AwesomeOcelot

How is that shafting anyone? Because something was delayed then everyone has to wait, that's shafting people who got digital copies. And in terms of who paid more, a lot of the time in terms of funds digital provides more because they cost a lot less than physical.

In theory, it's fair for them to block such things. The trouble is that while steam objects to being used as a platform for other stores it is itself happy to itself be inserted into the products other stores sell, ie block others from bundling their exclusive shopfront but do the exact same thing and bundle your own shopfront into products sold by others. Ultimately, if EA or Paradox or whoever wanted to bundle their own shopfront into their products it is for their own benefit, if they do the same with steam's shopfront it is primarily for steam's benefit as steam gets the cut on dlc and their store bundled into all copies. It's good business sense if you can get away with it, but it's also hypocritical and not something you could get away with if there was proper competition. Or to put it another way, every steamworks game sold on Gamersgate or Impulse or whatever is a "Trojan Horse" for steam just as much as ME3 sold on steam would be a "Trojan Horse" for origin. Valve will allow stores like Origin, Live, and Uplay to be bundled into products on Steam as well. It's not so much about bundling the store, it's that they then freeze Steam out of continued revenue from that game. It's not the same situation at all. I don't believe Steamworks actually effects which store I use, it's certainly not going to stop me from using GreenManGaming, Amazon, or Origin. I used Steam for ages without buying any games from it, with it at minimal and launching at my games library.

I love this idea and Josh's weirdness. Been watching TGS Blood Bowl league on YouTube, and this seems like the tackle zone system. Just an idea to conceptualize this.

Why would they be reluctant to fulfil their commitment to backers? If they're having problems with Steam or GoG, that shouldn't mean they have to delay rewards to their backers. Giving backers beta access would be a sensible compromise, even though they would have released that version, calling it a beta, increasing the pool of testers before it goes on sale, it's a win-win. Why should that be an issue with the digital version? They could just delay the physical version if there's problems.

I don't see what the problem with Valve stopping games using Steam as a platform for other stores, like a Trojan Horse. You can release on other stores, but you can't use Steam as a platform, especially to move costumers to other stores. In the end, that could have hurt Valve quite badly. Now Microsoft is moving in that direction, they've put a barrier between the user and other stores, and placed their store in front of that barrier, unlike Steam however, Windows is not free. There's positives and negatives in being an open platform. Do Microsoft want to lose market share and gain competition in operating systems to dominate the software store market on Windows? Option 1: A publisher with several large franchises, many development studios, and lots of money opening a store. Option 2: An independent developer with two big franchises, one development studio, and not so much money opening a store. There's clearly a difference there. Ubisoft and EA getting to together, that could be a dangerous move for consumers, and the big publishers tend to follow each other. Also people don't like Ubisoft and EA for various reasons, how they've treated developers, franchises, and consumers has sucked, we fear that they'll carry on this pattern of behaviour with stores. People don't mind Steam because Valve has competed with service and pricing. There wasn't allegiance to Steam in the beginning when 3rd party games first came up, just because they had to use it for Counter-Strike and Half-Life 2 did not mean they were going to buy other games on it. Apart from service and pricing, there's still not much tying people to Steam as a store. Where I have a problem is Steamworks as a platform, heavily leveraged exclusive games, is that it's closed. I hated Gamespy Arcade for the same, but that was always a piece of crap, Steamworks has gotten progressively better. I don't mind Origin, Uplay is a piece of crap. Valve are competing with other platforms with pricing and service, but in this case for developers not consumers. It's created a bad situation for consumers, in they have to run a bunch of different software for no good reason for them, with different accounts, some of them absolutely terrible.

Seems to have been a private server. They could use a private server, if they have bandwidth limitations they could have a staggered release, and they could set up a torrent tracker, get willing backers to share the load a bit, which they would do. Steam has hosted beta and prototypes in the past. GoG maybe willing to do so if they plan to release it there.

They managed to get the beta out, there's lots of avenues they can choose.

They've already given those people a beta version before, so why should they offer a second beta? Under your logic. If they're delaying the game themselves, purposely, for reasons that don't seem to be about development, it's not about when it's done. Truth is a game is never done, it's only released. If they were going to release it until "distribution complications" came up, they should release it.

It's not fine for every project to miss its release date, they need to reassess their policy on release estimates. Obviously no one will mind a few weeks either side of a release date, but if you're not hitting the release in 3 months of the estimate you've failed somewhere. I get the impression that in the industry you don't get release dates in development, you get release windows, and the release date is left until pretty late, and they hit them with time to spare. If Logic Artists have done what people are accusing them of then they're not going to be able to hide it. I'm going to wait for the facts but obviously from what they said it doesn't sound good, they should release the beta to all backers, distribution deals shouldn't effect their commitment to backers. Also developing stretch goals without stretch goal money backs up the concept that they're "bull****".

In a perfect world there would be a GOG or something else version of every Steamworks game, and for multiplayer Steamworks games would have an open API counter part like back in the day when you had Gamespy3D and All Seeing Eye on top of Gamespy Arcade, Ingame browser, and MSN Gaming Zone. I would feel a lot better if people were given true choices about Live, Origin, Uplay, and Steam. I'm happier when a independent developer like Valve does things like this compared to a publisher EA because developers created their own systems for multiplayer and services all the time, they don't have nearly as much franchise leverage as the major publishers.

If you use Microsoft Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, or Outlook you're* on very thin ice with that argument. Also Sun's Java, Adobe's Flash and Reader, they've all taken months to fix issues, while having a crazy security policy in the first place. Chances are high that several of the manufacturers that make your hardware have had privilege escalation exploits in their drivers at some point. As I've said, many games from Ubisoft, EA, and Activision will have bugs that could be exploited but they're not due to lack of an install base, more people will target Steam than any game because it's installed on many millions more computers than any game. Valve is flawed when it comes to security, but lets not single them out, if trivial exploits were a concern you wouldn't install any game.

If you've allowed malicious code to run on Windows XP SP3 then Steam is not the only vector for privilege escalation. This is more a consequence of Steam being popular, malware is going to target software that's installed on millions of machines, some games without any DRM are going to have bugs that can be exploited for privilege escalation. The browser launch exploit is down to the user and the browser mostly. All the browsers you should be using ask for confirmation, you can also easily disable it on Opera, couldn't find a way on Firefox other than direct it to a different exe, and Chrome doesn't even have it. Is Valve stupid for having this in the first place? Yes, it's an incredibly stupid idea, but it's not forced on people.

Maybe if you live in the middle of nowhere. The worst case scenario for me would be 150 miles, with 15-20ms net latency. Bandwidth isn't the issue, many places have more than enough bandwidth. Would I play Street Fighter or Counter-Strike on it? No. Would I play Rayman or Total War? Yes. It's not just lag, there's a number of drawbacks with cloud gaming, but there are a number of benefits.

It wasn't a clarification, they changed it after feedback, which is good. Not sure if it's a compromise, because now the keyword becomes the "subject" and every full dialogue system has that, it's basically the same as a full dialogue system, they've just converted the keyword system into one instead of having one from the beginning. As I said before, keyword/paraphrase can't communicate the nature of the dialogue, no one communicates in keywords, you need sentences, maybe even some tone/emotion modifiers and gestures in [] brackets or different text colour.

Wasteland 2 will have full dialogue choices on top of a key word dialogue system now.

Note that games like Counterstrike are Steam only, and have dedicated servers ran by players, and by the sounds of it Steam gets more and more mod friendly all the time. In any case, I'm very curious how successful ArmA 2 was prior to DayZ. You're right that I was expecting more Operation Flashpoint (which is ironic, as I stopped playing that game once it required me to learn it's clunky helicopter flying controls). It seemed very niche, and while I know production costs are much lower in Eastern Europe, it's still going to scale up with the level of fidelity they wish to add. ArmA is not a modern military shooter like Call of Duty or Battlefield 2. It is a mil sim like Operation Flashpoint but more so, it is niche, these games are extremely fun if you're into things military, the same way people like Football Manager or Train Simulator. These people care about the details being right, the experience of warfare as it's fought. ArmA is to CoD as IL-2 Sturmovik 1946 is to Dogfight 1942.

He gave that answer the first time, in the Eurogamer article. They're going to be using software that's available right now in the PS3, the online pass stuff which is a semi-block on used games already. It's a smart move by Sony because they can't ban it, publishers would be able to put pressure on them, and publishers are free to gradually implement it, as they've already started with online passes on PS3. They could charge half the full retail price for a multiplayer online pass for a future Call of Duty, that has micro transactions and subscriptions. After seeing what Ubisoft has done on the PC, I can't imagine them saying "this doesn't meet the expectations of our consumers".

That's so ridiculous, they don't know PC games sales, the reason why Diablo 3 was the only PC game that topped the sales chart is because it was one of the few with sales recorded. Retail stores makes up something like 10% of PC games sales. Steam and Origin don't seem to want to post their sales figures, and they make up at least half of PC game sales. In the end, F2P games like Tribes:Ascend, Team Fortress 2, and League of Legend cost many people more than a full price retail game, but they're not counted as "sales" at all. I think the Steambox will live or die on the price. With the consoles using quite generic PC hardware, it will be a bit of a let down if this thing costs way more. It will be interesting to see whether they've innovated with a new gamepad.

What does everyone think of the now confirmed GDDR5 unified memory? I thought that stuff was extremely expensive. It's way faster than the usual system RAM DDR3. Is their a chance we'll see it migrate to PC system RAM?

Where's your evidence? Where's the sales numbers? Where's the revenue? Where's the profits? We don't know what they are when concerning well over half the PC gaming sales platforms Steam and Origin, revenue from F2P games like League of Legends and Team Fortress 2. You don't know. Negative, that was the revenues posted for the financial year March 2010 - March 2011. Where do you draw the line? Do we take away Wii games? Move games? Kinect games? They make a lot of money for the consoles, that's why they're pushing them so hard. Do we take away racing and sports? They're not really part of "core" gaming. Actually a lot of the big console franchises are about attracting the casual gamer, the modern military shooter including Call of Duty and Battlefield single player, almost on rails meant for the "cinematic" experience with gaming down to a minimum, the Uncharted series, Heavy Rain, all the bull****.

If you count ALL PC gaming then estimates are that PC gaming revenue was $18.6 billion in 2011, more than all 3 consoles revenues combined, and it's quite clear with free-to-play, subscription, and digital sales the vast majority of revenue, also no hardware subsidy, PC gaming is more profitable. StarCraft II fastest selling strategy game. League of Legends 32 million active players, Dota 2 soon to be released, and countless other MOBA games which are a PC thing, and a RTS sub-genre. Dawn of War II was successful, and we have a new Company of Heroes game coming. Petroglyph is still making games, End of Nations out this year. Supreme Commander and Sins of the Solar Empire are always going to be niche titles. Rise of Nations, Empire Earth, Age of Empires died because of shifting trends, all genres have shifting trends, even on consoles. Command and Conquer, they ceased being Westwood titles, they sucked. You clearly don't have a clue what the revenue of PC gaming is. Valve don't disclose sales, neither does EA, they make up over half the PC game sales. Let alone MMO and F2P revenue, which you clearly don't even account for. Also console subsidise their hardware, they make a loss on their hardware. Square Enix posted $1.6b revenue for the year ending March 2012. World of Warcraft has had around 10 million users for some time, subscribing monthly, that's around $1.2b revenue. Imagine what happens when an expansion pack is released, one game generates more revenue than Squeenix, and more importantly way more profit.

So the answer to whether games on the PS4 will require online registration is that it's up to the publisher, but Sony as a publisher has no plans to implement this. That should leave the door open to modding the console to circumvent that.

People complain about copy right infringement on PC, but used games are the same when it comes to why developers and publishers complain about it. He's right that it does come down to what people expect, I wonder how many people buy used games but would criticize others for modifying their console to play burnt discs or torrenting a PC game. Console manufacturers are going to kill used games, there might be pressure on them not to kill retail game stores and from consumers, but eventually they will get around to it, they might be waiting for a purely download console. They couldn't care less if someone who only buys used games doesn't buy their console, they lose money on their console. If they implement features like allowing time limited trials, reactivation for a discounted price for used games, ability to go to your friends house and use a game, and cut prices, also adding benefits and services for free, I don't see how this would hurt them. Publishers do terrible things, people say they'll boycott, no one ever seems to.

Sarcasm. But it doesn't mean more work for engine programmers. Unified memory is more flexible, solving some headaches for engine programmers. It's not that big a deal.

People at the conference obviously didn't recognise the Diablo 2 soundtrack. Yeah, Diablo 3 will work on consoles, not that big of a surprise. When conquering the world was mentioned, I thought obviously WoW or even their new MMO. Was it called Titan or something? Bungie: Persistent, grow, and customize. Subscription? Micro-transactions? That was really disappointing, already knew about the hardware through leaks, and nothing really new in terms of the games. Why show trailers at a live streaming event? Some old widely available trailers.