@senselocke: You seem to be assuming that collectors make up some vast majority of the gaming populace. If my time working in game stores is any indication, most people don't give a shit about BC. All the people who talk about it online? They care. Their friends? Of course they care, because common interests…

@Nulls: You are reading too much into what I said, and therefore not reading what I said at all.

@Nulls: If you don't see what everyone else in the comment thread sees, then good on you. I would gladly challenge you to find me an advertising agency, though, that things putting a cartoon Italian plumber (or some equivalent character) next to a little boy in a bath tub is a good idea.

@ZombieDispatch: Actually, it's kind of an interesting commentary. This is a 20 year old ad. If it were released today, the amount of outrage it would receive, particularly coming from a major family-friendly company like Nintendo, would at least be note-worthy, though not necessarily damning.

@Golgari: Sales are a representation of popularity. All of the games I listed are artistically stylized because of the Wii's lack of graphics processing, and yet they are just as successful if not more so than many better looking games.

@Golgari: Game mechanics have nothing to do with graphics. The fact that casual games on the internet are so successful is a huge testament to that fact. People still play old blocky arcade games because they're fun, not because they're flashy.

@NoBullet: You're talking the difference between objective value and subjective value, though, which is what I was pointing out.

@NoBullet: Fair is a relative term here. Fair within the system? Definitely. The behavior is not something that is restricted, nor is it one that breaks anything for other players. I say break in the sense that no rules have been circumvented, no numbers have been hacked, and everything has been earned on her…

@mariospants: It's Star Wars. Give the fans too much of the same, and they'll complain, but if you make it too different, they'll also complain.

Hey. Hey Mike. How about you wait to see what the storyline is when the game comes out? I'm not saying things are going to radically shift in the comic world (though it's likely the event will be over by the summer), but it seems that it would be fairly hard to follow a storyline that's happening RIGHT NOW in a…

@MrGOH: What are you talking about? The behavior Microsoft is exhibiting is incredibly similar to the theft policy. Just because the government isn't involved in the EULA enforcement doesn't make the comparison wrong. I never said that it was the law; just that the principle was the same.

@Fernando Jorge: Welcome to every trend ever. In the late 2010's, people will get tired of whatever the standard is, and it will shift again. It'll happen again in the 2020's, and the 2030's, ad nauseum.

@phisheep: Thing is, this policy isn't any different than theft policies. If you buy stolen property off of someone, and it is discovered that the property is stolen, you are legally required to give up what you've purchased at no compensation. Unless you can trace the thief and get your money back, whomever is last…

@FreeJack2k2002: dd528 pretty much hit the issue. Deatj Race, which was essentially the first really 'controversial' game, was released in 1976, and actually sparked protests. If you figure the lower end of the game-playing populace that was going to arcades was somewhere around 10, then you're dealing with people…

@UsernameOfTheDead: An inferior product that Valve was directly responsible for not making because of their aversion to the PS3.

I'm glad to see some positive opinions making an appearance in what I honestly expected to be a host of jeers and complaints. I've been a musician for fifteen years, and have enjoyed everything Harmonix has done thus far. I have a lot of faith in their ability to present games to the public, and really, if they can…

@AceofCase: That is certainly the case, but the concept of what is 'free' is an interesting one here.

@Xaevier: You already pay money to access new content. It's called buying an expansion.

Sigh. Statistics lead to such poor headlines.

@Brian Ashcraft: Only if you completely unnecessarily assign a male gender to a nonspecific word like giant, and then feel compelled to be progressive and add a feminine suffix to the previously genderless word you masculinized, most likely for the sake of feeling progressive about feminizing.