Longest running beta phase in franchise history? I don't know how they think that boasting that is a good thing?... to me that's a bad thing... If you were a good developer with good QA, you'd fix all the bugs as fast as possible, not let it drag on like this after core development has ended. They need to change their priorities, but it's EA so I'm not surprised... they already ran the C&C franchise down to the ground with C&C4 and Red Alert 3.

Actually, long betas aren't that uncommon for F2P games. Stronghold Kingdoms just came out of a very long "beta" of around two years. During that time they were still able to charge money for the extra features just as you would in a "released" version.

It's sort of the best of both worlds when developing. You get to say "but it's still beta" when addressing the complaints or getting the content finished and you still make money from those eager to pay for those extras.

And this time we really mean it!

No really we do!

xXBatmanXx wrote on Jun 20, 2010, 19:17:
CoD is run and gun.

Well.. it WAS run and gun. If they made a PC MMOG out of it, they would have to add some treadmills to it and more waiting. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to retain subscribers. Of course that's the whole reason why FPS games really haven't been successful at making the transition to monthly fee games. Those still playing CS are too cheap to upgrade their PCs, let alone subscribe to a MMOG. The rest of us who jump to the next great FPS get bored quick without a WoW-carrot in front of us. Planetside was the most successful MMOFPS and it did not hold my interest for very long. WWIIOL with its persistent battlefield was even less "run and gun" and it definitively took too much time for most people to see action, making it a niche game. Although I would have liked to see a WWIIOL game with the CoD engine.

But who cares, most if not all of Infinity Ward's employees have left the CoD series development team and Bobby is more likely to make this even more console centric.. for that clamoring audience he speaks of. Whatever they come up with won't be all that interesting for PC gamers. There are only so many things you can do to a non-persistent "run and gun" FPS every month to justify charging a fee for. Monthly fee for just maps, lol. And when when they go a month without releasing anything new... forget about it.

This comment was edited on Jun 20, 2010, 21:22.

Keith wrote on Apr 29, 2010, 10:48:
Come on, Myth 4!

Last I knew the Myth IP rights were sold to Take-Two Interactive. Bungie has really been Halo Inc. for like the last 9 years. I don't have much hope in their next IP, whatever it is.

Opps.. he left. That must mean no bonus for him either, heh.

So you are saying that the work Activision done in marketing the game had no part in it , you're implying that the game was super fantastic and that the programmers/artist/sound/desgin guys should all be given a life times amount of money each?? Is that what you are meaning?

I don't think the guy mentioned anything about marketing, but if the marketing guys had been given written indications that they would be receiving royalties, then hey, pay them too. I also doubt the contracts mentioned anything in the amount of a "life times" amount of money either. I think they would be happy with the amount of royalty payments they were promised (even Activison acknowledges there is some sort of bonus amount to be determined). Regardless, Activision looks bad PR wise and they had better hope the talent out there isn't all scared off by this.

If the Supreme Court of the United States allows videos and pictures of dog fights, I'm pretty certain they'll have no problem with violent video games either.

Zyrxil wrote on Apr 23, 2010, 09:35:

MMORPGHoD wrote on Apr 23, 2010, 09:30:
Could the company have withheld it and been legally correct to do so? Absolutely.

No, not absolutely. We have no idea how these bonuses were promised. If it was in a contract with specific terms, if you met those terms it doesn't matter if you were still at the company when they gave them out a year or 5 years or 10 years later, you'd still be owed the bonus.

Actually, I was speaking about my situation because I don't know what terms they had. I didn't sign a contract for my bonus and the company was under no legal obligation to pay me the bonus. The point was they did anyway because they knew it was the right thing to do. Some companies actually treat their employees well.

It's pretty obvious they were holding up the bonus payments to retain their employees. And when that didn't work, they started to pay out the bonuses to keep who was left there. Whether it's legal or not, it's unethical and I for one won't be purchasing the next MW iteration from activation. It probably won't be much of a game regardless.

By the way, I was paid a nice 8k bonus even though I was no longer part of the company I had worked for, because I did the work required and earned it. Could the company have withheld it and been legally correct to do so? Absolutely. However in this case, it's called doing the right thing.

"Not an April Fool's Gag."

That's what I think when I see the letters DNF mentioned no matter what day it is. It's been more gag than game for years now.

The thing isn't wireless and I don't see it requiring less effort than existing devices. I'll stick with my Nostromo.

This game is receiving more attention than it deserves. Just another crappy "Terrorist Takedown" money grab attempt.

This would be great if it didn't cause blinding headaches to a significant percentage of people who use it for any length of time more than an hour.

Exactly. I was able to sit through avatar without a problem but I know people who could no longer take it near the end of the movie. Can't imagine this being acceptable for long gaming sessions.

Bah, physX isn't even worth debating anymore. Wake me up with they're serious about using it.

If there's any truth to it I'm sure their state of California will find a way to go after them too, as they're desperate for money.

AMD's physics solution may suck, but PhysX is nothing to rave about either. PhysX seems like a bust after all this time and probably won't take off until future consoles take better advantage of it.

Stolk wrote on Mar 8, 2010, 16:20:
Err, I doubt they would show PC only games in the MAC client.

Possibly, or there could be a grayed out list similar to 'Not installed' for the PC only games. Since they're letting you log in with the same login id for both, I was thinking they'd list everything purchased for that account rather than hide them. There are actually some options for those games (View Forum, View Store page) that might still be useful in some cases.

This comment was edited on Mar 8, 2010, 16:36.

killer_roach wrote on Mar 8, 2010, 15:45:
It's not like Valve's games are system-intensive or anything... even a two-year-old Mac should be able to run L4D2 without much hassle. Is it the best of solutions? Probably not, but if Valve thinks it's worth doing, more power to them.

Oh it's not the few and far between valve games I was thinking of. It's all those other games over steam.. Bioshock 2, CoD:MF2, Mass Effect 2, BF:BC2 .. and on and on. I would be frustrated to look at my games list on my mac and see how many of them I can't run on it. By the time they do end up porting those games to the mac, I've moved on. Maybe it's a step towards making Macs more game friendly, meh probably not. But I suppose it can't hurt.

By the way, where can you even get a list of new game releases on the mac? Amazon doesn't seem to make it easy at all to see a mac game list, although I do see ME2 is now only $30.. for the PC of course ;).

Should be fun to be able to run the steam client on your mac and see how many games you can't run on it. Although it is nice to see that the potential to be able to buy for the PC and get the mac version free. Still, I'll stick to gaming on the PC for the time being.. even though I do own a mac.

More likely a supplier added counterfeit units in a very large shipment. The CPUs were non-functional, so I doubt anyone at newegg would be stupid enough to expose themselves to that kind of bad PR.