@lion2447:While you get the elementary concept of how a business works (Profit = Revenue - cost), you are putting blinders on and focusing on the little tiny picture instead of the big picture. You are missing some very fundamental business/marketing techniques at play here.
In business you will sometimes have certain items that are heavily discounted to attract people into the store. Even places like Walmart will take a loss on certain products with the knowledge that you will most likely buy other stuff. This is the basic premise of why sales work and why Black Friday has "Doorbuster" deals.
Witcher 3 was that item. GMG knew people would come to them to buy the Witcher 3 and potentially use them in the future to buy other games. They created a connection with the customer and customers love getting deals. There is a sense of "Well I got such a great deal on product X, I can use that saved money on product Y".
The really interesting part of the whole Witcher 3 thing is that by discounting it so heavily (and taking a loss on each sale) they essentially made The Witcher 3 an advertising campaign. Each sale was pretty much just chalked up to an advertising expense. They made the price so low that people HAD to talk about it. As far as advertising campaigns go it was probably one of the most successful ones they've done and google trends shows it.
Honestly, they are super smart when it comes to advertising. You can argue that its unethical to sell products that the producer doesn't want you to sell, but /shrug.
I'm not sure why everyone is being so cynical here. Their are many applications for these free tools. These exist to give programmers an easy to use API. If you can't see uses for this then you aren't the target audience for this.
I utilize the facial recognition software in an app I made. I have no interest in reinventing the wheel so I was more than glad that Microsoft made this available.
The funniest thing here is that you people think Japan gives two shits about Western morals and Western societal issues. Nintendo doesn't know or care about the "feminism war" going on in English speaking forums. This character is completely typical for what Japan is used to. We can see that by the usage of the words "Imouto-teki" or, little sister like to describe her. Plus it's relatively common to have characters get their gender reversed in anime and other Japanese media.
Once again, the world does not revolve around Western social issues. Japan doesn't care about pleasing Western feminists or anyone else. We are essentially importing their culture when it comes to video games, it's foolish to think otherwise.
@bfa1509: Why on earth would you assume he didn't have a gender? He's not something like Yoshi or a goomba. There are so many times that he's referred to in a masculine manner. There are times where NPC refer to him as a straight up guy. He joins male only clubs...
@valwinz: See that screenshot of the Japanese book? (勇者のリンクの女の子版) is roughly, 'Female version of the hero Link'
So, I guess people are "pulling this shit from" Nintendo's official promotional material. I know enough Japanese to understand that phrase. It just says the whole female version of Link and then describes her as having a personality of an imouto, or little sister.
@FTWiener:I was following you until you bashed Fallout 3 and Skyrim.There's been a lot of treats thrown at CRPG lovers the past year or two. Pillars of Eternity and Divinity Original Sin. OS 2 is coming out in the near future also. Wasteland should have been exactly what you were looking for.
If you didn't like fallout 3 or skyrim, why the heck would you think this would be different? Millions of people love the modern Bethesda rpgs and they are here to stay. If you don't like them, move on to a different series.
@otterbee: From their view it's 10million people have now handled their game. 10 million people have first hand experience as to what titanfall is. A lot of marketing is simply just getting someone to even try the product, let alone buy it.
This is why they give out food samples at grocery stores. You try it (EA access or free xbox one), like it, and then maybe you'll be more likely to buy Titanfall 2.
Basically at this point any additional player for Titanfall 2 just means a higher chance of an additional sale for Titanfall 2. This is why they are celebrating.
@lamprey263:I think you are misunderstanding some key things here. The article is referring to the FELLOWSHIP. It also clearly states 92 days (the time from when the fellowship is created to the end).
There is a reason they didn't do from the beginning of the journey. A lot of the first half was just the hobbits and gandalf and they usually stayed at civilized places. Plus the whole elf capital thing and such. Plus, unless you are forgetting, half the fellowship wasn't even with them at the beginning. So why would you include them? These things are why they didn't do a day 1 calculation. This is a FELLOWSHIP -> Mordor calculation.
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