Zoraptor

Why not? Probably because he refuses to read the link I've provided twice thrice. That's also a figure consistent with other available sources (NPD/ VGChartz; may be some recursion).

Well, they had different default views and different control schemes. Different engines would be news though. EA disagrees with you (as you've been told multiple times the figure they have is 1.6 million sold after three months, 2 million shipped, the link has been provided multiple times too) and in a battle of credibility between an EA quarterly report and some random guy on the Codex via Volo filter it's, well, not even a contest.

EA bought Bioware in Oct 2007, so two years basically. WoD: There is no solid source for it that I know of- there was a lot of speculation from some very knowledgable sources though that the key factor was the feasibility of console versions. IIRC DA was left off some EA lists of upcoming games which is where a lot of the speculation came from and someone from Bio said that EA were reviewing their active projects but I may not RC and unfortunately that's the sort of thing Google is very bad at searching for. Up to July 2008 DA was still a PC exclusive game, it was announced for consoles then. While they would have been working on it for a while prior to that I see no way that it wasn't 'ported'. EA themselves ('During its call with investors, Electronic Arts CEO John Rictiello [sic] said that the [PC] delay was due to marketing' per Shacknews) said that the PC version was completed to time, since content wise the two versions were identical that leaves, well, what? as an alternative to what the extra time was spent doing. It's certainly not unreasonable to think that many of the storyline/ artists/ designers etc did not sit around twiddling their thumbs for the six months of the delay.

One other thing to bear in mind is that DAO sat around being converted to consoles for months after it was finished. No doubt some of the people involved went to DAO:A but others will have started work on DA2 pre production. At that time they would probably have expected Mass Effect 2 to sell better than DAO, which it didn't end up doing of course, but since EA apparently considered canceling DAO as being too oldschool it seems very likely that was their expectation. As such, making a 'Dragon Effect' would at the time have looked like an eminently sensible idea as well as most of the changes saving money.

US patent office issues vague and overly broad patent, news at Basmati Rice and Yellow Beans are unique American inventions and people in Mexico and India need to licence the crops they've been growing for centuries. I'd suspect it's specifically related to the algorthym used to identify computers, a hash generated from the MAC address of the network card plus the assorted hardware- and about the only way of actually doing so. No mention of Tages so I'd suspect it's one of those patents that gets laughed at by Euros; SecuROM (SonyDADC) is named though. Uniloc made the DRM on Alpha Protocol.

There's a greasemonkey script (template?) floating around that will purge replies quoting designated users as well if you want a Volo free browsing experience, ignore doesn't cut it, and if you have Firefox. h8rs_gonna_h8_.gif facepalm_montage_.gif

I think a number of people would argue that the changes to DA2 are basically making it Dragon Effect/ Mass Age* which is hardly something different- consolidating everything into the Mass Effect Model 'RPG' and going from two fairly distinct products to one gestalt line. *hoho, the second one is a euphemism for prostitution I'm unintentionally witty, haha.

Sheesh Volo, are you in a 'who can be more disingenuous competition? 100+ employees across 2 and a bit teams and the source for the 700k figure was provided not just in the first post, but directly on the first page. Ah, the internet, where stating something as fact, having a red user name and sounding authoritative is enough. Faaaaaiiiiiled. It's always specified which is being used as it's a legal obligation to be accurate with things that affect share price for publicly traded companies. EA q3 reports "ME2 shipped 2 million copies to retailers" EA q4 report "ME2 sold through 1.6 million units on 360, PC and digital downloads" Personally I think he's right in this case (on balance of probability) but he's nowhere near being as authoritative as he likes to appear. Definitively non definitive.

Perhaps the average AAA next gen game costs $25 million to develop, but there aren't many of those a year. I'd be surprised if AP cost anywhere near that amount. Bioshock cost around $25 million to make and it was 4 years in development and had three studios working on it for the last of those years. Bioshock 2 had four. Sauce? The Japanese translation of the figures gives a rather less than useful "units sold", and a standard disclaimer. A shipped figure seems sensible to me, though that makes the Iron Man totals small given it was shipped to five platforms.

The moon? A planet? Something in space? Dear god please let it be in space.... Seriously, that is probably the safest bet that could be made 11/08/99 System Shock 2 released ... 11/08/10 ??? announced

Yep, that's her.

no it didn't thank god. I suspect you skipped some relevant bits- Triss and the other read head healer chick (funny I can't remember her name either) were 'romances' at least as much as anything BioWare has done, albeit romances from outside the setting of a party. You didn't have to choose either of course, but then you don't have to romance anyone in Bioware games either. Most importantly (hohoho), you got two booby cards for the one you romanced.

While the amount of military activity would make it a 'target rich' environment it would also make it very hard for the North to get a submarine into position. For the love of... You do not need contact for it to be a mine. That is not supposition, it is not inference it is simple fact and has been for seventy odd years. As you appear unable to go to the nice Wikipedia link I handily provided here is the direct quote: Even in the initial report- yep I actually bothered to read it- the only thing which they state is definitively torpedo is the wreckage they found and everything else they state is consistent with a torpedo (they certainly imply a lot of other evidence as being exclusive but that is standard PR practice in, well, everything). It wouldn't have to be old. It could also be recent, a malfunctioning 'friendly' one, one from either side that has broken its mooring or numerous other possibilities.

(1) Doesn't really compute. You wouldn't say 'don't jump to conclusions, it was probably a mine' if you knew all along it was a torpedo. (2) Captain's ship blows in half, he phones in a 'we are being attacked' message. If it happened before his ship blew in half it'd be fairly compelling, for sure, but after? All he knows is that there's a big explosion. There's no suggestion that a torpedo launch was detected at any point, just an explosion. (3) First I've heard of them having new stealth tech, considering the US sonar is designed to detect 'proper' stealth tech used by the Russians on SSBNs I find it difficult to believe that DPRK has better, though I'd be willing to be convinced if you can provide evidence. Perhaps you'd care to furnish the quote where I suggest that? Either an accident or a mine would be alternatives to 'hey let's murder some of our own sailors'. Given what I'd already said I would have thought it obvious what I considered the most likely alternative- hint: I'm hardly going to say that it didn't have to be a torpedo (the parts of which constitute the only actual proof of anything other than a non contact explosion) and could be a mine in two separate places if I thought it had to be/ was a torpedo.

That contradicts their initial statements. It would be a bit embarrassing if true as (1) the Cheonan was an anti-submarine corvette and (2) there are a staggering number of active and passive sonars in that area. Doesn't mean the report isn't true, but most of the 'definitive' details released are no where near as definitive as they're made out to be. I hadn't heard anything about this. When was that? Do you have a link? This mentions two incidents, though it obviously isn't the greatest source in the world for specifics.

Yes exactly, that's why even though it is an example (ie someone could be insulted by being called a janitor) it is a bad example because it's obvious Parker wasn't. Don't worry, you'll never convince Volo it's a bad example, one of his charms is his absolute faith in his own opinions even in the face of incontrovertible proof he's wrong.

Nope, they don't (see spefcifically 'influence mines' as wiki calles them). Haven't since at least WW2 as the Germans had magnetic mines (as well as magnetic torpedoes) which could be nullified by degaussing ships, by that point. They also (can, it does of course depend on the exact torpedo/ exact mine) use the same explosives. I know the contact thing keeps getting repeated but it's simply wrong In this case LoF is right at least on one thing, ROK itself ruled out a torpedo attack initially for several reasons- main one being that there were no 'missing' DPRK submarines and that particular area has the most active/ passive sonar in the world for obvious reasons- and there was absolutely no indications from any intelligence sources that the DPRK had any knowledge about it, no unusual chatter etc. Whether it actually was a fix is unprovable of course, it certainly is politically expedient for the ROK's ruling party to blame the DPRK and they definitely had DPRK origin torpedoes available (from a submarine they nabbed trying to extract DPRK special forces, IIRC). Also their idea of an 'independent' panel was somewhat... well, it would have rather more impact if somewhere like Russia had been included. As it stands the only one with a shred of independence is Sweden.

Irrational has been working on a Civilisation fps for a while, so that's presumably the announcement.

Yeah, you don't get what an example is don't you? Volo is referring to an actual dialogue choice. It's a bad example, as Parker (who Thorton refers to as a 'janitor') takes no umbrage at the suggestion he's a janitor and actually says it would be a good guess later on in the conversation. You can make it an insult, but only if you follow up the initial professional choice with a suave (?) choice, iirc. That's probably the biggest criticism I'd make. It either needed to stay as a 'serious business' spy game or go the more stylised route fully. As it stands having some things realistic and some not is a bit of an uncomfortable blend.

Oh Volo, you've moved on to quoting Codex posters as authoritative sources? Time to give the internet a rest for a bit. Especially since that guy got things outright wrong ( )

And some people slobber all over anything new with a bit of marketing like a labrador puppy after a treat. That's hardly Road to Damascus stuff. A list of Steamworks benefits, from a developer/ publisher's POV 1) DRM. 1a) Not that Steam prevents piracy, of course, though like most online DRM it is at least good at preventing pre Day 1 piracy. 1b) Prevents 2nd hand sales, at least in theory. 2) Monitoring- allows analysis of well, everything game related. Theoretically useful for patching, practically I don't imagine it's used much as I doubt most publishers care enough. 3) Built in MP infrastructure 4) Built in DLC handling 5) Free 6) Misc other features (achievements/ cloud saving) 7) Built in, vocal, fanbase that will defend anything Valve/ Steam to the hilt and beyond. 3-5 can be covered by viLe as well as an alternative, free, middleware. The big points are probably 3-5, and especially 7. The number of people who rejoice at Steam exclusivity as if it's manna from heavan- and as if they wouldn't be able to buy on Steam without the exclusivity- is astounding, and it can hardly be said that any other DRM except for the much neglected and maligned None has anywhere near as much (any) support.

"YOU ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT YOUR SOLE AND EXCLUSIVE REMEDY FOR ANY DISPUTE WITH VALVE WITH REGARD TO STEAM OR THE STEAM SOFTWARE IS TO DISCONTINUE USE OF STEAM AND CANCEL YOUR ACCOUNT." "Valve may amend this Agreement at any time in its sole discretion. As a Subscriber, you agree that Valve may amend the terms of this Agreement." [Not me shouting, Valve seems to think it's rather important]

...more seriously, there is an oil exec in Syriana called Leland.

He wrote Thief, System Shock 2 and Bioshock. They all have some pretty obvious narrative similarities ( ). SS3 was under development a few years ago (with no Irrational/ Levine involvement), but John R canceled it pretty much as soon as he got in the door.