Mr. GOH!

Holy fuck, you guys, this game is brutal. Not sure I have the time or patience to replay every single fight every time I die.

Hostile takeovers are not necessarily a bad thing, either, if the entrenched interests at the target are bad for the company/public/industry or whatever.

The stockholders also elect the board, and the board hires management. Stockholders don't like what management is doing, management gets fired, business models get reevaluated, and strategy changes. Activist stockholders can raise a real ruckus. Takeovers are also possible if the stock price gets too low. For example, right now Nintendo's Market Cap(italization) is around $15 billion; that's the value of all of Nintendo's publicly-traded stock. That's a lotta money, and would be a very large acquisition, but there are companies and funds out there that could afford to buy enough of Nintendo's stock to do a takeover. Google, for example (though not likely; there are even bigger entities out there with more cash on hand). The deal wouldn't necessarily be $15 billion in cash, as the buyer would have to buy from lots of different sellers of the stock and word would get out that X is buying up Nintendo stock and the price would increase. But you get the idea. The deal could also be friendly; a buyer could make an offer to the shareholders and they could approve. Edit: @FMW This disrupts short-term operations because new management don't generally want to keep funding old management's projects; why spend even more money on failed projects/divisions/products/brands dreamt up by the people who just got sacked? Companies do operate in short-term holding patterns after big changes, but not for more than a month or two.

The problem with being a publicly traded company is that they have to hang on as an attractive investment until the next cycle. If something causes investors to flee en masse and not return, well, Nintendo could fall very hard very fast. I think that its past success with the Wii may shield it for a while, but Nintendo has to raise its game well before the next cycle to prevent a even a gradual sell-off.

If it's really tactical, rather than whatever the hell Mass Effect 2 and 3 were, I'm in.

Since marketing is all about understanding and shaping public opinion, I find the assertion that Nintendo does its own thing regardless of public opinion to be less than convincing. The Nintendo marketing folks who approved of the name "Wii U" and of the awfully ambiguous marketing of the machine should be fired. It's a stupid strategy. I have no fucking clue what they were thinking.

I think the poor economy for 80% of the public and the much larger field of entertainment options for most non-hardcore gamers also stacks the deck against Nintendo. I expect the PS4 and the NextBox will also have sluggish sales compared to previous console generations' launches.

Nintendo released the Wii U sales figures so far and they're not very good. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-22/nintendo-ceo-seen-missing-profit-target-as-wii-u-founders.html Nintendo did earn a profit, though it's attributable in significant part to a weak yen. Edit: Nintendo also posted an operating loss, which essentially means it's not doing so hot despite running a profit.

People who don't understand that sexism implies misogyny. People who understand misogyny only as white-hot hatred of women. See, e.g.: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/17/difference-between-sexism-and-misogyny

What annoys me is when people say criticisms of misogynistic character designs are irrelevant because I have a penis. Also people who characterize valid criticism as "taking everything to be offensive." Those people really piss me off.

Yeah, DocSeuss is hilarious. And his weird, personal rants are doubly so.

I'm just happy that EU did well enough that folks find that theory plausible. Also, I meant "killed" in a broader scope, as in, the idea of making an XCOM-branded shooter. My fault for not being specific.

That's kind of a stupid attitude, imho. Sure, it was disappointing that they were turning XCOM into an FPS, but now that a proper XCOM has come out, I wouldn't mind getting the shooter. The original gameplay they showed had a nice visual style to it. At this point, it probably has nothing to do with what they showed back then, though. @Wally Nah, not gonna be passive aggressive. @FLD My attitude is the correct attitude. A careful reading of my comment will reveal that I wasn't denigrating the shooter. I was, rather, denigrating the ill-founded belief that the only games to sell well are FPS or TPS games. The FPS looks interesting, but it sure as hell is not XCOM. The rebranding is a *good* thing for that game.

She made this thread on the old forum? So when this forum migrates, will I be offered a job at Kotaku?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?

A year's worth of DLC is pretty standard. I'm sure there are diminishing returns on DLC/expansions as a game ages.

I get no end of pleasure from the theory that XCOM: EU's success killed the XCOM shooter. Fuck you, video game publishers, good games will sell and not every games needs to be a cover-based shooter.

@TheRevanchist - http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/387419-31-gaming-upgrade Check out the 'Best Answer'. ETA: @Atomsk - I think you should be able to connect your computer to the TV for audio, too, so no need for speakers. I already had my speakers when I converted to being a couch PC gamer.

Anyone acting surprised clearly missed what EA has been doing with the Sims for the past decade.

Mine falls into the Great/Superb category. I think my specs are somewhere upthread. But, anyway, it's an i5-2400k, GTX 570 GPU, 1.5 TB Seagate 7200rpm HDD, a $150 ASUS mobo, 8GB corsair RAM, Rosewill case, 650watt Antec PSU (used to have a fancier 750w PSU, but it was faulty), and stock fans. Runs most games like a treat at 1080p. As to your assumptions, it's better to have a target cost rather than working from common assumptions. I mean, you're not necessarily gonna save money limiting yourself to a dual-core when quad core chips are getting to be so cheap, at least from AMD. As for the GPU version numbers, yeah, I guess any card with a model number that ends lower than "60" is probably not that great, but that doesn't mean everything ending in "60" is good. Gimme your price target and I'll link you to some suggestions on Newegg.

I think the idea is really to target groups to donate via Paypal. I know Tides of Numenera, Wasteland 2, and Project Eternity all received a lot of single donations that were the result of groups of gamers/RPG enthusiasts who banded together. RPG Codex does this for example, as do other folks on other forums. I do not think it will get the $140k+ needed to hit $4.5 million. I'm surprised it hit $4.25 million, and am very hopeful for the final game, even without a stronghold (a feature more in line with Project Eternity than Torment, I feel).

I have doubts they'll get $300k through paypal donations by the end of April, especially since the Kickstarter marketing/news blitz is over. If folks didn't have money in March, they likely won't have it in April. Donations will roll in, but I think the big money spenders have been pretty much tapped out. On the other hand, I'm thinking about adding onto my donation via Paypal.

*Glances at ancient Infinity engine game disks* I guess it's time to get digital versions of these greats, eh?

It just broke $4mil. Looks like it will be a thick-ass RPG. TASTY!