Dirk Dorkelson

Yeah, although some of this is on the reporter. Anyone writing for a general interest audience ought to know to spell out "IP" on first reference. It's kosher on a video game site to abbreviate it all the time, because we use it all the time, but I don't think I've ever heard anyone outside of the film or game industry loop talk about IP and not mean Internet protocol.

So it's a dick move to buy the rights to something, then be mad when the person who sold you the rights continues to act as if it owns them? I guess Bethesda should have just given Interplay a huge pile of cash to keep it afloat and expected nothing in return.

Now, I'm sure there's legal fine print here, but the whole point of buying something and negotiating a deal is that both sides are supposed to abide by it. Clearly, at least one of the two parties involved with this deal aren't abiding.

Actually, I think the main issue (in addition to what are surely Beatlesy contractual issues) is the whole, "programmed to let three people sing" vs. "not programmed to have three people sing" thing.

Well of course I found out about it later. I'm only in my early 30s. :)

I've always found the "Yoko ruined the Beatles" argument to be pretty flaccid. There was a lot of turmoil and infighting in the band before she even came along, from all accounts. And John Lennon, in particular, was reportedly an extremely difficult person to get along with.

Yoko Ono was an accomplished visual artist before she met John Lennon and has made some pretty decent music as a solo artist, to boot. But if you want to cling to the weird myth that she's a talentless nogoodnik who broke up the Beatles, I guess you can do that. "Listen, the Snow is Falling" is fantastic, though.

It's not at all uncommon for businesses to compare revenue/sales to the year-ago period. In industries whose sales fluctuate throughout the calendar year, such as most consumer products, it's the smart thing to do. After all, if sales are traditionally slow in the summer months, your investors are more interested in how you did this summer versus last summer, as opposed to, say, last fall.

As someone forced to maintain two separate friends of friends lists for Culdcept Saga leagues/tournaments/matchmaking because of the 100-player cap, I say yes.

I don't find that I, as an individual user, need more than 100 friends. But plenty of Web sites/gaming communities will create gamertags so that their users can use the "friends of friends" feature to find other gamers on XBL. For a niche title like Culdcept Saga, where matches can last an hour or longer, it's vital to be able to find other players online this way so you don't spend 90 minutes sitting in a lobby waiting for someone to join your game.

This data is misleading. Checked out the article on Gamasutra and the figures being looked at are dollar amounts, not unit sales. It makes sense that dollar amounts would be down year over year once many of the players have invested money in the plastic instruments used to play the games. Example: If I spent $170 at retail in 2007 when Rock Band came out, but only $60 at retail the year "Rock Band 2" came out, that would indicate a decline of nearly 60 percent, when measured by dollars. But if I'm buying each game in the series, does that indicate the series is a "fad" that's going away?

Similarly, you can now buy Rock Band 2: Special Edition for $140, rather than $170. To keep sales figures from sliding, they'd have to sell more units.

I'm not saying the guitar/band genre isn't a fad. It's just that it should be measured by unit sales rather than dollar volume. Presumably we're not all plunking down money for new plastic instruments every time one of these games comes out.

Manly, are you the guy who designed Modesty Mansion? Brilliant stuff.

Or a rake, even.