I think another related issue for me is a general flooding of the market with content. I've been an avid gamer for the past two decades, and I never felt like there was so much on my plate like I do nowadays. With so many games, and so many of them great, coming out, I feel I have to pick and choose my battles with both the games I play and the manner in which I buy them. Do I drop $60 on a game to support my favorite developers? Do I wait for an inevitable online digital sale? Do I buy 3 used games for that price that were AAA bestsellers last year that I haven't got to yet? Do I bother with those games at all, when I can get a great gaming value for the same amount of money with some smaller downloadable games (Bastion, Outland)? Something to think about.
I agree with many points, except for about KB worth of data vs. MB worth of data. DLC is a great way to extend the length of a game, and I'm okay with supporting the extra time and effort the developers have spent in addition to the time and effort on the primary game itself...but when a game goes gold with content ON the disc that you have to pay for to unlock as a mere few KB dowload...well, it's obvious that it's not extra, it's part of the time and effort they put into the primary game. If it were extra, if I were really paying for the time they spent on adding content, they would have cut production costs to go gold early, but since the cost of production that my $60 is going toward includes that "extra" content, I think I feel rightfully ripped off when they ask for more money. They can't even use the "well it went gold and we worked extra afterwords to provide day one extra content" because they didn't...its just poor customer service that makes for good business. Case in point, Capcom baiting customers with the promise of the extra Jill and Shuma-Gorath characters for Marvel vs. Capcom 3 available months after the release for $5 a piece, when they were on the disc the entire time. I'd almost rather they have the balls to just outright sell the game for $70 than tell me that my payment of $60 for services rendered wasn't enough for all the content on the disc.
@Giancarlo "Wow. Since when did everyone suddenly become an apologist for poor security? Oh wait, they're giving us all free games. Looks like that plan worked." Poor form from a GameSpot columnist. A good editorial is a confident one, written knowing that when it is published it is understood that the community will have differing opinions, often widely so, and that these people may want to comment, either for or against the opinions written. A good columnist believes in what they write without needing to feel defensive, and doesn't have to resort to putting down the same community that keeps them in business. Poor form.
I can't help but feel like this is an incredibly poor article. I'm all about expressing opinions, but if you have a problem with how a company handles an issue, yet openly say that you don't have a realistic alternative to recompense, then please refrain from posting such a pretentious editorial. I'm thankful Sony is doing anything at all...they didn't have to do anything. Sure they'd be expected to, but they didn't have to. Yes, identity theft is serious, but personal information can be found anywhere, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were even members of this site who have had their information gleaned from here at some point. Personally, I'd almost challenge someone to use my info from Sony at this point, as I'm sure there are a pack of feds waiting to sink their teeth into any leads on one of the highest profile cases of cyber crime we've ever seen, and I'd love to do my part in helping to catch the people who did this. Maybe I'm being naive, but I just don't think it's fair to take out my anger and cynicism on the hundreds of poor employees at Sony who had nothing to do with this because of some malicious hackers and a few poor judgement calls made by a couple people, just like I won't stop coming to this site run by many great people just because of a poor post by someone apparently trying to capitalize on the hottest gaming news at the moment for attention. I'm willing to give Sony at least one more shot. After years of great service to me, I feel they deserve it.
As opposed to those who think this article isn't relevant, I actually appreciate it, seeing as I am using the internet on a computer via my OS and don't often frequent OS tech websites because that's time that could be spent gaming, so thanks Gamespot. Nice to know whats coming up I guess, and I'll keep an eye out for it. Still smoothly running XP myself, haven't felt the need to upgrade to Vista as the perks (DX10) don't out-weigh the setbacks (its Vista). Some people have had no issues with Vista, but I'm a poor sap who isn't among them. In any case, glad to hear more pros than cons about 7.
1. Final Fantasy Tactics - PS 2. Chrono Trigger - SNES 3. Ogre Battle - SNES 4. Perfect Dark (though I'd settle for Goldeneye...but PD had more content)- N64 5. Soul Calibur - DC
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