The issue is whether the server(s) can be operated profitably.

Not quite. If you have better, more profitable stuff to do for the team then it may still be a good decision to shut the thing down, even if it is slightly profitable.

There's also the issue of focus and risk.

The risk problem is simple. If you're just slightly in the black, then if something changes quickly you can end up loosing more money.

The focus thing is a little less intuitive. The core problem is that if you do too much different stuff then the diversity can cost you money that is hard to track down and attribute to the actual cause, just because of the complexity. You are better off as a company doing a few really profitable things than doing many slightly profitable ones.

Anyone want to explain to me, who besides the drm-company earns any actual money from it ? It's not that I care one way or another about this actual form of drm it's just that I don't see the point.

It's a psychological thing. Or a "cover your ass" thing. The managers want to either feel or demonstrate that they have done everything they could have possibly done to protect the game. Never mind that its counter-productive and only harms themselves and their legitimate customers.

And I totally expect that many of these decisions are done by people who don't even understand what they are putting in there. They think its "protection" and that's good. It's like putting on chain mail to protect yourself from a flame-thrower - it will not hinder the flames at all and only make yourself slow, but if you didn't understand the physics behind it, it might seem like a good idea.

could be accommodated within the MA 15+ classification.

Is that polit-speak for "the bribe was quite nice, thank you"?

They also announce funding for their laptop dealies, so they won't have to live up to the "Phantom" name, after all, as they will go on sale in January.

Yeah sure. They got funding and will release the product in less than a month. Maybe they forgot to put a year >=2010 behind that "January"?

Anyway, I don't believe they'll pull that off. Maybe if they downgrade again and just sell a plastic holder for your own keyboard and mouse - that's something that THIS company may be able to do ;).

More evidence of GeForce renaming surfaces.

So, what does a GeForce call a surface then? ... Oh, nevermind.

Sorry, it's late around here

EIGHT CORE PROCESSOR RUNS AT 7FPS ON LOWEST SETTINGS. END OF STORY.

But 50% faster than the same system with integrated graphics.

Well - Intel integrated graphics. Lets face it - the current Intel chips are total rubbish. Their only reason of existing is to enable 3D effects at all if speed does not matter. E.g. Vista translucent windows.

And in that respect MS might have something here.

Though I find it amazing that MS would opt for doing a complete software implementation instead of utilizing the hardware support that is there in every PC. I mean, even the worst chipset would be good enough to handle the Vista window manager.

My guess is that the problem is driver support. They mismanaged the new Vista driver system, so they cannot get the old chipsets to run at all now. And apparently that problem is harder to fix than implementing a whole graphics stack in software.

Pretty embarassing...

The mac is good in desktop publishing and to vomit on.

Macs are great machines. There is something to be said for one company to have control over both hardware and software. And this "desktop publishing" argument hasn't been true since the 90s.

I use a Mac as my main machine (running Windows via Bootcamp/VMWare when needed). I originally bought it to have the *option* to run MacOS for development, but I quickly switched to MacOS as my primary operating system. A lot of things are very well thought out on the Mac - application and window management are just two examples. Apple has some great engineers and obviously uses them a lot more efficiently than MS.

So don't dis my mac, bro!

But I do agree that for someone who primarily plays games MacOS is not the right choice.

The hardware still rocks, though - even with Windows

This comment was edited on Nov 25, 2008, 16:13.

For every Fallout 3 there are thirteen Deer Hunter sequels and spin-offs. These probably do not count as "significantly" profitable, but probably make enough money to keep the business moving along

Oh, I think they are probably immensely profitable (well, maybe not all the spin-offs, but the originals). They are cheap to make and sell pretty well. Granted, looking at absolute profits they probably won't be in the same league as AAA titles. But I'd imagine that the profit percentage is just as high, if not higher.

Are Eidos retarded? Do they just not learn?

As I recall Kane&Lynch sold really well. Maybe they WANT this kind of publicity.

It is called Hollywood Accounting. Actually only 1% or so of Hollywood movies make a profit officially (IIRC). I suspect that this is the same thing.

The reason for this is, of course, that someone gets a percentage from the net profit. If you manipulate the numbers so that there is none then you save a lot of money.

If I remember correctly they usually do this by giving hugely overpriced subcontracts to "production companies" (that they conveniently own). So the profits end up in those companies, as opposed to the publisher.

In all reality he is going to move to another state and try to take the bar.

Nah. He's just going to pretend that the disbarment was against the law and that he still is a licensed lawyer.

In other words: he's going to earn his money as an "expert" on Fox News or something like that.

But still: its good to see that sometimes there is justice.

This comment was edited on Oct 29, 2008, 14:30.

1994? I feel old....

3d realms used to do some great stuff back then. Maybe they should just ditch duke and do shareware games for the iphone or something...

Aaaah. Yes!

That one was surprisingly good! And it probably was over a decade ago (wasn't it a DOS shareware game? Can't remember...).

I don't know. I think there is a lot of fun in this kind of "offline" competition. I.e. retrying over and over to beat your buddie's run, finally doing it, only to get a new, faster run from him.

The training aspect is a lot more pronounced in this kind of thing. With a certain type of player this will be a major hit.

Could be a big time sink for me ;). And it could also be absolutely huge in asia, if I understand anything about the market there.

It would have been interesting to compare the results from this game to something like Need for Speed. Maybe it is not only general "sharpness" that can be trained, but also driving-related reflexes and environment awareness.

Then again, telling 65 year olds who have never played a game before to play NFS will certainly not end well ;).

But maybe when the Atari generation gets old enough...

Wow. Blue's News arrives in the Web 2.0 era.

Blue, you may want to change some stuff to fit that style. Maybe "bluezz nuezz"? Reviews and previews could be "revzz" and "prevzz".

Just an idea

I don't know why everyone is so happy, this guy was the source of endless comedy on Internet forums everywhere.

He'll stay that way. I fully expect him to file legal motions for years until he finally accepts that they just shred them immediately.

The best thing about this (apart from giving this guy what he deserved) is that the combined costs of the US legal system will probably drop significantly now that this loony legal spammer is out of business.

Developers are fast heading over to software based rendering, with Crytek and Epic both indicating they are pursuing that direction for the next generation engines. My understanding is that that means APIs like DirectX and OpenGL will become less relevant.

Are you kidding? A normal CPU has nowhere near the parallel processing power of a modern GPU. There is no way that they could provide competitive graphics with a software based approach.

If you are serious, please provide some proof...

From what I've read, they guessed her "secret question" answer and managed to change the password via that.

Yeah, I imagine it is pretty easy to find out the "mother's maiden name" of a VP candidate.

Anyway, serves her right. From what I've read she uses a private account to keep her less honorable actions out of the official archives. It is only fitting that this lead to another batch of bad news headlines for her...

How? Does Gamespot have any editors left that could quit or be fired? How are they gonna make a sequel without the resources?