It might not sound underpowered at all at first, but read the whole thing.

Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz processor, 2x250GB 7200RPM drives in RAID-0 on an MSI P6N SLI Platinum mobo with 4GB DDR800 RAM, 1x160GB 7200 RPM drive for torrents, 1x300GB 7200 RPM drive for usenet downloads, MSI Radeon X1900 XT for video... that being said... the X1900 is the loudest video card ever made I'm pretty sure. I makes my teeth rattle it's so unbelievably loud. The real sucky part is that the MSI motherboard, despite claiming to be all Platinum and all, is an unreliable piece of crap. Most of the USB ports don't work. I think it might be killing my 2 download drives, as both are only about a year old but are reporting their next estimated crash will happen in February 08. An Asus board is on its way to replace it... never again will I be buying MSI.

Though the demo is controlled as you would expect, the controls for the final game are, inexplicably, identical to the controls in the recent Resident Evil 4 release on the PC. The only controls available are a WIRED Xbox 360 controller (must be the only game controller attached to PC) and the keyboard. No mouse support.

There is also no way to exit the game. Well, aside from power slamming your machine.

It also requires Vista.

What on earth makes you guys think we'll ever see this device used in any product? Several companies have had chips out that will do MPEG-2 encoding of 1080i content for years... and they're not used. DVRs record an MPEG-2 stream directly as it is broadcast. They don't do any of the encoding.

This chip would be useful for one thing - encoding from an ANALOG source to h.264. That is the primary fear of the MPAA. That is why we don't have any reasonable way to capture HD content. Go ahead, search around for a capture card that takes component video, DVI, or HDMI and encodes it into MPEG-2. The only ones that exist are upwards of $10k and intended for TV stations.

This chip will be used in consumer devices over the MPAAs dead body. The only light of day it will see will be in devices that cost more than a car that companies will use to produce content for the iTunes store or something like that.

Warning: Do NOT rely on the pathing code driving NPCs if you get the 'take 3 year old newphew shopping' quest!

Gamestop is driving mom and pop shops out of business? I'm sorry but I just don't see how. Go to Gamestop, get $1 for your trade-in and only $5 off the brand new price for a used game. How can that possibly hold a candle to mom and pop shops that can offer MUCH better deals? Trade-in credit for 50% of retail price, discount of 25% off retail price for used games. Do that and Gamestop looks like the fools errand it is with regards to used games.

There are 2 Gamestops and 1 ebGames within a 10 mile radius where I live. In a city of about 20,000. They've been open for years and, as far as I can tell, they're doing quite well. I can't help but think that any store that opened up doing classic games (including the old consoles setup so you can try the games) and import games and such would do extremely well.

Now that he's back home, he'll be going back to school, probably won't have unsupervised Internet access, likely won't be allowed to play the M-rated games he'd been enjoying... hope he fares better than that other guy (forget his name) that was kidnapped and grew up away from his family for years, then was returned and ended up destroying himself.

News stations won't pick up on this involvement with xbox live, though. Their stance is that your kids will meet kidnappers online and get themselves abducted magically through the TV screen. Not that kidnappers will snatch you while you're outside riding your bike and then let you play all the games you want.

How is a 65nm processor going to make the DVD drive quiet? That's the only thing that makes any significant noise in the 360.

The only way a study of this type could be in ANY way valid would be if the rates of 'consumer engagement' are compared with that of other forms of advertising. So they can find out that only .001% of gamers driving by a Nike ad on a track actually 'see' the ad in any meaningful way. That number is completely meaningless. How many real life drivers see the bilboard? How many real like television watchers pay attention to the commercial?

What this consulting company has done is said "When ads are put in a game, they don't get as much attention as the game". That makes as much sense as complaining that there is more show than commercials on during an episode of a television show (although ABC is looking to remedy that imbalance with Lost). Or arguing that there should be more pages of ads than of content in magazines. Or that you're advertising on a bilboard is not effective unless people pay more attention to it than the road and wreck.

Advertising is not precise. It is messy and blunt. Advertising does not hold a person down and convince or coerce them into purchasing your product. As an advertiser you may want to tell people that's what it does, but it isn't. Advertising informs, piques curiosity, increases brand recognition, and things like that. If 3 months after you play a game with an ad in it someome says "I've been thinking about getting an X" and you say "Hmm... I don't know where I know it from, but I think Company Y makes those", then the ad has done its job.

This is why direct study of advertising is useless. This is also why websites who advertise with others and only pay based on click-throughs or on actual purchases are out-and-out FRAUD.

Neat game! Exactly the kind of thing we'll never get to see on Xbox Live Community Arcade, unfortunately. MS would be too afraid of the trademark implications, and ban it without a second thought.

The whole eBay component shouldn't surprise anyone. eBay is a den of thieves and con artists, protected at every turn by eBay.

I'm not a lawyer, but I am pretty sure that these circumstances could be used to mount a successful "justifiable torture-rape-homicide" case.