That's not creating a new business out of nothing, nor is it being particularly visionary. It's a natural improvement on an existing market segment.

This piece reads like someone has been smoking the good stuff at Apple HQ.

You really believe it was that and not that the default changed in the #3 browser?

That's so naive it's comical.

Wow, that's genius! I wonder why nobody else thought of it? Maye next you'll come up with some gems like "teach people not to shoot each other", and "teach people how to drive properly".

Yes, because Macs are magical and a user space process on them can't encrypt files that the use has access too... because magic.

You zealots are hilarious.

The original idea for The Hobbit was to make two movies. Then Hollywood executives got involved and the third movie was invented. With it came the need to invent new stuff to fill all the extra time, and most of it is garbage.

If you trim it back down to two movies, there is enough content to make a good pair of movies. Instead, what we got was Peter Jackson's attempt to make The Lord Of The Rings II, occasionally featuring a hobbit.

Enjoy what? The never ending CG fight that doesn't seem to go anywhere? Tauriel being a good little damsel straight from Peter Jackson's imagination?

Forget there's a book at all, the movie is just plain bad. It's probably alright for the Transformers crowd, they love endless CG with no particular point.

Gamergate wasn't hijacked at all. The thing that Baldwin started with was literally bullshit made up by that developer's ex-boyfriend.

It started off as sexist BS, and it remained sexist BS. Basing an "ethics" campaign on flagrant lies isn't exactly a good place to get started.

Depending on the game, it can be reversed, but it's not easy. Diablo 3 is a recent example. Bad launch with major server problems and gameplay issues. The 2.0 patch and expansion basically undid all of that, got rave reviews, and AFAIK did result in a sales bump. That's Blizzard, though.

Assassins Creed usually sells a lot up front, sells some DLC, then moves on. DLC doesn't provide a "reset" to try and win people back over the same way a major expansion launch does. For AC Unity, the damage is done. Fixing it makes sense to try and limit the damage to the brand and because some of those fixes can probably be used in the next game, not because they hope it'll generate more sales.

When you have the hype machine going a year in advance aimed at a certain date, promotion contracts with Gamestop and such for a certain date, and even something simple like shelf space at Walmart for a certain date, changing that date is not without consequences.

Digital distribution tends to make this easier, but this is predominantly a console game and so retail matters.

There is a reason they want you to buy the game before any reviewers or other users start commenting on it. It's what enables them to sell broken crap like this. They've already got your money.

The hype train, preorder bonuses, review embargoes are all meant to allow them to get away with selling broken crap. That's exactly what they've done. All the complaining in the world won't do a whole lot about that, now.

If you really want to put a stop to companies like EA and Ubi doing this - never preorder a game. Any game worth buying on launch day is still worth buying two weeks later, and you'll save yourself quite a lot of money by avoiding duds.

"Unexpected technical issues", as in "we knew there were issues but didn't expect them to become this big of a media story."

You're right. Game company management and PR want to meet the ship date no matter what because of the hype train and various retailer contracts for shelf space. QA isn't that high on the totem pole when it comes to influence, and are routinely ignored if they're saying what management and PR don't want to hear.

Hopefully, Ubi learns something from this.

Everyone already bought it, so it's all good as far as Ubi is concerned.

Usually, testers find these things and management decides that they can be fixed with a patch later, because missing the ship date would cause marketing problems.

Sometimes they get away with that. Sometimes the problems are worse than management thinks and a debacle like this happens.

Unlike the other candidates, Carly has a proven track record of spectacular failure.

Don't settle for less, vote for first rate failure in 2016!

Except that I can sign up for Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr/G+/Whatever with a browser, and costs me zero dollars.

A Disapora appliance would have to cost more than zero dollars, because you're making and distributing hardware. Why would people ever buy it? What happens when it fails, or the baby spills juice on it, or it needs patching, or any number of other real world things happens to it?

It's a complete non-starter unless it also does something game changing.