Zoraptor

vgchartz is not infallible when it comes to numbers, they do down revisions on occasion and in at least one case (Bioshock) the logical conclusion is that at least one of their sources is/was supplying combined 360/PC sales instead of separated 360 ones. (potted history/evidence: 2k- the publisher- claimed, officially, Bioshock had shipped 2.2 million copies in its quarterly report, at that stage vgchartz had it as selling ~1.8 million on 360 alone, almost at the same time nVidia said BSPC had sold 1 million copies and there were sources for BSPC selling more in Europe than the 360 version). As for Bioware, they haven't bothered to update ME's figures at all in the best part of two years, nor as you point out, to add SWTOR to that page. Keeping them up to date is clearly not very important to them.

It will very likely not be released on PS3- MS published/ funded ME360 and I think we can fairly safely assume one of the conditions of that was no PS3 version... To the main point, theoretically yes. However, as previously stated, ME would have cost multiple times more to produce. So a profit would have been made on BG once it passed [figure in low 100ks] rather than once it reached ~1 million sales. Significant, yes? PC sales also generate more revenue per equivalent price point (due to console licencing fees) and that money would be heavily weighted to ten years ago, so add ~20% due to ten years of inflation and I can go on all day. You're also assuming that Bioware's figures for their older games are up to date. The vgchartz ones are theoretically accurate to the week. Bioware has been using the same rounded figure for BG series sales since at least 2005 and the 3 million figures for NWN since at least pre May 2006 (and to answer alanschu, several 3rd party sources cite 3 million baseline sales for NWN, rather than baseline + expansions which is why I though NWN sold better than it apparently did). The vgchartz figures may already include MEPC sales, vgchartz is specifically unreliable (that's why you cannot go to Wikipedia and update/ add game sales based on their figures). As an example, the figure there for Bioshock360 was revised down last year because some of the figures supplied had PC numbers included and hence contradicted figures from 2k and other sources. All evidence (eg EA's SecuROM defence article) is that MEPC sold poorly in any case. On the issue of 'tail' and longevity of sales (1) Going by vgchartz' figures and the MS press release trumpeting ME (and Halo 3) sales ME360 either shipped 80% of total sales in its first six weeks (MS figure, theoretically the only really solid figure available) or sold 75% in its first ten weeks (vgchartz) and (2) console titles have built in obsolescence. You can just about guarantee that ME won't be still selling, as Baldur's Gate is, a decade post release if for no other reason than all the 360s in the world will have rrod by then. [edit: This issue is very much Your Mileage May Vary as there's no way to independently evaluate the evidence until such time as Bioware updates their figures. I'd still be confident that ME is Bioware's second worst selling RPG at present, I'll happily concede that it may overtake other titles in the future. The initial (and intended as throwaway) point I was initially making was that it didn't sell quite as well as is often implied, especially considering the amount the game market has grown over the past decade]

Sources The Bioware site has some sales figures, used for the PC versions as they were never accurately collated by 3rd parties. ME360 figures comes from vgchartz (ultimately from NPD (US)/ ESA(? not sure of the acronym; Euro)). I won't give the link for K2's sales (~1.75M) as I'm not sure if its disclosure was strictly authorised- the US sales figures however were in the initial publicity for SW: TOR- and the same source (iirc) gave sales of 5 million total for Ob's titles. Let's just say that if you find it difficult to play Anachronox because you expect Boots to be a font of, er, banal negativity you probably know where the info is. Figures for NWN2 aren't publically available otherwise so far as I am aware- except for some German language stuff from the investment group that actually bankrolled the project (IIRC two relevant documents (1) they expected to sell ~2million copies, (2) it performed significantly better than expected) which meshes pretty well with the 5 million total sales. A final (hopefully) note on ME: The thing to bare in mind is that while it sold its copies quickly, it won't have much of a tail (ie won't sell many more copies) and most significantly it cost many times more than either BG to make. A current AAA title costs $20 million+ to produce- why the break even mark has moved from roughly 100k copies back when BG1 came out, to around 1 million now. Which was more profitable in absolute terms we'll never know for all sorts of reasons (licensing costs, publisher cuts, 360 exclusivity payments etc) but the point stands, despite its much heralded sales ME is almost certainly Bioware's second worst selling RPG.

As someone who has dial up and capped 'broadband' if there has to be DRM then I far prefer disk checks, especially over something like Steam. An Empire:TW type situation where verifying your game caused some people to download the whole thing off Steam would potentially cost me around $300US (ie about five times the game's cost) in broadband bandwidth. While more suited for the DRM thread, I think it should be noted that SecuROM does not have a rootkit (when Bioshock came out I personally ran the checks necessary to prove it) and the current version performs only static checks, not dynamic ones. The current 'bad offenders' are FADE and nuTAGES, SecuROM- especially the disk check version- is relatively benign.

To clarify: I'm not saying Mass Effect sold poorly in an absolute sense- 2 million is only failure if you're something like GTA- just that it was hardly as much of an OMG blockbuster!!!11! title as is often implied. It is however probably Bioware's second poorest selling RPG (depending a bit on definitions- going by sku ME360 probably beats the separated xbox/pc figures of kotor; if you add in MEPC it probably beats both bg vanillas but not with xps counted, etc) ahead of only Jade Empire.

Fun fact: Mass Effect didn't actually sell all that well. ~2 million sales on 360, less than either Baldur's Gate, less than KOTOR, a lot less than NWN. A lot better than JE. Take as accepted that for various reasons the sales numbers aren't directly comparable as a measure of profitability. I'd imagine Obsidian would be disappointed if AP performed to RF: Guerrilla levels, frankly. K2 sold near to 2 million copies, and NWN2 (from memory) a fair bit more.

I agree, in principle. The problem is in invisaging a situation in which an intelligence agent, knowing that he was going to be partaking in a bomb plot, would find it either necessary or advantageous to use his own passport and then go and personally purchase items to be used in a bombing, establishing a chain of evidence. We know he had a spare passport, so why take the risk? I'd posit that while it is possible that al-Megrahi's id was accurate and he bought the clothes, the strong possibility exists, even if you accept the id, that he simply bought some clothes and had no idea to what purpose they would be put. Basically, I discount it because it would be trivially easy to avoid (any of: don't buy unique clothing, purchase in a third party country, steal the clothing, use fake passport, use a blind to purchase) and it is reasonable to expect a trained intelligence operative to take reasonable care if planning on blowing up an airliner. No, we should not be lowering burdens of proof just on the say so of intelligence agencies- that opens up an enormous can of worms because while it may be well intentioned it is open to abuse deliberate and accidental. It inevitably leads to 'prove your innocence' type situations where a falsely accused person cannot reasonably be expected to prevail. To illustrate, in a fairly famous refugee case here the fact that the refugee's camera's photos had "symbols of western capitalism" in some of them was used as evidence he was a terrorist scout. In any sane system that simply indicates that it is impossible to take pictures in most cities without getting McDonalds or Starbucks in the background of some. In a system where the burden of proof is effectively reversed, however...

There are also a couple of good documentaries which were the main reason I knew much about it apart from the trial basics. @aristes, primarily. Walsh's article is poor because it is wholly assertional- it works back from a known 'certainty' (Megrahi = guilty) presenting only evidence that supports that assertion and without considering alternatives, or flaws, or being even slightly critical in its analysis. It simply states the prosecution case, as presented at trial, as fact. People are still pursuing the case- many of the UK victims' families want a public inquiry- Jim Swires is probably the most famous. That's also why the release decision was not universally panned by the families in the UK as opposed to those in the US- many of the UK families believe that the wrong man had been convicted. Most of the evidence (and counter evidence) presented for the trial and leave to appeal hearing is Matter of Record- it can probably be requested (some of it at least) from the Scottish courts, allowing anyone to make their own mind up. For the record, I actually have no opinion on Megrahi's- or Libyan- guilt as such, it is plausible that they were either directly or indirectly responsible. But with the tarnishing of the only two direct pieces of evidence there isn't and wasn't enough evidence to convict him, and his appeal would almost certainly succeed. And when it comes to conspiracy theories I have a simple rule: 95% of the time a conspiracy theory can be explained by incompetence or bad luck, rather than malice. Bush didn't do 9/11, the US fully expected to find WMDs in Iraq, Waco was a sadly logical end to an apocalyptic cult, Diana died because her driver was drunk.

Probably ship to figures. Sell through is around 860k (540k 360, 320k PS3), if only a mid budget game that should be profitable.

Aristes- Megrahi's appeal was due just prior to his release and suspended due to his ill health and eventually canceled just prior to his release, hence my initial comment that if you were looking for a conspiracy theory avoiding an embarrassing appeal which would inevitably be lost and make your country's judiciary look silly is far more likely than the Scottish National Party helping out their good buds (not) of the Labour Party. That Stratfor article is, to be blunt, feeble apologia rife with argument by assertion and I'd advise the poor electrons who worked tirelessly bringing it here to sue for recompense. FTR Mebo also sold circuitboards to dozens, hundreds of other entities including the German Police, as they had perfectly legitimate uses. As for that matter, did Toshiba with their radios. Irrelevant anyway, as the only evidence directly implicating mebo is from someone who now admits being a suborned perjurer (not mentioned by Stratfor) and they never bothered to actually test it for bomb residue (!!??), so evidence dismissed. The PFLP-GC had another bombmaker- not a Jordanian intel stooge- who obtained at least one of Khreesat's devices, devices which were almost diagnostic in their similarity to the one used at Lockerbie- note also that while the detonators he used were duds, the bombs weren't- a German bomb disposal expert actually died defusing one. And "He denies it, so it must be true" is one of the weakest and most feeble pieces of 'evidence' which can ever be presented, 'proving' as it does that indisputably innocent people (eg the various 'IRA' pub bombers, Guildford 7 etc) were toughened, trained terrorists/ spys when it's now known and accepted that they were effectively framed. Worse, it also relies on the old "this guy is an awesome spy, except for when he was planning on blowing up an aircraft yet used his own passport for the critical travel in his plan despite having at least one fake available", a mistake which would beggar credulity coming from a raw recruit let alone a supposedly seasoned veteran. And, as previous, Megrahi's identification as buying the clothing was indisputably tainted. In summary, repeating the accusations made at trial while failing to mention- let alone even try to refute- any of the problems which have come to light since? Unconvincing, to say the least. There was no doubt he was going to get his conviction quashed.

The air warfare coordinator was, it's in the wiki entry, specifically "..the other [award] for his actions relating to the surface engagement with Iranian gunboats" which occurred concurrent with shooting down the airliner. Note: AIR coordinator, not surface coordinator. The whole thing was due to the horrendously gung-ho attitude of Rogers, where he deliberately ignored rules of engagement, Naval standing orders and directly issued orders so as to to "get some action". Accidents happen in war and I don't actually think he deliberately shot down an airliner knowing what it was, but the negligence/ incompetence involved (eg continually misidentifying speed and altitude, when in an AEGIS cruiser?) was so gross that it should have been punished, not rewarded. Note also, while the IranAir victims did get $61 million the Lockerbie victims got $2.7 billion, or roughly 45 times the amount. For the circuitboard and second For the tainted identification at the bottom of the first page. IIRC one of those articles mentions an investigator saying they wouldn't even have got an indictment, let alone a conviction, without either of those bits of evidence.

Same deal if you pre-order on GamersGate, too. One local store (er, which I'm in no way affiliated with apart from buying from them on occasion) is offering a guide book. So there are some pre order bonuses around.

Guys, he wasn't tried by a jury, but by a panel of judges. His conviction was iffy at the time (the UN observer called it manifestly unsound) and it has only got less sound as one key witness has admitted to being bribed into giving false evidence- with respect to the circuitboard- while the key identity witness was both paid and had already seen and read articles with pictures linking Megrahi to the bombing, a fact that the prosecutors kept from the defence and the judges. If you want a conspiracy theory for the release consider that his appeal was imminent, was not going to be a limited appeal (ie he could bring in everything including things like the covert CIA drug operation which saw the bomb bag not being searched) and he dropped it prior to being released. There was no way the conviction was going to stand, and that would mean all those lovely compensatory millions would revert back to Gaddafi. Since we're getting all aerated and morally outraged itt , perhaps we could spare some small thoughts for the US Government- in the form of Capt. Will Rogers III- who shot down an Iranian airliner broadcasting a civilian IFF and on a standard civilian flightplan (killing 290), from inside Iranian territorial borders, while partaking in an unauthorised incursion from which he had already been ordered to withdraw but which order he was ignoring, blatantly and repeatedly lied about it, for which they were awarded medals and to this day hasn't even been apologised for, let alone anyone prosecuted.

Practically though, anarchist groups do (almost all) believe in some form of government, much as almost all capitalists do believe in some form(s) of regulation despite a tight definition of capitalism predicating free markets. Somalia is at least as much an indictment on Capitalism as on Anarchism, as is DRCongo and various other places. Both places are, after all, eminently capitalist too. The CNT, which LoF was referring to is Anarcho-Syndicalist. Basically their belief is in local rather than national administration (as they don't really believe in nations) so far as possible and 'workers' running their own businesses as syndicates/ co-ops, organised people's militias as armed forces etc ie nothing like your definition of 'anarchy'. They sent politicians to Madrid and participated in national elections, participated fully in the struggle against Francoist fascism and found time to fight against the communists too. They actually have a lot in common with many small government states' rights US libertarians. Probably their only fault, if you can call it that, is that they didn't smash the communists when they had the chance- as technically they were on the same side and Uncle Joe was the only foreign leader (apart from Mexico, who couldn't do much) to actually get off his chuff and send the legitimately elected government supplies.

I didn't pick Spore because it was released significantly before F3/ FC2/ RA3, which were all released within weeks of each other and thus should be generally comparable- Spore would have around 6 months more downloads counted. F3's 360 and PS3 sales are available. Assuming the whole 4.7 million sold that gives an absolute minimum PC figure, excluding purchase downloads, of 1 million. Since the PS3 and 360 figures are 'to date' rather than to Nov 2008 we can safely assume that the PC sales are (considerably) higher than 1 million. Overall sales across all platforms are important in any case, as one of the charges leveled at PC piracy is that it cannibalises console sales. I was quoting the cash only figure because that was the thing which was primarily absorbing their losses and thus showed the most precipitate decline. I'll concede the point though as it isn't really worth arguing- as I said previously EA ain't going to go bankrupt anytime soon, but at the same time multiple hundred million dollar losses (as again in the last quarter) do take their toll eventually. I thought the LGS closing article actually referenced it, though I haven't read that in years. I'm not privy to the details, of course, the gist of it was that it was an 'accumulator' type deal which required all the titles on it to return a profit in order for any to. Because British Open Golf did not sell to target (don't think the third reached release) it meant that the profit from SS2 went almost exclusively to EA. Can't say I'm surprised, I remember seeing SS2 in some torrent sites' top 10 download stats even quite recently. There's certainly still demand for it for purchase, as both SS titles are top of GOG's wishlist by a fair margin. I know anecdotally that the EA Classics version of SS2 sold very well and was (supposedly) discontinued early only because of compatibility troubles (needing a switch to install on 2k based OS, multicore/HT crashing).

Which game? RA3 (and Far Cry2, though obviously that wasn't EA, picked over 2008 download king Spore because those three were released almost simultaneously) both had similar piracy amounts to F3, despite F3 selling considerably better. Hence their piracy rate was considerably worse than for the non-protected F3. Figures were from the TweakGuide to piracy, and actually showed exactly the opposite from what the author intended. Obviously it's the company which makes a profit rather than a loss. Revenue is irrelevant if you cannot turn it into profit. EA also isn't sitting on $2 billion. I actually read their quarterly report with the multi hundred million dollar loss, for my sins, and their cash reserves are well into the hundreds of millions (still good, of course, but way down from $3 billion a few years ago). They aren't going to go bankrupt, especially since some of that cash has gone on things like buying Bioware albeit at a(n IMO) grossly inflated price, but they're hardly sitting pretty and most significantly most of this loss happened before the US economy really started tanking. I usually quote Desslock's PC Data 2000 figures and Ken Levine from Usenet post 1 and post 2 and sometimes to articles showing that the threshold for profitability was around 100k copies at that time. SS2 did not make LGS much money because of their deal with EA- in contrast, Irrational's next game was 2 years later and self published (in NA) at least implying they did pretty well from their only previous game.

It does, when SecuROM's much vaunted system resulted in more downloads than something like Fallout 3 which effectively didn't even have a disk check, and it garnered a lot of negative press. Probably the biggest problem though was the enormous support load it was generating. Using EA's own figures around 20,000 people had 'bricked' Spore within a couple of months of its release (with around 20% of buyers having 1 or fewer activations left), and the support load was still increasing. EA's lost money hand over fist for the last few years. They're not in imminent trouble though their cash reserves have dropped around 70%, and their share price had dropped around 70% as well. Revenue itself is irrelevant. Last (?) quarter 2008 they lost a huge amount (~800m USD, iirc) though that did include some one off costs. LGS is a poor example. LGS did not go out of business because of piracy, nor even because of poor sales. It went out of business primarily because of its own bad business decisions, mostly going back to the decision to self publish Terra Nova. All of LGS's late, main line PC titles (Thief 1/2, SS2) were solidly profitable, though due to a poor deal with EA they never saw much of SS2's money, and Thief 2's came too late to be of much help.

I would just point out that while "Planescape" is dead "Torment" isn't. WotC still maintains a trademark registration against it (Reg# 2778296, if anyone's really interested and knows TESS) so there's no inherent block to a Torment 2. Most interesting thing about Planescape as an IP is that apparently in 2003 they were planning on making a TV series (!) in the setting as there's an expired registration against Planescape for use in TV.