Looks like it's the Collector's Edition for me, due to the fact that my university's firewall blocks Steam from connecting to its central servers.

Valve and VUG have a contract whereby VUG, after getting a release candidate, can release HL2 at any time within six months, thus all the talk of a six month HL2 delay. After six months, VUG HAS to release HL2.

Now, Vivendi is bleeding truckloads of cash. They NEED HL2's revenue stream. The legal fight with Valve means nothing if you aren't in business long enough to take advantage of a victory. HL2 is coming, sooner rather than later.

subsidizing (sp? I know that's wrong.. I'm not looking it up)

Actually, you spelled it correctly.

Vivendi's shareholders will tear them apart if they don't get HL2 out the door for this holiday season. Expect an announcement eventually where Valve and VUG reach an agreement to release the game and apply the eventual court ruling to the game's distribution at a later date.

GTA's physics are alright... what bothers me is the graphics themselves. The texture work reminds me of the N64--blurry and brown. Hopefully the game will look better at release, but I doubt it... looks like we'll have to wait for the PC version to at least get proper anti-aliasing going.

It'll come to North America, but I'm sure Square-Enix USA wished it looked like Final Fantasy X, for marketing purposes.

That interview... reveals more PR incompetence than a strategic "let's kill off Dragon Quest!" mindset. That department needs a shakeup, but it won't get one--FF sells well here, meaning the marketers are doing their job.

No one will agree with me on this, but the best game of the show... Dragon Quest VIII. This game is going to rock so hard it isn't funny. I wonder if they've topped the 100-hour length of DQ7...

SP2's problems are overhyped. I installed it a week or two ago, and have had no problems. Actually, I think my system is slightly faster.

On a side note, does anyone know if Microsoft's issued a patch for that occasional system slowdown caused by memory management in SP1? I heard they'd include a fix in SP2, but I'm still having the problem. It's annoying as hell to have a game randomly slow to a crawl.

I've heard the PS2 supports mouse and keyboard. Is that true?

It does, via the USB ports, but the game does have to be coded to allow mouse/keyboard input, just like any other console peripheral. I don't know offhand whether or not SA supports the mouse and keyboard, but it's unlikely.

I doubt Fion can produce one example of how this game "glorifies" gangrape.

He said "gang banging," not "gangrape." Gangbanging refers to acting with a gang, not the popular synonym "gang raping."

"liberalism" are you trying to pretend you can comprehend an iota of political census?? "OOH, I MUST BE A LIBERAL IF I PLAY GTA!! , wow look at me im the liberalist gamer evar!11!1"

Talk about making my point for me... nowhere did I say or imply that you have to be a liberal to enjoy GTA. I was replying to people flaming Fion for not liking San Andreas because it's about gangs. Those replies were off-the-wall stupid. To give you an easier-to-understand example, the flames posted to Fion are about as nonsensical as finding someone who didn't like Payback, or The Godfather, or any other number of crime/mafia movies, and telling him to go hide under his church--just like ColligoMortis said!

This thread is like the Blue's News episode of The Twilight Zone.

I think by "liberalism," he meant that people were overly quick to attack another person's opinion.

Overly-quick indeed, but also using completely nonsensical slurs. Such as ColligoMortis' "go hide under your church" post.

Edit: added last quote.
This comment was edited on Sep 26, 17:56.

Somehow, "Ask Jeeves it" doesn't quite have the same ring that "Google it" does.

PS2 has a LARGE exclusivity window, so much so that Rockstar only confirmed the existence of a PC port via burying it in their shareholder report. The port itself doesn't come out until June, and there's absolutely no word of an Xbox port.

Just pick it up on PS2. That's your only option unless you want to wait until summer.

And, is it just me, or is the liberalism here running amok? Fion isn't excited about San Andreas--no need to flame him on political grounds. Put it back in your pants, people.
This comment was edited on Sep 26, 15:34.

Memory Stick.

Great.

I think that you've misunderstood me to some degree, as well as also possibly misunderstanding what Valve will have to do with Steam in terms of attracting software sales if Valve intends Steam to succeed as a software sales channel for the software they wish to sell through Steam.

I was actually using your quote more to make some points that I don't think were being made (notice all the people who support Steam only because they consider publishers the scum of the earth, without stopping to consider that VU still profits off Steam.) It wasn't really a reply to the content of your post, though I will address a couple of your points.

1: Steam merely exerting pressure on retailers isn't enough to change them. Steam is delivering one game, HL2, which is guaranteed to sell most of its copies through retailers. HL2 is just one game, and retailers deal in selling hundreds of games. Steam, right now, will not make a dent in anything except online ordering, IMO. Steam simply doesn't offer the inventory to compete with a retailer.

2: I agree on your points regarding piracy, and it's kind of sad that the best the PC games market can do is to screw up multiplayer for pirates. They need to figure out how to screw up single player, too. Requiring a CD present in the drive isn't cutting it, and it only annoys legit customers.

3: The way I see it, Steam won't take business away from retailers right now. As I understand it, HL2 will install Steam on the customer's PC, thus creating a direct distribution network, but that network isn't around now, and if you've already bought HL2, you aren't going to buy it over your new install of Steam. We'll have a better idea of Steam's true viability when it comes time to release Half-life 3. HL2's release is more focused on making Steam as widespread as possible.

4: I used the 10% figure as an overestimate. There are a lot of hardcore gamers who want to buy over Steam, and there are a lot of CS gamers who have Steam right now, who'll buy HL2 for the prospect of CS2, or at least CS: Source. But IMO, those numbers pale in comparison to the amount of people who want HL2, but don't have Steam, and will buy at retail.

Edit: added 4th point.
This comment was edited on Sep 25, 14:29.

As much as you'd like to believe what you just said, I'll wager that only people who are obsessed with physical media and going to nerd-filled, horrible computer stores to buy a game are the ones who will stubbornly refuse to use steam [or an equivalent delivery service] in the future. Sorry to have a dissenting opinion, but for many people with broadband connections [most gamers], Steam is a perfect idea. It seems popular to bash steam, but the truth is that it shall be the main method for gaming and software commerce in the future. 5 years from now, your post will seem as naieve to everyone else as it does to me.

I'm not talking about five years from now. I'm talking about now. Because you aren't getting anything extra over Steam, and are in fact paying the same price as retail without the price justification (which truck driver's salary needs to be paid from Steam's profits?), Steam, as it exists right now, is not delivering on its promise. It might do so eventually, but it's not happening now, and will not happen at HL2's release. It will definitely start a ripple effect, but the question is how far out the ripples will spread. I don't think it's going to make that big a change in the industry.

As for Steam itself, I have nothing against it. Actually, I like Steam. It's a great service and a great idea. The people who complain about Steam are probably the same people who refuse to use GMail for some vague privacy reasons that don't stack up to reality.

My post did not take issue with Steam as a program, Steam as a dashboard for managing your video games, or Steam as a content delivery service. My issue is with the idea that Steam is somehow cutting out the evil publisher and the evil retailer. It is not. Perhaps it will in the future, but when you buy Half-life 2 over Steam, the only entity you cut out is the retailer. Vivendi will still profit. Vivendi will still budget that money towards covering delivery costs--CD/DVD pressing costs, packaging costs, marketing costs, delivery costs, royalties--while you, the Steam customer, do not get the results of that which your money has paid for (you aren't getting a CD/DVD, you aren't getting a manual, you aren't getting a box, you aren't getting anything of the sort, yet you've still paid for it. In other situations, this would be called a ripoff.)

As it stands right now, Steam is not going to do what so many people seem to believe it will do when HL2 comes out. Perhaps eventually Valve will be able to change the marketplace, but it'll take until Half-life 3's release to see just how much of an effect Steam will have. If you want to buy HL2 over Steam, go right ahead. You're contributing to a new infrastructure that by all rights should be available. But I want my money's worth, and so until games sold over Steam reflect their actual cost, and not their "we need to keep the people who cater to the other 98% of our customers" cost, I'm going to buy at retail.

I'm sorry that you put me into a "Steam hater" profile, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Edit: sentence correction.
This comment was edited on Sep 25, 04:49.

You have to understand, newswriters are located in major cities. They are also rather shallow people, fawning over anything that makes their lunch breaks at Starbucks more interesting. So when the local Starbucks introduces wireless network access, suddenly it MUST be widespread--after all, it's available everywhere the newswriter goes, nevermind that s/he never leaves a city except via airplane, and only then to fly to another large city. And if that city's Starbucks has that wireless network also, well then, it's in everyday use!

Edit: hit post too early.
This comment was edited on Sep 25, 03:57.

I'm really getting tired of these types of stories. Some new technology comes out, everyone loves it, and JUST as it starts becoming widespread, some no-name company jerks the patent chain.

This is nothing more than technological extortion.

Don't get me wrong. I don't hate patents. I think they're great. The problem is with the patent offices--they'll approve patents on just about anything. Case in point: Microsoft's patent on using the Tab key to cycle through browser windows. What's next, a patent on sustaining life through a process of ingesting nutrient compounds?

Okay, PSP supports MP3. That's well and good, but...

How the heck do you download the mp3s to the PSP?

Do you burn UMD discs containing the mp3 files? Do you download the mp3s onto a Memory Stick (in which case, NO ONE is going to use the friggin' feature)? Do you use a USB connection? No one ever explains this stuff.

However, if Valve intelligently prices the Steam product 20%-30% lower than the MSRP of the retail VU CD product, to reflect the much lower costs of this method of publication and the fact that Steam users are paying their own monthly ISP subscription fees for Steam product delivery, then I can see some very positive trends occurring over term for the gaming industry.

Sorry for the double posting here, but I had to comment on this.

Games sold over Steam simply will not be lower-priced than their retail counterparts. Steam is not going to generate more sales than Gamestop, EB, Best Buy, CompUSA, and all the rest. I'd be surprised if 10% of Valve's total HL2 sales come from Steam.

Now, because Valve still has to rely on retailers to push product--these retailers will not enjoy being undercut by the company who developed the game. If Valve sells HL2 over Steam for, let's say $30, then EB, which is selling the same game for $50, is not going to be happy. This will lead to HL2 being taken off EB's shelves. Other retailers will do the exact same thing. It's one thing for Gamestop to price less than EB--it's quite another for Valve to do so.

Until a near-totality of game sales occur over Steam--and we're talking market share figures that would make Bill Gates jealous--then Steam can only save the customer a drive to the game store. I can see Steam making a dent in online sales--why pay $8 to ship the game, plus the $50 for the game itself, when you can just pay the $50 and get the game after a couple hours' worth of downloading? But given that e-commerce itself is only something like 2% of all economic transactions, taking business away from ebgames.com is not a revolution in content delivery. Hell, it's not even a milestone.

And for everyone saying that Steam's goal is to cut the publisher out, well, that may be true, but I believe it's been reported before that Vivendi gets the exact same cut from Steam sales as they do from retail sales. You might be leet and cutting-edge to be among the first to download one of the biggest games of the last ten years, but you're paying just as much as those of us who drive down to the local game store, and we have more to show for it (physical media, box, instruction manual, receipt.)

Edit: forgot to complete a point, and fixed a grammar mistake.
This comment was edited on Sep 25, 03:38.

HL2 is going to ship this holiday season regardless of what happens in court. VUG simply cannot hold it back. There's absolutely no competition on the PC gaming front, and they need the money. They can use the piles of money to try and work legal magic in January.