I'm notoriously camera shy so there aren't many photos of me, but here's one of me last year...

[QUOTE="jamyskis"][QUOTE="the_ChEeSe_mAn2"]Probably. They have put it on every PC release since AC2, so I don't see them stopping that trend.ColdfireTrilogy

Have I missed something here? Everyone seems to be gushing about Blizzard's apparent disaffection with DRM and have failed to read this bit:

StarCraft II, due out on July 27, requires a one-off activation and a registered Battle.net account. Once completed, players will be able to get started with the game's single-player campaign in offline mode.

Videogamercom

People, this is DRM. If it needs to connect to the internet to authenticate, it is DRM. What happens if the authentication servers go down or you have no internet connection? Reminds me of Steam and Stardock's rant against DRM...every time they bring out some kind of new anti-piracy technology, they advertise it as "not being DRM". CEG anyone?

2. I've seen people on the web say that SecuROM is a data mining utility; is this true, or is it just some anti-DRM conspiracy?

Xeros606

Probably. They have put it on every PC release since AC2, so I don't see them stopping that trend.the_ChEeSe_mAn2

I know gamesbad when I see them. The only reason I have bad games is because I bought them out of a bargain bin. I figured for $1-$10 how bad could it be? Bargain bin games area gamble by the way. Most of them are as awful as they seem, but every now & againI find something pretty good.

MagnumPI

Most games I buy for €50 for the PC (now €55-60, as that's rapidly becoming the standard price for PC games) are ones that I've wanted for a long, long time and know that it's going to be good. Well, until I bought GTA 4, which was good, but bug-wise screwed. I rarely buy games for full price. In fact I could list all the games that I have bought full-price (in twelve years of PC gaming): Sims 1, Sims 3, GTA: Vice City, GTA: San Andreas, GTA 4, X-Blades, The Last Remnant, Rome: Total War, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing. For PS3 I bought Little Big Planet, Metal Gear Solid 4, Tekken 6, Modern Warfare 2 and Killzone 2 - that's in less than three years.

With the exception of GTA 4, I've never really been disappointed. So I see what you're saying - when you pay €50-60, you need to know what you're getting, and that can be difficult on the PC. Bargain bin games are a bit of a gamble, as you say. The thing about bargain bin titles is that for every 20 trash low-budget games there are, there is one absolute gem.

Amazon Germany was doing an offer a year or so ago, offering five titles for ten euros. I bought twenty, paying 40 euros. For what its worth, many of the games were junk - Swedish Classics GP, Operation Sandstorm, Call-A-Pizza Dude and Midnight Outlaw Illegal Street Drag were perhaps the poorest excuses for games I've ever known. But if I hadn't gone for this offer, I wouldn't have accidentally discovered gems like Sword of the Stars, Eets, Ascension to the Throne, Perimeter: Emperor's Testament (note: I have the first game and really like it, I didn't realise until then that it had a sequel!) and Daemonica, which alone were worth the 40 euros I spent.

Turning Point : Fall of Liberty and Empire Earth 3linkthewindow

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say quite openly that I rather enjoyed Turning Point...then again, I only paid €8 for it, new.

GTA 4 for the PC.

Not that I didn't like the game - just that by the time it was remotely playable without constant crashes and performance problems, the game had been reduced to €20 in the shops anyway. So by the time I came around to playing it properly, I might have well have just waited.

I agree with everything the OP has said - and I do believe that motion control HAS a market, but it won't OVERTAKE the market. I believe that Nintendo has provided the Classic Controller with the Wii for "transitional" purposes, and that they too believe that traditional methods of game control will eventually die out.

I don't believe so. I believe that traditional methods are just as effective as motion control, and sometime more so depending on the game.

One point that the OP mentioned that applies to the evolution of control methods here. He mentioned that many producers going crazy over the stereomania back then created some very poor mixes just for the sake of using stereo. I think many of the current approaches to motion control gaming suffer from the same problem - many developers have been developing or porting games for the Wii and PS3 and implementing motion control activities that really aren't necessary and detract from the overall experience.

As an example, I recently had the pleasure of re-experiencing Heavenly Sword for the PS3. When I first played the game, I was wowed by the motion control technology, simply because the current gen tech was new, my PS3 was new, and I'd quite honestly never really experienced anything like it.

Three years later, and the motion control element just seems ridiculous and unnecessary. It makes gameplay unnecessarily difficult, the gameplay elements that use motion control could have been implemented just as well, if not better, using the analogue sticks. The motion controls do not add to the experience. The same applies to Killzone 2 and the melée combat elements - I feel it just doesn't work.

Compare this to an example like Red Steel or Wii Sports, where it's done properly - those games were primarily designed for the Wii Remote and benefit from it. I remember the Sega Star Wars Arcade game from the early part of the last decade, where a huge 3-axis analogue joystick was used to play lightsabre battles. I remembered thinking at the time that there was no way that this could be translated to a home gaming experience, and to all extents and purposes I was right. It needed fluid, unified 3-axis control, which only motion control like the Wii remote and PlayStation Move can provide.

There was that guy in the Old City in Gothic 1 whose name escapes me that kept following you around should you have been daft enough to save him. Every 2-3 minutes he keeps telling you that he feels safe with you and he's your friend. I got around him by leading him away from all the guards and then hacking him to death in the wilderness. Put him out of his misery.