anonymous coward

"i personally don't have a clue shy they would use it. they already have there 3yearsinthemaking white engine and ue3 is primarily targeted for 360."

connect the dots, dude.

"so your condoning stealing copies because these poor people in third world countries can't afford it? Why are these people entitled to Vista? there not! let them use windows 95 if thats all they can afford. Wait? If they are so poor, what are they doing with computers in the first place? Think about it"

This sounds like a troll, but I'll bite anyway.

I don't think they're too concerned with some random Engadget poster's morality.

If I was living in a 3rd world country where I was trying to pull myself out of economic hardship, while the software writers were all driving BMWs, well then MS be damned.

Your morality and indignation don't mean sh*t, and frankly, why should they? Nobody over there has any vested interest in your well being, so why not pirate? If you aren't flying humanitarian aid to Darfur or otherwise taking an interest in the well-being of some other 3rd world country, you'd be hard-pressed to convince any intelligent person they should take an interest in your well being, no?

Get off your high-horse. The smart choice for them is to pirate, and your sense of morality has nothing to do with it.

"The numbers are becoming more clear. Without the PS3 and a studio advantage Blu-ray would be dead."


So what you're saying is that if Blu-Ray wasn't more successful than HD-DVD, it would be less successful than HD-DVD?

Thanks, Captain Obvious. Where would we be without you.

Wow, another Sony-bashing story by Blake Snow.

Absolutely shocking.

"hmm... guess Sony is desperate for content, easily letting go of their 500MB limit."

nice how you spin this. they do something good (i.e. ignoring arbitrary limits in order to please a developer and allow more content) and you criticize them. i'm sure if they disallowed it due to size you'd criticize them for not allowing more than 500MB for games.

jeezus. find a real problem.

"So congratulations to NVIDIA for making the PS3 obsolete before it ever shipped, as G80 is truly a beast."

By your inane line of reasoning, every machine that isn't the absolute fastest is obsolete. Your precious Wii and 360 are obsolete too.

Jesus.

Two things to ponder:

1) The 8800GTX costs more than a PS3.

2) The PS3 will be a viable platform longer than the G80 will.

"Here's the thing - school scores and video game ratings serve entirely two different purposes."

"School scores actually rate about what percent of the knowledge offered in that class the student has actually absorbed."

That would be correct if they actually reported grades in numerical format, but they don't. They're letter grades, and it's understood that A means good student and D means bad.

They report relative grades because if they reported absolute grades, the system would be meaningless, as the report card doesn't list the entire curriculum.

"Video game ratings serve to compare games against other games."

This is the same as report cards from schools. As a practical matter, you can't sensibly quantify how much a student knows any more than you can quantify how good a game is. All you can say is that one student/game is better than another.

Employers look for the best candidate out of the ones that apply. Gamers look for the best game out of the ones on the retailer's shelves.

Game ratings work like grades in many schools.

Anything below a 60% is an F. To get an A, you need a 90%. A 75% is a C, and a C isn't really average anymore since there are more B students than D students and more As than Fs. We all went to school, we all understand that.

Sure, it's kind of a waste of so much of the scale, but so is the school's rating system. They could make a 50% a C by making the work more difficult. It's a little arbitrary. They have to fix the mean somewhere, but it doesn't really matter where.

"How come it was never necessary to "trim the fat" for games like FF8, FF9, FFX..."

This is actually a good question.

Part of it is that the FF games offer extrordinarily powerful optional enemies, if you are inclined to find them. To find them is, in itself a quest (e.g building the monster arena in FFX), and to beat them (say Nemesis from FFX) takes careful planning and preparation. The battles are fun, and the quests to get them are fun as well. In order to win them, you need to have obtained a lot of other equipment, which in itself is the stuff of other quests. The extra stuff in FFX really adds a lot to the game.

The extra stuff in Okami, however, serves no purpose. The game is ridiculously easy, and there are no side quests of any real substance.

It's a great game, for sure, but too linear to justify the length.

"PlayStation 3 kiosks invade Japan for massive damage!"

I think that joke has run its course.