wilbz

@17: "They said its free and it will be seemless between games."

From TFA: A FUTURE GOAL is to let users transition seamlessly from Home into a disc-based game, such as Motorstorm. (emphasis mine)

My future goal is to be rich, that doesn't mean that I already am though. I'm sure Sony has plenty of future goals, but lest you get caught up in the hype, remember similar such "goals" in other games that never really came to fruition (Fable, Black & White, insert future Peter Molyneux game here). Compared to what was promised, and what has been delivered so far regarding the PS3, I would hesitate to be overly excited about anything until it's final form has been revealed.

My biggest concern is that Sony's going to make a "Jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none" approach to this, and it's going to interfere with doing all the things the PS3 was SUPPOSED to do (e.g. play games). OTOH, if this really takes off, it might be discouraging to third party support if people are spending more time in Home paying micro-transactions to customize their virtual apartment, than they are playing games.

My understanding is that if you're playing the multiplayer game, you will basically fill the role played by the normal "fodder" enemies for the single player game (e.g. the marines from HL). Someone playing the single player game will be more powerful than someone playing multiplayer, but will have goals related to the story, rather than just killing all of the enemies they encounter.

What I don't understand, is are there going to be factions of people that are playing against each other for the multiplayer, or is it all going to be "everyone against the single player guy".

@66
"Suggest these questions:
1. Are the Virtual Console games priced too high? Yes, No.
2. Have you bought any Virtual Console games? Yes, No.
3. Do you want to play games with friends online? Yes, No."

This is exactly what I'm talking about regarding rhetorical questions.
1.If someone asks you directly if you think they're charging too much for one of their products, regardless of what you really feel the value is you'll probably say yes in the hopes they lower the price.
2.Nintendo already knows exactly who has purchased virtual console games and what games have been purchased.
3.Of course most people want to play games with friends on-line. In fact, lots of people would like to play games with STRANGERS on-line. Nintendo still obviously hasn't figured out how they want to do it and maintain the kind of safety measures they want. Friend codes are seemingly about protecting children who might use the system from exposure to random perverts on the internet.

Regardless, all of these yes/no questions provide no intrinsic value to Nintendo. If someone asks you if you want more features out of their product (such as original content, faster weather updates, cheaper VC prices, and most of the other proposed questions) of course most people are going to say yes. The only thing that would provide value to Nintendo would be a matter of preference between two choices, e.g. What would you rather have: Original Content on the VC, or more frequent VC releases? This provides feedback as to what should be the higher priority for them.

I like how everyone is submitting rhetorical questions and expecting that they'll have some sort of effect (or that they'll even get posted). Might as well submit the questions: "How much do you want to pay for Nintendo products: nothing, or some?"

Currently, all of the questions only provide two choices. To provide any kind of real feedback, they'll need to provide more than that (Ideally something like a five tier option from strongly agree, to strongly disagree). It's really going to be dependent on if they start offering any questions that aren't quite so vanilla, but I expect they'll prefer to take submissions from 4-14 year olds, rather than 15-50 year olds (when it comes to the content of the question).

@41
I don't see the final comment as being some sort of anti-Sony fanboy-ism. Why should people pay $500-$600 so they can play a game at a higher resolution (720P on PS3 vs. 480P on PS2) that they can already play on their PS2. In other words, GOW2 is great, but IT ALREADY PLAYS ON THEIR EXISTING HARDWARE! You'd be paying $500+ to gain slightly in resolution, but would lose rumble and have absolutely ZERO difference in game play. At least the Wii version of Z:TP had a different game play experience via the new controls.

Additionally, I wouldn't argue with anyone who said that Z:TP was not THE reason to buy a Wii. It was A reason to buy one, along with Wii Sports, the VC, and the control scheme in general, but it was certainly not the sole reason to get a Wii.

@#41 - Nintendo wasn't holding on to them, the retailers were so they could advertise them. I can guarantee you that Nintendo is shipping them as fast as they can make them. Don't forget that they're producing consoles for most of the world, while Sony is only doing so for the US and Japan right now.

Personally, I'm glad the retailers held them until Sunday so that I finally had a chance to get one. I can't leave work midday during the week, which is when most of the shipments normally arrive. Holding it gave some of us working stiffs a chance to finally buy one. That, and everyone knew where and when to be. From the retailers end, it's not a big issue to them WHEN they sell them, they're more concerned about selling them all (which it appears they still managed to do).

I was number two in line at a Target that ended up having 69 of them!. Finally scored it after having been 31st in line at a Circuit City before X-Mas when they only had 30 of them.

The interesting thing was that I was behind a couple of grandparents who were buying the system for THEMSELVES after having played it at their son's house. I think this is why the system has taken off so much: the viral nature of the game-play itself. It's fun and it's inexpensive enough most people say "Hey, I can get one of these for $250? Count me in!"

This is merely the mess thats currently happening in most MMORPGs being extended to standard console games. EA is merely capitalizing on people who are willing to pay for convenience, just like WoW gold sellers. The only difference is, they're cutting out the middle man. At least in this case (AFAIK) it is not providing the purchaser with an unfair advantage in on-line play over someone who has made no such purchases. It's much more of a problem when people with money can buy their way past people with skill (especially if it starts to take place in arcade style games). Can you imagine needing to insert an extra quarter to play as anyone but Johnny Cage in MK?

Extra Controller

Fish Tycoon? Couldn't they have come up with any more plausible [noun] + Tycoon game? As if the Tycoon games weren't a big enough joke already.