Part III out. It's a depressing read because it reminds me again of how truly amazing RPGs were between 1996 and 2001, particularly Interplay and their related companys' ones (Interplay/Black Isle, Bioware, Troika), and how bad the genre is now in comparision... Baldur's Gate and BGII are unmatched games with no competition, essentially. Dragon Age? We'll see, but while some things sound good, on other fronts I'm not sure if it will do it... anyway, great read, if sad because of how great the genre was and how poor it is now. :(
Quote:The period I've termed the "Modern Age" begins in 2002 with the publication of BioWare's Neverwinter Nights, and includes games like Microsoft's Dungeon Siege and Troika's The Temple of Elemental Evil. Although these games have probably sold many thousands more copies than games from earlier periods, they seem to represent more of a looking back than a looking forward, and I'm increasingly worried by the large number of CRPG fans migrating towards MMORPGs. In fact, I don't even consider these games to be part of the same genre, a point I'll get to towards the end of this article.
Dungeon Siege and NWN got good reviews, but were NOT good games...
Criticism of the article: They didn't mention Wizards & Warriors, which is a great game in the Wizardry style, but unique and original... amazing game. Flawed, but every game has flaws; the issue is whether they matter enough to disrupt the good parts. In this case, they don't.
Also (from part II), Quest for Glory is the second-best RPG series ever, after Baldur's Gate... even if they are really adventure-RPGs, not RPGs. Well, QFG V: Dragon Fire, the last one, is a much more standard RPG, but it's also the least fun game in the series... http://www.gamasutra.com/features/200702...n_08.shtml
Updated: 2 hours, 19 minutes ago
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NEW YORK - CBS fired Don Imus from his radio program Thursday, the finale to a stunning fall for one of the nation’s most prominent broadcasters.
Imus initially was given a two-week suspension for calling the Rutgers women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos” on the air last week, but outrage continued to grow and advertisers bolted from his CBS radio show and its MSNBC simulcast, which was canceled Wednesday.
“There has been much discussion of the effect language like this has on our young people, particularly young women of color trying to make their way in this society,” CBS President and Chief Executive Officer Leslie Moonves said in announcing the decision. “That consideration has weighed most heavily on our minds as we made our decision.”
Imus had a long history of inflammatory remarks. But something struck a raw nerve when he targeted the Rutgers team — which includes a class valedictorian, a future lawyer and a musical prodigy — after they lost in the NCAA championship game.
Imus reportedly met with the Rutgers team members and coach on Thursday night. New Jersey governor Jon S. Corzine was on his way to attend the Rutgers-Imus meeting, held at the governor's mansion, when his motorcade was [b]involved in an accident[/b]. Corzine reportedly suffered several broken ribs and a broken leg in the crash.
The cantankerous Imus, once named one of the 25 Most Influential People in America by Time magazine and a member of the National Broadcasters Hall of Fame, issued repeated apologies as protests intensified. But it wasn’t enough as everyone from Barack Obama to Oprah Winfrey joined the criticism.
The Rev. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson met with Moonves on Thursday to demand Imus’ removal, promising a rally outside CBS headquarters Saturday and an effort to persuade more advertisers to defect.
Jackson called the firing “a victory for public decency. No one should use the public airwaves to transmit racial or sexual degradation.”
Said Sharpton: “He says he wants to be forgiven. I hope he continues in that process. But we cannot afford a precedent established that the airways can commercialize and mainstream sexism and racism.”
Losing Imus will be a financial hit to CBS Radio, which also suffered when Howard Stern departed for satellite radio. The program earns about $15 million in annual revenue for CBS, which owns Imus’ home radio station WFAN-AM and manages Westwood One, the company that syndicates the show nationally.
The news came down in the middle of Imus’ Radiothon, which has raised more than $40 million since 1990. The Radiothon had raised more than $1.3 million Thursday before Imus learned that he lost his job.
“This may be our last Radiothon, so we need to raise about $100 million,” Imus cracked at the start of the event.
CBS announced that Imus’ wife, Deirdre, and his longtime newsman, Charles McCord, will host Friday’s show.
Volunteers were getting about 200 more pledges per hour than they did last year, with most callers expressing support for Imus, said phone bank supervisor Tony Gonzalez. The event benefited Tomorrows Children’s Fund, the CJ Foundation for SIDS and the Imus Ranch.
Imus, whose suspension was supposed to start next week, was in the awkward situation of broadcasting Thursday’s radio program from the MSNBC studios in New Jersey, even though NBC News said the night before that MSNBC would no longer simulcast his program on television.
He didn’t attack MSNBC for its decision — “I understand the pressure they were under,” he said — but complained the network was doing some unethical things during the broadcast. He didn’t elaborate.
Sponsors that pulled out of Imus’ show included American Express Co., Sprint Nextel Corp., Staples Inc., Procter & Gamble Co. and General Motors Corp. Imus made a point Thursday to thank one sponsor, Bigelow Tea, for sticking by him.
The list of his potential guests began to shrink, too.
Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham said the magazine’s staffers would no longer appear on Imus’ show. Meacham, Jonathan Alter, Evan Thomas, Howard Fineman and Michael Isikoff from Newsweek have been frequent guests.
Okay, apparently many teachers are no longer teaching about the holocaust out of fear of offending muslims.
First of all, not all muslims are going to be offended, and second of all, I care about as much about offending the sort of muslim that would be upsetted by this as I would by offending a neo nazi.
Just teach what the evidence shows. Stop caring about people getting offended by that. Now political correctness is an important thing in an enlightened society, but this is the direction of madness. It serves no one to act like all points of view in terms of things that are actually testable and have loads of evidence are somehow equally valid. If one is going to turn school into just a place where all viewpoints are taught instead of just what the evidence shows, what is the point of school at all?
Quote:Just as Microsoft's about to introduce a new Xbox 360 SKU, Sony's announced they're removing one from the marketplace. Sony Computer Entertainment America announced today they've officially dropped the PlayStation 3 20GB SKU and will no longer be offering the cheaper, Wi-Fi less model to North American retailers. Sony says a 10-to-1 retailer demand for the 60GB SKU has prompted the move.
Don't panic, though, as 20GB owners will continue to receive the same customer service support they were guaranteed upon purchasing the machine. The architecture between the 20GB and 60GB SKUs are the same, save for a few feature differences, so the shift is minimal from a customer relations and development perspective -- unlike Microsoft, who cannot drop support for the Core SKU, as that model doesn't come with a built-in hard drive.
"At launch, we offered two separate models of PLAYSTATION 3 to meet the diverse needs and interests of our PlayStation fan base. Initial retail demand in North America was upwards of ninety percent in favor of the 60GB sku, so we manufactured and shipped-in accordingly. Due to the overwhelming demand for the 60GB model from both retailers and consumers, we have ceased offering the 20GB model here in North America," said SCEA senior director of corporate communications Dave Karraker.
"In addition to the larger internal hard drive, the 60GB PlayStation 3 features added storage media slots and built-in Wi-Fi not found in the 20GB system. Based on retailer and consumer feedback, we have decided to focus our current efforts on the more popular 60GB model," he concluded.
And so it's official -- less than six months after the launch of the PS3, the 20GB SKU is officially dead.
"Retailer demand", hah... we all know better. It's because the profit margin is larger on the $600 model.
(via http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=150343 ... neogaf is good for news, but for 'replying to long posts', it doesn't do well at all... too many posts for threads to last long without constant posting... there's a balance somewhere between here and there that would be nice, I think. Where you get the news and discussion, without things vanishing to page two after an hour of posting in them... :))
The list in the original post is horrible... while half of it is decent, the sheer volume of nintendo-bashing, and N64-bashing, in the other parts negate any good points in the article. On the good side, the point I most strongly agree with is the online gaming one. Nintendo has a truly awful online gaming policy, no question about it. Lack of a decent online gaming service for the Western market is probably the issue Nintendo on the strongest (there are reasons to explain why they have the policy they do, though. Not going to get into it here, but it has to do with differences between what Japanese people want from online gaming and what Western audiences want -- Nintendo isn't designing the service for the West.)... The Virtual Boy and Mortal Kombat I can also understand (though other than losing Gunpei Yokoi, the Virtual Boy debacle didn't really matter at all in the long run; the MK thing was more influential, and Nintendo's censorship needed to stop, though its impact was as much about Sony and Sega's successful efforts to capitalize on it was it was about Nintendo's actual actions.), and maybe the third parties issue (when it was on top Nintendo certainly did treat third parties quite badly -- falling behind was a wake-up call Nintendo needed. They had been so arrogant and monopolistic in the NES days... that's not a good thing for any company.), but nothing else. Numbers 1 and 2 are completely, utterly wrong, and numbers 2 and 7 just stupidly bash the N64 controller and the Wii, with absolutely no justification.
The Wii will die off and it was a mistake? That sounds like something people were saying a year ago... but given its massive success now and clear signs that that's not about to change, it's ridiculous to even try to say it now.
The N64 controller was bad? No it wasn't. It's my favorite gamepad ever, actually, and for many good reasons. Six buttons, awesome dpad (underused perhaps, but great quality), great analog stick (yes, it degrades fast. It's still the best.), trigger button (triggers >>> shoulder buttons)... what more can you ask for from a gamepad? Dual analog and two shoulder buttons per side? Dual analog is not overly useful and two shoulder buttons per side is one of my least favorite gamepad "innovations" ever...
The N64 should have had a CD drive? No to that too. Oh, yes, if the N64 had had a CD drive, Nintendo well might have won the console generation because they might not have lost Square and Enix. But... Mario 64 with early-PSX-game load times and area size restrictions because of CD speed and loading? Load times in N64 games? NO! No, I like it the way it is... yes, Nintendo lost because of it, but the benefit of less loading makes it worth it.
The SNES CD with Sony should have been released? At Number One? Ah, that was not going to happen, period, ever. Nintendo would have had to be insane to continue on with it with what Sony wanted to do... and you even mention why. Sony wanted complete control over game relases -- all the rights, etc. Nintendo could have gotten shut out of games on their own system, perhaps... Nintendo and Sony had irreconcilable views on the money and rights issues, and Sony wasn't just going to give in to Nintendo. Given that fact, how can this be a 'mistake'? Nintendo wouldn't have won much of anything worth having from the deal... So Nintendo abandoned the issue. As for Phillips, et al, as Nintendo looked into it more and realized that a CD drive really wasn't what they wanted after all... and as I said in the last paragraph, they were right. :) (and as I said earlier, it allowed Nintendo to rethink its business, and the industry, and finally come up with the product to change things, the Wii. Which most definitely will NOT fail like this article suggests.)
Games Radar Wrote:The N64 may have spawned some of the best games ever made, but honestly, how many systems can make the same claim? Sure we adore Ocarina of Time, Goldeneye 007 and Super Mario 64, but most of the other titles are crap. This entire console generation was like watching a king get quartered in front of the entire village. And you know what? Our number one mistake explains why it's all Nintendo's fault.
I won't even begin on this particularly stupid bit of Nintendo trolling... the N64 was a great console, with a large library of good and great games. Pretend that they didn't exist all you want, but it certainly doesn't make a comment like that defensible. The Nintendo 64 is my favorite console, I think... or at least one of the best, certainly. Despite the graphics in some games, its games are mostly just as fun now as they ever were... great system... :)
As for a list, I think that there are two completely different kinds of lists that can be made, depending on what you consider a "mistake". Is a "mistake" "something which harms Nintendo's market share", or "something they did that you don't like"? By the first defintion, the SNES/N64 CD would probably have to come in first -- losing Square and Enix doomed them, and with a CD drive they might have been able to keep at least one. But by the second definition, I wouldn't even put that on the list... I like the N64 the way it is, darnit! :)
Anyway... my list, using mostly the SECOND definition. (the numbers don't really mean much)
1. Denial of online gaming. This has been addressed before here and elsewhere, but it's a huge, huge problem... maybe some day NOA will actually manage to convince NCL that Western audiences DO expect competent online services (my model would be Battle.net, but Xbox Live is great too), but until that day comes, this is a huge, huge issue right now. DS online is horrible, and Wii online like that would be truly tragic.... :( This won't affect Nintendo's success in Japan much, I think, but it eventually will factor in in the West.
3. Angering the third parties. Had Nintendo's relations with Square actually been GOOD in 1996, maybe they wouldn't have completely stopped making any games for Nintendo platforms, cartridges or not... but no, Square's leadership and Yamauchi developed up a big feud, and they had had problems for some time, so that was impossible. Stupid restrictive stuff like "you can only release five games per year" and "you can't release games on competing systems" that they did in the NES days sure didn't help either. Nintendo has done a lot to mitigate this problem in more recent years, so it's not nearly so big of an issue anymore, even if it's not completely gone.
3. Not having any games out in Japan for the N64 for several months after launch. A lot of people bought it, played Mario 64, and ... then what? Sold it. They needed momentum there that they never got... the N64 was fairly successful in the US (look at total sales charts -- the N64 sold just a few million fewer units less in the US than the SNES had. Of course, the PSX ended up selling many more, but compared to other Nintendo systems, it's the NES to SNES drop that is the largest, followed by the N64 to GC one...), but elsewhere... maybe this is representative of the "angering the third parties" thing and the "Nintendo's arrogance wasn't gone and they could not quite see that their policies were flawed" point I made earlier, but it's true.
4. Ignoring Europe, I guess. Everyone did it, and many still do, but Nintendo was worse... yes, Nintendo certainly could have tried a LOT harder (or tried at all, really). As it was, they deserved to lose every console generation there... if you release games that late, what do you expect people do to? Go buy Sega Master Systems, evidently.
5. Dropping their second parties. So... the companies made Eternal Darkness (my favorite GC game), Excitebike 64 (exceptional game!), and the Rare N64 classics, and you get rid of them all? What the heck? Oh, I know the reasons, but still, I don't think they did the right thing there in the end...
What else... hmm, can't think of anything... I could say "the Gamecube", but that was a first attempt at what they perfected with the DS and then the Wii -- something to attract anyone. It's not Nintendo's fault that it didn't catch on; Nintendo's support for the GC was strong, even if many of the games weren't as original as their previous N64 versions. There's not much you can do about that really... and I didn't mind the original non-backlit GBA...
In comparison, here's my "What Nintendo Should Have Done To Succeed More List".
1. Do whatever it takes to keep Square in 1996. ("Lower fees? CD drive? Okay!")
2. Failing that, do anything to keep Enix, despite Square's pressure on Enix to follow them away from Nintendo. (Enix likely would have accepted carts at the right price...)
3. DVD playback in the GC. Irrelevant in practice, but it'd have been a great PR move. "Gaming only" didn't work.
4. More hardware plants, so they could better keep up with DS and Wii demand. Supplies could be higher while still maintaining the "it is hard to find" thing... Nintendo is too conservative here.
5. Actually try to succeed in Europe and take the region seriously. They didn't even win with the NES there as far as I know!
Other than #1 (ie, if it had required a N64 CD that I wouldn't want), I wouldn't mind if they had done/do those things...
In short, due to the way Oblivion handles assigning every generated object an ID code and the way some new AI scripts (mal)function, a save file can be destroyed. There is HOPE! Just not for 360 players...
On the other end of the scale is the "Oblivion for Oblivion" mod, which sets out to add the Oblivion keyblade to Oblivion (it was MEANT to BE!).
... after a few weeks waiting (including a delay), my new computer finally arrived... it'll be quite a big hassle for some time to get stuff installed on it and all that, and it's not ALL new because I didn't get a new monitor or speakers/headphones (so I'm using the same old 17" Dell CRT and my 2 speakers which I usually don't use in favor of some decent headphones I have), but I think it's a very nice system indeed...
Motherboard - Asus P5N-E SLI
Pentium Core2 Duo 2.40Ghz (E6600)
2GB DDR2 DRAM
NVidia GeForce 8800 GTS 320Mb
2x320GB SATA II HDDs (600GB actual total space)
Creative Labs SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer
Windows Vista Home Premium
DVD +/-RW drive
3.5" floppy drive (yup! :))
flashcard reader (SD, CF, etc)
Cost nearly $2000 including shipping, not that I paid for it myself(it's a graduation gift from last summer I put off on getting for various reasons, essentially).
... since I got it from a site that allows extensive customization (cyberpower.com) I selected all the parts - the case, motherboard, various accessories, etc, but I'm not going to list everything...)
... and it came with a free copy of Dark Messiah of Might & Magic, too.
![[Image: sourceAP.gif]](http://msnbcmedia1.msn.com/i/msnbc/Components/Sources/sourceAP.gif)
