Valve and BioWare are not in the alliance because their publishers (EA) is not in it. I'm surprised EA is not in the alliance, given that their Sims franchise dominates the PC game market together with WoW. View

Hm. Where did you hear Blizzard's StarCraft II + World of Warcraft: The Lich King and BioWare's Dragon Age (= Baldur's Gate III) are coming out on the PS3?

Those happen to be the TOP THREE 2008 games on a lot of people's lists, and they won't be on the PS3. View

Unlikely. FCC allowed the Activision-Blizzard deal to get through.

Generally speaking, FCC wouldn't get involved (nor block nor care too much about any deal) in the gaming software business -- simply because they see games as unimportant.

You can't argue "anti-trust" or "monopoly" for gaming software business. Gaming is not required or necessary in life or business. If you don't like a game company, just don't buy their products -- it's not like consumers *have to* use their products in order to make a living or business.

Also, EA won't be in the position to dictate game software market price even after it buys Take Two -- so monopoly doesn't exactly apply either. That's why "anti-trust" and "monopoly" does not apply in the gaming software business. View

Midway itself is in the risk of being bought. I think Rockstar will most likely end up with Activision if this deal goes through. View

Then they'll have to put as many titles on the platform as possible to maximize their advertising fees.

Hm. View

Even rumors have to come from CREDIBLE SOURCES. Otherwise, anyone here can go register an account at any forum, post whatever rumor he likes and claims that it originated from some magazine, and then submit it here on N4G. This seems to be what's going on here.

Maybe I should start doing that and posting dozens of rumors I like in here. Unless the admin/mod start to penalize people who submit/approve this kind of crap, I likely will because -- hey -- since there's no consequences, why should I care?

I have plenty of CRanks to spare. Since I can't seem to find enough stories to use up my CRanks, maybe I should just start making stuff up in random forums under anonymous screen names and then submit them here as stories. View

The serious problems with this one:

1. This is a rumor -- from a public forum posted by an unknown individual/user who's basically anonymous. For this sort of rumor, we should demand more credibility.

2. The forum post was dated almost a month ago on Jan 29 -- that's just old.

3. You put the two togother: if the magazine report was valid and the rumor has any credibility, then you would have expected this rumor to be posted all over the gaming press already.

This kind of shady submission should not have been approved in the first place. Hopefully the admin/mod will ensure the people who posted and approved the submission will receive some sort of penalty and consequences -- because without consequences, they don't care. They'll just continue to approve craps because they know nothing will be do to their accounts or approval privileges.

Anyway, please contine to report the submission as OLD, SPAM, or FAKE to get the admin/mod's attention so it'll get removed. View

1. This is a rumor from a FORUM and an ANONYMOUS user.

2. It's posted in the forum almost A MONTH AGO. Apparently it's fake, otherwise this kind of magazine report would have been all over the Internet weeks ago already. View

Since when can the UN put a tax on anyone or any country?!? View

In case you haven't noticed, corporate and business work quite very differently in the West.

Right now, major American retailers are more interested in dumping HD DVD on consumers to recover as much money as possible.

Unlike major Japanese retailers, which had already had suspended all sales of HD DVD:

http://newsinfo.inquirer.ne...

Just show you how differently Western and Japanese companies treat consumers. And that's why so many American companies fail to compete with Japanese companies, and deservingly so.

And the weirdest thing is, Americans actually accept bad customer service... I suppose people have gotten used to it over the years. View

It's not selling more only because not everyone (in the US) can find and buy one. If Nintendo can allocate more Wiis to the US, the Wiis would have overtaken Xbox 360 in the US.

Maybe Reggie knows something about the upcoming supply in the next ffew months that we don't. View

And from everything I've read about that blabbermouth, you can't trust his words 100 percent.

He's saying negative stuff about Xbox Live only to sell the PS3 version of UT3. When the time comes, he will change his tune and say different things to sell the Xbox 360 version of UT3.

He's saying things only to sell his games, whatever those games are at the moment.

After you read a lot of rhetorics from Mark Rein, you'll start to see a pattern. And I've been posting his comments and interviews enough to see his pattern. View

Sony, Electronic Arts, Lionhead, Areae and all the industry experts disagree with you.

When you have established as much credibility, experience and reputation as they do, then I'll take your words over theirs.

Those games you listed doesn't bring anything truly new or revolutionary to the table. They just recycle what has already been done before and just make it flashier and louder. View

WoW became very successful because Blizzard already had a solid reputation from making WarCraft, StarCraft and Diablo. People trust the company and the name "Blizzard", and people buy whatever Blizzard makes because they know it's gonna be good.

All other MMOs have failed because all the other companies that made them do not have the reputation of Blizzard.

BioWare, on the other hand, is more or less in the same league with Blizzard. People trust those brand names. View

Interesting that fanboys are complaining about Valve not making games for PS3 and how Valve is anti-PS3.

But no one is complaining about Insomniac not making games for the Xbox 360 and is anti-Xbox 360. View

Bill Gates said Blu-ray vs. HD DVD would be the "last" physical format war. He's WRONG.

Video quality will only get better and better, and resolution will only get higher and higher -- which means videos will require more and more storage space.

The video of future will take up more space than even Blu-ray could store.

Right now, we're looking at hi-def, 1080p, that takes up 50 gigs to 100 gigs of data space. If you think that's good enough forever, then you're WRONG.

That's something even more advanced, with even better solution, than the current HD. It's the Ultra Hi-Def Video (UHDV), and it's already on the horizon. It has 16 times the resolution of the current HD. It'll be ready for consumer markets in about 10-15 years, probably sooner.

Get this: one hour of uncompressed UHDV would consume 12 TERABYTES of data. Even Blu-ray can't store that much data.

Someday soon enough, people will want that UHDV in their homes. Currently, only the commercial-grade Protein-Coated Disc (PCD) and some kind of experiemntal nano-technology-based discs can handle much data.

How soon do you think cable will be able to transfer TERABYTES of data instantly? You won't download that insane amount of data over cable in the foreseeable future, certainly not when UHDV arrives for the masses. We'll still need physical format to store all that data.

Oh, and UHDV is not the end of the line... currently, the movies you see in the cinemas and theaters have EIGHT TIMES the resolution of UHDV. One day, maybe in 15-20 years, they'll figured out to put that eight-times-of-UHDV videos into homes... via physical format FIRST, many many years before digital download will be able to handle them.

And the quality of cinema pictures is also improving... this is like a cycle.

Which mean we'll still need bigger and bigger capacity for physical format... and digital download will always fall behind physical format in terms of capacity.

Saying that physical format will go away is just like saying that papers are going away -- ain't gonna happen. Only in Bill's widest wet dreams. View

Your Xbox 360 can already play and upscale DVDs. You don't need to get that obsolete add-on to do that. View

But a business and marketing strategy that's absolutely clueless.

And an "ally" (i.e., Microsoft) that's actually been sabotaging and undermining Toshiba's effort, only helping Toshiba enough to barely keep HD DVD alive, because that "ally" only wants both Sony and Toshiba to lose, so Microsoft alone could win while everyone else loses. With that kind of "friend", who needs enemy? View

Valve and Turtle Rock (the creator of Counterstrike) - two fairly high-profile studios with good track records - are making it. View

Apparently hardcore fanboys like Cyrus365 and zambrota/TANOD/Shmee/Nasim want to argue that it's coming out to the PS3. Here's their reaction to this reaffirmation that the title is only for PC and Xbox 360: "This is a lie! This is fake! This is SPAM! This is a Microsoft's lie!!!"

Go figure. Let me tell you, even after months Left 4 Dead comes out on PC and Xbox 360 later on and with no PS3 version in sight, they'll still say it'll come to the PS3. View