I can't read what word you wrote. It is filtered or something.

I'm under the impression that most of this stuff is a complete racket though. Sure, Sprint can put several thousand dollars on your bill in one month because you used your data plan in Canada or something. But did that actually cost Sprint very much? If not, who cares if you cannot pay the bill? As long as you can at least pay enough to cover Sprint's costs, it shouldn't be a big deal for them if you simply owe them a lot of money.

Exactly!

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Oh drat.

Games don't take $60 Million to make. Spectacular extravaganzas with high-detail hero models, high-detail set designs, high-detail world designs, full-orchestral scores, full-cinematic cuts, companion toy merchandising, and highly-predictable-never-escapes-the-rails storylines. That's what takes $60 Million to make.

Errr... that all sounds like great stuff, except for the toys and predictable parts. I don't get the "Great graphics and productions = no gameplay" mantra. Sure, some games are all flash, but that isn't always true. Any game mechanic that works with simple graphics can be incorporated into something with good graphics. And a few shallow people like me actually enjoy seeing things go boom sometimes.

Actually you have that backwards.

Nintendo is making money hand over fist, they have no need to update the Wii

I'm not so sure. Nintendo was the only developer to price their system so that they actually made money on hardware sales. Microsoft and Sony need to keep selling games for their systems to actually make some money. Putting out a new system would just put them further in the hole.

Nintendo could easily increase their sales, a lot, if they did an upgrade right. As a lot of people have pointed out, the main problem with the Wii is that is WAY underpowered, plus the whole not really 1-to-1 controller problem. A Wii2 with a modern processor and built in Wii-Motion-Plus that is fully backwards compatable to the Wii would continue to rake in new sales, plus get a lot of Wii owners to upgrade. You argue that Nintendo has cornered the casual market, but that just means there is a big non-casual market still open to them. A new Wii could break into that market.

A quick example. The Wii currently has what may be the best FPS controller besides the mouse, but can't render a game that is up to the standards of FPS players. If you could play COD5 on the Wii using a slightly more accurate remote, I think that could draw in the hardcore players.

I really enjoyed Mass Effect, although it got repetitive in some parts. I don't see how a game in (essentially) the CRPG genre gets faulted for trying to be like a movie. Isn't that what RPGs have always been trying to do?? Even the early Final Fantasy games had cutscenes that tried to be movie-like. Is the problem here that you just don't like RPGs? I know ME isn't a great RPG, but they all really want to be interactive movies.

I found some of the movie influence in Mass Effect to be a huge postive. Just compare the dialogue sequences to Oblivion. In Oblivion you had a camera fixed on a weird looking person with terrible voice acting and a bland script. In Mass Effect you had a movie style camera switching positions with a cool looking alien, good voice acting, and a sometimes interesting script. Mass Effect was the first game I actually turned subtitles off so that I could watch and listen to everything.

ME definitely had some flaws, but it should be stuck in a category with Gears of War or even Assassin's Creed (although that was definitely fun for the first few hours).

That's a good point. For example the Wii Balance Board has been a complete disaster for Nintendo. And those crazy guitar shaped controllers also bankrupted their creators.

Hmmm... oh wait, it turns out Nintendo makes a crap-load of money by creating new hardware to sell.

That's a nice list of games that a mature demographic can play, but most of them suck. Okami is good. I haven't played Metroid yet. Comparing that list to what is available for the other systems (or the PC) is laughable though. The developers (and even Nintendo themselves) are just not putting money into developing good Wii games.

I essentially bought my Wii because I assumed a great boxing game would have to come out within a few years. There have been a few but they were awful. This is partially because the controls aren't as good as was originally claimed. Perhaps holding two Wii Mote + Motion Control controllers will allow the Wii to have a game that is at least as good as Fight Night (not graphically tough, of course).

To be clear, there have been really good games on the Wii, but most of them didn't really take advantage of the motion control. Boom Blox did, and it was really fun. Mario Galaxy was great, but a lot of the motion control got in the way. Rock Band\Guitar Hero are fun, but not as good on the Wii. Even Okami, which allowed you to paint with the Wiimote, also through in super annoying waggle combat. You have to admit that shaking your Wiimote to attack was just awful. Also, the graphics were muddy. ::sigh::

My dad -- who couldn't figure out how to play golf on the Xbox because of all the different button combinations -- had no problems playing golf on the Wii

Hmm... I find this statement odd, since I do have a hard time playing golf on the Wii. Or, at least, I have a hard time playing well. The controls are just way too finicky. I'd have a much easier time basing the power of my shot on one or two wildly swinging meters that I have to hit a button combination to stop at the right point. Every time I swing the Wii remote I seem to get a somewhat different response. And then theres putting. Then again, maybe this makes the game more like real golf.

Also, I might just be dense, but the way the game displays the direction of the wind is just confusing to me. In most game I usually get the idea right away. The wind is blowing towards me. But Wii Sports Golf forces me to turn my character to face the wind to have a good idea of where it is going.

There are similar complaints for bowling or almost any other Wiimote-centric Wii game.

I'm a Mormon, you insensitive clod!

Memes aside, I really am a bit offended by this. Not so much what youngone wrote, but the fact that it was modded 5, Insightful. The inference that someone joins a church just because they are an idiot should bother most people. He also failed at HTML and made a terrible joke. How is this a 5? And below, someone got marked a Troll just because they gave a simple defense of his accusations.

Why was the "I do my primary gaming on..." poll taken down so quickly??? These polls both posted on the same day.

I don't want my house, garden, neighborhood and face plastered all over the web for everyone to gawk at. You don't want it. Nobody wants it.

Speak for yourself. I don't mind it all. In fact, I'm somewhat annoyed that half of my street still shows as unfinished in Google Earth. I wish they would rescan us. Street View is a little more up to date, but I wish they could do that more too. It is very useful.

Taking pictures from a public place is not a human right. The rules about it are based on laws. If enough people get paranoid about this sort of thing then they can encourage their representatives to change the law to stop this. However, that isn't going to happen since the super-majority of people do want this. Or at least if they don't want it, they aren't telling anyone.

Shortly after I showed Google Earth to my Mom, she came to me with a question. A friend of hers wanted to know if I could get photos of someone who broke into her house. That's right; satellite images of a specific time (at night!) that were good enough that you could actually identify the people in them, on google, for free. Now, maybe the CIA can do this....

I remember being amazed at what was offered on Google Earth when it first came out. It is always surprising when someone else thinks that a technology can do something that is insanely more complicated than what I was amazed by.

We drag 'em to the back, 'n' SHOW 'em their hard drive.

Ugg, that's the last thing I want to happen with car repairs. I just stand their nodding and waiting for the information I really want. How much will this cost? The rest of the time I'm just nervous that I'll have to try to respond to what they are saying in an intelligent manner. If I want to know about how a car works I'll look it up. I don't want to suddenly be given a lesson when I'm worrying about how to get to work tommorow.

I know you're joking, but the thing I always laugh at when I read these things is the fact that the "in whole or in part" completely ignores fair use. For example, you (or a publisher that attaches similar boilerplate) can go ahead and try to prosecute me "to the fullest extent allowable by law" for quoting part of your post, but the case would be tossed out in short order.

Unfortunately you are wrong here. Sure, you can do all kinds of stuff and claim that it is a "fair use", but this won't stop someone (or some corporation) from suing you. And it will not simply get "thrown out" of court. You will have to spend a whole lot of money on a lawyer, a whole lot more than they would be trying to extort from you. Determining "fair use" is not cut and dry at all. This is a major problem.

For example, in Lessig's Free Culture, there is a story about a guy who made a documentary about a production of Wagner's Ring Cycle. At one point he filmed some employees hanging out in the pit (or somewhere) playing chess. In the background was a TV playing an episode of the Simpsons. The scene has nothing to do with the Simpsons, it is a short clip, on a TV in the background, but that was still enough for Fox to request ten thousand dollars to allow it. He did feel it was important for it to be in the scene, but in the end had to digitally remove it. Was this a fair use? Definitely. Could he possibly distribute the film without removing the scene? Definitely not. No one will distribute a film that is open to a copyright infringement lawsuit.

Sorry, but "fair use" is almost completely dead.