Actually, they can easily get away with charging you no interest. Apple knows you're much more likely to purchase media from them and purchase a new iPhone later when the time comes, and at&t will have you locked in a contract for years, and much more likely to STAY with them if you love the iPhone, etc; not to mention the possibility of pulling you from another carrier simply BECAUSE of the iPhone, which is a rather amazing revenue swing for them. Any barriers if entry they lower will make for that many future advantages. At&t has already shown some interest in changing "how things are done" with the iPhone, so they may not be averse to experimenting with a few more. (The situation may change somewhat after they lose exclusivity, tho.)
Also, can people PLEASE stop using "I don't care about these features on my phone?" rationales? Obviously the iPhone is not aimed at you. But to people who are not averse to the idea, paying $499 along with a contract is less objectionable when they are also not going to have to pay $200-250 for an iPod on the side, get real Wi-Fi connectivity, and excellent, easy-to-use, full features on the side.
The iPhone certainly has points to prove, and--yes--it still has a price hurdle in the beginning (the same price point the RAZR started at, amusingly. It seems to have done well by itself.) but I wish people comparing prices would actually consider all the prices they SHOULD be. (And heck, we don't even HAVE all of them to compare yet.)
People want to praise him for his wonderful sucesses (Mac, iPod, OS X), but quickly forget the failures (NEXT, Newton, The Cube)
Newton was not his. NeXT contributed a ton of technical advances and became the basis for OSX, which most credit as the largest part of Apple's recent desktop successes, as it pulled them out of their OS funk. (NeXT by itself had some development gems going on, but indeed couldn't find a place in the market to survive on--which has basically been every other commercial OS that didn't pre-date Windows. It's not the easist of markets in which to find succor.) On the Cube, I can't really blame him for YOUR weird-ass opinions ("I thought it would be the future and savior of all things electronic."), but in the meanwhile it was simply a PC design that was not widely adopted and was quickly phased out. It's not like they sank tens of millions into it; to my knowledge it still brought in profit--it just wasn't popular enough to have them continue the production and line complications (and potential consumer confusion.) Shuttle and other mini form factor computers came out later on, and they were adopted but not widely so, so it's not until recently that we're seeing a stronger push for it. (Driven also by media center desires, which weren't there at the time.) The Cube was not on target, but it was not a huge failure to bemoan.
In fact, if you want to go back to the Newton (which was Sculley's pet project, and which Jobs canned upon his return) and assume Jobs were a part of it from its' inception, we may have seen much less "failure" and much more "not seeing Palm exist," as Jobs pushes the same kind of values that Palm used to really take off to begin with. While the Newton was cool in many ways, it was also too complex and priced to a point where its' potential market was very limited, and not poised to expand that market. Maybe they could have kept up the technological advancements and pushing things with a higher model, but had Jobs been in charge we'd have likely seen something much like the Palm Pilot in existence much sooner. And if that were the case, the market would have started growing sooner, the room taken up by Palm likely co-opted by their already established name... Heck, Apple would probably still have held onto ARM and sunk more money into development, too.
Jobs has certainly had failures in his time, but I find people tend to fixate on the sillier ones and "ones that really aren't," rather than what was going on before his ousting.
By this reasoning, you have "vendor lock-in" with your cell phones, too. Just how many people do you think are afraid to get a new phone, even though they'll likely be buying a case, a car charger, and new adaptors each and every time? Heck, on an even closer parallel, just how many people buy ringtones ALL OVER AGAIN? Repeatedly.
The vast majority of people haven't purchased enough off iTunes for it to be a consideration. $20-30 of potential repurchasing--more, even--doesn't make a huge amount of difference when looking at $200+ music players. (And if you're getting something along the lines of a Shuffle, you really aren't wasting money on the player itself; you're looking for the most value you can muster.)
Meanwhile, the lock-in is even SMALLER, since it doesn't really exist on the music end. You can get around it using iTunes itself, simply by burning your music to a play CD and re-ripping it. So really, all we're talking about are those who have started using iTunes for TV and movies, which are much harder to re-encode, and can't be done through iTunes itself. And considering how many iPods can even PLAY the media compared to the 100 million sold, and the lower percentage of people who have those AND have purchased a lot of digital media...?
The "vendor lock-in" force does not feel strong to me.
Heck, even for THOSE I'll typically press the Command button and say "Dial 1-555-123-4567..."
It takes longer, but half the time I'm doing it from the road, so I'd rather be safer about it. Some phones (like many of LG's new ones) are extremely repetitive when doing that, though, so it really depends on the model.
How come so many people are of the "if this one game isn't enough to make you want to pay for the system..." ?
Single games rarely make someone buy a system. Is $650 too much to pay for LBP? Yes. Is $450 too much to pay for Gears of War? Yes. Is $300 too much to pay for Super Paper Mario? Yes. It's hardly ever one game that sells you on a platform, but is often one game that tips you over the "price-to-enjoyment" line, or sells you on the fun now, and promise of similar content later.
You have a BIT more of a case with LBP since it seems to run perpendicular to the usual "hardcore gamer" type the rest of the boxed games are selling to, but there are a heck of a lot of them who are interested in such games as well. And you'll be getting LBP and Home at basically the same time, which run along closer lines of interest. The PSN is filling up with more good, casual games and will continue to do so. It also, just simply, adds to and fleshes out their fall/holiday lineup, which is as strong as their current crop has been shruggable (excepting a few gems). That's good for everyone, no matter their gaming type. Heck, it might even attract many NON-gamers, who are more interested in getting an HD DVD player, and are more attracted to the PS3 because of it.
Basically, it's never important that "one game be worth the money," because it's so rarely the case. They'll usually "sell you into buying now instead of waiting later for more games to be out and price drops to be had, because that game is interesting enough to tip the balance."
How many people can honestly say they had ZERO interest in a platform and ZERO interest in anything but playing that one game when they make their purchase? It's all a part of a larger equation, which is usually bigger than people give it credit for, or even think about.
True, LotR:O was the most solid beta I've ever been in, and has had a smooth launch. Its' main problem is in figuring out what differentiates itself from WoW, other than more appeal to the Tolkien fan base.
My HOPE is that they actually have some story direction and movement through the War of the Ring events (especially since it would be cool to play in "the rest of the world" that you never saw directly in the trilogy, but still had lots going on), but that puts them on a path to an "ending," so... I'm not sure I can see them doing that.
Regardless, as far as "smooth launches" go for MMO's, this will basically be the first.;)
So remember folks... not only is Apple at fault when they don't support open standards like OGG, but they're also at fault when others don't support open standards like AAC!
DAoC had a pretty bad launch in my eyes. They didn't have quite as many bugs as other games, but they WERE infested with a huge amount of memory leaks for a while there. (It all depended what card you were using and what OS you were on... Quite random.)
The biggest issue with DAoC, however, was the sheer amount of placeholder graphics they used. They model-swapped like DEMONS for a long time, so--artistically speaking--the game was tremendously boring.
The game I think will have the best launch and launch in the most complete state right now is LotR:O (certainly it's been the best and most complete game I've ever seen in beta), though I think it sports the issues "what makes it different in ANY meaningful way from WoW?" and "lack of content." Hopefully the type of gamer who would go there as opposed to WoW will make it a different environment (more RP-friendly, perhaps?), but... I'd still like to see ANY glimpse of developer future direction and design to know where they want to head. (Whether or not they get there.)
I imagine it has to do mainly with the amount of graphical horsepower it's trying to push; loading all sorts of models and shaders and normal mapping...
WoW doesn't have a very graphical requirement, so most people won't notice bad lag except when they are swooping over everything on a gryphon or wyvern (which I did on my old rig). Also bear in mind a lot of WoW's zones are still designed in that "surrounded by mountains" classical design, so the transitions between them are easier. Vanguard has no real "zone-like" feel to it, so the many smaller zones are ostensibly to make transitions easier, as you're travelling gradually wherever you go.
SWG is more unique in that it attempted to go in a VERY different and hard-to-handle direction and suffered many design issues as a result, after which LucasArts started stepping in and saying "look, we have the most popular property--like--EVER, and that Warcraft game is kicking our ass after only a few months!" and demanding changes be made. Obviously the only way to get more subscribers is to make the game so simply a 9-year-old could play it, right?
Unfortunately SWG had long since established itself as a broad-concept sandbox-type game, and changing it utterly did more to drive away those who LIKED that aspect and couldn't get it anywhere else, and didn't go far enough in other directions to draw more people in.
I'm pretty damn certain Raph and the design team didn't say "well we only spent 5 years developing this game so far and it hasn't drawn in millions of subscribers, so quick--do a 180!" They could have tossed template-based "classes" on top of their existing system with certain unique powers to make things easier to grasp (let players break template when they feel they want to), and they could have continued to refine things... but I don't think they had much of a choice in the matter.
SWG was VERY buggy in the beginning itself, though, and was too broad in scope while being not refined enough in "purpose" to keep a certain type of MMORPG player around, so in the end they were limited in scope. If Jump to Lightspeed had been handled better (again, nice concept, poor execution and "purpose" to it) they could have added a lot of people REALLY wanting to hearken back to the X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter days, but...
You mean the perfect model of a PC game? One with bugs that stick around for a while? OH NOES!
Even tons of RTSes have dumb bugs and incorrect design that sticks around for ages, and they're far less complicated that a MMORPG. So long as the bugs themselves aren't terrifyingly life-threatening or permimant, it's just a part of life.
I see the inventory bug far less than I did it beta (maybe once a week I'll have an issue that can be cleared up with a quick logout), so they seem to be on top of it, and it's not a big deal. Mob "popping" has been cut down as well (though now I see more "players disappearing when they have levitate on";-) ), and--as previously stated--merely requires a quick backstep to clear up and doesn't train other mobs in (so it's just a weird modelling quirk and a targetting annoyance).
The game will have more show up and the game will have more taken care of; such is life in a MMO. In many ways it's this "breathing" quality that entertains the subscribers, and even the more irritating bugs end up being fun stories of flavor to talk about years down the line.;-) (My friend still laughs at getting stuck on an ogre's back in EQ for 10 seconds or so and taking 10,000 points of falling damage when he finally slid off.:-D )
Meanwhile, let me write in my little black book that a PC game has bugs that stick around for a while. I'm sure someone, SOMEWHERE will be shocked.
Oh, there are definitely a lot of bugs in Vanguard:
Some quests are just plain broken.
Items "disappear" from your inventory at random times, which seems to be a form of "virtual stacking" and takes you resorting a lot of items or logging off to clear up.
"Soft-zoning" through chunks can have a lot of effects, ranging from breaking/follow and riding mounts, to shifting you from 3rd-to-1st person, to crashing the game entirely, to "teleporting" you way ahead virtually and getting you attacked by aggro mobs upwards of a kilometer away, to--from what I've heard--reducing you a few levels to a previous save state.
The biggest annoyance is the common tendency for mobs to "teleport" to another area nearby; they are still where they were before, but their model wanders from out of eyesight back to the location. You can still hit it, but it makes targetting between mobs difficult. Mobs "disappear" in this way differently for each person, so you could be fighting one that's always there, but to your companions it has taken off. (Thankfully the "virtual location" does not aggro more mobs.) VERY irritating.
That being said, the game is still very stable, and not out of line with other horribly buggy launches (like Anarchy Online and Asheron's Call 2, as notable examples). It's tightened up pretty well on some fronts, and while it still has a number of issues, it's a solid game.
WoW has a solid launch (but was certainly not brimming with content and all their "promises") and it looks like LotR:O will as well (though it's much more a question of "Why bother?" when sitting side-by-side with WoW), but the "reviewer" is patently nuts if he thinks there's any precedent being set here.
You can make the "released too early" comment about ANY MMO, and if you had your druthers, you'd never play one until it's been out for 6-12 months to shake out bugs, get the biggest balance patching in, and adding some more flesh to the content.
They were already doomed to getting displaced by IBM, with or without Microsoft's involvement. It's only IBM's poor business decisions and other hardware manufacturers' competition with IBM specifically that gave Microsoft the de-facto monopoly.
Apple would likely have had a bigger marketshare and be a larger player in a more fragmented marketplace, but there was absolutely zero chance they would have been a monopoly. Little chance they'd have been a majority the way they are with the iPod, either.
Wait... what? Apps like a BACKUP utility or network monitoring?!
The apps people object to are things like anti-virus and anti-spyware software, as it puts them in a position to be lazy about security on the front end so they can capitalize on it in the future with subscription costs. (Fewer people would object if what they offered was free.)
People also object to certain key software that's bundled too closely with the OS and does not easily allow for the insertion of software of their choice. But they do NOT object to extremely important, very simple utilities that they want right out of the box, or only need to use once in a blue moon to troubleshoot. Those they simply want to "be there" when they need it.
If it has some kind of texturing or alternate concept (wood grain, for instance), then maybe. But most people don't want their electronics to look like a sun-moistened Hershey bar.
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Actually, they can easily get away with charging you no interest. Apple knows you're much more likely to purchase media from them and purchase a new iPhone later when the time comes, and at&t will have you locked in a contract for years, and much more likely to STAY with them if you love the iPhone, etc; not to mention the possibility of pulling you from another carrier simply BECAUSE of the iPhone, which is a rather amazing revenue swing for them. Any barriers if entry they lower will make for that many future advantages. At&t has already shown some interest in changing "how things are done" with the iPhone, so they may not be averse to experimenting with a few more. (The situation may change somewhat after they lose exclusivity, tho.)
Also, can people PLEASE stop using "I don't care about these features on my phone?" rationales? Obviously the iPhone is not aimed at you. But to people who are not averse to the idea, paying $499 along with a contract is less objectionable when they are also not going to have to pay $200-250 for an iPod on the side, get real Wi-Fi connectivity, and excellent, easy-to-use, full features on the side.
The iPhone certainly has points to prove, and--yes--it still has a price hurdle in the beginning (the same price point the RAZR started at, amusingly. It seems to have done well by itself.) but I wish people comparing prices would actually consider all the prices they SHOULD be. (And heck, we don't even HAVE all of them to compare yet.)
People want to praise him for his wonderful sucesses (Mac, iPod, OS X), but quickly forget the failures (NEXT, Newton, The Cube)
Newton was not his. NeXT contributed a ton of technical advances and became the basis for OSX, which most credit as the largest part of Apple's recent desktop successes, as it pulled them out of their OS funk. (NeXT by itself had some development gems going on, but indeed couldn't find a place in the market to survive on--which has basically been every other commercial OS that didn't pre-date Windows. It's not the easist of markets in which to find succor.) On the Cube, I can't really blame him for YOUR weird-ass opinions ("I thought it would be the future and savior of all things electronic."), but in the meanwhile it was simply a PC design that was not widely adopted and was quickly phased out. It's not like they sank tens of millions into it; to my knowledge it still brought in profit--it just wasn't popular enough to have them continue the production and line complications (and potential consumer confusion.) Shuttle and other mini form factor computers came out later on, and they were adopted but not widely so, so it's not until recently that we're seeing a stronger push for it. (Driven also by media center desires, which weren't there at the time.) The Cube was not on target, but it was not a huge failure to bemoan.
In fact, if you want to go back to the Newton (which was Sculley's pet project, and which Jobs canned upon his return) and assume Jobs were a part of it from its' inception, we may have seen much less "failure" and much more "not seeing Palm exist," as Jobs pushes the same kind of values that Palm used to really take off to begin with. While the Newton was cool in many ways, it was also too complex and priced to a point where its' potential market was very limited, and not poised to expand that market. Maybe they could have kept up the technological advancements and pushing things with a higher model, but had Jobs been in charge we'd have likely seen something much like the Palm Pilot in existence much sooner. And if that were the case, the market would have started growing sooner, the room taken up by Palm likely co-opted by their already established name... Heck, Apple would probably still have held onto ARM and sunk more money into development, too.
Jobs has certainly had failures in his time, but I find people tend to fixate on the sillier ones and "ones that really aren't," rather than what was going on before his ousting.
By this reasoning, you have "vendor lock-in" with your cell phones, too. Just how many people do you think are afraid to get a new phone, even though they'll likely be buying a case, a car charger, and new adaptors each and every time? Heck, on an even closer parallel, just how many people buy ringtones ALL OVER AGAIN? Repeatedly.
The vast majority of people haven't purchased enough off iTunes for it to be a consideration. $20-30 of potential repurchasing--more, even--doesn't make a huge amount of difference when looking at $200+ music players. (And if you're getting something along the lines of a Shuffle, you really aren't wasting money on the player itself; you're looking for the most value you can muster.)
Meanwhile, the lock-in is even SMALLER, since it doesn't really exist on the music end. You can get around it using iTunes itself, simply by burning your music to a play CD and re-ripping it. So really, all we're talking about are those who have started using iTunes for TV and movies, which are much harder to re-encode, and can't be done through iTunes itself. And considering how many iPods can even PLAY the media compared to the 100 million sold, and the lower percentage of people who have those AND have purchased a lot of digital media...?
The "vendor lock-in" force does not feel strong to me.
Heck, even for THOSE I'll typically press the Command button and say "Dial 1-555-123-4567..."
It takes longer, but half the time I'm doing it from the road, so I'd rather be safer about it. Some phones (like many of LG's new ones) are extremely repetitive when doing that, though, so it really depends on the model.
How come so many people are of the "if this one game isn't enough to make you want to pay for the system..." ?
Single games rarely make someone buy a system. Is $650 too much to pay for LBP? Yes. Is $450 too much to pay for Gears of War? Yes. Is $300 too much to pay for Super Paper Mario? Yes. It's hardly ever one game that sells you on a platform, but is often one game that tips you over the "price-to-enjoyment" line, or sells you on the fun now, and promise of similar content later.
You have a BIT more of a case with LBP since it seems to run perpendicular to the usual "hardcore gamer" type the rest of the boxed games are selling to, but there are a heck of a lot of them who are interested in such games as well. And you'll be getting LBP and Home at basically the same time, which run along closer lines of interest. The PSN is filling up with more good, casual games and will continue to do so. It also, just simply, adds to and fleshes out their fall/holiday lineup, which is as strong as their current crop has been shruggable (excepting a few gems). That's good for everyone, no matter their gaming type. Heck, it might even attract many NON-gamers, who are more interested in getting an HD DVD player, and are more attracted to the PS3 because of it.
Basically, it's never important that "one game be worth the money," because it's so rarely the case. They'll usually "sell you into buying now instead of waiting later for more games to be out and price drops to be had, because that game is interesting enough to tip the balance."
How many people can honestly say they had ZERO interest in a platform and ZERO interest in anything but playing that one game when they make their purchase? It's all a part of a larger equation, which is usually bigger than people give it credit for, or even think about.
Microsoft selling software is like Exxon selling gasoline. Except that Exxon has better sense than to brag about their monopoly.
ExxonMobil is huge, exerts much influence, and makes dickloads of profit, but they have nowhere NEAR the stranglehold Microsoft does.
In Soviet Russia, the rootkits install Sony!
True, LotR:O was the most solid beta I've ever been in, and has had a smooth launch. Its' main problem is in figuring out what differentiates itself from WoW, other than more appeal to the Tolkien fan base.
;)
My HOPE is that they actually have some story direction and movement through the War of the Ring events (especially since it would be cool to play in "the rest of the world" that you never saw directly in the trilogy, but still had lots going on), but that puts them on a path to an "ending," so... I'm not sure I can see them doing that.
Regardless, as far as "smooth launches" go for MMO's, this will basically be the first.
They don't want Linux and its related projects going, "Ok, we'll code around that, thanks."
More like, "90% of that isn't defensible in court in the slightest, and we'll code around the rest to be careful, thanks."
Cool people are wearing the T-shirt of that comic as we speak. ;-)
So remember folks... not only is Apple at fault when they don't support open standards like OGG, but they're also at fault when others don't support open standards like AAC!
I'm sorry. I think I've been spending a bit too much time of Digg. Knee-jerk reaction. ;-)
I am a thoughtful poster!
"But the simple fact is, no MMO is released as a full gold. They haven't been for a long time."
;-)
I agree with that if by "for a long time" you mean "since forever."
DAoC had a pretty bad launch in my eyes. They didn't have quite as many bugs as other games, but they WERE infested with a huge amount of memory leaks for a while there. (It all depended what card you were using and what OS you were on... Quite random.)
The biggest issue with DAoC, however, was the sheer amount of placeholder graphics they used. They model-swapped like DEMONS for a long time, so--artistically speaking--the game was tremendously boring.
The game I think will have the best launch and launch in the most complete state right now is LotR:O (certainly it's been the best and most complete game I've ever seen in beta), though I think it sports the issues "what makes it different in ANY meaningful way from WoW?" and "lack of content." Hopefully the type of gamer who would go there as opposed to WoW will make it a different environment (more RP-friendly, perhaps?), but... I'd still like to see ANY glimpse of developer future direction and design to know where they want to head. (Whether or not they get there.)
I imagine it has to do mainly with the amount of graphical horsepower it's trying to push; loading all sorts of models and shaders and normal mapping...
WoW doesn't have a very graphical requirement, so most people won't notice bad lag except when they are swooping over everything on a gryphon or wyvern (which I did on my old rig). Also bear in mind a lot of WoW's zones are still designed in that "surrounded by mountains" classical design, so the transitions between them are easier. Vanguard has no real "zone-like" feel to it, so the many smaller zones are ostensibly to make transitions easier, as you're travelling gradually wherever you go.
But they have to work on that part. 8-P
SWG is more unique in that it attempted to go in a VERY different and hard-to-handle direction and suffered many design issues as a result, after which LucasArts started stepping in and saying "look, we have the most popular property--like--EVER, and that Warcraft game is kicking our ass after only a few months!" and demanding changes be made. Obviously the only way to get more subscribers is to make the game so simply a 9-year-old could play it, right?
:-/
Unfortunately SWG had long since established itself as a broad-concept sandbox-type game, and changing it utterly did more to drive away those who LIKED that aspect and couldn't get it anywhere else, and didn't go far enough in other directions to draw more people in.
I'm pretty damn certain Raph and the design team didn't say "well we only spent 5 years developing this game so far and it hasn't drawn in millions of subscribers, so quick--do a 180!" They could have tossed template-based "classes" on top of their existing system with certain unique powers to make things easier to grasp (let players break template when they feel they want to), and they could have continued to refine things... but I don't think they had much of a choice in the matter.
SWG was VERY buggy in the beginning itself, though, and was too broad in scope while being not refined enough in "purpose" to keep a certain type of MMORPG player around, so in the end they were limited in scope. If Jump to Lightspeed had been handled better (again, nice concept, poor execution and "purpose" to it) they could have added a lot of people REALLY wanting to hearken back to the X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter days, but...
Sucks.
You mean the perfect model of a PC game? One with bugs that stick around for a while? OH NOES!
;-) ), and--as previously stated--merely requires a quick backstep to clear up and doesn't train other mobs in (so it's just a weird modelling quirk and a targetting annoyance).
;-) (My friend still laughs at getting stuck on an ogre's back in EQ for 10 seconds or so and taking 10,000 points of falling damage when he finally slid off. :-D )
Even tons of RTSes have dumb bugs and incorrect design that sticks around for ages, and they're far less complicated that a MMORPG. So long as the bugs themselves aren't terrifyingly life-threatening or permimant, it's just a part of life.
I see the inventory bug far less than I did it beta (maybe once a week I'll have an issue that can be cleared up with a quick logout), so they seem to be on top of it, and it's not a big deal. Mob "popping" has been cut down as well (though now I see more "players disappearing when they have levitate on"
The game will have more show up and the game will have more taken care of; such is life in a MMO. In many ways it's this "breathing" quality that entertains the subscribers, and even the more irritating bugs end up being fun stories of flavor to talk about years down the line.
Meanwhile, let me write in my little black book that a PC game has bugs that stick around for a while. I'm sure someone, SOMEWHERE will be shocked.
Oh, there are definitely a lot of bugs in Vanguard:
/follow and riding mounts, to shifting you from 3rd-to-1st person, to crashing the game entirely, to "teleporting" you way ahead virtually and getting you attacked by aggro mobs upwards of a kilometer away, to--from what I've heard--reducing you a few levels to a previous save state.
...but where's the fun in that? ;-)
Some quests are just plain broken.
Items "disappear" from your inventory at random times, which seems to be a form of "virtual stacking" and takes you resorting a lot of items or logging off to clear up.
"Soft-zoning" through chunks can have a lot of effects, ranging from breaking
The biggest annoyance is the common tendency for mobs to "teleport" to another area nearby; they are still where they were before, but their model wanders from out of eyesight back to the location. You can still hit it, but it makes targetting between mobs difficult. Mobs "disappear" in this way differently for each person, so you could be fighting one that's always there, but to your companions it has taken off. (Thankfully the "virtual location" does not aggro more mobs.) VERY irritating.
That being said, the game is still very stable, and not out of line with other horribly buggy launches (like Anarchy Online and Asheron's Call 2, as notable examples). It's tightened up pretty well on some fronts, and while it still has a number of issues, it's a solid game.
WoW has a solid launch (but was certainly not brimming with content and all their "promises") and it looks like LotR:O will as well (though it's much more a question of "Why bother?" when sitting side-by-side with WoW), but the "reviewer" is patently nuts if he thinks there's any precedent being set here.
You can make the "released too early" comment about ANY MMO, and if you had your druthers, you'd never play one until it's been out for 6-12 months to shake out bugs, get the biggest balance patching in, and adding some more flesh to the content.
Being released early sets a precedent? ...in PC games? ...in MMOG's?
*blinks*
Did this guy wake up from a 20 year coma as of last month?
They were already doomed to getting displaced by IBM, with or without Microsoft's involvement. It's only IBM's poor business decisions and other hardware manufacturers' competition with IBM specifically that gave Microsoft the de-facto monopoly.
Apple would likely have had a bigger marketshare and be a larger player in a more fragmented marketplace, but there was absolutely zero chance they would have been a monopoly. Little chance they'd have been a majority the way they are with the iPod, either.
Wait... what? Apps like a BACKUP utility or network monitoring?!
The apps people object to are things like anti-virus and anti-spyware software, as it puts them in a position to be lazy about security on the front end so they can capitalize on it in the future with subscription costs. (Fewer people would object if what they offered was free.)
People also object to certain key software that's bundled too closely with the OS and does not easily allow for the insertion of software of their choice. But they do NOT object to extremely important, very simple utilities that they want right out of the box, or only need to use once in a blue moon to troubleshoot. Those they simply want to "be there" when they need it.
That game rocks! Ah, brings me back... :-D
If it has some kind of texturing or alternate concept (wood grain, for instance), then maybe. But most people don't want their electronics to look like a sun-moistened Hershey bar.
You're a gadget freak, but you listen to popular SPORTS?!