John Pope

@Bearxor Umm you realize they shipped in Feb of 07, in July of 07 told MS that they were going to do something else first, then in Sept 07 stated at the All Star Dev conference that after APB if they had the resources they would talk to MS about a sequel, MS didn't want to wait 3 years and went with Ruffian.

In case you haven't noticed WoW is an exception in MMO's its the only one that has had anything near its level of success, a new MMO from a mostly unproven developer cannot just release it incomplete and expect to just have people flock to and ignore the problems while they finish it. The game just seemed like RTW forgot everything that made crackdown fun, the game mechanics were messed up, hell you couldn't even drive or shoot properly and there was no variety, less than 2 weeks into the initial 50 days I was done. I'm usually pretty patient and really don't spend a whole lot of time gaming compared to many I know, but there just wasn't enough to APB to make it seem worth the initial $50 much less anything that would make me want to pay up every month for it.

Hard to really feel sorry for RTW, instead of potentially becoming the next Rockstar and build off the success of their one great game, they got greedy. They wanted a piece of the retail pc gaming pie, wanted a piece of the MMO pie, wanted a piece of the mircotransaction MMO pie, made one game that tried to do all 3 over and then wondered what went wrong. Who in their right mind would pay full retail for a game, pay a monthly fee to play it and then pay micro-transactions in order to actually play effectively?

Umm Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon has sold far more copies than Sgt Pepper which is the highest selling Beatles album. The Beatles while loved by zillions only have 1 album in the top 50 all time. Pink Floyd has 2 (DSOTM and The Wall). I think that would show a rather "huge following". While Pink Floyd has many long songs, the majority are of average length. Have A Cigar, Comfortably Numb, Time, US and Them, etc all fit the under 5 minute bill, most of the "masterpieces" such as echoes, astronomy domine, etc are not the more "popular" ones but even those could open up an entire new game mode "endurance". I really think you underestimate the market for this.

Well at least we now know how they will attempt to get away with bandwidth caps again. Time Warner doesnt mind streaming video and bandwidth usage as long as they get to be the toll booth.

Im looking forward to playing crackdown but decided to wait until the Halo 3 beta is over after seeing so many fanboys buying it just for the beta. I figure I can get it cheap in a couple weeks.

Nazi state is the wrong the correct term is Nanny State. NY is all about protecting us from ourselves through legistslation, its the Liberal way. If the government puts in enough safeguards to protect us then we dont have to think for ourselves. The sticking problem has been finding out who's idea of the perfect society is correct...and everyone has an opinion so when in doubt just label it as "for the children" and everyone should hop onboard. I dont have a problem with stricter enforcement of game ratings but the simple fact is that most kids dont buy their own games their parents do. Until they try to enable jail times for parents providing games to their kids nothing is going to change other than the occasional high profile sting where some poor schmuck at gamestop gets sent up the river for selling a copy of Halo to a 19 year old undercover cop. The politicians will decare they won the war on video games...meanewhile Billy will beg for GTA and mommy will pick it up for him for his birthday.

Ebay has forgotten who got it to where it is now. When it started it was an online flea market and now they want to be a big box store. I closed shop and left my ebay business behind almost a year ago now with no regrets, but I would start again in a heartbeat if there were a viable alternative. Some people are completely content with a modest income and a "mom and pop" store, those sellers usually end up being the more honest and customer friendly ones to deal with as well. I would be willing to bet that if a viable alternative such as an imroved googlebase came along the mass exodus from ebay would make AOL's reapidly dwindling user base look like a slow decline.