"If another console breaks we have to report it."

If that's the case, why don't you write up a story on how my 360 broke. That's right, I sent it in last night for repair/replacement. Make a story! Another console broke, so that should be news too, right?

**BREAKING NEWS: Another Xbox 360 got the RRoD!!! OMG! LoLZoRZ!!11eleven!11!**

Give me a break. View

Sure it has.

GT3 was 'groundbreaking'. Then came Vice City... and San Andreas... more of the same, with a couple little extras added in here and there.

The author is expecting the same of GTA4. More of the same. I can't blame him, and I'll hold judgement (and my money) until I see the game myself. View

You really thought Overlord was good??? Wth? Am I missing something because I thought the game was garbage. View

I second that. View

...like myself, who won't be buying a Blu-Ray player.

I'm not an HD-DVD supporter, nor am I a Blu-Ray supporter. That being said, if HDDVD had turned out to be the winner, I probably would've purchased one. I can't say the same of Blu-Ray.

Sorry, but I'm just not a big fan of the draconian DRM-before-all-else mentality of the Blu-ray association. I know of many others who share that sentiment.

No doubt that someday, perhaps, I will have one. But we're talking years down the road. Until then I'm happy with my upscaled DVDs and/or digital streaming. View

I bought a console on launch day, and it RRoD'd on me in Feb/06, a few mere days before its original 90-day warranty expired. MS replaced that console with a new one (fast turnaround since at the time they were over-nighting everything). When I got my new console, I decided to buy the 2 year extended warranty just in case... only to have Microsoft then go and extend the RRoD warranty to 3 years. Essentially, I wasted the money on that warranty.

Anyways, my 2nd console seemed to work great. Never had a problem with it. Until this past Sunday. I came home from a weekend trip and felt like playing some Halo. Well, my 360 disagreed with me and RRoD'd. Crap. 1-800-4MY-XBOX and they're shipping me a coffin. However, it is no longer overnight. I should receive the box next week, then I ship it off to them. There's goes another week. Finally they'll ship me back my replacement, and I'll receive it another week later. A month without my 360. And what do I get in return? 1 month free Xbox live. I'm sorry - it's not really free since I'm paying for this month but have no way of using it. So they're basically 'reimbursing' me for a month of unused subscription.

Am I mad? Yeah, I'm mad. Is it 'acceptable'? No. It's not. I've been a LIVE subscriber since the month it came out. I remember playing Ghost Recon 1 on LIVE - it sure as hell isn't acceptable to me! But... that doesn't mean I'm not going to welcome back my replacement console with open arms.

Despite the hardware problems, the inconvenience, etc, the 360 just has what I want. The games, the online, the games & most importantly, the games! It has what the competition doesn't. I don't have interest in a PS3 nor do I have interest in the Wii. At least not yet.

Some people say I should buy a new 360 and sell my replacement one when I get it back. Nope. I refuse to spend more money on a console that shouldn't have broken down in the first place, let alone twice. But I'm sure as hell not going to give it up completely, like so many other people suggest I should. View

The fact that JVIDICAN's post is still up 18 hours after it was posted is testamount to how poorly this "moderated GamerZone" is actually moderated.

How does this kind of s$%t pass?! View

Come on guys, it's a freakin' comic strip! Some of you are defending and lashing out like it was your mother they made a joke about or something!

Examine your heads! View

Wow! The amount of emotional investment a person must have in something as frivolous as a video game console to respond to a silly comic strip with such a pathetic outburst must be HUGE!

Do you sleep with your Playstation? Do you bring it to the bathroom with you? Is it your safety blankey? Awww, someone poked fun at your wittle safety blankey! Poor baby.

Seriously, those of you who have such an emotional investment in a videogame console that you take *personal* offense to something like this really, REALLY need to re-examine your priorities in life. View

I wasn't aware of this - do you have any link for the details of that? I'm not calling you a liar, I just want to learn more about it.

I guess in this day and age of globalization, free trade and foreign investment, I'm surprised that one of the world's largest economies has such strict rules about foreign investment and ownership.

EDIT:

Nevermind, I found it.

Interestingly, what you said was true up until 1980 when the Foreign Exchange Law was passed. Until then, a foreign individual was allowed to own a maximum 10% of equity and a foreign company 25%. That law has since changed and there is no longer a restriction on the amount of foreign investment allowed - there are 10 exceptions to this rule, Fuji Cameras is one of them. Sony is not.

More interesting than that is that, apparently, board of directors for Japanese companies are ultimately not liable to the shareholders of that company. Where in the US, and most western economies, boards must take whatever action is deemed to be best for shareholders, Japanese boards do not need to do this. In effect, it reduces the shareholder of a Japanese company to the role of a "creditor" -> they have little to no influence over the management of a company. If I understand that correctly, then, a Japanese company, like Sony, could flat out reject a takeover bid by another company, even if that company were to offer a significant premium over the market cap value of the target company.

Note to self: Do not ever invest in a Japanese company, then. I prefer to invest in a company that is accountable to me, as a shareholder, than one which can arbitrarily decide policy. View

Microsoft's Market Capitalization is $260 Billion

Sony's Market Capitalization is $43 Billion (it used to be much higher, around $104 Billion, in fiscal 2000 - but they tanked for a few years after that).

Market Cap is the value of a company's total shares. Therefore, it is essentially the amount of money a company would need to come up with to buy all the shares of that company at face value. Since most investors won't sell their shares at face value (they want some profit) a buyout usually requires a company to pay a premium on top of the market cap for the shares.

Anyways, go ahead and check for yourself if you don't believe me. Just look up the stock of both companies, Market Cap is listed. MSFT & SNE are the symbols.

Total assets is irrelevant when buying out a company; the only time that would come into play is if the company being bought liquidized their assets to buy back some of their own shares - this would almost never happen, however, because the board of a publicly traded company is bound by law to make decisions which are in the best interest of shareholders. Liquidating ones assets is rarely, if ever, in the best interest of shareholders.

I'm not saying that MS could easily buy out Sony - although their proposed buyout of Yahoo for $44 billion is more than Sony's total market cap. My point is that you're wrong - MS is a bigger company.

Why am I even posting this? It's not like you kids in the Open Zone even care about truth or reason. Flame on. View

I'm still waiting for a Star Wars game that lives up to the potential that the Star Wars franchise holds. Hopefully this one bucks the trend of past mediocre titles. View

Touche...

But I was chastised yesterday for making that same point (fanboys have ruined this site, or, to directly quote, "this site has become the premiere social site for fanboys") - for doing so, a moderator dropped my bubble count from 9 to 5, reduced my contributor approval vote from 2 points to 1, and several members called me "childish" and reminded me that N4G is "what you make of it". So, I'm trying to heed that advice.

...granted, I'm not expecting too much to come of it. ;) View

"Saying that one month of negative growth equals recession or "the verge" of recession is disingenuous any way you look at it."

But that's not what 'they' are saying, or at least not the well respected authority figures. By suggesting that's the case, you're being disingenuous yourself.

There are strong indicators which suggest that the economy is, in fact, on "the verge" or at serious risk - historical markers strongly point towards a looming recession. Taking past data and reasonably extrapolating from that data is not being disingenuous. Particularly when you're an expert in the field.

http://www.cbc.ca/money/sto...

David Rosenberg, Merrill Lynch's chief North American economist, said Friday’s employment report — which showed the U.S. jobless rate jumped to a two-year high of five per cent in December on weaker-than-expected job creation — "strongly suggests that an official recession has arrived." In a report dated Monday, Rosenberg outlined several data markers that he says are unequivocally associated with recession. ***"At no time in the past 60 years has the unemployment rate risen 60 basis points … from the cycle low without the economy slipping into recession, and here we now have the jobless rate hitting five per cent in December versus the [March 2007] trough of 4.4 per cent,"*** he argues.

And I particularly like this quote:

"One can speak euphemistically if one chooses, but there are no substitutes for outright 'recessions' — to say that the backdrop is 'recession-like' is akin to an obstetrician telling a woman that she is 'sort of pregnant,'" he said. View

Considering that the US reported its first month of negative growth in years (since 2001, I believe) with little sign of that trend reversing any time soon, many experts and economists are saying that this is the brink of a recession.

"A growing number of top economists believe that the U.S. economy has now toppled into recession.

Alarm bells were set off Tuesday by a grim report on service businesses, which make up the majority of the U.S. economy.

The Institute of Supply Management said that activity in the service sector declined for the first time in nearly five years. This report also indicated that employers are cutting staff."

http://money.cnn.com/2008/0...

Sounds like a recession to me, or, at the very least, being "on the verge".

Perhaps you're being to literal in your interpretation of being on "the verge"? What would you consider being on the verge of recession? The day before that 2nd quarter ends? A week? A month? View

Total Market Value:

Sony: $43.4 Billion
http://money.cnn.com/quote/...

Microsoft: $268.2 Billion
http://money.cnn.com/quote/... View

Holy crap - how is it that you're still allowed to post in the "GamerZone"?! You want to know what's a joke? This whole "moderated" N4G "GamerZone" thing is a joke! Your comments prove that. View

I don't disagree with you; in an ideal world, N4G would be what you make of it. It actually used to be that way, believe it or not! That is until it was hijacked and overrun (around E3 last year, and ever since) with fanboyism. Like I said before, the fanboys were always there. But in the last year the site was over run. I guess like anything great, once it goes mainstream, it generally gets ruined.

In the time I've spent here, I've always contributed good articles when I've come by them, I've always engaged in open, honest, non-flaming debates and discussions and I've always FAIRLY and ACCURATELY approved/reported submissions. Unfortunately I'm in the minority. I got tired of it, so I spoke up. Sue me.

I obviously struck a nerve with a moderator in my first post on this thread - my bubble count dropped from 9 to 5 and my contributor voting weight dropped from 2 to 1. Someone didn't like the fact that I stated the truth. Funny how you can lose 4 bubbles for posting something truthful (and without fanboy bias) yet fanboys can rant and rave to their heart's content, and not lose any bubbles or voting rights for doing so. What a joke. Congratulations, moderators, on stifling the contributions of one of the few people on this site who actually have something constructive to contribute. View

Almost every day. Same with 80% of my 50+ person friends list, and 100% of my actual friends. The only other game that's touched the tray since mid-November is Guitar Hero 3.

I played COD4 for two weeks when it came out. Beat it on Veteran. Played multiplayer till I got my level up to 40ish, then I went back to Halo.

COD4 just doesn't take the skill, teamwork and strategy that Halo does. View

You guys are seriously going to sit there and honestly say that I'm wrong? Give me a break.

This site, which I've been visiting for years, before it was even called 'N4G', before they seperated the site into "xbox360news" and "ps3news", before all of that, has gone to the fanboys. It always had fanbody comments, of course, but over the last year or so it has devolved so thoroughly into mindless drivel that it's hardly worth visiting anymore. And that sucks.

This site used to be awesome, but now you can't even find a legitimate article that hasn't had some sort of fanboy slant added to its title or description, followed by pages of bickering! You can't even post an article or a USER REVIEW without fanboys reporting it because they don't want good news to be posted about certain consoles, games or companies!

...the guys who run the site know this, and so they've changed the format to try to mediate the fanboyism a little bit. And it worked for about a week, to a certain extent. But lately I've been browsing and seeing all sorts of pathetic, fanboy comments all over the place in the "GamerZone" - and its from the same old people that have always posted those comments. And instead of being BANNED from posting, like they should be, they have their comment deleted (or, more often, left untouched) and the site continues on its downhill plunge.

You can call me childish all you want, but I've been here longer than 85% of you have and I don't post the kinds of crap that's become mainstream around here. If you fools are proud of that and want to support that, then fine. That's your perogative. But at least cut the crap and admit that this is the biggest flame-fest fanboy website on the net. Anyone who claims otherwise is just being dishonest, plain & simple.

You're not fooling anyone.

@7.1: Unfortunately, I rarely do anymore, my post history will verify that.

@7.2: Childish? It was merely the truth - they're capitalizing off of the rabid fanboyism that goes on here. Show me where I'm wrong, and then you can call me childish. The fact is that this site has grown exponentially since it became so ridden with controversial, fanboyesque posts. Fanboyism sells, apparently. And don't get me wrong - I'm not faulting the owners for that - all the power to them. I just think its unfortunate and the quote is hilarious. View