deanb

I carry on forgetting that John Noble is Australian. (it's a video interview, just with spoilerish stuff in the preview)

They're Blizzard. They already support roughly 12million+ customers. I've a feeling server and customer support is something they're not exactly lacking in. Also waiting until the magical day arrives doesn't lead to any guarantee nothing will fuck up. But a soft launch at least means if/when it fucks up, it only fucks up for a few people instead of all of them.

Yeah does strike me as more of a "avoid the holiday rush" kinda dealy. Quite a few games to go up against and this isn't exactly the Bioshock folks picked up in '07 so it's somewhat risky. And a game having deadlines pushed back isn't always a good thing, so it's not really backwards thinking. It's always easy to over cook a turkey. Wouldn't surprise me if the time is taken to refine ports (iirc it's coming to Vita), or work on multiplayer. Or on other game or eventual DLC n such.

In other news the House Oversight Committee pull out a ton of numbers on the TSA and the outlook (for TSA) is not good. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120509/10161518848/congress-tsa-is-wasting-hundreds-millions-taxpayer-dollars.shtml

So I hear Obama has backed same-sex marriage. Though I'd swear the reaction to it you'd think he just signed in the 28th amendment and declared 9th of May "Gay Marriage Day". (then again by Fox's reaction you'd think he'd just declared war on marriage )

I think with a game like Diablo III, a game over a decade in the making, years of hype, etc etc, that it's more of a "well we'll let you in on this party" than a "please Gamestop, please stock our game or our company will collapse" kinda deal. I think something like 70% of Acti-Blizz's income was digital, and given they've got the rather hefty sales figures on COD on consoles bringing up that 30% it points to Blizzard as a large chunk of that digital purchases. They probably could make it digital only and still take home a fair amount of bacon. Just a bit of old school thinking keeping them with traditional retailers.

Well then surely it's only fair that cars drive at a few miles an hour so as to be fair to the horse and cart industry? Blizzard can directly sell to the consumer their own product and at a much higher profit and an earlier release. So why not do that? I thought you were all for a free market. If a company can offer a better product(or more a service here I guess) and at a higher profit then more power to them and all that. Then it's up to the consumer, early access (though with potential hiccups) by buying it through Blizzard. Or a disc copy, potentially for cheaper and a few days after the main hiccups, but several days after most other people. Heck. "Pay $10, get early access" or "Pre-order Heart of the Swarm, get early access", "Buy 6 months of WoW membership, get early access". Make even more profit.

Thing is holding out digital release until retail release does the exact opposite of helping with server load and customer support since instead of a rolling release of a million one day and a million more a few days later you have several million all on at once. Which then leads to the stupidity of Diablo 3 having you wait out 40 seconds before you can log in to play your game.

But the official greenlight is dictated by the retail release they'd set. There's absolutely nothing Stopping Blizzard hitting the big red button and unlocking the pre-loaded copies now. Other than the arbitrary date. Which retailers are tied to and some digital distribution channels also tie themselves to for needless purposes. Game is done, finished, in boxes, on computers, on servers etc. It works, it runs, just...it doesn't. It's kinda silly. I swear there's been examples of games where the digital release unlocked before retail came out. In fact wasn't it StarCraft II? I know it won't have been a Steamworks game cos they're tied to the arbitary retail launch date too despite the pre-loading.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/05/09/interview-what-happened-to-black-mesa-source-part-1/ An interview with the Black Mesa guys. They talk quite a bit about how n why it became so delayed.

http://www.bioshockinfinite.com/news/articles/159886 Delayed to February next year.

http://www.blappeture.com/ I don't know if it should go in the Portal or the Half-Life thread. Either way I don't think this one is a fake.

So it's out now, it's pretty damn slick. Few issues with navigation, but that's always a case with single view 3D applications. Not as many items as appear in the game though (one I'm annoyed on losing is the hole in the glass.) http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=68493962 First map, friends only.

I've now seen Episode 2. I hope Tyrion slaps Joffry about some more. Shame about the doggies though. Get their staring role then *drags finger across throat with appropriate sound effect*. Though I'm to understand this is how the show goes. What was the gag I heard a while back..something like "It's lucky George R.R Martin isn't on Twitter. He'd have killed all 140 characters by now". Woot for the kiddy though. Hoping it get's a bit less gloomy. It could be good n all, but I like my gloom balanced out. With slapping of annoying kids.

I wasn't aware it was a brand. Bunch of places and products under that name (since obviously the "Kentucky" one is a bit used already).

And a close-up

I feel there's some key context missing here.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2012/may/08/gay-rights-united-states

I really should maybe get round to watching beyond episode 1 of GOT.

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/alan_wake $15 for Alan Wake. It's a GOG game so it comes DRM free and with a bunch of goodies.

https://twitter.com/#!/KazHiraiSCE/status/199597938123603970/photo/1

Do you mean Pit Boss? If so, I don't know if you want to figure it out on your own or what so I'll spoiler it Ah

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-05-07-star-wars-the-old-republic-has-lost-400-000-subs-since-february It's lost 25% of subs in the past few months. It'll be F2P by the end of the year me thinks.