Highlader

Oh good grief. How many other brand new completely original games (as in totally new IP) have come out and sold over a million copies within about two months of launch? I don't know, but LBP has done so.

Fallen off the radar? What is it with gaming journalists these days? Are you so attention deficit that you can only pronounce a game a success if it sells 3 million copies in the first week? Those kinds of sales figures are not normal, they are an abnormality that has been created by the sequelitis that has plagued the gaming industry. Halo2, Halo3, Gears of Way 2, Guitar Hero 19, RockBand 4 Part II, Gran Turismo 5 Prologue Spec III, Half Life two and a half this time they're undead (subtitle, left 4 Dead).

Honestly, the expectations of so-called gaming hournalists seem hideously distorted. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised considering the way in which Microsoft has managed to move the goal posts. It's no longer about long term success folks. Who cars if your game sells well for a year and tops out at 3 million copies globally if it didn't sell 2 million in the first week? Who cares if your console sells consistently well over 6-7 years and hit's 100 million sold if you didn't outsel the competition in the first two years?

Garbage. All of it. I call BS on this article, and the thesis behind it.

That's just plain stupid.


So the game isn't canceled, but because THQ are dumbasses they'll forgo the US market? What now? If they're actually finishing the game why in hell are they not releasing it in the US? Stupidity. What is it? Are they being paid by MS? I mean, if the game is getting a release in Europe, why not the US? Thank goodness PS3s are region free, it should allow some in the US to get the game if they want it. But it's still just plain stupid.

THQ, you're fools, even more so if you're allowing Microsoft's pocketbook to determine your strategy.

Um....wasn't the original report of this published on APRIL FIRST? Perhaps there's a little significance to that date, you know April 1st?

Perhaps it's foolish to consider the date, perhaps now. But it does sound a little more than implausible to essentially say that the empty space on a blu-ray disc causes it to perform slowly. That's a little like saying a Nascar race car will slow down as it's fuel load lightens because the fuel pump has to work harder to pump the fuel to the engine...

The trouble here is that she's suing essentially 90-somthing percent of the world's short wavelength diode manufacturers. If her patent (which applies only within the US) is so gosh darned special, when hasn't she got any commercial partners here in the US to build the things? The whole case is just another example of slightly protectionist and opportunistic legal work. I have no doubt about the lady's academic achievements, but as she's done nothing to make use of her patent herself, I think it's pretty rich to go after companies that have invested billions of dollars in manufacturing the things, taking the basic concepts and developing them further and commercializing them so that it's even possible to produce the things on an industrial scale.

You'll note that all the companies being targeted are companies outside the USA. The reason there are no US companies on the list is not because companies in the US obey patents any better than companies abroad. It's because no one else makes the bloody diodes.

Does it matter which of your categories they fall into? Theft is theft.

Downloading and playing a game without paying is stealing, whether you play for a couple of days and don't like the game or play for weeks and love it. Many games have demos now, so try before you buy. But if you download it and use it without paying, what else can it be called other than theft?

Guys, it's Gauntlet with ray guns and aliens. Looks like a lot of fun. Why so negative? It's not like there are a lot of concepts in games. Vertical shooters, vertical scrollers (special case of vertical shooter), sideways scroller, rotational shooter (aka dual analog shooters), first person shooters, etc... How many first person shooters are there? Why play any of them when we can have Doom and Wolfenstien 3D for free? Asteroids is the mother of many games, any time you are a ship, plane, car/tank, person or whatever that moves around the screen, rotates and fires outwards - guess what, you're playing Ateroids, all dressed up perhaps, but Asteroids none the less. Sideways scrollers are all variations on Defender.

Everything old is young again....

Apart from the obvious point that the bluetooth technology used by Sony is used under license, so it's not really Sony who's responsible for any infringement. This is a dumb case. The TCP/IP protocol adequately covers all the bases on this concept and it's almost entirely public domain. This company should get short shrift and kick up the arse for being cheeky.

Honestly this patent is so overbroad as to be invalid even before the case gets going. A nice test of th Supreme Court's recent guidance regarding the obviousness test. Basically it will come down to this. If you have more than one remote device communicating wirelessly using the same frequency or a spread spectrum of random frequencies, each unique remote device must have an identifier. Since this is a digital system thre is no way to do it except using a binary code which will obviously translate directly to a number. There is no other way to do it. This patent is not just obvious it's painfully bleeding obvious. And it was just as painfully bleeding obvious in January 1996 when it was filed for. That is BTW more than 10 years ago. I'm pretty sure that there have been devices in that 10 years that have used numeric codes to identity themselves. For example any cordless phone using digital transmission employs a handshaking protocol with the base station that automatically identifies each handset with a numeric code. Multi-hand set capability has bee around for years. Why in hell's name to idiots still think they can game the patent system?

Keyboarding errors blow also. NFL TOUR not TOUT.

*sigh*

Oh boy. NFL Tout blows donkeys. I played the demo from PSN and all I can say is...what a waste of bandwidth. The game structure and gameplay is almost identical to the rather more sedate Backyard Football my son plays on his ancient Dell PC. Only difference is that the player models are 'real' NFL players rather than kiddie representations of them as in the backyard game.

Perhaps they can do something about the homicidal/suicidal AI that the two weekend add-ons have featured. I swear if I get cheap-shotted one more time by the game I may have to throw something. Seriously, tough AI is fine, but these guys are simply out to take you out, they don't care about their pace in the race at all. Quite the annoyance when you're trying to complete the tickets to unlock the extras. I paid for it, either give me an unlock code, or do something about the stupid, frustrating and annoying AI.

Apart from that, great DLC, thanks Evolution.

Now, fix your damned AI!