Wow, that's a whole load of top selling games....oh, no it's not

>Your words are laced with prejudice.

I Disagree. I despise many politicians, pop bands, etc. - but if someone else uses my opinion to justify their more extreme opinion, that's no different from the clothes meaning 'she asked for it'.

>You are not part of the solution endorsing despising ANYONE you've never met.

He's not suggesting that this attitude is a solution. My understanding about the point he's making is that while a solution must obviously be found, it does not do to hand-wring and be dishonest about disapproving of hopelessly outdated ideas for fear of not being morally hip or culturally sensitive enough.

>Despite how well informed about them you may feel entitled to be.

You don't have to polarize every opinion into 'peace' or 'war'. I see this happen a lot on reddit, any opinion that might lean one way or the other is then exaggerated to the extreme - 'Oh, so you think that I should vaccinate, huh? Inject poison into my arm, huh?'. Everyone thinks the Jack Ryan approach is somehow legitimate.

People said this about widescreen on VHS ('what's the point?')
Then they said it about surround sound ('why would I need this at home?')
Then it was about DVD ('This is just to get us off of VHS and buy all those films again')
Now it's about 3D - ingoring that many are quite happily watching Hugo in 3D at home right now. Yes, there actually have been a number of popular 3D films since Avatar - unless you have an axe to gring, it would seem. TinTin, Tron Legacy and even some of the post-jobs like Avengers are very, very good, to say nothing of 3D offerings available right now like The Hobbit, or upcoming converstion like the remaining Star Wars films that my kids can't wait to see.

And *that's* before we get to the likes of Battlefield 3 in 3D - but hey, go right on complaining about the first-gen 3D TV's as if they'll prove your point, you won't sound like people trumpeting the end of Windows when Vista came out...and will probably look just as foolish too.

Sorry but this article puts nothing new on the table table, and is just another whinge by someone not on board that doesn't like change.

I can usually tell instantly if someone is calling from either Skype or a mobile, simply because of the compression and cut-outs.

Just that alone will annoy a potential client - and I really prefer not to give out my own mobile number (because then you get calls from the international helpdesk at 3am).

the OP reminds me of someone that just doesn't realise or accept that MP3's sound crap becuase that's all they've ever known.

You're demonstrating the assumption of familar=good.

Mission Impossible 2 did very well *because of MI:1*, not because it was a good film. But by your logic, it was fantastic.

Which means that Justin Bieber is one of the greatest musicians of all time.

....and a whole bunch of piracy from people that don't accept a full-price-game that contains a single change.

FPS, for example - now with slo-mo! now with hiding-behind-objects! now with (etc.) - bleat about piracy killing games all you like, but when they're nearly all reduced to two or three genres of copying original C64 games, that's not really what most would consider an 'industry' anyway - and it's this problem that means pirates will never really care about costing EA money when that's exactly what EA are doing to begin with - and expecting a full-price for them. How many times would you pay The Beatles to hear the same entire album but with one slightly changed instrument with each release?

The fact that after around thiry-odd years games that are ultimately little different to Elite, Chequered Flag, Way of the Exploding Fist, the Ultima series etc. bears this out - to the point where you can stick MB Games' 'Simon' on a guitar neck and call it a new game is seen as 'original'.

>When i first used steam, all it did was launch games

I take it you mean *sell* games, which is what we're talking about.

> Now there's a friends network, community pages, and trading system.

None of which are difficult to implement or count as major leaps forward in design or service. They've had *years*.

>Steam doesn't add DRM to another company's product.

No, they sell other companies' products with DRM in them. At this point, it becomes irrelevant who wrote it in terms of support, certainly from a legal point of view....hence my comment about returning something to a shop and the 'we just sell it' excuse not holding up, just like a 'no refunds given' sign doesn't change the law. Unless, of course, you're going to hide behind international law so that you can ignore the local ones.

> Usually some proprietary thing that devs have to buy a kit to even develop on. But the OS certainly isn't windows.

You're right, the XBox was never going to succeed. Interesting how wide you're casting the net to to bolster your claims.

>There are plenty of DRM free games on steam too, so not sure where you came up with that.

Er...I came up with it because Steam sell them. Non-DRM games - so what? Again, your statement doesn't really mean anything. If you as a company sell something with DRM, you support it. If you don't want to support it, you don't sell the game. For example, what you *don't* do is automatically enter the serial for the user upon installation, and then pretend a la linux that they should have known in advance that there was another serial number to enter to enable the content that they'd already paid for under the 'digital edition' they were selling. There are hundreds, if not thousands of examples like this, a large number of them being due to Steam pretending that 'they just sell the stuff'. Doesn't work like that.

> But returning games? Sorry man, that has never happened.

Er.,...actually it has. Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of times, going all the way back to the ZX-81. Personally, I returned Star Wars Galaxies because it was a crap game, X-Wing Vs. Tie FIghter because it had no single player option....maybe you're not considering places outside the US, but in plenty of countries if a product is not fit for purpose, or does not work as described, you can take it back. By law. And that's before we consider shops like Argos that will give refunds simply because you've changed your mind. None of these things vanish simply because Steam decided they're different.

>Linux on a game console sounds like a foreign concept?

Who mentioned consoles? No, linux as a desktop platform running as a games machine is pretty much a foreign concept. Probably because it's failed to make any sort of real dent in the desktop market over the past twenty years.

>What OS do you think those consoles use anyways?

Apart from the not-at-all-popular XBox? Well, that leaves the PS3, unless you're going to pretend that the Wii is still a going concern -so I guess there's an untapped market of linux desktops that nobody has bothered porting these linux-based games to, and that Sony and the rest just aren't interested in making any money.

>What was wrong with Portal 2?

Plenty. Many people didn't like the annoying sidekick - and overall, it wasn't the same as the original game.

>Never mind, i think you were just trying to act like a dick.

Sure I was, I'm not basing this opinion on what the aftermath on reddit was like in any way at all. Dick.

>The world disagrees with you though: http://www.metacritic.com/search/all/portal+2/results [metacritic.com]

Wow, now critics = the world? It's like the reviews of Blade Runner and The Thing never happened....thirty years ago.

Any other not-mentioned associated issues you'd like to bring in instead of addressing the issue?

>Valve sitting on its laurels? They have never stopped making games

And have never stopped updating Steam with.....oh, nothing. This isn't about games in any way at all, this is about MS offering a built-in, free replacement for what was previously a Steam-only arena (please don't mention Origin as if it's actually a competitor, I don't want to spit tea). In that time, they've had *years* to develop the client or at least acknowledge their role in the DRM fiascos that have gone on; for example, try selling someone else's product in a shop owned by your company that ultimately doesn't work, then pretend it's nothing to do with you when the customer returns it - see how far you get. Hiding behind international laws to sidestep responsibility for what you sell is not going to win you more fans....especially when a built-in rival comes along. In this respect, Steam is no different to Symantec or RM - make hay while the sun shines without bothering to update much, then bitch as if it was your right to do so when everyone jumps ship at the first opportunity.

> As far as i can tell, they don't care much about the making money part.

Sure, because every other game-making company is now talking up Linux as a games-console, right? Why would valve be doing that? (Clue - see above).

>They could release a pile of crap and call it HL2 Episode 3 and everyone would buy it.

You mean like Portal 2? :-)

....that Novell acted in pretty much the same way - don't offer something better, just bitch about the competition. And watch your market disappear whilst doing it.

In this case, there's even a bonus - unless MS go beyong Steam's fuck-you-we've-got-your-money policy, it's game over; another example of a company resting on their laurels for years (Commodore, Blackberry etc) and then acting butthurt when they might just have to design something new to compete.

But what do I know? I'm sure Linux will actually become common instead occupying the niche it's lived in for twenty years just because Gabe says so.

....I don't really feel the need to spend four-to-five times the cost of their latest OS just to use the interface I don't need.

....would you accept that statement from your mechanic when their fix doesn't work?

....that's just so totally unsuited to a touch-based interface....such as Windows 8.

....and after plastering posters everywhere, shipped back to the states a week or so early, leaving all the posters up and everyone that simply went along after that point to find this out when they arrived at Hyde Park.

I pointed this out to the organisers of that recent 'Captains' event, and they replied with 'well, that wasn't anything to do with us'. No mate, it's to do with the franchise you've paid for to earn money off of - that clock doesn't reset simply because Paramount licensed it out to someone else previously that wasn't you.

....but I'll riot if it doesn't agree with what my God insists on.

Note: Asking questions is the same as disagreeing with me.

>I have no desire to treat my desktop as a giant tweeting twitting FB shitting cell phone.

That's the best summary of Metro I've ever seen.