Scott

Microsoft's gamerscoreblog has a note up from Hufford saying that his remarks were taken out of context somewhat. He says they were made to Bloomberg about two months ago when they were discussing monthly sales figures and talking about console pricing in general.

http://gamerscoreblog.com/team/archive/2007/06/08/551072.aspx#comments

Dvorak was also the guy who said the United States should nationalize Microsoft and predicted Microsoft would kill the Xbox because everybody would start using them as cheap Linux computers, thereby undermining Windows. Dvorak might know the PC industry but he doesn't understand gaming.

Zach: The rest of Asia may not like the Xbox, but when I lived in Beijing from 2002 to 2005, my brother-in-law and all his friends (mid-20s to early 30s) loved to come over and play my Xbox. They had read about it and knew it was the most powerful machine out there. The Chinese don't show the same aversion to shooter games that the Japanese do (Counter-Strike and Quake 2 are huge phenomena over there) so they take readily to titles like "Halo".

Sony tried to launch the PS2 there a couple years ago and it totally failed. The rampant piracy there is a huge issue for an industry that relies on the software to be profitable. Hard to have a business model that works when pirate versions of the games can be bought for $1.

China's cultural autocrats, already suspicious of video games, are even more cagey when it comes to foreign games. Very few foreign games receive official approval to be sold there, and the ones that do have pretty non-political themes, like World of Warcraft. It's impossible to imagine a game like "Splinter Cell", where the story involves corrupt Chinese generals, or "Battlefield 2", in which you can play as American soldiers fighting Chinese ones on Chinese soil, getting approved.

Finally, something like Xbox Live must totally give them the willies. Who knows what people would say to each other, or what messages they would send? Of course the number of gamers who would actually get political would be totally small, but no amount of dissent or disloyalty is too insignificant to escape the attention of the government.

However, if Microsoft can convince the powers-that-be that Live won't be a hotbed of antisocial and antigovernment sentiment, it might be the answer to their piracy concerns because they could use online authentication for the hardware and games. Sure it's not perfect but it might be enough to give them a viable business model.

The final point is that China does have a thriving video game market, just not a thriving console market. It's shaping up to be more like Korea than the U.S. or Japan, with MMORPGs like "Legend of Mir" and "WoW" accounting for most of the action. I believe at least one PC-oriented gaming company has said they want to make a console for China, but I'd be surprised if anyone there did anything significant for the next 3-5 years.

Game publishers may cite "increased production costs" as a reason behind the $60 price tag on next-gen games, but the simple fact is that price is rarely set by cost. Price is set by what the market will bear, i.e., what people are willing to pay. Why would they leave $10 on the table. If someone was willing to buy your used car for $500 over Blue Book, you wouldn't turn them down, would you?

Oh, I just got another Gamestop message saying that "due to unforeseen shipping problems", pre-ordered copies of "Gears of War" may not be available in all stores. They recommended calling your store first before going in to pick it up.

It is shaping up to be a rather messy launch.

The game has definitely not shipped to all retail outlets. I preordered a copy from Gamestop back in April or thereabouts. Yesterday (the 7th) I went in to pick it up and they said they weren't getting their shipment in until the 8th. Two Target stores got shipments but were sold out by mid-afternoon. Best Buy wasn't getting any until the 8th, either.

Today (the 8th), I also stopped into a CompUSA and a Virgin Megastore, neither of which had received any copies yet. An EB Games had tons but you were out of luck unless you'd preordered (and you can't preorder at Gamestop and pick it up at an EB, even though they are the same company).

I was starting to get worried because I didn't really believe that my local Gamestop would come through for me. It really is run very incompetently and I've actually stopped buying there because they are so lame. But lo and behold I did get the recorded message saying that I could pick up the game, and they did indeed have it when I went in.

Now I'm just waiting for my 5-year-old to go to bed so I can play it...

I don't think aliens and zombies are popular because of America's "religious extremists" but rather because America's cultural diversity extremists disapprove of anything that could be construed as encouraging negative racial or cultural stereotypes.

M3mnoch, you're confusing "median" and "average" (also known as "mean"). It's nonsensical to say talk about the "median of 0-100".

The median is the middle number in a range. So, if for a given video game title, five reviewers gave it scores of 65, 72, 78, 85, and 94, the median would be 78. The average, or mean, would be 78.8.

The median is often a preferred measure because just one wild number in the range can completely skew an average. Imagine in the above range that the first number is zero. Suddenly the average drops to 65.8.

Concerning the wider issue of score inflation, there are probably a number of factors at play. It seems to resemble ratings deployed by Wall Street analysts on the companies they cover. I bet if you graphed those, they would look similar to the curve above -- lots of "buy", "outperform" and "hold" ratings, and only a few "sell" ones. Maybe this is because they only cover companies/games they like. Why bother reviewing a crap game or a company that's about to go bankrupt? Look at reviews for books and games on Amazon.com. Most people review what they like, and tend to over-reach when describing it. Look how many ho-hum or moderately good albums are declared to be "the best ever!" It's easy for people to skew their own perceptions.

Then again, a professional reviewer should be able to rise above such sentiments and keep perspective on the material in front of them. Here, I would turn to someone like Roger Ebert. How many movies does he give 4-5 stars? Are all of those movies of the caliber of "The Godfather" or "Citizen Cain" or what have you? No, but he rates them not only on their technical achievements but also just on how much he enjoyed them.

Anyway, there are a lot of reasons why game reviews are curved the way they are without resorting to accusing the authors of being paid by the game companies to slant their reviews.

The Xbox 360 version is also rated "M". Although the topless mod doesn't work, the violence was deemed more excessive than previously thought. Check out the ESRB Web site:

http://www.esrb.org/ratings/search.jsp

"Roddick: Escape From Butcher Bay" basically had no HUD except for a health bar that was only visible when you took a hit or got healed.

Several games show ammo loads through a readout on the gun itself -- "Halo" and "Doom 3" are maybe the best examples.