neckthrough

I'm 99% sure they will. Over the past few years they've been slowly migrating songs over from iTunes to iTunes Plus, and they've always had an option somewhere to update your library to Plus whenever and wherever possible. It used to cost money because iTunes Plus tracks used to be $1.29 before, but all tracks are $0.99 now.

Announcement at Macworld today: starting today, 8 million songs will be on iTunes Plus (i.e., DRM-free, high-quality 256K). By the end of this quarter, ALL 10 MILLION SONGS ON ITUNES WILL BE DRM FREE!!!

Yeea.. except tiny insignificant things like how they couldnt get it to render at 1280x720(xbox360 standard resolution), so they had to lower the resolution thus making it look like a grainy migraine-inducing smudge? Sometimes your ignorance frustrates me. I believe Kaftan's comment was 100% accurate. Nothing surprising here, it was a simple tradeoff, a price the devs probably had to pay to maintain a consistent 30fps. Several console games are rendered at a lower resolution and then upscaled to 720p/1080p.

Two new class-action lawsuits against EA over DRM

AnandTech's detailed Review is up. As expected, Nehalem doesn't offer too much for gaming or general purpose apps (and as Kaftan said gaming's completely GPU-limited anyway). What it does do is smooth out several of the kinks in the Core 2 architecture, which is why you see such huge performance boosts in certain applications.

http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.ph...892618&st=0 http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=892715 It's one thing to require users to uninstall Daemon tools in order to play a SecuROM game, but it seems even 100% legit tools like Nero is unacceptable to SecuROM. You're only allowed to keep the standard Windows CD burning software. Seriously, this piece of crapware must go away.

Yeah it was a sarcastic remark. Though I wouldn't bet on it not coming true someday.

I guess this is one major advantage of console gaming over PC gaming. Your games never expire if the publisher pulls some server... Don't worry, they'll fix this soon enough. Today's console disks provide copy-protection equivalent to the CD-key checks used in PC games thus far. Future console disks will only be playable on the first 3 unique consoles you first play the disk on. Once you "activate" a particular console, you can play the game on that console as many times as you wish, but if you want to play it on another console you will use up an activation. The idea is to limit second-hand sales (an ugly and downright criminal practice that is rampant in the console space), and to discourage you from lending your disk to your friend temporarily (another deplorable practice). These modifications will bring console DRM on par with today's PC DRM.

Bioware says "Games these days got no consequences". http://kotaku.com/5069615/bioware-says-gam...no-consequences

I liked the intro: Sounds like Oblivion with Guns (and some Tacked-On-CnC). Could still be a fun game. I'll wait for the price to hit the $30 mark.

Yup, then you wouldn't like Generals or RA3. They're both micro-oriented games. Some people enjoy this tremendously, since a single unit can sometimes turn the tide of a Zero Hour battle. Different strokes I guess.

Have you played any of EA's CnC games? Granted, CnC3 was lacklustre, but Generals and Zero Hour were immensely enjoyable games, both for their single-player campaign as well as online multiplayer. I was never good enough to be able to compete online, but my impression from the online community has always been that while they didn't have much in the way of macro-management (so they're nowhere close to a real e-sport RTS like Starcraft), they were fun little micro-management intensive games. In fact, as far as competitive multiplayer is concerned, I believe Generals and Zero Hour are considered superior to Westwood's revered originals. I've been following the RA3 Beta and it seems most of the community generally prefer it to CnC3, it's not as good as Zero Hour was. So it seems to have decent core gameplay. Package this gameplay in a completely wacky over-the-top Hollywood-esque single-player campaign, and I think you end up with an enjoyable game. It's sad that Westwood died, but there's no need to unnecessarily revere their games as some gold standard that no modern developer can surpass.

I've been lurking about the RA3 forums (at gamereplays.org) for the past few months. A couple of days back, gamesradar.com published a somewhat shallow review for the game. A gamereplays.org veteran member proceeded to write the following article in response, which I really liked. I think many of his comments are relevant to the state of gaming journalism in general. Linky: http://www.gamereplays.org/redalert3/porta...rt-3-scores-big

Yeah I heard about this recently, and it's disturbing. Steam already provides a decent enough authentication system to discourage casual copying, which is what DRM is about anyway... anybody that seriously wants to play the game without paying for it would just get the torrent. On another note, I've been thinking about EA's recent comments. Assuming that they genuinely intend to follow through with their promises, I think the combination of user-deactivations and a future patch removing activation limits altogether addresses most of the practical complaints most customers would have with DRM. My personal ideological objections still remain, though. I still can't come to terms with the fact that I'm having to install junk on my machine when the torrent is probably going to get released on the very same day the game goes for sale. Seriously, if SecuROM were able to protect their content for even a few days after release, I could possibly just bite the bullet because there's *some* good coming out of DRM use.

Games you buy via Steam are attached to your Steam account. To start up a game, you log on to Steam, which authenticates you with a password (similar to an online game), and then launches the game locally installed on your machine. If you wish to play offline, you can just authenticate your account once and then go into offline mode, following which you can play any Steam game as many times as you wish without an internet connection. Of course, if you want to download updates or purchase any new games, you'll want to log on again. So, Steam does exert some amount of control over your activities as a user, but I like the fact that it does allow you to go offline if you wish. I don't think I've ever used Steam in offline mode, but it's important for me to have the freedom to do so. In return for its (mostly minimal) interference in your activities, Steam offers a handful of useful value additions (unlike any other DRM scheme): You can often pre-stream game data into your hard drive before some game releases. On release day, you either purchase an activation key online, or go to the store, purchase a box and get the activation code from within. Enter the activation code into Steam and your game is good to go. The steam servers maintain a record of the games you own. You can delete and re-install your games as and when you choose without having to look for your CDs. Patches and updates for all your installed games are streamed in and applied automatically the moment you log onto your Steam account. You can log out of your account on your home machine, get to work, log onto Steam on your work machine and start playing Half Life 2. You'll probably get fired though. So yes, it's DRM, but the application works perfectly, it does not install rootkits on my machine, it allows me to install and play my games on as many machines as I want to (as long as I have my login information), it does allow me to go offline if I so wish, and in exchange for the limited control it exerts, it provides a bunch of useful services. I think that's the key distinction between Steam and all other DRM methods: all other methods provide ZERO benefits to the end user, Steam actually gives you a reason to use it.

And play for what? 6 hours? 8? Not to mention that purportedly the last 30% of "Crysis" is not so great and generally Crysis is just another shooter, albeit a pretty one. There is no doubt that by a MMO with modest tech requirements folks in strained circumstances get far more entertainment for their buck. Not to mention that ongoing small payments are easier to manage (and justify to oneself) and they can cancel at any time. Personally, I am sick and tired of the graphics race and would heartily endorse some single-player games with lower-end graphics as well. Maybe the Devs would even manage to make them with few bugs and new, interesting gameplay, if they aren't so concentrated on forcing some extra pixels in? Isn't it funny, how most games run at top form on most normal gamers PCs only a year or 2 after release, when they have become bargain purchases long since? What kind of screwed up economics is that? I do agree that a blind graphics race is stupid. Visual appeal is an important to me, but art direction is far more important than sheer technical pixel-pushing prowess. WoW itself is a great example with modest system requirements, yet it looks gorgeous. But you took my Crysis example out of context. It may be a short, crappy game. But there are many single-player or multi-player free-to-play games that people derive months of enjoyment from. Some of these require hardware investments, but the amount you pay for WoW ($180) is more than enough to buy a new $50 game every year plus all the hardware upgrade you need to be able to play any game you wish. I do *not* like having to continuously upgrade hardware, I think having to spend $100 each year on a graphics card is ridiculous. But having to pay $180 for WoW (or any game), to me, is equally ridiculous. Why do you think people lease and mortgage purchases that cost them several times more than the actual value of the purchase? A year's subscription to WoW may cost you $180, but when you're paying it in $15 increments, it becomes easier to make that payment. $180 up front is seen as a more significant cost than $180 spread out over 12 months. Furthermore, saving up for $180 does have an effect on people...since it becomes easier to impulse buy something that comes up. Now, I could save up for 12 months to buy the video card to play the game I want to play (net 0 months of play time), or I could just play the game (net 12 months of play time). Which one do you think someone that doesn't have much for money laying around would prefer? If I plop down $180 on a video card, but then hit a financial crisis where I'm very tight for cash...I am pooched....the money is gone, and never coming back. If I am currently in month 3 of my $15 subscription, I stop my subscription, and still have money left over. Yes, I do understand the economics. It's just that intuitively it seems to me that anybody that doesn't have $180 in floating expendable cash probably wouldn't consider spending $15 a month on a sheer luxury like a game subscription a wise idea. Cars and homes are slightly different, since they are essential amenities, the loan periods are 5-30x longer, plus I think human brains throw all logic down the drain when it comes to taking out a mortgage on a house.

EA has made a statement on RA3's DDRM: http://forums.ea.com/mboards/thread.jspa?t...34&tstart=0 Mostly unchanged, except the tone is much more gentle, almost apologetic, plus there's this new "promise":

I doubt that making it in a more "realistic" style -id est the other two KotOR games- would task people's PC too much. Poor people are also unlikely to be able to afford a game with monthly fees - unless they are very, very motivated indeed to play it. Not true. A small monthly cost is much easier to swallow than a large upfront payment for high end computer components. Depends on how small "small" is. A year's subscription of WoW would cost you $180 (not including the initial game cost), for which you could buy a fairly high-end card (9800GTX) and plop it into any run-of-the mill Dell machine and turn it into a Crysis-capable monster. Now if we're talking $5 a month, then yes, your comparison is valid.

This made me LOL.

Regardless of whether virtual crimes are tried in a virtual court or a real one, I do think the punishment should be limited to within the virtual world. Stole somebody's virtual property? You'll lose all your gold and your high-level character (or perhaps all your characters) has to spend 6 months in a virtual jail cell (I'm pretty sure that'll drive an MMO addict nuts).

I'll wait and watch this one out, but I'm not too hopeful.

IGN review: 8.8