I've been a paid subscriber since around 2001, and fondly remember receiving a 2005 E3 DVD set (as well as the following year's E3 event from my Gamespot DVD image download) free for being a paid member. Initially I paid because of the faster download times for patches, and Gamespot hosted quite an extensive collection of those, back before services like Steam and GOG took care of all that for us. Since then I've just maintained a paid membership to show some support for a service that I've come to appreciate even if I don't use it nearly as often as I used to. Invasive ads, whose source servers can be infected and thus serve us malware, are not a change that I look forward to seeing, so I, too, will be forced to resort to an ad blocking browser extension for security's sake. It's a shame, really.
@Cryptic_Shadow Perfect Dark had a few more interesting guns (I liked the one that could see and shoot through walls), but it ran a lot choppier (lower FPS) than Goldeneye, so I'll still regard Goldeneye more favorably.
Will this be the MMORPG that finally kills WoW, or will it join the heap of many others (Aion, Rift, Guild Wars, Conan, Tabula Risa, D&D, Star Trek, etc.) that tried and failed?
I recommend not trading in or selling your games if you can afford it, because then you can go back to that older software once you've upgraded your hardware and run it at higher or even top graphics settings. I've replayed several games this way, including Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights, No One Lives Forever, Counterstrike, Might & Magic 6-9, etc., and often the difference in graphics quality is so obvious that it's like playing an entirely new game!
I wouldn't recommend immediately purchasing an entire system upon an operating system's debut. Give it a year or two and the wrinkles should be ironed out, and more software should be available by then that's exclusively compatible with it, or at least optimized for it. That's what I did in late 2001 when I chose to buy a Win98 computer (my second with that OS) over one with XP (I didn't get an XP computer until mid-2004). I'd be hard pressed to buy a whole new system on a relatively untested OS based on just one or two games, despite the Halo series' popularity and quality. Unless those games are a part of the Wizardry, X-Com, or Jagged Alliance franchises, of course.
Yeah, I burned everything successfully, and I can promise you that the Sony conference was way more than 184 megs; it's 4.3 gigs just as it says above the orange "Burn Full DVD" button. I loved all the press conferences, including Sony's, which I took seriously, despite all the badmouthing from fanboys who are discouraged by the PS3's delays and expensiveness. All the next-gen consoles by Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo look robust and appealing, but if I had to choose only one (I'm primarily a PC gamer), it would probably be the Xbox 360, because it's more widely available, the least expensive, and has software both available now (Dead Rising) and eventually (Grand Theft Auto 4) that I find more interesting than the franchises linked to the other platforms.
Princeweasel, those HD Download buttons I think are only for watching on your computer in a format other than DVD (WMV, AVI, or whatever). Start over and select "Burn Full DVD," then use your burner program to copy the .iso image from your hard drive to your blank DVD-R.
I have Earthlink DSL, and the fastest connection I got to download these DVDs was around 170 kbps. Obviously not all broadband connections are equal. I'm just glad I managed to successfully download all 5 DVDs on my first try with no hiccups or crashes. Now, about the DVDs' content, I especially like how spokesmen for Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo pitch their system's features and advantages. They're slick! I couldn't help but wonder how long each had prepared and rehearsed, or whether any of them delivered their speeches or at least select portions of such extemporaneously. They all did a splendid job.
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