If you want to get really cynical, there is another bill up for discussion in a few months or so, PCIP (Protect Children from Internet Pornographers), whatever doesnt pass in SOPA/PIPA can just get tacked onto PCIP, and anyone who dare oppose that bill will get called a pedophile and a child porn supporter.

Good luck with that land of the free thing guys

at launch, the gamecube was roughly 280 euros, and hardware wise is was beyond the PS2, and pretty close to the xbox in terms of performance. That same xbox was criticized heavily for its 480 euro pricetag, it took a pricedrop to 300 before it got any serious traction here.

A $200 pricetag is obviously unrealistic for a new console, but 600 like the ps3 is just not gonna float in todays economy.

As i have said many times in ms/oracle comparisons, i would consider MS more of a slightly incompetent blundering bunch of nerds, they have the occasional evil idea, but compared to sony (And oracle), most of their fuckups are more just screwups rather than diabolical plots. I cant remember the last time MS did something diabolical like the rootkit CDs or pulled a "i've altered the deal, pray i do not alter it further" like the otherOs trick.

And honestly, you do have a choice as the end user. Buy a wii, or buy a used gamecube and play all the good games on that platform, go for PC gaming, or heaven forbid, take gaming slightly less serious and do something else.

It will matter, in the ps2/360/ngc generation, multiplatform studio's catered to the lowest common denominator (ps2, in case you were wondering), because of its HUGE install base compared to the other two. This generation multiplatform studios either disregard the wii entirely, or hire a second teams to make a wii "port" with a seriously dumbed down engine, publishing a game on all three platforms with roughly the same graphics as the wii (like in the ps2/xbox/ngc generation) will get you raped in the ps3/360 reviews so badly no-one is going to buy the game.

I find that youtube movie thoroughly unimpressive, the macroblocking and encoding quality make it a poor showcase, even if the original did not have those artifacts, it makes it impossible to judge the quality. Also, these kind of highly optimized tech-demos always paint a very rosy picture of what is possible, and are hardly ever realized in real games.

The leaked specs so far put the wii-u somewhat on par with the 360/ps3, which is nearly 6 year old hardware at this point, possibly 7 by the wii-u's release. Thinking that the wii-u will be able to match the next xbox/ps4 on performance is just hilariously naive

As for the motion controls and ms/sony not being able to match the wii-u on features. Given that we know jack-all about the new xbox and ps4, other than that they are comming at some point, MS and sony can not only feature match, but also outclass nintendo quite easily.

Adjusting the layout of my living room to work around some technical shortcomming of a video game console is not acceptable, as you will find out once you get a girlfriend.

Tried to play this game, but it made me cringe, so bad are the graphics compared to what i'm used to these days. Also the control scheme feels quite clunky. People might like it for nostalgic reasons, but once you take away the "ooh its golden eye" factor, i'd probably prefer some shooter on the original xbox/gamecube over this.

I dont know, most of Sega's fanbase was absorbed by microsoft i think. The original xbox had a shitload of games derived from saturn/dreamcast classics, built by those same teams. I know that the dreamcast (in 2002, after its demise), was my gateway drug into the world of xbox gaming, well after i got a gamecube.

And i think that save for the die-hard zelda fanboys, nintendo has managed to alienate a good portion of its traditional fanbase with the Wii, a huge portion of the wii's succes is down to its appeal to casual gamers and there is a significant risk that most of those people are bored with their wii and wont bother with the wii-u.

Dont hide behind that though, do whatever you can to change things. Go vote in the primaries (both rep and dem if you can), vote in every election you can, vote out the incumbent scumbags you have in congress, and if you can, run for congress yourself! Change does not come from complaining about how powerless you are.

I never thought i'd say this (about a "republican" candidate anyway), but i hope you guys are succesfull in getting Ron Paul in the white house. I might not agree with him on all points, but he seems to have a modicum of common sense in his policies, and stands by his principles. Also, he seems to be the only republican whose first act wouldnt be nuking Iran.

There is a difference between US companies individually saying "we dont like how spain doesnt support SOPA, we wont do our business there", which your analogy would be like, and the US imposing nationwide sanctions on trading with spain.

I hate you, i pay 25 euro for 20* mbit ADSL, and because of the locked down cable market the fastest connection i can get is 50 mbit at 50 euros, while at my old house i could get easily over 100 mbit by now.

*actual performance is 11-12mbit due to the fact that ADSL sucks donkey-balls compared to docsis 3.0 cable.

In my experience, the PSPs sleep mode pretty much fixed this issue though. Sure you have the occasional level loading, but take for instance a largely open world game like GTA or AC, i would play for half an hour on the tram, put the psp to sleep, in my bag, and at the end of the day be gaming again within a second of pushing the button.

720 degrees is 4 Pi in radials

*waits for inevitable whoosh*

Hate to burst your buble, but the P4 is about the worst CPU power-wise you can get, if it happens to be a northwood it isnt THAT bad, but prescott based P4s are frickin space-heaters. You should put a kill-a-watt meter on the thing and calculate its power-cost, chances are that replacing the P4+mobo with an Atom-based mini-itx might work out in a year or so.

As for the carbon footprint thing, if you are just replacing drives for the power-usage (rather then needing more space), i do not believe you could ever compensate for the CO2 produced in the production/shipping of the new drive. (not within its operational lifetime anyway)

True, my dad runs two hard drives of about 500 mb, both systems get turned on and off every work-day.