Dummy00001

It's called "phased introduction" and actually is pretty popular with H/W vendors when they start selling ware at low quantities to limit early adopters problems to the truly early adopters only.

And since MMO games are essentially hardware limited - back end server hardware at that - it too makes perfect sense.

Well, at least I think it is much better than to buy a game and be unable to play it after unpacking.

I still remember the times of games where you didn't have to reload/reload manually.

@HighestRanked1 "Did you ever wonder how Apple is making more money than any other computer company on Earth? Now you know."

PC side of story is not complete without a mandatory mention of stickers....

@techlord, cut it. it's 1.5 months to photokina - everyone gonna announce something soon.

@maty: "They're sold in independent electronics stores and reems of kids at school have them." "I'm a professional games developer too, even that being the case, I've never met anyone using these things for legitimate use."

Kids want to play. Kids have no $$$$/££££ to pay for the modern overpriced games. Face the reality.

Heck, that's DS we are talking about: there are even no game demos here. Reviews are generally useless/biased. How do you even supposed to justify wasting the hard earned on something of unknown value and hefty price tag???

@max3000, my friend works in the area. they have in labs many safety measures and constant safety trainings. partially to keep people out of harms way, partially to not to fry the sensitive uber-expensive equipment they use for research.

@TheSmartGuy: "Most of these corporate "BSODs" are due to poorly written proprietary software." "OS is blamed just because that is what users see on their screen."

On systems BP likely using, the software is least of the problems.

BSOD is most commonly caused by poor device drivers and the hardware (not certified to work under all the stresses of oil rig). Responsibility for at least one of the reasons - poor device drivers - partially lies with MS. I coded in past drivers for both Windows and Linux (mostly latter), and all Windows device drivers I have seen were of generally low quality.

But the BSODs caused by drivers quality quantitatively is peanuts compared to number of dead systems I have seen due to use of uncertified/untested hardware. They simply saved on hardware...

@JL, that was my pessimistic look at the worst case scenario.

I can only hope that Google would maintain its active role in the Android development. And they have to or MS would really side-line them very quickly, not at consumer level, but rather at manufacturer level. And to develop the OS further, Google would need the hardware, meaning that one or two manufacturers might get the unofficial status of official supplier of development phones to Google. Whether it would translate into market availability of phones, officially blessed by Google, is questionable though.

Goodbye Android!

Welcome the fragmentation at hands of manufacturers.

No official phone - no target for hardware manufacturers - further customized, incompatible hardware - further customized, incompatible software - "Android" stops meaning a damm thing to consumers - WinPho7 wins since manufacturers love when MS throws them R&D money for the OS/phone integration.

Sad.

And here I was waiting for Nexus Two rumors surfacing....

This is bad.

I think Android needs a 1st party device made by Google itself to prevent the fragmentation by manufacturers.