Some of the everquest expansions added races, and this being essentialy the same people makes me think that such an addition is possible. You are correct in your assertions, so as with any expansion pack I would guess that the focus will be on new content that everybody can use, like quests, new areas and items to gather and auction on ebay.
Jawas and Gungans? I have to believe that this was someone's idea of a joke (what about Ewoks? or Minocs?) though if SWG is trying to emulate the films by adding things that people don't really want and leaving out the parts that they do thereby alienating the audience, then Gungans would be right at home
Ion Storm might have figured it out, and they may have even confessed to it at some point, but the proof is in the pudding as they say and most likely they would have kept their mouths shut if nobody was whining about it. Out of sight out of mind as you said.
The flip side of the argument though might be that if Ion Storm had been testing the product like they should have been then the bugs would never have made it out the door in the first place. Who cares? Its part of the product just like the exploding gas tanks were a part of the Pinto; if you don't like the product nobody is sticking a stiletto between your ribs and making you buy it.
If you don't frequent Fark.com you might have missed this, but here is some proof for your theory as to Vin's gamer background.
And here seems as good a place as any for my 3.14 cents: COR is a really good FPS. The first person fighting is top notch, the shooting scenarios are well done, the stealth is well implemented, and there is even a very nice little surprise if you make it all the way to the end of the game to. (the last stage is simply one of the best endgames I have ever played)
Really this behavior is a byproduct of is the fact that in any game, there are almost never any useless items or empty hidden rooms.
I would have gone through the window, and then I would have come back and done the other 2 doors as well because I can't be sure that the developers didn't put something I am going to need or some secret mission objective beyond one of those obstacles. Gamers respond to the laws of the game world and the law of the game world says phat loot is always behind the most difficult to open best guarded door.
Put up a sign that says "do not push this button" and tell me how many out of 20 leave the button alone.
For sure, I think i will be grabbing it before the lawyers hit the place, though I am not sure I will ever be able to convince anyone to play the game with me.
What the world really needs, is for that x-com mod for silent storm to make its way into the world....
Well in my case (that is last weekend) total we had access to 3 gamecubes, 2 moveable televisions, 1 very immoveable HDTV, 2 GBASPs, 1 GBA, 3 link cables, 1 gameboy player (a friend of my brother's owns one, I don't. If I had known that they had link cable connections on them I might have figured this idea myself) and about 60 total bottles/cans of beer.
We almost had enough stuff to allow 2 people to use TVs and the other 2 use GBASP (using a GBA vanilla can be tough without good background lighting) knowing this about the GBA player I am going to be keeping my eyes open for a used unit.
Ok i am betting that there are at least a dozen people that are going to rush this board with something to the effect of "duh thats stupid kuz it is more work than just getting GBAs". Never mind that nerdy rush some of us get for stuff like this.
But this isn't a stupid idea or impracticle at all if you remember that you don't need to put all 4 people on cubes. Last weekend I was out at my brothers, and there were 4 of us that wanted to play CC, but there was only 3 GBA's between us. Had we known about this, we could have dragged the small TV out of the basement, gotten ahold of another link cable and used a Gameboy player to get that 4th person in. All it would have taken was a $5 purchase of a used link cable from the local gamestop and a little bit of lifting.
I should be used to this by now, but I still can not get over this idea that if your business model is obsolete or at the very least, seriously unable to contend with the way that the world works, you should be trying to come up with a new way of doing business not petitioning the government to cripple everybody else so you can stay on top. It's like playing a board game like say, oh lets just say Monopoly, and trying to change the rules mid game because you are afraid that other people might be able to build that massage parlor on Boardwalk before you get all the railroads. Obviously with such antiquated ideas I would never survive in business.
The technology as itself poses no threat unless the artists and listeners themselves realize and actualize a business model that allows them to market and sell their music without the help of the RIAA.
How many times did I just use the word business? I really need to invest in a thesaurus.
They could do that sure, and save money. But there is a catch: If they don't court 3rd parties they are never going to even begin to catch Sony. If they ditch the Japanese market then a lot of Japanese 3rd party companies are not going to bother producing for the X-box, meanwhile the PS2 is everywhere so producing a game on it would hit every market with only a little bit of localization and some fresh box-art.
Staying out of the handheld market is a good idea at this point, Nintendo is going to be a tough one to budge and only Sony is strong enough to try it with a realistic expectation of success.
THis really is a (rare) case where Hotmail is your friend.
If I need to register for a website or anything that I suspect will result in a spam torrent, I hop over to hotmail, make a new account and within seconds I have a legit email that I can use for the registration and promptly forget about. I am probably commiting fraud by doing this but white collar prison vs spam is not a difficult choice to make.
They should grab the BloodBowl license from Games Workshop. I play in two leagues with my Necromatic team and its actually surprising the number of people that have gotten into it since GW re-released it a couple years ago. i mean, Mutant league was clearly inspired by BloodBowl it only make sense for them to go for a license that a lot of gamers already know.
I represent the other end of the sports game spectrum. I do not follow football, as I do not enjoy watching it in the least. I don't know who is what on which team, I couldn't tell Jerry Rice from Uncle Ben's rice. When I play a sports simulation, the first thing that I look for is the ability to make my own team, with my own created players. It could be the RPG gamer in me that refuses to die despite the fact that I really don't care for most of the highest acclaimed RPGS (Final Fantasy, Baldur's Gate and so on)
To someone like me, the loss of the licensing rights will not result in a whole lot of lost sleep. My all time favorite baseball series is still Baseball Stars for craps sake. I am however in a pitiful minority. Most people play for the recognition and the real teams. Without it, It would be like watching your favorite movie with different characters played by the wrong actors.
P.S. I am still waiting for EA to include crime statistics with their player rosters, when they make a game that i can have a player out because he pulled a piece out at a bar the night before a game, I will give up my 100 year old copy of Frontpage sports football.
If I can put on my tin-foil fedora for a second; I would think that the code by itself is meaningless, more likely it is a key to some other "clue" or scripture or something of that nature that may be contained elsewhere.
I mean, if i was going to hide some religious artifact of immense spiritual importance, I would not put the whole map in one place for any fool to stumble upon it. It's like the legend of the secret formula to coca-cola: No one person has the whole thing, that way it's much harder to steal.
I have some friends that work retail and while most of them are fairly tolerable, I know the types of people that work in game stores and most of them fit your description right up to your little off topic stab at Nintendo there, Old hat I know but there does seem to be an audacious echo in the room doesn't there?
I always assumed that the clerk passes are not given out as such as much as EB or Gamestop get a certain number of passes to attend the show which they distribute amongst their sales districts with the intent of ending up with managers and possibly highly effective clerks that are in a better position of knowledge to sell pre-sales for upcoming products (stores are all about pre-sales these days) What happens though, is most of the managers could give a rat's ass about video games (it's just a job) and they just toss them to the wolves, only the jackals are the first ones to the passes.
I don't think clerks have no business being there, I think this is more a case of certain people have no business being there. All of these ass-clowns just make the companies they work for look bad; in fact any ass-clown at the show reflects badly on the company they work for, but obviously a lot of people don't seem to he worried with PR these days are they or they would leave the idiots at home.
Yeah, but then honestly how many of us are in any danger of getting to go anyway? I mean oh no, I won't be allowed into a conference that I will never attend anyway.
Now for those of you that are in positions in which you might have gotten to go but now won't because of this, my condolences. I have a cardboard box you might be able to use to sneak in with if you still want it.
I really have a hard time seeing this as anything but a good thing. Games that get ported to all 3 systems rarely look, play or feel as good as a game developed for one of the consoles exclusively. Even the much mocked PS2 can deliver some really impressive visuals and game play when the game is specificly developed for that platform.
The only people exclusive titles are bad for are the people that don't own multiple consoles, but now it just means that if you want to buy a console you have to make a choice doesn't it? Isn't choice good? If you think that all games should get ported to all systems please tell me how that would be any better than there only being a single console standing? Neither Nintendo or Sony are going anywhere for awhile, it is a long road before either one of them gets busted apart by MS.
If I can share a moment of my inner geek, I would say one of the things that most improved math, not to mention reading, vocabulary and critical thinking skills as a young lad was Dungeons and Dragons. My dad introduced my brother and I to the game when we were 9 and 7 respectively, and we would invite over some of our other friends to play.
No it wasn't exactly calculus but it put numbers into a less serious context and it really made it a lot easier in school to feel comfortable with math. I think that a lot of kids have problems with math because they can't see how it can be used or how it fits into the real world. A great number of the scenarios my dad came up with challenged us to solve puzzles, some of these were logic problems, some required coming up with creative ways to use ordinary objects, some were essentialy algebra problems hidden under the façade of an ancient puzzle lock or something like that. And as for vocabulary, how many 9 year olds can use the words opulent, prismatic, or eldritch in a sentence and actually know what they mean?
And we all bathed regularly and went on to lead more or less productive lives in case anyone would like to volunteer any stereotypes involving black trench coats, virginity, and body odor.
It takes me just about 30 minuets to drive to work, which is a little more than half of a CD. If I listen to it in order, than everytime I play the CD I am going to here the same 6 to 7 songs, I could choose what I wanted to hear and program in a play list, but why bother when with a single button I get an assortment?
The above is even more true for MP3s, when you have a folder with 500 songs in it, it is tiresome to listen to it in te same order everytime, and it is a pointless bother to program it. Turn on random and I can go the whole afternoon without hearing any of the same songs that I heard the day before.
OK I guess not, but consider this: The most popular TV shows are all sitcoms and reality shows. Are you going to pay for any cable if the only thing that gets shown on any network is a sitcom or a reality show? What is your 5 favorite movies, or 5 favorite tv shows? Would you be ok if they got the axe because most people didn't like them?
Majority Rules is not a good way to produce much of anything least of all television, film or music. I am not defending the crap that is on TV, nor am I saying that only having to pay for the half dozen or so channels that I like is a bad idea, I am just saying that when you let the majority decide what you are going to watch, you better like midget dating and new episodes of survivor and friends because that is all you are going to be getting anytime soon.
First, you have to keep in mind that none of the cable providers are going to let their profits slip, so if they start loosing money, they are going to raise rates. Whether this means you and I will end up paying more for cable is hard to predict, offering fewer channels will inevitable reduce overheads so it may all average out.
The other problem is that new networks are not going to have a chance since nobody is really going to be willing to pay for them. What I think the long-term trend will be is fewer and fewer networks, offering more and more traditional fare. Cable networks may be discouraged from innovating or pushing their boundaries if they are in constant worry of getting their plug pulled by disgruntled viewers. In the end, I think this may only lead to further media/network consolidation.
Really what I mean is as long as Comedy Central and Cartoon Network survive I don't really care.
So what do we see here? "Time Splitters 2" has glowing reviews, "Grabbed by the Ghoulies" is at best considered average, and below average by most. I am not sure what all this means, oh right your next line is likely something about how "reviews are crap" or something like that.
How many games has Silicon Knights produced for Nintendo in 4 years? 2. In case math isn't one of your stronger suits, that is only one more than one. Not a very strong showing is it? While this doesn't help Nintendo in terms of game library, the loss of SK is not going to be putting any nails in any coffins anytime soon, they just haven't done enough to really matter. Nintendo has bigger things to worry about than this.
And Rare? I think "Grabbed by the Ghoulies" says all that needs to be said about Rare: Free Radical obviously took all of their gifted staff and left behind the second string.
Your out of the hardware comment is very obviously an attempt to rile up the fan-boys so I don't really feel any need to address it. Or do you have proof? Didn't think so.
In the N64 incarnation of Perfect Dark, Johanna while female was not really portrayed as a sex object. She was skinny, but not really the classic image of male sexual fantasy. If you have seen some of the concept art from the sequel/prequel Perfect Dark Zero, you will notice that she now looks like a DOA character picking up a little work on the side. It's tempting to attribute this to Nintendo's clean image versus Microsoft's edgier one, but some of the concept art goes back to before Microsoft even bought them.
My point is: Rare seems to have decided that it would be able to sell more copies if only they make the heroine into a trollop. I am of course being facetious, Sex sells everything no matter what the product; I would just rather believe that only crappy games and second rate companies have to rely on such base marketing.
You're buying an album where you only like a few of the tracks?!?
Most of the albums that I buy are from artists that I already know and likely already have a few of their albums.
One of my Local NPR stations actually plays a very diverse range of music, on occasion I hear a song by some artist I have never heard of and I really like it, and subsequently hunt down and purchase it. Rarely am I dissatisfied. The one-track wonder kiss of death seems to be more a problem with top 40 music than non-mainstream, I have no idea why but I suspect that it has something to do with marketing. You can always blame marketing.
Really though if you think about it, they are doing microsoft a favor. MS loses a lot of money on every x-box sale. If people can buy the games without having to buy the system MS still makes money from the game sales and doesn't have to offset the $100 or so they lose per unit.
Of course a lot of people that use this, will be using it in order to also copy and download x-box titles without paying for them. It's that group of idiots that give the entire emulation scene a really bad name.
Slashdot Mirror
Some of the everquest expansions added races, and this being essentialy the same people makes me think that such an addition is possible. You are correct in your assertions, so as with any expansion pack I would guess that the focus will be on new content that everybody can use, like quests, new areas and items to gather and auction on ebay.
Jawas and Gungans? I have to believe that this was someone's idea of a joke (what about Ewoks? or Minocs?) though if SWG is trying to emulate the films by adding things that people don't really want and leaving out the parts that they do thereby alienating the audience, then Gungans would be right at home
Ion Storm might have figured it out, and they may have even confessed to it at some point, but the proof is in the pudding as they say and most likely they would have kept their mouths shut if nobody was whining about it. Out of sight out of mind as you said.
The flip side of the argument though might be that if Ion Storm had been testing the product like they should have been then the bugs would never have made it out the door in the first place. Who cares? Its part of the product just like the exploding gas tanks were a part of the Pinto; if you don't like the product nobody is sticking a stiletto between your ribs and making you buy it.
If you don't frequent Fark.com you might have missed this, but here is some proof for your theory as to Vin's gamer background.
And here seems as good a place as any for my 3.14 cents: COR is a really good FPS. The first person fighting is top notch, the shooting scenarios are well done, the stealth is well implemented, and there is even a very nice little surprise if you make it all the way to the end of the game to. (the last stage is simply one of the best endgames I have ever played)
Really this behavior is a byproduct of is the fact that in any game, there are almost never any useless items or empty hidden rooms.
I would have gone through the window, and then I would have come back and done the other 2 doors as well because I can't be sure that the developers didn't put something I am going to need or some secret mission objective beyond one of those obstacles. Gamers respond to the laws of the game world and the law of the game world says phat loot is always behind the most difficult to open best guarded door.
Put up a sign that says "do not push this button" and tell me how many out of 20 leave the button alone.
For sure, I think i will be grabbing it before the lawyers hit the place, though I am not sure I will ever be able to convince anyone to play the game with me.
What the world really needs, is for that x-com mod for silent storm to make its way into the world....
Well in my case (that is last weekend) total we had access to 3 gamecubes, 2 moveable televisions, 1 very immoveable HDTV, 2 GBASPs, 1 GBA, 3 link cables, 1 gameboy player (a friend of my brother's owns one, I don't. If I had known that they had link cable connections on them I might have figured this idea myself) and about 60 total bottles/cans of beer.
We almost had enough stuff to allow 2 people to use TVs and the other 2 use GBASP (using a GBA vanilla can be tough without good background lighting) knowing this about the GBA player I am going to be keeping my eyes open for a used unit.
Ok i am betting that there are at least a dozen people that are going to rush this board with something to the effect of "duh thats stupid kuz it is more work than just getting GBAs". Never mind that nerdy rush some of us get for stuff like this.
But this isn't a stupid idea or impracticle at all if you remember that you don't need to put all 4 people on cubes. Last weekend I was out at my brothers, and there were 4 of us that wanted to play CC, but there was only 3 GBA's between us. Had we known about this, we could have dragged the small TV out of the basement, gotten ahold of another link cable and used a Gameboy player to get that 4th person in. All it would have taken was a $5 purchase of a used link cable from the local gamestop and a little bit of lifting.
I should be used to this by now, but I still can not get over this idea that if your business model is obsolete or at the very least, seriously unable to contend with the way that the world works, you should be trying to come up with a new way of doing business not petitioning the government to cripple everybody else so you can stay on top. It's like playing a board game like say, oh lets just say Monopoly, and trying to change the rules mid game because you are afraid that other people might be able to build that massage parlor on Boardwalk before you get all the railroads. Obviously with such antiquated ideas I would never survive in business.
The technology as itself poses no threat unless the artists and listeners themselves realize and actualize a business model that allows them to market and sell their music without the help of the RIAA.
How many times did I just use the word business? I really need to invest in a thesaurus.
Microsoft should drop Japan
They could do that sure, and save money. But there is a catch: If they don't court 3rd parties they are never going to even begin to catch Sony. If they ditch the Japanese market then a lot of Japanese 3rd party companies are not going to bother producing for the X-box, meanwhile the PS2 is everywhere so producing a game on it would hit every market with only a little bit of localization and some fresh box-art.
Staying out of the handheld market is a good idea at this point, Nintendo is going to be a tough one to budge and only Sony is strong enough to try it with a realistic expectation of success.
THis really is a (rare) case where Hotmail is your friend.
If I need to register for a website or anything that I suspect will result in a spam torrent, I hop over to hotmail, make a new account and within seconds I have a legit email that I can use for the registration and promptly forget about. I am probably commiting fraud by doing this but white collar prison vs spam is not a difficult choice to make.
They should grab the BloodBowl license from Games Workshop. I play in two leagues with my Necromatic team and its actually surprising the number of people that have gotten into it since GW re-released it a couple years ago. i mean, Mutant league was clearly inspired by BloodBowl it only make sense for them to go for a license that a lot of gamers already know.
For the purposes of comparison only
I represent the other end of the sports game spectrum. I do not follow football, as I do not enjoy watching it in the least. I don't know who is what on which team, I couldn't tell Jerry Rice from Uncle Ben's rice. When I play a sports simulation, the first thing that I look for is the ability to make my own team, with my own created players. It could be the RPG gamer in me that refuses to die despite the fact that I really don't care for most of the highest acclaimed RPGS (Final Fantasy, Baldur's Gate and so on)
To someone like me, the loss of the licensing rights will not result in a whole lot of lost sleep. My all time favorite baseball series is still Baseball Stars for craps sake. I am however in a pitiful minority. Most people play for the recognition and the real teams. Without it, It would be like watching your favorite movie with different characters played by the wrong actors.
P.S. I am still waiting for EA to include crime statistics with their player rosters, when they make a game that i can have a player out because he pulled a piece out at a bar the night before a game, I will give up my 100 year old copy of Frontpage sports football.
If I can put on my tin-foil fedora for a second; I would think that the code by itself is meaningless, more likely it is a key to some other "clue" or scripture or something of that nature that may be contained elsewhere.
I mean, if i was going to hide some religious artifact of immense spiritual importance, I would not put the whole map in one place for any fool to stumble upon it. It's like the legend of the secret formula to coca-cola: No one person has the whole thing, that way it's much harder to steal.
I have some friends that work retail and while most of them are fairly tolerable, I know the types of people that work in game stores and most of them fit your description right up to your little off topic stab at Nintendo there, Old hat I know but there does seem to be an audacious echo in the room doesn't there?
I always assumed that the clerk passes are not given out as such as much as EB or Gamestop get a certain number of passes to attend the show which they distribute amongst their sales districts with the intent of ending up with managers and possibly highly effective clerks that are in a better position of knowledge to sell pre-sales for upcoming products (stores are all about pre-sales these days) What happens though, is most of the managers could give a rat's ass about video games (it's just a job) and they just toss them to the wolves, only the jackals are the first ones to the passes.
I don't think clerks have no business being there, I think this is more a case of certain people have no business being there. All of these ass-clowns just make the companies they work for look bad; in fact any ass-clown at the show reflects badly on the company they work for, but obviously a lot of people don't seem to he worried with PR these days are they or they would leave the idiots at home.
Yeah, but then honestly how many of us are in any danger of getting to go anyway? I mean oh no, I won't be allowed into a conference that I will never attend anyway.
Now for those of you that are in positions in which you might have gotten to go but now won't because of this, my condolences. I have a cardboard box you might be able to use to sneak in with if you still want it.
I really have a hard time seeing this as anything but a good thing. Games that get ported to all 3 systems rarely look, play or feel as good as a game developed for one of the consoles exclusively. Even the much mocked PS2 can deliver some really impressive visuals and game play when the game is specificly developed for that platform.
The only people exclusive titles are bad for are the people that don't own multiple consoles, but now it just means that if you want to buy a console you have to make a choice doesn't it? Isn't choice good? If you think that all games should get ported to all systems please tell me how that would be any better than there only being a single console standing? Neither Nintendo or Sony are going anywhere for awhile, it is a long road before either one of them gets busted apart by MS.
If I can share a moment of my inner geek, I would say one of the things that most improved math, not to mention reading, vocabulary and critical thinking skills as a young lad was Dungeons and Dragons. My dad introduced my brother and I to the game when we were 9 and 7 respectively, and we would invite over some of our other friends to play.
No it wasn't exactly calculus but it put numbers into a less serious context and it really made it a lot easier in school to feel comfortable with math. I think that a lot of kids have problems with math because they can't see how it can be used or how it fits into the real world. A great number of the scenarios my dad came up with challenged us to solve puzzles, some of these were logic problems, some required coming up with creative ways to use ordinary objects, some were essentialy algebra problems hidden under the façade of an ancient puzzle lock or something like that. And as for vocabulary, how many 9 year olds can use the words opulent, prismatic, or eldritch in a sentence and actually know what they mean?
And we all bathed regularly and went on to lead more or less productive lives in case anyone would like to volunteer any stereotypes involving black trench coats, virginity, and body odor.
I agree with you.
It takes me just about 30 minuets to drive to work, which is a little more than half of a CD. If I listen to it in order, than everytime I play the CD I am going to here the same 6 to 7 songs, I could choose what I wanted to hear and program in a play list, but why bother when with a single button I get an assortment?
The above is even more true for MP3s, when you have a folder with 500 songs in it, it is tiresome to listen to it in te same order everytime, and it is a pointless bother to program it. Turn on random and I can go the whole afternoon without hearing any of the same songs that I heard the day before.
If I say art will you leave me alone?
OK I guess not, but consider this: The most popular TV shows are all sitcoms and reality shows. Are you going to pay for any cable if the only thing that gets shown on any network is a sitcom or a reality show? What is your 5 favorite movies, or 5 favorite tv shows? Would you be ok if they got the axe because most people didn't like them?
Majority Rules is not a good way to produce much of anything least of all television, film or music. I am not defending the crap that is on TV, nor am I saying that only having to pay for the half dozen or so channels that I like is a bad idea, I am just saying that when you let the majority decide what you are going to watch, you better like midget dating and new episodes of survivor and friends because that is all you are going to be getting anytime soon.
There is a downside
First, you have to keep in mind that none of the cable providers are going to let their profits slip, so if they start loosing money, they are going to raise rates. Whether this means you and I will end up paying more for cable is hard to predict, offering fewer channels will inevitable reduce overheads so it may all average out.
The other problem is that new networks are not going to have a chance since nobody is really going to be willing to pay for them. What I think the long-term trend will be is fewer and fewer networks, offering more and more traditional fare. Cable networks may be discouraged from innovating or pushing their boundaries if they are in constant worry of getting their plug pulled by disgruntled viewers. In the end, I think this may only lead to further media/network consolidation.
Really what I mean is as long as Comedy Central and Cartoon Network survive I don't really care.
hmmmm
Time Splitters 2
Game spy
Game Spot
Computer and Video games review>
Game Pro
Grabbed by the Ghoulies
Game Spy
Game Spot
Game Zone
Team XBox
So what do we see here? "Time Splitters 2" has glowing reviews, "Grabbed by the Ghoulies" is at best considered average, and below average by most. I am not sure what all this means, oh right your next line is likely something about how "reviews are crap" or something like that.
How many games has Silicon Knights produced for Nintendo in 4 years? 2. In case math isn't one of your stronger suits, that is only one more than one. Not a very strong showing is it? While this doesn't help Nintendo in terms of game library, the loss of SK is not going to be putting any nails in any coffins anytime soon, they just haven't done enough to really matter. Nintendo has bigger things to worry about than this.
And Rare? I think "Grabbed by the Ghoulies" says all that needs to be said about Rare: Free Radical obviously took all of their gifted staff and left behind the second string.
Your out of the hardware comment is very obviously an attempt to rile up the fan-boys so I don't really feel any need to address it. Or do you have proof? Didn't think so.
Funny thing you bring up there.
In the N64 incarnation of Perfect Dark, Johanna while female was not really portrayed as a sex object. She was skinny, but not really the classic image of male sexual fantasy. If you have seen some of the concept art from the sequel/prequel Perfect Dark Zero, you will notice that she now looks like a DOA character picking up a little work on the side. It's tempting to attribute this to Nintendo's clean image versus Microsoft's edgier one, but some of the concept art goes back to before Microsoft even bought them.
My point is: Rare seems to have decided that it would be able to sell more copies if only they make the heroine into a trollop. I am of course being facetious, Sex sells everything no matter what the product; I would just rather believe that only crappy games and second rate companies have to rely on such base marketing.
You're buying an album where you only like a few of the tracks?!?
Most of the albums that I buy are from artists that I already know and likely already have a few of their albums.
One of my Local NPR stations actually plays a very diverse range of music, on occasion I hear a song by some artist I have never heard of and I really like it, and subsequently hunt down and purchase it. Rarely am I dissatisfied. The one-track wonder kiss of death seems to be more a problem with top 40 music than non-mainstream, I have no idea why but I suspect that it has something to do with marketing. You can always blame marketing.
Really though if you think about it, they are doing microsoft a favor. MS loses a lot of money on every x-box sale. If people can buy the games without having to buy the system MS still makes money from the game sales and doesn't have to offset the $100 or so they lose per unit.
Of course a lot of people that use this, will be using it in order to also copy and download x-box titles without paying for them. It's that group of idiots that give the entire emulation scene a really bad name.