Well, correlation isn't necessarily causation, but PS3 monthly sales have generally trended upward worldwide after BC was phased out. Though I will agree that BC may become much more important next gen, especially if versions of Live and PSN continue to be used on the successors.
I think the correlation is with price drops over time rather than removing of a feature that altogether doesn't affect much.
Though it'd be hilarious to see them release some kind of bullet point presentation touting that removing BC was a great thing.
On September 10, Turbine swapped out the $15-a-month price model for its massively multiplayer online role-playing game Lord of the Rings Online in favor of a free-to-play model supported by in-game microtransactions. Now, the developer has revealed that the decision to do so has been a lucrative one.
During a recent Ten Ton Hammer Live podcast, Turbine's Adam Mersky and Kate Paiz revealed that Lord of the Rings Online is performing more successfully under the new business model. According to the developer, the J.R.R. Tolkien-inspired MMORPG has tripled its revenue since venturing to the free-to-play sector.
Hm. What kind of microtransactions are in that game?
Some character classes, a bunch of in-game content (though you can still level up without spending anything if you want), a whole pile of stuff that I'd label as cosmetic (e.g. pimpin' hat) or convenience items (e.g. a timed-use mount that you can use from level 1, consumables that boost XP gain, etc.). There are a few core things that are part of the microtransaction system (e.g. the regular horse-riding ability that allows you to use permanent mounts), but you get some store currency just for completing in-game quests and objectives, and it's generally enough to acquire those "core" elements for zero monies if that's how you choose to play.
Well, correlation isn't necessarily causation, but PS3 monthly sales have generally trended upward worldwide after BC was phased out. Though I will agree that BC may become much more important next gen, especially if versions of Live and PSN continue to be used on the successors.
I think the correlation is with price drops over time rather than removing of a feature that altogether doesn't affect much.
Though it'd be hilarious to see them release some kind of bullet point presentation touting that removing BC was a great thing.
Oh of course, the sales increases were mostly due to the price dropping to the realm of sanity. My point being that removing BC didn't put the brakes on that much at all.
Hm, that microtransaction system for Lord of the Rings doesn't sound half-bad, really. Nothing as annoying as trying to play Farmville for free, at any rate.
Well, it worked for Dungeons and Dragons Online, and the person in charge of the transition was the same as it was for D&D. STO will probably follow suit.
Oh, it's certainly annoying to the enthusiasts, and personally I wish it was region-free. But honestly, if taking away BC on the PS3 didn't affect sales, this certainly won't.
Oh, this won't dent sales at all. Won't even register as a blip on Nintendo's internal radar. But I can understand those who are rethinking their purchase. I'll be rocking SSF43D in the meantime.
The biggest effect may simply be enthusiasts opting to buy US systems rather than European ones initially. For starters, there's a massive price discrepancy between US DS prices and UK ones: a popular DS game costs exactly the same as a popular Wii game (£25-30), and so importing almost always saves you money. And games like Picross 3D are never released at a discounted $20 - always the full £30.
I didn't think region-locking would be a huge problem, but then I look back over my most-played DS games and realised that if the DS was region-locked:
1) I never would have had the chance to play Ouendan, and EBA would never have been made.
2) The Phoenix Wright series would've had a much tougher time finding a foothold in the west, and I would have had to play each game a year late and out of order (they insanely released 3 after 4).
3) I would have never had the chance to play 999, one my most interesting games of last year.
And looking at the region-locked Wii, you have:
1) No Fatal Frame 4
2) No Excitebots
3) No Trauma Team
4) Heavily censored No More Heroes
and 5) absolutely fucking awful delays on a huge number of titles.
And whilst it's certainly true that the loss of the 'enthusiast' segment won't make a dent, it does serve to further polarise Nintendo platforms. The more niche and interesting games simply won't get released in Europe because the market for them there will be strangled in the womb - no importers means no buzz to create a non-hostile environment.
The weirdest part? If importing was such a big problem that region-locking is actually making Nintendo some money, it actually suggest that this 'niche' segment is rather larger than people are making out. But the larger the segment of importers that are losing you money by not paying jacked-up regional prices, the larger the segment that you're destroying the goodwill of, and the less likely they are to buy it at full price. It has to be one or the other, and I'm not sure which - importing is a bigger global business than people are implying, or region-locking serves no useful purpose even for Nintendo.
Oh, it's certainly annoying to the enthusiasts, and personally I wish it was region-free. But honestly, if taking away BC on the PS3 didn't affect sales, this certainly won't.
Oh, this won't dent sales at all. Won't even register as a blip on Nintendo's internal radar. But I can understand those who are rethinking their purchase. I'll be rocking SSF43D in the meantime.
The biggest effect may simply be enthusiasts opting to buy US systems rather than European ones initially. For starters, there's a massive price discrepancy between US DS prices and UK ones: a popular DS game costs exactly the same as a popular Wii game (£25-30), and so importing almost always saves you money. And games like Picross 3D are never released at a discounted $20 - always the full £30.
Very true and it used to be even better when the $ was so weak against the £ for much of the 00s. I managed to import my Wii a few weeks after launch for less than the price of a UK one even including the postage. In the last few years the £ has really tanked sadly but it still sometimes works out cheaper to import.
With the news that infamous iPhone hacker George Hotz has enabled homebrew via a custom firmware patch, speculation is now moving on to what Sony will do to stop unauthorised code running on the PlayStation Network. What exactly can the platform holder monitor from your machine and what steps can Sony take in banning you from the PlayStation Network?
First of all there's an important distinction in the unofficial hacker's "code of conduct" to be aware of: these guys believe that once you buy a machine, you own it and you have the right to run your own programs on it, even if the inevitable consequence of this (by their own admission) is that piracy becomes possible on what was previously a "backup"-proof system. However, hackers are equally adamant that the PlayStation Network, or Xbox Live for that matter, is a service that users subscribe to and for which they have no ownership rights at all. In short, if you do decide to run your own code on a system connected to such a service, you're on your own and should be prepared for the consequences.
Thus far, educated estimates put the amount of Xbox Live bans at well over one million consoles, accounting mostly for users who modified their DVD drive firmwares to run games burned onto DVD. However, Sony has been remarkably restrained in its response to the Jailbreak even though PSN has been vulnerable for some weeks over the last few months. Does the company have the tools to track Jailbroken consoles and if so, why haven't we seen the banhammer fall already?
First up, what does Sony know about what's going on with your console? It is true that when the PS3 boots up - whether you have a PSN account or now - the machine itself communicates with a string of Sony servers, as recently posted on NeoGAF, and a log of applications run on the system is almost certainly transmitted. Similarly, the game you're running at any given point also shows up on your PSN profile, and the chances are that if you run a game from within a "backup manager", then the manager - not the game - will be displayed attached to your PSN account.
According to the terms and conditions of the PlayStation Network, this effectively makes you fair game for a PSN ban of which many variations exist - a timed suspension or even a lifelong ban. The amount of access Sony has to your machine is greater than you probably suspect: the company even has the means to irrevocably disable your console should it so wish, and if that happens, it will remain non-functional whether you're online or offline.
However, despite the options Sony has available, to date there have been no ban waves that we've been aware of, despite Jailbroken consoles being easily detectable. Sony's approach has been very responsible - issuing security updates via new firmwares that automatically lock Jailbreakers out of the PlayStation Network as opposed to issuing outright bans. Sony effectively offers PS3 jailbreakers the opportunity to "go legit" in order to preserve their PSN access.
It was the right solution for its time: a system update is inconvenient for the end-user but for Sony it would be far more of an issue in dealing with the unwelcome publicity of a ban wave. Just the logistics of the customer relations element also makes this the most reasonable approach: why deal with thousands of emails, requests for info from the press and - yes - potentially banning a small amount of innocent users when a new firmware prevents any of this from happening?
Microsoft went the nuclear option with its various ban waves of course, but there is a difference between modifying DVD firmware and running a PS3 jailbreak: opening up your 360, re-flashing the drive and reassembling the machine demonstrates a singular purpose in running burned games. With the USB jailbreaks, all machines were vulnerable and any one could run the dongle on any machine whether they owned it or not. Sony may well have a list of "suspect" consoles, but arbitrarily suspending PSN access without a proof of sustained usage would be an over-reaction. As a knock-on effect, it would obviously stop these people spending money in the PlayStation Store. Updating new firmware and locking out the compromised systems while offering offenders the chance to "go legit" has clearly been the platform holder's MO thus far.
In the short term, expect to see Sony do exactly the same thing. Firmwares 3.42 and 3.5 worked in locking out Jailbroken consoles with the minimum of fuss. Hacks to get compromised consoles onto PSN were neutralised relatively quickly and you can expect the current access Jailbreakers have to PSN with Geohot's hacked software to be revoked imminently with a new system update.
In future firmwares, expect internal checks to be carried out during run-time and on boot to ensure the integrity of GameOS - these are trivial for Sony to code, invisible to the legitimate end-user and much more difficult to reverse-engineer. However, the long term challenge facing the platform holder is a lot stiffer now - the collapse of the security set-up means that any kind of code can be installed on any PS3.
Where Sony is going to face real difficulties is in preventing determined PSN cheaters from adjusting and patching their games. The latest hack isn't just about patching GameOS any more: jailbreakers can change map data, roll back patches and even adjust the game code and re-encrypt it to look like an official update. Determined cheaters could probably use DNS hacks to install suspect code on their console even without the requirement of a custom firmware in the first place. Over and above this, leaving GameOS to the mercies of the hackers could see them reverse-engineer the ways in which PSN games are purchased and activated on the console, opening up another wave of piracy Sony would rather not have to deal with.
The chances are that threats like this are just too big to ignore, and it's surely just a matter of time before Sony's current "soft touch" approach to dealing with Jailbroken PS3s on PSN becomes a thing of the past. If the situation escalates, expect that ban hammer to hit without warning: at the end of the day, running unapproved homebrew code of any description while connected to the PlayStation Network is just a really bad idea...
It's interesting, though there seems to be a number of assumptions throughout it. My guess is Sony's taking the Microsoft approach in staying silent while they gather a list of hacked systems and then they'll ultimately ban them all at once.
Honestly i think it would be hilarious if Sony had the ability to brick a jailbreaker's machine and then went through with it.
Legitimate or not, the lawsuits would be incredible. Has any tech manufacturer ever knowingly bricked a consumer's device for violating terms? I'm not just talking video games, I mean Nokia phones and such.
That could be really far-reaching. Imagine web-enabled cars refusing to start up because the owner hacked the dash to play .avis.
Honestly i think it would be hilarious if Sony had the ability to brick a jailbreaker's machine and then went through with it.
Legitimate or not, the lawsuits would be incredible. Has any tech manufacturer ever knowingly bricked a consumer's device for violating terms? I'm not just talking video games, I mean Nokia phones and such.
That could be really far-reaching. Imagine web-enabled cars refusing to start up because the owner hacked the dash to play .avis.
Wasn't there a big thing recently where the law decried that it was perfectly legal to jailbreak an iphone and Apple can't do diddly squat to you for doing so? I'd say that's a pretty big precedent right there.
The Wolfman on
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
Honestly i think it would be hilarious if Sony had the ability to brick a jailbreaker's machine and then went through with it.
Legitimate or not, the lawsuits would be incredible. Has any tech manufacturer ever knowingly bricked a consumer's device for violating terms? I'm not just talking video games, I mean Nokia phones and such.
That could be really far-reaching. Imagine web-enabled cars refusing to start up because the owner hacked the dash to play .avis.
Honestly, I can't entirely rule out Sony actually doing that.
Meanwhile, Japan is still weird.
Sega has announced that it’s testing consoles called “Toylets” in urinals around Tokyo. The novel hardware asks the user to strategically vary the strength and location of his urine stream to play a series of games.
For now, Sega has installed Toylets in four Tokyo metro locations, including Akihabara, Soga and Ikebukuro. The location test will run through Jan. 31.
Each urinal is installed with a pressure sensor. An LCD screen is mounted on the wall above, letting the gamer select from and play four different minigames. There’s “Mannekin Pis,” which simply measures how hard you can pee, and “Graffiti Eraser,” which lets you remove paint by pointing a hose in different directions.
There’s the faintly misogynistic “The Northern Wind, The Sun and Me,” where you play as the wind trying to blow a girl’s skirt up, and the harder you pee, the harder the wind blows.
Finally, the bizarre “Battle! Milk From Nose” is a multiplayer game where you compete against the person who last used the urinal. The strength of your urine streams are compared, and translated into milk spraying out of your nose. If your stream is stronger, your milk-stream knocks your opponent out of the ring. If you do particularly well on any of the games, you can download and save your information to a USB stick.
Of course, it’s not just about games. Between sessions, the Toylet will display ads, hoping that you’ll pay more attention to them than to a traditional ad, because the console also serves up the games. With the USB stick functionality, it’s entirely possible that personalized adverts are in the works, too.
The idea may have come from a concept served up by Yanko Design back in 2006, where a designer named Marcel Neundorfer positioned pressure plates on urinals. While other one-offs have followed, Toylets seems to be the first time that the concept has been considered as part of a larger, commercial roll-out.
There’s the faintly misogynistic “The Northern Wind, The Sun and Me,” where you play as the wind trying to blow a girl’s skirt up, and the harder you pee, the harder the wind blows.
Honestly i think it would be hilarious if Sony had the ability to brick a jailbreaker's machine and then went through with it.
Legitimate or not, the lawsuits would be incredible. Has any tech manufacturer ever knowingly bricked a consumer's device for violating terms? I'm not just talking video games, I mean Nokia phones and such.
That could be really far-reaching. Imagine web-enabled cars refusing to start up because the owner hacked the dash to play .avis.
Honestly, I can't entirely rule out Sony actually doing that.
Meanwhile, Japan is still weird.
Sega has announced that it’s testing consoles called “Toylets” in urinals around Tokyo. The novel hardware asks the user to strategically vary the strength and location of his urine stream to play a series of games.
For now, Sega has installed Toylets in four Tokyo metro locations, including Akihabara, Soga and Ikebukuro. The location test will run through Jan. 31.
Each urinal is installed with a pressure sensor. An LCD screen is mounted on the wall above, letting the gamer select from and play four different minigames. There’s “Mannekin Pis,” which simply measures how hard you can pee, and “Graffiti Eraser,” which lets you remove paint by pointing a hose in different directions.
There’s the faintly misogynistic “The Northern Wind, The Sun and Me,” where you play as the wind trying to blow a girl’s skirt up, and the harder you pee, the harder the wind blows.
Finally, the bizarre “Battle! Milk From Nose” is a multiplayer game where you compete against the person who last used the urinal. The strength of your urine streams are compared, and translated into milk spraying out of your nose. If your stream is stronger, your milk-stream knocks your opponent out of the ring. If you do particularly well on any of the games, you can download and save your information to a USB stick.
Of course, it’s not just about games. Between sessions, the Toylet will display ads, hoping that you’ll pay more attention to them than to a traditional ad, because the console also serves up the games. With the USB stick functionality, it’s entirely possible that personalized adverts are in the works, too.
The idea may have come from a concept served up by Yanko Design back in 2006, where a designer named Marcel Neundorfer positioned pressure plates on urinals. While other one-offs have followed, Toylets seems to be the first time that the concept has been considered as part of a larger, commercial roll-out.
And thus The Sonic Retard spent tens of thousands of dollars to import a toilet.
Honestly I think the games sound fun, or at least an interesting diversion while taking a piss, but there's no way I would want to touch that LCD screen.
The...nature of the games is pretty... for better or worse japanese. But I remember hearing about urinal games way back in like high school. The idea is pretty old. I just don't think anything ever came of it. Or at least I never actually saw one in person.
The Wolfman on
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
I think it's pretty telling that Sony conciously built in the functionality to perma-brick your console remotely at any time for whatever the hell reason they decide they want to. Fuck. That. Noise.
Honestly i think it would be hilarious if Sony had the ability to brick a jailbreaker's machine and then went through with it.
Legitimate or not, the lawsuits would be incredible. Has any tech manufacturer ever knowingly bricked a consumer's device for violating terms? I'm not just talking video games, I mean Nokia phones and such.
That could be really far-reaching. Imagine web-enabled cars refusing to start up because the owner hacked the dash to play .avis.
Wasn't there a big thing recently where the law decried that it was perfectly legal to jailbreak an iphone and Apple can't do diddly squat to you for doing so? I'd say that's a pretty big precedent right there.
If I recall, the Library of Congress declared that Jailbreaking did not breach copyright, and therefore was legal.
There’s the faintly misogynistic “The Northern Wind, The Sun and Me,” where you play as the wind trying to blow a girl’s skirt up, and the harder you pee, the harder the wind blows.
What.
Let me get this straight: human beings designed a game where the controller is your dick and you're trying to use pee to lift a girl's skirt?
There aren't even words to describe how screwy this is. Used-panty vending machines don't even compare.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited January 2011
But if you get a boner you can't pee. This game is autocancelling. You can't win!
Only people who don't really care would be able to win. I'm finding that absolutely hilarious.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Ubisoft announces latest retail milestone as hit Wii series continues to dominate charts
Wii sensation Just Dance 2 has sold more than 5 million copies worldwide.
Ubisoft confirmed the sequel to its best-selling dance title is performing just as well as its predecessor, particularly in the UK.
VG247 reports that since the first Just Dance was launched in November 2009, the franchise has spent 45 weeks in the UK All Formats Top Ten, and has been in the Top 15 list in France for 42 weeks.
The design of peeing games was a technological inevitability once designers, presumably male, noticed that people using urinals tried to aim their piss.
All it required was a lack of shame. Or a different cultural understanding of shame, possibly.
I think there were serious scientific studies that showed that if you put a teeny little target in the bowl, say a fly or a bee, men can't help but aim at it.
Welp, now that I've [strike]shit[/strike] pissed up this thread, I think it's time for another:
The design of peeing games was a technological inevitability once designers, presumably male, noticed that people using urinals tried to aim their piss.
All it required was a lack of shame. Or a different cultural understanding of shame, possibly.
Tried?
Have you ever been in a public men's room? And I'm not talking about those scuzzy public park ones. I'm talking ones you'd find at a place of employment. Office workers will aim at the wall given a chance...
Posts
I think the correlation is with price drops over time rather than removing of a feature that altogether doesn't affect much.
Though it'd be hilarious to see them release some kind of bullet point presentation touting that removing BC was a great thing.
Oh of course, the sales increases were mostly due to the price dropping to the realm of sanity. My point being that removing BC didn't put the brakes on that much at all.
Hm, that microtransaction system for Lord of the Rings doesn't sound half-bad, really. Nothing as annoying as trying to play Farmville for free, at any rate.
Steam: CavilatRest
The biggest effect may simply be enthusiasts opting to buy US systems rather than European ones initially. For starters, there's a massive price discrepancy between US DS prices and UK ones: a popular DS game costs exactly the same as a popular Wii game (£25-30), and so importing almost always saves you money. And games like Picross 3D are never released at a discounted $20 - always the full £30.
I didn't think region-locking would be a huge problem, but then I look back over my most-played DS games and realised that if the DS was region-locked:
1) I never would have had the chance to play Ouendan, and EBA would never have been made.
2) The Phoenix Wright series would've had a much tougher time finding a foothold in the west, and I would have had to play each game a year late and out of order (they insanely released 3 after 4).
3) I would have never had the chance to play 999, one my most interesting games of last year.
And looking at the region-locked Wii, you have:
1) No Fatal Frame 4
2) No Excitebots
3) No Trauma Team
4) Heavily censored No More Heroes
and 5) absolutely fucking awful delays on a huge number of titles.
And whilst it's certainly true that the loss of the 'enthusiast' segment won't make a dent, it does serve to further polarise Nintendo platforms. The more niche and interesting games simply won't get released in Europe because the market for them there will be strangled in the womb - no importers means no buzz to create a non-hostile environment.
The weirdest part? If importing was such a big problem that region-locking is actually making Nintendo some money, it actually suggest that this 'niche' segment is rather larger than people are making out. But the larger the segment of importers that are losing you money by not paying jacked-up regional prices, the larger the segment that you're destroying the goodwill of, and the less likely they are to buy it at full price. It has to be one or the other, and I'm not sure which - importing is a bigger global business than people are implying, or region-locking serves no useful purpose even for Nintendo.
...then again, Excitebots barely came out here. :P
Very true and it used to be even better when the $ was so weak against the £ for much of the 00s. I managed to import my Wii a few weeks after launch for less than the price of a UK one even including the postage. In the last few years the £ has really tanked sadly but it still sometimes works out cheaper to import.
It's interesting, though there seems to be a number of assumptions throughout it. My guess is Sony's taking the Microsoft approach in staying silent while they gather a list of hacked systems and then they'll ultimately ban them all at once.
Legitimate or not, the lawsuits would be incredible. Has any tech manufacturer ever knowingly bricked a consumer's device for violating terms? I'm not just talking video games, I mean Nokia phones and such.
That could be really far-reaching. Imagine web-enabled cars refusing to start up because the owner hacked the dash to play .avis.
My Wii is brick proof courtesy of homebrew, I even have the entire NAND backed up. We will probably see something similar for PS3.
Wasn't there a big thing recently where the law decried that it was perfectly legal to jailbreak an iphone and Apple can't do diddly squat to you for doing so? I'd say that's a pretty big precedent right there.
Honestly, I can't entirely rule out Sony actually doing that.
Meanwhile, Japan is still weird.
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/01/sega-urinal-games/#more-31640
And thus The Sonic Retard spent tens of thousands of dollars to import a toilet.
What.
Honestly I think the games sound fun, or at least an interesting diversion while taking a piss, but there's no way I would want to touch that LCD screen.
XBL |Steam | PSN | last.fm
If I recall, the Library of Congress declared that Jailbreaking did not breach copyright, and therefore was legal.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/feds-ok-iphone-jailbreaking/
Also, What the Fuck, Japan?!?
3DS Friend Code: 0404-6826-4588 PM if you add.
Let me get this straight: human beings designed a game where the controller is your dick and you're trying to use pee to lift a girl's skirt?
There aren't even words to describe how screwy this is. Used-panty vending machines don't even compare.
Only people who don't really care would be able to win. I'm finding that absolutely hilarious.
All it required was a lack of shame. Or a different cultural understanding of shame, possibly.
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There were, like, footballs and goals to encourage accurate aim.
First time I used one I was wasted, it seemed the best thing.
Welp, now that I've [strike]shit[/strike] pissed up this thread, I think it's time for another:
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?p=17944195#post17944195
Tried?
Have you ever been in a public men's room? And I'm not talking about those scuzzy public park ones. I'm talking ones you'd find at a place of employment. Office workers will aim at the wall given a chance...