The world is going to end up with two massive game companies - EA and Actiblizzion. At some point, at least one of the two will realize they can save an assload of money by not paying royalties to nintendo/sony/microsoft and will just develop their own console. The other will see how much the other company is saving, and will follow suit.

This will lead to a two console gaming front. EA's console will have all the sports games as well as the Sims. This will allow the console to flourish solely on yearly Madden updates and Sim expansions.

Actiblizzion's console will have WoW as well as Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk. WoW's revenue stream will be used to finance another decade worth of Tony Hawk expansions, as well as Guitar Hero 4.

On a serious note, how is Blizz not getting the shaft in this deal? Firstly, they don't need Activision. Secondly, they're investing twice as much into the merger, yet Activision's CEO will be the CEO for the merged company.

Doh! Double post
This comment was edited on Nov 14, 00:44.

What makes this marriage so unusual is that, for once, the wife is in the dog house. No wonder though, I heard she's a real bitch.

They must have ran out of codes- you don't get squat for joining the group anymore

I just tried it and it worked fine for me. A flash popup had the code after I joined.

EA will be releasing NWN '09, as well as the first FOUR patches last week for the low price of $69.99 for the PC and $99.99 for XBOMB 360!! Get your interception on today!!

You forgot to mention how the online support for NWN '09 will be canned once NWN '10 is released.

Besides, the difference in performance between the 320MB and the 640MB version is completely negligible as long as the clocks for the GPU and memory are equal. It's only at very high resolutions that you *might* notice a very minor difference if you really want to imagine seeing one. It really doesn't fucking matter as far as playability is concerned though. If it runs well on a 640, it will run fine on a 320, too.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2926&p=3

In most cases the difference is negligible, but Quake 4 in Ultra mode cuts the 320's frame rate in half vs the 640mb version. Considering that the minimum requirement for crysis is 256 megs of video ram, I have no doubt that the 320 mb version of the GTS will have to turn down some combination of texture detail/resolution/AA to remain competitive with the 640mb version.


Edit: Another link, this time focusing on World in Conflict:

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTM5OSwzLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

To save a bit of reading, the 640mb version was generally running at twice the framerate of the 320mb version.

As you can clearly see, the GeForce 8800 GTS 320 MB doesn't have enough local memory to play World in Conflict with "Very High" settings in DirectX 10. When we shared our results with NVIDIA, they had this to say:

"Very high quality setting uses too much memory for the 320MB GTS. The developers have commented on public forums saying this setting is not recommended for the 320MB GTS. For optimal playable settings on the 320MB, use either medium settings or high settings with a few options (like AA) turned off."

So there you have it, from the horse's mouth. The GeForce 8800 GTS 320 MB is not suitable for playing World in Conflict with "Very High" settings in DirectX 10. We even turned AF off, and it still wasn't playable. However, the 8800 GTS 640 MB and the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT (with their larger memory capacities) had no such problems.

This comment was edited on Oct 9, 21:29.

Did anyone notice that Activision bought Bizarre? I know they were independent, but in recent years they've been effectively MS exclusive. It's interesting to me that MS has lost both them and Bungie in a matter of days. Either MS has something up their sleeves, or they've lost two powerful exclusive franchises for seemingly no reason.

Remind me again how he was declared mentally fit?

"There's been no such announcement. We continue to celebrate the tremendous success of the global phenomenon that is Halo 3."

That's an AWFULL long way from a denial

So true. I'm pretty surprised this would happen though. Bungie has to be making far more money than they ever were before, and Halo is undoubtedly a far bigger success than their previous games (sales wise). Unless they're just getting tired of Microsoft, I don't know what their motivation to leave would be. MS seems to give them all the development time they need, and the developmental funding has got to be outstanding. Perhaps they don't want to wait for the next Windows release before porting Halo 3 to the PC?

From the other side, I can't imagine MS would have the slightest desire to let go of Bungie either, due to how many console sales can probably be attributed directly to the Halo series (not to mention the sheer amount of money the game sales themselves bring in).

This comment was edited on Oct 2, 10:35.

I'd just like to know how he was found to be mentally sound. He seriously seems to think the entire world is out to get him. Then again, at this point he may be right.

I played part of the original on the PC and was feeling no love for the series. So I skipped Halo 2. And the only thing that has me interested is seeing the videos... It appears they took the game to new level of polish and really filled out the game as a whole. Plus four player Co-Op just sounds badass.

I own and have beaten both Halo 1 & 2, but I've never thought they were all that fantastic of games. Halo 1 felt like I was fighting the same 3 enemies in the same bland gray level with the same 3 weapons. Halo 2 at least added a little variety, but is still eclipsed in my mind by the better PC FPSs. I really haven't touched them since running through them with a friend in co-op mode at least 6 months ago (co-op mode being the primary reason I got it).

Halo 3 finally got it right. It's not the second coming, but it's a solid FPS that definitely improves upon the previous 2 games. They've added enough weapons, vehicles and enemy variety that it feels significantly less repetitive. They used the extra power of the 360 over the original xbox to flesh out the environments and have larger battles with more enemies (and more allies). To me, this has changed it from "walk ahead, fight 2 guys, repeat" to "walk ahead, engage in squad-level battle, push the enemy back". It makes a difference and makes the battles significantly more interesting.

Also the forge mode (where you edit the objects in the multiplayer maps) entertains me more than it should. I've spent more time in it blowing things up than I'd like to admit. It's oddly fun to set up a vehicle, and then set up a bunch of explosive barrels around it and fire a rocket or grenade into all of it. Not everyone may be as entertained as I was though.

You believe this game is getting reviews of 100%? I'm wondering how much these review sights are getting paid.

It's good, but they're just writing a hasty review after playing the game. If they let their initial excitement die down, they'd give it a more accurate review. So far, I'd put it at about 90%. It's not really breaking all that much new ground, but what it does, it does well.

From the NYT Halo 3 article:

Among them was Mr. Bollard, 18, who said the 73 cents was all he would have left after buying the game. [snip] “I don’t know how I’m going to feed myself,” Mr. Bollard said.

It's a game... it's not worth starving yourself for. Eh well, it'll make a good "crazy college kid" story he can tell his kids.

More than 10,000 stores across the country, many of them converted into miniature carnivals Monday night for fans awaiting the game, opened their doors to long lines of Halo fans who started camping out as early as Sunday afternoon.

Unless you just enjoy camping out before major releases, you're an idiot if you camped out on Sunday. I walked into a local Best Buy yesterday and picked up the LE edition shortly after noon. Microsoft wisely produced 80 billion copies of the game, so there shouldn't be widespread shortages.

Games exclusively for the PlayStation 3 this holiday season include the fantasy diversions Lair and Heavenly Sword.

Fantasy diversions? I'm not sure whether they're trying to insult the fantasy genre or the games themselves, which have generally received poor reviews.

Joseph Hunter, 19, a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, said the series has “sort of become an obsession” and said entire dormitories at Morehouse face off against one another in Halo combat.

Nice. Wish I had inter-dorm lan parties. I only remember doing this a couple of times in college.

(Continued) Regarding Halo 3, he said, “I knew that if I didn’t have it, my life would be over.”

Riiiiiight....

This comment was edited on Sep 26, 11:12.

but just a general 3d question: look at the left girl's shoulder. it still has lines and looks polygonish. isn't there any move to removing this limitation in games in general?

I suspect the polygonal budget (so to speak) was spent on the parts people will be looking at (the boobies) instead of the parts people wont (the shoulders); notice the boobs are very smooth on the one girl, versus the shoulders.

This comment was edited on Sep 22, 15:57.

I have never, ever seen it spelled "ice-cream".

LEAVE NVIDIA ALOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE!

YOU BASTARDS ARE LUCKY THEY EVEN WRITE DRIVERS FOR YOU!!!!!!

Yeah, but you need a processor when building a new PC, you don't need a PhysX card....

Not quite the same.

Very true. I was really just pointing out that a PhysX card isn't twice the cost of a quad core processor. As to if the PhysX card is worth even $130, I've never seen one in action to judge.

This comment was edited on Sep 16, 09:58.

this is great news for intel owners - especially those with dual or quad core cpu's. Finally those spare cores might actually be used the way they should - for physics calculations, so there will be no need to by a physX card with costs double to price of a quad core processor anyway.

1. Intel buying Havoc doesn't magically make games support multiple cores; it will still fall upon the game developers to ensure the game supports multithreading. Additionally, games such as Supreme Commander already offload physics onto a second core, which to the best of my knowledge was not influenced by intel (not that Supreme Commander even uses Havoc).

2. I don't know where you price shop, but you've either found an amazing deal on a Core2 Quad or a horrible deal on a PhysX card. Newegg has 2 PhysX cards, one for $130 and one for $142. The cheapest quad core is $280.

Sounds like a great name for a boob job clinic.

Seems like an odd purchase on intel's part. They must be planning on somehow making AMD's processors run Havok really poorly, because I can't see any other reason they would have any interest in this company. It's not as if Intel makes games or movies.

....and his Psychologist said he was fit? yeah right.

I'm sure he's completely mentally sound; it's the rest of the world that has the problem.

Thompson is currently suing that referee, Judge Dava Tunis, along with the entire Florida Supreme Court and the Florida Bar in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

See? A judge, the Florida Supreme Court, and the Florida Bar are all out to get him, not to mention Take 2, all video gamers, Jeb & George Bush, Blue, the rest of the judges & lawyers in Florida....