First impressions are bad.

http://content.guru3d.com/article.php?ca...genumber=1

From a purely technical standpoint Voices doesn't seem like it would be that great an anime: It's 25 minutes long and it was made almost entirely by one man. It must be a low budget, fan-made project that doesn't have much going for it, right? Actually, Voices is the exact opposite.

Although the character models are somewhat crude, the animation is great. It also has some CG for added affect, although it isn't anything amazing it easily does it's job. But, what about the story? You'd think that the story would be very shallow, but in 25 minutes Voices weaves an incredible story full of details. Voices only has two characters, but they are very realistic and memorable.

The Story: Mikako and Noboru are two average high school students, but their lives are disrupted when an unknown alien force attacks Earth. Mikako decides to join the army and travel into space to fight the aliens, but Noboru stays behind on Earth. The only means of communication that they have are text messages that they send over their cell phones. As Mikako travels farther away from Earth their messages take longer to reach their destination. As years go by Noboru ages, but in space Mikako hardly ages at all.

All in all Voice of a Distant Star is a very good movie, whose only downside [if you can even call it that] is that it's short.

...er, the name of the chapter I just finished in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Superb book, like the other four (and I started reading before it turned into a gigantic craze). Assuming any of you bought it (I'm thinking at least a couple did) how far are you, what do you think of it?

Been reading for 4 days...technically (the I got it in the mail, I had three more days of exams 'till school was finished), and I'm on page 353.

Just a reminder to everyone, the new Ren & Stimpy show is gonna debut tonight at 10:00 EST on TNN. I know I'll be watching it. Just letting you all know...

---Barry

Quote:According to Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities, you could be paying an extra 10 dollars for top titles by the end of this year. An MSNBC report tells why it may be possible, even though most analysts agree that most game makers want to keep software prices where they are. In a case against the increase in game prices, studies of the 'life cycle' model of previous consoles and the current next-generation consoles show that new games stick at a higher price, but old games and relatively unknown games get slashed prices. GameCube, PS2, and Xbox are entering the second half of their life cycle, the period where price points in hardware and software trend downward. But what isn't happening is development costs declining as developers reach the technical limits of the platform. “Research and development costs continue to go up,” said Richard Ow, a game analyst for the NPD Group. A typical Playstation game in 1996 cost less than $1 million to make and sold for $49. Today the console games run around $5-7 million per title and sell for $49.99.

Development costs have risen because the 128-bit generation requires at least 40 times as many lines of codes to exploit the system capabilities as the previous console generation. “To keep pushing the limits, that not only takes more people, but better people,” Perry said. “Great development staff are therefore becoming more and more valuable, and as our industry moves to Playstation 3, Xbox 2, etc., then they will be at a new premium,” he said. Game creators are also adding costly exclusives video footage for Enter The Matrix to grab peoples attentions, and licensed material. Then there's marketing to handle. "With so many costs built into production," said Halpin of the game retailing group, "a triple-A game price change in favor of higher prices and higher margin or lower prices and higher sales would not be easy. Right now it’s too much a part of philosophy in way of conducting business. Especially for public companies. They would need to re-scale their economics.”

The other problem is there isn't much complaining of the game prices. “There just doesn’t seem to be negative reaction to game prices,” said Ow. “Even if one publisher took the chance to lower the price of a triple-A game, it could bias the consumer that it’s a lesser game." "Game publishers don’t understand consumers, they understand video games,” he added. “Prices never go down. People don’t have a problem with prices going up, the publishers do.” Over the next year, about 750 new titles will hit the market. "If past sales figures offer any clues," said Pachter, "the top 50 to 60 games will rake in 50 percent of the total sales. Once you see those numbers, it’s easy to see that half could command a $60 price point. The thing that may counteract all of this is the fact that game sales have risen tremendously. $10 billion was spent by Americans on hardware and software. The conclusion they come to is if one publisher sells a very popular title for $60 and thus makes a killing on sales, publishers with similar titles may follow.

Quote:People don’t have a problem with prices going up

Legendary comic book artist Todd McFarlane (er...at least I think he's legendary....I dont' really give a shit for comic books) bought Barry Bond's 73rd home run ball for $450,000 today...he also bought Mark McGuires 70th home run ball a few years back for nearly $3 million. How the hell does that work?? Bond's record is better, and he paid a whoooole lot less for it. Plus, there was a lot less demand for it too. (!)

Weird.

Faranoth claims that he's in love with Guenvillarfe, but to tell you the truth I think he's just covering up for his lack of faith in Teragnome.

What do you guys thing?

Faranoth claims that he's in love with Guenvillarfe, but to tell you the truth I think he's just covering up for his lack of faith in Teragnome.

What do you guys thing?

Its a This Modern World extravaganza!








That last one makes a good point that the so-called 'Liberal Media' just doesn't exist.

And to make Weltall happy...

Got mine yesterday,and it's better than I thought. I was afraid pixelization would be bad because of the screen size difference, but this simpy isn't the case. The screen looks great, LttP looks just like it did on the SNES!

Anyone else gotten one? Your thoughts?