I got my 360 Premium brand new from Micro Center for $300 almost a year ago. Since then that sale's been running on and off non-stop. How is $250 half the price? It's $50 less... and for a console with fewer games and pricer controllers (I'd need the nunchucks) I don't see it as that big a bargain. I'm not saying a price cut is in order by any means, but I never saw the Wii's somewhat lower price a huge selling point for myself (though then again most people look at $9.99 and think it's much cheaper than $10.00).
I'm a "racing fan" for sure:-) (well, fan of a LOT of genres, including fighting games which atm I'd go with Xbox for due to DOA4's exclusivity. I LOVE Smash but it's in its own genre for me)
Gran Turismo games as far as "racing fans" are concerned are a bit of a joke compared to Forza. The physics model and racing customization just isn't on the same level. They're more popular because they're Sony games for Sony systems. But the MS Racing Wheel is basically the undisputable trump card. "Pure" racers like those games are best played with simulation-style controls, so a good racing wheel (and the MS one is BY FAR the best) seals the deal.
The "tilt" stuff is neat and all, but I'd say it fits more for a space flight sim than an automobile game.
Anyway, if Mario Kart is considered a part of the "racing race," then Nintendo will probably win it as soon as they release one for the Wii. Until then, EA is the winner with their NFS series on all consoles ^_^
Well as far as RPGs go, Bioware is still sticking with Xbox so for fans of those games that makes a difference (or, at least, might make up for FFXIII being on PS3...).
As for platformers, until Wii gets Mario Galaxy I'm not sure it's ahead really... 360 has Kameo and hopefully Rare will show us some Banjo 3 in a bit here (but who knows).
For racing, 360 is well ahead with not only better games (PGR, Forza) but the pricey-yet-actually-good Racing Wheel.
Still, I totally agree with your last sentence. I like almost all genres (except puzzle and "music" games like DDR).
It depends... if by "new" you mean "the movie was in theaters just a bit ago" then I can often find a copy for $15 for a limited time at Target. Or perhaps randomly discounted at my local grocery provided I have the "loyalty card" on my keychain at the time (got Seinfeld Season 8 for $25 new that way).
But "not-so-new" (by which I mean older movies) DVDs are often in the $10-$15 range just about anywhere, and the "not-so-new" Blu-Rays are still like $25.
Nah mostly it's impulse buys while looking for some game at Best Buy or something, heh. I have indeed been getting stuff online more, especially if it's a series I've committed myself to.
The Netflix thing is a good point, although I tend to buy rather than rent because I'm a big moviegoer. But in terms of price, I tend to see Blu-Ray at $25-$30, with the $25 ones being bad Adam Sandler films or something. I buy DVDs at prices in the $10-$15 range usually. The only pricey ones I sometimes get are anime ones, which I'm always like "grumble grumble" about grabbing off the shelf. And if someone were to tell me that anime DVDs are overpriced, I'd say "ABSOLUTELY!"
A $2-$5 premium over DVDs *at what price*? Here at Best Buy normal DVDs range from $6 to $22 (I tend to buy at or below $15, depending on the movie, most often around $10-$12). Blu-Ray movies are $25-$30, and the "cheap" $25 ones are like "Badder Santa" and other such masterpieces....So, it's not "bile" heh.. and when did this become about Windows Vista???
Well... unless you really care about Blu-Ray movies (which IMO are way overpriced), by the time you pick up a game ($60), an extra controller, whatever other accessories (maybe component cables?), and factor in the tax on all this stuff, you end up paying $650 or more. When more must-have PS3-exclusive games come out (or Blu-Ray films become anywhere near a sensible purchase), the PS3 will become an ok purchase, but until then it seems a bit pricey.
The 360 isn't necessarily that much more bang for the buck on its own, either, given the extra costs due to setting it up for XBL and such, but given that its game library is FAR better across the board, all of that barely matters.
Basically as I see it the only current-gen console that is enough *if it's the only one you have* is the 360. The others just don't have enough games to play yet...
Now, if only they'd port that White Knight game to 360 and make the characters run less lame....
It's fine. Nintendo has a tight grip on the handheld market that MS hasn't a prayer of getting into. For now, the PS2 is selling well enough anyway, hahah ^_^
Heh, you should be offended at the comic writing more than anything else. The fact that Wonder Woman, arguably the most high-profile and iconic female superhero, is constantly written to be stupid and irrational in her actions, is astounding. Writers simply don't know what to do with female characters most of the time and often portray them in silly ways.
Ummm.. can you tax illegal money transfer? And, like, imprison a thief for tax evasion along with, say, robbery? If they're taxing it, doesn't it HAVE to be legal?
But I like my computer... and Kentucky is okay sometimes, as long as you avoid most of the locals. There's a cave somewhere in Kentucky that's kinda cool... it has an underground lake that GOD MADE!
Yeah whoever modded you Troll shouldn't be getting any modpoints. Hopefully I can metamoderate that into oblivion!
In Elder Scrolls 5, you'll be able to buy Coke and Pepsi alongside "Cheap Wine," mead, and other RPG beverages. And one of the best items will be the Under-Armour Shirt of Strength.
Halo 4 will have Cheef trade in his warthog for a Jeep Wrangler Unlimited, and have him exlaim various crap while driving such as "man, the handling on this thing is amazing!"
Final Fantasy XIV will replace every potion with various flavors of Vitamin Water, and every Esper will be replaced by LeBron James and Greg Oden and each summon will be followed by a screen saying "This summon was brought to you by NBA on TNT Thursdays."
While Forza Motorsport 3 is loading a track, a teaser of Apocalypto will play. If the Nürburgring is being loaded, it will play the full trailer and possibly the "making of" video.
The game was in playable form at E3 2005 and I was there as a correspondent, so I got some good demos from the Blizzard staff. It was there on all 3 consoles as far as I can recall, and although the Cube one didn't have online multiplayer, all 3 looked cool and played well.
A 3rd-person shooter of that sort would be very welcome by folks who miss the good old days of Jet Force Gemini, and I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the game 2 years ago. It also appeared nearly finished!
However, the additional delays basically made it a title that would be released well into the 360's lifespan, making it look very outdated. I do hope they get a chance to overhaul the graphics engine and maybe add whatever content they felt was missing, and release the game.
(Though, the real deal-maker would be if they made it possible to play through the game as either Nova (the ghost) or a Protoss hero, and possibly some hyper-intelligent Hydralisk or something.)
That makes sense... I guess WoW is by design something that forces guild leaders into being obsessed or at least a bit too dedicated to the game. Well, makes me glad I play GW instead:-)
I have to agree with much of what you said. I'm not far enough in my career yet to know whether my "leadership" skills in an MMO are transferrable to a large extent (when I become an IT manager perhaps, we'll see), but having to manage 45+ people, even online, does give one insight into how such a group of people interacts and how to resolve differences between them.
Your next-to-last paragraph, describing leaders that take a very casual approach to the game, is totally on-the-dot as far as many I know:-) (myself included). The others you describe -- these are the leaders that see their guilds come and go in at best a year. The long-timers, the ones that make good friends that stay together from game-to-game, these are actually the older folks, often married and with children of their own, who take a VERY casual and mature approach to gaming, these are the ones who have guilds last for many years. I know a number of GW guilds that started off as Diablo 2 guilds, and plan on sticking together through GW2 and onwards, all things permitting. Their leaders, and even "officers," are not overly active in-game by any means. They simply make good decisions.
Interestingly, such guilds are usually quite large. At least two that I know very well have between 400 and 1000 members (forced in GW to span an entire "Alliance" as opposed to a single guild), and are led by women in their 40s+ (if not older?) who are simply wise enough to command respect, and are assisted in their duties by what may be dozens of capable "officers" who divide these duties amongst themselves. As a result, no-one needs to be "obsessed" with the game or overly active. You will find that the guilds with members that really do "piss away" their lives in these games -- these guilds don't last very long. At the very least, those members don't last long in the "good" (read: long-lasting) guilds, as I have seen a few come-and-go in the guilds I've known.
Those leaders are the ones that lose their guilds real fast if they have to actually provide some real leadership, though. They're the ones that lead the hundreds of guilds that come and go on a whim.
I for one, and the successful guild leaders I've known, are very far from playing the game much. I log onto Guild Wars for at most 1 hr per evening, mostly to check up on people, say hi to everyone, and possibly help someone out on a quick quest or participate in a player-vs-player battle. Most of my work as leader entails participating in forum discussions, organizing guild meetings to see what direction to take things, get to know new members and get them to interact with the older ones as much as possible so that player experience can be shared, etc. In many ways it is an administrative role, but also one where I need to set the example of how to approach the game. I don't want players to get obsessed and then eventually burn out on the MMO through overplaying. Stressing moderation, and things like work/school first, is what keeps folks playing and enjoying it when they have free time for it. The "being always on" criterion you mentioned, although insightful and true to a degree, is handled differently in my case (and in the case of most others I know). That is, there is a rank in MMOs called something like "officer," which is simply like a "moderator" on a forum (as opposed to the equivalent of leader, the "admin") in terms of authority. Picking responsible ones, and just enough so that at any given time of moderate-to-heavy guild activity, there is at least one online to keep the peace and help novices with things, and generally provide guideance -- that fulfills the role that otherwise an obsessed and perpetually active leader would need to fill.
That "finite number" of 2000 you mentioned might apply to some MMOs, but it most certainly doesn't to Guild Wars. In that game, the servers are: North America, Europe, China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan. So, unless your guild is like 200,000 people (max guild size is 100 btw), you won't be able to control the high-level content much, hehe.
Actually given the number of active accounts in WoW, I doubt 2000 is the number one's looking for there, either. It's probaby a couple of orders of magnitude larger.
I've been an officer in a high-profile GW guild in the past, and currently lead my own guild. The former was the first-ever GW guild, and is still doing very well. Mine as well. Yet, in the time I've played the game, I have seen MANY guilds fall apart, even those that seemed like they'd go on forever. And every single time, it has come down to a question of leadership. "Drama" is always waiting to happen, and good guild leaders (and officer groups) will either prevent it before it does, or handle it swiftly and decisively *if* it does. Those that don't will eventually lose their guild.
Why? The answer is simple -- people really only care about *playing the game,* and of course they see drama as a hindrance in that regard. Once they see that they spend less time playing the game and more time worrying about "what will happen to the guild," they want out.
The guilds that survive for extended periods of time are laid-back ones that put the goal of just playing the game first, and make it a point to ignore or avoid all of the surrounding personal issues that come up.
I mostly disagree with the latter portion of your comment. The question of how closely one identifies with a movie character vs. a 'controlled' character in a game isn't that simple to define, nor can it be answered without exceptions.
What if a game only had your character do "Hostel"-level gruesome things to others in cutscenes, when not under your control? Would you expect "film standards" to be applied in that case?
I think it's easier to reason that the levels of violence setting a PG-13 film from an R-rated film should be expected to be about the same as those setting a T game from an M game.
In the end, the ratings are all quite arbitrary. I can find R-rated films with less violence, language, sexual content, etc. than some PG-13 movies, for instance.
Well.. there's a fee for the DVR on top of it being an HD digital cable box box but it seems worth it to me... it does have time-shifting, doesn't require an internet connection, has a good program guide (why not want one?), has *better* than VCR-like programming (can record manually set times, all episodes of a particular show, or all NEW episodes of a particular show, and of course just one-time recordings of something like a movie).
The DVR setup I have is literally part of the digital cable box, so sadly I am incapable of anything you listed in the second paragraph.
Slashdot Mirror
I got my 360 Premium brand new from Micro Center for $300 almost a year ago. Since then that sale's been running on and off non-stop. How is $250 half the price? It's $50 less... and for a console with fewer games and pricer controllers (I'd need the nunchucks) I don't see it as that big a bargain. I'm not saying a price cut is in order by any means, but I never saw the Wii's somewhat lower price a huge selling point for myself (though then again most people look at $9.99 and think it's much cheaper than $10.00).
I'm a "racing fan" for sure :-) (well, fan of a LOT of genres, including fighting games which atm I'd go with Xbox for due to DOA4's exclusivity. I LOVE Smash but it's in its own genre for me)
Gran Turismo games as far as "racing fans" are concerned are a bit of a joke compared to Forza. The physics model and racing customization just isn't on the same level. They're more popular because they're Sony games for Sony systems. But the MS Racing Wheel is basically the undisputable trump card. "Pure" racers like those games are best played with simulation-style controls, so a good racing wheel (and the MS one is BY FAR the best) seals the deal.
The "tilt" stuff is neat and all, but I'd say it fits more for a space flight sim than an automobile game.
Anyway, if Mario Kart is considered a part of the "racing race," then Nintendo will probably win it as soon as they release one for the Wii. Until then, EA is the winner with their NFS series on all consoles ^_^
Well as far as RPGs go, Bioware is still sticking with Xbox so for fans of those games that makes a difference (or, at least, might make up for FFXIII being on PS3...).
As for platformers, until Wii gets Mario Galaxy I'm not sure it's ahead really... 360 has Kameo and hopefully Rare will show us some Banjo 3 in a bit here (but who knows).
For racing, 360 is well ahead with not only better games (PGR, Forza) but the pricey-yet-actually-good Racing Wheel.
Still, I totally agree with your last sentence. I like almost all genres (except puzzle and "music" games like DDR).
It depends... if by "new" you mean "the movie was in theaters just a bit ago" then I can often find a copy for $15 for a limited time at Target. Or perhaps randomly discounted at my local grocery provided I have the "loyalty card" on my keychain at the time (got Seinfeld Season 8 for $25 new that way).
But "not-so-new" (by which I mean older movies) DVDs are often in the $10-$15 range just about anywhere, and the "not-so-new" Blu-Rays are still like $25.
Nah mostly it's impulse buys while looking for some game at Best Buy or something, heh. I have indeed been getting stuff online more, especially if it's a series I've committed myself to.
Good point, no there aren't.
The Netflix thing is a good point, although I tend to buy rather than rent because I'm a big moviegoer. But in terms of price, I tend to see Blu-Ray at $25-$30, with the $25 ones being bad Adam Sandler films or something. I buy DVDs at prices in the $10-$15 range usually. The only pricey ones I sometimes get are anime ones, which I'm always like "grumble grumble" about grabbing off the shelf. And if someone were to tell me that anime DVDs are overpriced, I'd say "ABSOLUTELY!"
A $2-$5 premium over DVDs *at what price*? Here at Best Buy normal DVDs range from $6 to $22 (I tend to buy at or below $15, depending on the movie, most often around $10-$12). Blu-Ray movies are $25-$30, and the "cheap" $25 ones are like "Badder Santa" and other such masterpieces. ...So, it's not "bile" heh.. and when did this become about Windows Vista???
Well... unless you really care about Blu-Ray movies (which IMO are way overpriced), by the time you pick up a game ($60), an extra controller, whatever other accessories (maybe component cables?), and factor in the tax on all this stuff, you end up paying $650 or more. When more must-have PS3-exclusive games come out (or Blu-Ray films become anywhere near a sensible purchase), the PS3 will become an ok purchase, but until then it seems a bit pricey.
The 360 isn't necessarily that much more bang for the buck on its own, either, given the extra costs due to setting it up for XBL and such, but given that its game library is FAR better across the board, all of that barely matters.
Basically as I see it the only current-gen console that is enough *if it's the only one you have* is the 360. The others just don't have enough games to play yet...
Now, if only they'd port that White Knight game to 360 and make the characters run less lame....
Well at least it's 2 whole cents. Too many people say stuff like "just wanted to add my .02 cents" which IMO deals a severe blow to their credibility.
It's fine. Nintendo has a tight grip on the handheld market that MS hasn't a prayer of getting into. For now, the PS2 is selling well enough anyway, hahah ^_^
Heh, you should be offended at the comic writing more than anything else. The fact that Wonder Woman, arguably the most high-profile and iconic female superhero, is constantly written to be stupid and irrational in her actions, is astounding. Writers simply don't know what to do with female characters most of the time and often portray them in silly ways.
Maybe I missed something, but...
[this] is not about defining RMT legal/illegal
Ummm.. can you tax illegal money transfer? And, like, imprison a thief for tax evasion along with, say, robbery? If they're taxing it, doesn't it HAVE to be legal?
But I like my computer... and Kentucky is okay sometimes, as long as you avoid most of the locals. There's a cave somewhere in Kentucky that's kinda cool... it has an underground lake that GOD MADE!
Yeah whoever modded you Troll shouldn't be getting any modpoints. Hopefully I can metamoderate that into oblivion!
In Elder Scrolls 5, you'll be able to buy Coke and Pepsi alongside "Cheap Wine," mead, and other RPG beverages. And one of the best items will be the Under-Armour Shirt of Strength.
Halo 4 will have Cheef trade in his warthog for a Jeep Wrangler Unlimited, and have him exlaim various crap while driving such as "man, the handling on this thing is amazing!"
Final Fantasy XIV will replace every potion with various flavors of Vitamin Water, and every Esper will be replaced by LeBron James and Greg Oden and each summon will be followed by a screen saying "This summon was brought to you by NBA on TNT Thursdays."
While Forza Motorsport 3 is loading a track, a teaser of Apocalypto will play. If the Nürburgring is being loaded, it will play the full trailer and possibly the "making of" video.
I can't wait.
The game was in playable form at E3 2005 and I was there as a correspondent, so I got some good demos from the Blizzard staff. It was there on all 3 consoles as far as I can recall, and although the Cube one didn't have online multiplayer, all 3 looked cool and played well.
A 3rd-person shooter of that sort would be very welcome by folks who miss the good old days of Jet Force Gemini, and I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the game 2 years ago. It also appeared nearly finished!
However, the additional delays basically made it a title that would be released well into the 360's lifespan, making it look very outdated. I do hope they get a chance to overhaul the graphics engine and maybe add whatever content they felt was missing, and release the game.
(Though, the real deal-maker would be if they made it possible to play through the game as either Nova (the ghost) or a Protoss hero, and possibly some hyper-intelligent Hydralisk or something.)
That makes sense... I guess WoW is by design something that forces guild leaders into being obsessed or at least a bit too dedicated to the game. Well, makes me glad I play GW instead :-)
I have to agree with much of what you said. I'm not far enough in my career yet to know whether my "leadership" skills in an MMO are transferrable to a large extent (when I become an IT manager perhaps, we'll see), but having to manage 45+ people, even online, does give one insight into how such a group of people interacts and how to resolve differences between them.
Your next-to-last paragraph, describing leaders that take a very casual approach to the game, is totally on-the-dot as far as many I know :-) (myself included). The others you describe -- these are the leaders that see their guilds come and go in at best a year. The long-timers, the ones that make good friends that stay together from game-to-game, these are actually the older folks, often married and with children of their own, who take a VERY casual and mature approach to gaming, these are the ones who have guilds last for many years. I know a number of GW guilds that started off as Diablo 2 guilds, and plan on sticking together through GW2 and onwards, all things permitting. Their leaders, and even "officers," are not overly active in-game by any means. They simply make good decisions.
Interestingly, such guilds are usually quite large. At least two that I know very well have between 400 and 1000 members (forced in GW to span an entire "Alliance" as opposed to a single guild), and are led by women in their 40s+ (if not older?) who are simply wise enough to command respect, and are assisted in their duties by what may be dozens of capable "officers" who divide these duties amongst themselves. As a result, no-one needs to be "obsessed" with the game or overly active. You will find that the guilds with members that really do "piss away" their lives in these games -- these guilds don't last very long. At the very least, those members don't last long in the "good" (read: long-lasting) guilds, as I have seen a few come-and-go in the guilds I've known.
Those leaders are the ones that lose their guilds real fast if they have to actually provide some real leadership, though. They're the ones that lead the hundreds of guilds that come and go on a whim.
I for one, and the successful guild leaders I've known, are very far from playing the game much. I log onto Guild Wars for at most 1 hr per evening, mostly to check up on people, say hi to everyone, and possibly help someone out on a quick quest or participate in a player-vs-player battle. Most of my work as leader entails participating in forum discussions, organizing guild meetings to see what direction to take things, get to know new members and get them to interact with the older ones as much as possible so that player experience can be shared, etc. In many ways it is an administrative role, but also one where I need to set the example of how to approach the game. I don't want players to get obsessed and then eventually burn out on the MMO through overplaying. Stressing moderation, and things like work/school first, is what keeps folks playing and enjoying it when they have free time for it. The "being always on" criterion you mentioned, although insightful and true to a degree, is handled differently in my case (and in the case of most others I know). That is, there is a rank in MMOs called something like "officer," which is simply like a "moderator" on a forum (as opposed to the equivalent of leader, the "admin") in terms of authority. Picking responsible ones, and just enough so that at any given time of moderate-to-heavy guild activity, there is at least one online to keep the peace and help novices with things, and generally provide guideance -- that fulfills the role that otherwise an obsessed and perpetually active leader would need to fill.
That "finite number" of 2000 you mentioned might apply to some MMOs, but it most certainly doesn't to Guild Wars. In that game, the servers are: North America, Europe, China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan. So, unless your guild is like 200,000 people (max guild size is 100 btw), you won't be able to control the high-level content much, hehe.
Actually given the number of active accounts in WoW, I doubt 2000 is the number one's looking for there, either. It's probaby a couple of orders of magnitude larger.
I've been an officer in a high-profile GW guild in the past, and currently lead my own guild. The former was the first-ever GW guild, and is still doing very well. Mine as well. Yet, in the time I've played the game, I have seen MANY guilds fall apart, even those that seemed like they'd go on forever. And every single time, it has come down to a question of leadership. "Drama" is always waiting to happen, and good guild leaders (and officer groups) will either prevent it before it does, or handle it swiftly and decisively *if* it does. Those that don't will eventually lose their guild.
Why? The answer is simple -- people really only care about *playing the game,* and of course they see drama as a hindrance in that regard. Once they see that they spend less time playing the game and more time worrying about "what will happen to the guild," they want out.
The guilds that survive for extended periods of time are laid-back ones that put the goal of just playing the game first, and make it a point to ignore or avoid all of the surrounding personal issues that come up.
If you are truly the Lord of Hyphens, you should say "hop-skip-and-a-jump." Right now you are the Lord of Plus Signs.
I mostly disagree with the latter portion of your comment. The question of how closely one identifies with a movie character vs. a 'controlled' character in a game isn't that simple to define, nor can it be answered without exceptions.
What if a game only had your character do "Hostel"-level gruesome things to others in cutscenes, when not under your control? Would you expect "film standards" to be applied in that case?
I think it's easier to reason that the levels of violence setting a PG-13 film from an R-rated film should be expected to be about the same as those setting a T game from an M game.
In the end, the ratings are all quite arbitrary. I can find R-rated films with less violence, language, sexual content, etc. than some PG-13 movies, for instance.
Well.. there's a fee for the DVR on top of it being an HD digital cable box box but it seems worth it to me... it does have time-shifting, doesn't require an internet connection, has a good program guide (why not want one?), has *better* than VCR-like programming (can record manually set times, all episodes of a particular show, or all NEW episodes of a particular show, and of course just one-time recordings of something like a movie).
The DVR setup I have is literally part of the digital cable box, so sadly I am incapable of anything you listed in the second paragraph.