Oblivion was merely published by T2, it was developed by Bethesda which retains the rights to the IP. Bethesda is a subsidiary of Zenimax Media. Thus, TES would not be a factor in the EA acquisition of T2.
IMO, this is a bad move for EA. GTA has been a good franchise, but it is all TT has. It's the biggest franchise they have but it's not even close to "all they have". Just to name a few they have Bioshock, Civilization, and all of the 2K Sports franchises.
You must be new, welcome to the Internet. Here on the Internet you are required to view any publicly held company as evil and any effort on their part to charge for a service as pure, unadulterated greed preferably attributed to their CEO or other high-ranking executive. Corporations should provide as many possible services for free, regardless of the time, capital, and human resources required to develop and run those services or products. Any efforts of corporations to charge money in voluntary exchange for their services or products is to be likened to highway robbery, extortion, or in the case of particularly large corporations, rape. I hope these guidelines have helped. May your future be full of forum discussions loathing corporations and their evil/greedy ways.
It seems to me that the key problem with his statement is the assumption that the tank of air just appears from nowhere. How large is this tank an how highly is it compressed? How much energy does it take to compress that air? He's just cutting half of his energy out of the equation to arrive at the 10mpg figure.
Kind of OT, but could we please stop tagging articles with "whatcouldpossiblygowrong"? Aside from the fact that is stopped being funny after the 2nd or 3rd time, it kind of negates the purpose of having a tag if every single article gets the same tag.
It should also be noted that it appears the Hitachi can only support two simultaneous touches at a time, while the Surface can currently recognize up to 52 different touches and even specific items with visual codes fixed to them.
I could think of a few things, robotic surgery, piloting UAVs, flight simulators, etc... anything that involves immersing the user in another point of view. Obviously this is a niche device, but for what it is, it's pretty cool.
Actually most of us 'hardcore' gamers would still like to see longer periods between consoles.
It's my firm belief the last generation was cut short by at LEAST a year before it needed to be
The original Xbox was on the market for 4 years before Microsoft cut it off. Correct me if I misunderstand you, but if you think last gen should have lasted at least another year, you're saying the Xbox should have made it to at least 5 years. That's exactly what I said. The Xbox 360 is now 2 years old. If it lasts another 3 years, it will have made it to 5 years. In all likelihood it will make it another year too, because I don't see Sony replacing the PS3 only 4 years into it's lifecycle and Microsoft won't feel so pressured to launch early in an attempt to cement their foothold in the industry.
If history is any guide, I think we'll pretty much see 5-6 year hardware cycles from here on out (unless it's a minor upgrade ala DS to DS lite). Sega tried short cycles in the 90's and discovered that you don't have enough time to build a library if your machine only lasts for 3 years. Sony pushed the envelope with the PS2 at 7 years and saw their competitor step in to fill the high-end void they left open at the end of their cycle. Microsoft cut the Xbox short at 4 years, but suffered problems with the 360 from rushing it out of the gate (RROD). The sweet spot for hardware cycles is most definitely 5-6 years.
Fans of the platform might still have some anxiety this year; a rumour on the 1up site indicates Microsoft is already working on a game for the next-next-gen console to bear the Xbox name.
Morons might have some anxiety over this. High profile games take years to develop, particularly when they're trying to meet a tentative launch date of a console that doesn't even have firm hardware specs in place.
The original Xbox was cut short because 1) it was a money losing platform for Microsoft and 2) because Microsoft saw launching before the PS3 as crucial to their success. While Microsoft is still having trouble making the 360 profitable, it's doing significantly better than the original Xbox was. As for #2, Microsoft is in no hurry to beat out the other two machines, which are only a year old right now and probably won't be replaced for at least another 4 years, at which point the 360 would be 6 years old.
You can practically guarantee that the 360 has, at the very least, 3 more years of life before Microsoft decides to replace it.
Simple, it's hard to push 7.6GB of dvd info over the wire. It's faster to mail it. And bule ray/HDDVD would play to netflix advantage.
Funny, my experience with Netflix's streaming services on the PC says otherwise. Just last night I watched a 2 hour movie with only about 60 seconds of buffering. Oh sure, it might be slightly compressed, but it's close enough for me not to notice and/or care about the difference.
"If you can't follow NCAA rules, how do you think you'll do in the White House press corps?"
I don't think it's quite the same. Access to the White House is extremely limited, especially if you want to ask your own questions. Access to an NCAA sports event is quite the opposite. Just at a stadium you can have upwards of 80,000 people and we're not even talking about television viewers. Every single one of those people sees, more or less, the same game. Obviously, the guy sitting in row 3B may not be in the optimal position, but he knows what happened in the last play just as easily as the guy in the press box.
This idea that you have to have a press pass to blog about a game is outdated. It may fly with the traditional media types, who don't realize the flexibility of the Internet, for a while. Sooner or later people will wise up though and realize that you don't have to have a press pass to blog about sports game that can be seen by millions in numerous different ways, many for free.
What exactly does the NCAA hope to accomplish by revoking press credentials when just about anyone can blog from anywhere with nothing more than a smart phone? Will the NCAA then start revoking peoples' cellphones at the gates? This move just reeks of idiocy.
I don't really think this is the point of the article though. The problem is that the Internet serves as a megaphone for people who want to complain about petty, insignificant aspects of the game, like holding a magnifying glass over a pimple. For instance, most anyone who visited a gaming message board after the Bioshock launch is sure to know about the "widescreen issue", which wasn't really much of an issue at all. People just piled on it because it was a quantifiable flaw in the game.
In fact, I would say that such criticism is often a sign of lack of skill on the critics part. They don't have the ability to recognize things that are actually important in game design so they focus in on meaningless, but quantifiable, flaws in the game.
I like books, anyway. They're tough, you own them, you can do the usual things as compared to any physical possession, and they have a delightful physicality to them.
To me this sentence underlines the problem with eBooks. People who read books like books. However, there's a huge segment of readers that a device such as this, and just about every one that has come before it, is missing out on, and that's people who read periodicals. People who read periodicals don't like the format, they just like the content. As soon as they're done with a magazine or a book it just goes right into the trash can or recycling bin. That's your real market for eReaders.
What's more, periodicals provide a lot more avenues for revenue. Magazine subscriptions, newspaper subscriptions, RSS feeds, these are all services that can be monetized. Build a device for periodicals and the books will follow.
You'll have a hard time finding rare games like Psychonauts, Beyond Good & Evil, Panzer Dragoon Orta, and Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath for less than $15.
"I picked up Gears of War for the PC last week only to find that it required me to PAY for a LIVE account to play it online"
This isn't correct. You can play online on the PC with GFW Live Silver (which is free). What you don't get with the free version are Microsoft's True Skill matchmaking services, cross platform play, and multiplayer achievements (details here). Still frustrating, but not the same thing.
Enormous demand only means increasing prices if supply stays limited. As the article notes, though competition to meet that demand is fierce between the vendors, meaning increasing supply with demand and increased economies of scale, hence lower prices.
People mindlessly voting up pointless articles based on ridiculous combinations of technology, America bashing, and sensationalist headlines. I could have sworn I've seen that somewhere before.
Do you really feel qualified to just a 15-20 hour game after playing it for only 10 minutes? I'm not surprised that you didn't find the graphics good. It was an Xbox 1 game at the end of the systems life cycle ported to the PC 12 months later. Not to mention that the art style skews more cartoonish than realistic. For the time and platform it was released on, Fable has pretty decent graphics, and there are some pretty impressive lighting and texture effects later on in the game.
The story was indeed shallow, as was the combat and the dialogue. However, none of those were what made Fable a good game. What made Fable good was the amount of choice you had to play the game. While there were the usual scripted, "pick the good or evil quest" sequences ala KOTOR, you also had freedom to play the game on your own just in the general game world. You could just roam around doing good or evil deeds on your own, with no need for the game to spell out for you when you got to choose.
Fable's level of customization went beyond just good and evil too. Your character reflected how you played the game. Choosing ranged, melee, or magic had a satisfying effect on how your character looked and played later in the game.
This is the thing that always surprises me about the backlash against Fable. Molyneux did not deliver on all of his promises of a massive customizable game. However, he delivered on a lot of them and he delivered a lot more customization than 99.9% of games out there.
Oh, and FWIW, you can have a massive amount of sex in Fable too, even homosexual sex if that's your kind of thing.
Slashdot Mirror
This just in: somewhere, someone on the Internet complains about something. More at 11.
Oblivion was merely published by T2, it was developed by Bethesda which retains the rights to the IP. Bethesda is a subsidiary of Zenimax Media. Thus, TES would not be a factor in the EA acquisition of T2.
For what it's worth, an EA buyout of T2 would reunite Firaxis with the rights to Alpha Centauri.
You must be new, welcome to the Internet. Here on the Internet you are required to view any publicly held company as evil and any effort on their part to charge for a service as pure, unadulterated greed preferably attributed to their CEO or other high-ranking executive. Corporations should provide as many possible services for free, regardless of the time, capital, and human resources required to develop and run those services or products. Any efforts of corporations to charge money in voluntary exchange for their services or products is to be likened to highway robbery, extortion, or in the case of particularly large corporations, rape. I hope these guidelines have helped. May your future be full of forum discussions loathing corporations and their evil/greedy ways.
It seems to me that the key problem with his statement is the assumption that the tank of air just appears from nowhere. How large is this tank an how highly is it compressed? How much energy does it take to compress that air? He's just cutting half of his energy out of the equation to arrive at the 10mpg figure.
Kind of OT, but could we please stop tagging articles with "whatcouldpossiblygowrong"? Aside from the fact that is stopped being funny after the 2nd or 3rd time, it kind of negates the purpose of having a tag if every single article gets the same tag.
It should also be noted that it appears the Hitachi can only support two simultaneous touches at a time, while the Surface can currently recognize up to 52 different touches and even specific items with visual codes fixed to them.
I could think of a few things, robotic surgery, piloting UAVs, flight simulators, etc... anything that involves immersing the user in another point of view. Obviously this is a niche device, but for what it is, it's pretty cool.
The original Xbox was on the market for 4 years before Microsoft cut it off. Correct me if I misunderstand you, but if you think last gen should have lasted at least another year, you're saying the Xbox should have made it to at least 5 years. That's exactly what I said. The Xbox 360 is now 2 years old. If it lasts another 3 years, it will have made it to 5 years. In all likelihood it will make it another year too, because I don't see Sony replacing the PS3 only 4 years into it's lifecycle and Microsoft won't feel so pressured to launch early in an attempt to cement their foothold in the industry.
If history is any guide, I think we'll pretty much see 5-6 year hardware cycles from here on out (unless it's a minor upgrade ala DS to DS lite). Sega tried short cycles in the 90's and discovered that you don't have enough time to build a library if your machine only lasts for 3 years. Sony pushed the envelope with the PS2 at 7 years and saw their competitor step in to fill the high-end void they left open at the end of their cycle. Microsoft cut the Xbox short at 4 years, but suffered problems with the 360 from rushing it out of the gate (RROD). The sweet spot for hardware cycles is most definitely 5-6 years.
Morons might have some anxiety over this. High profile games take years to develop, particularly when they're trying to meet a tentative launch date of a console that doesn't even have firm hardware specs in place.
The original Xbox was cut short because 1) it was a money losing platform for Microsoft and 2) because Microsoft saw launching before the PS3 as crucial to their success. While Microsoft is still having trouble making the 360 profitable, it's doing significantly better than the original Xbox was. As for #2, Microsoft is in no hurry to beat out the other two machines, which are only a year old right now and probably won't be replaced for at least another 4 years, at which point the 360 would be 6 years old.
You can practically guarantee that the 360 has, at the very least, 3 more years of life before Microsoft decides to replace it.
"Consumer friendly" is business-speak for "cheap crap"
>This idea that you have to have a press pass to blog about a game is outdated.
You read the article backwards.
If you want that press pass, you agree to blog under certain conditions.
If you don't want that press pass, you can text the game play by play on your handy.
I doubt that's how the NCAA sees it.
"If you can't follow NCAA rules, how do you think you'll do in the White House press corps?"
I don't think it's quite the same. Access to the White House is extremely limited, especially if you want to ask your own questions. Access to an NCAA sports event is quite the opposite. Just at a stadium you can have upwards of 80,000 people and we're not even talking about television viewers. Every single one of those people sees, more or less, the same game. Obviously, the guy sitting in row 3B may not be in the optimal position, but he knows what happened in the last play just as easily as the guy in the press box.
This idea that you have to have a press pass to blog about a game is outdated. It may fly with the traditional media types, who don't realize the flexibility of the Internet, for a while. Sooner or later people will wise up though and realize that you don't have to have a press pass to blog about sports game that can be seen by millions in numerous different ways, many for free.
What exactly does the NCAA hope to accomplish by revoking press credentials when just about anyone can blog from anywhere with nothing more than a smart phone? Will the NCAA then start revoking peoples' cellphones at the gates? This move just reeks of idiocy.
I don't really think this is the point of the article though. The problem is that the Internet serves as a megaphone for people who want to complain about petty, insignificant aspects of the game, like holding a magnifying glass over a pimple. For instance, most anyone who visited a gaming message board after the Bioshock launch is sure to know about the "widescreen issue", which wasn't really much of an issue at all. People just piled on it because it was a quantifiable flaw in the game.
In fact, I would say that such criticism is often a sign of lack of skill on the critics part. They don't have the ability to recognize things that are actually important in game design so they focus in on meaningless, but quantifiable, flaws in the game.
Actually the Kindle allows you to link your account to up to 5 devices and read material on all of the devices simultaneously.
To me this sentence underlines the problem with eBooks. People who read books like books. However, there's a huge segment of readers that a device such as this, and just about every one that has come before it, is missing out on, and that's people who read periodicals. People who read periodicals don't like the format, they just like the content. As soon as they're done with a magazine or a book it just goes right into the trash can or recycling bin. That's your real market for eReaders.
What's more, periodicals provide a lot more avenues for revenue. Magazine subscriptions, newspaper subscriptions, RSS feeds, these are all services that can be monetized. Build a device for periodicals and the books will follow.
You'll have a hard time finding rare games like Psychonauts, Beyond Good & Evil, Panzer Dragoon Orta, and Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath for less than $15.
"I picked up Gears of War for the PC last week only to find that it required me to PAY for a LIVE account to play it online"
This isn't correct. You can play online on the PC with GFW Live Silver (which is free). What you don't get with the free version are Microsoft's True Skill matchmaking services, cross platform play, and multiplayer achievements (details here). Still frustrating, but not the same thing.
I would agree with you if it weren't for the fact that, more the most part, we're still being charged $60 for that 6 hours of gameplay.
Enormous demand only means increasing prices if supply stays limited. As the article notes, though competition to meet that demand is fierce between the vendors, meaning increasing supply with demand and increased economies of scale, hence lower prices.
People mindlessly voting up pointless articles based on ridiculous combinations of technology, America bashing, and sensationalist headlines. I could have sworn I've seen that somewhere before.
Do you really feel qualified to just a 15-20 hour game after playing it for only 10 minutes? I'm not surprised that you didn't find the graphics good. It was an Xbox 1 game at the end of the systems life cycle ported to the PC 12 months later. Not to mention that the art style skews more cartoonish than realistic. For the time and platform it was released on, Fable has pretty decent graphics, and there are some pretty impressive lighting and texture effects later on in the game.
The story was indeed shallow, as was the combat and the dialogue. However, none of those were what made Fable a good game. What made Fable good was the amount of choice you had to play the game. While there were the usual scripted, "pick the good or evil quest" sequences ala KOTOR, you also had freedom to play the game on your own just in the general game world. You could just roam around doing good or evil deeds on your own, with no need for the game to spell out for you when you got to choose.
Fable's level of customization went beyond just good and evil too. Your character reflected how you played the game. Choosing ranged, melee, or magic had a satisfying effect on how your character looked and played later in the game.
This is the thing that always surprises me about the backlash against Fable. Molyneux did not deliver on all of his promises of a massive customizable game. However, he delivered on a lot of them and he delivered a lot more customization than 99.9% of games out there.
Oh, and FWIW, you can have a massive amount of sex in Fable too, even homosexual sex if that's your kind of thing.