err... Ico ? Shadow of the Colossus ? No wait ! I haven't finished yet... God of war ! xD These are 1st party games from Sony computer entertainement ;)
But i agree with you, good devs don't fear a bit of criticism.
"while two major British retailers are reportedly considering a ban on games that include Steam integration"
That was a good joke, made me laugh. Retailers selling PC games... crazy thing !
"The sooner competing services quit bitching and start putting together comparable platforms where you can shop, play and communicate as easily as you can on Steam, the sooner we'll take their criticisms as something more than just sour grapes."
Exactly, but bitching is easier to do.
I think Steam has done a lot for PC gaming especially in times of console and "casual play" domination.
@DutchOtaku: No, VAT would be a so simple explanation, do you really think no one has taken this into consideration ? I'll give you one of the main reasons: it is the lack of concurrence in the distribution sector, and i'm not talking about retailers nor editors, it's the inbetween, i mean wholesalers, all retailers are bound to their pricing, they can't escape that as they need a localized version of the game, ask any honest local retailer what hinders them the most.
So i think the writter got 'thanks' letter for putting a light on something kept for too long in the shadows and i believe he is abolutely right.
Reminds me an article of why games costs 70€ here in europe (96$), a simple answer was given: because people buy them anyway, you can't blame them, blame yourself.
@Shin-san: This is already the case but only for low-end solutions, all high-end solutions are and will stay separate, there's at least 3 reasons to prevent the prophetised merge:
- Heat: one thing is sure we won't even keep the current form factor of graphic cards for long so let alone a CPU + GPU merge.
- Architecture: GPU and CPU architecture are totally different, that's why Intel won't invest much in it and had many failed atempts (larabee, I7xx...) and AMD bought ATI to be present on the graphic market (and chipsets), everything you see now is just a 'die' merge (like the new Xbox 360 chip), but that can only be done on past architectures with enhanced manufacturing processes available years after.
- Costs: if it may cost less for you to buy a merged chip, for manufacturers it's the contrary: it makes the die bigger with more transistors, that means more possible errors and more dies ditched if the GPU or CPU is defective, on high end products it's very risky, even for GPU alone ATI prefers using crossfire technology for high end cards (like the HD5970).
When i said ATI was doomed, i was speaking financially, because the graphic branch fares much better than its cpu counterpart at AMD.
"When we tested this on development kits, this never came up so that took us completely by surprise, and we're looking into it."
I knew it, i should have bought a dev kit instead a real console !
And bullshit is bullshit: if you hogs the bandwith a 5200 RPM SATA HDD can offer with video encoding, there is a problem... maybe learn to encode a video... maybe...