@caiphascain: while generally I would agree with you, the pandemic saw large business execs make record money while doing things like paycuts and furloughs for workers claiming they couldn't afford to pay them. The execs absolutely should be raked over he coals here.
@JustPlainLucas: it's not a rental though. You get the movie for repeated viewings. You effectively are buying it. The only reason to buy a BluRay is for the higher quality due to higher bitrate of the film.
I just built a new comp. Although I enjoy it, I hope it's my last. I'd love to see streaming take off. I'd rather focus $$ on better display, controllers, and VR. Here's hoping.
The xbox may have better textures but in most of the games the images look washed out. The overall contrast difference between the brights and the darks on the xbox is lower in almost every shot. Batman is the most drastic IMO. The PS3 just looks better. I think the big problem is that the games are simply designed for xbox first then ported over. When code is optimized for the PS3 first then ported over the PS3 version usually looks better. They are both probably quite equal as far as capability. It depends more on the programmers IMO.
I really like the fact that this article sheds light on the good things going on over at Stardock. Impulse isn't a perfect platform yet, but I feel it is the best of the options available. Sins of a Solar Empire should be evidence that DRM free games sell perfectly well. The game was developed by a small company and published by Stardock, yet it had better sales than many games that are released by the giants of the industry. The game would be easy to pirate and require no headaches on the user end but people who wanted to buy the game, still bought it. DRM is nothing more than an inconvenience for people who buy software legally. Not only that, it actually costs the publisher more because they have to buy the DRM software and devote resources to integrating into their game and later extensive customer support. The money saved by dropping DRM would most certainly make up for the small number of "casual pirates" discussed in this article. DRM is put in games to appease ignorant stockholders and board members who want to feel that their product is "safe."
For my consoles I can buy the game, loan it out to all my friends, then resell it on eBay for nearly what I paid for it. DRM design over the last few years has been targeted to have a single copy of a game work for one user on a handful of systems. It seems quite obvious to most PC gamers that the publishers would just rather not have to deal with PC gaming because the install base for consoles is just so much higher. They have every right to do that, but they should be up front about it. They aren't fooling anyone with claims of invasive DRM having any positive affect on piracy. Go back to the CD key in the box a disc check on game startup. Heck, you could throw other random disc checks in for security. I used to hate disc check because I would have multiple games installed that I would play, but I have become used to it with my consoles now. It is good to see that publishers are backing off of this issue even if it did take them too many games to realize it. Spore is a game that never touched my system. I dealt with that crap in Bioshock and was not about to deal with a more restrictive version.
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