Drowsy Emperor

and heard the lamentations of their women?

As a game developer you find everything that makes people in the industry work more unreasonable. That's very reasonable of you, but I as a gamer think of it like this: If the PS2 (and 3 to an extent) could do it, if each Nintendo console could do it, then everyone should do it and not invent bull**** reasons not to. Gaming history is the history of pressure by publishers and developes on the consumer, justified by anti piracy measures. Each new generation is locked down tighter in more annoying ways, and offers less for the same amount of money. You'd have to be blind not to notice it.

For you EU folks: why did you import millions of muslims into Europe again? Or fight a war on their behalf in Bosnia, Kosovo etc.? Do you even know? Because your policy makes obviously do not know. But they're not the ones being beheaded in the streets. ...Jesus christ, these people stood talking in the street and no one did anything until the police came.

Maybe they're lying to make the game seem more appealing? I don't know. People were bitching all the time how no one was playing it online. To go from that to the population of Mexico city is a gap that's hard to fill on pure bull****.

I always want BC because it gives me a reason to skip on buying an entire console just to play the half a dozen games I really want to play. If they don't promise me that I won't promise them I won't reach for the emulator.

I thought the game bombed

And if we ditch the marketing terms Oculus rift is really a monitor and a wiimote sellotaped to your head. I'm not saying its a bad thing, but I have doubts it will ever be anything more than a niche thing even among the gaming crowd.

Lol well, I never did mind the consoles much until they ate the better part of the PC market. But what I think will be the real downfall of this console generation is the unrealistic expectations that companies have cultivated in gamers, especially the less tech savvy ones. They expect quantum leaps in fidelity and visual pizzaz that just aren't going to happen anymore. They expect new gimmics and future tech that just isn't there. The new generation, apart from being decent machines in the hardware department just don't have anything really new to show. There are no new LCD/Plasma TV's to take advantage of, 3D has not and will not gain widespread acceptance. 4K is next to useless for everything but a movie theater sized screen. The new generation is much exactly like the old generation. PC gamers of course have a more realistic view of things since all changes are slow and incremental. The only real difference over the last 13 years is that we now have better looking games and better monitors. And we (at least the realistic ones among us) don't expect anything else. So, I think its reasonable to expect a gradual decrease in the console market and an increase in all other markets, PC among them.

It had a few rather tasteless sex scenes, but otherwise its okay. Sandman is better than anything else he made though (and not all of Sandman at that).

From what I read, the Xbox360 division in MS never made any profit either (officially). Who cares anyway, the only thing that's sure is that they're dead when they go bankrupt and it makes no difference to us as gamers either way. Development teams (which is what matters, not Sony or MS) will strike out on their own, be bough or sold or die off as its always been. Big deal. Either way, video games are here to stay and they're never going to be reduced just to what the ipad and phone can put out. I foresee good times for the PC.

Why is the PS4 crowd cheering anyway? Its not like Sony has anything more to show than MS at this point. There's the vague promise of backwards compatibility through streaming, but in all other aspects - its the same story all over again. Their biggest boast can be that the same games won't look worse on their more expensive machine like they did with the PS3. As for exclusives, the PS3 exclusives stable is a lot thinner than the PS2's. Even today, if you scan through metacritic, there are precious few good games that are PS3 only. Of course, the XB360 exclusives were practically non existent or not worth bothering about so the PS3 wins hands down - but that doesn't necessarily mean the PS4 will have better exclusives. Finally there's the question about the reason to upgrade. PS3 will still be supported for quite a while like the PS2 was - while the PS4 will need more than a year at best to get going.

Of course it could also be used for a horror film. You're away from home for a week, and you come back, plop yourself into the sofa and the XBOne mysteriously turns on, the words glowing on the screen: I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST WEEKEND

And the "I remember what you did last" is going to lead to some embarrassing moments. >Hey babe check out my new console! >TV! >Game! >Movie! OOOOH! AAAAH! AAAAAAAAH! >OFF OFF!

What stuttering?

I don't see your point. 99% of the time in cRPG's its obvious that a quest is either a side quest or a part of the main quest. In theory you could make a hidden connection between side quests and the main quest but that's just a possibility like any other. Its hardly obligatory to make the main quest a mystery. The only thing that makes quests interesting or dull is the writing and the events that transpire and that goes for all quests whether they be main or side. BGII is the actual proof of that, most of the quests there are by far superior to anything seen in BG1 - and they were far more interesting to follow.

But the real nail in the coffin for XBOne for me is that every "exclusive" is likely to end up on the PC anyway, so overall its better to invest in a PC and spare myself the misery of the new equivalent of RROD.

People are not really against having to be online, what they're against is the enforcement of conditions that exist solely for the benefit of the publisher. Companies are trying to present being online as something that will bring you certain benefits and all that does is make it blatantly obvious that its an undesirable feature through and through. As for Steam the best that can be said about is is that it works. Compared to the convenience and fairness of GoG though - its ****.

Its only natural that the two most hated IT companies would have a special relationship.

Of course they will. Everything worthwhile on the Xbox ends up on the PC anyway. Does the casing remind anyone of the bulky 90's VCR's? My take: apart from the voice and gesture command there is exactly 0 new things about the new Xbox.

Helsinki, Finland. If that's true... (1) How do you think it got that way? (2) What kind of structures do you think might maintain those attitudes? (3) What, if anything, do you think could or should be done about it? How many gypsies are there in Finland? 1. It got that way because the gypsies never cared to fight for a legitimate position in society (which is the only way a minority gets such a position). 2. Internal societal structure of the gypsies themselves. Its not about a single leader or an ideology, its rock hard habits without the willingness to change. 3. Everything everyone else said was true, there were honest efforts to integrate gypsies. They were failures. There were effectively extermination campaigns (nazi camps, forced sterilizations). They failed too. The gypsy mentality is total, in the sense that it regulates the entire life of the individual and is extremely resistant to change. I have no idea what is to be done. The solution for that question has eluded an entire generation of leaders in all European societies.

I think at this point its obvious that the new gen of consoles won't actually surprise us with anything. For all intents and purposes they're now an above average PC with similar features and a few gimmicks thrown in. Also, is anyone uncomfortable with the idea of a camera constantly on in the inside of your living room?

The same way you design a console that breaks its soldering and dies inside of its guarantee.

It would be so cool if Xbox One was just old stock of the first Xbox in a new box.

Still not worthwhile as dodging the game itself. I know. I bought it day 1. If its any consolation, I briefly considered doing the same.

Or we could just enjoy a fantasy world without enforcing tasteless real world references of one sort or another. Like we had (more or less) in Planescape Torment or Baldur's Gate 2. You know, a genuine adventure? Not a political statement like the Bioware pro-gay crusade?