what about the difficulty level?? doesnt that count? play gears of war on normal - quite relaxing, a few strugling moments, bt overall easy fun. try difficult - having trouble where u didnt b4? thought so... and the impossible level got its name for a reason. i think this way game dev's can make games appealing to both casuals AND hardcores. right, some games do lack that. and that is a problem. bt where u have t, i think ts quite a fair compromise between selling what they need to sell and h...
dont no if u haver realized, bt this article hardly supports ts points with any data, moreover, it only talkes about Xbox in superlatives and is completely bias, not even mentioning that many of those futures is used by other consoles just as well
come on, xbox (or any other platform) isnt just about online!! i enjoy single just as much, if not more, as multi! ts not the end of the world if u cant play multi for a day. and playing single doesnt necceserly need to b viva pinata. CoD4, GoW all those games are amazing at single too. and then there are things like AC, which dont have multi at all, and they are still amazing!
as always there are positives and negatives:
personally, i would love to have a system like PSN or Xbox Live FULLY integrated on PCs - unfortunately, although GfWL is a step in the right direction, its nt as good as t should b - it is only a small portion of what the consoles have. It is also not popular enough -too few games have it. There, THQ is taking the right step - t might b a bit of a pain in the ass, bt t always comes with changes. And if this change will make more ppl get GfWL...