Humanity

@ratamero: I understand what "third world" means and I fully realize that Italy or Germany aren't third world countries. That said, would removing region locks definitely lead to manufacturers settling on one worldwide price? This seems kind of tricky. Depending on which country they chose to base their single price on, they would be either undercutting their revenue in some regions because of the much lower price point or essentially completely forfeiting any sales at all by having a completely unreasonable price that most consumers would not settle for. Wouldn't they simply continue what they are currently doing by calculating a price point that reflects the economic conditions of the market in which it operates, but kept within reach of the original when shipping would be factored in so as to make the costs of importing forego any financial gains? The only difference would be that while travelling between lets say US and Japan, your entire movie collection wouldn't suddenly become obsolete because of region locks.

I guess I'm just not seeing what the difficulty is in setting prices for individual regions as using one base price for the entire world seems quite frankly impossible.

@ratamero: I'm not an economist, so I ask this in all seriousness and not as a challenge or anything because I'm genuinely curious: how do you figure that ending region locks would increase "third world" region pricing? European prices are already higher than their US counterparts as a lot of products simply get the currency sign switched from dollars to euros. If you remove the necessity to buy from your local retailers and could import directly from the US using the much more favorable dollar conversion, how would that make local markets react by increasing their local prices even further?

While the way he phrased it can be viewed as a bit extreme I understand where he's coming from. When you're into a relatively niche and very specialized type of game and hear people that don't know the deep nuances of said game make offhand, dismissive remarks about it - that can be grating. I love the Bombcast, I respect the guys, I respect their subjective tastes, years in the industry, experience etc - all that out of the way - they can be extremely dismissive about things they themselves don't consider "fun" or "good" in the worst kind of ways. Vinny was the only one who always managed to be very respectful when talking about genres he wasn't versed in really well or even didn't particularly enjoy. Jeff is on the directly opposite end of the spectrum where he has no problem calling something garbage simply because he doesn't enjoy it. Once again, I think Jeff is extremely knowledgeable and a consummate professional at what he does, much respect, but some of the opinions he states with incredible conviction as if they were hard facts can be rough.

While I understand your point about outsourcing manufacturing in order to lower production costs which ostensibly lower the product price, but how do you justify those low wages exactly? People overseas are working for literal pennies in some of those factories. Immoral is a really gracious term that can be used for some of those working conditions.

Also the prices are higher because the market can afford it? I'd invite you to visit some European countries where game prices are directly translated from Euros to local currency irregardless of economic conditions and the average wage minimum of said countries. I'm from the US, but where I'm living right now in Eastern Europe the Uncharted 4 collectors edition is going for, I kid you not, 1/3 of what a typical person earns in a month - and thats retail pricing. The entertainment market is fucked in terms of pricing everywhere outside the US.

This looks pretty nice and is not at all what I was expecting.

Dan would never cheat on Taco Bell, that is a relationship you take to the grave (literally it will take you to the grave).

@wildali: Yah I mean it's a really clever way for them to move two SKU's simultaneously. They have enough of a lead to eat some losses early on.

Austin actually raised a great point about jumping ship to the other brand. I gamed on a 360 all last generation. This time I switched to the PS4 because it seemed like it was the better system and in many ways this has turned out to be true. Now I don't see myself buying a PS4 NEO any time soon because thats is just ridiculous, but were a brand new more powerful XB1 come along that would be a really great incentive to finally get that second system to cover my bases on exclusives. If this theoretical XB1 NEO was just as capable as the newest Sony counterpart, and significantly better than the base PS4, I could definitely see myself suddenly switching brands and getting all my multiplatform games for the XB1 Neo instead, with only a stray exclusive purchase on the base PS4 every few months. This would work out perfectly because I would get the best playing experience for multiplatform titles, I'd have a brand new console in case some hot Microsoft exclusive comes along, and historically Playstation exclusives had both looked and performed a lot better than multiplatform games so having a simple base PS4 model wouldn't hurt as much.

@yummylee: Ehhhh I wouldn't say "rock solid," but it's servicable in most cases as far as console games go. Some fights can get dicey but not since Demons Souls has one of these played at a consistent framerate - and even then Valley of Defilement was rough.

@fram: Yah it's the novelty factor for sure. At some point you're going to get diminishing returns on time travel or bullet time.

I think they're all pretty fun for different reasons. I never understood this philosophy that yah the Matrix is this amazing thing and then the latter two movies are just too much or something. They are all equally dumb and ridiculous which is honestly half the fun.