"I'm sorry folks, there's been a mistake. The 'Grandest Waste of Ten Minutes' award that we previously announced was going to Disaffected!, was given in error. After a recount, the parent poster of this very topic has been given that award, in addition to the 'My God! How Can You Be So Anal About A Fucking Link Award'
My site relaunches on Friday 27th and we decided to "drop the scores" a couple of months ago.
They're pointless in the current climate. Personally, I decided to take this route because I was sick of seeing referral traffic from forums where folks had come along to the site, read the score (not the review text) and then promptly headed back to their favourite forum to trash us.
"Why did he give that 9/10? It sucks! Its not as good as !" etc., etc.
The alternative? Just give them the review. Then they don't have to ask WHY a reviewer who's spent a good while playing a game and a good while writing about it has given the score that he has, just because they're too damn lazy to read the review text. We have a short summing-up at the end of the review, so folks can read that if they really are adverse to checking out the rest of it.
All I know, is that if I've personally taken time out to visit a website to check out a review, I'm going to READ it. Not everyone is like that. Some folks do just want a number in place of valid reasoning and qualification of the opinion in question. Good luck to them. I guess they're the guys that return things to stores because they "didn't do what they expected."
Or the guys that stood in front of a 4ft tall black-on-white sign pasted on my local game store's window that said "We have 4 Xbox 360's and they are all reserved for preorders." on launch day, for three hours. Before walking up to the cashier when the doors opened and saying "Do you have any spare Xbox 360's? I didn't manage to preorder one. No? Are you sure? There are none left? Can you check?"
Friend of mine bought a 360 on launch day. Came over to mine at about 8pm on the same day. I ask him why he isn't still playing his 360 (which he'd specifically taken the day off work to do) and he starts complaining. A few select phrases...
The Xbox 360 is shit. Microsoft are a bunch of bastards and he'll be suing them if they don't refund or replace. The console has ruined his PGR3 disc. He hasn't even managed to set up his Live account as the console crashes every five minutes. What a bunch of bandits. Just like Windows 95. Crashes every five minutes and you have to reboot it. It shouldn't be allowed. I told you I should have waited for the PS3.
Mine's been absolutely fine and has been on for at least 6 hours. We go to his house to check it out. The power pack is tossed behind the TV and is sitting underneath a now-unused Gamecube which was pushed back out of the way in my friend's excitement to get his 360 "in place". We turn it on for a few minutes and even without running a game, the power pack is practically on fire and sure enough, the system freezes.
So we move the power pack to a sensible position.
The PGR3 disc has an elliptical scratch going all the way around it. "Did the 360 make any grinding noises at any point?"
"Well, I wanted to see if standing it vertically would cool it down a bit, in case it was crashing due to the heat. When I stood it up, it made a hell of a noise and then my disc was scratched."
"You moved it whilst the disc was spinning?"
"Uh-huh"
I just wonder how many people have a similar situation. How many of us are defaulting to "I hate Microsoft" - just because its what everybody else has told them to think? I personally like Microsoft, and think that what they've done with the 360 is good. My original Xbox had the bad drive problem, and Microsoft swapped my console out by courier on the day after launch. They haven't screwed me over, so why would I ever act like they had?
Oh that's right! This is Slashdot, and even if Microsoft were giving the consoles away for free, they'd still be a bunch of fucksticks.
I feel like a complete fool. Thanks for pointing out the error of my ways.
I've paid retail price (not eBay price) for an Xbox360 with PGR3, Call of Duty 2 and Condemned. I've plugged the console in, put a game in, sat down in my favourite chair - and played three incredibly addictive and FUN games. It hasn't crashed once (because I didn't lag the power supply with fourteen blankets) and it hasn't scratched a disc (because I haven't moved the console from vertical to horizontal whilst a disc is spinning) - yet.
What an idiot I am! I got to play games that I enjoyed. I must be missing the point, but I thought that was the idea of this pasttime that we call gaming. If it isn't, then somebody please show me exactly what the point is, before I "waste" even more of my money on having fun.
"and should Microsoft ever acknowledge that there is anything wrong with the game consoles, you can get a full repair/replacement" - RTFA. Microsoft DID acknowledge the problem.
"At least I know the ps3 will have a final fantasy soon enough AND I can play DDR Max/Extreme on it."
Final Fantasy XI was released with the 360 in Japan, and is coming to the US and Europe very shortly. DDR Max/Extreme will no doubt follow right behind.
"Call of Duty? ICK. Where's the story?"
So because a story doesn't involve the word CUTE nineteen times a second, it isn't a story? The story of World War II is one of the greatest ever told, and Call of Duty II tells it better than any other. My point is that you aren't in the target audience for the first wave of Xbox 360 titles. Voodoo Vince and Whiplash were OK games, but they certainly weren't the sort of games to sell consoles to a public that (for the greater part) haven't seen what the system can do. Call of Duty and PGR serve that function well, since they impress graphically, whilst providing an engaging gameplay experience.
"Seriously, where are the story games in this lineup? "
Everywhere. PGR3 is a story game where *I* am the story. Same goes for FIFA, Madden, Tiger Woods Golf. Condemned has a strong story. King Kong is a game based on a Hollywood blockbuster, which is based on the film that pretty much popularised the cinema. But hey, what's that without any story?
And for the record, you know SHIT about the PS3. You know that you "probably" will be able to play DDR Max/Extreme on it and that it will "probably" have Final Fantasy available for it shortly after launch. Nothing has been announced. Is there a backwards-compatibility list? Will your old dance mat even plug in to the console? If it doesn't, will you be able to get a convertor? If it does, will the software even run? If the dance mat plugs in and the software doesn't run, you'll be in the same boat as you are with the 360.
You'll have a console that you can't play Ultramix on, that has a launch lineup that ("probably") consists of Japanese feudal war themed titles, EA Sports ports and driving games that are "too confined" for you.
And that's when you start on how the PS3 sucks, but the Revolution will be great because...
So female gamers won't like to play Project Gotham 3? Call of Duty 2? Kameo? Condemned? Ridge Racer 6?
Hang on. If that's the case, why are you even bothering to look at the launch lineup in the first place? Oh, that's right. Female gamers only like dancing games, games that involve ridiculous peripherals and games that make them feel like a popstar!
I bet Microsoft is really kicking itself for missing that heavy spending target audience. Or not. Since it knows that female gamers aren't that ridiculously closed minded.
Microsoft is gearing up for its European launch this weekend, but many believe the shortages could be even worse over there
What do you mean by "could be"?
Stores in the UK have been taking £20 deposits on consoles, with the £20 purchasing a "guarantee" that you'll get one tomorrow, 2nd December. Many of the stores have undercompensated for the shortages. I have been guaranteed one - but many people are complaining of calling the store they preordered from, only to be told that the store hasn't had ANY consoles in, no games for the system, no accessories and no promise of delivery.
Our local ASDA (owned by Wal-Mart now, fancy that) have a queue system in place. You preorder for £20 anytime since July. You turn up today at midday (12 hours before it goes on sale) and they may give you a ticket, depending on how many consoles they have in stock. If you paid and didn't get a ticket because you were too late, you can get a refund or wait as a reserve. People check the queue every hour, and if a ticketholder isn't in line for two of these hourly checks, their ticket is passed to a reserve.
In other words, the store is FORCING you to queue for 12 hours to get hold of a console that they guaranteed you'd receive on launch day when you preordered months ago.
Our local branch of GAME took 280 preorders. They have 32 premium systems and 10 core packs. They have ONE VGA cable. ONE Play N Charge kit. TWO extra wireless controllers. No wired controllers. No headsets. No Xbox Live subscription or points cards and they only have enough copies of PGR3 to satisfy the successful preorders.
And they're the biggest store that sells games for miles. I've called 14 stores within a 20 mile radius to reserve Kameo and Tiger Woods. Nobody has any left over after preorders. Luckily my PGR3 is safe, but if you just preordered the console and managed to get one - you might not have anything to play on it...now tell me, how hard is it to use an existing process and supply chain to duplicate standard DVD discs and get them to stores. I can buy King Kong for Xbox from any store I choose...most have a ton of copies of it...but I can't buy King Kong for Xbox 360 anywhere. Work that one out.
no matter what else the box promises, once you're tired of playing the games it'll end up in the back of the closet, covered with hardened Cheeto grease, dust, a few dents from being kicked when things didn't go quite to plan in a game and utterly forgotten until Garage Sale Season.
Wow. I'm so glad that such a hardcore gamer got the first punt at this topic. My PSOne, Dreamcast, Saturn, Genesis, SNES etc etc aren't on my closet. I haven't become bored of the games, persay, just that I've moved on. I occassionally go back to Duck Hunt on the NES or Speedball 2 on the Genesis, because they're FUN games. Moving on doesn't mean giving up on the past altogether. There's room for all of them if you're creative with your space.
As for your Athlon64, perhaps you have some issues there. Are there three hundred older and slightly less powerful processors in your closet waiting for a garage sale? You're using "top of the line" kit to play some kid's Java dream. Nice. Like I say, maybe this is why you have such hatred for Microsoft, although they didn't MAKE you upgrade to play Settlers of Catan, you chose to because maybe the satisfying clicky-clicky of the buttons won't slow down when you have your non-Microsoft media player running off MP3's by the dozen.
Yes, I'm ranting. Yes, I'm sick to the fucking back teeth of Xbox360 stories on Slashdot. Why? Because they all end the same way. Some tit opens up Internet Explorer on a Windows XP (SP4) machine, goes to Slashdot, reads about the Xbox360, thinks for half a second, then writes a torrent of pure unenlightened, uneducated and downright uncalled for bullshit about how he hates Microsoft and how Microsoft screws everybody. Sometimes, he might substitute the "s" in Microsoft for a dollar sign, to represent the fact that they make a shitload of fine money. Then, he sits down with some piss-poor "update" or "fan conversion" of his favourite game from 1987 and plays that, because he can't get the original running without booting into DOS - another Microsoft product. "FUCK Microsoft. Always screwing me over! I don't Goddamn need them. Never did, never will." - Again, as he boots into DOS, which is required to play the original of his favourite game.
I used to have a calculator. I used to have a word processor. I used to play games on an Atari 2600 jacked into my TV. I used to have to speak to people or pick up the telephone to get my message through. Shopping? I'd go outside and do it. And you talk about convergence and how its such a bad thing? I do all of that at my PC now - which runs Windows XP. I use Word for word processing, since AFAIK no open-source Word processor (I had OpenOffice for a while) exists that does decent grammar and spelling checks - on my Windows XP PC. I use the built in Calculator for calculating stuff - if I don't use Excel - both of which are stored on my Windows XP PC. I shop using my browser - which isn't Microsoft branded, I have to say, but runs on my Windows XP PC. I email my friends or use MSN/YIM/AIM/ICQ/IRC to speak to them - again, from my Windows XP PC. Do you see what I'm getting at?
I don't love Microsoft. But I sure as hell love what they've done for me. I wouldn't have been designing websites or writing about games for the last ten years and making some decent money for it, if it wasn't for Windows.
I'll be buying a 360. Why in hell's name does everyone always act like you can only buy one console, anyway? I love games - so I'm going to love Project Gotham Racing 3. Its only for Xbox360 - so since I have a crappy PC that doesn't get upgraded daily, I have some spare cash to pick up a 360 to play it on. The same as I'll pick up a PS3 for Gran Turismo 5, and a Revolution for the new, new, new Mario. Buying a 360 certainly doesn't put me into a box that stops me from buying a competitor's console.
Let us not forget, people, this isn't just a problem with Microsoft - before we get onto the old "Microsoft sucks" bandwagon.
Two weeks ago, you couldn't buy a PSP in the UK, since Sony not only couldn't cover the preorders for the unit, but then couldn't supply enough units to retail in the six weeks following the launch.
But, is this the real reason - they just could not make enough PSPs?
No. It isn't. Why? Because they then announced and released the "Giga Pack", which contains all the original PSP "Value Pack" did, but has a 1Gb memory card included. It also costs about £30 more. Funnily enough, there are more than enough Giga Packs to go round. I can walk into any one of ten stores in my town and get one off the shelf.
Can I get a Value Pack? No. They couldn't meet the demand.
Have to disagree with your comment there. Affordable?
I can pick up a 32" standard flatscreen TV here in the UK for £200 - £300. The same size TV with HDTV support would set me back £1,000 - at LEAST. That was an offer I just saw online, and it expires tomorrow. Regular price £1,100.
So you're saying Bizarre are bad coders? Have you ever actually played one of their games? Specifically any of the games in this series, going back to the original Metropolis Street Racer on Dreamcast.
What, you mean the same Metropolis Street Racer that had to be recalled in the UK because the developer left a bug in there that meant that you lost half your accumulated Kudos points every time you completed a certain type of race - making game completion impossible? The same Metropolis Street Racer that was due for release with the console on 9th September, 1999, but didn't actually see a release until 3rd November, 2000?
You're right. They aren't bad coders. Just sloppy. And yet I still love 'em.
There's the guys ogling the booth babes because they're men, and men like to look at women. Y'know, procreation, sex...all that tired old shit that got us to where we are today. Or, there's your good self, who by the nature of your post is implying that because a "booth babe" is getting ogled, she has neither the brain cells or the ability to do anything else and that they need YOU to go in to bat for them with the feminist perspective. A lot of these models are paying to put themselves through school/college by simply making the best of what God has given them. Its no worse or better than me putting together a bunch of HTML code and selling it to someone so that I can afford to eat and drink. Is my buyer wrong for staring at the pretty website I made?
Now what's worse? Me looking at an attractive women, or you implying that she's not at all intelligent BECAUSE she's attractive? Hmm...
Because unfortunately, 1UP seem to overlook "what ought to be standard in a game" in pretty much all of their game reviews, preferring to just give great reviews to what they consider should be cool and get them points with the IGN/Gamespot crowd. Plus, Sly Cooper's 3rd title is coming out soon, and I believe Sony are doing some heavy "promotion" at the moment...wonder how much it costs to get an article like this going? Getting Slashdotted must be a nice added bang for the buck.
...if the company in the UK that is marketing its range of "innovative packaging designs" by using its design for "The Hero" DVD in its advertising is affected?
Especially since the design is exactly the same as Halo 2's, only with a little pair of black plastic goggles on the side as a clasp to keep the case closed.
I thought that Halo 2's case was just a DVD case made of metal, with the case being cut into two seperate pieces (rather than the "norm", which is one continuous piece) and kept together by an equally cheap metal hinge. And the previous poster is right in saying that Doom 3 was released in exactly the same style of casing.
I know we're all "supposed" to hate Microsoft, but could it not be that a) Small company realises that its main product is ridiculously easy to copy and has nothing else up its sleeve to improve profits, so b) sues the biggest company in the World, hoping to get a big "DualShock" style payoff?
Slashdot Mirror
Uhhh yah...we covered this in comment one. Just calling to make sure that you knew that it wasn't like a half-a-day or anything...
"I'm sorry folks, there's been a mistake. The 'Grandest Waste of Ten Minutes' award that we previously announced was going to Disaffected!, was given in error. After a recount, the parent poster of this very topic has been given that award, in addition to the 'My God! How Can You Be So Anal About A Fucking Link Award'
Congratulations to all involved!"
My site relaunches on Friday 27th and we decided to "drop the scores" a couple of months ago.
They're pointless in the current climate. Personally, I decided to take this route because I was sick of seeing referral traffic from forums where folks had come along to the site, read the score (not the review text) and then promptly headed back to their favourite forum to trash us.
"Why did he give that 9/10? It sucks! Its not as good as !" etc., etc.
The alternative? Just give them the review. Then they don't have to ask WHY a reviewer who's spent a good while playing a game and a good while writing about it has given the score that he has, just because they're too damn lazy to read the review text. We have a short summing-up at the end of the review, so folks can read that if they really are adverse to checking out the rest of it.
All I know, is that if I've personally taken time out to visit a website to check out a review, I'm going to READ it. Not everyone is like that. Some folks do just want a number in place of valid reasoning and qualification of the opinion in question. Good luck to them. I guess they're the guys that return things to stores because they "didn't do what they expected."
Or the guys that stood in front of a 4ft tall black-on-white sign pasted on my local game store's window that said "We have 4 Xbox 360's and they are all reserved for preorders." on launch day, for three hours. Before walking up to the cashier when the doors opened and saying "Do you have any spare Xbox 360's? I didn't manage to preorder one. No? Are you sure? There are none left? Can you check?"
Nitpick: The US title will be "Gentle Brain Exercises" when it is released this year.
Nothing like desperately playing for a "5: Funny" and failing absolutely abysmally.
Stop using "tho", it's annoying.
OK, check this out.
Friend of mine bought a 360 on launch day. Came over to mine at about 8pm on the same day. I ask him why he isn't still playing his 360 (which he'd specifically taken the day off work to do) and he starts complaining. A few select phrases...
The Xbox 360 is shit. Microsoft are a bunch of bastards and he'll be suing them if they don't refund or replace. The console has ruined his PGR3 disc. He hasn't even managed to set up his Live account as the console crashes every five minutes. What a bunch of bandits. Just like Windows 95. Crashes every five minutes and you have to reboot it. It shouldn't be allowed. I told you I should have waited for the PS3.
Mine's been absolutely fine and has been on for at least 6 hours. We go to his house to check it out. The power pack is tossed behind the TV and is sitting underneath a now-unused Gamecube which was pushed back out of the way in my friend's excitement to get his 360 "in place". We turn it on for a few minutes and even without running a game, the power pack is practically on fire and sure enough, the system freezes.
So we move the power pack to a sensible position.
The PGR3 disc has an elliptical scratch going all the way around it. "Did the 360 make any grinding noises at any point?"
"Well, I wanted to see if standing it vertically would cool it down a bit, in case it was crashing due to the heat. When I stood it up, it made a hell of a noise and then my disc was scratched."
"You moved it whilst the disc was spinning?"
"Uh-huh"
I just wonder how many people have a similar situation. How many of us are defaulting to "I hate Microsoft" - just because its what everybody else has told them to think? I personally like Microsoft, and think that what they've done with the 360 is good. My original Xbox had the bad drive problem, and Microsoft swapped my console out by courier on the day after launch. They haven't screwed me over, so why would I ever act like they had?
Oh that's right! This is Slashdot, and even if Microsoft were giving the consoles away for free, they'd still be a bunch of fucksticks.
I feel like a complete fool. Thanks for pointing out the error of my ways.
I've paid retail price (not eBay price) for an Xbox360 with PGR3, Call of Duty 2 and Condemned. I've plugged the console in, put a game in, sat down in my favourite chair - and played three incredibly addictive and FUN games. It hasn't crashed once (because I didn't lag the power supply with fourteen blankets) and it hasn't scratched a disc (because I haven't moved the console from vertical to horizontal whilst a disc is spinning) - yet.
What an idiot I am! I got to play games that I enjoyed. I must be missing the point, but I thought that was the idea of this pasttime that we call gaming. If it isn't, then somebody please show me exactly what the point is, before I "waste" even more of my money on having fun.
"and should Microsoft ever acknowledge that there is anything wrong with the game consoles, you can get a full repair/replacement" - RTFA. Microsoft DID acknowledge the problem.
I think the phrase "rumor was" before the statement indicates that the poster picked it up from somebody/something else.
Therefore, your point is moot.
"At least I know the ps3 will have a final fantasy soon enough AND I can play DDR Max/Extreme on it."
Final Fantasy XI was released with the 360 in Japan, and is coming to the US and Europe very shortly. DDR Max/Extreme will no doubt follow right behind.
"Call of Duty? ICK. Where's the story?"
So because a story doesn't involve the word CUTE nineteen times a second, it isn't a story? The story of World War II is one of the greatest ever told, and Call of Duty II tells it better than any other. My point is that you aren't in the target audience for the first wave of Xbox 360 titles. Voodoo Vince and Whiplash were OK games, but they certainly weren't the sort of games to sell consoles to a public that (for the greater part) haven't seen what the system can do. Call of Duty and PGR serve that function well, since they impress graphically, whilst providing an engaging gameplay experience.
"Seriously, where are the story games in this lineup? "
Everywhere. PGR3 is a story game where *I* am the story. Same goes for FIFA, Madden, Tiger Woods Golf. Condemned has a strong story. King Kong is a game based on a Hollywood blockbuster, which is based on the film that pretty much popularised the cinema. But hey, what's that without any story?
And for the record, you know SHIT about the PS3. You know that you "probably" will be able to play DDR Max/Extreme on it and that it will "probably" have Final Fantasy available for it shortly after launch. Nothing has been announced. Is there a backwards-compatibility list? Will your old dance mat even plug in to the console? If it doesn't, will you be able to get a convertor? If it does, will the software even run? If the dance mat plugs in and the software doesn't run, you'll be in the same boat as you are with the 360.
You'll have a console that you can't play Ultramix on, that has a launch lineup that ("probably") consists of Japanese feudal war themed titles, EA Sports ports and driving games that are "too confined" for you.
And that's when you start on how the PS3 sucks, but the Revolution will be great because...
Wow.
So female gamers won't like to play Project Gotham 3? Call of Duty 2? Kameo? Condemned? Ridge Racer 6?
Hang on. If that's the case, why are you even bothering to look at the launch lineup in the first place? Oh, that's right. Female gamers only like dancing games, games that involve ridiculous peripherals and games that make them feel like a popstar!
I bet Microsoft is really kicking itself for missing that heavy spending target audience. Or not. Since it knows that female gamers aren't that ridiculously closed minded.
Really. "It's crap, I can't play Ultramix!"
Microsoft is gearing up for its European launch this weekend, but many believe the shortages could be even worse over there
What do you mean by "could be"?
Stores in the UK have been taking £20 deposits on consoles, with the £20 purchasing a "guarantee" that you'll get one tomorrow, 2nd December. Many of the stores have undercompensated for the shortages. I have been guaranteed one - but many people are complaining of calling the store they preordered from, only to be told that the store hasn't had ANY consoles in, no games for the system, no accessories and no promise of delivery.
Our local ASDA (owned by Wal-Mart now, fancy that) have a queue system in place. You preorder for £20 anytime since July. You turn up today at midday (12 hours before it goes on sale) and they may give you a ticket, depending on how many consoles they have in stock. If you paid and didn't get a ticket because you were too late, you can get a refund or wait as a reserve. People check the queue every hour, and if a ticketholder isn't in line for two of these hourly checks, their ticket is passed to a reserve.
In other words, the store is FORCING you to queue for 12 hours to get hold of a console that they guaranteed you'd receive on launch day when you preordered months ago.
Our local branch of GAME took 280 preorders. They have 32 premium systems and 10 core packs. They have ONE VGA cable. ONE Play N Charge kit. TWO extra wireless controllers. No wired controllers. No headsets. No Xbox Live subscription or points cards and they only have enough copies of PGR3 to satisfy the successful preorders.
And they're the biggest store that sells games for miles. I've called 14 stores within a 20 mile radius to reserve Kameo and Tiger Woods. Nobody has any left over after preorders. Luckily my PGR3 is safe, but if you just preordered the console and managed to get one - you might not have anything to play on it...now tell me, how hard is it to use an existing process and supply chain to duplicate standard DVD discs and get them to stores. I can buy King Kong for Xbox from any store I choose...most have a ton of copies of it...but I can't buy King Kong for Xbox 360 anywhere. Work that one out.
no matter what else the box promises, once you're tired of playing the games it'll end up in the back of the closet, covered with hardened Cheeto grease, dust, a few dents from being kicked when things didn't go quite to plan in a game and utterly forgotten until Garage Sale Season.
Wow. I'm so glad that such a hardcore gamer got the first punt at this topic. My PSOne, Dreamcast, Saturn, Genesis, SNES etc etc aren't on my closet. I haven't become bored of the games, persay, just that I've moved on. I occassionally go back to Duck Hunt on the NES or Speedball 2 on the Genesis, because they're FUN games. Moving on doesn't mean giving up on the past altogether. There's room for all of them if you're creative with your space.
As for your Athlon64, perhaps you have some issues there. Are there three hundred older and slightly less powerful processors in your closet waiting for a garage sale? You're using "top of the line" kit to play some kid's Java dream. Nice. Like I say, maybe this is why you have such hatred for Microsoft, although they didn't MAKE you upgrade to play Settlers of Catan, you chose to because maybe the satisfying clicky-clicky of the buttons won't slow down when you have your non-Microsoft media player running off MP3's by the dozen.
Yes, I'm ranting. Yes, I'm sick to the fucking back teeth of Xbox360 stories on Slashdot. Why? Because they all end the same way. Some tit opens up Internet Explorer on a Windows XP (SP4) machine, goes to Slashdot, reads about the Xbox360, thinks for half a second, then writes a torrent of pure unenlightened, uneducated and downright uncalled for bullshit about how he hates Microsoft and how Microsoft screws everybody. Sometimes, he might substitute the "s" in Microsoft for a dollar sign, to represent the fact that they make a shitload of fine money. Then, he sits down with some piss-poor "update" or "fan conversion" of his favourite game from 1987 and plays that, because he can't get the original running without booting into DOS - another Microsoft product. "FUCK Microsoft. Always screwing me over! I don't Goddamn need them. Never did, never will." - Again, as he boots into DOS, which is required to play the original of his favourite game.
I used to have a calculator. I used to have a word processor. I used to play games on an Atari 2600 jacked into my TV. I used to have to speak to people or pick up the telephone to get my message through. Shopping? I'd go outside and do it. And you talk about convergence and how its such a bad thing? I do all of that at my PC now - which runs Windows XP. I use Word for word processing, since AFAIK no open-source Word processor (I had OpenOffice for a while) exists that does decent grammar and spelling checks - on my Windows XP PC. I use the built in Calculator for calculating stuff - if I don't use Excel - both of which are stored on my Windows XP PC. I shop using my browser - which isn't Microsoft branded, I have to say, but runs on my Windows XP PC. I email my friends or use MSN/YIM/AIM/ICQ/IRC to speak to them - again, from my Windows XP PC. Do you see what I'm getting at?
I don't love Microsoft. But I sure as hell love what they've done for me. I wouldn't have been designing websites or writing about games for the last ten years and making some decent money for it, if it wasn't for Windows.
I'll be buying a 360. Why in hell's name does everyone always act like you can only buy one console, anyway? I love games - so I'm going to love Project Gotham Racing 3. Its only for Xbox360 - so since I have a crappy PC that doesn't get upgraded daily, I have some spare cash to pick up a 360 to play it on. The same as I'll pick up a PS3 for Gran Turismo 5, and a Revolution for the new, new, new Mario. Buying a 360 certainly doesn't put me into a box that stops me from buying a competitor's console.
Let us not forget, people, this isn't just a problem with Microsoft - before we get onto the old "Microsoft sucks" bandwagon.
Two weeks ago, you couldn't buy a PSP in the UK, since Sony not only couldn't cover the preorders for the unit, but then couldn't supply enough units to retail in the six weeks following the launch.
But, is this the real reason - they just could not make enough PSPs?
No. It isn't. Why? Because they then announced and released the "Giga Pack", which contains all the original PSP "Value Pack" did, but has a 1Gb memory card included. It also costs about £30 more. Funnily enough, there are more than enough Giga Packs to go round. I can walk into any one of ten stores in my town and get one off the shelf.
Can I get a Value Pack? No. They couldn't meet the demand.
Of course, the real question is why the hell is Gamespot blocked from work, but not Slashdot?
Perhaps you could put your obviously mammoth penis away. That would make space.
Oh no, that's just what you WANT us to think...
Have to disagree with your comment there. Affordable?
I can pick up a 32" standard flatscreen TV here in the UK for £200 - £300. The same size TV with HDTV support would set me back £1,000 - at LEAST. That was an offer I just saw online, and it expires tomorrow. Regular price £1,100.
So, what's affordable?
So you're saying Bizarre are bad coders? Have you ever actually played one of their games? Specifically any of the games in this series, going back to the original Metropolis Street Racer on Dreamcast.
What, you mean the same Metropolis Street Racer that had to be recalled in the UK because the developer left a bug in there that meant that you lost half your accumulated Kudos points every time you completed a certain type of race - making game completion impossible? The same Metropolis Street Racer that was due for release with the console on 9th September, 1999, but didn't actually see a release until 3rd November, 2000?
You're right. They aren't bad coders. Just sloppy. And yet I still love 'em.
Wow. I really don't know what's worse here.
There's the guys ogling the booth babes because they're men, and men like to look at women. Y'know, procreation, sex...all that tired old shit that got us to where we are today. Or, there's your good self, who by the nature of your post is implying that because a "booth babe" is getting ogled, she has neither the brain cells or the ability to do anything else and that they need YOU to go in to bat for them with the feminist perspective. A lot of these models are paying to put themselves through school/college by simply making the best of what God has given them. Its no worse or better than me putting together a bunch of HTML code and selling it to someone so that I can afford to eat and drink. Is my buyer wrong for staring at the pretty website I made?
Now what's worse? Me looking at an attractive women, or you implying that she's not at all intelligent BECAUSE she's attractive? Hmm...
The PlayStation brand is getting the Emmy, rather than the PS2. Or that's how I would see it.
Because unfortunately, 1UP seem to overlook "what ought to be standard in a game" in pretty much all of their game reviews, preferring to just give great reviews to what they consider should be cool and get them points with the IGN/Gamespot crowd. Plus, Sly Cooper's 3rd title is coming out soon, and I believe Sony are doing some heavy "promotion" at the moment...wonder how much it costs to get an article like this going? Getting Slashdotted must be a nice added bang for the buck.
It would be innovative to bring it out for the PC if no company had ever ported a console title to PC before. But they have. So it wouldn't be.
Buy a PS2 if you want to play it so badly.
...if the company in the UK that is marketing its range of "innovative packaging designs" by using its design for "The Hero" DVD in its advertising is affected?
Especially since the design is exactly the same as Halo 2's, only with a little pair of black plastic goggles on the side as a clasp to keep the case closed.
I thought that Halo 2's case was just a DVD case made of metal, with the case being cut into two seperate pieces (rather than the "norm", which is one continuous piece) and kept together by an equally cheap metal hinge. And the previous poster is right in saying that Doom 3 was released in exactly the same style of casing.
I know we're all "supposed" to hate Microsoft, but could it not be that a) Small company realises that its main product is ridiculously easy to copy and has nothing else up its sleeve to improve profits, so b) sues the biggest company in the World, hoping to get a big "DualShock" style payoff?
"Every time I post a story about someone editorializing Nintendo's death, or how Nintendo will never die, it saddens me a great deal."
That would indicate that you read what you post, which just can't be right.
Your complaint no longer carries any merit with anyone so it's not even worth posting on /.
And your vitriolic reply so obviously is. Since when did "your complaint does not affect me" = "your complaint carries no merit with anyone"?
Fuck you very much for sharing.