Early in the life of DVD, The Matrix was the one disc that really got a lot of attention. It's what convinced me that DVD was more than worth the cost - from the surround sound to the higher definition playback, it was plainly superior. Seeing it on VHS and then on DVD made me realize how much I was missing from the experience. I have yet to see either new format in action, but from all I've heard, there is no compeling reason (even when it becomes affordable) for the average Joe to upgrade from DVD to HD or Blu-ray. I highly doubt those three movies above are going to convince anyone.
Not necessarily so. While it's true that Microsoft didn't turn a profit with the X-Box, they forced Sony to sit up and pay attention. The Cell processor and other PS3 components may have already been well in development by the time it became clear the X-Box wasn't going away, Sony (at least internally, despite their PR hubris) realizes they are no longer assured a lock on first place in this round of console wars. By the time PS4 and XB3 roll around, Sony will have learned a few critical lessons about staying competitive. Nintendo was all but massacred in the (very critical) US market last round. They reached back into their heritage and pulled out a hail-mary play that looks extremely likely to work. Not only has New Super Mario Bros. become a very high selling game this year, the demand for the DS is holding strong. Interest in the Wii is definately there, whereas whenever anyone hears the price of PS3, they start eyeing up the 360 which suddenly has a better price point, a quickly growing library of great games, and strong developer backing for future games. If Nintendo hits the $200 price point, Wii is almost assured the #1 spot even if they don't grow the gamer base, as so many PS3 and 360 fans will pick one up as their second system.
Competition creates better product. While sometimes there needs to be a final resolution to a battle (such as the HD vs. BR format war), that initial "war" is key to figuring out who's better. The problem with this particular battle is that neither standard offers a big enough reason to upgrade for consumers.
Agreed. My first-run XBOX lasted for three years before finally giving out (which I suspect was due to the abuse of being transported back and forth to several different locations in a poorly-protected backpack). My first-run 360 has not given me any over-heating, disc scratching, or crashing issues (*knock on wood*).
The failure rate of original-design PS2s was much higher than the 360 from what I have been able to see. The only reason failures are getting so much attention is because of the very limited supply right now combined with a general anti-Microsoft hysteria that plagues Slashdot. Sony was getting trashed pretty thoroughly a few weeks ago though for rediculous copy-protection schemes. It would appear the only gaming company immune from this is Nintendo.
Optical drives were designed to be layed horizontal. They were not made to be moved around while in use. Keep those things in mind and I'd bet money that this disc scratching issue goes away.
Seems a bit amusing to hear that sort of thing from EGM (no doubt referring to Game Informer) when EGM is often knocked for praising Sony excessively while trashing Microsoft. Of the publications out there, GI has far and away shown the least amount of bias, and in fact I seem to recall there being an award given to the entire GI staff last year for best video game reporting or something along those lines. GI also has the least to gain from bias, because it is a division of GameStop. If GI took a slant towards one publisher or another, then other publishers might decide not to give GameStop the volume price discounts that, say, Best Buy would get. Same with Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo.
I disagree. I think Microsoft would love nothing more than to issue a patch removing something from Sony. The amount of PR and publicity this would create two weeks before launching a product that directly competes with Sony's only real moneymaker would be worth far more than costs of a possible lawsuit that Sony might attempt to launch against them (which would get thrown out anyway).
Most of these systems lock the game to a license/user. Take Valve's Steam program for example. Your CD key(s) are locked to your user account. Your account cannot be signed in from more than one machine, but you can sign in to that account from any computer that has Steam. Thus if your computer is fried by some klutz spilling soda on it, or you upgrade or just replace it entirely (or want to play at a friend's house), you simply log in to Steam using your own account. The difference compared with Sony's apparent method is that the game is locked in to a single unique piece of hardware that cannot be upgraded, replaced, or sold/traded.
If Sony proposed some sort of Steam-like system I might be inclined to support it under the condition that they required the disc to be in the drive in order for that disc ID to be locked in to that account (so you could still loan the game to a friend, but you wouldn't be able to play a copy of that disc for example). But this would require an internet connection to every PS3, and that simply isn't realistic.
For those who complain that their local video game store (GameStop, EB Games, GameRush, Game Crazy, etc) doesn't sell much in the way of PC games anymore, it's primarily because they can't sell used PC product, therefore there is next to no profit to be had. The margins are so slim that most stores would need to sell hundreds if not thousands of games a day in order to break even, much less turn a profit. If used games and trade-ins are eliminated, the specialty video game retailers will cease to exist. Considering that GameStop now has about 25% of the market and many other retailers are getting into the used/trade business, Sony would not be able to do this. It would be suicide for them, and there would undoubtedly be a massive underground movement among retail employees to encourage customers very strongly to get the 360 or Revolution instead.
Sony is a stupid company. Very, very stupid. They don't care about the customer. That said, they do care about profits. They are smart enough to realize that implementing this technology on games for the PS3 might give them a slight boost in profits for a couple of months only to be followed by a mass exodus of people who are sufficiently angry at Sony when their machine breaks (as happens all too often with Sony hardware) and are now not only unable to play their games on the replacement machine but now unable to even sell them. With so many games being developed for both major platforms, it is extremely likely that Sony's marketshare by the time of the next generation would be much like that of the GameCube in the US. Meanwhile, Bill will be laughing all the way to the bank.
80MB still isn't doable as a web application. 80MB is nothing compared with the size of MS Office, but Google really wants this to be something that can be opened instantly from any computer that has internet access. That's what Microsoft is so desperately scared of. If there is a free office suite available from any computer that is connected to the internet, anywhere, then there's really no need to have a product like MS Office which costs hundreds of dollars and is locked in to one computer. If you integrate the service/product into the internet itself, where's the value in a purchased CD? It'd be like having to buy MS Search for $300 in order to be able to search the internet. Why would you do that when you've got a perfectly capable product at google.com?
Two companies with less than 15% of the market each can't get the sort of economy of scale that a company like Walmart (with nearly 50% of the market) can. However, with a combined 25%+ of the market, it's much easier to say to Microsoft (for example), "We need 300,000 Xbox 360's at launch," and have them deliver.
If you truly believe that mergers are no good for anyone, you should take a basic economics course. Gamestop still has plenty of competition from Walmart, Best Buy, and the other big box retailers.
As far as store closings go, those who are anticipating immediate closures need to consider that most of those stores are already quite profitable and as long as each is turning a profit, there's no reason to shut one of them down. Also, especially in mall locations, there are long-term leases on those locations that would be very costly to bail out on. Expect store closures to happen over time as things settle down, but realistically there's not going to be any haphazard store closings.
Limited trade-ins? GameStop's stores don't have trade-in limits. The web site does, but that is run as a seperate entity from the stores. The reason that this merger needs to happen is that the primary competition for GameStop/EB is Walmart. A company that represents 10% of the video game market has a tough time getting competetive pricing from manufacturers. On the other hand, a company with 20-25% of the market is much more able to get great deals. The reason that older systems aren't kept in most stores is because the supply is no longer there and is thus consolidated down to a handful of stores. If the demand for it existed enough that it would sell at a higher price, then perhaps GameStop would not have ceased trading in that product. But many of these stores are small and can only accomodate so many systems. And quite frankly, from a business standpoint there is no sense in keeping something in your store that has very little profit when you need the space for the rapidly growing library of titles for PS2, Xbox, and soon Xbox 360. GameStop is driven by the customer - if demand was truly there, then the stores would still carry those older systems. But the average gamer is someone whose first game system was a PS2.
I certainly wish it was still possible to walk into a GameStop and buy an NES, but I completely understand why it isn't any longer.
I always tell parents that the game they're buying for their kid is rated M for Mature due to [blood, gore, violence, sexual themes, drug use, etc]. Nine times out of ten, they tell me they don't like it, but their kid already played it. What the hell kind of excuse is that? I've told parents flat-out that GTA: SA is quite possibly the worst game that they could be buying for their kids, yet they still use that excuse. I blame the parents as well, because they are ultimately the ones who can control what their kids play. Retailers can only do so much to inform the parents, and no government-mandated rating system is going to change anything (the current rating system works just fine, but the parents don't care). If parents get in an uproar about how terrible a game is, odds are they ignored the information they were given.
Why not? Collision detection and AI are tasks that can be quite easily left up to the other CPUs on board. I have little reason to doubt that the GPU is capable of rendering this at 60fps, either.
Haven't any of you seen the video clip of PGR3 in action that was shown at E3?
As an employee of a major video games retailer, I can state that we sell far more PSP systems, games, and movies than we sell in DS. I don't have the actual numbers available here, but I'd wager it's almost a 10:1 ratio. Worldwide the DS might be on par with the PSP, but not in my local experience. I suspect that in North America, the PSP outsells the DS by a wide margin, just as the XBOX outsells the GameCube by quite a lot in NA.
I'm sorry, but you are comparing an overclocked processor to a standard processor. If you compare them at available warranty-covered speeds, then the Pentium M falls way behind. While it is a very impressive chip for what it does, it is not available at 2.5GHz.
Microsoft and Sony both decided multi-cores are the future with their next generation of consoles. Thus, game developers will begin to write code to take advantage of multi-threading. This will translate pretty quickly onto the PC, since dual-core processors are becoming more readily available. Games have long been the software that pushes new technology onto the market before anybody else thinks it is necessary. And so it will be with multi-core CPUs.
To those who think the PSP isn't selling a million units a month, I think you may want to check your facts first. Not only is the PSP selling like hotcakes even at the $250 price point, but the Nintendo DS is essentially dead in the water as far as sales go. The software library for the DS is pitiful and there are more titles for the PSP, which has been out for two months, than there are for the DS (which has been out for seven months). And the quality of titles for PSP is much greater. Nintendo is largely out of touch with what the market wants, despite all of their hubbub about what they think is going to sell.
I don't think it is necessary to outsource the PSP. If demand continues like this, they can keep the price at $250 much longer and sell more units. When demand starts to drop, just lower the price a little. Demand is not at such a high level as to justify a second factory without it oversaturating the market.
The only RPG/adventure games I ever got into were Quest For Glory and Kings Quest. If the game would still run on my computer (it moves entirely too fast now), I'd be playing it again. I never cared for Final Fantasy or Legend of Zelda - they never captured my imagination. Perhaps it was simply because they had too much of a fantasy influence or because they were simply set in a different environment than what I traditionally thought of as exciting.
Most retailers won't sell M-rated games to minors anyway. There are of course some exceptions, just as there are with alcohol and tobacco sales. Whether or not it's a law, the ESRB has done a great job of policing the game ratings already.
The problem of young kids playing games not suitable for them lies not with the retailers or publishers. The problem lies with parents not caring if their children play violent games. Most kids won't be terribly affected by playing a game like GTA: San Andreas when they're only 11 or 12. But some will. Those who would be affected by it are likely to have been raised in an environment that would encourage the sort of behavior shown in these games anyway.
I am disgusted when parents buy M-rated games for their kids when they are plainly still in elementary school. I see it happen, and I always do my best to make sure that the parents understand how violent/bloody/sexual a game is. The most common response? "Oh, he's already played it with his brother/friend/etc."
Agreed, the majority of stores are not like what he described. There are a handful, but GameStop has been actively weeding out the problem areas by getting rid of ineffective DM's and SM's alike. GameStop is very much a company on the move, and the buyout of EB, while surprising, is a very good strategic move.
Epidemic? Seriously, that word has no place in the context you used it. If this were an "epidemic", then a large number of scientists would be supporting it. Yet only a small number are. If a great percentage of the world's scientific community supported it, then you wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it as "pseudoscience bullshit".
In all seriousness, a Commander Keen game utilizing the next generation game engine would be amazing. It had such a fun storyline, and quite a lot of randomness that made it uniquely enjoyable to play. Such a game would use a wide variety of bright colors, thus shutting up all those people who think id's very talented artists can't work in anything but dreary darkness.
The problem with that is that the moon would likely be knocked a bit out of its orbit. Perhaps not to the point of leaving the Earth's pull entirely, but enough to cause massive disturbances in the tides due to gravitational changes. And that could severely damage a lot of coastal areas. Not to mention the possiblity of it creating a massive debris field around the planet, which would make entering space all the more hazardous.
Of course, I'm just guessing at this, here, and may be completely wrong.
I felt it was a huge let-down. If not for CS:S and DOD:S being included in the package I got, I would've considered it a huge waste of money. The game was over much quicker than I expected, and the plot was not as in-depth or well told as it could've been. They seemed more interested in setting us up for the third iteration of the Gordon Freeman story than telling a genuinely good one.
Maybe my expectations were too high, but when magazines bandy about the phrase, "Greatest game ever," it's hard not to expect at least a game worthy of $60.
Slashdot Mirror
Early in the life of DVD, The Matrix was the one disc that really got a lot of attention. It's what convinced me that DVD was more than worth the cost - from the surround sound to the higher definition playback, it was plainly superior. Seeing it on VHS and then on DVD made me realize how much I was missing from the experience. I have yet to see either new format in action, but from all I've heard, there is no compeling reason (even when it becomes affordable) for the average Joe to upgrade from DVD to HD or Blu-ray. I highly doubt those three movies above are going to convince anyone.
Not necessarily so. While it's true that Microsoft didn't turn a profit with the X-Box, they forced Sony to sit up and pay attention. The Cell processor and other PS3 components may have already been well in development by the time it became clear the X-Box wasn't going away, Sony (at least internally, despite their PR hubris) realizes they are no longer assured a lock on first place in this round of console wars. By the time PS4 and XB3 roll around, Sony will have learned a few critical lessons about staying competitive. Nintendo was all but massacred in the (very critical) US market last round. They reached back into their heritage and pulled out a hail-mary play that looks extremely likely to work. Not only has New Super Mario Bros. become a very high selling game this year, the demand for the DS is holding strong. Interest in the Wii is definately there, whereas whenever anyone hears the price of PS3, they start eyeing up the 360 which suddenly has a better price point, a quickly growing library of great games, and strong developer backing for future games. If Nintendo hits the $200 price point, Wii is almost assured the #1 spot even if they don't grow the gamer base, as so many PS3 and 360 fans will pick one up as their second system.
Competition creates better product. While sometimes there needs to be a final resolution to a battle (such as the HD vs. BR format war), that initial "war" is key to figuring out who's better. The problem with this particular battle is that neither standard offers a big enough reason to upgrade for consumers.
You should consider getting out more... game stores have PS1 memory cards. Ebay isn't the only (or even best) place for used gaming purchases.
Agreed. My first-run XBOX lasted for three years before finally giving out (which I suspect was due to the abuse of being transported back and forth to several different locations in a poorly-protected backpack). My first-run 360 has not given me any over-heating, disc scratching, or crashing issues (*knock on wood*).
The failure rate of original-design PS2s was much higher than the 360 from what I have been able to see. The only reason failures are getting so much attention is because of the very limited supply right now combined with a general anti-Microsoft hysteria that plagues Slashdot. Sony was getting trashed pretty thoroughly a few weeks ago though for rediculous copy-protection schemes. It would appear the only gaming company immune from this is Nintendo.
Optical drives were designed to be layed horizontal. They were not made to be moved around while in use. Keep those things in mind and I'd bet money that this disc scratching issue goes away.
Seems a bit amusing to hear that sort of thing from EGM (no doubt referring to Game Informer) when EGM is often knocked for praising Sony excessively while trashing Microsoft. Of the publications out there, GI has far and away shown the least amount of bias, and in fact I seem to recall there being an award given to the entire GI staff last year for best video game reporting or something along those lines. GI also has the least to gain from bias, because it is a division of GameStop. If GI took a slant towards one publisher or another, then other publishers might decide not to give GameStop the volume price discounts that, say, Best Buy would get. Same with Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo.
Gentlemen, Behold! My space-time continu--
I disagree. I think Microsoft would love nothing more than to issue a patch removing something from Sony. The amount of PR and publicity this would create two weeks before launching a product that directly competes with Sony's only real moneymaker would be worth far more than costs of a possible lawsuit that Sony might attempt to launch against them (which would get thrown out anyway).
Most of these systems lock the game to a license/user. Take Valve's Steam program for example. Your CD key(s) are locked to your user account. Your account cannot be signed in from more than one machine, but you can sign in to that account from any computer that has Steam. Thus if your computer is fried by some klutz spilling soda on it, or you upgrade or just replace it entirely (or want to play at a friend's house), you simply log in to Steam using your own account. The difference compared with Sony's apparent method is that the game is locked in to a single unique piece of hardware that cannot be upgraded, replaced, or sold/traded.
If Sony proposed some sort of Steam-like system I might be inclined to support it under the condition that they required the disc to be in the drive in order for that disc ID to be locked in to that account (so you could still loan the game to a friend, but you wouldn't be able to play a copy of that disc for example). But this would require an internet connection to every PS3, and that simply isn't realistic.
For those who complain that their local video game store (GameStop, EB Games, GameRush, Game Crazy, etc) doesn't sell much in the way of PC games anymore, it's primarily because they can't sell used PC product, therefore there is next to no profit to be had. The margins are so slim that most stores would need to sell hundreds if not thousands of games a day in order to break even, much less turn a profit. If used games and trade-ins are eliminated, the specialty video game retailers will cease to exist. Considering that GameStop now has about 25% of the market and many other retailers are getting into the used/trade business, Sony would not be able to do this. It would be suicide for them, and there would undoubtedly be a massive underground movement among retail employees to encourage customers very strongly to get the 360 or Revolution instead.
Sony is a stupid company. Very, very stupid. They don't care about the customer. That said, they do care about profits. They are smart enough to realize that implementing this technology on games for the PS3 might give them a slight boost in profits for a couple of months only to be followed by a mass exodus of people who are sufficiently angry at Sony when their machine breaks (as happens all too often with Sony hardware) and are now not only unable to play their games on the replacement machine but now unable to even sell them. With so many games being developed for both major platforms, it is extremely likely that Sony's marketshare by the time of the next generation would be much like that of the GameCube in the US. Meanwhile, Bill will be laughing all the way to the bank.
80MB still isn't doable as a web application. 80MB is nothing compared with the size of MS Office, but Google really wants this to be something that can be opened instantly from any computer that has internet access. That's what Microsoft is so desperately scared of. If there is a free office suite available from any computer that is connected to the internet, anywhere, then there's really no need to have a product like MS Office which costs hundreds of dollars and is locked in to one computer. If you integrate the service/product into the internet itself, where's the value in a purchased CD? It'd be like having to buy MS Search for $300 in order to be able to search the internet. Why would you do that when you've got a perfectly capable product at google.com?
Two companies with less than 15% of the market each can't get the sort of economy of scale that a company like Walmart (with nearly 50% of the market) can. However, with a combined 25%+ of the market, it's much easier to say to Microsoft (for example), "We need 300,000 Xbox 360's at launch," and have them deliver.
If you truly believe that mergers are no good for anyone, you should take a basic economics course. Gamestop still has plenty of competition from Walmart, Best Buy, and the other big box retailers.
As far as store closings go, those who are anticipating immediate closures need to consider that most of those stores are already quite profitable and as long as each is turning a profit, there's no reason to shut one of them down. Also, especially in mall locations, there are long-term leases on those locations that would be very costly to bail out on. Expect store closures to happen over time as things settle down, but realistically there's not going to be any haphazard store closings.
Limited trade-ins? GameStop's stores don't have trade-in limits. The web site does, but that is run as a seperate entity from the stores. The reason that this merger needs to happen is that the primary competition for GameStop/EB is Walmart. A company that represents 10% of the video game market has a tough time getting competetive pricing from manufacturers. On the other hand, a company with 20-25% of the market is much more able to get great deals. The reason that older systems aren't kept in most stores is because the supply is no longer there and is thus consolidated down to a handful of stores. If the demand for it existed enough that it would sell at a higher price, then perhaps GameStop would not have ceased trading in that product. But many of these stores are small and can only accomodate so many systems. And quite frankly, from a business standpoint there is no sense in keeping something in your store that has very little profit when you need the space for the rapidly growing library of titles for PS2, Xbox, and soon Xbox 360. GameStop is driven by the customer - if demand was truly there, then the stores would still carry those older systems. But the average gamer is someone whose first game system was a PS2.
I certainly wish it was still possible to walk into a GameStop and buy an NES, but I completely understand why it isn't any longer.
I always tell parents that the game they're buying for their kid is rated M for Mature due to [blood, gore, violence, sexual themes, drug use, etc]. Nine times out of ten, they tell me they don't like it, but their kid already played it. What the hell kind of excuse is that? I've told parents flat-out that GTA: SA is quite possibly the worst game that they could be buying for their kids, yet they still use that excuse. I blame the parents as well, because they are ultimately the ones who can control what their kids play. Retailers can only do so much to inform the parents, and no government-mandated rating system is going to change anything (the current rating system works just fine, but the parents don't care). If parents get in an uproar about how terrible a game is, odds are they ignored the information they were given.
Why not? Collision detection and AI are tasks that can be quite easily left up to the other CPUs on board. I have little reason to doubt that the GPU is capable of rendering this at 60fps, either.
Haven't any of you seen the video clip of PGR3 in action that was shown at E3?
As an employee of a major video games retailer, I can state that we sell far more PSP systems, games, and movies than we sell in DS. I don't have the actual numbers available here, but I'd wager it's almost a 10:1 ratio. Worldwide the DS might be on par with the PSP, but not in my local experience. I suspect that in North America, the PSP outsells the DS by a wide margin, just as the XBOX outsells the GameCube by quite a lot in NA.
I'm sorry, but you are comparing an overclocked processor to a standard processor. If you compare them at available warranty-covered speeds, then the Pentium M falls way behind. While it is a very impressive chip for what it does, it is not available at 2.5GHz.
Microsoft and Sony both decided multi-cores are the future with their next generation of consoles. Thus, game developers will begin to write code to take advantage of multi-threading. This will translate pretty quickly onto the PC, since dual-core processors are becoming more readily available. Games have long been the software that pushes new technology onto the market before anybody else thinks it is necessary. And so it will be with multi-core CPUs.
To those who think the PSP isn't selling a million units a month, I think you may want to check your facts first. Not only is the PSP selling like hotcakes even at the $250 price point, but the Nintendo DS is essentially dead in the water as far as sales go. The software library for the DS is pitiful and there are more titles for the PSP, which has been out for two months, than there are for the DS (which has been out for seven months). And the quality of titles for PSP is much greater. Nintendo is largely out of touch with what the market wants, despite all of their hubbub about what they think is going to sell.
I don't think it is necessary to outsource the PSP. If demand continues like this, they can keep the price at $250 much longer and sell more units. When demand starts to drop, just lower the price a little. Demand is not at such a high level as to justify a second factory without it oversaturating the market.
The only RPG/adventure games I ever got into were Quest For Glory and Kings Quest. If the game would still run on my computer (it moves entirely too fast now), I'd be playing it again. I never cared for Final Fantasy or Legend of Zelda - they never captured my imagination. Perhaps it was simply because they had too much of a fantasy influence or because they were simply set in a different environment than what I traditionally thought of as exciting.
Most retailers won't sell M-rated games to minors anyway. There are of course some exceptions, just as there are with alcohol and tobacco sales. Whether or not it's a law, the ESRB has done a great job of policing the game ratings already.
The problem of young kids playing games not suitable for them lies not with the retailers or publishers. The problem lies with parents not caring if their children play violent games. Most kids won't be terribly affected by playing a game like GTA: San Andreas when they're only 11 or 12. But some will. Those who would be affected by it are likely to have been raised in an environment that would encourage the sort of behavior shown in these games anyway.
I am disgusted when parents buy M-rated games for their kids when they are plainly still in elementary school. I see it happen, and I always do my best to make sure that the parents understand how violent/bloody/sexual a game is. The most common response? "Oh, he's already played it with his brother/friend/etc."
And with the EB/GameStop merger, the subscriber base is going to grow pretty quickly in the next two years.
Agreed, the majority of stores are not like what he described. There are a handful, but GameStop has been actively weeding out the problem areas by getting rid of ineffective DM's and SM's alike. GameStop is very much a company on the move, and the buyout of EB, while surprising, is a very good strategic move.
Epidemic? Seriously, that word has no place in the context you used it. If this were an "epidemic", then a large number of scientists would be supporting it. Yet only a small number are. If a great percentage of the world's scientific community supported it, then you wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it as "pseudoscience bullshit".
In all seriousness, a Commander Keen game utilizing the next generation game engine would be amazing. It had such a fun storyline, and quite a lot of randomness that made it uniquely enjoyable to play. Such a game would use a wide variety of bright colors, thus shutting up all those people who think id's very talented artists can't work in anything but dreary darkness.
The problem with that is that the moon would likely be knocked a bit out of its orbit. Perhaps not to the point of leaving the Earth's pull entirely, but enough to cause massive disturbances in the tides due to gravitational changes. And that could severely damage a lot of coastal areas. Not to mention the possiblity of it creating a massive debris field around the planet, which would make entering space all the more hazardous.
Of course, I'm just guessing at this, here, and may be completely wrong.
I felt it was a huge let-down. If not for CS:S and DOD:S being included in the package I got, I would've considered it a huge waste of money. The game was over much quicker than I expected, and the plot was not as in-depth or well told as it could've been. They seemed more interested in setting us up for the third iteration of the Gordon Freeman story than telling a genuinely good one.
Maybe my expectations were too high, but when magazines bandy about the phrase, "Greatest game ever," it's hard not to expect at least a game worthy of $60.