Mario Man

outsourcing is fine. The problem is the company's have the expectation that none of the savings has to be passed to the consumer. The flaw in the logic is the belief that they can continue to sell at the price point. As someone stated earliar as jobs are moved off shore the purchaseing power of the orginial company is diminished. As discretionary income decreases so does demand for games. And basic supply and demand tells you that a price reduction will result thus erasing any margin improvement that was gained by the offshoring. Granted the process will take time but the result is inevitable.

Offshoring is a cop out for firms who cannot grow revenue and to please outside investors they hope to show PTI improvement by adjusting their cost structure. Short term fix that has a major and long term reprecussions

On the metroid comment about control - You have to remember that samus in in a metal suit with no neck. so it will be impossible to look independent of the direction of the torso and arms so scheme is probably accurate to how you would actually be in the suit

Whoever posted as James kudos i laughed my ass off at that. If he did post then he is just speaking the truth. I do beleive that he does have a bias against new things which is not a bad thing just you should do better in disclaiming it prior to your review. Wii performance has not been flawless but given the number of reviews james OPINION lies in the minorty group of people who have played with the Wii controller.

I think Joystiq should start a weekly post reviewing a game through the eyes of an opposing Fanboy. So like a Sony fanboy reviews Zelda Ocarina of Time and rips it apart or something. Would be pretty funny.

there is always the possiblity that the PS3 will be priced at 1000 USD with lack luster games at launch and no one wants one

The problem stems from people disassociating themselves because they do not encounter or witness them everyday, hence the saying, “out of sight out of mind”. It is easy to have a clear conscious about shallow and ignorant things such as the x box pictured above or other senseless acts of opulence. If you were exposed to such a disparity on a regular basis, (the occasional "Save the Children" TV commercial does not count), your value system MAY be vastly different then if otherwise. There is a saying that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. Regardless of your religious background, it easy to see the morality of that idiom with the world having people living in gaudy opulence while simultaneously having some starving.

First time blogger

As a gamer and a finance professional i wanted to chime in. The loss in equity value is critical to a company like EA since software companies are not very capital intensive. The stock value has a direct correlation to the value of the goodwill and intangibles on the balance sheet. If stock is doing well, brand can be valued strongly which helps the asset profile for a company. With large stock drops for a company like EA the brand question comes into question and with nothing tangilbe to liquidate the valuation of a company current and future assests changes drastically. This can have and impact in the financing arena as lenders may take a more conservative stance. Some of the outstanding loans and bond issues could have default clauses if the stock were to fall to a certain point. Does a loss of 800M in market cap affect EA a whole lot in the grand scheme? No, but to say its ho hum is very incorrect. I think this will lessen management's apptite for game release delays given the elasticity of the price of their stock. Which could turn into more rushed to market releases