Thursday Next

That's atrocious behaviour. If I went out with a journalist/blogger I would not expect an article to be written about me without my permission. Never mind integrity, it's just common courtesy. If he was hitting on her at a MtG tournament (i.e. "at work") then that's one thing, but this is completely out of order.

Castlevania Lords of Shadow. Can anyone tell me if the DLC is worth picking up?

I think Libraries get a free pass for being "a good thing".

According to 1up "Vita sports 512MB of RAM along with 128MB of dedicated VRAM." So does that mean it has like 640MB of RAM or will 128 of the RAMs be taken from the 512 RAMs? I like when things have lots of MB's it makes me think they will do stuff good. http://www.1up.com/news/vita-ram-wasnt-downgraded-reach-24999-price

I think it took until the advent of CD/DVD based games before pre-owned really took off. Cartridge games always (or at least nearly always) had something of the previous owner on them, a save file, high score, what have you. You factor in that, and the growing games market and people just plain getting used to the idea of trading in games (thanks to GameStop's encouragement) and I think it was something of a perfect storm that saw pre-owned swell from the tiny rear corner of the shop to the huge centrepiece. I think we're getting to that point with Digital downloads now. It's just the publishers foolish and stubborn stance of not undercutting retail prices that is stopping digital from becoming more dominant more quickly.

It's not just that With that, it all got spoiler tagged, so everything is cool.

If they're locking the activation region, then there's really only one reason for it and it's a pretty shitty one. It's a way to get around EU Article 101. If country X is selling the game for more than country Y then it is cheaper for people in country X to import from country Y so profit margins for the publisher decrease. Especially if country X is an emerging market where not many other publishers are selling games and competition is not so fierce, a publisher in this country would effectively have a monopoly and would seek to exploit that. EU laws prohibit restricting trade between EU states, German shoppers must be allowed to shop in Italy, Italians in France and so on. The only "good" reason for region locking is for online multiplayer titles where you want to ensure that for example an Australian doesn't hop onto an EU server and screw the match with their ridiculously high ping. Otherwise, it's to keep people who have to pay lots for games from going somewhere cheap to buy them.

I reckon it'll be a smallish ~£20 game. Not sure when they are going to set it though. Was there a 12-24 hour period that you wasn't covered in the story? I don't recall one. I guess this could just be an alternative universe thing. Obviously your Karmic choice through this is going to be Cure Vampirism or Become Badass Vampire. Think I'll sav the evil playthrough for last this time. Hope they do some save game carry-over like they did for infamous 1-2. Either way, I'm getting this.

I don't disagree for one second that PG are going to be less profitable than GameStop. I will say that PG most likely will have much lower overheads than GS due to a lack of brick and mortar stores. I still think that PG will be profitable though. The biggest hurdle is, as has been pointed out elsewhere, publishers being seen as firing a shot across the bows of one of their major retailers. As has been pointed out earlier in this thread, the cost to EA of an Online Pass is questionable at best, so for a 10% kickback there is no reason for EA not to hand out Online Passes to PG, if only to encourage more people to traffic used games through PG and increase EA's used game revenue. EDIT: Too much "they" not enough proper noun.

Ummmm... Final Fantasy! Oh wait... no... Since Mirror's Edge has already been taken... Heavy Rain, Bulletstorm or maybe ToeJam and Earl, I loved the isometric one.

Ok, perhaps you didn't read the article. PostalGamer will give trade in sellers 30% more than "The Corner Retail Store". <-- Person trading in wins. PostalGamer will give 10% of used game sales to publishers. <-- Publisher wins. I haven't seen a price list yet, but let's say they charge the same as GameStop pre-owned. If you trade in for example CoD W@W at Gamestop for $10. They sell it pre-owned for $24.99. That's a $14.99 (150%) profit, without all the overheads and stuff. If you trade in the same game at PG they give you $13. PG sell it for $24.99 and kick $2.50 up to the publisher. That's still a $9.50 (or 73%) profit again, before overheads and such. Hell, they could undercut GameStop and sell at $21.99, give $2.20 to the publisher and still get over 50% profit. EDIT: http://www.postalgamer.com/password for source on the 30% to trade ins.

I think you missed my point. From a publisher perspective, this is getting value from used game sales, as such it is better than piracy. Had retailers done this to begin with, then we may not have had the "Project $10" issue in the first place. As it is, perhaps these guys will be able to negotiate for discounted Online Pass codes or something? I don't know. Just saying that this is what publishers had wanted from second hand retailers from the get go. I didn't miss your point, as I've said before I disagree that retailers need to be doing this. I've also made a point before that I strongly doubt that stores doing things like this would change the Project $10/Online Pass/etc that's currently in use. That store is essentially worse from everyone's perspective except the publishers who most likely will still be getting the $10 and the 10% on top. I just don't understand how this is meant to play out. All P$10 does is instantly wipe off a fair amount of value from the product right away. And how would a 10% cut be worked out? How do you get that from people selling on Ebay or similar? If you can talk retailers into giving EA a cut of the profits and people are already used to having to pay for Online Pass n Project $10 stuff then what reason is their for EA to stop running that program? How would it retroactively work with older games? Yes I understand that Gamestop & Co make significant amount of profit from used sales. But what does EA have to do with any of that? Does EA hire the staff? Rent the stores? Run the websites? EA sold their game to Gamestop for what I assume is at a profitable price. boom your money is made. If you feel you want more then raise your wholesaler price that you sell your games for to Gamestop. The bit you are missing is the conditional clause: Had retailers done this to begin with publishers may not have gone down the Project $10 route. That said. This could easily work if, in exchange for the 10% revenue that the retailer gives to the publisher, the publisher gives the retailer Project $10 codes at a discount to include with the game. That way purchasers still get the full product at a discount and get to feel warm and fuzzy about supporting developers, the retailer makes a profit, the content creators get paid what they think is their due and people who trade in games get more money. Everybody wins. If publishers raised the wholesale price of games it would just be passed on directly to the consumer. No publisher wants that. They don't want customers to pay more, they just want to see more of the money their customers are paying.

So Good =/= Good? Personally, I don't think Cole ever strays into being truly "Evil".

I think you missed my point. From a publisher perspective, this is getting value from used game sales, as such it is better than piracy. Had retailers done this to begin with, then we may not have had the "Project $10" issue in the first place. As it is, perhaps these guys will be able to negotiate for discounted Online Pass codes or something? I don't know. Just saying that this is what publishers had wanted from second hand retailers from the get go.

Some people don't need to try. Really? Isn't that "Rosebud is his sled" territory yet? Also, if you think the title is a spoiler, then say that, BHB only said the scene was a spoiler.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2011-08-15-used-game-start-up-offers-publisher-revenue-share Buying Used (from here) > Piracy. If GameStop and others had done this in the first place then we might not have ended up with Online Pass and the like.

What if it did? EDIT: I mean, there's no reason for EA not to sell Activision's games through Origin, and if EA were to take a smaller cut than Steam, there would be nothing for Activision to lose, I don't think it's as out there an idea as it first appears, especially if Activision or Ubi or whoever have no intention of creating a Digital Distribution platform of their own.

Invention of Lying wasn't too bad IMHO, I watched it on a flight to SanFran so my standards were set lower. It was a pretty good idea, but it was running out of steam towards the end.

Do Good first, then Bad. Bad ending is better so you might as well end on a high.

I much preferred the "Evil" (though I consider it more "morally ambiguous") ending. That said, I preferred the "good" playthrough as I like Kuo and found Nix terribly irritating. I didn't pick up the dead drops on my second (good) playthrough so I've no idea if they changed depending on your actions. Will have to check on that.

I prefer stats that change based on your actions rather than making an arbitrary decision to, for example increase strength. Vagrant Story had a good system where weapons would become better at killing a thing the more they were used against said thing. I think Oblivion had a similar system where the more you performed an action the more it improved, using your bow a lot would improve your bow skills, rather than killing 200 rats with your bow and then adding +10 Sword. I think that would apply to swinging a pipe too. If you are an average Joe then you've probably never swung a pipe at a person in anger. Stands to reason that you're going to get better at it as you get used to the weight, the balance, etc. In fact, someone who is a black belt or whatever the ranking is in Ken-do is really just a "level x stick wielder". So why not apply the same logic to pipes?

Are emoticons words?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBor7K3j2Eg

Given that the PC delay was announced a couple of days before launch, I'm guessing that the PC version was ready and that they were talking to Microsoft until the 11th hour to see if they could launch simultaneously on PC and Xbox, or Ubi had assumed that Xbox exclusivity meant PC + Xbox and MS got in touch late in the day to say "What's with this simultaneous PC launch eh?".

Fairly sure From Dust delay is due to some Summer of Arcade skulduggery.