I agree with you. It seems very unlikely to me that Nintendo would have even bothered to port it to Wii if Miyamoto wasn't reasonably convinced it would work with the controller. We would have gotten it a year and a half ago if that were the case.
That said, I'm glad EB has a nice returns policy - if it really does play terribly, I'll just bring it back and exchange it for the Gamecube edition.
I'm seeing a lot of comments here lamenting the fact that the majority of PC games are developed using DirectX instead of OpenGL. You have to remember that DirectX Graphics (formerly Direct3D) is just one part of the overall package. DirectX also provides simple, useful interfaces for sound, input and networking. While I'm reasonably sure that the networking support doesn't get a lot of use, the sound and input APIs do. Heck, even the much-touted OpenGL example World of Warcraft actually makes heavy use of DirectX under Windows. Just not for graphics.
If there was a good overall package that leveraged OpenGL for graphics, then you'd see OpenGL being used more often. At the moment there's really only SDL, and to be frank, while SDL is great for some things, it's just not on the same footing as DirectX having come late to the party and not had the level of funding and development.
Just 6 minutes for a 12 fighter game is 72 minutes worth of HD video, I tried converting a couple things into the true HD standard with one of the codecs, for about 10 minutes worth of video the outputted file was over 500mb so even though they are dual layer dvd's they are still restricted by size.
If you know what you're doing, using H.264 it's quite possible to get 25 minutes of 720p video down to around 250mb without it looking too bad at all. Certainly you need a reasonable machine to play that back, but the X360 shouldn't have any issues whatsoever.
The TIE Fighter, Bomber and Interceptor have no shields, yes. However you also spend a decent amount of time flying TIE Advanced and Assault Gunboats, and if you had the expansion, TIE Defender and Missile Boats. Those all had shields.
Besides, I'd argue that removing the shields made the game that much more challenging. And there's nothing quite like the feeling of blowing up rebel X-Wings in a TIE.
How about just making a remake of or sequel to TIE Fighter? It's still the best game Lucasarts have ever published. The exact same game with a few gameplay tweaks and a modern graphics engine would be an awesome experience. Add to that some good multiplayer and episodic content, and you'd have a sure seller.
That said, Lucasarts would probably try and contaminate it with prequel stuff.
Sony have quite cleverly declared that the PS3 will be completely region-free. The implications of this are that they can then get modchips outlawed completely, even in countries like Australia where they've been ruled legal. After all, if there's no regioning in the system, the only reason to get a modchip is to play 'backups' (which we all know is basically a synonym for 'pirated copies') and the occaisonal homebrew.
Based off here it looks like it's basically Debian Sarge with a set of useful applications - I assume the ones that have different names eg Zurbarán (Gimp 2.2) are localised builds.
By that logic, you're not going to find any games that really deliver any emotional impact on this level. Modern story-based games deliver their story primarily via short (or not-so-short in the case of most RPGs) cutscenes. These are the bits where you're going to have the emotional impact. While it is possible for the gameplay of a game to impart other emotions - fear, for example, as you pointed out - sadness strong enough to make you cry is not going to be possible within the current gameplay paradigm, which is why designers have no choice but to fall back on cutscenes and their ilk. We need to have some kind of emotional connection with the characters of the world in order to care enough to feel sad when bad things happen to them, and games are not immersive enough and AI nowhere near sophisticated enough to do this during actual interactive gameplay. Even things like the more complicated dialogue trees you might find in some RPGs have been scripted in some way.
The problem with your argument is the games medium itself. You can't say that parts 'aren't a game' so they don't count. What makes a game different from a movie? What makes it different from a novel? For that matter, what makes a novel different to a movie? What do all three have that's different to hearing someone tell you a story? There is a huge amount of sharing between these media. They're really all the same thing: a vehicle for telling a story, for the purpose of entertainment. Even the simple games during the formative years of gaming tell stories - stories about a yellow circle-mouth-thing popping pills and eating ghosts, or about a single spaceship that defended the earth from wave after wave of alien invaders, or whatever. Sure, they're not much as far as stories go, but they're still telling a story as you play them.
Since then games have gained more non-interactive narrative elements such as cutscenes and FMV sequences, but discounting those elements simply because they're not immediately interactive is completely unfair. By the same logic, you should be arguing that movies can't make you cry, because they're just recordings of people acting out stories that were written down originally (scripts, novels). And then you'd need to argue that novels can't do it either, because they're just old spoken stories written out on paper.
The people who actually like FF8's story appear to be few and far between. It's actually got one of the best stories of any of the FF games, primarily because everything is circular. The main issue with it is that Square executed the story badly, and rather than leaving things 'mysterious' in places, those gaps which they expected you to be able to fill in intuitively ended up feeling like gaping plot holes and inconsistencies.
Add to that that the whole gameplay system was ludicrously easy (spend a few hours levelling up the right GF abilities at the beginning of the game and Squall can beat every boss on the first disc in one round) and it's not hard to see why people didn't like it. Especially coming off FF7 which, while its story is weak, was extremely well executed in comparison, and it had a much better character customisation system in Materia.
There's a rather large gap in the logic presented here. Specifically, the whole DVD-vs-Blu-Ray argument assumes that the content of each is completely unique. This is not going to be the case.
Just as with the current generation, there will be a fair number of exclusives on each platform, but the bulk of the games will end up being on both the PS3 and the 360. And possibly on the PS2 and maybe Xbox for a few years yet as well. With skyrocketing development costs, this trend is likely to increase rather than decrease - the cost of developing multi-platform is often offset by the potential to reach a much larger market, and thereby sell more games.
In the context of game development, you often hear the term 'lowest common denominator' being thrown about. It's the reason that add-ons like Hard Drives never really caught on, and it wasn't until the Xbox included one as standard that developers actually began to use it. It's also the reason why, even if MS added the capability, almost zero games would be produced for the all-but-confirmed HD-DVD add-on for the X360. Developers will always target the common hardware, and thus will rarely bother with an add-on unless practically everyone has it.
What I'm leading to is pretty simple. PS3 will have the ability to use Blu-Ray discs, but by all accounts it should also support DVDs. 360 uses DVD. PS2 uses DVD. Xbox uses DVD. Even cutting the current-gen consoles out, DVD is the lowest common denominator. Any multi-platform game is going to have been developed with DVD in mind (to work on the 360) and it will only be the PS3 exclusives that will go Blu-Ray. It's quite likely that a lot of the time developers aren't going to find they need the extra capacity anyway, and I'd expect it won't be until the third generation of PS3 games that we start to see stuff that really uses the Blu-Ray's capacity. Certainly, the PS3 releases of multi-platform titles will probably be able to include slightly higher-resolution textures, but that would be about the only content that could be used to pad the discs out. Given that the capabilities of the X360 and PS3, graphically, are rougly very similar, there shouldn't be any engine-hobbling going on, and we're well past the era of having hundreds of minutes of pre-rendered FMV. There simply won't be any extra to add to the PS3 version.
A lot of the time people cite the fact that a lot of PS2 RPGs have been on two DVDs, examples including Xenosaga II, Star Ocean 3 and I believe Final Fantasy XII. These are actually split over two DVD-5s - they'd fit on a DVD-9 but the earlier PS2s have trouble with dual-layer DVD-ROM content. This actually illustrates another issue with including immature media technology in consoles, but that's neither here nor there. The only real genre of game that could potentially exceed the bounds of the DVD format are the larger RPGs, and even then, most RPG gamers are quite happy to have the game split over two discs. Speaking as a big fan of these games myself, it actually feels like you've gotten something bigger and more impressive when it's split up. A bit of a 'wow, it had so much content that a single DVD just wasn't enough!' deal, even though I know that it's only split up that way because the PS2 isn't very good at DVD.
Really, there is no real need for Blu-Ray (or HD-DVD, for that matter) for games until the platforms are both quite mature, which should be a lot later than the end of 2007. There is definitely no practical justification for socking consumers an extra $200 for the privilege. The only real reason we're seeing it in PS3 is because of the media and electronics side of Sony's business dictating the policy for the other wings of their entertainment business. I'd hate to be a Sony Computer Entertainment exec right about now, I bet they don't want to be selling the damn thing with Blu-Ray in it either.
Actually, NASA announced today they've renamed Project Constellation, the 'Return to the Moon' project, to Project Orion. It's also the official name being given to the CEV module that will be used to get people there.
I have to wonder though if there might be some kind of ulterior motive going on with it, based off the names. Orion (the Hunter) modules in an Ares (god of war) rocket...
Personally, I can't see the Mana games working as MMOs, unless it's some kind of handheld-based one.
If I was to take a guess at them adapting any of their existing franchises to MMO, I'd pick either Dragon Quest for the brand recognition (at least in Japan) or Kingdom Hearts, which has been stupidly successful and has pretty much got the largest and most MMO-ready world.
After all, without a story you can do "sequels" (read: Count up the release year and sell it as a new game) more easily.
EA know this already. Have a look at the pile of games they've put out that have been successful. Stuff like Need for Speed, The Sims... they've been producing Madden games since 1988, NHL games since 1991, FIFA games since 1993, and however many other sports titles. EA also know that there is a place for games with a story just as much as there is a place for games without it.
Re:I have GIMP installed, but only to save PSDs!
on
Beginning GIMP
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· Score: 1
Of course it doesn't. It's a new format. This is like bitching that Word 6 can't open documents from Word 97. Or that you can't fit engine parts from a 2000 Ford into your 1960s pickup.
Re:I have GIMP installed, but only to save PSDs!
on
Beginning GIMP
·
· Score: 1
Wait, you think Photoshop is bad because your old version isn't compatible with features added to the file format two revisions down the line? That makes absolutely no sense at all. How on earth did this get modded up?
Don't lose sight of the fact that Will Wright works for EA. While it's true they do churn out a lot of crap, every now and then they produce something good as well.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Wii works out quite nicely for EA. It'll be much easier for a dev with a good idea to convince management to take a gamble when the stakes are significantly lower, and we all know that Wii development is going to be a lot cheaper.
This is just another entry in the long list of 'we probably shouldn't have introduced this species into this environment' stories. Kind of like introducing Rabbits into New Zealand, or Foxes into Australia, or a myriad of other examples. They end up thriving and taking over, to the detriment of the various species that were already there.
Xbox 360, like the PS3, is 'region-free'. What this actually means when it comes to consoles is that the manufacturer doesn't force developers to lock the game to a certain region. It's up to the publisher - if they want to region lock it, the capability is there. Blu-Ray is 'region free' too. They just use other parts of the spec to lock the disc to certain regions instead.
The original Xbox had this as well. I had a friend bring some games he purchased in Canada when he was living there back to Australia, and several turned out to play fine in my (Australian) Xbox. From memory it was Unreal Championship and something else.
once they bring them stateside 99% of the fansub sites drop the files and most of the people (atleast the ones i know) go and buy the DVD's because they want to support it and want the nice disks and art and good quality..
With more and more Japanese broadcasters now broadcasting anime in 720p HD, this is going to change, at least in terms of quality. As a recent example, I picked up Geneon's release of Kamichu, having seen fansubs of the first few episodes a while back. The fansubs had 720p video (apparently upscaled, at that point nothing was being broadcast in real HD) and I have to say that, while Geneon's DVD release looks very good, the fansubs actually look better.
Of course this is really just a technology limitation. The whole HD-DVD / Blu-Ray battle doesn't help matters at all.
The perception of fansubs amongst the big US distributors is changing, as well. As much as the fans like to say that fansubs are beneficial, the truth is that this is increasingly not the case. In the early days, before digital subbing was as common as it is now, fansubs really did help these companies. Then there was the huge boom in it earlier this decade, which appeared to peak around 2003/2004. At that point, US companies were going around licencing almost everything they could get their hands on. This is just not happening as much any more - there's a good portion of stuff produced that is quite popular as fansubs, but hasn't ever been picked up. Additionally, as digital subbing has grown, more and more groups are refusing to stop distribution when a series gets licensed. Usually they'll cite the fact that this is the internet, and most if not all of the group aren't in the US, so why should they stop? It's a straw man argument, but it's used quite often. Those groups that do stop distribution often find that certain people will re-post their work elsewhere, anyway. The ease with which you can get hold of fansubs from licensed series really does matter, now.
Piracy like this is inevitable. The other half of the equation is that often the 'official' releases aren't much better quality than the fansubs. It's not uncommon for certain companies to do extremely stupid or annoying things with their translations, such as substituting Japanese-centric jokes with 'Americanised' versions, translating some honorifics but not others, not bothering anywhere to actually provide translation notes on cultural references, and the list goes on. For some stuff it really doesn't matter - I don't really need to know the deep cultural meaning behind some line while watching my giant robots beating each other up - but given the increasing diversity of anime actually getting a US release, this often really does matter. Several of the older companies in the industry are now struggling to stay afloat, and fansubs are a good part of that. It's a bit of a vicious cycle - they need good licenses to get enough sales, they need sales to get money, and they need money to get good licenses. A lot of them are now actually funding production of new series in Japan in order that they make sure they have the licenses for quality series.
On the flip-side, they really should stop licensing so much crap. ADV for example used to be one of the nastiest companies out there to fansubbers. The instant they obtained a license, they would hunt down anyone and everyone distributing and send C&Ds. Amusingly, most of the stuff they picked up was dogshit - no one in their right mind would pay for that stuff if they could get it for free. The last year or so they've been pretty much silent, because they haven't been able to afford any licenses. Fansubbing is a factor, but not the only one.
Really, in the end, fansubs can form a decent measuring stick for potential licenses, but for the most part they're only beneficial to the fans, and to the Japanese companies who produce the stuff and are practically losing nothing by having people outside Japan increase interest in their work.
The Enterprise may be the first of the shuttles built, but it's also never seen space. Ideally Columbia should have been the one to end up in a museum, but that's a little difficult now. I'd say you could pretty convincingly argue that they might want to replace the Enterprise with the Discovery or Endeavour once their's life is over.
Also, there won't be three working shuttles when they're retired. Atlantis is being scrapped in 2008, cut up for parts for the other two. Put Enterprise out to pasture, put Endeavour into the Smithsonian, and put Discovery on display at the Kennedy Space Center. I'm sure they can make room for it somewhere.
People always talk about Steve Jobs and his Reality Distortion Field that mysteriously makes him able to sell anything. It looks like someone at Sony has one of them too, but they use it on Kaz instead of customers.
In what alternate dimension does repeatedly trumpeting to the media how you're overpricing your system and your games become a good marketing decision?
Slashdot Mirror
Is this some new, more appealing take on Schrodinger's Cat?
I agree with you. It seems very unlikely to me that Nintendo would have even bothered to port it to Wii if Miyamoto wasn't reasonably convinced it would work with the controller. We would have gotten it a year and a half ago if that were the case. That said, I'm glad EB has a nice returns policy - if it really does play terribly, I'll just bring it back and exchange it for the Gamecube edition.
I'm seeing a lot of comments here lamenting the fact that the majority of PC games are developed using DirectX instead of OpenGL. You have to remember that DirectX Graphics (formerly Direct3D) is just one part of the overall package. DirectX also provides simple, useful interfaces for sound, input and networking. While I'm reasonably sure that the networking support doesn't get a lot of use, the sound and input APIs do. Heck, even the much-touted OpenGL example World of Warcraft actually makes heavy use of DirectX under Windows. Just not for graphics.
If there was a good overall package that leveraged OpenGL for graphics, then you'd see OpenGL being used more often. At the moment there's really only SDL, and to be frank, while SDL is great for some things, it's just not on the same footing as DirectX having come late to the party and not had the level of funding and development.
The TIE Fighter, Bomber and Interceptor have no shields, yes. However you also spend a decent amount of time flying TIE Advanced and Assault Gunboats, and if you had the expansion, TIE Defender and Missile Boats. Those all had shields.
Besides, I'd argue that removing the shields made the game that much more challenging. And there's nothing quite like the feeling of blowing up rebel X-Wings in a TIE.
How about just making a remake of or sequel to TIE Fighter? It's still the best game Lucasarts have ever published. The exact same game with a few gameplay tweaks and a modern graphics engine would be an awesome experience. Add to that some good multiplayer and episodic content, and you'd have a sure seller.
That said, Lucasarts would probably try and contaminate it with prequel stuff.
Sony have quite cleverly declared that the PS3 will be completely region-free. The implications of this are that they can then get modchips outlawed completely, even in countries like Australia where they've been ruled legal. After all, if there's no regioning in the system, the only reason to get a modchip is to play 'backups' (which we all know is basically a synonym for 'pirated copies') and the occaisonal homebrew.
Based off here it looks like it's basically Debian Sarge with a set of useful applications - I assume the ones that have different names eg Zurbarán (Gimp 2.2) are localised builds.
By that logic, you're not going to find any games that really deliver any emotional impact on this level. Modern story-based games deliver their story primarily via short (or not-so-short in the case of most RPGs) cutscenes. These are the bits where you're going to have the emotional impact. While it is possible for the gameplay of a game to impart other emotions - fear, for example, as you pointed out - sadness strong enough to make you cry is not going to be possible within the current gameplay paradigm, which is why designers have no choice but to fall back on cutscenes and their ilk. We need to have some kind of emotional connection with the characters of the world in order to care enough to feel sad when bad things happen to them, and games are not immersive enough and AI nowhere near sophisticated enough to do this during actual interactive gameplay. Even things like the more complicated dialogue trees you might find in some RPGs have been scripted in some way.
The problem with your argument is the games medium itself. You can't say that parts 'aren't a game' so they don't count. What makes a game different from a movie? What makes it different from a novel? For that matter, what makes a novel different to a movie? What do all three have that's different to hearing someone tell you a story? There is a huge amount of sharing between these media. They're really all the same thing: a vehicle for telling a story, for the purpose of entertainment. Even the simple games during the formative years of gaming tell stories - stories about a yellow circle-mouth-thing popping pills and eating ghosts, or about a single spaceship that defended the earth from wave after wave of alien invaders, or whatever. Sure, they're not much as far as stories go, but they're still telling a story as you play them.
Since then games have gained more non-interactive narrative elements such as cutscenes and FMV sequences, but discounting those elements simply because they're not immediately interactive is completely unfair. By the same logic, you should be arguing that movies can't make you cry, because they're just recordings of people acting out stories that were written down originally (scripts, novels). And then you'd need to argue that novels can't do it either, because they're just old spoken stories written out on paper.
The people who actually like FF8's story appear to be few and far between. It's actually got one of the best stories of any of the FF games, primarily because everything is circular. The main issue with it is that Square executed the story badly, and rather than leaving things 'mysterious' in places, those gaps which they expected you to be able to fill in intuitively ended up feeling like gaping plot holes and inconsistencies. Add to that that the whole gameplay system was ludicrously easy (spend a few hours levelling up the right GF abilities at the beginning of the game and Squall can beat every boss on the first disc in one round) and it's not hard to see why people didn't like it. Especially coming off FF7 which, while its story is weak, was extremely well executed in comparison, and it had a much better character customisation system in Materia.
There's a rather large gap in the logic presented here. Specifically, the whole DVD-vs-Blu-Ray argument assumes that the content of each is completely unique. This is not going to be the case.
Just as with the current generation, there will be a fair number of exclusives on each platform, but the bulk of the games will end up being on both the PS3 and the 360. And possibly on the PS2 and maybe Xbox for a few years yet as well. With skyrocketing development costs, this trend is likely to increase rather than decrease - the cost of developing multi-platform is often offset by the potential to reach a much larger market, and thereby sell more games.
In the context of game development, you often hear the term 'lowest common denominator' being thrown about. It's the reason that add-ons like Hard Drives never really caught on, and it wasn't until the Xbox included one as standard that developers actually began to use it. It's also the reason why, even if MS added the capability, almost zero games would be produced for the all-but-confirmed HD-DVD add-on for the X360. Developers will always target the common hardware, and thus will rarely bother with an add-on unless practically everyone has it.
What I'm leading to is pretty simple. PS3 will have the ability to use Blu-Ray discs, but by all accounts it should also support DVDs. 360 uses DVD. PS2 uses DVD. Xbox uses DVD. Even cutting the current-gen consoles out, DVD is the lowest common denominator. Any multi-platform game is going to have been developed with DVD in mind (to work on the 360) and it will only be the PS3 exclusives that will go Blu-Ray. It's quite likely that a lot of the time developers aren't going to find they need the extra capacity anyway, and I'd expect it won't be until the third generation of PS3 games that we start to see stuff that really uses the Blu-Ray's capacity. Certainly, the PS3 releases of multi-platform titles will probably be able to include slightly higher-resolution textures, but that would be about the only content that could be used to pad the discs out. Given that the capabilities of the X360 and PS3, graphically, are rougly very similar, there shouldn't be any engine-hobbling going on, and we're well past the era of having hundreds of minutes of pre-rendered FMV. There simply won't be any extra to add to the PS3 version.
A lot of the time people cite the fact that a lot of PS2 RPGs have been on two DVDs, examples including Xenosaga II, Star Ocean 3 and I believe Final Fantasy XII. These are actually split over two DVD-5s - they'd fit on a DVD-9 but the earlier PS2s have trouble with dual-layer DVD-ROM content. This actually illustrates another issue with including immature media technology in consoles, but that's neither here nor there. The only real genre of game that could potentially exceed the bounds of the DVD format are the larger RPGs, and even then, most RPG gamers are quite happy to have the game split over two discs. Speaking as a big fan of these games myself, it actually feels like you've gotten something bigger and more impressive when it's split up. A bit of a 'wow, it had so much content that a single DVD just wasn't enough!' deal, even though I know that it's only split up that way because the PS2 isn't very good at DVD.
Really, there is no real need for Blu-Ray (or HD-DVD, for that matter) for games until the platforms are both quite mature, which should be a lot later than the end of 2007. There is definitely no practical justification for socking consumers an extra $200 for the privilege. The only real reason we're seeing it in PS3 is because of the media and electronics side of Sony's business dictating the policy for the other wings of their entertainment business. I'd hate to be a Sony Computer Entertainment exec right about now, I bet they don't want to be selling the damn thing with Blu-Ray in it either.
Actually, NASA announced today they've renamed Project Constellation, the 'Return to the Moon' project, to Project Orion. It's also the official name being given to the CEV module that will be used to get people there. I have to wonder though if there might be some kind of ulterior motive going on with it, based off the names. Orion (the Hunter) modules in an Ares (god of war) rocket...
Personally, I can't see the Mana games working as MMOs, unless it's some kind of handheld-based one.
If I was to take a guess at them adapting any of their existing franchises to MMO, I'd pick either Dragon Quest for the brand recognition (at least in Japan) or Kingdom Hearts, which has been stupidly successful and has pretty much got the largest and most MMO-ready world.
EA know this already. Have a look at the pile of games they've put out that have been successful. Stuff like Need for Speed, The Sims... they've been producing Madden games since 1988, NHL games since 1991, FIFA games since 1993, and however many other sports titles. EA also know that there is a place for games with a story just as much as there is a place for games without it.
Of course it doesn't. It's a new format. This is like bitching that Word 6 can't open documents from Word 97. Or that you can't fit engine parts from a 2000 Ford into your 1960s pickup.
Wait, you think Photoshop is bad because your old version isn't compatible with features added to the file format two revisions down the line? That makes absolutely no sense at all. How on earth did this get modded up?
Don't lose sight of the fact that Will Wright works for EA. While it's true they do churn out a lot of crap, every now and then they produce something good as well.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Wii works out quite nicely for EA. It'll be much easier for a dev with a good idea to convince management to take a gamble when the stakes are significantly lower, and we all know that Wii development is going to be a lot cheaper.
interestingly-designed characters that easily encapsulated everything the machine and its parent company stood for
Well, I don't know about modern game systems, but Japan has a few interesting ideas regarding Operating Systems mascots...
This is just another entry in the long list of 'we probably shouldn't have introduced this species into this environment' stories. Kind of like introducing Rabbits into New Zealand, or Foxes into Australia, or a myriad of other examples. They end up thriving and taking over, to the detriment of the various species that were already there.
Xbox 360, like the PS3, is 'region-free'. What this actually means when it comes to consoles is that the manufacturer doesn't force developers to lock the game to a certain region. It's up to the publisher - if they want to region lock it, the capability is there. Blu-Ray is 'region free' too. They just use other parts of the spec to lock the disc to certain regions instead.
The original Xbox had this as well. I had a friend bring some games he purchased in Canada when he was living there back to Australia, and several turned out to play fine in my (Australian) Xbox. From memory it was Unreal Championship and something else.
once they bring them stateside 99% of the fansub sites drop the files and most of the people (atleast the ones i know) go and buy the DVD's because they want to support it and want the nice disks and art and good quality..
With more and more Japanese broadcasters now broadcasting anime in 720p HD, this is going to change, at least in terms of quality. As a recent example, I picked up Geneon's release of Kamichu, having seen fansubs of the first few episodes a while back. The fansubs had 720p video (apparently upscaled, at that point nothing was being broadcast in real HD) and I have to say that, while Geneon's DVD release looks very good, the fansubs actually look better.
Of course this is really just a technology limitation. The whole HD-DVD / Blu-Ray battle doesn't help matters at all.
The perception of fansubs amongst the big US distributors is changing, as well. As much as the fans like to say that fansubs are beneficial, the truth is that this is increasingly not the case. In the early days, before digital subbing was as common as it is now, fansubs really did help these companies. Then there was the huge boom in it earlier this decade, which appeared to peak around 2003/2004. At that point, US companies were going around licencing almost everything they could get their hands on. This is just not happening as much any more - there's a good portion of stuff produced that is quite popular as fansubs, but hasn't ever been picked up. Additionally, as digital subbing has grown, more and more groups are refusing to stop distribution when a series gets licensed. Usually they'll cite the fact that this is the internet, and most if not all of the group aren't in the US, so why should they stop? It's a straw man argument, but it's used quite often. Those groups that do stop distribution often find that certain people will re-post their work elsewhere, anyway. The ease with which you can get hold of fansubs from licensed series really does matter, now.
Piracy like this is inevitable. The other half of the equation is that often the 'official' releases aren't much better quality than the fansubs. It's not uncommon for certain companies to do extremely stupid or annoying things with their translations, such as substituting Japanese-centric jokes with 'Americanised' versions, translating some honorifics but not others, not bothering anywhere to actually provide translation notes on cultural references, and the list goes on. For some stuff it really doesn't matter - I don't really need to know the deep cultural meaning behind some line while watching my giant robots beating each other up - but given the increasing diversity of anime actually getting a US release, this often really does matter. Several of the older companies in the industry are now struggling to stay afloat, and fansubs are a good part of that. It's a bit of a vicious cycle - they need good licenses to get enough sales, they need sales to get money, and they need money to get good licenses. A lot of them are now actually funding production of new series in Japan in order that they make sure they have the licenses for quality series.
On the flip-side, they really should stop licensing so much crap. ADV for example used to be one of the nastiest companies out there to fansubbers. The instant they obtained a license, they would hunt down anyone and everyone distributing and send C&Ds. Amusingly, most of the stuff they picked up was dogshit - no one in their right mind would pay for that stuff if they could get it for free. The last year or so they've been pretty much silent, because they haven't been able to afford any licenses. Fansubbing is a factor, but not the only one.
Really, in the end, fansubs can form a decent measuring stick for potential licenses, but for the most part they're only beneficial to the fans, and to the Japanese companies who produce the stuff and are practically losing nothing by having people outside Japan increase interest in their work.
The Enterprise may be the first of the shuttles built, but it's also never seen space. Ideally Columbia should have been the one to end up in a museum, but that's a little difficult now. I'd say you could pretty convincingly argue that they might want to replace the Enterprise with the Discovery or Endeavour once their's life is over.
Also, there won't be three working shuttles when they're retired. Atlantis is being scrapped in 2008, cut up for parts for the other two. Put Enterprise out to pasture, put Endeavour into the Smithsonian, and put Discovery on display at the Kennedy Space Center. I'm sure they can make room for it somewhere.
Bioware got criticism for Kotor II... I sure hope not, since KotOR II was developed by Obsidian, not Bioware.
People always talk about Steve Jobs and his Reality Distortion Field that mysteriously makes him able to sell anything. It looks like someone at Sony has one of them too, but they use it on Kaz instead of customers.
In what alternate dimension does repeatedly trumpeting to the media how you're overpricing your system and your games become a good marketing decision?
Where's Link when you need him?