deanb

I'm in the realm of "I'm not really sure what they'd be planning to do, I've a feeling it'll just be a reference box". You get a black sticker on the front of a Dell PC that says "Steambox certified" or something. And all the games that are "steambox certified will run on the Steambox PCs. Even you lot have been questioning if Far Cry 3 would run on your PC, it'd make it much simpler knowing you've got a "Steambox lvl3" and FarCry 3 is a "Steambox lvl2" game that you can run it fine. I don't see them making a PC, or why they'd even want to. PC's aren't something like a phone where you can do your own that's quite distinct from others on the market. Apart from specs and brand there's nothing separating a Dell from a HP from a Vaio, they're all Windows when they boot up and so would a "Steambox" (because folks are kidding themselves if they think Valve would make a Linux based PC so you can spend £500 on a PC that won't run most of your already existing software, let alone only a couple of your Steam games.) Well the hardware would allow them to sell the software, which Valve get a cut of whatever is sold through Steam. It's pretty much how consoles work too. Though I'm unsure on just how many games they plan to shift via HTPCs though, I assume they've got good enough figures already to attempt the venture. All they really needed to do was make Big Picture mode and let other companies do the rest. And given 100% of everything Valve sell through Steam runs on Windows, they'd have to have a Steambox run Windows. Which 2013 will be in full swing of Windows 8 for OEMs. Hah! No they haven't. They even have FSF concerned over Steam on Linux due to Valves use of closed systems, especially when seemingly working so closely with Canonical on it. Until they're recent "we're going to put Steam on Linux" they've never really done anything open-source. It would be great if they did though because then you'd have the option of alternative Steam clients. That's pretty much what they've done already, and yes applying the closed phone market model to PC is what has folks like Gabe concerned (that and scrapping all the legacy stuff which makes 100% of Steams catalogue work. Kind of like if you were Lotus in '95 but instead of having Lotus 123 n Notes on MS-DOS, youv'e got 1,500 programs sold on MS-DOS. I know you haven't said this, but it's a bit silly to reduce Gabes Win8 concern down to "MS are releasing a competing store" because they have had a competing store for years now and Gabe has made hardly a peep on it except vague references to other not-as-good services. And no, Steam updates are free. As is bandwidth and all that stuff.

A teaser of new TARDIS interior.

My mum puts her stuff up on the 13th(or 14th, depends on how she's counting that year) as it's "12 days before Xmas". We won't have any/much up at our flat though as most of us won't be around to appreciate it. Mariah Carey is getting a bit too much playtime at the moment for my liking. Did have a bit of "Driving home for Xmas" today which isn't often played. Slade is pretty much the classic though. http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=0A8KT365wlA also http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=_MbRoxS_5jY New Snowman this year!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=cgTpoy91nWo The original classic if you've not seen it (not sure if it's a popular thing in the US, as best I can tell Xmas media is fairly different beyond a few songs. Like us having the Great Escape on Xmas day and you guys with It's a Wonderful Life.

Probably me. I'm a big fan of the whole "drink water" thing.

I personally find just drinking water throughout the night mainly helps. You'll end up going to the loo more often, but it's a fair trade-off. Also finish off the night with something greasy, give you liver something different to think about.

Hipster. Must be the TV, mine looks great on my Samsung screen. Wearing scarfs in winter is a hipster thing now? Does that make Tom Baker King of the Hipsters? The shop was being renovated anyway so I'll likely just get a neck tube tomorrow morning as planned since I liked my old one. Also wouldn't it kind of make sense to pick a good TV for their display? btw I don't know what game it was, I'd have thought Rayman but looking up online to see if I could find that particular level (or see the sorta blurring effect in the videos I find out it makes extensive use of the gamepad, which in the store games case was just displaying 2 buttons). The game in particular had the player going along like a castle wall of sorts, 2D platformer (if thinking it was Rayman didn't give that away), and the enemies were lots of guys with shields above their heads. Lots as in they almost made a secondary floor. Ring any bells with people? edit: So this is a common issue with their display? Seems very un-Nintendo to have such a blemish, especially if you're using it for promotional displays.

I had a gander into town to get a scarf, nipped into GAME and they've a Wii U display unit up. Is it the console or the TV they use that makes it look really fuzzy/out of focus? Almost like the kind of effect you get when you're looking at 3D film with the glasses off.

Might I suggest hitting up your doctor first if you're on medication.

Well that's a bit like saying american cheese now tastes more like cheese. I don't get why they just can't have the TV adverts shooty shooty? If folks are saying that the cover wouldn't turn you off when you see it there on the store shelf all genericy then surely the reverse is true? Even more so as not spending £40 over a cover is a lot easier than spending £40 based off a cover. Especially if these are people that only buy a few games a year, they'd surely bit a lot more selective.

I'm somewhat curious on the point of making a cover that's to draw in the guys that like "dudebro shooters" if the game itself isn't a dudebro shooter. Surely they're now going to end up with a ton of people that are going "this Bioshock stuff is shit, no multiplayer either", thus turning off other potential sales?

You see Mass Effect becoming a major Wii U title? I didn't say "EA and Ubisoft don't have any game except Just Dance" I said "Ubisofts main Nintendo game is Just Dance", implying there are other games, just not as much of a success as Just Dance on Wii is.

They're likely just deflecting it to the community since; it saves them the bother, they know that there's a healthy alt-cover community in place anyway, and gives them a nice touch of PR in "community involvement".

Community has already been busy making alternate cover art before the official one was even revealed. It's nice to have a properly made one on the reverse than something printed off at the library on a sheet of paper and hacked down to fit a DVD case (since it's not quite the full A4). I'm kinda curious as to why it's not a common feature on most covers already. Double sided printed is actually surprisingly cheap, and I would imagine even more so if you're printing off a few million copies and not just a couple hundred.

So the box art is exactly as it looks then Which kinda sucks, would be nice to have a marketing box art and then a flipside of a nicely done one like Resistance 3. (of course you can always buy the collectors edition which I'm sure Irrational wouldn't mind). Still, over three months away so I'm sure plenty time to have further plans announced.

EA doesn't have much push with Nintendo. Ubisoft do, but Ubisofts main Nintendo game is Just Dance, a game not really affected by the limitations.

I'm halfway through and (very minor) (somewhat big, don't click unless completed game or fine with spoilers. I came across this one cos I stupidly read spoilers, but don't much care. In a way it adds to the lead up so might be wroth checking.) It's still a VG story, you don't exactly even meet him that much either. But his VA goes all out, which at least is worth seeing.

I don't mind the pop-ups, just that the little (!) doesn't go away. And yeah it'd be nice to have a "disable shop warnings" option as once you hit a certain point you don't want to be keeping hold of your dog skins, just stuff like tiger skins and shark skins (and the unique skins).

Well. Assuming folks have the space to download games in the first place.

Apparently to do with Germany. As David Jaffe already proved earlier this year, why bother just limited German laws and stipulations to Germany, when you can fuck over the whole of Europe with their rules. Not like Europe has any other reasons to have an ingrained dislike of Germany already.

I get jeans from Primark (and occasionally Tesco. £5 jeans, fuck yeah). Also those "wine jeans" posted look like ordinary trousers in a mauve shade.

In other news, Nintendo only thinks your indie if you have an office. If you don't have an office then I guess they assume you don't exist. Like Introversion, those guys aren't indie cos they don't (last I checked) have an office. (Not that they'd ever want to work with a console manufacturer again). So yes, the Wii U will be awesome for indies....as long as you've an established business, contacts with their favoured publishers, or success with other consoles.

FAT32s 4GB limit is right their in it's name, it's 32-bit. Same as 32-bit OSes only supporting 4GB's of RAM. It's in huge use because it's so old, and only recently been kinda less useful with the advent of large ISOs and HD video. Back when FAT32 came out 4GBs files were about as likely as we think of 4TB files today. As mentioned NTFS is Microsoft's own format, though many Linux's have r/w of it. I would have assumed OSX does given it has Bootcamp (wiki implies recent versions of OSX have NTFS r/w capabilities but requires fiddling with non-trivial settings to enable..which sounds about right). I'm to understand ext2 is supported by most OSes, though that doesn't include PS3 (personally I have a 16GB pen drive for quick copies to PS3, and just stream everything else right from Windows PC. Format a hDD as n when I want to do a back-up of it). Which is the other option, get a NAS or something instead and then it won't matter what formats the computer system uses, the NAT should still dish it out.

It's probably best to assume unless it's stipulated in the gift thing that they're not your Santa. Which also means when gifting to your ..err Santee(?) make sure to point out your their Secret Santa in the message (or if it's on a service without messages via forum PM or something)