Discussions

Pachinko is still everywhere, just about the only thing that is even more noisy than the electronics stores.

I couldn't believe Microsoft would have done such as thing but back then the "youthful" look was in. A lot of the adverts had pre-adolescent looking models and they were plastered everywhere.

That's not a matter of being "in". That's just a part of Japanese culture, unfortunately. Japanese men like youthful women (most of them seem to have a Lolita complex), so you end up with 30 year old women who look and act like they're 14. Considering that Japan is still one of the least emancipated "civilized" nations (though fortunately it is getting better), women pretty much have no choice to confirm to the stereotypes if they want to have any hopes of getting a husband or a job.

1 hour ago, DeathBy​VisualStudio wrote

It reminded me a bit of Tokyo where on every street corner in certain districts pretty ladies would try and entice you to come to their bar and buy them drinks.

That's not a part of Tokyo I've ever seen. The closest I can think of would be Kabukicho, a famous red-light district, but there it's almost exclusively guys standing outside trying to convince you to go to their sex clubs.

Besides which, have you ever been in an electronics store in Tokyo? Every single department will have at least 20 people standing around yelling at extremely high volume about their products. The floors that sell mobile phones are particularly bad. They also tend to stand outside, so even on the streets you're not safe. The sheer loudness of shopping in Tokyo can be extremely off-putting, though after a while you just tune it out and ignore them (that's what I did at least).

XAML was designed for easy tooling. XML makes perfect sense for that. The bloat only matters if you want to write it by hand (and even then a good editor will take care of most of it).

And I don't know if you noticed, but the alternative to XAML in WinRT (HTML5/JS) also uses a markup language based on XML.

Not bad. It's short, to the point, somewhat catchy, and actually shows the product.

1 hour ago, DeathBy​VisualStudio wrote

I don't know where you get the impression that I'm angry.

Because that is the tone your writing conveys. If that is not your intent I would seriously reconsider your choice of words and writing style.

25 seconds ago, jinx101 wrote

It is yet to be seen whether the storm they've created is short term like they guess or whether it will tank the system.  We can all speculate but none of us will know until it happens. 

Yeah, there's definitely outrage, but whether it will impact the bottom line remains to be seen.

Mass Effect 3 probably had the largest instance of nerd outrage ever witnessed concerning a computer game. It started with the huge outcry about the day 1 DLC, but that was nothing compared to what would follow about the ending. It was a sufficiently large outrage that BioWare suspended work on other DLC in order to provide a expanded ending for free... about which there was then just as much outrage. Angry Joe's videos were linked to a couple of times here about the XBO, and he did similar "rage" videos about ME3. It seemed everybody hated the game. On the BioWare forums today the debate about the ending is still going on.

Yet ME3 still made tons of money, and topped numerous best seller lists. Despite all the people who very vocally proclaimed they would never give another dime to EA (and would therefore not buy any future DLC), there have been no reports that ME3's DLC actually sold less than previous DLC, quite the contrary in fact, even though ME3's DLC was more expensive than previous ME DLC.

So I don't think outrage is a good barometer for actual sales, at all.

36 minutes ago, kettch wrote

@Bas: But as a rule, the really great sales are the only time I buy games. However, most people are probably fine paying full retail which is strange. I like games, but not $50-60 kind of like.

There's only a handful of games that I've bought at full retail price. Usually these are the kinds of games that I've been waiting for a long time and want to get immediately at release. They include Uru, Myst V, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, and Mass Effect 3. The latter two are the only two games I've ever pre-ordered.

And speaking of Dreamfall, I backed the Dreamfall Chapters kickstarter for $150. Probably would've been more if I'd been able to afford it. Because screw it, I don't care if it's a ridiculous amount of money, us TLJ fans have been waiting for that game for 6 years, I'd probably sell my first born to make sure it gets made.

EDIT: Also, I never suggested that MS was strong-armed into adding the DRM. Rather, I think that MS added the DRM on their own accord because they thought the publishers would like that feature. Which of course they do, they're just not admitting it because of the backlash.

1 minute ago, Dr Herbie wrote

I don't think it was at 'unprecedented levels' until SOny whipped it up this week.

You have to hand it to Sony's marketing department, the way they made use of the sentiments expressed at the XBO's reveal to manipulate public opinion in their favour was truly marvelous.

2 hours ago, Dr Herbie wrote

I can happily say that I've never shared a game or even bough or sold one second-hand. When I was a kid, if we wanted to play a friend's game, we would simply go to their house and play it on their computer. You know, actually leaving our bedrooms, walking in sunlight, socialising, that sort of thing.

When I was a kid, when you wanted to play a friend's game, you gave them a bunch of floppies and they made a copy. None of us knew that was illegal. Copy protection didn't matter, since the version they had was usually already a copy, and therefore cracked.

In our defense, quite a lot of the stuff we traded back then was shareware (like the free chapters of Commander Keen or Wolfenstein). It's not like we knew the distinction between shareware and retail games. Most of us barely knew English, if at all.

And quite a lot of the games I copied back then I ended up buying, eventually. Some of them more than once (e.g. I got an original, a collection, and/or a copy from gog.com). The Myst games are the worst in that regard: I bought Myst as much as six times (original, masterpiece, 10th Anniversary DVD, gog.com, realMyst, and iPhone). Riven, 5 times, appropriately (original, DVD, 10th Anniversary DVD, gog.com, and iPhone).

8 minutes ago, evildictait​or wrote

Maybe I'm crazy, but I'm going to wait and see what games are on the consoles before deciding which console to get.

I'm no expert in this area, but it seems to me that all the DRM stuff is things MS is doing because the games' publishers want them. If that is the case, it could end up that more publishers prefer the XBO which means MS might end up with more exclusive games.