Zekhariah

If abused the store probably just reserves the right to turn you down though.

My guess would be doing it more than very occasionally flags your account.

I think your music comparison falls a bit flat, as home-recorded indies can have perfectly good production values at this point. If you are 10k into something vs. 60million the stakes are a bit different. And the indie scene in games is absolutely working, with some titles moving up-market in terms of mainstream success as we speak. So it is not really an issue anymore, and will be less so as digital content becomes the expectation.

Games as a service is a bit of a red herring - companies are offering these on the basis of what consumers purchase. A subscription or continuous transactions is sort of a logical end-pint of sequels that are released closer and closer together with limited variability in content.

I would wait on a gaming PC, as you will be able to purchase one that supports 4k resolution at reasonable frame-rates in a couple years. The Steambox thing might be more of a thing at that point too. PS4 specs are fine for 1080p, and you'll probably want to get one eventually anyway, so that would be the one to pick first if your LCDs are in that range. And, if you have another PC, you could always toss a lower end video card in it to play most of the PC unique games.

And, while this is a bit of a social question, I would guess that your GF having a PS4 would make that a much more fun platform to have first if you enjoy playing multi-player / co-op games together.

@coolarman: I think it ends up being implied on the tradition 1-100 or A/B/C/D/F type grading scales. Reviews were traditionally scored on Gameplay, Graphics, Sound, Replay-ability/Longevity, etc. That was then averaged to give an overall number. Which very much implies and objective and impartial rating of specific components. The association is there because games embraced that prospective for decades.

That is less of a thing now, but its kind of a recent phenomena to insist that reviews are opinion. With anything that is at least somewhat along the lines of art, having a completely "objective" position is kind of iffy though. But there are still some number of games that really do not make good on what the marketing suggests, so there usually is room for for pass/fail criteria that gets mixed in with criticism. Hence there is still some parts that are expected to have objective evaluation.

It probably does help that the audience for each game clusters around very specific demographics (or at least voice chat suggests that to me......). Which means you can kind of do a review that would seem kind of objective, because it is written from the same place the audience of the game will come from (e.g. criticizing Soccer Manager for being boring due to no on-field play like FIFA would be a beside the point non-objective eval).

FLOPS (for FLoating-point Operations Per Second)

Floating point number are used so that you can have a fixed register size (e.g. 32, 64, 128, 256 digits) represent a wide range of numbers. They are not able to exactly represent every number necessarily, but going (significant figures)*(exponential base - e.g. a power of 2)^(exponent) lets you make really big or small numbers by using the exponential portion. It ends up being a kind of raw math measurement. Though its not necessary the be all end all way to compare stuff (a lot of the embedded chips - e.g. phone stuff - rate their GPUs with things like triangles/sec and fill-rate on the data sheet).

So you can kind of guess where frame-rate will land, but other things (like the memory interface, other transaction characteristics) are going to have an influence.

Edit: Terra is the pre-fix for trillion. (probably a unnecessary addition to mention here, if you've been listing to US gov. news lately though O.o.....)

@cky4890: Look at a coverage map, like opensignal. Opensignal

In general Sprint has poor coverage compared to both AT&T and Verizon (to a even greater extent). Aside from that, data plans generally run at least $30/month, so while the savings on a 5c are decent, your still stuck with the same even more substantial data plan cost and around half the device capability.

I would argue that the 3DS is in a bit of a different category than Wii U. Doing WW is still possible, but my guess would be an appearance on a more general show if it comes up.

I would try to avoid reprints / re-releases of old Nintendo games that should have made it to eShop at a reasonable price ages ago. There are probably a larger number of good titles than you have time to play, and it encourages Nintendo to stick with their head in the sand strategy.

@ronnylee19881: Windwaker is probably a poor fit for the site's content schedule. I'd have trouble suggesting coverage of any of the Wii U related content running a website; doesn't really fit the covered categories or verge into a weird enough direction to be novel.

@osheadiesstupid: Most of the gaming relevant entertainment pieces are better if you do not focus on GOTY/review side of the enthusiast websites. There are a large number of gaming news sites that more or less have the same content day to day (and skipping parts depending on specialization), and the real value is in terms of how they ornament or present the current topic. Don't worry about any of the specific trappings, or results of any list or grading type content.

It should be fun to listen to.