Thursday Next

True enough. A much better word to describe them. A lack of conscience is fair enough given that the company is not a "person" in the emotional sense. Also total biscuit makes a lot of sense. The only thing I disagree with is that if MS get rid of used sales they will not turn into Steam, TB seems to overlook the monopoly issue even though he actually references that the reason PC Digital is cheap is because of all the competition. If Xbox land a monopoly (no used games, all sales digital through their platform), then they have no reason to cut prices. From a business sense, they'd be absolutely insane to drop from the $60 price point unless competition from PS4 or PC mandated it.

I agree with most of it. I don't agree with people calling corporations "greedy" generally, since it implies an emotion that does not exist and I feel that people transfer the "greed" of the corporation onto the people who work for it. I am not greedy, I get paid well, I'm satisfied with that. If I could get paid more, I'd be happy with that too. The reason a corporation exists is to make money, you might as well call a bomb "violent". That out of the way. Yes. MS want to control the used game market because there is a lot of money in it (over one third of GameStop's revenue IIRC). If they can have that money instead of GameStop, they would very much like that. I don't think publishers paint retailers as evil. In fact, what MS are likely planning is a way to get a percentage of that 35% used game revenue, rather than take the whole thing. What really sucks is that you can't lend a game to someone any more. Or do a hand-me-down to a sibling or parent. That sort of stuff is not revenue generating so there's nothing for MS to gain by blocking it. It's just been caught in the cross fire.

You're welcome.

Fair enough. Still stand by my statement. It'll happen. Also, love that MS has chosen to screw the consumer by preventing legit ebay sales of used games where the consumer gets what the buyer pays, and forcing them to get bent over by getting £10 from gamestop for a nearly new, pristine disc which is then lobbed on a shelf and sold for £35. Gamestop meanwhile probably pay a tiny de-activation fee per disc. Why the hell didn't they just make the fee to activate a second hand disc sensible, like £10? Yeah, you'll get some people abusing the system "sharing" discs but that's small potatoes compared to the amount they've been missing out on thanks to Gamestop hoarding all the second hand wealth.

Yeah so I get that there's a few players that hold all the cards, but already Sky has put a lot of their big hitter channels on Xbox 360. I know plenty of people that would be quite happy with just Sky Atlantic. If MS really wants to own the living room then they either have to get the content creators (for TV) to sign up, or take the content themselves. Either way that will take money. Also, there's a rental charge for Sky boxes? Over here they just give them to you. Hence, handing off the box duties to MS would = *huge* savings. The model I'm envisioning here is you buy an Xbone, you sign up to Sky, to whatever package you want and you get those channels through the Xbone. Sky collect the same monthly fee they always did, but they don't have the cost of supplying hardware or employing people to go out and fit it. Yes, the situation today doesn't allow that, nor does it allow much cloud side computing, but this thing is going to sit under your TV for the next 7 odd years. A lot can change in that time. Mark my words. MS want this to be as near to a cable box as damnit and they will make that happen one way or another.

One of my fave things about this place is that it has a manageable number of people that I feel like I actually know.

It will not be a cable box in the USA, though. Cannot stress that enough. Why not? I'm not talking about at launch. What's to stop MS becoming another Sky or whoever? Isn't the port next to ethernet some sort of cable box input?

There's a first time for everything I guess.

I'd be surprised if this didn't essentially become a cable box in it's own right at some point. If Sky expand their internet delivery to all their channels then you won't even need the Sky box. I imagine that all the content providers, Sky, Virgin Media, BT, etc, etc, etc, would be quite happy to not have to make boxes, send out engineers to fit dishes and so forth and instead just sell you an account that allows you to stream content. Their overheads would shrink dramatically. Also, I've heard talk that this is MS last "console". From here on in all upgrades and what not are happening cloud side.

Book and Film Arya is my fave character. Not fave female. Just fave overall. She's ace. Precocious without being bratty. Brave but not arrogant. Vulnerable at times, but not a total drip.

It's actually a big comfort that something like this is still uncommon enough to be huge thing.

I also hate the Superman.

Any port in a storm.

Random Access Memories.

As far as Sexism at its best. Yet, no one seems to care that Robert led an entire fucking rebellion over some pussy. Don't want to speak for W&S but I felt the same way when: Also, FDS, she pretty obviously is not 14 in the series so it's harder to cut her slack on this point.

I'm guessing Sony price jump is not so much because Xbone looks rubbish as it is that it has a Blu-Ray drive, so whatever people buy, Sony collect money.

This is the problem you see. It bugs the hell out of me. It's not the 1800s, we aren't using typewriters, there's no need for it. Fonts are designed with proper kerning. You don't need to double space. Because I am beset on all sides by American lawyers I see it all the time. Why couldn't you have had the proper use of the letters "s" and "u" drilled into you instead??? I WILL CUT YOU!

Wonder if they will work offline the same way PC games work offline; i.e. after you have authorised them ONline?

I hate two spaces after a full stop. HATE it. HAAAAATE.

Isn't this a bit like the Wolfenstein / Doom argument. Or the Halo one. One of them was the pioneer. But really it's the scale and success of Iron Man that set them on the path to being the epic blockbusters they are today. Though if we're going to get real nit-picky. I'd say that Batman Begins is what really legitimised the superhero movie and brought it into the mainstream. Spiderman and Xmen were still regarded as kid / teenager films. Nolan's Batman made the whole genre grow up a bit. just my opinion of course.

Depends on your definition of success I guess. The console+software business is probably going to end up profitable. So it's a success in that they will make money. But, it won't be as profitable as the Wii was and with a smaller market share it will have much lower revenue to make that profit on. So the success will be vastly reduced from the Wii highs. Nintendo being publicly traded, this is bad news as "massively reduced profit" is almost as bad as a loss. Especially if it looks like the start of a trend. Personally, while I haven't grown out of gaming, I have grown out of 3D Mario, Mario Kart and Zelda (which I came to realise is the same game over and over to an almost CoD level), so the announcements from Nintendo do nothing for me. I wouldn't bother taking a WiiU if they were giving them away.

I think you underestimate JJA. Star Trek doesn't feel in the least bit Star Wars to me. The only bit that in hindsight felt remotely Star Wars was the bit at the start on that red planet. For Star Wars he can play up the fantasy elements and dump any of the science. Also,with Star Trek a lot of the writing depends on re-staging established scenes e.g. Uhura kissing Spock instead of Kirk, for Star Wars that's not on the cards. You're not gonna have a film where Leia kisses Chewie and Han gets his hand chopped off, so his approach has to be different. For someone who is waiting and seeing, you've neither waited nor seen much, which is not exactly a problem since unenthusiasm is a perfectly reasonable response to being entirely uninformed.

16:00 would be a better start from a global perspective. West coasters will not be off work much before 17:00 / 17:30 and it will take time to get home, get settled, get logged in to a working stream etc. so not exactly super convenient for them. East Coasters would be fine with a 19:00 and Europe could handle the midnight slot. Oh well, I'll just have to watch a repeat at some point the next day. At least it won't be as patchy as the stream inevitably will be.

Also, split screen co-op yo (that you can take online)! So if one bot is not pulling their weight you can switch to them at any point and make them act right.

That's my understanding.