I don’t know about the other games, but Dragon Age probably won’t have DRM because of Bioware, not because of EA. From what I’ve heard, Bioware has a lot of autonomy within EA. As long as Bioware continues to meet their expectations, EA will likely continue to let them do their own thing.
C&C4 requires an active internet connection. That’s like reverting to the Mass Effect days, when that would require a constant internet connection to play until the community outcry changed it. The only thing that’s different is that there aren’t limited installs anymore.
EA management has to be looking at what happens with Dragon Age, however. If the game sells gangbusters (and it probably will) and they get good press out of the new “gamer-friendly” stance, then they might reconsider DRM.
DRM is expensive; it’s a real cost, with dubious (at best) benefits. I mean, a DRM’ed game virtually guarantees calls to the support line over time. People need to install the software more than the number of times the company claims they’re “allowed” to. (Not at first, but a few years down the road? If the games’ good, it has a much longer gameplay lifespan than sales lifespan.) People have technical issues because your product’s “protection” causes issues. People have technical issues because the authentication server experiences an outage. It’s very common for DRMed games to have issues due to the DRM, and not with the game itself, because DRM is fundamentally more complicated, meaning that these support calls are entirely the fault of the DRM. Support calls are expensive. I’ve seen industry people claim a single support call can wholly wipe out the profit from the sale of several copies of a piece of software.
Once they realize that they can avoid these problems by using simple things like CD checks, and still get the sales they want to see, then DRM will disappear. (Of course, this presumes that this outcome, in fact, happens. If Dragon Age underperforms …)
That’s the problem and my main source of concern–It alone isn’t enough of a deal to you.
That’s why I consider JAST USA as not being under the microscope and in a pretty good position to do it again. Just like how everybody bought EA’s games despite their complaints about the DRM so they kept on doing the same thing for their other titles, nobody gave a crap about the JAST’s censorship of KK in and of itself, so they’re more likely to do it again with future releases.
The way you guys handled things as of now, it seems that a censored game needs to be a sex romp that forgoes all forms of storytelling and gameplay in order for any real anti-censorship backlash to occur. I really appreciate the precedent you guys are setting here. I really do. :roll:
So you just bought into their marketing of it? They designed the game to inherently have a form of DRM. There’s no technical reason why they couldn’t make it work offline.
But I’m not going to waste my time arguing this anymore. If you want to accept a game that always phones home as DRM-free, go ahead.
Nonsense. This could easily be implemented in any number of ways that did not require a constantly-on internet connection. For example, upload-on-save, or upload-on-join-multiplayer-game. The method chosen is actually more difficult than many of these other options, therefore, when they claim that this is the reason, they must be lying.
Not that this isn’t an improvement in certain ways. “Requires an Internet connection to play” is less restrictive than “requires a net connection to play and can only be installed three times.”
However, it is still true that in ten years, either they will have released a patch (which will make single player keep track of what’s been unlocked, somehow, without phoning home, thus making this “reason” into an “excuse”) or the game won’t work anymore. Or perhaps not in ten, but in twenty? Is EA going to want to keep shelling out year after year to run these servers?
So has anyone played the Japanese version, or know someone who’s played the Japanese version, or read a review from someone who’s played the Japanese version? I’m thinking of pre-ordering on the basis that A) it looks to be something a little different; B) I like the character designs; and C) it’s relatively cheap. But the last two games I bought for these very same reasons, Raidy and Pretty Solider Wars, were… not so good.
There’s some discussion along those lines on the first page. I’d say your fears about this game are justified. If you’re afraid of being disappointed, you should probably wait and see what people think of it after it’s released.
I’ve leveled a few complaints about the game’s sequel as well. As good as the models look, if the cars sound horrible, and the animation/graphic work isn’t exactly that good, then you’ve got a problem on your hands. Hell, even Genki’s bank of engine notes (a few for each engine type) they use in their Shutokou Battle and Kaido Battle series sound better than that!
I like the art for the characters, but the racing part doesn’t really appeal to me … I guess I’ll have to wait and see how it turns out. I have liked some games that probably got equally savaged by Japanese reviewers.
The last post on JAST USA’s blog (http://www.jastusa.com/2009/09/cat-girl … e-preview/) says that they are waiting for the discs to come back from the replicators. Now that JAST USA has a decent website again, you should just use that for updates and ignore the other “brand” websites.
Right, I think the new JAST USA website is the Payne empire’s answer for collecting together all the disorganized branches of their label.
???
Actually considering gaming companies haven’t been on board for the move to vista and actually resisting it (and by extention Windows 7 which is built to model after Vista) because of the bloat and problems it has with simple stuff like savegames and memory usage, it is starting to become an issue for getting people to upgrade.
Windows 7 is supposed to work a lot better than Vista.
There’s a lot of problems with Vista, but (having never used it myself) many of the problems seem to be associated with the move from 32-bit to 64-bit and the incompatibilities that result. To really fix that, you need to emulate a 32-bit system, which I believe is a feature that comes with Windows 7.
yes, W7 can emulate 32 bit quite nicely and very easily. It’s far and away a better product than Vista, it’s really what Vista should have been. It has better compatibility, stability, and resource management. It’s also far more sensible to get around, and the new addition of Aero: Peek is a fantastic way of expanding the functionality of the taskbar. I’ve been running it for quite some time as my primary gaming machine.
Also, all my VNs just WORK in W7, I haven’t come across a single one that didn’t (though for a few older ones i’ve had to touch the compatability settings).
Anyway, as you can tell, i’m a HUGE fan of Windows 7 over Vista (or any other MS OS really, i’m a Linux guy primarily).
It would be cool if someone wrote up a profile page for the cars. Hell I would do it if whoever’s managing the site will accept my submission.
does the racing demand alot of skill to do
I don’t believe there’s any racing “gameplay” in the first game.