I think those people with cards that fried because of this are more likely to go with ATI as the replacement rather than getting a new Fermi :)
Uh... yeah... okay...
And how the heck would they even carry out this plan? Mmm.... the Internet is kinda worldwide or did MS just forget about that altogether?
Good luck trying to convince Russia, Japan, China, France, Australia, Iceland, India, Iran and the other roughly two hundred countries of various development levels and government forms on this planet.
Oh, and then have them come to some agreement on how much to tax, how to collect the taxes and ...
I'm not seeing this update at all on my system. Neither in the installed, nor available updates (checked both important and optional). Is this validation update a worldwide thing for all versions of Windows 7 or is it limited to specific editions, regions or languages?
If you're only seeing 25% CPU usage in Flight Simulator X, then you're clearly doing something wrong. Did you install SP2 or Acceleration (which includes SP2)? Did you try and install any high end addons like the Flight1 Mustang or the PMDG MD-11? Did you throw in REX/FEX, GEX, ASA/ASE, UT Alaska and Ultimate Traffic 2? High res terrain mesh such as FSGenesis as well?
I've seen Flight Simulator X max out all cores on my 3.8GHz quad core. 100% CPU usage. It's frankly a bit scary w...
Ubisoft is really doing well these days, eh?
That's a fine approach if you just want to play generic shooter of the month #3859356, but if you, like me, prefer to play games such as Flight Simulator X, X3 Terran Conflict or run multiple MMO clients at the same time, max. CPU performance becomes critical and multiple graphics cards are pretty much useless.
What I'm trying to say is that what you want to use it for is what's important and not -all- games are about beefy graphics cards.
Aye... that's what I can gather from looking at a torrent site as well (not curious enough to waste my time, bandwidth and play the russian roulette with my system to actually find out in person).
Of course, it appears that the game has been released in such a buggy state that it's hard to determine what is caused by bugs and what is being caused by the DRM crack.
Ubisoft's statement reminds me of good old 'Baghdad Bob', the former Iraqi Information Minister. Here's a quote for added lulz.
"They're not even [within] 100 miles [of Baghdad]. They are not in any place. They hold no place in Iraq. This is an illusion ... they are trying to sell to the others an illusion."
So... Ubi... how much money did you spend on this DRM thing? Figure it was worth it? How many people did it prevent from getting an illegal copy vs. how many people decided not to buy your product over this?
Yeah... it doesn't take a degree in bean counting to figure out that this was a bad idea.
lol...
Ubisoft's DRM appears to have been cracked on Silent Hunter V and Assassin's Creed 2. So much for that brilliant idea LOL.
Not that I have any intention of buying this... heck, I wouldn't even bother wasting my bandwidth if Ubisoft offered it completely legally for free. But damn, I hope someone manages to crack it before release. That would make me laugh so hard.
LOL... a 12 core CPU running at 2.2GHz would be a downgrade compared to my old quad core running at 3.75GHz considering that I can barely find anything that'll make use of my 4 cores, but plenty of things that could make good use of some extra GHz on just one of the cores (asymmetrical core speed? Hmm...). Perhaps if I wanted to run 12 EVE online clients or something... then it could potentially be useful.
That was sorta anti-climactic, wasn't it?
Just let them do it. It's their money. It's their property. It's their right. It's also our right not to buy their products. Remember that last part. That's the one that will make them change their minds when they see it isn't paying off and that the pirates are still looting their booty right in front of their noses. By all means, fight the pirates, but use appropriate measures instead of giving your loyal customers a broadside of grapeshot.
A strong Blizzard fan based served as the foundation. Then pop culture and advertising did the magic and turned it into a black hole sucking in everybody, even people who had never heard of MMOs before. Heck, even non-gamers have been zombiefied by the wizards at Blizzard (hah! it rhymes!).
I mean... all your cool partying friends are playing WoW. Even that hot goth chick you want is playing WoW (forsaken warlock of course). Your boss is playing WoW too and wants you to join his ...
Did they just completely forget to mention Cataclysm (WoW expansion) or do I need to get my vision checked again?
I love Steam for the convenience it brings, but it doesn't pause my game in the middle of things if my ADSL modem decides to do a hiccup, nor am I forced to keep my save games on their server. It even has an offline mode even though I've never tried to use it, so how well it works I don't know. What Ubisoft is proposing is far more draconian.
If it was exactly like Steam, I would have had no problem with it and just accepted it as the lesser of two evils - ie. the need to log in ...
Not to mention that save games in some games can be freaking huge. Like the 50+ MB savegames that Empire Total War tends to generate in the grand campaign mode. On my ADSL connection, it would take at least 10 minutes to upload that kind of data and about a minute to load. How the heck is that supposed to work out? Even 30 seconds just to save a game is going to make some people seriously upset.
I don't mind preorder bonuses...
But when a company pushes this many preorder bonuses and makes such a big deal about it while also doing the whole lifetime subscription thing, I can't help but get the feeling that they're desperate and that they know the game won't have lasting appeal. This in turn makes me actually -less- likely to preorder a game.
Can't say I've been following this particular game.
But 15 hours?
Ya kidding?
That means you could be done with it in a weekend. Not exactly good value for money or am I completely missing something?