yes I do know that... I used the different names because it was easier to draw a comparison between the two different instances of the same franchise instead of saying "store#1"... "store#2"
Why I stopped Shopping at EB years ago... and why I started Shopping at Gamestop again
I used to pre-order the occasional game, but mostly just poked my head into a local EB to check out the used stuff.
On about 3 separate occasions I had placed a pre-order with EB only to show up on release day and they were sold out. Once such time I saw a guy buy a copy of the item I pre-ordered (and he did not have a pre order) and walk out of the store only to be told that they were all out and I would have to wait for the next shipment, even worse was that this was a pre-order I had paid for in full...
I swore off the store for quite some time. There is different store, a Gamestop, roughly the same distance from my house but in the opposite direction and I had stopped in a few times, they of course asked if I wanted to pre-order anything to which I told them NO and WHY, recalling the story from EB. They claimed that their store was run much better than the other one. I shrugged it off. When the Limited Edition of Bioshock came out I decided to give them a try pre-ordering it. It was a large-ish cardboard box and risking a day-of purchase at walmart mean it was probably going to be beat up by the ham-fisted employees there.
Two days before the release I caught word that a large percentage of the Limited Editions were damaged (the included figurine had a broken are in 60-80% of them). I called Gamestop where I had placed the pre-order and the assured me that they would not be selling any of the broken ones and that they had checked their shipment and had enough good ones to cover the pre-orders. When I arrive to the store on release day to pick up my copy the clerk handed me a copy of the game and said "check this over and make sure your happy with it before we ring you up"... I was extremely impressed that they actually gave a sh*t. Every time I go in there they're friendly and unlike some other stores the actually know what they're talking about. Instead of regurgitating misinterpreted forum banter.
I believe that the quality of the store comes down to the management 9 out of 10 Gamestop/EBs I go to are total garbage with rude employees and lack luster selections.... on occasion I'll step into one where that's not the case and I'm fairly certain it's due to a management staff that plays Gamestop corporate instead of the customer and holds their staff to some semblance of a standard instead of allowing them to be rabid register jockeys hocking pre-orders.
blockquoteOTOH, changing grades, while juvenile, is breaking into a system for purposes of committing fraud. It's technically no different than the guy who breaks into a computer system to produce a fake id or to alter financial records./blockquote
Not if Ferris Bueller made me do it!
That used to be one of my favorite puzzle games... I hadn't thought of it for a while.
When I was playing bioshock and came to the hack screen I actually thought of the train mini game on Big Brain Academy for the Wii... of course it makes much more sense there then it does in the middle of a shooter.
I'm sure it bothers some but I actually enjoyed the pipe games in Bioshock, I've always liked them so it's not much of problem for me. I seem to recall that Perfect Dark Zero also has a similar game that you need to complete to set a bomb, though a much more simple version.
What I really like about the GHIII set list is the fact that only 19 out of the 70+ song are "as made famous by" with the rest being recordings from the original artist. IMO this is the biggest benefit to this edition over the previous installments which were closer to the other way around. Either Activision has more $$ to pay for the originals, or more artists (read: copyright owners)are realizing that supporting Guitar Hero does wonders for the good will of their fans.
Last time I checked, laws that tried to limit who could purchase games based on their ESRB rating were being tossed out left and right.
Certainly there has to be a law against something before a company can be sued for breaking said law...
You can pretty much sue anyone for anything, it's just that most people wont waste the time and money to sue someone for something that has no real legal standing.
Personally I think that the ESA/ESRB should sue BestBuy/any other store that ignores the rating system putin place because really that's the core problem with the whole system.
EB, BestBuy, etc. don't even bother to enforce the ratings and while it's nice to blame the parents, by not enforcing it in the stores it makes it difficult for a parent to effectively managed their child's access. I'm not suggesting the government enforce this but the ESA themselves. Really I doubt this would even be half the issue it is if they enforced their own rating system well enough.
I've said it numerous times before, the ESA should send secret underaged shoppers to specific locations and if a location sells to them then you cut off that store's supply of M rated games for X amount of time. And that X increases with the number of offenses.
Unfortunately while the corporate bobble heads all agree that it should be enforced and put policies in place they still turn a blind eye to the managers and clerks on the floor selling it to anyone who walks through the door to keep making their quotas, and the ESA doesn't seem to really care either since everyone is making more money. If they don't take charge and start managing themselves then SOMEONE will eventually step in and manage it for them... it's unfortunate but really the software companies are doing it to themselves.
What I don't understand is why MS doesn't utilize Rare to make Killer Instinct 3 or another Banjoe Kazooee platformer, heck a new Jet Force Gemini would be well well received too.
Honestly, looking at the genres where the Xbox 360 is lacking... Platformers and Fighting games come to mind.
This is their competitor's biggest advantage right now. Nintendo obviously has platformers on lock, Sony's got great franchises like Rachet&Clank, Jax&Dexter, God of War, etc. What does MS have? Kameo could have been great but the fact that it was a port of an Xbox game that was a port of an N64 game really shows in it's overall design. Bringingn Banjoe back into a new game would really allow Rare to shine.
As for fighting games, this would allow MS to shine as well. Nintendo is almost completely devoid of the genre but Sony's got some strength here with Tekken. Thankfully VF5 and SC4 are both cross platform this next round but honestly MS will need to bring out something important if they want to combat Tekken 6 when it arrives.
It seems to me that the last thing the 360 needs is another first person Shooter. Shooters and Racers are pretty much the main event in the 360 world but there are other areas that are so incredibly lacking it's not even funny.
Puzzle games are another one. They had the Fuzion Frenzy franchise but managed to screw that up worse than Rare screwed up PDZ... if they really want to compete with Nintendo/sell to the "Family" market they really need a lot more in this department too.
It almost seems like they're relying entirely on crappy XBLA re-releases to fill the void in these genres but, I'm sorry, paying $10 for a re-release of the Art of Fighting does not make for a fulfilling fighting game experience.
Getting off-topic but FWIW I was (and still am) a fan of the Timesplitters series. I remember back when I first got an Xbox I picked up Timesplitters 2 and loved it, I never even bought Halo. Of course I could never find anyone willing to play a few rounds with me as everyone was more interested in Halo. The TS series does truly follow in the footsteps of Goldeneye and Perfect Dark.
Perfect Dark Zero, despite being developed by a completely different staff, actually does capture a lot of the spirit of Goldeneye and the original Perfect Dark. The only reason PDZ was a bomb was the game mechanics, it was just too clunky to play. side by side with the original it was an improvement but when compared to other modern shooters like halo and timesplitters it was just clumsy. It could have easily been the blockbuster MS was looking for but the semi-cartoony graphics coupled with wooden game mechanics just turned too many people away. If you can get past those two things it's actually not too bad and very similar to Timesplitters/older rare titles once you sit down with it for a while.
They took with them the underrated Conker's Bad Fur Day series, anything Perfect Dark, Banjo-Kazooie (I think)... arguably the best games development studio behind Nintendo itself. What happened?
They neglected to take with them most of the developers that made those titles so great... IIRC most of the core staff behind Rare in the Nintendo days now work under Free Radical which hasn't done much beyond the "Timesplitters" series, though not a blockbuster franchise, it's certainly more well received than Rares offerings over the last 5 years. They're also the ones behind the upcoming game: Haze...
When Microsoft bought rare, all they really bought was the name and some semi-popular franchses. Honestly the games they've made for the DS have probably made MS more money than the Xbox branded stuff they're put out. I'd be impressed if they've even as much as made half of the original investment back at this point.
I really don't understand why anyone would tilt the console while in operation. I'm not even convinced that it's the primary cause of disk damage. If it's causing a lot of problems, then why aren't there a lot of Wii and PS3 owners complaining about the same thing? Those systems have a horizontal and vertical position too. When that explanation was given, I assumed it was the maker trying to blame the user.
it's because of the DVD drive design... most drives have little rubber pads in place to keep the disc from tilting when loaded. for whatever reason the 360 drive doesn't have those pads (if I had to guess it's due to cost cutting measures) There is however a metal lip that makes up part of the assembly that when the disc tips to extreme levels it makes contact and if the disc is moving it will create a circular scratch right along the inside of the disc.
Poor design yes, but only certain drives are effected this way because MS simply outsourced the drives to 3rd party manufacturers... I believe it's the Hitachi drives that are known for making scratches.
It's been tested and proven that tilting the console with a disc in the tray is the only way to scratch the disc (save an actual malfunction). I don't have any links handy because this issue is so dead and gone it's not even relevant anymore. Amazingly when MS started including stickers on the drives stating "do not move console with disc in drive" the issue seemed to disappear. Seems like common sense to me but some people just need to be told.
I don't know where you're getting your figures but I haven't seen any stats regarding console sales sales figures post Halo 3 with the exception of Australia... which saw a 55% increase in hardware sales for the week it went on sale and September saw a 158% increase in sales over august in the same region http://www.itwire.com/content/view/14759/532/
So I'd say that both the price drop AND Halo 3 are quite a substantial catalyst for the 360. taking it a step further and bundling two games with the already reduced price hardware (and I should note that Forza 2 is still a full priced game, and a AAA 1st party franchise no less) will probably push sales even further for them.
...Incorporating a PS-2 inside of the PS-3 does increase the cost by about $100 (even with software emulation)...
doubtful, the PS2s cost $130 these days, they're looking at a $30 price drop soon and IIRC last year Sony was estimated to be making upwards of $45 on every PS2 sold (it's probably more than that at this point). Retailers are making a profit on that to.. Not to mention that if you're just using the main chips from a PS2 you don't have to pay for the included controllers, power supply, video cables, console case, DVD drive, motherboard, or even the box paperwork, shipping, overhead etc. When it all comes down to it I'd be downright surprised if those two chips cost Sony more than $30 to add to the PS3. I realize every penny counts when you're losing money on a system and people still think it's overpriced. But the cost to Sony is a whole world less than the end value to consumers.
I realize it rarely happens these days but isn't non-sensationalized journalism the kind that plainly presents the facts from all angles and leaves whether things are good or bad as an exercise for the reader? I mean as far as I'm concerned it's a pretty thin line between personal bias and sensationalism. Just because this article isn't the Jack Thompson level of over the top anti-game-violence sensationalism we're all used to doesn't mean it's not sensationalized at all.
The use of negative adjectives to describe many aspects of the game is enough for me... as well as comparing the AO rating to that of an "X" when in reality it's the equivalent of an NC-17. Many films get rated NC-17 before making changes and dropping down to an R. Of course, NC-17 doesn't hold as much negative imagery as an X rating does.
you're absolutely right... Apparently a lot of people forgot about WMV-HD the barely-available format that offered HD video from a regular old DVD disc. Of course these were only playable on your computer and all but one of the releases (terminator 2) was a discovery channel documentary.
the MPEG-2 codec is as old as it is a hog and even with all that wasted space movie makers are still able to fit loads of extra content onto a DVD-9 in addition to the movie.
There's no reason the "next-gen" of DVD couldn't have been 3+layer DVDs with some flavor of MPEG-4. It would have been available years ago with both media and players priced barely higher than what we've got today.
Hrm... Interesting enough I fit all the criteria save "relevant experience" depending on what that means. I also currently work for a company in the aerospace industry that makes a lot of parts for NASA...
... though the one thing I am lacking is the desire to actually be an astronaut...
I'm quite familiar with Warranty work on a modified vehicle... I drive a toyota pickup modified for off road and I recently sold a highly modified WRX.
In my experience it all depends on the dealership you take it to. everyone at the Subaru dealership knew everything that had been done on my car, and I knew that if anything broke on my car as a result of something I had modified I'd be responsible for it. Despite the fact that most of the suspension parts had been replaced, I was using very different wheels and tires and running an aftermarket exhaust, intake and computer tuning, I had a few problems with the car that the dealership happily covered under warranty. I didn't have any problems on this vehicle but when a similarly modified older vehicle wore out a wheel bearing pre-maturely I paid for the repair myself since it was likely due in-part to the suspension modifications I had made.
As of late I've simply gone for vehicles already out of warranty... Do you think your dealership would not honor your Jeep's warranty if the door hinge broke simply because you've got bigger tires? If so I would say you need to find a better dealership. I don't know about Jeeps but the fine print on the Subaru warranty says that I can do whatever I want to the car and they'll cover the warranty UNLESS something I modified is what caused the problem.
The only way Linux on the Laptop could have caused a hinge failure is if Linux caused a more enjoyable user experience then was speced out with windows. Thus the hinge saw far more use than it was originally intended for....
Slashdot Mirror
yes I do know that... I used the different names because it was easier to draw a comparison between the two different instances of the same franchise instead of saying "store#1"... "store#2"
Why I stopped Shopping at EB years ago... and why I started Shopping at Gamestop again
I used to pre-order the occasional game, but mostly just poked my head into a local EB to check out the used stuff.
On about 3 separate occasions I had placed a pre-order with EB only to show up on release day and they were sold out. Once such time I saw a guy buy a copy of the item I pre-ordered (and he did not have a pre order) and walk out of the store only to be told that they were all out and I would have to wait for the next shipment, even worse was that this was a pre-order I had paid for in full...
I swore off the store for quite some time. There is different store, a Gamestop, roughly the same distance from my house but in the opposite direction and I had stopped in a few times, they of course asked if I wanted to pre-order anything to which I told them NO and WHY, recalling the story from EB. They claimed that their store was run much better than the other one. I shrugged it off. When the Limited Edition of Bioshock came out I decided to give them a try pre-ordering it. It was a large-ish cardboard box and risking a day-of purchase at walmart mean it was probably going to be beat up by the ham-fisted employees there.
Two days before the release I caught word that a large percentage of the Limited Editions were damaged (the included figurine had a broken are in 60-80% of them). I called Gamestop where I had placed the pre-order and the assured me that they would not be selling any of the broken ones and that they had checked their shipment and had enough good ones to cover the pre-orders. When I arrive to the store on release day to pick up my copy the clerk handed me a copy of the game and said "check this over and make sure your happy with it before we ring you up"... I was extremely impressed that they actually gave a sh*t. Every time I go in there they're friendly and unlike some other stores the actually know what they're talking about. Instead of regurgitating misinterpreted forum banter.
I believe that the quality of the store comes down to the management 9 out of 10 Gamestop/EBs I go to are total garbage with rude employees and lack luster selections.... on occasion I'll step into one where that's not the case and I'm fairly certain it's due to a management staff that plays Gamestop corporate instead of the customer and holds their staff to some semblance of a standard instead of allowing them to be rabid register jockeys hocking pre-orders.
I see your point... though I feel compelled to tell you that the PS3 was launched in 2006... it was 3 days prior to the Wii release IIRC.
blockquoteOTOH, changing grades, while juvenile, is breaking into a system for purposes of committing fraud. It's technically no different than the guy who breaks into a computer system to produce a fake id or to alter financial records./blockquote Not if Ferris Bueller made me do it!
That used to be one of my favorite puzzle games... I hadn't thought of it for a while.
When I was playing bioshock and came to the hack screen I actually thought of the train mini game on Big Brain Academy for the Wii... of course it makes much more sense there then it does in the middle of a shooter.
I'm sure it bothers some but I actually enjoyed the pipe games in Bioshock, I've always liked them so it's not much of problem for me. I seem to recall that Perfect Dark Zero also has a similar game that you need to complete to set a bomb, though a much more simple version.
Goatse IS an implant... seriously, once you've seen it you can't get that crap out of your head.
What I really like about the GHIII set list is the fact that only 19 out of the 70+ song are "as made famous by" with the rest being recordings from the original artist. IMO this is the biggest benefit to this edition over the previous installments which were closer to the other way around. Either Activision has more $$ to pay for the originals, or more artists (read: copyright owners)are realizing that supporting Guitar Hero does wonders for the good will of their fans.
Personally I think that the ESA/ESRB should sue BestBuy/any other store that ignores the rating system putin place because really that's the core problem with the whole system.
EB, BestBuy, etc. don't even bother to enforce the ratings and while it's nice to blame the parents, by not enforcing it in the stores it makes it difficult for a parent to effectively managed their child's access. I'm not suggesting the government enforce this but the ESA themselves. Really I doubt this would even be half the issue it is if they enforced their own rating system well enough.
I've said it numerous times before, the ESA should send secret underaged shoppers to specific locations and if a location sells to them then you cut off that store's supply of M rated games for X amount of time. And that X increases with the number of offenses.
Unfortunately while the corporate bobble heads all agree that it should be enforced and put policies in place they still turn a blind eye to the managers and clerks on the floor selling it to anyone who walks through the door to keep making their quotas, and the ESA doesn't seem to really care either since everyone is making more money. If they don't take charge and start managing themselves then SOMEONE will eventually step in and manage it for them... it's unfortunate but really the software companies are doing it to themselves.
at least you aren't squirting anything
bah... the could have used SVGs for the graphs... At least that's what all the cool web developers use.
What I don't understand is why MS doesn't utilize Rare to make Killer Instinct 3 or another Banjoe Kazooee platformer, heck a new Jet Force Gemini would be well well received too.
Honestly, looking at the genres where the Xbox 360 is lacking... Platformers and Fighting games come to mind.
This is their competitor's biggest advantage right now. Nintendo obviously has platformers on lock, Sony's got great franchises like Rachet&Clank, Jax&Dexter, God of War, etc. What does MS have? Kameo could have been great but the fact that it was a port of an Xbox game that was a port of an N64 game really shows in it's overall design. Bringingn Banjoe back into a new game would really allow Rare to shine.
As for fighting games, this would allow MS to shine as well. Nintendo is almost completely devoid of the genre but Sony's got some strength here with Tekken. Thankfully VF5 and SC4 are both cross platform this next round but honestly MS will need to bring out something important if they want to combat Tekken 6 when it arrives.
It seems to me that the last thing the 360 needs is another first person Shooter. Shooters and Racers are pretty much the main event in the 360 world but there are other areas that are so incredibly lacking it's not even funny.
Puzzle games are another one. They had the Fuzion Frenzy franchise but managed to screw that up worse than Rare screwed up PDZ... if they really want to compete with Nintendo/sell to the "Family" market they really need a lot more in this department too.
It almost seems like they're relying entirely on crappy XBLA re-releases to fill the void in these genres but, I'm sorry, paying $10 for a re-release of the Art of Fighting does not make for a fulfilling fighting game experience.
Getting off-topic but FWIW I was (and still am) a fan of the Timesplitters series. I remember back when I first got an Xbox I picked up Timesplitters 2 and loved it, I never even bought Halo. Of course I could never find anyone willing to play a few rounds with me as everyone was more interested in Halo. The TS series does truly follow in the footsteps of Goldeneye and Perfect Dark.
Perfect Dark Zero, despite being developed by a completely different staff, actually does capture a lot of the spirit of Goldeneye and the original Perfect Dark. The only reason PDZ was a bomb was the game mechanics, it was just too clunky to play. side by side with the original it was an improvement but when compared to other modern shooters like halo and timesplitters it was just clumsy. It could have easily been the blockbuster MS was looking for but the semi-cartoony graphics coupled with wooden game mechanics just turned too many people away. If you can get past those two things it's actually not too bad and very similar to Timesplitters/older rare titles once you sit down with it for a while.
When Microsoft bought rare, all they really bought was the name and some semi-popular franchses. Honestly the games they've made for the DS have probably made MS more money than the Xbox branded stuff they're put out. I'd be impressed if they've even as much as made half of the original investment back at this point.
Poor design yes, but only certain drives are effected this way because MS simply outsourced the drives to 3rd party manufacturers... I believe it's the Hitachi drives that are known for making scratches.
It's been tested and proven that tilting the console with a disc in the tray is the only way to scratch the disc (save an actual malfunction). I don't have any links handy because this issue is so dead and gone it's not even relevant anymore. Amazingly when MS started including stickers on the drives stating "do not move console with disc in drive" the issue seemed to disappear. Seems like common sense to me but some people just need to be told.
except that Forza 2 isn't a bargain bin game... it's on of the 360's top sellers and still fetches full price at retail. http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Forza-Motorsport-2/dp/B000FRVCAA/?qid=1191942433
I don't know where you're getting your figures but I haven't seen any stats regarding console sales sales figures post Halo 3 with the exception of Australia... which saw a 55% increase in hardware sales for the week it went on sale and September saw a 158% increase in sales over august in the same region http://www.itwire.com/content/view/14759/532/
So I'd say that both the price drop AND Halo 3 are quite a substantial catalyst for the 360. taking it a step further and bundling two games with the already reduced price hardware (and I should note that Forza 2 is still a full priced game, and a AAA 1st party franchise no less) will probably push sales even further for them.
I realize it rarely happens these days but isn't non-sensationalized journalism the kind that plainly presents the facts from all angles and leaves whether things are good or bad as an exercise for the reader? I mean as far as I'm concerned it's a pretty thin line between personal bias and sensationalism. Just because this article isn't the Jack Thompson level of over the top anti-game-violence sensationalism we're all used to doesn't mean it's not sensationalized at all.
The use of negative adjectives to describe many aspects of the game is enough for me... as well as comparing the AO rating to that of an "X" when in reality it's the equivalent of an NC-17. Many films get rated NC-17 before making changes and dropping down to an R. Of course, NC-17 doesn't hold as much negative imagery as an X rating does.
you're absolutely right... Apparently a lot of people forgot about WMV-HD the barely-available format that offered HD video from a regular old DVD disc. Of course these were only playable on your computer and all but one of the releases (terminator 2) was a discovery channel documentary.
the MPEG-2 codec is as old as it is a hog and even with all that wasted space movie makers are still able to fit loads of extra content onto a DVD-9 in addition to the movie.
There's no reason the "next-gen" of DVD couldn't have been 3+layer DVDs with some flavor of MPEG-4. It would have been available years ago with both media and players priced barely higher than what we've got today.
well, you wouldn't want to get him confused with his arch nemesis: Flaccid Snake
Hrm... Interesting enough I fit all the criteria save "relevant experience" depending on what that means. I also currently work for a company in the aerospace industry that makes a lot of parts for NASA...
... though the one thing I am lacking is the desire to actually be an astronaut...
sounds fun... how much longer do we have to wait?
I'm quite familiar with Warranty work on a modified vehicle... I drive a toyota pickup modified for off road and I recently sold a highly modified WRX.
In my experience it all depends on the dealership you take it to. everyone at the Subaru dealership knew everything that had been done on my car, and I knew that if anything broke on my car as a result of something I had modified I'd be responsible for it. Despite the fact that most of the suspension parts had been replaced, I was using very different wheels and tires and running an aftermarket exhaust, intake and computer tuning, I had a few problems with the car that the dealership happily covered under warranty. I didn't have any problems on this vehicle but when a similarly modified older vehicle wore out a wheel bearing pre-maturely I paid for the repair myself since it was likely due in-part to the suspension modifications I had made.
As of late I've simply gone for vehicles already out of warranty... Do you think your dealership would not honor your Jeep's warranty if the door hinge broke simply because you've got bigger tires? If so I would say you need to find a better dealership. I don't know about Jeeps but the fine print on the Subaru warranty says that I can do whatever I want to the car and they'll cover the warranty UNLESS something I modified is what caused the problem.
The only way Linux on the Laptop could have caused a hinge failure is if Linux caused a more enjoyable user experience then was speced out with windows. Thus the hinge saw far more use than it was originally intended for....