Indeed, JRPGs as a genre wouldn't even exist if not for western games like Wizardry & Ultima that caught on in Japan the late eighties.

...somebody tell them then, damn.

Hell, they've been remaking BG2 over and over too. Some of ther character archetypes/story arcs haven't changed at all since then.

Imposed for the sake of argument. Sure, tons of great stuff from the early Win/DOS eras. But recently, in recent memory? Some. A few. If all you can point to as good examples are games from several decades ago, you have a dead genre. I don't want it to die. It doesn't deserve to die.

Yes, I'm getting tired of having to play those same 15. We're getting new 'real' RPGs, just not as as many as I'd like.

Really? I can't bring to mind many huge hardcore RPGs from the last 10 years that aren't JRPGs or MMOs.

...the fact that most games are heavily influenced by movies has something to do with it. Movies based on games based on movies simply leave very little to work with besides tired cliches and hackneyed genre conventions. Imitating the imitation leads to crap, see Max Payne, Resident Evil, Prince of Persia, etc etc.

Also it must be noted that most gamers are somewhat delusional about their favorite hobby. No, your favorite game/genre will not make a good movie, not because it "can't be translated to the screen" but because it's on the sub-comic book level in terms of themes, motivations, and honest character depth. You don't ask for quality in there areas, you don't get quality in these areas. Hollywood film interpretations are just the mirror reflecting back.

Good riddance. They have in all but name anyway, that's kind of the point here.

Not that piracy is the way to go, not at all. But frankly I wish all the big devs who've said with their actions that they really only want to copy/paste high-priced titles designed around another platform's strengths and weaknesses simply leave the playing field altogether and let smaller, more motivated devs take over the PC gaming space. Like in the early days, when we had whole dynasties started by handfuls of motivated developers.

Exactly. It's not doing a good job if it fails to realize that developers are a major part of it's well-being.

...sometimes a good thing and sometimes a bad thing. Publishers can obtain and manage capital, and if they deal fairly and wisely with the devs they fund it's a good thing.

If, on the other hand, we have something like Activision/Kotick, well, that's pretty indefensible.

A publishing house that has degenerated to the point where it cares exclusively for ensuring its own well-being is an evil one. There has to be a symbiotic relationship, not a lethal parasitic one.

This is something I never understood. If you say, and truthfully so, that violent video games don't make killers, therefore banning them is pointless, the logical principal behind that tends to negate the argument that guns should be treated in that same manner.

And not to be pendantic, but it is rather obvious that even the outright banning of guns would not stop people or children from murdering others, and it is my personal convition that it wouldn't even make much of a statistical dent.

That *had* occurred to me, but me being the trusting guy I am, I figured that they wouldn't do that to paying customers.

No, it didn't. This is on a Windows laptop. A lot of Mac people seem to be okay with the new player, so either Silverlight works better under OS X than Vista, or Mac user's expectations are really low. For me, and apparently a good chunk of Netflix's customer base, it's a step down. I imagine Siverlight would work fine, but there are obviously some glitches that need to be ironed out before Netflix forces a new player down our throats without giving us the option to backtrack.

And that doesn't work with Netflix, once your account is set for the Silverlight player, that's all they let you use. Disable it, and it forces you to install/enable it before watching. No other options.

Hookay, running a Core 2 Duo based system here, and I get:
1. Fullscreen artifacts
2. Stuttering (AFAICT it's not streaming problems)
3. More pixellation in higher quality modes than the old player.

So no, it's not just FUD.