joshua

@necroticart There is no guarantee that MK-levels of content will bring MK-levels of sales, though. It could easily be argued that MK was so popular because it's MK, and this was the first MK that was legit since 1995. 1995! Street Fighter IV had nothing for casual fans, was severely lacking in content, and yet it saw similar levels of success.

It's a tricky thing. Let's say they delay the game for a few months to get that content in. Will that actually increase sales? Is there really some contingent of people out there who see Soul Calibur single player as a DEALBREAKER? And is that contingent large enough to make it worthwhile to pay salaries and devote resources for the time it takes?

... I'm not seeing it.

@necroticart If it's killing the industry, it's been killing the industry since the mid-1970's. Every game ever made has had cut content. No game ever comes out in its ideal fully realized form. A game is always the result of compromises between imagination and reality.

They could have waited, and spent more money on development, which means of course they expose themselves to more risk, and need to sell more units to get a good ROI.

@Vidikron And you do? Read and learn:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/10/the-shame-of-college-sports/8643/

The system is a scam:
1. there is no way for the players to legitimately market their talents the way any other person of skill could in America.
2. they are effectively held hostage due to scholarships being handed out 1 year at a time. Again, there is no way for players to market their talents. If the NCAA cared so much about education, why won't they back multi-year scholarships?
3. The term "student-athlete" is legal jargon designed to get out of paying worker's compensation. It's a fraud. It means nothing.
4. It's even worse than you describe - many schools (including big ones, like Berkeley) - are taking money out of the general fund to prop up the athletic department. Ultimately, the question is why the hell are schools in the business of fielding athletic teams, especially if it comes with the baggage that is this awful, crooked, broken scam.

Gears of War 2 is not in "very good shape." It is still horrible. And amazingly it came out a year after Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3.

But Cliff is right on one thing - #3 needs to get it right!

@JGoodwin I've read a few previews of this game and none of them mention Silhouette Mirage. It's like the people writing about games nowadays know nothing about games.

Americans find it "boring" is because it's not understood. Not growing up with it, the tactics, ebb and flow, movement off the ball, etc. are all lost. If you don't appreciate the pitcher-batter duel then baseball loses much of its appeal. Soccer, any sport really, is the same way. The thing is, the pitcher-batter duel is ingrained in American sport. The 4-4-2 or whatever is not.

Us Americans love to smear stuff we don't understand as garbage, but the game is honestly growing in popularity here, thanks to changing demographics and big teams making an effort to come here to play (this offseason teams such as Inter, Chelsea, Milan, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Club America, and Everton all came to the US).

The question is why do Americans find it boring? Really, football is about 4 seconds of action followed by 36 seconds plus of watching coaches grimace and Jerry Jones pick his nose.

Soccer never had the chance to become part of American culture the way the other sports have. The reasons are many, it's actually very interesting (check out "Soccer In A Football World" or "The Ball is Round"). I think things are gonna change now with HD and excellent worldwide leagues on TV.

Yea, quite the contrary, the history of racist imagery is something that SHOULD be learned, so it can avoided going forward. It's a simple fact that this sort of thing was once quite important in American culture. Why shouldn't Americans know the good and bad about their culture and history?

There's simply no benefit to encouraging ignorance among citizenry, The cliches about knowing history abound and are as old as history itself but there's a reason for that.

You have to pick your battles. Telling people to go without U2 or football games isn't going to fly (actually I wouldn't care, I hate U2, but you know what I mean) and will lose you support very very quickly.

Good lord, its amazing how quickly people rush to defend billionaire owners.

Look fellow commentators, the money is somewhere. It gets made. So if the money doesn't go to rookies, it goes to veterans or owners. But if the veterans aren't getting it (as the union's research indicates), then it goes to the owners.

The only way I would get behind a "rookie salary cap" is if the veterans got the money. Of course, that's not going to happen. So I'd rather it goes back to somebody that is actually playing.

NFL players don't make much money compared to other leagues, even though the NFL is the country's wealthiest league by a mile. Yet they are also treated poorly, have non-guaranteed contracts, a significantly higher risk of injury than other athletes, and a far shorter shelf life.

NFL owners don't need some artificial cap on rookie salaries to protect them. The entire system is set up to protect owners. Look at the 0-16 Lions, who brought in roughly the same amount of revenue as every other team... if this was football in Europe they would've been relegated and lost like 40% of their income.

Hey claytor, the teams are profitable no matter what. Last year the cap was about $127M, even the poorest team had $200M of revenue, and is valued at $900M (thanks in large part to taxpayer subsidized stadiums). Salaries aren't bankrupting any team. Not even close.

Give the money to the players.