Wait... what? So the fact that some people find FarmVille (which I personally dislike) fun and addictive to play, makes them stupid? Just who the hell decides if a game is good, you? If they find a particular game fun, it doesn't mean they're stupid, it just means they find that particular game fun, and it's all the better for them, because they have something they like.

Seriously, what the hell?

You talk about the Wii being a gimmick yet it's almost identical stuff. Only the camera is mounted on the TV instead of on the controller. I'm not seeing where it is majorly different or more accurate.

That just makes them have different opinions. Obviously, FarmVille must be a great game, because many many people seem to love it. It is a great game for their target audience.

I know nothing about Forza 4. Forza 3 is very realistic, and I think it's better than GT. I played the demo of GT, and the physics didn't feel as real as they could be. And I was expecting to like GT more.

Causing wrecks is fun too, but realistic crashes, no matter how much you're denying it, are very much a part of a realistic simulation. Car wear happens. Stuff breaks. Crashes happen. To think wrecks aren't a real part of racing would be like real life racers not building any safety features into their vehicles ("you don't need them if you do it right").

It may have made more sense, may not have. I'm not going to pretend to know. But if the same thing happened with Sony, I doubt they'd just jump up and redesign, etc. Especially when you have other options. Being a professional software developer (at least I seem to think you are) you should know that you always go with the low cost/low risk options first.

Or the conditions just weren't right. Think about safety recalls with vehicles, etc. Just because there are lots of affected units doesn't mean a majority, let alone all, of them will actually experience the problem.

I'm not doubting that. I'm just going on the report I read that stated essentially what I said -- that the CPU overhead isn't a huge deal because its when the CPU would typically be idle anyhow.

The PS3 camera has more power to it. The Wii is nothing but an infrared camera that looks for some bright spots. Doesn't mean it's will be more accurate. With just one globe, it does NOT get the angle. With bad lighting, the camera only see the globe. It it just knows how far from the camera it is, and that's it. You could pretend you're rubbing some jail bars, and the controller won't pick it up because everything tracking it won't see much (if any) movement. Actually, the Wii remote works better as a pointer from what I can see...

For one thing, the Wii can't detect precise movement. Maybe it can with the MotionPlus or maybe it can't. I've heard it can't, but others say it can. I know for sure that the Wii itself is lacking in processing power far worse than the 360 is. At E3, Sony joked that gamers want to box with important body parts, like arms and necks.

The target audience is gullible people that are easily distracted by simple and repetitive actions that pretend to reward you. Add to that an advertising scam and you have yourself profit (and a crappy game). I can't believe you're defending FarmVille... Now it doesn't seem like such a stretch to defend Halo and Gears. When did consumers become more interested in retailers than themselves? Wii is good because it sells. FarmVille is good because it sells. Ugh.

I agree with that entirely. On the other hand, we're not professional racers and I think it would be a pretty deterring experience to have done nothing wrong, but have a shaft break and send you into a wall, making the past 60 minutes of your life fruitless. I don't think it's feasible to reach that level of complexity while still maintaining realistic track performance. As a general rule, though, if you crash your car in Gran Turismo, you're probably going to have no chance of recovering or at least you'll struggle (unless you're taking a super car to a beginner level race). Again, I would very much appreciate the realism of damage and car wrecks, etc. I can get a little bit of a taste from GTA IV though. From Gran Turismo, the racing physics are more important than how spectacular the wrecks are.

I'm a software developer, not a software salesman. I'm interested in getting it right. The money part of the deal is someone else' problem. In general, business tries to do it the cheap and "easy" way, but that usually ends up costing the user more time and money.

See my edit. When did consumers become more interested in retailers than themselves? It doesn't matter how much money the developer made. That doesn't define a good game... It defines a successful or profitable game.

Who said anything about attack? In Gran Turismo, you can't "attack" as that's against the rules. If you attempt to hit other cars you're penalized. The ability to rewind and try again would be quite useful during practice runs, but I don't think it should be available during actual races.

The original Gran Turismo on PlayStation had tire wear. I don't know for sure when it was introduced, but Gran Turismo 4 (2004-2005) definitely supported fuel as well.

Well if somebody was actually at fault for it then they never should have cut the corners they did. I don't see why the consumer should have to pay for their mistakes. If they didn't make mistakes then they shouldn't be concerned about addressing the problem. That wouldn't make for a very good company for anyone, employee nor consumer.

You should be able to tell management that you're not sure what's wrong and that you're going to do some testing to figure out if there is a flaw in the design. If Microsoft isn't willing to do that then I'm obviously completely right about them as a company. The alternative is that they did know what was wrong with the design and didn't want to admit it. Either way, bad for consumer (i.e., us you).

It is a good game. LOTS of people play it. If nobody thought it was a good game, nobody would play it. It may not seem like a good game to you, but I can guarantee that Gears of War, Gran Turismo, God of War, or even GTA fall into the 'good game' category in my grandmother's eyes (and she even happens to play FarmVille).

So owning up to the mistake isn't good enough now? A problem happened. Doesn't matter why or how, but it did. So of course they should address the problem and stand by their product. I'm not sure what you're arguing against.

It's not bad for me as the consumer BECAUSE I WASN'T LEFT WITH THE PRODUCT AND TOLD TO GO POUND SALT. I was left with something that may break, that had its original warranty TRIPLED just to reassure me that it would be fixed if it died. Sure I am inconvenienced, but you always take the risk of having problems whenever you buy anything. I've tried, and failed, to apply your thoughts of redesign to several other industries. Major recall on a vehicle? Scrap it, redesign it, and replace everyone's for free! Big security hole in a piece of software? Delete it and rewrite from scratch!

And how do you know what did or didn't happen with management regarding a flaw in the design? The bottom line is, they shipped consoles with a problem, and they now have to do damage control. Immediately scrapping the current design and starting over, without fully understanding the problems or attempting to address it with a lower cost, lower risk solution doesn't make sense. It appeals to the perfectionist in you, but it does not make good business sense.

If this is what happens at your work, then I wonder if you guys ever complete anything. There are always flaws in products. That doesn't mean you can constantly start over and never ship anything. That's called analysis paralysis, and when a business follows that model, things like Duke Nukem: Forever happen.

Exactly. It doesn't mean any of them aren't good games. They all have a large group of players who enjoy playing it, so that's good enough for me to call it good.

ET for the Atari 800/2600 was crap, objectively.

I liked it though when I was 9.

Personally, the Wii controller is simple, cheap and works. Most of the games don't use 1:1 because there are obstacles you cannot overcome. For example, if you are Kratos and swing your sword against a rock, you will gesture the full movement up down even though Kratos' sword bounces against the rock, thus losing the 1:1 accuracy (you expect the sword to be down when it is actually on top of the rock). Unless you give him a light saber (or make his sword so sharp he can kill anyone with a single stroke, which I hope we agree would be kind of dull), there are times when even if your controller can process 1:1 movement, it will be lost.

Nobody wants to have his Kratos beheaded because suddenly you answered the phone and with the movement the controller pointed at your head for a second.

Sony improved the Wii controller concept (while Microsoft changed it, personally players still want to hold onto something when playing to get physical rewards like sounds or vibration), however I doubt we will see games that couldn't have worked in a Wii (talking purely about the input method, and not the output like graphics, sounds, etc).

Speak for yourself. If you don't want to be beheaded then you should have paused the game.

I think you're going to have to explain how anyone would find that "childish".