bigsocrates

I believe the $20 pack includes those two characters.

I'm trying to decide between the $20 version of the new KI and the $40 version. I know the $40 comes with a port of the old KI 1 (two versions, but not KI 2) and some accessories and such for the characters, but how much content is it exactly? The old KI 1 port sounds like it'd be worth about $10 at most (and really less since it isn't HDified and no online multiplayer was added) so what fills in the rest of the value? Is it a ton of awesome costumes? One per character? I'm familiar with the old game and have some fond memories but it's not like I ever owned it or played a ton. Is the $40 version at all worth it or should I just stick to the season pass?

Failing to compete on price is anachronistic. Not using a cheap library of good games to push your console is anachronistic, yes. I'm not just talking about games practicses but virtually every media, from music to film to books, there has been a massive increase in the amount of great stuff that can be bought cheaply. In part this is because everything is competing against everything else and it's hard to sell anything but the most desirable book for $25 when Blu-rays of popular movies sell for $10, in part it's due to savings from digital distribution (Ebooks can be very profitable at $3 a pop, paperbacks not so much) and in part it's a way to combat piracy. If you put your popular TV show on Netflix at least you get some money for it, as opposed to none from bittorrent battling piracy is a huge reason for Steam sales, and Steam sales are a huge reason why PSN and XBL offer stuff cheaply (which in turn effects retail.)

Nintendo ignores all this and tries to sell older games for $50 each like it was still 1993. To some extent this has worked for them for a few reasons. One, they don't make PC versions of their games and piracy is a bit less of an issue to them. Two, they target a younger demographic which is more likely to receive games as gifts than buy them, which makes them less price sensitive (If Super Mario World 3D is your big birthday gift to your son you'll buy it at $50 as quickly as at $30) Three they have a bit of a monopoly on their niche of games, which tend to be very polished but older in design and not story focused. This makes their model (which only grudgingly accepts things like digital distribution) work. But I think you're wrong to say that there's no tie between their anachronistic model and low Wii U sales. I would love to get a Wii U if the games were reasonably priced (and it had a hard drive worth spit) but have held off in part because while the library exists it is overpriced. I doubt I am alone.

I love the XBONE media stuff and especially the voice control (I don't have a 360 Kinect) but for some reason whenever my XBONE Hulu comes back from commercial it skips ahead 2-3 seconds in the next segment. I have to rewind a little to see what it skipped and it's super annoying, and has had me using my old 360 to watch stuff on instead because it doesn't have this issue (nor does my PS3). Has anyone else experienced it and is there a solution?

I'd also like to complain that there's no Time Warner app for the XBONE so if I want to watch the live cable feed on my TV that's not near a cable box I have to use my 360, which is really weird considering the XBONE focus on TV integration, but I assume 'app does not exist' is a known issue for them.

This would be a good plan if there were a decent rental place near me. Alas there is not! And I'm not going to get a gamefly account for Ryse because then I will forget to cancel and end up paying more than $60.

Do what you want as long as it's legal. The only reason not to consume media is if doing so would hurt somebody (E.G. child pornography.) I can't think of a scenario where that's true for a game. Even if the publisher has acted badly or the studio exploited the workers most of them probably hope the game gets played so their hard work is appreciated. If you feel the need to buy the game used so you can enjoy the work while not sanctioning the bad acting publisher or development studio that makes sense, and there's nothing wrong with it.

Not to mention it's a port of a game from the mid-90s. The original game is probably older than most of the people it's being purchased for at this point.

They've discovered that the "junk" in fact does contain active code for various purposes including controlling the other code. No pyrokinesis yet. People's DNA doesn't change much except for mutation and decay from when they're a kid to when they're old, so when would the memories get encoded? Also the memories would have to stop at the point where the gamete cell is formed. That means nothing from mom because eggs are formed extremely early, and male ancestors memories would stop around the time the next ancestor was conceived.

It's 30 percent and $1.50. The weekly PSN and Xbox Live sales are regularly 50% or more (often off an already reduced price) and rarely less than 33%. Also Nintendo rarely discounts pricier games. Even from a percentage perspective 30% is not great, but in terms of absolute savings? Heck you want apples to apples? Microsoft released a game of the year edition for Halo 4 (came out around the same time as New Super Mario Brothers U and probably their biggest first party franchise) for MSRP of $40 and can be found marked down to $30 or lower. And Sony's even better. They sell games like Infamous, Killzone, and Resistance in compilation packs for $30. You can get Infamous 1 and 2, GREAT games with tons of open world content, for less than $30. Super Mario Galaxy 2? Still at $50.

If you've never owned a Nintendo console the next question is do you like older games? Because if so then you have a LOT of great stuff available on virtual console. Earth...frickin'...bound.