Or a twelve-pound bowling ball, or a lucky-lucky autographed glow-in-the-dark snorkel.

The point is...is doesn't matter that it doesn't cost them any extra to sell an extra product. The point is...every time they give away a product for free, that is presumably one less person who paid for it. Obviously some people will take for free what they would never buy. But plenty of people who would otherwise buy it will take it for free. If they have five friends or remote acquaintances who want the software, which plenty of people will, it's essentially lowering the price to 1/6.

Don't like "tangible" examples? Here's something less "tangible". Every movie studio, when they release videos, now start putting the video online as a free download. Videos are not tangible because a DVD costs almost nothing to make. The only real revenue they would lose it what people would pay for it otherwise. But that revenue would be a LOT.

It all goes back to the elementary school economics lesson--products are not worth the sum of their parts or how much it costs to make them. Products are worth what someone will pay for them.

I think it's fair to say that Nintendo's third party games aren't that great. But that fact is balanced out by the sheer number of great exclusive series' Nintendo has. Playstation has lost a lot of its exclusives and Xbox just hasn't been around long enough. There's something impressive about a company that can continue to make really good games for series' as old as Zelda, Mario, or Metroid. Part of their quality is in nostaliga, and part is just the confidence that you know, if it's got those names on it, chances are it will be good. Have there been bad Mario or Zelda games? Sure, but the majority of them have either been groundbreaking or just flat good games.

A lot of people cite the Wii as a casual gaming system. I agree with this. But "casual" doesn't have to mean kids, moms, and nursing homes. I like the Wii--but not for Wii Sports, Wii Fit, or anything like that. I'm not a hardcore gamer, but I am fairly familiar with gaming, but I still prefer Nintendo games for the most part. Sometimes I am willing to trade graphics or difficulty for a game that is just plain fun. Which should be what games are about anyway.

In the end, whichever console wins for me is the one that releases the next legitimate Suikoden game :)

Include the one in the title.

I suppose this is the fifth time in a decade they've appeared in the same sentence.

I think someone already made this joke.

I wasn't waiting for someone to make that joke.

I was waiting for someone to make that joke.

Is this actually supposed to be anything close to legitimate?

(1) Most of what is on this video is the kind of stuff people wanted in the days of Star Trek TOS--until they realized half of it wasn't possible and the other half was annoying.

(2) I doubt any user is going to be that polite to their digital slave. I'm certainly not calling mine by name.

(3) I would only be cordial to that device if its face was displayed like EVE from WALL-E.

(4) If Google ever starts showing every page it bypasses while doing a search I'm switching email providers.

Co-worker: Hey, John, just got you some decaf from the machine over there.
You: Sweet, thanks. If you don't mind.
[dips testing strip into it]

Thirty seconds later....
You: I was actually starting to like you...I thought you were an honest person...
Co-worker: Blast! I've been found out!