1) When the fuck are you talking about? Games on the Playstation 1 were $45-50. And while I was too young to buy them myself...Google suggests that SNES games were similarly priced. 2) To be fair....there's probably a lot more work going in to making these games. And a substantially greater demand.
I'm thinking back to prior to the N64 days. I may have exaggerated a little. But I vividly recall copies of Goldeneye costing 30 bucks at Wal-Mart. And that was one of the more popular ones. I'll agree on the second point, though. Still, I can't help but wonder if that much work is necessary. I mean, by chief complaint is games losing their functionality (Call of Duty, in particular) or otherwise not being very imaginative with the mechanics, in pursuit of having a game look and sound dazzling. And I read somewhere (might have been the RMMB) that the next GTA game is expected to have a $100M budget. That's nuts.
Whenever a "behind the scenes" element of a game changes, like a physics engine, AI, etc., it takes a SHIT LOAD of work, and is almost transparent to the game player. If you could freeze the hardware/software platform of a game, and then just keep building up bits on that, it would be much easier. Until some asswipe on the dev teams says something stupid like "if we switched to this AI, we'd have better control over X, and it'd be easier for us to code Y." But it then requires almost a complete re-write to implement, just to get back to where you started from. The constant evolution of engines is a nightmare to developers, as they have this notion that they have to keep up with the latest and greatest, which takes stupid amounts of time and money. Take a look at Duke Nukem as a prime example.
That's what marginal benefit is all about; something that most people don't seem to understand. Keeping up with "the latest and greatest" is far too overrated.
Not only overrated, but will spell the downfall of a lot of game companies and titles. There are some pretty stupid technical people making major decisions about how shit is being built, and shit is going bad and not meeting deadlines as a result. For instance, the FIFA Online and Need For Speed Online systems were supposed to use a bunch of shared code developed by an independent EA developer overseas. My take, as the guy brought in as the contracted online architect for NFS World Online, was that it was crap and wasn't going to work. As a result, I designed a new approach/tech stack, and we built it out, and launched ontime. FIFA pushed forward with their shit, and it didn't work, and they fucked up their launch. (We laughed, and were complete pricks about it, but FUCK THEM for being idiots). They tried to get too complex and too reliant on guys that had no experience, and made too big a change too soon. And their egos wouldn't let them do anything different.
Off the top of my head, people who purchase games that require one to input a code to play online. A perfect example is Mortal Kombat. It comes with a code in the case that you have to redeem through the PlayStation Store to download the unlock key and play it online. There are a lot of other games with codes like that, because they want to make you purchase new codes if you buy the games second hand. With the PS Store down, people can't redeem codes to play online for recently purchased games. On top of that, a lot of game companies are losing revenue because they sell games online. Take Capcom, for example. They've released two new retro Mega Man games and two Bionic Commando downloadable games (and I'm sure more that I'm not aware of), which at the moment, people can't purchase and download. They're getting fucked in the ass because all of the sales they were getting on the PSN are now completely gone, and they've lost all that revenue. There was also downloadable content for games was supposed to come out during this outage, and people with Xbox could get it, while people with Playstation can't. I'm sure there are a lot of people who don't use the store and don't think twice about it, but I'm also sure there are plenty of people who have been fucked by this outage.
To be fair, they released the map editor (beta) to the public and it's an extremely popular game, so there will most likely be an insane amount of custom maps.
I suppose that changes things, then. I haven't had the opportunity to play it yet (though I really want to), and all reviews I've heard thus far is that it can be beaten fairly quickly and doesn't offer much replayability.
I am a bit more underved with the cost of peripherals this generation that the 60 dollar game price bump. I must have bought 4 or 5 Duel Shock 2s for 25 bucks for my PS2. DS3s are 55 bucks new. Fuck. That. Noise. Is the addition of sixaxis and rumble costing them that much more? All you ever hear is that peripherals are the big money maker and it is hard not to think that they are trying to stick it to you. But fuck I just got Socom 4 new in the box for 42.50 and free shipping off amazon. Controllers are in the 24-30 dollar range. Fuck gamestop. Whats BestBuys deal matching like? A buddy of mine said he showed them some jank dealer from amazon who had a sweet TV deal and got the price knocked down on the flatscreen he bought there. Reading their website it seems like he might have gotten lucky or do they really match prices that freely these days?
They'll likely match it, depending on how well their store does. A store that is doing poor is more likely to price match for a sale than a store that is really busy. My brother worked at Best Buy for years in their computers and then their home theater departments, and still does on their geek squad. They don't make money on TVs, computers, games, or DVDs. Most of those are sold at or below cost. They make their money selling things like HD cords (their cost: $4.00, their resale price: about $35), printers, printer cartridges, warranty sales, installation, and things like that. They want you to buy a TV so that they can sell you a warranty and some geek squad installation, so once geek squad gets there, they sell you on a surround sound system and high end cables to hook everything up.
Agreed on the replayability, as this is a puzzle game and once you've solved it, the thrill is in fact gone. But as far as it being a short game, there's two kinds of Portal 2 reviewers: those who actually took their time and enjoyed the experience, and maybe even were challenged by the later maps (to the point of staring at their screen for like 10 minutes straight just thinking shit through, or so I've heard); and those who will lie to you about how good they are at the game. I can assure you that the game is definitely NOT 4 hours long as some of the Metacritics put it. I can also assure you that there's just as much, if not more fun to be had from the co-op mode (which is not just "add Player 2", but a whole separate experience).
I second this. In fact, even if you're just playing through the co-op, you're missing out on an entire third game, which is find as many ways to kill your teammate as possible. And drink every time you die. That's the best game of all.
I've been looking for my Welcome Back package for the last 10 minutes. Nothing concrete on the blog. They're posting shit like they haven't been gone 6 weeks. Kubla, Best Buy will not match anything from an online company. They'll only match retail with physical locations or as they call it "Brick and Mortar" locations. Any retail that tries to match an online company will bleed money.
Sony being targeted by hackers once again--Lulzsec to be specific--this time Sony Pictures where allegedly 1 million user's personal information was stolen: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.1up.com/news/sony-pictures-hacked-users-personal-data-compromised" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.1up.com/news/sony-pictures-h ... ompromised</a>
Now this seems at least somewhat like constructive criticism but fuck I don't know how much I can feel sorry for Sony if they are that stupid. Fuck these hackers though, it'll be a matter of time before you start seeing major FBI investigations and federal charges brought to mass numbers of these individual hackers...
The problem is that computers make people feel "anonymous," so these hackers think they'll never get caught. They also have an inflated sense of entitlement: they feel that they should be able to download free movies, games, tv shows, and anything else they want, and then scream that they're defending free speech and other freedoms and 'rights' that they don't actually have and don't actually exist. No, you don't have the 'right' to download pirated movies and music. You also don't have the right to hack your PS3 so that it will play hacked and illegally downloaded games, and make no mistake, this is the primary reason Sony doesn't want their PS3's to have different operating systems, and the primary reasons hackers are so desperate to have different OS's on their PS3's. The reality is that they're only going to bring a fuckton of heat down on themselves. Congress is already getting involved, and people were already working to fight pirates and hackers before, but now efforts are going to be completely ramped up. Don't be surprised if the talk becomes one of a "war" on hackers in the near future after these incidents.
Just so you know, most of the "official voices" in online gaming are nothing more than glorified interns. I know that the "Community Managers" (who got paid $11/hr but had a cool title and street cred in the gamer world) were told specifically what topics to NOT talk about, and are only allowed to discuss things that are within their sphere of influence. They've probably been sitting on their thumbs in their cubes while everything's been dead, and are just picking up where they left off before they were hacked. This is such a touchy subject with potential legal ramifications that you'd better believe that no such person will post ANYTHING about what happened unless they've been handed a very specific script from the Powers That Be to cut/paste. $0.02
Hoping I might get some ideas on here... I could post it on the tech support threads as well so mods move it if you feel fit. Anyone been having issues with WoW and DX11? In particular, I just bought a ASUS GTX270 and I was pumped to run DX11 in WoW. There's just one problem, it wont run it. I've done everything as far as turning AO off, and did complete clean reinstalls of up-to-date drivers, but nothing. Anyone have any ideas? Here's my Battle.net topic. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2592855801
Duke Nukem Forever is scheduled for release on June 14th in North America. Anyone else as looking forward to this as much as I?