HumanityPlague

While the 360 does occasionally have sales, it's nothing compared to what Steam does, in terms of tone or price. Also the problem with Xbox 360 sales are two-fold:

1. It seems like Microsoft intentionally hides sales. Unless you go digging around the "Games" tab on the 360, you're not liable to see them. Frankly, the "XBL sales" forum thread on Cheap Ass Gamer is way more informative and quick to change, than any of the official marketing done by Microsoft.

2. The other problem is consistency and value of sales. Every day at 1pm (PST) there's a new daily sale on Steam. Every Tuesday is a mid-week sale from Tues. to Thur. with usually two games marked down. And then on Thursday begins the weekend sale for two more games. There's also weekly sales, coupons for games, and just Steam/CD key websites (if you want to go that route) that further show you can save money on Steam.

Contrast this with Microsoft, which barely announces sales on Tuesday, often times not even on the console. When I have to go to Major Nelson's website to see what is marked down on the 360, someone has screwed up.

Even besides these two points though is the inherent fallacy of NBA 2K being cheaper on PC than on the 360. "Yes" it is cheaper, but it's also a neutered version of the game. Although strangely, NBA2K12 is more expensive than 13 on Amazon right now for the 360 version.

Here's a good question for you: Why is Modern Warfare 3 $60 on Games on Demand, and $40 on Steam, or for disk-basked versions (with a DLC pack included)? If you forego the DLC pack, it's $30. That's IF you buy it new, if you grab it used it's around $23/$10, respectively.

The fallacy is that you assume Microsoft would've had sales like Steam. There's no incentive for them to have done so, though. And considering their track record for the 360, it would've been about as half-assedly done. They have a platform now they could be exploiting heavily or sales, but they don't.

If Syndicate is what the PS9 really was, it's going to be blinding a lot of people who buy it.

So, if the PS9 is due out in 2078 as the old commercial said, with the PS2 out in 2000, the PS3 out in 2006, and the PS4 out in 2013 (rumored anyway), where does this leave Sony's long-term plans? There's still 65 years between the PS4's release date, and the PS9's. Do they just hope that each new Playstation can hold the line longer? Does that mean a PS5 is due out sometime in 2025? PS6 in 2037. PS7 in 2052. PS8 in 2061. Then finally the PS9 in 2078? That seems like an awfully long time between the PS8 coming out and the PS9.

Here is the commercial in question:

You can fudge the numbers a little bit, maybe say the PS6 will be due out in 2038, or the PS8 won't be out till 2065, but Sony has set a time-limit on themselves for getting the Playstation 9 out in the year 2078. I've solved it all.

I'm having the same issue also (Win 7/Chrome and IE). GB is using two different video players. The one for the Pitfall 2 video doesn't work at all for me. It just endlessly tries to load and never actually does anything. But the video player for the Crashmo Quick Look plays just fine. I guess it's Youtube for me, for a little while.

I'm not going to pretend to really understand how women are treated, in online playing, or with game development (regardless of job/position). I do understand some of the impulse that men have towards women. There are three issues involved primarily:

1. Guys (incorrectly) see women gaming as some sort of encroachment on "their territory", as it were. These are the same idiots who tell a woman to "get back in the kitchen" if she dares utter a word while playing Call of Duty. That's usually why most women I know don't even bother with a headset when they play, because they don't want to get harassed by idiots. Here's a small flowchart of typical male gamer behavior:

1. Girl Speaks in a game (there's a female in here!)

2A. "You're either fat, ugly, or don't know how to play. Stop playing." (the usual response)

2B. "Woah, a girl? How old are you? You hot? Got Pics?" (the other usual response)

3B. Woman says "Uh, I just want to game" (Because she does, and doesn't want to be harassed)

4B. Guy then immediately proceeds to step 2A because his lame pickups were shot down. (Thus the cycle is complete)

2. There is a gender disparity within the gaming population. While you can argue about specifics and such, there is a bit of an imbalance with regards to number of men vs. number of women playing games. Here is a thought experiment to deal with:

(General set up)

Step 1: Assume that for every female gamer there is 10 guy gamers, as a ratio. So, for every 5 female gamers, there is 50 male gamers.

Step 2: With this 1 to 10 ratio, think about the ratio of single female gamers out there (in a group). I'm friendly with a decent amount of female gamers, and 9 out of 10 are either married, or have a boyfriend. I'm sure others might have different opinions, but there is also a disparity between single female gamers vs. "attached" female gamers. For the sake of this experiment, imagine that ratio is still 1 to 10. So for every 10 female gamers, 1 is single. So, in my original analogy, it translates into 100 guy gamers for every 1 single female gamer. (Just as a general example)

It's analogous to the "small fish in a big pond" quote, with a single female gamer having a LARGE number of guys that are interested in her. This is the primary reason why most guy gamers are so obnoxious/angry towards women. It's a mix of loneliness/rejection/and depression that is the cause. (Mixed in with the usual internet anonymity thing). Most guys want a girlfriend that plays games, and when they don't have one, they become bitter and angry because of it.

(Actual thought experiment)

Step 3: With all that being said, imagine a world in which the gender ratios were reversed. That for every 100 Felicia Day's in the world, there was a nerdy guy. More-over, all 100 of the Felicia's, or Morgan Webb's, or whomever, were *AFTER* this guy non-stop, in hopes of getting a relationship with him (or really, just casual sex, which is what a large chunk of guys want). Now imagine you, the reader, was transported to this world. Do you think that there would be a lot of guys playing Halo complaining non-stop about women? No, of course not. It would be somewhat the opposite actually, with 20 women all instantly messaging you, and asking you if you're single, and the like.

Summation: While there are some outliers (sociopaths, trolls, etc.), most guys aren't inherently bad, or evil, just bitter and lonely. It's no excuse for guy behavior's online, but it is at least one reason to understand it.

3. A lot of developers and the media aren't even consciously aware of a problem. Most gaming sites only have 4 (max) women on them, as staff. Think about it, it's actually about the same ratio (1 woman to 10 men) when it comes to developers/reviewers. A friend of mine recently asked me why Giant Bomb doesn't have any female writers. I tried giving the reason that Jeff/Ryan/Vinny/Brad were the core group, and that they would expand, if needed. But honestly, that's a bit of garbage. How many women have been on the Bombcast over the years? I can think of two, Leigh Alexander, and Carrie Gouskos. And Carrie semi-doesn't count, because of her Hotspot/Gamespot connection. Compare that to the over two dozen guys on the Bombcast, over the years. Now, I don't think Giant Bomb hates women, by any means, but most everyone seems guilty of it, whether they are conscious of it or not. Gamespot (proper) has only one, Carolyn female, and that's it. The auxiliary GS sites (notably Australia) have more women, Laura Parker chief among them, but it's still not a perfect ratio.

Women are over 51% of the population (as a whole), but are only represented by about 20% (if that) when it comes to gaming. Now, not all women are into games, for sure, but the same can be said about men as well. Still, there is an uneven distribution of men and women in gaming. I have a female friend who works in game marketing, and frankly puts my computer/game knowledge to shame. She's said that when she goes to game events with her boyfriend, developers/designers always go up to him and ask him about stuff. Not her. He's not even that into games, but he's there to support her. That is another example of the inherent problem with the current gaming climate. I can think of only 5 or 6 female designers/developers off the top of my head: Brenda Romero (nee Brathwaite), Kim Swift, Corrinne Yu, Jade Raymonde, Amy Hennig, and a few others. Compare that to the dozens of male designers that most everyone knows, Kojima, CliffyB, Miyamoto, Inafune, American McGee, Sakaguchi, the list goes on.

I'm not going to pretend to say I have any real answers, but people should at least see this as a general problem, and hopefully address it. Otherwise, the gaming population is just going to get more and more fragmented, especially as more younger girls get into gaming, they're only going to encounter assholes in the future, which is good for no one.

It seems like every year or so, they get a new head of programming who thinks he can turn the network around in 6 months. Then he falls flat on his ass, because they had no money to actually make programming.

Regardless of that, with their new reboot, I hope, HOPE, they can keep the same 3 to 6 hours of Cops reruns, that they show every day. Yes, they're really trying their hardest with that.

I did a blog about how shitty G4 was, 2 years ago (here) and it's shockingly only gotten worse. Now the few half-decent personalities have left (Sessler, Hardwick, Pereira) and they're too incompetent to replace them. They think that just hiring semi-attractive, cheap, empty-headed women is somehow going to make people watch and/or care about their complete failure of a network. Good luck with that.

Viki from the Suikoden series.

The weird one for me was the first choice with the band director guy. I wasn't even aware that was a choice to be made. When I beat the game last night and it said, "You and 80% of other people made this choice", it threw me, because I didn't even know it was a choice to be made differently.

It depends really what you're interested in. I'm way into Debug/Developer hardware, or modded consoles. I currently have a Debug PS1, and a Debug original Xbox (with a game on it). And I have a neatly modded SNES with a black paint job and NTSC/PAL, 50mhz/60mhz switches on it. I know I could probably get 400$ easy (or above) for my PS1, but I like it too much to part with it.

An original Xbox game called "Deathrow". It was a futuristic sports game where you threw a disk into a goal, but you could also beat up the opposing team, collect points and "stimulants" (drugs) to boost your player, and so on. That would be an amazing game, especially with Live support. Greg Kasavin gave it an 8.7 when he reviewed it, a decade ago.