BS tbh, "Net" will always be mysterious as it will always retain secret parts that are unknown to us.
Because you can see the water in your glass (of water), that doesn't mean you know the depths of the ocean. Same goes for the net, as your smartphone can maybe be considered a glass of water when compared how big the net / ocean is.
The (lack of) impact that the crew and the director made is directly tied to their ability. They are professionals that aimed to create a movie that will sell well. If GitS didn't manage to sell "well", why would you create a direct copy of it? Dumb it down, make a mix of various things that are currently popular, sell few moments to the fans and you earn money, which at the end of the day is the goal.
Am a GitS fan, and this, while not the best thing that could happen to GitS, is probably the best thing to happen to popularize anime / stories from anime / manga. As a sacrificial lamb, GitS will remain a gem that served more then one goal in the eyes of the fans.
P.S. "manage to sell well", actually GitS did quite well but that is not enough for Hollywood. For them "well" is to turn a profit when considered investments (and marketing), thus it needed to sell quite more then the original in the same time period.
Note: Am quite disappointed by Kojima-san. His words almost sound like he is making an excuse for them. Even if he was right (which i don't think he is), it was the director's duty to analyze the environment (world's perception of the Net) and measure / approximate the impact of core lines and if needed adjust them.
So if someone is gonna critique the movie, that person should try to actually critique what it is, not what we want it to be or make excuses why it failed to be what we wanted it to be.
@Judeuduarte: am not sure, but i think it's not hard to imagine that some of them were never cracked.
But as for why, well could be anything (shitty game, lack of resources, wanting to not overexpose themselves, take your pick).
Am not expert on the topic, but some groups do it for boasting reasons (number of games, different protections etc), so doing the same thing again might not be a challenge, though this is a special case since it has a new (higher level xD) protection and might taunt the crackers too much... Who knows :)
good : legal copy users receive updates, tweaks, multiplayer events etc that brings value to the customers
bad : legal copy users depend on updates because of the shitty state of the released game, ruining the experience and lowering the satisfaction they get (or well, feeling pissed off because they paid full price for a shitty release state)
technically, those that like the game (and pirated it) now are encouraged to buy a legal copy that brings "significant" updates and more value (or better said, less shitty product).
Pirates that stay on the "old cracked version" are stuck playing an inferior product until the new version is cracked, which isn't gonna happen soon.
* from what i understand there is just one group that is able to crack the anti-tempering system and they don't crack a game for each update.
But overall it just adds to the list of reasons why not to pre-order games. Buy a game when it's actually finished, though a warning: not many people will play it then (for multiplayer).
it would be an interesting idea to plug components in like cartridges (hdd, gpu, cpu).
Aside from that stuff like RAM it would be iffy.
But that would require different design to the board and cooling solutions for both cpu and gpu (meaning cooling should be on the gpu/cpu and you insert it like a box). Aside from cooling, power supply would need to be designed differently (so that cpu and gpu can get power).
Now that would create a shitload of problems such as different game performance for different gpu/cpu, bottle-neck in game design (catering to the worst setting and then patches / settings for different gpu/cpus) and testing would be nightmare compared to now. Now add patches for bugs, testing for different configurations etc... It would destroy the simplicity...
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