Mandatory? Ehhhhhhh, at some point it will degrade the IP if it is mandatory. Obligatory sex scenes may noy necessarily enhance thes tory much. I can see it working in games like Beyond Good and Evil, but do we really need sex scenes in Ratchet and Clank?Vandalvideo

Off topic, somewhat, but where in Beyond Good and Evil was there even the slightest hint of sexual tension/implication?

On topic, you are quite right that it should only be used were appropriate, but that won't happen until the gamer median age demographic shifts solidly into the older (35+) range.

[QUOTE="Padfoot-Live"]Enter PSN, the "free service". Like Live, PSN has all the same costs involved, but is free. Why is this? For simplicity, I will assume that the quality of PSN is identical to Live (just to remove yet another argument from the thread). Given this, Sony is opting to take a loss on the operational cost of their network service in order to increase market share. Most likely this is due to the fact that PSN is a generation behind on the actively networked console market coupled with the PS3's late launch time compared to the XBox 360. So, technically, the service is free to you but at cost to the manufacturer and such a cost will be passed on to the consumer in other fashions (probably not directly from a gaming standpoint).HuusAsking

The "loss leader" principle doesn't really work in this case as the loss is based on a per unit basis and the profit potential via game licensing cuts has no such limit. As such, there is no operating loss involved in the console market, but the console network market is another beast entirely. So your point boils down to leveraging market share to generate revenue via advertising and/ordistribution of non-game IP licensingin a non-fee based system (the later, honestly, Sony is in a better position to do as they have a large media stake to begin with). I'm not saying that such a model can't work, but it probably would not be sustainable from a core-gamer only perspective. Furthermore, the competition outside the core-gamer only perspective becomes intense as you're no longer just dealing with MS, but also broadband providers as well who have devices with a much lower cost of entry point.

I'm expecting a bunch of investors to be very, very sad.

That's about it, though.

Let's talk facts for a moment:

Live is a fee based service and always has been a fee based service. The fees involved support the overall Live architecture including servers, technical support, content creation/publication, licensing, bandwidth, corporate profit,etc.. Obviously, none of the previously mentioned items are free (with the possible exception of corporate profits assuming MS has plans to go non-profit in the future :roll: ) so the service, from the outset had a fee attached to insure long term viability.

Enter PSN, the "free service". Like Live, PSN has all the same costs involved, but is free. Why is this? For simplicity, I will assume that the quality of PSN is identical to Live (just to remove yet another argument from the thread). Given this, Sony is opting to take a loss on the operational cost of their network service in order to increase market share. Most likely this is due to the fact that PSN is a generation behind on the actively networked console market coupled with the PS3's late launch time compared to the XBox 360. So, technically, the service is free to you but at cost to the manufacturer and such a cost will be passed on to the consumer in other fashions (probably not directly from a gaming standpoint).

So, in principle, PSN should not be free as it is not a sustainable business model unless you work under the assumption that at some future point (most likely when the service population reaches a critical point) the service will subscription based. For now, PSN members are enjoying a benefit that future subscribers will not have.

Welcome to how the world works. There is no reason for either service to be free.

Two Small Pieces

Heck, the Xenogears soundtrack overall.

I agree but even worse. With Vista vs XP, its sad that for games with running Vista it requires an extra 500mb of ram and 500mhz of processor just because of Vista.

I love it too, cause MS spent so much time attempting to emulate Unix environments that now they are stuck with a product model that milks resources from you PC.

Vasichko

Not to completely derail the current rant, but you are aware that the current Vista architecture is based on the WinNT architecture which, in turn, was based on the VMS architecture, yes? This has been the case since the mid 90's. Granted, the real merge between the home and business markets really occured with Win2k and not XP (XP was simply released because they couldn't get the game developers on board for the Win2k release). The XP to Vista upgrade path is relatively painless; all you need is better hardware (i.e. much of the software architecture remained the same between the versions) as Vista has a lot more default services running in the background.

On Topic: a MS adoption of a technology becoming a standard is not sucking up, it is business realism. Seriously, some of you kids need to detach your egos from the manufacturers of your gaming systems. A business's domainance in any particular market will do nothing for you personally (assuming you don't hold stock in said company). Let it go and go play your favorite game already. =)