Emasher

As much as I'm looking forward to this, I'm a little bit anxious regarding the PC port. Just Cause 2 was an amazing game, but the PC port was just terrible as far as controls were concerned. The main issue being that re-mapping a key in one context would also re-map it in another, and the gun-play itself was pretty stiff.

Metroid Prime 1 and 2 didn't have dual analog controls. The c-stick controlled switching to either a different visor or beam (I can't remember which, the other was on the d-pad), and the left analog stick was used to turn or move forward or backwards, or control the camera if you held down a certain trigger to enter free aim mode, but you couldn't move while in this mode. Compared to dual analog controls, it was very unintuitive, and made the original versions of the prime games difficult to control in my opinion. Lock-on was absolutely necessary as opposed to just being convenient when using the Wii remote controls. That said, I'd much rather have keyboard and mouse controls than dual analog. The Wii remote's camera doesn't even come close to my Logitech G502 as far as precision is concerned. This would be a bigger issue if the games were rendered at a higher resolution though.

No. It doesn't work. The Wii games being sold on the eShop channel are exactly the same as the retail versions. The only enhancement they've added is that games that originally worked with the Wii Classic Controller will work with the gamepad and 'pro' controller, but Metroid Prime Trilogy is not one of those games.

The larger downloads you're seeing on PS4/Xbox One/PC are mainly due to higher resolution textures and more complex geometry (although probably to a lesser extent). One of the main reasons for this is that the PS4 and Xbox One have a lot more memory that's available to the GPU to store textures in (compared to the Wii U/PS3/360/Older PCs). The download size is pretty reasonable for three games though. The original versions of the first two games are each just over 1 GB and Corruption is about 4.3 GB. I suspect the extra gigabyte in there comes from the lighting overhaul the Gamecube games got when trilogy was originally released.

It's amazing how well Metroid Prime has aged. Even today, there are very few games with such well designed environments, and that level of immersion. For anyone on the fence, I'd strongly recommend buying Trilogy, especially with the price it's at for the next week.

I might do something like that once the PC version comes out. I originally played the PS3 version, but I don't have many friends who have PS3s as opposed to gaming PCs. Still not convinced by mission oriented multiplayer in a sandbox game though.

I've really never been able to get into the multiplayer. To me, GTA has always been about just messing around and doing your own thing. There's nothing wrong with doing that with friends, but I find having to do a bunch of missions--usually with random people, in order to unlock better stuff to mess around with is just tedious. I'd rather just have a sandbox multiplayer mode where you can bring in all your stuff from single player and mess around with friends. Also, I really wish they would add more car (and other vehicle) storage space to single player.

I've been thinking about upgrading to a 970 as well recently (I currently have a 460 1GB non-SE). That's going to mean having to update my motherboard though, which means updating my CPU and a new OS (since my current one is an OEM), and if I'm doing that, I should probably thrown in an SSD, and a new power supply might be a necessity with all of that, although my current one is an OCZ 700 watt, so I might be okay... At least my RAM and case are still good.

Unfortunately I forgot about this and didn't get a chance to watch it until after. By the sounds of things, humans visiting mars is still around 20 years away, but now that the type of spacecraft that will most likely be used to get there has flown a successful mission (or rather "Flight Test"), it feels that much more real. I mean, there are humans, right now, working on a spacecraft that will be capable of human interplanetary travel.

Finally had some time to do some work on my mods, and I decided to improve the socket rendering.

The only statistics I know of are here: https://minecraft.net/stats But that's just for the PC version, and just total sales, and sales within the last 24 hours. Total sales of the console versions combined are known to be more than double that of total PC sales as of a few months ago. Still, assuming today was a typical day, 8000 sales a day isn't bad for a game of its age. Then there's this, but it's really out of date (over a year old): http://stats.minecraft.net/

Minecraft 2 doesn't really make sense as a product, at least in the near future. It's the sort of thing that gets added to and improved over time. There isn't much a sequel could add to it. The game itself is very extendable though, which is why it has such a large modding community. There's a very good good chance we'll see lots of paid DLC packs coming out similar to the sorts of things you see in mods. Even small things can change the game considerably and add that many more hours of utility to the game. I wouldn't be surprised to see some sort of subscription service either. And although a proper modding SDK seems unlikely now, I'm sure they could find a way to monetize that as well, and it wouldn't be that expensive to produce in the first place considering Mojang had been working their way towards that for quite some time now, and were getting very close to one, at least for the PC version. There are a lot of people out there (and some of them pretty talented) who already have a pretty good knowledge of how the game's code works, who have been producing content for the game for years, but haven't been able to monetize their work at all. And although creating that sort of opportunity certainly isn't going to make them 2.5 billion dollars on its own, pushing the game more in the direction of a platform for other people to create (and sell) content for is probably a step in the right direction. High quality maps and texture resource packs could also probably be sold, especially if they can target console gamers, who haven't been able to experience user created content for the game on the same level.

All the more reason to believe Microsoft has much bigger plans for it than people seem to be suggesting. They might not make a profit on it. But They certainly think they can, and already know how they're going to do it. Even for Microsoft, 2.5 billion isn't an impulse buy.

And you never will just by looking at Minecraft sales figures. This is about the bigger picture.

I don't think a release of Minecraft on the Wii U is out of the question. See my post in the Minecraft thread to find out why.

Thinking that Microsoft is planning on making their money back simply by continuing development on Minecraft as it is today is pretty naive. As someone who's developed a few, somewhat popular, mods for the game, I can say that Minecraft has a lot of potential beyond what's apparent to the public. You can see small glimpses of that by looking at what the modding community has produced this far. We've seen some amazing content in mods like Thaumcraft, Red Power, and many others. Now just imagine for a second what could be accomplished if Microsoft was to release a proper (and well documented, unlike Forge) SDK for modders that allowed for the development of mods that could easily be ported to multiple platforms, and then actually sold for money, with Microsoft skimming some off the top of course. You'd not only attract a lot more talent, but you'd start to see more ambitious and higher quality mods (stuff that people actually would be willing to pay for). With the flexibility of the platform, total conversion projects aren't out of the question either. With over 16 million copies sold on the PC, and even more than that on consoles (combined), there's already a pretty big market. Then there's the value of the IP itself. While it's unlikely that we'll be seeing Minecraft 2 anytime soon, a platforming game starring a creeper, or "Minekart" aren't out of the question.

I started my new co-op job (basically a 4 month well paid internship where you actually do real work) about a week ago. It's at a small company that makes software for doing certain types of high end special effects in films (my position is a software developer), and it's located in the city's hipster district (so basically a bunch of really bad shops and really good restaurants within a block). Went out for lunch with a bunch of my new co-workers on Friday and the conversation ended up turning to vintage Nintendo games pretty quickly. This is going to be a fun term.

I finally managed to track down a black Wii U Pro controller (they seem to be pretty rare here). Just in time for my copy of Mario Kart 8 to arrive. Glad I got it on my way home from work yesterday rather than today though. Apparently the shop got robbed 24 hours after I was there. I was wondering why I was seeing so many police cars rushing by on the bus home today.

Seeing this thread again makes me want to update my mods to work with 1.7.X. I've just gotten so bored with the game though. When my mods made it into a few of the main FTB packs a while back and I realized how much power I had to change the balance of the game for a lot of people, it just didn't feel worth playing any more. Still, I should probably just bite the bullet and get it done before my twitter followers decide to murder me.

I know. That's my point, they're now tied to an account, but also still tied to the console, which is off putting due to the potential difficulties in recovering the games if something goes wrong with the console. When I buy a game on Steam, I know that if something happens to my computer (stolen, destroyed, etc), I can just build a new one, and re-download all my Steam games to it without any issues, the same can be said for most other serious sellers of digital content such as Apple, Sony, EA, etc. However, with the Wii U, the games are tied to the account which is tied to the hardware meaning if your console is stolen or destroyed, there is no way of recovering these games. You can't simply log into a new Wii U with the same account and re-download your games, like you can with everything else. There is no technical limitation that's causing Nintendo to use such a system either. The justification I've heard is that they're limiting an account to one console to prevent piracy, however, if I wanted to, I could go right now and download ROMs of every single title available on the virtual console and play them on an emulator. People who want to pirate these games can already do it very easily, and no amount of DRM on the virtual console is going to stop them from doing it. And if they really wanted to, they could implement a system like Steam, where you have to have logged in, and only one computer can be logged in to an account at once. Getting rid of their seriously outdated DRM and moving to a more modern model would not increase piracy in any meaningful way, but would give their customers a lot more confidence that the titles they've downloaded will always be accessible to them through their account regardless of what happens to their physical hardware. This is especially important now that they're selling full priced retail titles through the eShop.

After finally buying a Wii U, I've made a few more observations. Something that would make me spend a little bit more on the VC right now would be a feature that allowed me to upgrade and download all of my (available) old Wii VC games on the Wii U at once. Having to make a list of them all, and then individually search each one to see if it's been updated is a pain. Also, I'd be a lot more comfortable buying virtual console games at this point if they were only tied to my account, and not the console. There are much better ways to do DRM than only allowing the account to be used on one console of each type. I shouldn't have to worry about loosing all my digital purchases if my console gets stolen or damaged, or have to worry about them not carrying over to the next console.

I finally went and purchased a Wii U today. What's up with these round analog stick sockets though? Did Nintendo say why they didn't use their traditional octagonal ones when the console came out, or did it just kind of slip through the cracks?

Thanks. The New Super Mario Bros. bundle is the only 32 GB console being sold in Canada at the moment, at least at the retailers I've checked, and it's the same $299 that the console was before the bundle, so it would actually be more trouble to track down one that wasn't bundled, not that there's any reason to.

Really? Something like that happened with my Wii several years ago, but Nintendo support made sure all my virtual console games were available to download again when they sent it back after repairs. Still, I'll definitely take that into consideration. Thanks.