No offence, but there is good reason why the author is a games editor and not a business consultant. Throughout the article, I was looking forward to his advice, and all he came up with is "work within your financial constraints to come up with a sustainable business model." God, where to begin. First off, a business model is not purely internal, and also includes shaping the market for your product. If the market structure is so that there are huge sales channels where you do not render a profit, you will try to change them to your advantage. You may consider a system where intellectual property enforcement structures are adapted so that there is a refund structure also when selling second hand games. Given penchant for deregulation in the US, and the lobbying costs associated with that, publishers rather reshape the structure of their product. Games production is not a charity, but a business. The "bottom line" of which the editor speaks is working within external constrains, and focusing on their method for creating games. If he had thought it through, this means: less staff spending less hours on their games. Congratulations dear editor, you just suggested EA and others to fire their staff, rather than you, when purchasing a second hand game which they produced, giving a few dollars to them for continuing their business.
I'm in favour of mild copy protection like serial numbers and the like. For me, there are games which I simply think deserve to be bought by us, like Crysis, GTA, ..., because of all the effort that went into developing them. However, I do wonder how many such gamers there are? GTA IV was way over the top for example, and I will not forget the head-ache causing horrifyingly long installation process in which the stupid social club wouldn't log on, I had authentication problems, and so on. Sure, that is punishing me, and I hated rockstar for it, but nevertheless I do understand them. It's not about greed as many of you say, but it's simply about protecting an investment. If you don't get that, read a bit more newspapers. We live in a world based on regulated free markets, and investment protection is a part of this, through international investment treaties, through contracts between companies, through intellectual property rights, and through DRM. It's a fact of life, and a fact of the economy, the point is just to find the right balance. That balance has been off for a while, and the fact that it's swinging back is a sign that companies are indeed trying to walk that middle-road, and that's a good thing. In the end, I don't think PC gaming is dead, if only for people like me who can only use their laptop b/c of traveling.
why pay 650USD for a netbook that may run some recent games when 750USD will get you a laptop that will run GTA 4 at 25 fps. (HP Dv5's will do that) The plus is that the mini-screen won't blow out your eyes after a few hours. And gamespot, the 'you wont shed tears if someone steals your netbook' argument is ridiculous. If someone steals my laptop I couldn't care less about the laptop in comparison to the data that I would lose. (regardless of regular backups) In these days intellectual property is often much more valuable than physical property, as is the time wasted trying to recover from the theft of your workspace!
When I play games i want to play games. if the game gets me so bored that I need to start surfing to entertain me the game must be crap and hence i will stop playing it. I have not really felt the need to alt-tab for browsing, but rather to switch of background processes, switch on fraps, and the like. for me this is kindof totally useless.
I really liked the combination of story, shooting and some little puzzles. The chapters they do now however really were a bad move I think, I'm just waiting for all three chapters and will play them then...
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