didnt i just read about them defending the use of the same engine in spite of technophiles wanting better graphics? really didnt take long for the PR guys to cave in and start talking about how the graphics are improved, did it?

and as ive said before, graphics are about the one thing the CoD franchise doesnt need to improve on, yet apparently that is what people want. i dont know how much of that is PR guys spinning the fact that this is the same game with more vividly detailed dirt textures, and how much is actual demands for graphical improvement by eternally unsatisfied graphics whores, but its depressing either way.

you BELIEVE its anti-consumer? is there someone who believes blocking used games would somehow be to our advantage?

whatever. an executive is smart enough to not announce to the world his blatantly greed-driven plans that can in no reality be viewed as positive to the millions of consumers who hear it. he has actually outright opposed a plan to shamelessly try and control more of the market than he already does. this says to me that he is not so greedy as to viciously hunt down and dominate every aspect of the business that does not exist to make him more money. i think we have sunken low enough that this guy should be running everything. it sure as hell cant hurt.

call of duty is a giant self-sustaining pile of money. given this generation's utter lack of concern or interest in anything that doesnt allow them to communicate impersonally with people they barely know, and who prizes convenience over quality to such ludicrous extremes not seen since the invention of home television, i can see the problem. CoD barely has to do anything to make horrendous amounts of money because it perfectly reflects a modern society of people who barely do anything and expect to be rewarded just as disproportionately. the mere effort of having to do more in a game to entertain yourself than pointing and shooting is a huge obstacle to overcome, not to mention the lack of seventy-gajillion dollars to spend on development, or working within a development cycle that was designed for a game series that has bottomless funds and needs very little time to make.

its definitely tough going, but we need games like fallout and deus ex to reverse this trend and get people to realize that stuff you have to work at tends to have a much greater payoff than the stuff that does nothing but kill time between texts and facebook.

EA has consistently run a number of gaming companies into the ground, which is probably enough to justify persson's statement already. add to that their propensity for yearly releases, their ongoing ruination of beloved RPG company bioware, and a series of recent PR kerfuffles and i have to agree the EA really aint doing any good for the industry. sure, some of their massive scrooge mcduck pool of money goes to fund decent games, but that kind of stuff is either hum drum business that any other publisher could do, or deliberate attempts to draw attention away from their less civic-minded investments. they also love to reinforce a completely f**ked up development cycle that has turned games into a mad dash to cram as much HD graphics onto a disc as fast as humanly possible with little time or effort left for anything substantial.

but the thing is, if they were gone, activision would fill the vacuum, and that would be WAY worse than anything EA could do. its like the bush presidency; we couldnt get rid of him because it meant cheney would take over. what we really need is more indie stuff and more publishers as competition, because as it stands we have 2 behemoths so secure in their power that the only thing they feel the need to improve is the quality of childish insults they sling at each other over who has the most profitable FPS series.

well of course multiplayer is important in a world that has been beaten by CoD and GoW into a breeding ground for man-children so insecure they feel the need to constantly prove their ability in video games to random people online, in the same way that alcohol is important in a world where the ability to consistently numb you senses until you are barely aware of anything ruins your life and coincidentally gives you a really good reason to be drunk.

the point being; the only people who are really being helped by booze are the people selling it, so no, i dont think japanese devs need to become as shameless and creatively bankrupt as american devs. they may not make as much money, but they certainly make the better games, which is of benefit to me.

every dollar and every second spent on multiplayer is one not spent on single player. even if the two components are developed separately and do not interfere with each other, the multiplayer team is still getting resources and using talents that would otherwise be used to better the single player. this mindset that a tacked-on multiplayer is somehow justified because the PR department assures you it wont affect the single player really needs to stop, especially when it creates such low standards that "it would be a worthwhile contribution to the game as a whole" has been replaced by "i dont have a problem with it." is it really so bad that the most we can expect from games is to not offend us any further than they already do?

Japan also tries to make robots act in theatre and specializes in cartoons of tentacled child molesters. idolizing pro gamers is one of their lesser crimes against humanity :)

ah, pro gamers, ever toiling to advance video games further and further in the wrong direction. at least when the average COD player buys the next yearly release, he has the excuse of just wanting something to kill time or being 12. i cannot even begin to fathom the mindset of someone who looks at one of the most casual, simplistic games on the market and wants to obsess over every minor detail and turn a game about dumb fun into a friggin spreadsheet of tactics and meta-gaming.

i beg you activision: make your yearly cash cow, exploit the very exploitable market all you damn well please, but for the love of god please dont start taking these psychotically obsessive weirdos seriously. i would take a game that caters to frat boys and children over a game that caters to pro gamers any day.

we cant get one honest gameplay trailer in without being assaulted with pre-order bonus bulls**t?!

@romanseight1

because if there is one thing that will destroy a content-packed series with big, open sandboxes and plenty of toys to mess around with, its minor graphical glitches...

you people do know that this is a sequel made by a new company after the previous company stated that that there would be no more direct sequels? you know this article is basically saying "its the same s**t, but with some new bells and whistles because they gave us a crapton of money and we didnt really need it"? also, that elite is hideous and cortana is supposed to be a computer, not a tattoed purple woman. the art team seems to have run out of ideas on how to repackage the same crap over and over again. are we reading the same thing here? am i in some parallel universe where this doesnt sound like an obvious cash-in?