Xenos, try looking information up instead of just randomly making it up. Windows and Office are by far the biggest source of profits for Microsoft. In fact 4 of their 7 divisions regularly lose money.

Making money off of other manufacturers harware only comes from windows, office, or other software OEM sales.

This bs about "consumer" money being a small part is meaningless. All money comes form "consumers" of one form or another. People aren't donating billions of dollars per quarter to them.

This comment was edited on Sep 9, 21:09.

One of the most overlooked reasons that Microsoft outdid Mac and linux is games. For years, the guy at Apple in charge of game suppot and getting game developers to support Mac was openly and vocally hostile to the whole idea of playing video games on a computer. The only reason many people put up with Microsoft is because Mac and Linux gaming has been a joke for so long. I think this guy did far more to doom Apple than any of the other reasons often hauled out. Software drives hardware sales. Everyone agrees with that.


This comment was edited on Sep 9, 15:14.

It has been harder and harder for pc game developers to get a publisher with the rise of consoles. The percentage of pc vs console game sales has been nosediving. I've also been hearing a lot more about publishers not letting the dev houses spend time making modding tools and patches for pc games because they are saying it doesn't make financial sense now since far and away most sales are for the consoles.

Hasn't Microsoft been losing money on Xbox sales anyway ? Or is that just on the hardware ?

Games are the only reason that I put up with Microsoft's b.s. If pc gaming really dies out, they can kiss my business goodbye real quick.

This comment was edited on Sep 9, 14:58.

I love the idea but the physics look very cheesy and arcade-like. I want more sliding. Going 120mph and turning on a dime on loose bumpy gravel is a complete joke.

This comment was edited on Sep 6, 19:36.

You have to click on the third of the three green dots on the map to get the multi car race and win money for upgrades or new cars. Has anyone tried pasting any of that story board text through a translator ?

This comment was edited on Sep 5, 16:07.

I liked the first one best. Even though the technical graphics got better later on, the artistic and design quality of the cars and levels went downhill from there.

Regarding the pedestrians being replaced with zombies or robots in European versions, the humans in the Flatout European version use crash test dummies rather than people as well.

Ratbag got nailed when Powerslide was released. It was Ratbag's first game and they used GT games as a publisher. GT went bankrupt just as Powerslide was released so Ratbag didn't see a dime of the money after spending years working on it.

They wanted to self publish Powerslide Slipstream. They couldn't find a reasonable publisher/distribution deal. They took it off their website. IGN still had several gameplay videos of it the last time that I looked. It looked like Ratbag was almost finished and just needed to finish some of the maps. It may still happen someday.

One of Ratbag's upcoming projects is
http://www.ratbaggames.com/scavenger/flash.htm
Scavenger

I loved Powerslide, Leadfoot and several of their other games. However, their most recent game, Dukes Of Hazard sucked more than a little(probably because it seemed to be aimed at young kids and was console-only). The upcoming one Scavenger looks pretty cool though and sort of fits in wiht the Powerslide environment

Powerslide is now tied with Flatout my favorite racing game of all time.



This comment was edited on Aug 4, 18:00.

The no-eject option is in the full version. The full version also has professional mode, vehicle upgrades, other vehicle classes(and cooler looking cars), and a few other things.

Flatout was released in Europe months ago but only in the last few days in the U.S. The U.S. release made many improvements to the Xbox and PS2 version online mode but didn't do much to the PC version. The European Xbox live version patches itself to be like the U.S. version. I don't think that the old European PS2 version even had an online mode.

You have to use the arrow keys to move to the letters when creating a profile name. This may or may not be fixed in the U.S. version or the patch which comes out soon.

Hitting space acts the same as hitting enter in menu mode for some reason.

This comment was edited on Jul 21, 01:38.

That buckle-up option exists. Look through the menus.

Empire wouldn't let Bugbear spend the time to code and test the more integrated multiplayer browser for the PC version. There are some good ones put out by the community and once the patch which evens up the U.S. and European versions comes out, more mp tools will come out. I'm guessing that Flatout2 which comes out next year will have better integrated pc version mp browsing.

There are plenty of mods out for this covering everything from physics to cameras to new car models.

Happy dance time !

I was hoping that they'd do this.

Trymedia's refusal to adapt patches to their games also becomes a very dangerous security problem in the case of games like Terminator 3 WOTM where an exploit was found that lets a malicious player gain control of the other player's machines.

Trymedia's version of some games are also incompatible online with the store bought CD versions.

Patches for the store bought versions don't work on trymedia games because they alter the executable. Trymedia tries to claim that they will release their own versions of patches but this is almost never true.

This company really disgusts me. They took a good idea and turned it into what many people see as a scam.

Bottom line: I won't be buying this.

ET:QW looks amazing !

A really good team oriented,mission based science fiction multiplayer is long overdue.

SW Battlefronts sort of does it.

Republic Commando turned out to be console oriented drivel.

RTCW and ET are the best multiplayer based games ever made in my opinion. The air strikes need a drastic reduction though.

Well, from their site, it looks like this will be yet another racing game that won't be released in the U.S. (or at least not in the near future).

There is a serious problem with getting publishers to put out racing games in the U.S. I've been having to order almost every last racing game that I want from overseas.

This comment was edited on May 12, 20:06.

Supposedly they have been tweaking the physics and handling over the last few months. Something was very wrong with the first demo and the second one got even worse.

A new demo is supposed to come out around the 20th. I really wanted this to work but they really messed something up in the physics in the earlier demos. Even their few supporters couldn't get the game very playable without some serious work.

One problem looked more like a bug than incorrect design. You'd be driving along with very little traction on the front tires but the second that you tried to correct in a slide, traction went to 100% and would violently fling your car around at the slightest touch.

The game looks great and I like the idea of it but unless they did some serious fixing, I'll stick with Flat Out.

This comment was edited on May 12, 16:57.

Disappointing. This is far too console-ish. I was really looking forward to this. There are some interesting aspects to it but it just feels very cheesy. Speaking of cheesy, wtf is up with those wooky models ? Those are the worst models that I've ever seen in a SW game. The whole can't be killed aspect of you and your team also got old and cheesy very fast. I even tried emptying all clips into one of the unconcious guys and still couldn't kill him.

I liked Battlefront and was fairly hopeful about this. I was expecting the biggest problem to be weak, inefectual weapons but... bleh.

Yep, the Trek rumor is false. They had better change the night again though. Trying to go head to head with Galactica, Stargate, or SG Atlantis in the same time slot is just plain stupid. They should never have switched from Wednesdays. I like Enterprise more than average but Galactica is 10 times better (especially than that last Enterprise episode with the transporter glitch, sheesh that was dull and pointless).

http://www.trektoday.com/news/180105_02.shtml
TrekToday - 'Enterprise' Not Cancelled Yet

http://www.saveenterprise.com/sfxrumor.htm
SaveEnterprise.com - SFX Rumor of Cancellation False

The first demo was very messed up but at least with a huge amount of tweaking you could get it drivable. The new version is a total disaster. The physics and controls are beyond hope. If you barely even touch the steering when correcting it suddenly and violently flings your car around as if traction suddenly went to superglue levels and you had yanked your wheel all of the way to the side. I really wanted to like this. It does look nice and I like the idea but forget it. What a joke.

There are several very good racing games which are being released at this time and most of them have demos. Try them instead.