Justin Murray

I appreciate the context, Joe. However, the idea is somewhat of a stretch. I do agree that many religions placed scientifically verifiable actions into the realm of the spiritual, but taking the bamboo-cutter's daughter story and making it out to be an advanced alien race destroys the concept of mysticism. It was as if Clover was trying to tell everyone that the Shinto belief is bogus and all of the events in the stories are done by a very real, very non-spiritual alien race. All Okami reminds me of are the various "scientific" groups that are Hell-bent on eliminating the divine from society. The worst book I ever read was a scientific dissection of The Odyssey. They went around, found the whirlpool, a rocky place that sounded like singing and explained how elephant skulls were the basis for the cyclops. Absolutely destroyed the story for me as any subsequent re-readings caught me thinking that Odysseus was just some back-woods chump easily freaked out by a dead elephant and confused by winds gushing through rock and not a regal, brave and wise king.

By stripping the Shinto religion, something I am not well versed in at all, of its mystic feeling, the entire wonder of the story was destroyed. All we have now is a science fiction film set in ancient Japan. Because the Shinto religion is such a foreign concept to the western world, Clover should have adjusted it to simply tell the stories to us as they were intended, and done so through the eyes of Amaterasu. The as-is format is acceptable for Japan, as many of them are familiar with the stories and a ho-hum retelling wouldn't do them any justice. As it stands now, I may never be able to look at Shinto for what it should be if I ever do read the actual stories. Because of Okami, they'll always be tainted by alien races and space ships. That is why I was dissappointed with it.

It's actually very simple. That isn't a TV per-se, but an LCD display you could find on any digital camera or cell phone that is fashioned to look like one. A little rigging to get some inputs connected and whammo, you got a mini-TV.

Nah, we can get fired. The grounds aren't as simple as making one mistake. If I reported bad information knowingly or consistently do the same thing (this is the first), then we may have a different story. We all have to remember something: everyone messes up. I'm owning up to it, which is a far cry better than making excuses or deleting the information entirely.

Even serious outlets like USA Today and the New York Times report on bad information, but it doesn't make them any less trustworthy or ruin their integrity. Snopes.com has a large library of times USA Today reported on urban legends being true, yet millions are still willing to pick up the paper for daily information. I do, even after knowing this.

Yes, this is bad information. We can still gain positive insight from this: the information is out there and we can now further educate those who see this and take it at face value.

Heh, catch-22. If I write a boring headline, no one will read it.

I guess I should dispense the subtleties and start saying things out loud for the "You're so bais" crowd:

1. I didn't fully believe the story from the start. Read the "if true" statements.

2. The information was presented as-written and clarification came later. The size does justify the Blu-ray disk, but the data-stuffing is still troubling as Blu-ray is designed to avoid such tactics.

3. Nice list of past articles, here are a few more:

Is the Xbox 360's high attach rate bad?

Wii have no room to play

PS3's B.C. problems and how to blow it out of perspective

Nintendo doesn't like next-gen optical disks

This'll be the last time I'll say it (since it will fall on deaf fanboy ears of all stripes and colors), but picking and chosing data and ignoring the rest doesn't help the argument much. If anything, given the percentage of news coming down the pipes, I've given Sony a beneficial treatment. The negativites are unfairly weighed more heavily at Nintendo in my short stint. If fairness counts, I should focus more on negative Sony stories to fill in what is coming out of the press (mainstream and video game varieties).

I apologize about forwarding bad data, but as we all know, if we don't jump on the information immediatley, it becomes old-news in internet terms. That is simply a chance that has to be taken. This time, the gamble failed.

The idea behind the article is that if the attach rate is rising, the hardware sales are not matching it.

The data can be taken in two ways:

1. Microsoft is not selling hardware and any additional unit of software sold contributes to a higher attach rate.

2. New 360 owners are prone to pick up 5 games upon purchase.

Option 2 is not particuarly realistic.

Product cycles have four phases: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. When it comes to consoles, if the product is selling well, the attach rate should be low in the introduction and growth stages. In these stages the console is selling well and due to various constraints (time and economic), the attach rate will be low.

When the console reaches the maturity stage, the sales will begin to drop, albeit slowly, which will allow the attach rate to either stagnate at a low level or begin to climb up. The decline stage is when the attach rate should begin to increase.

While I don't have any numbers, I would wager that the PS1's attach rate rose significantly after the PS2 hit retailers.

Microsoft's relatively high attach rate could be an indication that they're having difficulty selling hardware.

Brad Lee hit it right on the nose. Sony is in a precarious situation where they need to squeeze as much money they can from software sales. Because the bulk of sales go to hardcore gamers, offering diversions hardcore gamers would use that don't generate income is a bad idea. If one gamer is using his PS3 to play thousands of NES, SNES, Genesis, etc games that means another gamer will have to make up for that loss of income. An estimated $240 is a lot of software, and if another gamer has to pick up the slack, a profit on that unit may never materialize.

The decision to make the PS3 a virtual PC means Sony has little leway in dropping prices down the line. If Sony isn't making the money back on software royalties, they will have to make them back on hardware profits. This means those decreases in construction costs won't translate into a decrease in sticker price, ultimately damaging Sony's ability to mass-market the PS3.

josh -

There are plenty of Win95 programs that do not work even under the included WinXP emulation. Constructor, Dungeon Keeper (1 and 2) the first two Broken Sword games are examples that I've personally run into.

I never got Constructor to ever work, Dungeon Keeper was fixed with SP2, and I have to use ScummVM to run Broken Sword 1 and 2.