If it wasn't for Persona 3, Pac-Man: Championship Edition would have been my pick for best game of the year. Not best XBLA game of the year, not even best 360 game of the year, but best game of the year period. It's that good: wonderfully accessible for casual gamers, tons of depth for hardcore gamers, and pure distilled fun for everyone.
But why? I've played Pac-Man a million times before, and I honestly wouldn't care if I ever played it again. It's fucking Pac-Man - how does adding a time limit and filling parts of the screen with dots rather than filling the entire screen suddenly make it one of the best games of 2007?
Pac-Man CE is leaps and bounds beyond "more levels for Pac-Man." Frankly, I hate the original Pac-Man and I can't get enough of CE. You have to be the kind of person that likes replaying for high score, but the longer you play the more you realize the game has this wacky simple-but-great philosophy.
The game scales along with your performance. It's no longer about surviving long enough to eat all the dots and maybe getting fruit to boost your score a bit; you have to eat all the dots to get the fruit, you have to get the fruit to spawn the opposite half of the map, and you only have 5-10 minutes to rack up as high of a score as possible so you can't really play defensively. The faster you move, the faster the game moves, and as your score gets higher the game ratchets up in speed. Every time you die the speed bumps down a little bit, so the game is always just fast enough to keep you on edge but not so fast that you can't figure out what you're doing.
And there are a handful of different strategies that you have to use to squeeze every last point out of the seconds you have. You can chain how you eat ghosts and your points per ghost increase up to 3200 per ghost, so if you corral all the ghosts together and hit them all with power pills, then spawn a new half of the map to grab another pill, you can sweep another set of four 3200-point bites. Or, instead, you can screw off the ghosts and just focus on eating dots to spawn fruit to spawn more dots to spawn more fruit.
It's really just a score attack, but it's addictive because there's always "just one more turn I could have made" or "one different way I can try to hit up the board." Instead of Geo Wars + Wario Ware, I think I should have said Ikaruga + Wario Ware, because there's such a big emphasis on playing as perfectly as possible while everything ramps up from slow to ultra fast.
Because you don't pay for the damn service, which means you can sit in the back of the room and smile until you do. I was still able to play all my XBLA games, NO PROBLEM, even with the service was sketchy. It may have taken a few minutes, but it worked. The only thing that didn't work was the parts of the service I pay for (aka I couldn't get in to Halo 3 games). I PAY for that part of the service, thus I have a right to compensation...but all the XBLA games that I've already paid for and are on my HDD were working just fine.
Silver Members should be happy they are getting the compensation, but seriously, you don't pay anything for XBL, so just smile and nod and take what amounts to a free game for you.
Wow, entitlement much? If you didn't know, a lot of people have bought a new console or had theirs repaired, and in many cases the console IDs never got swapped so any XBLA games bought under a Gamertag from the old console won't play at all unless that specific GT is logged in and connected to Live. That affects a ton of people, and there have been a number of threads saying as such.
It's in MS's best interest to keep Silver members happy, too, because they buy XBLA games, video content and all sorts of pic/theme crap just like Gold members.
I am just curious, what exactly are you Silver Members being compensated for? The service you already don't pay for? I don't want to hear any of this "Well, I bought the HDD..." crap either, because last I checked the XBL outage didn't affect your HDD. You should consider yourselves lucky that you are getting a free game for an interruption in a service you don't even pay for.
What does the HDD have to do with anything? You can have a fucking 360 elite and still be a silver member. it all depends on whether or not you want to play games online.
Silver members can still go online and buy things, XBLA titles, HD movies, TV shows. The only thing they cannot do is play online. Sure, playign online is a big part of XBL, but it is not the only part.
Why shouldn't they be compensated when they have been affected by this whole thing too.
Because you don't pay for the damn service, which means you can sit in the back of the room and smile until you do. I was still able to play all my XBLA games, NO PROBLEM, even with the service was sketchy. It may have taken a few minutes, but it worked. The only thing that didn't work was the parts of the service I pay for (aka I couldn't get in to Halo 3 games). I PAY for that part of the service, thus I have a right to compensation...but all the XBLA games that I've already paid for and are on my HDD were working just fine.
Silver Members should be happy they are getting the compensation, but seriously, you don't pay anything for XBL, so just smile and nod and take what amounts to a free game for you.
You're forgetting the many, MANY people who had to replace their 360s and can now only access their downloaded games when the console is connected to the Internet.
Oh yes, lets find another permutation that makes up 2% of the XBL usage. Keep 'em coming. Lets face it, people just want something for free. And they will bitch until they get it. Hell, they've already gotten it and they are still bitching.
I am just curious, what exactly are you Silver Members being compensated for? The service you already don't pay for? I don't want to hear any of this "Well, I bought the HDD..." crap either, because last I checked the XBL outage didn't affect your HDD. You should consider yourselves lucky that you are getting a free game for an interruption in a service you don't even pay for.
Silver members can still download stuff, like XBLA games and movies/shows.
There are people who were in the middle of downloads that got interrupted, like a movie download where the person could not finish the movie before the 24 hour time frame was up because the download never finished.
What if a dude had to be connected to access his XBLA games thanks to DRM and him being on a 2nd Xbox? He couldn't then play his XBLA or access his DLC.
Then that is a separate customer service issue that Silver Member needs to take up with MS, because they didn't receive a product they paid for....but to sit and bitch like they deserve a free game for a service they don't pay for is silly.
I really don't see anyone doing that since they are getting the game aswell anyway. This is really a non issue, people who are Silver members can use the Marketplace just as easily as Gold members can, and if the service is down than they can complain because it's a service the signed up for when they made the investment in an Xbox 360.
So you can take you ill-conceived logic and shove it.
Wow, entitlement much? If you didn't know, a lot of people have bought a new console or had theirs repaired, and in many cases the console IDs never got swapped so any XBLA games bought under a Gamertag from the old console won't play at all unless that specific GT is logged in and connected to Live. That affects a ton of people, and there have been a number of threads saying as such.
It's in MS's best interest to keep Silver members happy, too, because they buy XBLA games, video content and all sorts of pic/theme crap just like Gold members.
Yes, entitlement much because I actually pay for the service. Sorry if that ruffles your feathers, but yes, I feel that paying for the service entitles me to something it doesn't entitle you too. Sorry, that's the way the world works.
If it wasn't for Persona 3, Pac-Man: Championship Edition would have been my pick for best game of the year. Not best XBLA game of the year, not even best 360 game of the year, but best game of the year period. It's that good: wonderfully accessible for casual gamers, tons of depth for hardcore gamers, and pure distilled fun for everyone.
But why? I've played Pac-Man a million times before, and I honestly wouldn't care if I ever played it again. It's fucking Pac-Man - how does adding a time limit and filling parts of the screen with dots rather than filling the entire screen suddenly make it one of the best games of 2007?
There isn't much strategy to the regular Pac-Man. Memorize the patterns, eat the pellets, try to use the power pellets when a bunch of ghosts are in range of being eaten. There's no penalty for defensive play. The goal is to last as long as possible. It's fun, but it's shallow.
Pac-Man: Championship Edition adds all sorts of new consideration. The game is no longer about getting as far as possible before dying, but rather about getting the highest score as fast as possible and you're not going to do that without an excellent plan and awesome reflexes. Defensive play is thrown out the window; it's all about taking risks now as the time limit is more of a foe than the ghosts. Should you try to keep both sides of the screen advancing at the same rate or is it best to focus more effort on one side? When should you do massive 12+ ghost eating chains for insane amounts of points and when should you focus on just getting through the levels quickly so as to unlock the higher scoring fruit and levels with a ton of power pellets? Should you intentially die to set up a big combo or can you start the combo without the sacrifice?
Plus on top of all these strategic considerations, there are 6 different modes each with its own set of level evolutions and different feels and each requiring different strategies (with my own nicknames):
Championship Mode - 5 mins. Most balanced set of levels.
"Feast and Famine" - 10 mins. Levels alternate between tons of power pellets and stretches w/ none.
"Alone in the Dark" - 10 mins. Dots are visible. Walls immediately adjacent to Pac-Man and the ghosts are visible, everything else is pitch black.
"Speedway" - 5 mins. Everything's on max speed all the time. Long straight lines of dots.
"Small to Large" - 10 mins. Levels start out small and cramped and grow larger and more spread out.
"Miscellaneous" - 10 mins. A mix of level styles.
Add in competitive leaderboards for each game mode, good control, and a nice retro evolved feel for both visuals and audio.
Seriously, the game feels more like a more intense and more enjoyable version of Geometry Wars than it feel like the old Pac-Man. High level Pac-Man: Championship Edition play involves similar levels of intensity, concentration, planning, and skill levels as a top level fighting game tournament or playing Ikaruga or Ninja Gaiden Black on the hardest modes. And yet, despite all this, the game is still lots of fun to even the most casual players (although their goal will be to simply survive for the entire time period rather than racking up insane scores).
So yes, I don't think it's hyperbole to call it one of the very best games of 2007.
I am just curious, what exactly are you Silver Members being compensated for? The service you already don't pay for? I don't want to hear any of this "Well, I bought the HDD..." crap either, because last I checked the XBL outage didn't affect your HDD. You should consider yourselves lucky that you are getting a free game for an interruption in a service you don't even pay for.
What does the HDD have to do with anything? You can have a fucking 360 elite and still be a silver member. it all depends on whether or not you want to play games online.
Silver members can still go online and buy things, XBLA titles, HD movies, TV shows. The only thing they cannot do is play online. Sure, playign online is a big part of XBL, but it is not the only part.
Why shouldn't they be compensated when they have been affected by this whole thing too.
Because you don't pay for the damn service, which means you can sit in the back of the room and smile until you do. I was still able to play all my XBLA games, NO PROBLEM, even with the service was sketchy. It may have taken a few minutes, but it worked. The only thing that didn't work was the parts of the service I pay for (aka I couldn't get in to Halo 3 games). I PAY for that part of the service, thus I have a right to compensation...but all the XBLA games that I've already paid for and are on my HDD were working just fine.
Silver Members should be happy they are getting the compensation, but seriously, you don't pay anything for XBL, so just smile and nod and take what amounts to a free game for you.
You're forgetting the many, MANY people who had to replace their 360s and can now only access their downloaded games when the console is connected to the Internet.
Oh yes, lets find another permutation that makes up 2% of the XBL usage. Keep 'em coming. Lets face it, people just want something for free. And they will bitch until they get it. Hell, they've already gotten it and they are still bitching.
Pretty sure the console has had more than a 2% failure rate.
You're pretty much trolling now. Silver members are just as deserving of the game as you are. I'm not a silver member, and I think so. they've had the problems too. Just because you like to play halo 3 online doesn't make you better than someone who wants to buy an HD movie and not play online.
I am just curious, what exactly are you Silver Members being compensated for? The service you already don't pay for? I don't want to hear any of this "Well, I bought the HDD..." crap either, because last I checked the XBL outage didn't affect your HDD. You should consider yourselves lucky that you are getting a free game for an interruption in a service you don't even pay for.
What does the HDD have to do with anything? You can have a fucking 360 elite and still be a silver member. it all depends on whether or not you want to play games online.
Silver members can still go online and buy things, XBLA titles, HD movies, TV shows. The only thing they cannot do is play online. Sure, playign online is a big part of XBL, but it is not the only part.
Why shouldn't they be compensated when they have been affected by this whole thing too.
Because you don't pay for the damn service, which means you can sit in the back of the room and smile until you do. I was still able to play all my XBLA games, NO PROBLEM, even with the service was sketchy. It may have taken a few minutes, but it worked. The only thing that didn't work was the parts of the service I pay for (aka I couldn't get in to Halo 3 games). I PAY for that part of the service, thus I have a right to compensation...but all the XBLA games that I've already paid for and are on my HDD were working just fine.
Silver Members should be happy they are getting the compensation, but seriously, you don't pay anything for XBL, so just smile and nod and take what amounts to a free game for you.
You're forgetting the many, MANY people who had to replace their 360s and can now only access their downloaded games when the console is connected to the Internet.
Oh yes, lets find another permutation that makes up 2% of the XBL usage. Keep 'em coming. Lets face it, people just want something for free. And they will bitch until they get it. Hell, they've already gotten it and they are still bitching.
I think you underestimate the failure rate of these things. I just bought one and got stuck with the older form... loud and hot as hell itself. Its only a matter of time until i join that "2 percent".
MistaCreepy on
PS3: MistaCreepy::Steam: MistaCreepy::360: Dead and I don't feel like paying to fix it.
I am just curious, what exactly are you Silver Members being compensated for? The service you already don't pay for? I don't want to hear any of this "Well, I bought the HDD..." crap either, because last I checked the XBL outage didn't affect your HDD. You should consider yourselves lucky that you are getting a free game for an interruption in a service you don't even pay for.
What does the HDD have to do with anything? You can have a fucking 360 elite and still be a silver member. it all depends on whether or not you want to play games online.
Silver members can still go online and buy things, XBLA titles, HD movies, TV shows. The only thing they cannot do is play online. Sure, playign online is a big part of XBL, but it is not the only part.
Why shouldn't they be compensated when they have been affected by this whole thing too.
Because you don't pay for the damn service, which means you can sit in the back of the room and smile until you do. I was still able to play all my XBLA games, NO PROBLEM, even with the service was sketchy. It may have taken a few minutes, but it worked. The only thing that didn't work was the parts of the service I pay for (aka I couldn't get in to Halo 3 games). I PAY for that part of the service, thus I have a right to compensation...but all the XBLA games that I've already paid for and are on my HDD were working just fine.
Silver Members should be happy they are getting the compensation, but seriously, you don't pay anything for XBL, so just smile and nod and take what amounts to a free game for you.
You're forgetting the many, MANY people who had to replace their 360s and can now only access their downloaded games when the console is connected to the Internet.
Oh yes, lets find another permutation that makes up 2% of the XBL usage. Keep 'em coming. Lets face it, people just want something for free. And they will bitch until they get it. Hell, they've already gotten it and they are still bitching.
So, to the people who couldn't play the games they paid for, you say "fuck 'em?"
Yeah, the analogy was imperfect, but I couldn't think of a better one of the top of my head.
My main point is that I agree when you say that "It's the value of the product the consumer gets in the end that's the important thing" but that the consumer should be the one to determine value, not Microsoft. Who the fuck are they to tell me that a game I may or may not want is worth equal or greater than a service I paid for and did not get.
Presumably, and I may be wrong here, they're the people who set the prices for the membership and games respectively?
Pictuer this scenario: You buy a Super Mario Galaxy from GAME for £35. You take it home and, fpt!, Disc Read Error. Your Wii works fine, all the other games boot up, so it must be the disc. You take it back to get it replaced when the Till Biscuit says they're out of stock, but you can exchange it for something of equal value. You can't then turn around to the PS3 stuff, grab Heavenly Sword which costs £15 more, and say "I want to exchange it for this, because I feel this game isn't worth as much as the game I wanted in the first place."
While I have a Gold account so i can't say this is 100%, but IIRC Silver Account's were still;
Unable to access the "Games" blade fully (as it communicates with XBL when you log in)
Unable to access the "Live" blade fully
Unable to access the ""Marketplace" blade
Unable to access any DRM protected content downloaded from XBL (i.e. Rented movies which they will have paid for)
Unable to access Arcade Games if they swapped HDD's due to the Live DRM system needing to verify content with XBO.
While silver uses do not pay for the service, I see the free game as more of a gesture saying "sorry for the inconvenience" than a refund for unavaliable services.
I have a Gold account, which I pay for usually with my own money (otherwise for Christmas or birthday). If Microsoft see fit to give me a free game for some under-par Live service of Christmas, then I will accept it. If they see fit to give something free to Silver users too, then how the hell does that generosity affect me in any way? It's certainly not to my detriment, so who the hell would I be to bitch that someone that isn't me gets something for free?
MS saw that my xbox had broken for the second time in two months and made sure no one else could play so I wouldn't get jealous! Thanks guys, your the bestest.
Silver members are just as deserving of the game as you are. I'm not a silver member, and I think so. they've had the problems too. Just because you like to play halo 3 online doesn't make you better than someone who wants to buy an HD movie and not play online.
I would disagree, simply because you are ignoring the fact that in order to play a game online, you must pay for the service. Paying to be able to play any game online does grant that person more entitlement to the service than those that simply use the free option. Its simple logic, really.
Before anyone starts to try and argue with me, I am not saying MS shouldn't give Silver members a game, just saying that they wouldn't be as deserving as Gold members. If MS decided not to compensate (ha) Silver members, I don't think there would be any grounds for an argument on their behalf, simply because the service they get is free.
Silver members are just as deserving of the game as you are. I'm not a silver member, and I think so. they've had the problems too. Just because you like to play halo 3 online doesn't make you better than someone who wants to buy an HD movie and not play online.
I would disagree, simply because you are ignoring the fact that in order to play a game online, you must pay for the service. Paying to be able to play any game online does grant that person more entitlement to the service than those that simply use the free option. Its simple logic, really.
Before anyone starts to try and argue with me, I am not saying MS shouldn't give Silver members a game, just saying that they wouldn't be as deserving as Gold members. If MS decided not to compensate Silver members, I don't think there would be any grounds for an argument on their behalf, simply because the service they get is free.
just because they choose not to play online does not mean they get any less out of the service than someone who does pay for gold. And does not make the other person better. They choose to pay for part of the service that the silver members do not want.
Bollocks to that, they should be refunding everyone's subscription fee for that period.
Or at least a month free.
I'm seeing this argument a lot but surely if it's a 400 or 800 point XBLA title it'd actually cost more than the subscription for a month? And Silver Members will be getting this too - you can hardly give them a month that they weren't losing.
just because they choose not to play online does not mean they get any less out of the service than someone who does pay for gold. And does not make the other person better. They choose to pay for part of the service that the silver members do not want.
Please re-read my post. Its not that one person is better than another. Its that one person is paying for a service that they are not getting, where as another is not paying for a service that they are not getting.
Now, let us use logic to determine who should be compensated for the lack of service, the person that is paying for the service, or the person who is getting something for free...
Yeah, the analogy was imperfect, but I couldn't think of a better one of the top of my head.
My main point is that I agree when you say that "It's the value of the product the consumer gets in the end that's the important thing" but that the consumer should be the one to determine value, not Microsoft. Who the fuck are they to tell me that a game I may or may not want is worth equal or greater than a service I paid for and did not get.
I'm sure that they were given the right to do that inthe contract that you agreed to upon signing up for the Live service.
To be all conspiracy theoryish (which is quite unlike me)
I take this as more of a marketing move then anything else, they just had a new influx of new members, many of which would probably ignore XBLA. By giving a free game they introduce people, both gold and silver members, to a different part of their service. I imagine they will give a pretty good game away in order to attract more people to the XBLA.
Jigrah on
0
The_SpaniardIt's never lupinesIrvine, CaliforniaRegistered Userregular
so griphshift is actually good? hmm, i was planning on buying it, but then it came out to so many meh reviews i decided against it
Gripshift is a very good title, lots of people just never knew what to expect going in. Though I must say that REMOVING content such as the mini-games, which I loved, and the ,what should be MANDATORY to keep when porting the game, map editor and then calling it the definitive version because you added one other mode is fucking unacceptable.
Silver members are just as deserving of the game as you are. I'm not a silver member, and I think so. they've had the problems too. Just because you like to play halo 3 online doesn't make you better than someone who wants to buy an HD movie and not play online.
I would disagree, simply because you are ignoring the fact that in order to play a game online, you must pay for the service. Paying to be able to play any game online does grant that person more entitlement to the service than those that simply use the free option. Its simple logic, really.
Before anyone starts to try and argue with me, I am not saying MS shouldn't give Silver members a game, just saying that they wouldn't be as deserving as Gold members. If MS decided not to compensate Silver members, I don't think there would be any grounds for an argument on their behalf, simply because the service they get is free.
just because they choose not to play online does not mean they get any less out of the service than someone who does pay for gold. And does not make the other person better. They choose to pay for part of the service that the silver members do not want.
what it means is that they do not have as much INVESTED in it as the gold members.
EVERY gold member was without the capability of using a service that they PAY for specifically.
ONLY SOME Silver members were without the capability to play XBLA games that required online authentification.
How can you justify that all silver members deserve thesame compensation as all gold members?
To be all conspiracy theoryish (which is quite unlike me)
I take this as more of a marketing move then anything else, they just had a new influx of new members, many of which would probably ignore XBLA. By giving a free game they introduce people, both gold and silver members, to a different part of their service. I imagine they will give a pretty good game away in order to attract more people to the XBLA.
My guess is that they look through the tiles that have sold the most to minimize lost revenue, pick one from those, and make it available for a short period of time, just like the 5-year anniversary. If you haven't bought it, and happen to grab it in the 48-hour period, you get it for free. Otherwise, tough.
I don't get it. Microsoft is offering a "ya, we know you're all pissed that the service was down for a while, here's something free for you" and people are actually pissed that EVERYONE is getting it, instead of only SOME people?
They are doing some really good customer service here, and people are pissed off about it.....I just don't get it.
EDIT: Also, they didn't have to offer anyone fuck all if they wanted. They could have told everyone to fuck off, and mention that their service ran for FIVE FUCKING YEARS without a problem. I think that for 2 weeks of downtime in 5 years, to give everyone a free game is pretty amazing on their part.
I don't get it. Microsoft is offering a "ya, we know you're all pissed that the service was down for a while, here's something free for you" and people are actually pissed that EVERYONE is getting it, instead of only SOME people?
They are doing some really good customer service here, and people are pissed off about it.....I just don't get it.
The point is the Gold subscribers had to pay for a service that conked out on them whilst the silver folk couldn't really complain since it was free for them. The Gold subscribers in this instance should be the ones compensated, as opposed to all members of Live. What the heck are we paying for?!
I don't get it. Microsoft is offering a "ya, we know you're all pissed that the service was down for a while, here's something free for you" and people are actually pissed that EVERYONE is getting it, instead of only SOME people?
They are doing some really good customer service here, and people are pissed off about it.....I just don't get it.
EDIT: Also, they didn't have to offer anyone fuck all if they wanted. They could have told everyone to fuck off, and mention that their service ran for FIVE FUCKING YEARS without a problem. I think that for 2 weeks of downtime in 5 years, to give everyone a free game is pretty amazing on their part.
The reason I am annoyed is because it sends a message to me, as a gold member, that the money I spend on their service is not worth anything.
I have ZERO problem with everyone getting something, but I do believe that gold members should get MORE. Whether that is a free wee/month of Gold, or a second game, or 200 marketplace points, or whatever.
The fact is, everyone was without the service for a period of time, but some people were without a service that they PAY for, and deserve a higher compensation because of that, otherwise what exactly are they paying for?
I don't get it. Microsoft is offering a "ya, we know you're all pissed that the service was down for a while, here's something free for you" and people are actually pissed that EVERYONE is getting it, instead of only SOME people?
They are doing some really good customer service here, and people are pissed off about it.....I just don't get it.
The point is the Gold subscribers had to pay for a service that conked out on them whilst the silver folk couldn't really complain since it was free for them. The Gold subscribers in this instance should be the ones compensated, as opposed to all members of Live. What the heck are we paying for?!
You sir are a bitter, hate filled man. And i'm not just saying that because I only have silver,which i didn't want to make any use of during the outage anyway and want a free game. ;-)
I don't get it. Microsoft is offering a "ya, we know you're all pissed that the service was down for a while, here's something free for you" and people are actually pissed that EVERYONE is getting it, instead of only SOME people?
They are doing some really good customer service here, and people are pissed off about it.....I just don't get it.
The point is the Gold subscribers had to pay for a service that conked out on them whilst the silver folk couldn't really complain since it was free for them. The Gold subscribers in this instance should be the ones compensated, as opposed to all members of Live. What the heck are we paying for?!
That's one of the problems with Xbox live.
I choose to pay for gold as well, but I also don't think that people with sliver access, who get 95% of the functionality of live, should be cut out.
People are complaining about getting something for free ,I guess that really does show the state of things.
I don't get it. Microsoft is offering a "ya, we know you're all pissed that the service was down for a while, here's something free for you" and people are actually pissed that EVERYONE is getting it, instead of only SOME people?
They are doing some really good customer service here, and people are pissed off about it.....I just don't get it.
The point is the Gold subscribers had to pay for a service that conked out on them whilst the silver folk couldn't really complain since it was free for them. The Gold subscribers in this instance should be the ones compensated, as opposed to all members of Live. What the heck are we paying for?!
That's one of the problems with Xbox live.
I choose to pay for gold as well, but I also don't think that people with sliver access, who get 95% of the functionality of live, should be cut out.
People are complaining about getting something for free ,I guess that really does show the state of things.
It's not a matter of them being "cut out".
It's a matter of value for what I pay for. According to MSoft's current move, the two weeks that the service was messed up resulted in ZERO loss of value to Gold subscribitions, specifically.
Wow, entitlement much? If you didn't know, a lot of people have bought a new console or had theirs repaired, and in many cases the console IDs never got swapped so any XBLA games bought under a Gamertag from the old console won't play at all unless that specific GT is logged in and connected to Live. That affects a ton of people, and there have been a number of threads saying as such.
It's in MS's best interest to keep Silver members happy, too, because they buy XBLA games, video content and all sorts of pic/theme crap just like Gold members.
Yes, entitlement much because I actually pay for the service. Sorry if that ruffles your feathers, but yes, I feel that paying for the service entitles me to something it doesn't entitle you too. Sorry, that's the way the world works.
In case you didn't see the giant strip of gold in my sig, I'm a Gold member too.
Secondly, all Silver members in the aforementioned situation are just as entitled to compensation as you are. You didn't pay any more for your XBLA games, did you? If this were an instance of only online multiplayer being affected -- something that only Gold members can actually use -- then I could understand the logic of compensating only Gold and not Silver members. As it stands, there are a great deal of things that both Gold and Silver members can do with the Live service, and since the online service interruption affected them all, helping out all of Live's members (the majority of which are still Silver, last I'd heard) makes perfect sense.
In case you're the type who needs a TL;DR: Live does not equal Live Gold.
Your analogy is TERRIBLE, just stop. XBL never completely stopped working, your XBox didn't completely stop working. There were intermittent issues with the service. If XBL not working somehow stopped me from using my XBox at all, your analogy might be valid, maybe, and even then it's a stretch.
Even though it didn't stop completely, the point is that if it is a service which I am paying for 24/7, I expect to get it 24/7.
My ISP experianced a problem where for 1 week I couldn't connect to the internet. To make up for it, they offered me 2 months free.
It is perfectly reasonable to think that someone might have been unable to connect to Live any/every time they tried durring this period, hell, from what I hear some people are still having problems.
Any free game should be in addition to a refund. It's great that Microsoft want to give something free to it's customers for whatever reason, but aswell as this they should be satisfying basic consumer rights too.
Seriously, people need to just stop with these stupid restaurant and car analogies, this is nothing like any of that. I swear, most of you people just like to bitch, that's all there is to. Especially you LewieP, you just admitted you don't have an XBL subscription, so wtf? You just want to make up stupid fucking steak analogies?
I don't have a subscription, but I want to buy a 360 at some point soon, and this issue impacts my purchasing decision.
People 'bitching' is what causes businesses to be accountable for their actions.
The fact that MS is giving anyone anything at all is a nice gesture, and rather than taking it at face value, everyone has to do the typical pessimism bullshit. It's getting tired, especially from people it doesn't affect in the first place.
I am 100% certain that Microsoft (and any other large software/entertainment corporation) has a deptartment who's job it is to resolve issues like this whilst keeping costs as low as possible. If people accept what is offered without questioning it, their job gets a lot easier.
Yeah, the analogy was imperfect, but I couldn't think of a better one of the top of my head.
My main point is that I agree when you say that "It's the value of the product the consumer gets in the end that's the important thing" but that the consumer should be the one to determine value, not Microsoft. Who the fuck are they to tell me that a game I may or may not want is worth equal or greater than a service I paid for and did not get.
Presumably, and I may be wrong here, they're the people who set the prices for the membership and games respectively?
Pictuer this scenario: You buy a Super Mario Galaxy from GAME for £35. You take it home and, fpt!, Disc Read Error. Your Wii works fine, all the other games boot up, so it must be the disc. You take it back to get it replaced when the Till Biscuit says they're out of stock, but you can exchange it for something of equal value. You can't then turn around to the PS3 stuff, grab Heavenly Sword which costs £15 more, and say "I want to exchange it for this, because I feel this game isn't worth as much as the game I wanted in the first place."
In this scenario I would either get a full refund from GAME, and take my business elsewhere, or ask (reasonably) for them to track down another copy of SMG either at another store or online, and if they could do so in a timeframe I deemed acceptable, then I would accept that (which would be my choice)
This scenario is also imperfect (admittidly less so than my restaurant one was...) since it doesn't account for the fact that Xbox live is a subscription based service.
I am pretty much done with discussing this topic now though, I have said my initial thoughts on the topic, and now my ability to contribute inteligently to the subject is limited by my little experiance with Xbox Live as a service (and my interest in this topic is solely as a potential 360/Live customer). But if anyone wants to make a specific counter point to something I have said, feel free.
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Pac-Man CE is leaps and bounds beyond "more levels for Pac-Man." Frankly, I hate the original Pac-Man and I can't get enough of CE. You have to be the kind of person that likes replaying for high score, but the longer you play the more you realize the game has this wacky simple-but-great philosophy.
The game scales along with your performance. It's no longer about surviving long enough to eat all the dots and maybe getting fruit to boost your score a bit; you have to eat all the dots to get the fruit, you have to get the fruit to spawn the opposite half of the map, and you only have 5-10 minutes to rack up as high of a score as possible so you can't really play defensively. The faster you move, the faster the game moves, and as your score gets higher the game ratchets up in speed. Every time you die the speed bumps down a little bit, so the game is always just fast enough to keep you on edge but not so fast that you can't figure out what you're doing.
And there are a handful of different strategies that you have to use to squeeze every last point out of the seconds you have. You can chain how you eat ghosts and your points per ghost increase up to 3200 per ghost, so if you corral all the ghosts together and hit them all with power pills, then spawn a new half of the map to grab another pill, you can sweep another set of four 3200-point bites. Or, instead, you can screw off the ghosts and just focus on eating dots to spawn fruit to spawn more dots to spawn more fruit.
It's really just a score attack, but it's addictive because there's always "just one more turn I could have made" or "one different way I can try to hit up the board." Instead of Geo Wars + Wario Ware, I think I should have said Ikaruga + Wario Ware, because there's such a big emphasis on playing as perfectly as possible while everything ramps up from slow to ultra fast.
Wow, entitlement much? If you didn't know, a lot of people have bought a new console or had theirs repaired, and in many cases the console IDs never got swapped so any XBLA games bought under a Gamertag from the old console won't play at all unless that specific GT is logged in and connected to Live. That affects a ton of people, and there have been a number of threads saying as such.
It's in MS's best interest to keep Silver members happy, too, because they buy XBLA games, video content and all sorts of pic/theme crap just like Gold members.
ya, horrible post on my part, clicked submit, instead of preview when I wanted to look at it. it's been edited.
Oh yes, lets find another permutation that makes up 2% of the XBL usage. Keep 'em coming. Lets face it, people just want something for free. And they will bitch until they get it. Hell, they've already gotten it and they are still bitching.
Same here.
I really don't see anyone doing that since they are getting the game aswell anyway. This is really a non issue, people who are Silver members can use the Marketplace just as easily as Gold members can, and if the service is down than they can complain because it's a service the signed up for when they made the investment in an Xbox 360.
So you can take you ill-conceived logic and shove it.
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Yes, entitlement much because I actually pay for the service. Sorry if that ruffles your feathers, but yes, I feel that paying for the service entitles me to something it doesn't entitle you too. Sorry, that's the way the world works.
There isn't much strategy to the regular Pac-Man. Memorize the patterns, eat the pellets, try to use the power pellets when a bunch of ghosts are in range of being eaten. There's no penalty for defensive play. The goal is to last as long as possible. It's fun, but it's shallow.
Pac-Man: Championship Edition adds all sorts of new consideration. The game is no longer about getting as far as possible before dying, but rather about getting the highest score as fast as possible and you're not going to do that without an excellent plan and awesome reflexes. Defensive play is thrown out the window; it's all about taking risks now as the time limit is more of a foe than the ghosts. Should you try to keep both sides of the screen advancing at the same rate or is it best to focus more effort on one side? When should you do massive 12+ ghost eating chains for insane amounts of points and when should you focus on just getting through the levels quickly so as to unlock the higher scoring fruit and levels with a ton of power pellets? Should you intentially die to set up a big combo or can you start the combo without the sacrifice?
Plus on top of all these strategic considerations, there are 6 different modes each with its own set of level evolutions and different feels and each requiring different strategies (with my own nicknames):
Championship Mode - 5 mins. Most balanced set of levels.
"Feast and Famine" - 10 mins. Levels alternate between tons of power pellets and stretches w/ none.
"Alone in the Dark" - 10 mins. Dots are visible. Walls immediately adjacent to Pac-Man and the ghosts are visible, everything else is pitch black.
"Speedway" - 5 mins. Everything's on max speed all the time. Long straight lines of dots.
"Small to Large" - 10 mins. Levels start out small and cramped and grow larger and more spread out.
"Miscellaneous" - 10 mins. A mix of level styles.
Add in competitive leaderboards for each game mode, good control, and a nice retro evolved feel for both visuals and audio.
Seriously, the game feels more like a more intense and more enjoyable version of Geometry Wars than it feel like the old Pac-Man. High level Pac-Man: Championship Edition play involves similar levels of intensity, concentration, planning, and skill levels as a top level fighting game tournament or playing Ikaruga or Ninja Gaiden Black on the hardest modes. And yet, despite all this, the game is still lots of fun to even the most casual players (although their goal will be to simply survive for the entire time period rather than racking up insane scores).
So yes, I don't think it's hyperbole to call it one of the very best games of 2007.
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Pretty sure the console has had more than a 2% failure rate.
You're pretty much trolling now. Silver members are just as deserving of the game as you are. I'm not a silver member, and I think so. they've had the problems too. Just because you like to play halo 3 online doesn't make you better than someone who wants to buy an HD movie and not play online.
So, to the people who couldn't play the games they paid for, you say "fuck 'em?"
Presumably, and I may be wrong here, they're the people who set the prices for the membership and games respectively?
Pictuer this scenario: You buy a Super Mario Galaxy from GAME for £35. You take it home and, fpt!, Disc Read Error. Your Wii works fine, all the other games boot up, so it must be the disc. You take it back to get it replaced when the Till Biscuit says they're out of stock, but you can exchange it for something of equal value. You can't then turn around to the PS3 stuff, grab Heavenly Sword which costs £15 more, and say "I want to exchange it for this, because I feel this game isn't worth as much as the game I wanted in the first place."
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While I have a Gold account so i can't say this is 100%, but IIRC Silver Account's were still;
Unable to access the "Games" blade fully (as it communicates with XBL when you log in)
Unable to access the "Live" blade fully
Unable to access the ""Marketplace" blade
Unable to access any DRM protected content downloaded from XBL (i.e. Rented movies which they will have paid for)
Unable to access Arcade Games if they swapped HDD's due to the Live DRM system needing to verify content with XBO.
While silver uses do not pay for the service, I see the free game as more of a gesture saying "sorry for the inconvenience" than a refund for unavaliable services.
I would disagree, simply because you are ignoring the fact that in order to play a game online, you must pay for the service. Paying to be able to play any game online does grant that person more entitlement to the service than those that simply use the free option. Its simple logic, really.
Before anyone starts to try and argue with me, I am not saying MS shouldn't give Silver members a game, just saying that they wouldn't be as deserving as Gold members. If MS decided not to compensate (ha) Silver members, I don't think there would be any grounds for an argument on their behalf, simply because the service they get is free.
NintendoID: Nailbunny 3DS: 3909-8796-4685
just because they choose not to play online does not mean they get any less out of the service than someone who does pay for gold. And does not make the other person better. They choose to pay for part of the service that the silver members do not want.
I'm seeing this argument a lot but surely if it's a 400 or 800 point XBLA title it'd actually cost more than the subscription for a month? And Silver Members will be getting this too - you can hardly give them a month that they weren't losing.
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Just buy it. It's out now and it's really great.
Please re-read my post. Its not that one person is better than another. Its that one person is paying for a service that they are not getting, where as another is not paying for a service that they are not getting.
Now, let us use logic to determine who should be compensated for the lack of service, the person that is paying for the service, or the person who is getting something for free...
NintendoID: Nailbunny 3DS: 3909-8796-4685
Well, that period wasless than a month.
And a full month costs 5-8 dollars
The average XBLA game is priced at 5-10 dollars
Looks to me like it all adds up.
Also,it mayhave alreadybeen said, but is this only for Gold members (who, you know, actually pay) or is it for silver members too?
I'm sure that they were given the right to do that inthe contract that you agreed to upon signing up for the Live service.
It sounds like it's for everyone at least from what the inital couple posts made it sound, but I really don't know
I take this as more of a marketing move then anything else, they just had a new influx of new members, many of which would probably ignore XBLA. By giving a free game they introduce people, both gold and silver members, to a different part of their service. I imagine they will give a pretty good game away in order to attract more people to the XBLA.
what it means is that they do not have as much INVESTED in it as the gold members.
EVERY gold member was without the capability of using a service that they PAY for specifically.
ONLY SOME Silver members were without the capability to play XBLA games that required online authentification.
How can you justify that all silver members deserve thesame compensation as all gold members?
My guess is that they look through the tiles that have sold the most to minimize lost revenue, pick one from those, and make it available for a short period of time, just like the 5-year anniversary. If you haven't bought it, and happen to grab it in the 48-hour period, you get it for free. Otherwise, tough.
NintendoID: Nailbunny 3DS: 3909-8796-4685
They are doing some really good customer service here, and people are pissed off about it.....I just don't get it.
EDIT: Also, they didn't have to offer anyone fuck all if they wanted. They could have told everyone to fuck off, and mention that their service ran for FIVE FUCKING YEARS without a problem. I think that for 2 weeks of downtime in 5 years, to give everyone a free game is pretty amazing on their part.
Which is why I believe the game that they're gonna give will be a game that was gonna be free anyway.
The point is the Gold subscribers had to pay for a service that conked out on them whilst the silver folk couldn't really complain since it was free for them. The Gold subscribers in this instance should be the ones compensated, as opposed to all members of Live. What the heck are we paying for?!
The reason I am annoyed is because it sends a message to me, as a gold member, that the money I spend on their service is not worth anything.
I have ZERO problem with everyone getting something, but I do believe that gold members should get MORE. Whether that is a free wee/month of Gold, or a second game, or 200 marketplace points, or whatever.
The fact is, everyone was without the service for a period of time, but some people were without a service that they PAY for, and deserve a higher compensation because of that, otherwise what exactly are they paying for?
That's one of the problems with Xbox live.
I choose to pay for gold as well, but I also don't think that people with sliver access, who get 95% of the functionality of live, should be cut out.
People are complaining about getting something for free ,I guess that really does show the state of things.
It's not a matter of them being "cut out".
It's a matter of value for what I pay for. According to MSoft's current move, the two weeks that the service was messed up resulted in ZERO loss of value to Gold subscribitions, specifically.
In case you didn't see the giant strip of gold in my sig, I'm a Gold member too.
Secondly, all Silver members in the aforementioned situation are just as entitled to compensation as you are. You didn't pay any more for your XBLA games, did you? If this were an instance of only online multiplayer being affected -- something that only Gold members can actually use -- then I could understand the logic of compensating only Gold and not Silver members. As it stands, there are a great deal of things that both Gold and Silver members can do with the Live service, and since the online service interruption affected them all, helping out all of Live's members (the majority of which are still Silver, last I'd heard) makes perfect sense.
In case you're the type who needs a TL;DR: Live does not equal Live Gold.
Even though it didn't stop completely, the point is that if it is a service which I am paying for 24/7, I expect to get it 24/7.
My ISP experianced a problem where for 1 week I couldn't connect to the internet. To make up for it, they offered me 2 months free.
It is perfectly reasonable to think that someone might have been unable to connect to Live any/every time they tried durring this period, hell, from what I hear some people are still having problems.
Any free game should be in addition to a refund. It's great that Microsoft want to give something free to it's customers for whatever reason, but aswell as this they should be satisfying basic consumer rights too.
I don't have a subscription, but I want to buy a 360 at some point soon, and this issue impacts my purchasing decision.
People 'bitching' is what causes businesses to be accountable for their actions.
I am 100% certain that Microsoft (and any other large software/entertainment corporation) has a deptartment who's job it is to resolve issues like this whilst keeping costs as low as possible. If people accept what is offered without questioning it, their job gets a lot easier.
In this scenario I would either get a full refund from GAME, and take my business elsewhere, or ask (reasonably) for them to track down another copy of SMG either at another store or online, and if they could do so in a timeframe I deemed acceptable, then I would accept that (which would be my choice)
This scenario is also imperfect (admittidly less so than my restaurant one was...) since it doesn't account for the fact that Xbox live is a subscription based service.
I am pretty much done with discussing this topic now though, I have said my initial thoughts on the topic, and now my ability to contribute inteligently to the subject is limited by my little experiance with Xbox Live as a service (and my interest in this topic is solely as a potential 360/Live customer). But if anyone wants to make a specific counter point to something I have said, feel free.
TLDR - I'm not just some moaning bitch, honest.