Zoraptor

360 isn't even close to breaking even.

If that were the case Sony would be slitting their wrists. PS3's are sold at a loss. Buying a PS3 for a single game is not great for Sony, it's very bad for Sony. They need to sell other stuff (games, extra controllers etc) to break even on the console side of the ledger.

They had one term and we refused to accept it. And the funny (well, if you're of the opinion that it wasn't meant as "back off, Georgian Joe, OUR WORDS ARE BACKED BY NUCLEAR WEAPONS" but a legitimately necessary part of war) thing is being that after the unconditional surrender that one term got honoured. Or in other words 150k people killed for no practical reason except being able to say the surrender was unconditional.

Most MMOs have it. Borderlands had it, even ME had it, but only when buying something from a vendor. ME had it automatically showing on the inventory screen, you had to click a specific button to see it when buying.

You're pretty on target here I think, Purkake. The problem is not yet overwhelmingly obviously serious enough for all the suits to get up and take notice and say "we gotta deal with this and DRM isn't working". There's no real conclusive evidence out in the public OR in the industry in general. Until it happens... "The gaming industry is doing just fine" is incorrect, and that's pretty much inarguable. The only publisher that's financially secure at this point is Activision, most of the others are either close to bankrupt (Atari, 2k, Sega US, Eidos prior to it getting acquired), have been close to bankrupt and are still losing money regularly (Ubisoft) or have been losing money for years previous even if they are in no immediate danger (EA). Even Activision has managed to have money losing quarters despite having the $1 billion a year of near pure profit WoW provides. The hardware manufacturers aren't in great shape, Nintendo excluded. MS has worked hard to bury the gigantic hole caused by half its 360's getting RRODs (that on hardware which sells at a loss, let alone is replaced at a loss) and shunted most of its development costs for the 360 onto the written off budget of the original xbox- it's unlikely they will see any overall profit from the 360 despite continuing to push out its retirement date. And that's not even considering Sony and the PS3 which has not got anywhere near the economies of scale- especially wrt to Cell- needed to get close to breaking even. Until recently their games division was being propped up by the PS2. Some independent developers are doing fine, of course, but there's no shortage of "[dev house] shuts down" headlines to balance that out. In short, gaming industry is not doing just fine unless your definition of just fine is anything which isn't actively imploding.

A little better than what I remembered, but still losing 5 to 1 against the consoles. Ignorant statement. It's not losing 5 to 1 against any single console. That's what people talking about 'the consoles' fail to grasp: the PC is a platform. The Xbox is a platform. The console is NOT a platform. The breakdown of sales is roughly 6:3:2. For this game sales on the PC lag those on other platforms, but they are still high (more than high enough to justify porting - and on that note, it'd cost more to port it from Xbox to PS3 than Xbox to PC, assuming they didn't actually code it for PC first, which they often do). It's also stats from the UK, which has the highest console penetration of any (major) country and does not include any PC digital sales of which the UK has one of the highest rates- thus not the most representative figures to use as they are pretty much the maximums for the two consoles and the minimum for PC.

[citation needed]

Frankly I'd regard that as a symptom of no Levine. The three main story driven games he's written for are Thief: TDP, System Shock 2 and Bioshock and each has (a) main antagonist(s) which you can identify with a 'big' ideology- The Trickster in Thief is Anarchist, The Many in SS2 is collectivist, Shodan is fascist, Ryan and Fontlas both in their own way are capitalists (one idealist/objectivist, the other realist/nihilist). Along with plot twists executed in a manner that Bioware has been trying to ape with little success since BG2 it's perhaps his greatest signature. Jordan Thomas just ain't as good as carrying it off as Levine.

XCOM is weird because they are on all the other DD services except GOG. And it isn't a drm thing either as even the Steam version doesn't have a wrapper on it.

No, the brutal repression didn't work, not the first time and not the second. The bunch of barely trained teenagers, FSB goons and moribund Soviet Dinosaurs that made up the official internal security forces and whose tactics of 'shoot and or blow everything up while interning and or torturing and or executing everything that moves' actually managed to lose the first war, after all. Simply put the 'tame' Chechens- while hardly a pleasant and convivial bunch of enlightened SNAGs- were far far better at not alienating other Chechens, far better suited to gathering useful intelligence, more knowledgable of the environments and culture and were hence far more effective at fighting the 'bad' Chechens while not generating more bad ones to replace them. And as it stands now the Chechen unit of the Russian army is probably their second highest regarded one, behind their paratroops/ special forces.

With torture you end up with a load of rubbish intel even from completely innocent targets while still getting the gibberish from the trained 'guilty' targets. And because the innocent people are telling you what you want to hear you are far more inclined to believe them. Second example is rubbish, the Russians have been burying Chechen rebels in pigskins and such (as well as the more traditional torture methods) for ages and it's utterly pointless against a motivated foe. In the end they did exactly the same thing the US has done in Iraq and Afghanistan, paid off various internal factions to fight on their behalf.

No, they canned it because Microsoft hates PC games and they're paying the bills.

Yes, and not only that but also most normal people will say anything (usually whatever they think the torturer wants to hear) in order to make it stop while those trained will tend to say stuff which is inaccurate, or worse, partly accurate but designed to give a false impression. The information gained is of very poor quality because you have to check literally everything about it to have any idea of its quality. At least if someone is keeping their gob shut you don't end up wasting resources chasing wild geese or getting a dose of whatever the subject thinks you want, which inevitably leads to scenario fulfillment- think there are lots of AQ agents in the US? Torture people and ask them and- surprise surprise- you'll find they tell you that there are lots of agents because that's precisely what you are rewarding them for saying.

And according to law of most of the countries EULA has the law value about the same like toilet paper if you cannot read it before you unpack the good It's specifically aimed at the US, to circumvent First Sale Doctrine (which guarantees the right to sell goods second hand) by making it so that you don't sell the good, but the account. One valve can stop, the other it is illegal for them to do.

It isn't illegal. It's against the EULA to sell an account though, for what that's worth.

I'd presume it's referring to the GTTV footage, given it ends with Thorton getting, well, busted. And if it were set in Paris...

Once again, PST, IWD, Baldur's Gate etc will not turn up at least until Hasbro and Atari stop fighting each other in court. Yep. Well, Zenimax now technically, I guess. Activision only distributed them. Same deal with all the Star Wars titles- they are LucasArts published and only distributed by 3rd parties (and will presumably turn up.. elsewhere.. at some point)

Perhaps an illustration of exactly why thinking someone approves wholesale of people they may "admire" is dumb may help? Beck loves the Founding Fathers. He thinks they are great Logically therefore: He approves of slavery, having children by your slaves, voting being restricted to rich white men etc etc as, "logically", because he thinks they're great he thinks everything about them is great including the slavery, the fathering of children by slaves, and voting rights being restricted to rich white men of a certain monetary value, and any and all other foibles and flaws major or minor they may have had.

Sounds like it's the two Actard owned Troika titles ie Arcanum and VTMB. Don't expect any D&D (TOEE or otherwise) while Atari and Hasbro are fighting about sublicencing in court.

Arkane recently obtained the licence for Arx Fatalis off JoWood, though it could be related to simply to them putting it onto GoG rather than being a potential sequel. The game he was talking about was not The Crossing, and was on a contract for EA, reviving an old IP that was well known and regarded but not a stellar seller.

Probably, couldn't find a publisher, and with EA yanking their other project they didn't have an option to self finance for something which would be risky at the best of times.

So is SMAC, for that matter, and it has the problem (as does SS2) of being associated with a studio that are now their rival 2k's property. I'd hope for either SMAC or SS2 as it would likely mean a bunch of other EA titles coming too- I really can't understand their reluctance as it is basically free money from their side of the deal. I'd tend to go for X-COM, especially if 2k is planning to release a new xcom title. That would hardly be huge as GOG is about the only digital distributor which doesn't have the xcoms yet.

Personally I prefer :picard: :headdesk: as I feel it brings both simplicity and elegance to proceedings.

The most amusing bit of geopolitics of the last two years was watching various western diplomats squirm when asked what the difference between Abkhazia/ South Ossetia and Kosovo was and trying to see them avoid the really obvious difference, ie "well, Kosovo is our client..." He had good reason to think that as he was told that "the US has no opinion" on Kuwait and Iraq's border dispute when he asked prior to invading. He hadn't counted on Saudi Arabia throwing a wobbly, as a combined Iraq/Kuwait could challenge their dominance of OPEC and nearly match their reserves and production capacity

Given the mission based structure a demo could probably be done relatively easily, though it probably still would not be a trivial amount of work unless there's a trade demo or similar already done.