WTF

Yeah I can imagine. Each time I watch their PR I get reminded of House of Cards. They are so eager to fall on their swords, the other companies pretty much just like to watch and sharpen the blades for them. Go on, Fall. Fall. etc

Everyone's going to say Nier - it's the cult classic of the generation. Many people would say Folklore, Folksoul. I'm sure we'll even here some for Prince of Persia 2008, White Knight Chronicles, No More Heroes, Deadly Premonition, Wet and the like. I'm going to see if there are games people have actually forgotten about and aren't cult classics. Resonance of fate Majin and the forgotten kingdom The Saboteur. King's Bounty: Armoured Princess/The Legend Yesterday Avadon Cult Classics Wizardry Labyrinth of Lost Souls Child of Eden Jamestown Tokyo Jungle Sound Shapes M&M: Clash of Heroes Outland Shatter Echochrome The Last Guy

Missed the discussion but MS investors do not want their entertainment division, they'd be happy if MS spun it off or sold it off to someone. Their entertainment division has been a resource drain. the Xbox is the sole success from that division. I doubt they'd care enough to want tomake Mattrick fall on his sword. I mean if they want to get him out, they'd probably also take out Hyrb since he's also been involved in the brouhaha of bad PR. What they need is an official PR face that's neither MN or DM. Bring in a nice young friendly lady, someone who caters to including women but not make them look like the Ubi Fragdolls or the kinectcasual market. Someone normal and balanced. It's not impossible to find them and make sure they're relatable and friendly. What MS needs to do is try to get some of the talent or similar talent to that which drained away from the Xbox division. They need to repair their brand image (so does EA for that matter and they're not as stable as ActiBlizz for that matter strictly in financial terms). There's also the thing that it seems like MS might have blown their load a bit earlier instead of sharing it across the three events. Plus launching in 21 markets isn't the smartest thing to do. Not to mention the one thing that's not clear from all of this, we know they need one activation does that mean if you bought it out of a territory do you still need a VPN activation for the first time usage of your console/game? It's region-free but in what sense.

She looks like Bridgette whatserface, the one who's married to Pete Sampras and was Sonya Blade in the 95 film version of MK. Yeesh I just realised that there probably are plenty of people who are adults now who weren't even alive when the damn film came out. Bah! On topic, I have a massive dislike for the name Sarah, if I ever see a Sarah/Sara it's only too soon. I had my winter of Sarahs where I ran into 42 different Sarahs in the span of 20 days and some were blind dates. People, please name your children something nice and no not North West or Pilot Inspektor or Apple. Okay that was Off-topic, on topic though I like how small the PS4 is, it means I'm going to be able to carry it when I travel a lot more often. which is awesome.

I didn't quite see this till now. I'm pretty sorry to hear that Ethan. She sounds like she had a a well loved-life and it was the best that she didn't suffer more. Still, my condolences.

I'm not surprised at the video. It's a 3 minute vid that's going to be online and probably going to be jump cut down to 30-40secs if they ever air on TV (and that's a huuuuuuuuuge IF). This is what a corporate video looks like. lol bad actors galore isn't uncommon. Let those kids get some money for better acting classes .

I'm glad they aren't forcing it on day one adopters. But people are going to stay skeptical. A lot. Like I said before, the damage to their brand has been done. Of course it will sell better now but they have to improve their PR stance now. I'm seeing someone who works in PR and we've been having this discussion for a while now. Brand damage has occured. They need to improve their image in the next 4 months. However it is wise to remain skeptical since they do want to do this. They played their hand and now are retracting it. It means the public is now aware of their intentions. To be fair, what needs to cull some of the suits responsible for this debacle. This error wasn't on a ground level but on an exec level (as most such decisions always are).

I know. I don't think I worded myself right. However there are people who still believe in it. I recall all those fake ones right before the Xbone reveal.

I'm sorry HH but pastebin is as reliable these days as rumours that come from one's behind aka as some forums call it 'tales from my ass'. Game isn't doing too well so they'll take it.

Being honest always does wonders. There's also the other thing, they aren't talking down to the consumers and trying to be well 'just one of you guys' - that attitude resonates well with people no matter what you do (Of course until you royally fuck up!).

I think people are confusing failure with ROI, profitability and expectation. The XBone need not fail per se but unless they turn around it will sell dramatically less. First rule of new console generation : The rules are reset. What you did in the past has no relevance in the future. Especially so if you console has no backwards compatibility. Second rule: Price matters. If it didn't Samsung wouldn't have taken over Sony and Panasonic in the consumer electronics department. (Even if it's an out of context example). OK getting back to consoles - The PS3 came after 2 generations of incredible success. The PS1 sold about 110-120M. The PS2 at the launch of the PS3 was sitting at 120-130M approx. The PS3 at the launch of the PS4 will be about 82-85M. That's a decline of 40-50M after two successive successful generations with a global mindshare. The 360 is launching at the period when they probably will have 82-84M globally. It will decline. MS expects it to hit that target. Consistent backlash in the media will cause a loss of sales. You don't think negative media coverage is going to affect sales? I mean right now you have the US Military involved saying what the hell? The US is their single most strategic market. If not for that market loyalty their global sales would be about 40-50M. Now they're pretty much sabotaging themselves. Unless they turn things around you can expect a return to the original Xbox sales of 30-40M lifetime. It's okay but it's nothing to write home about. This is not what MS expect, this isn't what they're bankrolling. It could be lesser still if peope decide to just buy tablets instead. The console market has increased in size but going against public opinion isn't smart. I think people forget how fast word spreads today. When the last gen launched we never had twitter revolutions or anything. Negative news spreads faster. People remember negative shit faster. Something positive. No. Not that much. The market has changed. If people expect this not to have an impact on sales, they're wrong. It's not about selling. It's about selling to expectations. You don't build a product and think okay if I sell without making a loss it's good enough. If that were the case we'd still have Zune. We'd have creative MP3 players, we'd have the Panasonic Kuro. They want to sell on par or greater than the 360. That's what won't happen. They have internal projections that make them believe they can acheive a greater marketshare in the US than they currently possess. I think people forget the importance of brand value. For instance, FF was a ridiculously strong brand in the 90s. Even if Versus sorry 15 is a good game, it's unlikely it'll hit the sales figures of 7 or 8. And this game definitely would have cost more. However they would have adjusted for that I hope (though their targets for TombRaider, Hitman and such make me think they'd be stupid -.-). Last generation, the Wii was the market leader and people really bought into it. I mean it's the console that sold about 100M. What's the WiiU's adoption rate? Crap. Mostly cause there's not enough games. 3.5 M global in half a year when they expected >5.5M isn't good. Early adopters dropped. It's a blank slate. Marketing and such only can make a certain amount of difference. This is like saying an uncharismatic leader of the party in power that has been saying all the wrong things will still win 45% of the votes when their rivals have a better sounding labour and basically just need to say 'I'm not doing what they're doing'. Opinions change, popularity changes. Tides change. I'm not saying the Xbone will not be profitable, but the company can count it as a flop unless they change the tide of public opinion. I mean you've got MSNBC saying MS doesn't care for the troops and Maddow retweeting something. It's just a piece of consumer electronic, it shouldn't matter but it's now got strong negative brand association. Unless they go about changing that it's only going to get worse. So like I'm saying. They need to shut up for a while, regroup and think of a new strategy to sell or they can pretty much ride the wave of notoriety. Looking at Win8, Surface etc - it's clear that they don't care about the consumer business because B2B is where they make most of their earnings (Server side, tools and corporate stuff). Or maybe it's the MS cycle of good product, shit product, good product, shit product.

Is that the dev or MS though? I was under the impression that except for free trial weekends MS doesn't allow any kind of multiplayer for non-Gold. It's both technically. The reason why FF14 won't be on MS systems is because they refused to put the game behind the paywall. There have been plenty of games that didn't go on the 360 because of the paywall. They were discussing Eve at some point and we all know how loaded most of those players are. World of Tanks got a decent cheque from MS and honestly they didn't care for it too much so it's there behind the paywall. Like I said, it's both parties. MS might have a policy but if you don't like it you don't have to play ball especially if you have a product with a decent subscriber base. I mean for instance BBC iPlayer isn't behind the paywall, might not be a game but it's an example.

The cloud is a company wide initiative. You don't even need to make images, just check out MS corporate and you'll see ridiculous branding for the cloud. MS believes in the cloud as a company-wide strategy to charge for more premium services. Azure is okay and all but come on. Honestly most of the people in charge of the previous iterations of the console aren't there anymore. The Bone sorry Xbone is and always was a corporate machine. If this tanks, it'll be zuned No question about that. There will be a relaunch but I bet around that time both Nintendo and Sony will be able to charge less so this generation is going to be hard on them. Vecha is right, this whole cloud business is a company-wide thing. They do sound brainwashed to some extent but they believe in the 'clowds'.

Yeah a little lttp due to being busy but F2P that's first party definitely won't require plus, pretty certain the others wouldn't as well since they want to get more people to play and company policies are aiming for that. Of course then again some might not care like World of Tanks is behind a paywall on the 360. Other than that there is no infrastructure on the PS4 to pay for online passes so it's up to publisher discretion. Going by EA trying to repair their rep by not charging for online and Sony themselves not doing online passes. I think most pubs would try to avoid it - since brand rep does improve sales. Then we're in a gen where we had 100k keys for ondisc content that wasn't even content patches that had an unlock. So there's that.

Kitty got wet I suppose.

Unless I'm mistaken Xbox and Apple support are both in Ireland. Though MS does have support centres in the subcontinent. However all that said, they're unsure of what to do. You see their DRM is system-wide as in it's built into the system. Even their disclaimers suggest that publishers can opt out. You've built a system that actively negates sharing. It's not an opt-in, there's never any wording that suggests that. Systems and services are decided on long before a console is out. They'd been so forward thinking in their draconian measures that they never expected a backlash. If you read recent interviews, the stuff they've been saying is hilarious. Hence my earlier comments of 'stop talking'. There's a recent interview where they've said their data says people will ignore everything and buy stuff. The protests are a vocal minority. They believe this and honestly can you blame them? Let's see we increased the fee of Xbox live by $10 - that okay? Sure np. Keep more things behind a paywall. Sure. Honestly their data suggested that whatever they did people wouldn't care so they didn't expect anyone to care. This sort of living room dominance was their plan when they launched. They just accelerated it. Oh and the disclaimer suggests that their OS takes 'significant' amount of the 500GB. Note: Significant aka it's probably going to take about a tenth at the very least. Remember the backlash when surface pro was out? Of the 128GB only 83GB was available. It's a 128GB SSD it should've had about closer to 100 gigs. This is a 500GB HDD so let's remove the usual 20ish gigs that go and then the OS. I'm expecting that usable HDD space might be about 400Gigs which isn't a lot with mandatory installs. Mind you, a lot of insiders suggest the console has yield issues. If that's the case and it's not resolved, be prepared for RROD pt2. Forget downclock rumours and everything. Yield issues are a greater problem considering it's to launch in 5 months.

@W&S It's cognitive dissonance while one can't deny that those who've always been in Sony's camp are enjoying some good old Schadenfreude. They can't be like oh it's so bad for just one company, it must be for both cause that way it's universal. /end of the direct reply . Oh about the PS+ fees. It's now confirmed that there are no online passes from first party games and they do not have a system in place to support online passes so if a third party publisher wants to place online passes then they have to implement their own system. They do not actively support it and thus don't think third party pubs would either. I suppose that means they'll try and pay third party pubs a bit more via plus. So we won't have both as was the case of MS and 360 in the last couple of years. I think that actually would be a fair trade. USD 49.99/ £39.99 plus the fact that one sub works on a system. Online gaming should've been as it always was but if they are doing away with Online passes that's not bad since for those who do play several MP games outside of the current benefits of plus if I'm not mistaken that's the yearly cost of 4-5 online passes on average? f2p might not be behind a paywall at the mo it seems to be on a case by case basis. Closed platforms. Oh well.

Oh I've seen that video. The hubris. It's amazing. "Fortunately we have a product for people who aren't able to get some form of connectivity, it's called xbox 360." "The average internet connection is working the majority of the day - people are imagining that it isn't... It's change. There was a point in time when people would say all i want my phone to do is make a phonecall." Seriously it's getting to ridiculous levels. You are selling to consumers, your aim is to maximise the consumer-base not separate yourselves from them. Stop talking. Literally. It is sad about Orth in retrospect since he was just spewing what they were feeding.

in retrospect seems somewhat accurate.

I'm getting the PS3 because I like their franchises in general and it's a bit more powerful. It's as simple as that for me. Also i do like it's design a bit better and it's only about as big as the slim (slightly smaller actually) based on the dimensions that we know. It's an incredible formfactor for the device because it actually includes a disc drive. I'm all about form factors (Damn you Lian-Li!) Edit. Not keen on the paywall but I already knew about the other things before the conference so it was easy to swing that way. However I do wish they dropped the online passes and intead raised the price of Plus slightly or give a cut since it would actually paint them as more consumer-friendly. RIght now they're getting credit for something they'd dropped serious consideration ages ago and are pulling a marketing 1-2.

Tell me about it dates are expensive especially if you're in a big city. As for the WiiU. It's Nintendo's Vita - this isn't their primary focus and Japan is their primary market. The 3DS is making money. A lot of money. HD budgets are expensive. They'll just give it about barebones support with Nintendo exclusive titles and let it limp on for a year and then give it more support if they see it's worth the investment. Right now I bet they're evaluating if it's worth it and the only way they can gauge it is after about a decent HD games developed by their first party launches. Right now we have 2 Nintendo developed games for the Wii U that have been released. NSMB U and Nintendoland. Let's forget the published ones for a second since that doesn't help them gauge development and they haven't done HD development till now. The next ones coming up are Game and Wario and Pikmin. Following that we have the Luigi DLC, Wii Fit U, Wii Party U, Super Mario 3D World by the end of 2013. The sales of Mario Kart 8 is what will make them gauge the future of the WiiU. I mean seriously do you guys not see a pattern? The 3DS dropped the price and they released Super Mario 3D and Mario Kart 7. If they can drop $50 and still be within their profit margins they will do so prior to the PS4 launch (they have time). They do not need to reduce the price so early when their next decent first party games are towards the end of the year. I expect that if they do drop the price it'll be at the earliest around TGS. I'm expecting a phasing out of the basic model and the premium one to be their main SKU in two colours at $300 with two games bundled (NL + some other title). Also expect the game to be installed onto the drive rather than discs because it saves money for them. If this doesn't drive sales, expect only the announced games plus a few in dev moving forward and the WiiU to be phased out by 2016-17. I repeat they will not drop the price right now because even if they drop the price there is no compelling software for the mass market. People will buy and be like now what? (Pikmin and Game and Wario aren't compelling and I've doubts about the exclusivity of Lego City Stories). That creates a negative brand impression like the 'PS3 has no games' to a greater market. Drop the price closer to release times of major titles. I'm expecting a price drop pretty much closer to Sony and MS's console release (A month or two in advance). Most people do not buy Nintendo products to play 3rd party games. If I'm not mistaken this price drop will be timed to the release of Sonic Lost Worlds because that's the only game that can come out before PS4 and Xbone come out and it's an exclusive second party title that has a bit more mainstream appeal. Yeah Nintendoland and Sonic Lost Worlds will be the packed in games. It'll be a clever strategy in their eyes. Will it work? It's quite possible. There won't be stagnation either as when people are tired of this you have Wii Party U, SM3DW and Wii Fit U pretty closeby.

Launch. PS4. I'll get a Bone probably after they change a few things when they see sales decline. They can't be that stubborn they're a business with a product cycle of 10 years unlike the case with Windows and their server products.

I had one of those awesomely lucid dreams again. The best part of this one was that I could touch, feel and sense everything in the dream. Not to mention I was pulled out of another dream and landed in this weird fluorescent lit mall in a town in the middle of nowhere. There was this long dark haired girl in my dream who seemed extremely upset. I spent time talking to her and trying to figure out what was wrong with her. I fixed her bangs for her and ended up helping her shop through the mall and the supermarket. I realised that she had lost someone important in her life from the nature of the conversation. I had to make sure it was a dream so I tried to look at her face. I realised that while it's probably a dream I can see her face though I'd never remember it once I woke up. [i am in control of my actions in 60% of my dreams] Throughout the course of the dream she slowly started to cheer up. She began to open up to me about life in a town that I'd never really heard of (some small town someplace) for the most part I was just trying to make sure was alright and trying to fix her hair because it was just too messy and I had to fix it up. I just had to. I asked her about the city (I have recurring dreams of a city with a tall spire where they keep trying to interview me for this job in some sort of dark tower. The city reminds me of a cyberpunk version of 19th century Victorian London but mostly deserted and apparently populated by dead people) and she said she'd dreamt of it as well but it'd been a while. That set her bawling again because apparently the person she missed had also spoken about it before they passed away. Skipped the conversation. For some reason she didn't have enough to cover her bill. I didn't have any money on me either but I tried to convince the cashier I was good for it. Since it was closing time and the difference was miniscule in her eyes (Not sure how $80 is miniscule at a point of sale in a supermarket) she let us go. I helped her keep everything in her car. She asked me if I would join her and I told her that I would some other time. As she drove off, I woke up with a jolt. That's the most recent dream - at least it's better than when Dracula, Frankenstein and co offer me bloody marys and tomato juice. Or dreams where everyone's out to kill me.

the episodes I've seen so far. eehhh. I still have a ways to go. I just don't like sort of focus at the start.