Thursday Next

You seem to be deliberately ignoring the fact that online gaming is a service. It requires continual investment to run, not just server space but the people to run/maintain the servers, the hardware, the software updates, all that stuff. Analogies with car parts don't really work because once a seat is in a car it costs nothing for the manufacturer to leave it in and would cost more to take it out. They do still charge you for servicing though if you go through their dealers. Getting angry because ME2 was planned to have more content added at a later date doesn't make any sense to me. Either they magically added in extra rooms to the Normandy which would have left people moaning that the layout was wrong and there were more windows inside than outside and why didn't EA think it through instead of foisting ill conceived tacked on DLC on the game or they put the rooms in during early development so that everything meshes together nicely. Do you get annoyed that your legos had bits sticking out that are obviously there so that more legos can be stuck on them? With regard to Demos/Early Access. It's not semantics. Early Access is the full game, downloaded to your console / PC in advance. There's nothing to suggest that demos won't continue to be released as before, but they will be small portions of the game, a couple of teams and limited gameplay options. There was some talk of having Season Ticket overlap with release, maybe this was dropped or maybe it's in the pipeline. I don't know. Buying music, films and so forth are not services. They are products. You don't see official forums for every album / film release filled with people asking for x or y issue to be fixed. If Maximus is wearing a Casio in Gladiator there will not be a patch to fix it or if there is it will be in a new boxed product which you will have to buy, if Jimmi Hendrix misses a chord they won't correct the error. You got the content, that's it. Game publishers are service providers. They support products, sometimes years after launch in a way that album and film makers do not as such they deserve to be paid for every copy sold, even second hand ones, because these days they are expected to continue to support products after they have been purchased irrespective of if they were purchased first hand, second hand or swapped with a mate. That said, I wouldn't have an issue if any shop (bar charity shops) that sells goods second hand had to kick a % to the original manufacturer (maybe stick a 5-10 year limit on it or something so older stuff is exempt).

One prolific poster.

1. Online gaming is not a car seat, at best it is an optional extra. Physical copies of games do in fact come with a warranty (for the disc itself not the software on it). 2. The DLC was planned for ME2 when ME2 was being developed. If the extra rooms hadn't been included then the DLC would not have meshed with the full game and would have felt "tacked on". EA did not make the game with those extras in, then have a raffle to see which characters should be removed for DLC. 3. Season ticket gives you early access to the full game, not a demo. There are lots of early access promotions out there. This service means that you can play the game while you wait for play.com or whoever to deliver it to your door. No need to go to midnight launches to get the game first. Oh and yes... EA probably does care more about the people who pay them more money, just like every other business. 4. As it is, Gamestop are the one's overcharging for second hand games. Not publishers. If Gamestop had paid a royalty to the content producers for second hand sales, content producers may not have felt the need to go direct to the second hand purchaser for some money.

In the trailers I seem to recall I saw Harrison Ford looking scared like he does when suddenly and unexpectedly outnumbered by hordes of Stormtroopers/Natives/Ants so wasn't sure if that was somewhat slapstick-esque. "Cowboys" is, for me at least a light hearted term. You play Cowboys and Injuns when you're a kid. When you grow up you watch Westerns / Spaghetti Westerns. First to admit I'm judging a film by the cover, which is why I asked if someone, preferably someone who's seen it could let me know what sort of film it is. Basically, is it more "Men In Black" or "Way of the Warrior"? or is it another beast entirely?

If you buy anything second hand you don't get the service that comes with a first purchase. Cars: No manufacturer warranty, but you can buy a warranty from the main dealer. Sky: Buy second hand box, minimum channels unless you subscribe. Phone: No calls unless you pay. Games are no different. Buy second hand and wysiwyg. Buy new or pay the extra and you get to have the full service. Portal wasn't just a Valve thing (please don't make the mistake of thinking they are some benevolent altruistic NPO, they're out to make money too), first purchasers of Alice MR got Alice free. Second hand have to pay for it. EA also did "buy Dead Space 2 LE (which iirc cost no more than the standard edition) get Dead Space Extraction free". Not sure what you mean by "charging for demos" and as for "taking out" content, that simply doesn't happen. A game doesn't get made, then EA look at it and say "what can we remove from this to sell separately?" DLC is planned from the start to be a separate offering. There is a degree of customers getting caught in the crossfire, but that's on Gamestop. They know that the second hand products are worth $10 less once the code is burnt, they just haven't moved to take that into account. They've been ripping customers off for years with used sales anyway. Maybe this will finally make people realise that it's not such a great deal after all.

To be somewhat bull headed. Gamestop are the ones that should budge on this. Publishers (developers etc.) create the content and provide the service. When it comes to used game sales Gamestop pay naff all for them and then charge fractionally below the RRP for the next guy to walk in. It's free money for them, they've been creaming mega bucks off of selling the same game twice (or thrice) and don't kick anything back to the publishers. If they'd kept the publisher sweet by chipping a % of the profits their way, then publishers be much more pumped about used game sales. As it is, publishers will continue to annex the "service" part of their products and retain control over that. Gamestop will just have to adjust their pricing structure to reflect the fact that second time round they are only selling content and not service.

Feelin Elgar today. It's all about the Enigma Variations. Then maybe some Thomas Tallis.

Nimrod > Dorabella

Gran Torino is a legendary film though. So balances out the Smokin' Aces purchase.

Thing is, I'm not sure what sort of film it's meant to be. The title makes me think it's a "Night in the Museum" style comedy romp, but I'm not sure if I'm supposed to take it more seriously than that. Is it supposed to be like "Way of the Warrior" (Cowboys and Ninjas)? If so, I'm interested, but really, I liked Way of the Warrior's style more than its substance.

Killzone 3 - Done! Just trying to clear my backlog.

Hahaha. Animated one is weird. I wonder if he'll pop out of the background as much as I think he will? It'd be like a Who Framed Roger Rabbit version of Batman.

Battlelog is here to stay. It's got a few advantages over launching a client up front. Firstly, you can just have a battlelog tab open and see if any of your friends are online rather than having to boot the game and see who is playing (yes Steam does this too, but BF3's not *on* Steam yet <-- Not a confirmation or denial of Steam support). Secondly, you can manage your favourite servers, view your stats, see leaderboards, manage squads, add friends and people and what not all without booting the game. Thirdly, when you do eventually boot the game you don't have to sit through any obnoxious EA logo --> DICE logo --> etc. So far as "number of clicks" or "hassle" goes, I don't see what disadvantage Battlelog has over launching a client. Just go to Battlelog when you want to play BF3.

As of right now, you can't circumvent it (and it's an absolute clusterfuck as to how to launch it). You click the game in Origin, and on most other platforms, it would just launch right away, right? Wrong. On Origin, clicking BF3 instead takes you to the Battlelog, which is basically a stat tracking website. From there, you then click to join multiplayer, and once it finds an open game, THEN you can launch BF3. That better not make it into the full game, because that's a horrendous way to launch a game. I'm pretty sure you can just got to Battlelog and launch from there. No need to go through Origin.

Star Wars is not wholly owned IP. Battlefield on the other hand is. So while EA can do whatever the hell it wants with BF, with SW it's bound to an extent by what LA will allow for SW. Also worth noting that while it may not look like it, most of these services are interconnected.

EA seem to be quite pleased with the pre-orders for both this and BF3... Unless they do a Homefront and steal the most cancelled pre-order crown, both games should be successful by most measures.

Activate Smug Mode. Probably going to wait for Layton v Wright though. That's my system seller.

Certainly don't feel bad for them, but a 40% / $90 discount is pretty good really isn't it? *NOTE* I know that you can probably get the 3DS for less than $249 already, but assuming the discount will be in proportion to the actual price.

Alpha / Feature Complete means that all the maps, guns, levels etc are in the game and are testable. No new content should be added once a game has been declared Alpha. How those features work is still in flux. So while a new menu screen shouldn't be added the content of that menu screen could change. While a new gun shouldn't be added everything from its graphical appearance to its stats can change. Of course that's how it's supposed to work. In reality games will often be declared Alpha before being feature complete as dev payments can be linked to hitting such milestones. If you have any questions specific to the Alpha, I strongly recommend you drop them in the BF3 Alpha forums so as to avoid breaching any NDA that you may have had to agree to. I'm sure someone from EA / DICE will respond to you there. I'm not saying that any of that is specifically true for BF3, that's just how things work in the industry generally.

3DS going down in price: http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/28/nintendo-3ds-price-drops-from-249-to-169-august-12th-current/ hopefully this will extend globally.

They still mean the same at EA. Alpha = Feature Complete. Beta = No unknown bugs.

Haha. Penguin is a cross between Bob Hoskins and Cartman doing his English (lil scheme) accent.

Nope. I looked at the picture. That's about it it. Did it say things in the articles?

You know these two groups are not mutually exclusive yes?

The BBC are running a campaign surveying 3G connections in the UK. To take part you can download the app here: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.epitiro.uk3g