After saying "As far as we're concerned, this looks like stupid money. They are paying an exclusive price for a nonexclusive agreement" Brown continued by laughing and stating "I bet Take-Two actually pays their employees for working overtime. Suckers."
According to them it was the next "Grand Theft Auto." At least that's what they told every single person who walked into the store when I was there.
Sounds like VOM to me. Certainly gag me, in the gag me of corporate culture kind of way - but the clerks are just people making sucky wages like everyone else. Watch come Spring Break and when school lets out for summer, and the gameboy game section will usually take the front of the store for about 2-4 weeks. In the meantime, here's how to tell VOM at an EB:
* first display gondola is filled with a certain game or publisher
* at least one of the windows (the "primary" window usually) is dedicated to that publisher or game
* there is a trade-in promotion dedicated to that game or publisher
* they try to push that game as the next "Grand Theft Auto." =)
Actually, if it's the end of the month and you go in wanting that VOM game, the clerks are probably much more likely to manipulate the trade in system to swing you credit if you get that game. You know, if you don't mind getting $5 trade in for a game you just paid $50 for.
True, but I think it's doubtful that Take-Two could have outbid EA. However, here they are with an exclusive MLB contract so?
But just as we can't be sure that T2 didn't outbid EA, we also don't know whether T2 "let" some competition in, whether this was the MLB's stipulation, or whether MS and Sony had some pull in the decision. My guess is that the purchase of the High Heat franchise by Microsoft meant they had some vested interest in an MLB game, whereas they had already canned their medicore NFL title.
People were bitching at EA for picking up the NFL exclusivity contract and talking about its unfairness to Sega. Yet, here is Take Two (who distributes Sega sports) doing the same thing. Moreover, Take Two tried to do the same NFL exclusive contract as EA got, they just bid less than EA. So are people starting letter writing campaigns into Sega?
As an interesting sidenote, the EA-NFL contract was completely exclusive. But here, it seems that first-party studios are not barred from making MLB games. I wonder if Microsoft put too much into buying the High Heat franchise to let that go?
I think what's more interesting is that EA seems to be supporting the Xbox2 slightly more than they did the Xbox1. EA was slow to support the first Xbox, and they did so begrudgingly. The article states that none of the EA-Xbox2 titles are exclusive, but if they're better looking (and one owns an Xbox2) why would one not buy the Xbox2 version? What will really show EA's hand will be whether they release any PS3 exclusive titles or not.
Their attitude is more cautious, but it seems that the industry is warmer to the Xbox2 than they were to the Xbox1. Will this translate into market domination (in the US at least?)?
. ..retail has shown a great deal of favortism to PS2 and XBox, long before Cube fell to a distant 3rd
I can't speak for Wal-Mart or Best Buy, but at EB Nintendo paid to be EB's "VOM," or Vender of the Month, at least as much as Microsoft and many more times than Sony. I managed an EB when all the systems came out, and if there really was favoritism towards any particular system it was because it was selling well. Come end of school in May-June, the Gameboy games would get the most wall space. But come Christmas, Sony would.
Despite this, when I worked at EB the Gamecube remained inidiginous to the ever shrinking diehard Nintendo fans and parents of small kids. I should also say that in terms of retail reps, Nintendo's was always - across the board - the most clueless. This was true in every other district I had communication with. We knew more about Nintendo than their own reps. Microsoft and Sony at least had some interesting information when they stopped by.
I know at our store, we pushed Nintendo as much as we could. We would walk across the hall to the Barnie's Coffee to show how well the Wavebird worked. We held Smash Brother tournaments when it came out. Yet, it was obvious that people just weren't interested in the Gamecube.
Yes, everything is bought in retail as it is in grocery stores. Even ad space. If you think that Best Buy or EB give more ad or shelf space to MS and Sony because they have some sort of strange innate love for them, you're wrong. MS and Sony paid to have that full page ad, and Nintendo paid less to have that small corner. Even when they didn't buy shelf space in our store, shelf dedication followed store sales. If Nintendo had sold better, you can rest assured they would have had more shelf space.
You're overlaying a conspiratorial malevolent intention on retail when there is none, save perhaps a raw desire for profit.
I find it interesting to compare the movie industry and game industry. Movie studios are generally able to predict the date of a release as soon as production begins. Dates do change, but this is rare. But in the game industry, it's rare when a game publisher is actually doesn't change the date. Is it that there are more people involved? No. Money? No. Are games just more complicated to make than a movie? I can't see why. So what is it about games that makes it so difficult for publishers
Why is it that the best studios are the ones who often claim the mantra "when it's done" as their release date? It seems to me that a truly great studio ought to not only craft great games, but do them in a timely manner. I don't think this would bother me so much, except that in every E3 they imply and act as if the game is coming out that year. They're taking advantage of the press and fans, and eating their cake too: they get to put out whenever _they_ feel like it. Seems like a raw deal for us.
Someone needs to kick the game industry in their pants and tell them to shape up and act like, oh you know, every other professional industry.
The problem for Sony is not that they lack engineering or design prowress. Sony is not just Sony, they are Sony Electronics, SCEA, Sony Disc Manufacturing, Sony Entertainment (music and movies), etc. Sony Entertainment will never let Sony Electronics design a music player that could "threaten" their profits. Sony Disc Manufacturing, which also produces memory sticks, would never let a music player going out that wouldn't benefit their company.
That's one reason why Apple's iPod has been far more successful than Sony's playuer, even though Sony has had a major foothold on CD and tape players for 20 years. The iPod's only attachments are iTunes and the Mac; and Apple learned quickly that isolating the iPod to the Mac was a mistake. Whether this kind of intracorporate meddling affects the PS3 and its dependence on Blu-Ray remains to be seen.
I set up a website with what I called a wall of shame and sent some 50+ members out to take screenshots and report all the IP protected characters.
Now that you don't play anymore, do you go around your neighborhood taking pictures of kids wearing red blankets as capes and cut-out S's who pretend to be Superman? Damn kids. Who do they think they are, infringing on people's intellectual property. Get off the intellectual property brats!
This is actually good news. I think it's the beginning of the end for EA.
First, my bet is that Sony, MS, and Nintendo are as worried as anyone about EA's rise to power. The could quite nearly already ruin a console (cf. Dreamcast). But now, if a console maker isn't doling out favors and money to EA, they will find themselves in a very difficult position.
I wonder if we won't begin to see some interesting powerplays behind the scenes, with MS/Sony/Nintendo running some subvert rescue operations to somehow curb EA from gobling all the power dots on the board.
The other positives in this is that we will probably start to see all the things that come with being in a near-monopoly level of control. Lawsuits against EA will inevitably ensue.
Finally, I don't care what EA says - a vaccum of competition makes teams lazy. What does Tiberon, the studio behind Madden, have to worry about if they have a few bad features in the game? Why bother paying for focus groups, or worrying about review scores or message board feedback, if your game is the only NFL game on the market for the next X years? Mark my words: the progression we've seen in the quality of EA's sports titles will begin to diminish.
You don't use an ICBM to kill an ant hill. EA was obviously worried about Sega. They wouldn't have gone to all this trouble for the hell of it. You don't see them suddenly making exclusive Curling League contracts. They were starting to hurt after last year's $20 high quality sports titles.
I am clueless on sports, and when I watch ESPN I feel even more clueless. The deluge of statistics, rules, various sports overwhelms me. Yet, how many ESPN channels are there? Like 20, each more categorically detailed than its parent channel? ESPN is unarguably difficult to "get" into. If you don't know sports, ESPN is a morass of numbers and names and terms you know nothing about.
Kind of like video games and computing. Video games and computing on TV have more in common with TV sports than any other form of entertainment. There is something of a learning curve for video games and computing, and like sports they have generally appealed to a specific demographic. But what G4 is doing is the exact opposite of ESPN. They're trying to be more mainstream, instead of appealing to the niche like ESPN does. The fact is that ESPN makes the niche look so cool, and they do it so well, that the niche becomes mainstream. G4 is trying to be mainstream without appealing to the specific demographic of people who love - really love - video games and technology.
I guess one could ask why the hell they're parading "the best of 2D and 3D girls" if they're trying to go mainstream. But it's like the kid in high school wearing the Walmart Wranglers jeans and knockoff brand jacket trying to fit into the cool clique. It's obvious that G4 is trying too hard. X-Play is the only thing they have going for them. Adam and Morgan* appeal to the niche, but at the same time they do it so well that it becomes cool. Friends who have no love of video games love to watch X-Play.
G4 should be modeling ESPN, not Fox. The channel should cater to the people who love video games and technology, not shun them by canceling their favorite shows.
* Ok, plus, Morgan is hot. But what she is not is a "2D or 3D girl." How lame.
I can't help but wonder if this is just EA walking away after beating the crap out of Sega and then turning around just to step on on Sega's glasses. I mean, what interest would anyone have in an AFL game - unless that was the only football game you could make?
My guess is that the EA probably gave the AFL more money than it's ever made from video games (which is to say, greater than $5) and is probably assigning the five newest interns as the entire team. This isn't to make an AFL game, it's to stop other companies from using it as a potential backdoor.
It's elitism like the kind displayed in the post and on the page that will marginalize indie games into an ignored niche. Let's be clear before we start writing off high budget video games: of the top 10 indie games listed, six of the writeups mention as a positive characteristic that the game is similar to existing mainstream game franchises. I have played several games on the list, bought them, and liked them - but there are none that I would at all consider groundbreaking or seminally creative (ie. Gish = platformer + physics + goth). All are obviously borrowing from somewhere; some, like Hamsterball, could very well have been PC ports of video games like Super Monkey Ball. They are all great titles I'm sure, but they are all progressive in their creativity - not at all unlike a certain high budget Xbox FPS. Several of the writeups mention the quality of graphics or the polish. Again, all features of that FPS Which Shall Not Be Named.
I've seen too many posts lamenting the lack of creativity in the top games of 2004. Here again is another form of that. Apparently there are indie game fans who think that these games were created by people who lived apart from civilization all their lives and then suddenly started writing games. Spontaneous creativity is rare, if it even exists at all. Progressive creativity, be it high budget or low, is good and should be applauded whatever its source.
I wish I would have waited. I could have saved myself $50 to experience the frusteration that is Half Life 2 on an n-n-n-vi-d-dia-a-a c-c-a-a-r-r-d-d-d.
I guess what I meant to say wasn't that it was the first to have interoperability. I just remember them sticking up for it. Go look in the cnet news archives, and anytime AOL shuts down their service to other AIM clients it's Trillian fighting the good fight, not Everybuddy or GAIM.
Wasn't it Trillian that basically paved the way for multi-IM clients? I would suggest that if it wasn't for Trillian's (then) larger userbase you wouldn't have the interoperability that GAIM and Miranda have now. Could be wrong, and if I am I have no doubt someone will correct me.
No, but they really did bid against EA for the NFL. Had they managed to outbid EA, however unlikely, would you have been as angry at Sega as you are at EA? Doubtful.
I remember reading an article where the Lucasarts president said something along the lines of Force Commander being too ahead of the times for anyone to like it yet. So, apparently we should all be playing Force Commander...right....about.....NOW.
You don't need to put a gun to my head to say that Sega is a better company than EA. But let's make it clear: the Player's League took a bid from Sega and Take Two just as they did from EA. The difference is that EA bid more. If they had the cash, Sega would have gladly cornered EA out of the market if they could, so this is not exactly like a mom and pop shop v. Walmart. This is a large corporation v. a larger corporation. I like Sega - love Sega - but this is the way the game is played.
There are articles that state that the NFL was taking bids earlier in the year and that Take 2 and Sega put in bids themselves. This was not a surprise for Sega and Take 2. I wonder if the $19.99 price point was not a way to build consumer support before the door closed?
I worked at EB when we "invented" GMR. We signed up hundreds and hundreds of people per store because we were being given a spiff on each membership sale. It wasn't much, but if you sold well - and most of us at the store I worked at did - you could could away with an extra game or two every month (that's how you can tell I worked at a game store, everything is in number of games bought, not meals or gas gallons). Within a year, EB had taken that spiff away. So why resubscribe if you don't have an EB guy breathing down your neck?
My guess is that the numbers dropped significantly after EB removed the spiff. GMR was a good magazine, so it's a shame this happened but even the $5.50 an hour retail worker knew that this would happen. Anyone working for GMR knew the deal going in, I would hope.
As for XBN, which EB had nothing to do with save selling it, it seemed kind of specifically redundant. Good, but the only reason OXM does so well is the demo disc. Without the disc, why buy XBN?
Nix two magazines. Whatevs. I'm still lamenting the fall of Next Gen.
Slashdot Mirror
After saying "As far as we're concerned, this looks like stupid money. They are paying an exclusive price for a nonexclusive agreement" Brown continued by laughing and stating "I bet Take-Two actually pays their employees for working overtime. Suckers."
So expect a smaller George Foreman grill, not necessarily a smaller pc.
According to them it was the next "Grand Theft Auto." At least that's what they told every single person who walked into the store when I was there.
Sounds like VOM to me. Certainly gag me, in the gag me of corporate culture kind of way - but the clerks are just people making sucky wages like everyone else. Watch come Spring Break and when school lets out for summer, and the gameboy game section will usually take the front of the store for about 2-4 weeks. In the meantime, here's how to tell VOM at an EB:
* first display gondola is filled with a certain game or publisher
* at least one of the windows (the "primary" window usually) is dedicated to that publisher or game
* there is a trade-in promotion dedicated to that game or publisher
* they try to push that game as the next "Grand Theft Auto." =)
Actually, if it's the end of the month and you go in wanting that VOM game, the clerks are probably much more likely to manipulate the trade in system to swing you credit if you get that game. You know, if you don't mind getting $5 trade in for a game you just paid $50 for.
True, but I think it's doubtful that Take-Two could have outbid EA. However, here they are with an exclusive MLB contract so?
But just as we can't be sure that T2 didn't outbid EA, we also don't know whether T2 "let" some competition in, whether this was the MLB's stipulation, or whether MS and Sony had some pull in the decision. My guess is that the purchase of the High Heat franchise by Microsoft meant they had some vested interest in an MLB game, whereas they had already canned their medicore NFL title.
People were bitching at EA for picking up the NFL exclusivity contract and talking about its unfairness to Sega. Yet, here is Take Two (who distributes Sega sports) doing the same thing. Moreover, Take Two tried to do the same NFL exclusive contract as EA got, they just bid less than EA. So are people starting letter writing campaigns into Sega?
As an interesting sidenote, the EA-NFL contract was completely exclusive. But here, it seems that first-party studios are not barred from making MLB games. I wonder if Microsoft put too much into buying the High Heat franchise to let that go?
I think what's more interesting is that EA seems to be supporting the Xbox2 slightly more than they did the Xbox1. EA was slow to support the first Xbox, and they did so begrudgingly. The article states that none of the EA-Xbox2 titles are exclusive, but if they're better looking (and one owns an Xbox2) why would one not buy the Xbox2 version? What will really show EA's hand will be whether they release any PS3 exclusive titles or not.
Their attitude is more cautious, but it seems that the industry is warmer to the Xbox2 than they were to the Xbox1. Will this translate into market domination (in the US at least?)?
They should just have an Animal Crossing tourney instead! That would rock!
"TAKE THAT ASSHOLE, I just got the Purple Flower Stationary! BUUYAH!"
. . .retail has shown a great deal of favortism to PS2 and XBox, long before Cube fell to a distant 3rd
I can't speak for Wal-Mart or Best Buy, but at EB Nintendo paid to be EB's "VOM," or Vender of the Month, at least as much as Microsoft and many more times than Sony. I managed an EB when all the systems came out, and if there really was favoritism towards any particular system it was because it was selling well. Come end of school in May-June, the Gameboy games would get the most wall space. But come Christmas, Sony would.
Despite this, when I worked at EB the Gamecube remained inidiginous to the ever shrinking diehard Nintendo fans and parents of small kids. I should also say that in terms of retail reps, Nintendo's was always - across the board - the most clueless. This was true in every other district I had communication with. We knew more about Nintendo than their own reps. Microsoft and Sony at least had some interesting information when they stopped by.
I know at our store, we pushed Nintendo as much as we could. We would walk across the hall to the Barnie's Coffee to show how well the Wavebird worked. We held Smash Brother tournaments when it came out. Yet, it was obvious that people just weren't interested in the Gamecube.
Yes, everything is bought in retail as it is in grocery stores. Even ad space. If you think that Best Buy or EB give more ad or shelf space to MS and Sony because they have some sort of strange innate love for them, you're wrong. MS and Sony paid to have that full page ad, and Nintendo paid less to have that small corner. Even when they didn't buy shelf space in our store, shelf dedication followed store sales. If Nintendo had sold better, you can rest assured they would have had more shelf space.
You're overlaying a conspiratorial malevolent intention on retail when there is none, save perhaps a raw desire for profit.
I find it interesting to compare the movie industry and game industry. Movie studios are generally able to predict the date of a release as soon as production begins. Dates do change, but this is rare. But in the game industry, it's rare when a game publisher is actually doesn't change the date. Is it that there are more people involved? No. Money? No. Are games just more complicated to make than a movie? I can't see why. So what is it about games that makes it so difficult for publishers
Why is it that the best studios are the ones who often claim the mantra "when it's done" as their release date? It seems to me that a truly great studio ought to not only craft great games, but do them in a timely manner. I don't think this would bother me so much, except that in every E3 they imply and act as if the game is coming out that year. They're taking advantage of the press and fans, and eating their cake too: they get to put out whenever _they_ feel like it. Seems like a raw deal for us.
Someone needs to kick the game industry in their pants and tell them to shape up and act like, oh you know, every other professional industry.
The problem for Sony is not that they lack engineering or design prowress. Sony is not just Sony, they are Sony Electronics, SCEA, Sony Disc Manufacturing, Sony Entertainment (music and movies), etc. Sony Entertainment will never let Sony Electronics design a music player that could "threaten" their profits. Sony Disc Manufacturing, which also produces memory sticks, would never let a music player going out that wouldn't benefit their company.
That's one reason why Apple's iPod has been far more successful than Sony's playuer, even though Sony has had a major foothold on CD and tape players for 20 years. The iPod's only attachments are iTunes and the Mac; and Apple learned quickly that isolating the iPod to the Mac was a mistake. Whether this kind of intracorporate meddling affects the PS3 and its dependence on Blu-Ray remains to be seen.
I set up a website with what I called a wall of shame and sent some 50+ members out to take screenshots and report all the IP protected characters.
Now that you don't play anymore, do you go around your neighborhood taking pictures of kids wearing red blankets as capes and cut-out S's who pretend to be Superman? Damn kids. Who do they think they are, infringing on people's intellectual property. Get off the intellectual property brats!
This is actually good news. I think it's the beginning of the end for EA.
First, my bet is that Sony, MS, and Nintendo are as worried as anyone about EA's rise to power. The could quite nearly already ruin a console (cf. Dreamcast). But now, if a console maker isn't doling out favors and money to EA, they will find themselves in a very difficult position. I wonder if we won't begin to see some interesting powerplays behind the scenes, with MS/Sony/Nintendo running some subvert rescue operations to somehow curb EA from gobling all the power dots on the board.
The other positives in this is that we will probably start to see all the things that come with being in a near-monopoly level of control. Lawsuits against EA will inevitably ensue.
Finally, I don't care what EA says - a vaccum of competition makes teams lazy. What does Tiberon, the studio behind Madden, have to worry about if they have a few bad features in the game? Why bother paying for focus groups, or worrying about review scores or message board feedback, if your game is the only NFL game on the market for the next X years? Mark my words: the progression we've seen in the quality of EA's sports titles will begin to diminish.
You don't use an ICBM to kill an ant hill. EA was obviously worried about Sega. They wouldn't have gone to all this trouble for the hell of it. You don't see them suddenly making exclusive Curling League contracts. They were starting to hurt after last year's $20 high quality sports titles.
If EA can bleed, they can be killed.
...when you have to go back to 2001 for reading material.
I am clueless on sports, and when I watch ESPN I feel even more clueless. The deluge of statistics, rules, various sports overwhelms me. Yet, how many ESPN channels are there? Like 20, each more categorically detailed than its parent channel? ESPN is unarguably difficult to "get" into. If you don't know sports, ESPN is a morass of numbers and names and terms you know nothing about.
Kind of like video games and computing. Video games and computing on TV have more in common with TV sports than any other form of entertainment. There is something of a learning curve for video games and computing, and like sports they have generally appealed to a specific demographic. But what G4 is doing is the exact opposite of ESPN. They're trying to be more mainstream, instead of appealing to the niche like ESPN does. The fact is that ESPN makes the niche look so cool, and they do it so well, that the niche becomes mainstream. G4 is trying to be mainstream without appealing to the specific demographic of people who love - really love - video games and technology.
I guess one could ask why the hell they're parading "the best of 2D and 3D girls" if they're trying to go mainstream. But it's like the kid in high school wearing the Walmart Wranglers jeans and knockoff brand jacket trying to fit into the cool clique. It's obvious that G4 is trying too hard. X-Play is the only thing they have going for them. Adam and Morgan* appeal to the niche, but at the same time they do it so well that it becomes cool. Friends who have no love of video games love to watch X-Play.
G4 should be modeling ESPN, not Fox. The channel should cater to the people who love video games and technology, not shun them by canceling their favorite shows.
* Ok, plus, Morgan is hot. But what she is not is a "2D or 3D girl." How lame.
I can't help but wonder if this is just EA walking away after beating the crap out of Sega and then turning around just to step on on Sega's glasses. I mean, what interest would anyone have in an AFL game - unless that was the only football game you could make?
My guess is that the EA probably gave the AFL more money than it's ever made from video games (which is to say, greater than $5) and is probably assigning the five newest interns as the entire team. This isn't to make an AFL game, it's to stop other companies from using it as a potential backdoor.
It's elitism like the kind displayed in the post and on the page that will marginalize indie games into an ignored niche. Let's be clear before we start writing off high budget video games: of the top 10 indie games listed, six of the writeups mention as a positive characteristic that the game is similar to existing mainstream game franchises. I have played several games on the list, bought them, and liked them - but there are none that I would at all consider groundbreaking or seminally creative (ie. Gish = platformer + physics + goth). All are obviously borrowing from somewhere; some, like Hamsterball, could very well have been PC ports of video games like Super Monkey Ball. They are all great titles I'm sure, but they are all progressive in their creativity - not at all unlike a certain high budget Xbox FPS. Several of the writeups mention the quality of graphics or the polish. Again, all features of that FPS Which Shall Not Be Named.
I've seen too many posts lamenting the lack of creativity in the top games of 2004. Here again is another form of that. Apparently there are indie game fans who think that these games were created by people who lived apart from civilization all their lives and then suddenly started writing games. Spontaneous creativity is rare, if it even exists at all. Progressive creativity, be it high budget or low, is good and should be applauded whatever its source.
I wish I would have waited. I could have saved myself $50 to experience the frusteration that is Half Life 2 on an n-n-n-vi-d-dia-a-a c-c-a-a-r-r-d-d-d.
The NFL, DiCE, now Ubisoft...
Looks like someone's Christmas capital is burning a hole in their pocket! Tsk tsk!
I guess what I meant to say wasn't that it was the first to have interoperability. I just remember them sticking up for it. Go look in the cnet news archives, and anytime AOL shuts down their service to other AIM clients it's Trillian fighting the good fight, not Everybuddy or GAIM.
Wasn't it Trillian that basically paved the way for multi-IM clients? I would suggest that if it wasn't for Trillian's (then) larger userbase you wouldn't have the interoperability that GAIM and Miranda have now. Could be wrong, and if I am I have no doubt someone will correct me.
No, but they really did bid against EA for the NFL. Had they managed to outbid EA, however unlikely, would you have been as angry at Sega as you are at EA? Doubtful.
I remember reading an article where the Lucasarts president said something along the lines of Force Commander being too ahead of the times for anyone to like it yet. So, apparently we should all be playing Force Commander...right....about.....NOW.
You don't need to put a gun to my head to say that Sega is a better company than EA. But let's make it clear: the Player's League took a bid from Sega and Take Two just as they did from EA. The difference is that EA bid more. If they had the cash, Sega would have gladly cornered EA out of the market if they could, so this is not exactly like a mom and pop shop v. Walmart. This is a large corporation v. a larger corporation. I like Sega - love Sega - but this is the way the game is played.
There are articles that state that the NFL was taking bids earlier in the year and that Take 2 and Sega put in bids themselves. This was not a surprise for Sega and Take 2. I wonder if the $19.99 price point was not a way to build consumer support before the door closed?
I worked at EB when we "invented" GMR. We signed up hundreds and hundreds of people per store because we were being given a spiff on each membership sale. It wasn't much, but if you sold well - and most of us at the store I worked at did - you could could away with an extra game or two every month (that's how you can tell I worked at a game store, everything is in number of games bought, not meals or gas gallons). Within a year, EB had taken that spiff away. So why resubscribe if you don't have an EB guy breathing down your neck?
My guess is that the numbers dropped significantly after EB removed the spiff. GMR was a good magazine, so it's a shame this happened but even the $5.50 an hour retail worker knew that this would happen. Anyone working for GMR knew the deal going in, I would hope.
As for XBN, which EB had nothing to do with save selling it, it seemed kind of specifically redundant. Good, but the only reason OXM does so well is the demo disc. Without the disc, why buy XBN?
Nix two magazines. Whatevs. I'm still lamenting the fall of Next Gen.