Try that in 10 years, or when Blizzard has passed through 5 different companies (it could happen). Or, if you want the fun and excitement now, try to get a replacement copy of Pirates! or, if you lost the code wheel, Starflight. It won't happen, even if you paid for the copy legit.
If it's a typical Molyneux game (typical as in, like the one other game he's produced in the last 5 years), then everyone will love it, give it 9/10 or perfect scores, and then 2 months later think the game blows and laugh at it.
Many games on the xbox and gamecube look identical to the PS2 version because the developers like doing straight ports.
Go read the reviews of games that appear on both and find me an Xbox one that says "this looks identical to the PS2 version." When comparing the two, the reviewers nearly always point out that the Xbox version looks "slightly" better, sometimes more than that. The only exception I can think of is the last Need For Speed, whose XBox port was developed by a less capable EA studio than the one for PS2. I don't know if this translates into extra sales or not for the Xbox, but for an older crowd who already hang towards Sony as their brand of choice, it can't hurt.
Finally, all they did was release the *names* of the games, how can anyone here possibly judge the games based on the title?
Have you looked at the list prockcore? I've already played 80% of them on other systems? Are you thinking that somehow Dynasty Warriors will be a tetris clone, and that New Mr. Driller is a bloody 3d romp around Florida? I guess "Plus one additional title in development" from Namco is a mystery. I guess that'll be their ace in the hole huh?
Besides, I'm not saying that this is a piss poor launch lineup. It's just not the lineup of someone who's going down fighting, it's the lineup of someone going down. History is stacked against Nintendo here, not for it, and they seem characteristically obvlivious to that. It's cute, almost, except that I may lose my precious Nintendo because their head is in the sand of Spongebob ports.
This list doesn't look like the revolution Nintendo promised. This could very well have been the lineup for the last GBA, and it is especially not the kind of lineup I'd really want going up against the PSP.
Compare Sony's lineup with Nintendo's, and there's some obvious overlap. This is bad news for Nintendo, as ports will hurt Nintendo. For the touch and dual screen to really work they need to be implemented from the bottom up, not as an afterthought. What's more is that when we're talking $200+ price tags, the kids going on vacation playing Spongebob and Monster Rancher in the back seat, it's the 24 year old riding the bus to class playing Metal Gear Solid and Gran Turismo (at least in the US). Without an effective touch and dual screen implementation, any ports will inevitably look better on the graphically more powerful PSP.
Those that aren't ports and are indiginous to either system seem to be kid oriented titles on the DS and conversely more "adult" titles on the PSP.
Now, to be fair, the handheld market is obviously doing fairly well among kids and neither company can ignore that. As much as I hate to admit though, I think that Sony's pulling a Playstation here on this. The proliferation of cellphones and mp3 players means people - adults - are used to having electronic devices in their pockets, and that's a relatively untapped market so far. Toss in a Grand Theft Auto PSP in the American launch lineup, and it may well be the end of Nintendo as we know it.
Sure, Nintendo's isn't a bad lineup persay, and it remains to be seen what Nintendo will pull out of their hat. But this is definitely not the lineup of someone fighting tooth and nail over what is essentially the last bastian of the their once grand empire. This is instead s reminiscient of a clueless company who thinks that Goldeneye will sway the GTA3 junkies.
Gee, that sounds familiar. I think that Nintendo might be in for some deja vu here. I'm thinking this smacks of PSX v. N64, only tinier. Here's hoping it's not, because I do love Nintendo and I think that the DS could be something really great in video gaming, a pinnacle moment in innovation. Nintendo just needs to start acting like it is all.
Ok. So Obsidian is doing KOTOR II, and now also Neverwinter Nights 2. Besides finishing up Jade Empire, what is it exactly Bioware is doing for Bioware?
You're bitching as if this is something new. When Doom and Doom 2 were out, the situation was nearly the same. In fact, I knew dozens of people in my college dorm that played Doom 1/2 all the way through, and played all the damn time. I think of the 20-30, I can think of only two that had legit copies. Most had the pirated version, and others had only the shareware version.
Proportionately, I'm fairly certain that the numbers of legit users to pirates are probably the same. Sure, there's a lot more pirates numerically, but I think that the ratio is probably no more than it was 10-15 years ago.
An online author, and for the life of me I can't remember who (someone who linked to the article would be doing a huge favor), wrote a year or two ago that online piracy was a fact of life and should be considered a tax of popularity. Besides, how many people listen to the radio for one or two good songs from an album instead of buying the album? How many people read a book through their local library instead of buying it? How many people buy used games or music (and not a dollar of which sees iD or, say, Island Records)? Even if we're not talking intellectual property, how many jeans are stolen at the Gap?
I think iD will walk out of Doom 3 quite a bit richer than if they hadn't released it all, so I wouldn't worry about John Carmack starving on the streets with a sign reading "Will Code Huge Hit Game for Food." If rampant piracy of their game somehow surprises iD, shame on them. People getting your product for free is part of doing business.
Actually, I read reports about that and it did, in fact, sound quite fascinating. I mean, at least more interesting that Anna Nicole slut-izing my beloved video game characters.
G4 only seems interested in getting whatever second-rate celebs they can corral, shoving controllers in their hands, and trying to pass them off as "gamers"...
Exactly. I think the problem is that whoever's behind G4TV just doesn't think games are "cool" enough to hold their own. So they toss "celebrities" at it to jazz it up a little. Stupidheads.
Making video game awards appealing to mainstream TV viewers is never easy, but the G-Phoria producers attempted to add some razzle-dazzle to the proceedings by hiring Electra and Navarro to host . . . Other developers had to sit on the sidelines, and there were no developers who presented awards. Furthermore, there was no time for acceptance speeches.
G4TV is confused as hell. They want gamers to watch (Gamers 4 TV, right?) but then silence the people that gamers most want to hear from, the designers. Then they're trying to be mainstream, but they get second rate porn stars and have been not-so-supermodels?
Mainstream? Mainstream awards shows have what would be considered industry "experts," you know, actors and actresses that act and directors that can direct. G-phoria awards aren't "mainstream," they're pornstream. And at which point do the game designers just stop going to these lame shenanagins? Why doesn't someone respectable start up their own awards show, even if it is in someone's silicon valley garage?
G4 has some great people, albeit all from TechTV. Why not throw Unscrewed Martin and Xplay Morgan as the hosts? The wrong people are running not only the awards show, but the channel, and it's certainly not anyone with any respect for video games. If I want to see Anna Nicole Smith or Carmen Elektra I'll fire up the old cable modem. It's the game designers I want to hear from and see on an awards show for games on a supposedly game network.
It hadn't occured to me until I read your post, but it's also possible that the music tech side of Sony has its hands tied by the music music ownership of Sony, record execs that are card carrying members of the RIAA. Apple has no such restrictions, except a fleeting loyalty to the record companies because of itunes.
As far as the whole minidisc thing, I'm not so sure. I know one guy who has a minidisc player, and he wants an iPod. I'm sure such a market exists, especially in the concert recording crew, but I think far more people find mp3 players far more convenient. With Minidisc, I think Sony felt like they could replicate the Walkmen popularity. It feels like they're doing the same thing with this new mp3 player lineup. Could be wrong though.
Sony, known for pushing proprietary interfaces, is backing open standards.
So, let me get this straight. When they're in charge of the market, in this case the console market, Sony plays with open standards. But when they're in a market that they have little share over, say mp3 players and online music distribution, they go with about as closed a standard as one can muster.
Sounds like a couple of people accidently switched briefcases in the lobby of Sony to me.
Don't just sling insults around like that without even seeing a real demo.
Why not? Breeze through the latest issue of your favorite gaming magazine and there's so much gushing enthusiasm in the previews it's like reading 50 unrequitted love letter off the floor of a middle school.
What we need is a little cynicism. I'll be honest gdark, I've been watching the game industry for some time and when I think a game is crap I'm rarely surprised. And let's be honest: playing a game for 10-20 minutes in the controlled environment of something like Comic Con or E3 is hardly an objective environment to judge a game. Everyone said that Halo blew the E3 before it came out, and the same people said that the Bouncer would change gaming as we know the E3 before it was released. As far as I'm concerned, a game is guilty until proven innocent. Why? I've spent too much money on games trusting people who said how great a game was after playing it for 20 minutes.
And, comparetively speaking, even if Red Star is a solid game, there's absolutely no way in gaming hell (where Daikitana and BC3K live) that it can even hope to sell well enough to make a profit in the wake of Halo 2 and GTA:SA. Good for you that you're willing to give Acclaim another chance, because even Acclaim isn't giving Acclaim another chance.
Hmm, this press release seems rather pleasant in tone.
Is a press release ever NOT pleasant in tone? Of course it's pleasant; if id is being legally pursued by Creative they wouldn't print a press release saying, "Creative can blow." That kind of talk is saved for plan files, not press releases.
Bloodrayne 2, Terminator 3: The Redemption, The Red Star, 100 Bullets, Crash n' Burn, Predator: Concrete Jungle, and Shadow Hearts 2
So basically, if your game is crap don't release when everyone else does. Makes sense. These games all look horrible even from this early on.
Although what I'm much more concerned about are the Prince of Persias and Beyond Good and Evils of this Christmas, like, for example, um, Prince of Persia 2 which is set for November. You'd think that Ubisoft would've learned after last year, but once againt hey're sticking POP2 smack dab in the week before the storm. Why? It's like throwing an olympian runner into a ring with 5 500 pound men and asking him to sumo wrestle. Prince of Persia 2 will be amazing, but there's no way it can hold its own against a GTA, Halo sequel, Half Life sequel, and KOTOR sequel. There are other top tier 300 pound titles as well, like Call to Duty for consoles, or the Sims go ebonic (Urbz), or a LOTR EA game, or Need For Speed Underground sequel. You know, titles people know about.
Ubisoft, if you're reading, give POP the space it needs. Throw it out mid January when the kiddies are trading in GTA:SA and Halo 2 after playing it 14 hours a day during their break. I promise: it'll do better.
Dave writes "in the digital media world it apparently now means 'Ok to steal.' Sorry, I can't agree with that." Yet, he inadvertantly highlights a major problem with the ownership of intellectual property that has yet to be solved.
If we're concerned about morality here, than ultimately we want the appropriate people who worked on the game to be compensated. But that doesn't happen with "out of print" games. The person getting the money when Dave buys that still in shrink wrap copy of Starflight for the Amiga isn't Greg Johnson, Binary Systems, or even EA. 100% of however much Dave spends on the game goes to the collector. No one is getting compensated with out of print games that really deserves it. So how does Dave justify this? If Dave really wants to be do the "right thing", he ought to download the game from Underdogs and then send the game creators a check. Buying the physical product off of ebay does nothing at all.
And secondly, he's tying games to books with the out of print comment. There's a big difference between out of print books and out of print games. Books are so cheap, and so easily distributed that rare books are specific editions, and not the actual book itself, what we would consider, say, one intellectual property unit. What is rare is a first edition (I assume) of Catcher in the Rye. But just because it's rare doesn't mean I will never be able to read Catcher in the Rye. With games, there are no editions. A game that is out of print really is unfindable, save perhaps paying a collector who had nothing to do with the game's creation. What's more is that the public - in the form of libraries - has maintained books for public use. So who's doing this for games? Perhaps because games are still viewed at as pure entertainment and not as a vehicle of communication we have yet to see gaming's Carnegie. That will change, but it will take some time.
The creator of Underdogs is, in my opinion, a far more moral person than Dave. Underdogs is more concerned about the money reaching the actual source rather than a collector. If I were Dave, I would be doing some serious reevaluation of a morality system that allows the rewarding of collectors for scouring garage sales and reselling them at a vastly inflated price, instead of compensating game creators for making a game worth finding 10 years later.
Install this "hack" and this is what you'll really get:
The real networks logo will display instead of an apple during bootup. You'll also notice that somehow the engraved logo on the back of your iPod also changed from an apple to Real.com.
You'll get "news" notifications during the songs (real format or otherwise) which actually consist only of upgrade information to the real software. Even if you just upgraded.
You'll notice that, despite being an iPod, Real somehow became the default player for all media formats on your iPod. The interface will be clunky and will no longer use the clickwheel but only two buttons and the lock switch, and you won't be able to figure out how to restore the default settings on your iPod. And it won't play AAC files.
Songs will stop midway through until you pay for a RealPass.
You'll constantly get buffering messages, even though the iPod is reading from the hard drive.
Menu options will crowd the top of the display that read, "FREE AOL SOFTWARE" and "FREE OFFERS FROM REAL"
You'll discover that you didn't really download the free version, but that somehow you paid $29.95 even though you don't remember using a credit card.
Why shouldn't the companies stop putting copy protection on games? I don't see these "legitimate users" threatening to boycott games with Safedisc on it. How many here have sent written letters through snail mail to their publishers saying they won't buy any more games with Safedisc on it?
Including copy protection on a game, thus far, doesn't cost a publisher any sales. Who looks at a game and doesn't buy it based on its copy protection? So it doesn't work with users' CD-ROMs? Release a post-mortem patch, and people will start playing the game and stop whining.
At this point, regardless of what Stardock's big cheese says or doesn't say, it costs companies more to exclude copy protection than it does to include it. Until consumers stop buying games with copy protection and there is a visible drop in sales that can be unquestionably attributed to the inclusion of copy protection (a visible boycott), it will always exist.
Why do you think that copy protection on music CDs isn't on every single CD? Because enough people return the CD to the store. The only CDs with copy protection are corporate experiments. They're the ones the publishers are using to test the waters. But computer game buyers have been so pavlov-ed into the idea of patching and the inability to return a game that it doesn't even occur to us that we deserve a product that works on first try.
"At this late stage, media companies have grown so large and powerful, and their dominance has become so detrimental to the survival of small, emerging companies, that there remains only one alternative: bust up the big conglomerates . .."
" . ..because it's so much more difficult to buy them up when they're big."
Slashdot Mirror
Try that in 10 years, or when Blizzard has passed through 5 different companies (it could happen). Or, if you want the fun and excitement now, try to get a replacement copy of Pirates! or, if you lost the code wheel, Starflight. It won't happen, even if you paid for the copy legit.
If it's a typical Molyneux game (typical as in, like the one other game he's produced in the last 5 years), then everyone will love it, give it 9/10 or perfect scores, and then 2 months later think the game blows and laugh at it.
Many games on the xbox and gamecube look identical to the PS2 version because the developers like doing straight ports.
Go read the reviews of games that appear on both and find me an Xbox one that says "this looks identical to the PS2 version." When comparing the two, the reviewers nearly always point out that the Xbox version looks "slightly" better, sometimes more than that. The only exception I can think of is the last Need For Speed, whose XBox port was developed by a less capable EA studio than the one for PS2. I don't know if this translates into extra sales or not for the Xbox, but for an older crowd who already hang towards Sony as their brand of choice, it can't hurt.
Finally, all they did was release the *names* of the games, how can anyone here possibly judge the games based on the title?
Have you looked at the list prockcore? I've already played 80% of them on other systems? Are you thinking that somehow Dynasty Warriors will be a tetris clone, and that New Mr. Driller is a bloody 3d romp around Florida? I guess "Plus one additional title in development" from Namco is a mystery. I guess that'll be their ace in the hole huh?
Besides, I'm not saying that this is a piss poor launch lineup. It's just not the lineup of someone who's going down fighting, it's the lineup of someone going down. History is stacked against Nintendo here, not for it, and they seem characteristically obvlivious to that. It's cute, almost, except that I may lose my precious Nintendo because their head is in the sand of Spongebob ports.
This list doesn't look like the revolution Nintendo promised. This could very well have been the lineup for the last GBA, and it is especially not the kind of lineup I'd really want going up against the PSP. Compare Sony's lineup with Nintendo's, and there's some obvious overlap. This is bad news for Nintendo, as ports will hurt Nintendo. For the touch and dual screen to really work they need to be implemented from the bottom up, not as an afterthought. What's more is that when we're talking $200+ price tags, the kids going on vacation playing Spongebob and Monster Rancher in the back seat, it's the 24 year old riding the bus to class playing Metal Gear Solid and Gran Turismo (at least in the US). Without an effective touch and dual screen implementation, any ports will inevitably look better on the graphically more powerful PSP.
Those that aren't ports and are indiginous to either system seem to be kid oriented titles on the DS and conversely more "adult" titles on the PSP.
Now, to be fair, the handheld market is obviously doing fairly well among kids and neither company can ignore that. As much as I hate to admit though, I think that Sony's pulling a Playstation here on this. The proliferation of cellphones and mp3 players means people - adults - are used to having electronic devices in their pockets, and that's a relatively untapped market so far. Toss in a Grand Theft Auto PSP in the American launch lineup, and it may well be the end of Nintendo as we know it.
Sure, Nintendo's isn't a bad lineup persay, and it remains to be seen what Nintendo will pull out of their hat. But this is definitely not the lineup of someone fighting tooth and nail over what is essentially the last bastian of the their once grand empire. This is instead s reminiscient of a clueless company who thinks that Goldeneye will sway the GTA3 junkies.
Gee, that sounds familiar. I think that Nintendo might be in for some deja vu here. I'm thinking this smacks of PSX v. N64, only tinier. Here's hoping it's not, because I do love Nintendo and I think that the DS could be something really great in video gaming, a pinnacle moment in innovation. Nintendo just needs to start acting like it is all.
How about a "two-episode stint" of good writing?
That would be cool.
Ok. So Obsidian is doing KOTOR II, and now also Neverwinter Nights 2. Besides finishing up Jade Empire, what is it exactly Bioware is doing for Bioware?
Speaking of, can't someone set up a poll or tally of the amount of people who use piracy as "try-before-buy"?
Wish granted.
You're bitching as if this is something new. When Doom and Doom 2 were out, the situation was nearly the same. In fact, I knew dozens of people in my college dorm that played Doom 1/2 all the way through, and played all the damn time. I think of the 20-30, I can think of only two that had legit copies. Most had the pirated version, and others had only the shareware version.
Proportionately, I'm fairly certain that the numbers of legit users to pirates are probably the same. Sure, there's a lot more pirates numerically, but I think that the ratio is probably no more than it was 10-15 years ago.
An online author, and for the life of me I can't remember who (someone who linked to the article would be doing a huge favor), wrote a year or two ago that online piracy was a fact of life and should be considered a tax of popularity. Besides, how many people listen to the radio for one or two good songs from an album instead of buying the album? How many people read a book through their local library instead of buying it? How many people buy used games or music (and not a dollar of which sees iD or, say, Island Records)? Even if we're not talking intellectual property, how many jeans are stolen at the Gap?
I think iD will walk out of Doom 3 quite a bit richer than if they hadn't released it all, so I wouldn't worry about John Carmack starving on the streets with a sign reading "Will Code Huge Hit Game for Food." If rampant piracy of their game somehow surprises iD, shame on them. People getting your product for free is part of doing business.
Actually, I read reports about that and it did, in fact, sound quite fascinating. I mean, at least more interesting that Anna Nicole slut-izing my beloved video game characters.
G4 only seems interested in getting whatever second-rate celebs they can corral, shoving controllers in their hands, and trying to pass them off as "gamers"...
Exactly. I think the problem is that whoever's behind G4TV just doesn't think games are "cool" enough to hold their own. So they toss "celebrities" at it to jazz it up a little. Stupidheads.
Making video game awards appealing to mainstream TV viewers is never easy, but the G-Phoria producers attempted to add some razzle-dazzle to the proceedings by hiring Electra and Navarro to host . . . Other developers had to sit on the sidelines, and there were no developers who presented awards. Furthermore, there was no time for acceptance speeches.
G4TV is confused as hell. They want gamers to watch (Gamers 4 TV, right?) but then silence the people that gamers most want to hear from, the designers. Then they're trying to be mainstream, but they get second rate porn stars and have been not-so-supermodels?
Mainstream? Mainstream awards shows have what would be considered industry "experts," you know, actors and actresses that act and directors that can direct. G-phoria awards aren't "mainstream," they're pornstream. And at which point do the game designers just stop going to these lame shenanagins? Why doesn't someone respectable start up their own awards show, even if it is in someone's silicon valley garage?
G4 has some great people, albeit all from TechTV. Why not throw Unscrewed Martin and Xplay Morgan as the hosts? The wrong people are running not only the awards show, but the channel, and it's certainly not anyone with any respect for video games. If I want to see Anna Nicole Smith or Carmen Elektra I'll fire up the old cable modem. It's the game designers I want to hear from and see on an awards show for games on a supposedly game network.
Funny. I don't remember Farah having underarm flab. I wonder if she'll make her entrance through a crevice at G-phoria.
It hadn't occured to me until I read your post, but it's also possible that the music tech side of Sony has its hands tied by the music music ownership of Sony, record execs that are card carrying members of the RIAA. Apple has no such restrictions, except a fleeting loyalty to the record companies because of itunes.
As far as the whole minidisc thing, I'm not so sure. I know one guy who has a minidisc player, and he wants an iPod. I'm sure such a market exists, especially in the concert recording crew, but I think far more people find mp3 players far more convenient. With Minidisc, I think Sony felt like they could replicate the Walkmen popularity. It feels like they're doing the same thing with this new mp3 player lineup. Could be wrong though.
Sony, known for pushing proprietary interfaces, is backing open standards.
So, let me get this straight. When they're in charge of the market, in this case the console market, Sony plays with open standards. But when they're in a market that they have little share over, say mp3 players and online music distribution, they go with about as closed a standard as one can muster.
Sounds like a couple of people accidently switched briefcases in the lobby of Sony to me.
Sorry EA advertising agency, this pales in comparison to as Sega's NFL 2K4 Beta-7 campaign.
Don't just sling insults around like that without even seeing a real demo.
Why not? Breeze through the latest issue of your favorite gaming magazine and there's so much gushing enthusiasm in the previews it's like reading 50 unrequitted love letter off the floor of a middle school.
What we need is a little cynicism. I'll be honest gdark, I've been watching the game industry for some time and when I think a game is crap I'm rarely surprised. And let's be honest: playing a game for 10-20 minutes in the controlled environment of something like Comic Con or E3 is hardly an objective environment to judge a game. Everyone said that Halo blew the E3 before it came out, and the same people said that the Bouncer would change gaming as we know the E3 before it was released. As far as I'm concerned, a game is guilty until proven innocent. Why? I've spent too much money on games trusting people who said how great a game was after playing it for 20 minutes.
And, comparetively speaking, even if Red Star is a solid game, there's absolutely no way in gaming hell (where Daikitana and BC3K live) that it can even hope to sell well enough to make a profit in the wake of Halo 2 and GTA:SA. Good for you that you're willing to give Acclaim another chance, because even Acclaim isn't giving Acclaim another chance.
Hmm, this press release seems rather pleasant in tone.
Is a press release ever NOT pleasant in tone? Of course it's pleasant; if id is being legally pursued by Creative they wouldn't print a press release saying, "Creative can blow." That kind of talk is saved for plan files, not press releases.
Bloodrayne 2, Terminator 3: The Redemption, The Red Star, 100 Bullets, Crash n' Burn, Predator: Concrete Jungle, and Shadow Hearts 2
So basically, if your game is crap don't release when everyone else does. Makes sense. These games all look horrible even from this early on.
Although what I'm much more concerned about are the Prince of Persias and Beyond Good and Evils of this Christmas, like, for example, um, Prince of Persia 2 which is set for November. You'd think that Ubisoft would've learned after last year, but once againt hey're sticking POP2 smack dab in the week before the storm. Why? It's like throwing an olympian runner into a ring with 5 500 pound men and asking him to sumo wrestle. Prince of Persia 2 will be amazing, but there's no way it can hold its own against a GTA, Halo sequel, Half Life sequel, and KOTOR sequel. There are other top tier 300 pound titles as well, like Call to Duty for consoles, or the Sims go ebonic (Urbz), or a LOTR EA game, or Need For Speed Underground sequel. You know, titles people know about.
Ubisoft, if you're reading, give POP the space it needs. Throw it out mid January when the kiddies are trading in GTA:SA and Halo 2 after playing it 14 hours a day during their break. I promise: it'll do better.
Dave writes "in the digital media world it apparently now means 'Ok to steal.' Sorry, I can't agree with that." Yet, he inadvertantly highlights a major problem with the ownership of intellectual property that has yet to be solved.
If we're concerned about morality here, than ultimately we want the appropriate people who worked on the game to be compensated. But that doesn't happen with "out of print" games. The person getting the money when Dave buys that still in shrink wrap copy of Starflight for the Amiga isn't Greg Johnson, Binary Systems, or even EA. 100% of however much Dave spends on the game goes to the collector. No one is getting compensated with out of print games that really deserves it. So how does Dave justify this? If Dave really wants to be do the "right thing", he ought to download the game from Underdogs and then send the game creators a check. Buying the physical product off of ebay does nothing at all.
And secondly, he's tying games to books with the out of print comment. There's a big difference between out of print books and out of print games. Books are so cheap, and so easily distributed that rare books are specific editions, and not the actual book itself, what we would consider, say, one intellectual property unit. What is rare is a first edition (I assume) of Catcher in the Rye. But just because it's rare doesn't mean I will never be able to read Catcher in the Rye. With games, there are no editions. A game that is out of print really is unfindable, save perhaps paying a collector who had nothing to do with the game's creation. What's more is that the public - in the form of libraries - has maintained books for public use. So who's doing this for games? Perhaps because games are still viewed at as pure entertainment and not as a vehicle of communication we have yet to see gaming's Carnegie. That will change, but it will take some time.
The creator of Underdogs is, in my opinion, a far more moral person than Dave. Underdogs is more concerned about the money reaching the actual source rather than a collector. If I were Dave, I would be doing some serious reevaluation of a morality system that allows the rewarding of collectors for scouring garage sales and reselling them at a vastly inflated price, instead of compensating game creators for making a game worth finding 10 years later.
It has won every challenge but Froogles.com.
Perhaps with the IPO Google has officially jumped the shark?
The real networks logo will display instead of an apple during bootup. You'll also notice that somehow the engraved logo on the back of your iPod also changed from an apple to Real.com.
You'll get "news" notifications during the songs (real format or otherwise) which actually consist only of upgrade information to the real software. Even if you just upgraded.
You'll notice that, despite being an iPod, Real somehow became the default player for all media formats on your iPod. The interface will be clunky and will no longer use the clickwheel but only two buttons and the lock switch, and you won't be able to figure out how to restore the default settings on your iPod. And it won't play AAC files.
Songs will stop midway through until you pay for a RealPass.
You'll constantly get buffering messages, even though the iPod is reading from the hard drive.
Menu options will crowd the top of the display that read, "FREE AOL SOFTWARE" and "FREE OFFERS FROM REAL"
You'll discover that you didn't really download the free version, but that somehow you paid $29.95 even though you don't remember using a credit card.
How about a graphical adventure called Mam & Sax: Free to Hire Investigative Peacekeepers?
Why shouldn't the companies stop putting copy protection on games? I don't see these "legitimate users" threatening to boycott games with Safedisc on it. How many here have sent written letters through snail mail to their publishers saying they won't buy any more games with Safedisc on it?
Including copy protection on a game, thus far, doesn't cost a publisher any sales. Who looks at a game and doesn't buy it based on its copy protection? So it doesn't work with users' CD-ROMs? Release a post-mortem patch, and people will start playing the game and stop whining.
At this point, regardless of what Stardock's big cheese says or doesn't say, it costs companies more to exclude copy protection than it does to include it. Until consumers stop buying games with copy protection and there is a visible drop in sales that can be unquestionably attributed to the inclusion of copy protection (a visible boycott), it will always exist.
Why do you think that copy protection on music CDs isn't on every single CD? Because enough people return the CD to the store. The only CDs with copy protection are corporate experiments. They're the ones the publishers are using to test the waters. But computer game buyers have been so pavlov-ed into the idea of patching and the inability to return a game that it doesn't even occur to us that we deserve a product that works on first try.
We do, and maybe we should start acting like it.
"At this late stage, media companies have grown so large and powerful, and their dominance has become so detrimental to the survival of small, emerging companies, that there remains only one alternative: bust up the big conglomerates . . ."
" . . .because it's so much more difficult to buy them up when they're big."
Did you ever notice that most scammers (particularly Nigerian scammers) write in all lowercase?
Maybe they're all avid readers of ee cummings. You know, like assasins and Salinger or something.