Actually the Wii did have a lot of 3rd party support. Just not Western 3rd parties...there's a difference and the Wii actually had a ton of quality games released on it. Were they as successful as the slew of Call of WII Future Soldier 47? Probably not...but there is still a ton of 3rd party stuff...

Eh, we'll see what happens down the road. Most 3rd parties do that if sales don't go through the statosphere. How they think nearly matching the Wii sales is "bad" is beyond me...the PS4/NextBox won't do nearly as well either...

Even then, it's still twice as much as the 360 and PS3...so that is an improvement. **shrugs** and it's got a much more capable gfx card.

Not really. It's just flat out more powerful. Even if you discount the 1gb of ram for the OS...it's still double that of the 360 and PS3 (if you count the 256x2) and the gfx card is far more capable.

How exactly is 2gb of ram, much better GPU and newer, more efficient chipset not an upgrade exactly?

Again, what's the point? This is exactly why Microsoft said that SteamBox wasn't a competitor...since you have to buy and install Windows on the thing to get it to work...it's an overpriced PC that's not really that great spec wise at all.

It has the whole catalog of Steam behind it? Better check that...SteamBox is Linux based. Try 1-2% of Steam behind it...you'll have to put Windows on it.

Is this an example of the "best" level performance that Gabe was talking about?

Considering 3rd parties can make whatever they want for the "high end" SteamBox models? Yep, it's fair to call it that. Especially since all the SteamBox really is a branded pre-built PC...

I think losing the subways, having the city sizes nerfed at around 200k max population, dumbing down the utilities, no local saves and a few other things are pretty horrible to be honest. The online problems just keep heaping on issue after issue.

Then you probably won't be buying another EA game for a long time. They've pretty much flat out stated that every game they're making in the future was going to be "live 24/7/365" with some form of always on.

Um, actually it uses the servers for algorithmic stuff that plays into how the simulation of the game runs. So yeah, there's that.

It won't happen. Consumers don't get the full game, a lot of things are 100% dependent on EA servers. Good luck with someone getting all that code...and good luck for your machine running all of it at once..

Aliens: Colonial Marines

It would be nice if some other studios actually picked up the IP's....I think that may actually be the best situation. Hopefully the developers could remain intact after the dismantling...

The WiiU is the 2nd best console launch, behind only the Wii in the first couple of months. (3.2mil Wii, 3mil Wii U).

I'm with you there. I can't believe that they're taking the company in this direction at all. It's like they don't even care.

The thing is, this time they have support from Sony. The PS4 has all this wrapped up in there for them. Probably why Nintendo wouldn't play ball with them. They didn't want all this in there.

I was a bigger fan of Sega Marine Fishing...that was even more batshit crazy fun...