bVork

A complete copy and paste job from the Aperture Science website. I guess somebody got desperate when trying to meet a deadline.

Disc checks and light anti-copying measures like SafeDisc. It prevents casual piracy (people trying to burn duplicates for their friends) but doesn't massively inconvenience legitimate users.

@Solace

The games market is not a closed, retailer-specific system. GameStop is not the only games retailer in existence. In fact, they sell considerably fewer games than Walmart. Thus, they aren't really required to sell new games in order to eventually receive used trade-ins.

Also, you don't seem to understand the reasoning behind pre-orders. The incentives are there to pre-order a game for two reasons: first, they just love it when people give them money before receiving a product - that's basically free money for the weeks (or months) before the product actually arrives. Second, they use pre-orders to figure out how many games to stock. They don't like having a lot of new copies sitting on shelves, and want them sold as soon as possible So they tend to order only enough games to fill pre-orders and a couple extras. Expecting people to trade them in is not why they do pre-orders.

@ Solace

See my second paragraph. Mass Effect 2 feels complete as it stands, without any DLC. Had the Cerberus Network stuff not even existed, I doubt anyone would complain. This isn't a large portion of the game. It's some new items and side missions. I'd agree with your complaints if a significant portion of the game was locked, but that simply is not the case.

I don't think GameStop trade-ins drive the sales of new games, either. It is, in fact, in GameStop's best interest for people to keep buying and trading in used games as much as possible.

Will EA's "Project Ten Dollar" cause a drop in used game prices once people realize the additional cost of getting access to the DLC? Sure. Is this a bad thing? Not at all! This just means that GameStop won't be able to stick used games on the shelf beside the new copies for $5 less, meaning that the used copies won't be competing as directly with the new copies - which is exactly what EA intends.

@Solace

That's exactly WHY EA is doing what they do. Remember that they don't get a cut of any used game sales. I can't blame them for that kind of tactic, when there are stores like PawnStop that offer $20 for trade-ins then re-sell them for $55, right beside the $60 brand-new copies.

At least most of EA's DLC isn't essential. You aren't really getting a crippled game if you don't, say, have access to the Cerberus Network in Mass Effect 2. What Capcom does is just bullshit, since this stuff is already on the disc or included in the download. You're just paying for unlock codes.

It ran just fine on PC, though. I quite enjoyed that version, and I think anyone who has a rig capable of running it should give it a shot.

And the reason people abandoned those versions is because, unlike 360, there's no protection on the saves. Exploits and hacked characters are the norm.

Remember that this is using the median, not the mean. That means that outliers such as testers (unless there are a LOT of testers) and bigwig CEOs don't affect the data a great deal. And yes, it sucks that people in marketing and publishing are getting paid more than the people who actually make games, but what can ya do? Can't sell a game without all the fun that goes on in funding the game, manufacturing and distributing it, and making sure people know about it. Here's hoping that the move towards digital distribution will skew the numbers more towards the actual developers, since there will be far less overhead and thus more opportunity for self-publishing.

That does look an awful lot like GRIN's engine - the way it handles the shadows cast by trees is identical to the way it works in Bionic Commando.

Except that Sauron lost his physical body in the destruction of Númenor, and could never again take on a humanoid form. Tolkien is pretty clear about how Sauron took many shapes, but mostly stayed in the form of an ever-searching lidless eye.