Comments on: Can You F’n Believe It? -OR- To Die a Natural Death

By: sue

sue — Mon, 07 May 2007 18:37:00 +0000

its coooooooooolllllll !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
sue
x x x x x x x

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 01:01:47 +0000

Well when you put it that way, B seems to apply here. Though giving all their over-marketing (the MTV crap, all that annoying viral marketing, all those stupid events like X05 or whatever they’re called), I still say A plays a big part of it all.

By: dhex

dhex — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 21:22:27 +0000

having worked in the industry yourself, what’s more likely:

A) self-choked supply chain as part of larger metamarketing technique/psyops

B) rush to meet delivery date and screw up supply chain because msoft knows jack about retail

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 18:06:14 +0000

What you say is true, but I still think its always been the plan to have everyone go nuts over the system via under supplying, at least during the holiday season. Simply because, despite the fact that many potential customers become pissed off, every single one of them will get the system in a heartbeat once they get the chance.

Its like that with every system launch… very rarely are people so frustrated that its completely soured them from the idea of ever getting the system eventually. Which I think is sorta sad, since companies know this.

By: dhex

dhex — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 16:03:32 +0000

“But this is all part of Microsoft?s plan of course, to generate buzz for their product, no matter how false or underhanded it might be.”

matt, i gotta disagree real hard with this, and not just cause i know a dude who works in their marketing department.

it makes zero – 0 – sense for msoft to do this to themselves when they’re operating within a razor/blade economic model and to delay sales of a product they’re already spending millions on marketing. every day they delay getting more units out there is another day they’re not recouping the tremendous pre-holiday launch costs.

By: Westacular

Westacular — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 05:56:15 +0000

I fortuitously found a copy of PS2 Rez at Toys R Us just over a year ago in the $20 bargain bin at the same time as I was buying my PStwo. I didn’t even realize what price it was going for on ebay until just a couple days before you posted this. I still haven’t beaten level 5 — haven’t tried in a while, but the last few times I did I just couldn’t get past the bullet hell bit right at the last quarter of the final final boss.

By: click

click — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 22:10:11 +0000

Another one bites the dust!

Actually, it looks like the fellow at http://www.paradoxshift.net will be backing up my website? He has yet to reply to my emails, but… at least it appears c-s.com is not totally forgotten.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 16:51:01 +0000

Its his use of term authorial control that irks me as well. Anyone who’s fluent with the filmmaking process is well aware that no film truly reflects one sole vision.

Yes, the director orchestrates it all, but you have everyone from the camera person to the actors interpreting and processing things, whether it be the script or directions from the director, in their own unique manner. Actors will change lines, director or photography may alter a shot for whatever reason, and that’s before the editor gets involved… there’s simply too many factors to say that a director has total and absolute authoritative control.

As I mentioned, Ebert just seems like someone who’s arrogantly out of touch with the times and its current modes of expression. Wasn’t film considered low-brow when it first hit the scene?

By: John

John — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 15:25:34 +0000

The Roger Ebert statement is a little surprising. By his logic, a video game is inherently not art, but a video of a person playing a video game inherently is.

And when he mentions “authorial control” that just makes me think he hasn’t played a game since Space Invaders, or at least that’s his perception of games. He doesn’t understand that in modern games, the game designers have to be storytellers, and there are clearly games that had good designers and bad designers.

By: legalstep

legalstep — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 00:48:37 +0000

Wow you sum up most of my Microsoft based anger pretty well. Also I’m angry that they were so eager to leave behind the last generation when they still had something to give.

I’m sure xbox360 will be the next great whatever for microsoft until 3 years from now when they decide to leave that behind for the next official for real sequel to xbox.