The Bard

Why? If there's less consumer spending, it follows that consumer electronics brands are going to suffer? Apple are different because the variety of services they provide (iTunes, Apple TV etc) are palatable to a huge range of people, and they've been building that cachet since before the recession hit. Are you going to buy a device that's made to run with the ecosystem of services that you've grown accustomed to over the last few years, or are you going to say "fuck it, I have no cash, but I'm going to take a gamble on a windows phone"? Apple products tend to be reliable, and in an austere economic environment, what better incentive do people have to buy their stuff? And I wasn't pegging everything on the recession, I meant that it was a factor that had to be taken into consideration. People were just spending less money because they had less money to spend.

Came here literally just to say this. I give Microsoft shit for being the slightly square, argyle sweater wearing cousin of the gaming world, but at least they catch on pretty quickly about what consumers want. I think it's only £50 cheaper coz they already just dropped the price of the console by £30 a couple of months ago.

There was also a global recession the last five years; shit happens.

Sony won't go under, they're a national staple and one of the most recognised electronics brands in the world. The problem is that they have a tendancy to focus almost exclusively on the high-end high price market for their consumer electronics, especially when they're a pioneer in that particular sphere. It's a sort of old hat business practice that favours charging premiums for high end devices, and non standard features that raise the expense bar exponentially and then are either dropped completely from subsequent models, or decrease substantially in price. I'm talking specifically their 3D televisions, blurays and the forthcoming 4k displays. All of which are or were prohibitively priced for the general consumer, and feature very few decent quality, low price variants, the sort that any average consumer is going to want in their home. They have a chance to get in on a level playing field by aggressively pricing their 4K displays, but I doubt they will, just because they insist on throwing every random gadget they can think of into devices that don't need them. PS4 and Xperia are doing well though. Sony'll be fine, they might just have to give up their fief on such a broad swathe of electronics.

I'm genuinely very excited for this game. Whoever up there (can't be bothered to double check) said that it looks like Killzone... yes, because The Third Reich made its aesthetic choices based on a mediocre FPS franchise. It's also being made by Machine Games, which was formed by all the heads of Starbreeze, (I have Magnus Hogdahl specifically in mind, who a lot of people call Sweden's John Carmack) and who made two of my favourite games of the last generation (Escape From Butcher Bay and The Darkness), and in addition, everything I hear has sounded incredibly positive. Anyway, being a Starbreeze game in spirit, you can at the very least guarantee that it'll be well written and artistically well put together; two firsts for the Wolfenstein franchise. Also, the boxart looks great.

If some clues have multiple users attached to them...how long did this take you to make? I'm imagining you dressed in all green lycra, a pimp cane and a bowler had with a big ass question mark on it.

@MoogleViper Unlike @Cube, I am cretinous.

That's why I never quote people! I just thought it was some sort of occult forum paraphernalia that wouldn't bear being tampered with. I figured it out just now when I joined the Idle Thumbs forum where they have a "multiquote" button, and I had an ohmygodthat'swhatitis moment.

I just discovered what the + Quote button does. My life has momentarily swung from herp to jerp, and I'm so excited.

Have Nintendo ever re-released this on anything but VC? I can't imagine that they'd leave a game this classic to fester in obscurity for people who want to legitimately own it (not everyone is going to know or be savvy enough to emulate it). If they haven't, it's fucking boggling, considering the amount of re-releases LTTP and Super Mario World have gotten.

Same thing happened when Nintendo "appropriated ("ripped off" is the term the Nintendonauts used when Sony did the same borrowing) the TrackIR that'd been used for years and years in flight sims and gesture controlled mouse emulation. Except because it's Nintendo, the human lice feel the need to crawl out and infest every space where games are discussed, and declare it a revolution. Other console manufacturers have pretty solidly proved again and again that there are more elegant ways to implement Nintendo's own ideas in a way that's unobtrusive and doesn't fuck people who want to opt out.

Is that..are those inverted commas around satire...in a post complaining about sarcasm? The irony levels right now would chart on a fucking seismometer. I find it interesting that you focus on the deformity of my feet and completely miss the tyrannosaur claw of a right hand. But of course, perspective and concavity don't come into it at all...

Yeah, it really messed up the pacing, and made it difficult to properly keep track of all the plot points. Which sucks especially for DLC like Shadow Broker and Leviathan which were pretty much essential to the story.

I didn't get pissy, I assumed abrasive manner and wording of a forum post in order to satirise the abrasive manner and wording of that forum post. I just have big feet and tiny shins, I'll cop to it. But I like the idea of needing help here, enlighten me oh sagacious sartorial sage.

Your avatar and text combo make you look like a deviantart trawling weeaboo who humps his chobits pillow to sleep every night. But it's your loss . What I meant by "compensating for perspective" was that in slightly concave mirrors, and depending on angle of vision there's a distortion effect that makes extremities appear elongated, hence the clown feet. Thanks @Emma

That's fair enough, the problem is that almost everything I wear is really close fitting and I got tired of my nipples peeking through every item of clothing. It's essentially just for variation, but I get your point - the arms are fucking ridiculously baggy; they didn't have any in a medium size. Also it makes people mistake me for a jock, which isn't completely unwelcome after the obvious stereotypes that come after a lifetime of wearing black jeans and metal t-shirts.

If they do bring Mass Effect trilogy to PS4/Xbone, it'd be nice for them to fix the fact that Mass Effect 3 couldn't support a holster animation because the systems it was made for didn't have enough RAM. I shit you not, when Orbis and Durango were announced this was the thing I was most excited about.

Not sure if this stands for pre-owned PS3s in general, but I bought one in February 2013, and by September it was fucked; would just randomly shut off about half an hour into play, no lights, no nothing. The only way to get it to turn on again was to unplug it from the mains and then plug it in again after waiting about five minutes. In general, tread lightly with last gen consoles pre-owned. Part way through production a law was passed that put some sort of sanctions on lead based components in electronics, and the sauter they used had to be replaced with something flimsier that wasn't cut out to handle the heat dissipation you typically got with those consoles. Which is what caused the RROD and the PS3 errors as well. The longer those consoles spend from the production line, the likelier some sort of fault is going to be. I'd say just hold on and get the PS4.

Diageo; you're full of shit son, compensate for perspective. Everyone else; dang (/americanisms).

Not sure if the skinny jeans go with the very baggy baseball jacket. What sayeth thee, kneeee? (Ignore the vast amounts of detritus and filth covering the mirror/my face grascias kthxbi)

This is tragic. They absolutely nerfed the original Wii when they brought out the latest model without either wifi or ethernet, nor, unless I'm hugely mistaken, Gamecube support, so I don't see why they're so trepidatious about releasing a Wii U console without the stupid gamepad. I don't understand why, for the people that want it, they can't just bring out a cheaper version of this dinosaur of a console without the absolutely superfluous screen. It might mean patching some games that require it (ZombieU comes to mind for all the inventory stuff) to be able to work without it, but really, anyone that might have wanted the fucking thing is put off by the prohibitive price for lacklustre hardware and the occasional lukewarm ladling of your generic franchise sequel. Which would be fine, if it was a £129 console like the Gamecube was on fucking launch day, I'd already have one and have probably re-bought all my favourite VC games just because of the upscaling. Nintendo are just the weirdest company. The worst business practises of all time, mixed with the most schizophrenic tendencies towards their games. We've seen less and less of the Nintendo that genuinely innovates, and more of the risk averse, sequel shovelling outcast that really doesn't know or remember what place it occupies in the videogaming ecosystem.

Because I'm a nerd and I like tinkering with computers in the same way a 70s greaser (or Goafer) would with his car. I'm kidding, it's pretty much for my girlfriend when we're playing co-op, I don't want either me or her to get the shitty end of the stick with a mid tier CPU from 2007. Also when friends come around to play CoH, out of a misplaced sense of etiquette I usually get saddled with the shitty computer.

Yeah but until then my second PC has a Q8200 with a HD5770. Can't even call that mid range these days.

Not to hijack the thread, but I've been thinking about building a PC for my girlfriend, looking mainly at getting the 8350. I've got an 2500k in my main PC which is a lot better for current gen gaming, but I've seen some benchmarks for less single core intensive and more multithreading heavy games and the AMD cpus perform a little better (Crysis 3 specifically, which is was baffled by). Would it be a decent long term bet to go for an 8350 or just wait it out until the Haswell-Es are out and swap out my 2500k into another case? @Raining_again, if your GPU doesn't have a fan it might be a good idea to spend a tenner on a PCI slot fan. Either one just below the card to push air onto it, or one above it that can serve as an exhaust (which I've seen going for a fiver on amazon and have a 50+ CFM rating, which is pretty damn good for the price.