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Comment: Where is the bait and switch? (Score 2) 447

by grapeape (#37542564) Attached to: The Cable Industry's a La Carte Bait and Switch

If what they are offering is the "free channels" bundled and the ones that cost them money as optional isn't that pretty much what most people want. I'm not a big sports guy beyond my home teams which are nearly always on the local channels so the opportunity to drop 40%-50% of my bill to get rid of channels I dont want would probably encourage me to get cable tv again.

Comment: Re:"The criticism died down"... oh really? (Score 4, Interesting) 302

by grapeape (#37426334) Attached to: Ballmer Hints At 'Metro-ization' of Office

No kidding...with my clients I had exactly 1 that is using office 2010, all of the others actually went backwards to office 2003 after the ribbon stuff gave secretaries fits. I had one spend nearly 10 grand only to go back to the old version about 6 months later, they just couldnt adjust macros were broken, templates had issues, it was a mess.

Comment: Re:Duh. (Score 3, Informative) 431

by grapeape (#37382980) Attached to: Why Aren't There More Civilians In Military Video Games?

Thats kind of the point though your killing pixels...most know the difference enough that they want to keep fantasy and reality separate. However, a "more realistic" war-game might be a good idea just to show the real horror and consequences of war...just dont expect it to sell well and dont expect any good press no matter if it was made with good intentions.

Comment: Re:Next up: tiered pricing (Score 1) 314

by grapeape (#37286956) Attached to: Starz To Pull Content From Netflix

Actually $30 would be about $50 cheaper than the cheapest cable package I can get locally that includes Starz. I would have no problem with ala carte programming if I could truly pick and choose my channels at a reasonable price. I'm not much of a sports guy for instance...dropping ESPN and Fox Sports from my cable bill according to known rates charged by the networks per viewer would drop my bill over $20 a month, but currently I can't get even basic cable without the espn tax. I like BBC America, but I can't get that without subscribing to the highest digital cable package.

The thing that made me drop cable was tracking my families viewing habits over a month, it turned out we watched a total of only 17 channels but paid over $170 a month for our cable package, I ditched tv went with the standard internet only deal and subscribed to netflix and hulu plus, I can't watch some of the shows I enjoy, but save enough monthly for a couple of season sets on dvd every month and still have money left over.

Comment: so pilots can use cellular and wifi? (Score 1) 253

by grapeape (#37196420) Attached to: United Pilots To Use iPads For Navigation

The article mentions real time info and updates which means using 3g most likely, but wasn't United one of the loudest in declaring wifi and 3g use unsafe for passengers to use because supposedly it could potentially interfere with flight controls? Wouldn't having them in direct contact with those instruments and controls be a bit bigger issue or were they just lying to make more money off of those back of the headrest phones?

Comment: Re:Atari? (Score 1) 219

by grapeape (#37194068) Attached to: Atari Targets Retro Community With Cease &amp; Desist

Atari has been passed around like a cheap whore since the late 80's. First if was Atari, then it was sold to Warner who later sold it back to Jack Tramiel, Then it was merged with JTS Inc. then it was acquired by Hasbro which then sold it to IESA who had already purchased Infogrames and Infogrames and Atari were merged to become Infrogrames Interactive and has recently been relabeled Atari Interactive Inc.

Comment: If people prefer shorter games why is dlc popular? (Score 1) 637

by grapeape (#37131404) Attached to: Coming Soon, Shorter Video Games

Sure some people dont complete games, but I actually seek out long games. In the past 5--6 years my absolute favorite games are things like Oblivion, Fallout 3, etc. I have logged over 100 hours in Fallout 3 alone and I dont play that often, its just something I keep going back to. I realize that developers are looking for ways to reduce cost and increase revenue, but if they dont think there will be a "fallout" of their own they are delusional. I simply won't pay $60 for a short game even if its a "good" one...when those come out I wait until it hits bargain bins. Most gamers I know are the same way. They are already working on ways to kill off the used/rental market, now they want to offer less for the same price...I'm starting to think the game industry is trying to kill itself.

Comment: Just be patient cable is already bleeding... (Score 1) 223

by grapeape (#37131288) Attached to: Can Google Fix the Cable Box?

Cord Cutting has become fairly mainstream lately, probably more due to the economy than anything else but the trend started with people just tired if paying insanely high bills. Cable companies have enjoyed monopolies on internet in many areas since driving out local ISP's. Prices here were actually reasonable when there was competition but as speeds increased smaller companies didn't have any ability to compete. Prices in my area have gone up over 100% since I first had it installed 8 years ago. What was $69 for the deluxe package then is now almost $200. I dropped it down to internet and basic cable only, but their recent trick has been to raise the price of internet only so now I'm saving a whopping $18 over the "bundle" cost and yesterday it was announced that they are planning to drop "basic cable" within 5 years meaning everyone has to rent a box or cable card. IMHO this is desperation...they realize many people simply dont need cable tv anymore.

In convincing my family to cut the cord I tracked channels watched for 3 months...out of the 400+ channels available we watched a grand total of 16 and none of those channels were in the top ten as far as per subscriber costs go. Cable wont adapt to ala carte programming willingly so the only way to convince them is to let them bleed customers...perhaps then they will realize that some money is better than no money. Being simply an internet conduit scares the crap out of the fat cats in the cable industry for too long they have been able to sponge money from pay per view, premium channels, forced bundles, etc and now that those are becoming unneeded there only recourse in their eyes is to go to extreme measures to make having "internet only" a bad deal. Luckily Google is moving here with their fiber network...once that happens I have vowed to never give my cable company another dime.

Comment: Maybe this is a good thing... (Score 2) 243

by grapeape (#37099450) Attached to: Music Copyright War Looming

Look at how many popular bands from the late 70's and early 80's are still around now and still popular. Bands like Aerosmith, Van Halen, ACDC, Pink Floyd, Kiss, Elvis Costello, The Cure, Prince, Tom Petty, Fleetwood Mac, The Pretenders, John Melancamp, Bruce Springsteen, etc...are all still around in one form or another and all still selling well and have huge fan bases. Perhaps this the the time when the RIAA's hypocrisy is fully exposed and the tide turns? While money can be very influential in politics so is a support base...I would imagine that it would be rather easy for artists to enlighten and sway popular opinion. While I know its definitely a difficult fight, ultimately the politicians care about reelection more than how greased their palms get in the short term and going up for reelection as "the guy that screwed over Springsteen" surely isn't going to garner the popular vote, the RIAA may have the money but they dont have the electorate.

Comment: Re:It's about portability. (Score 1) 425

by grapeape (#37060650) Attached to: How Apple Is Beating Nintendo At Its Own Game

Time is always an overlooked factor in handheld gaming, sure games on the Sony and Nintendo handhelds are "deeper" much of the time, but when I have 5 minutes waiting in line or even 30 minutes in a doctors office, I dont want something that is going to take an hour to the next area where I can save or put the game down. With my kids they rarely finished a game anyway so casual stuff works much better.

Comment: Killed the kid and casual gamer market (Score 1) 425

by grapeape (#37060576) Attached to: How Apple Is Beating Nintendo At Its Own Game

The prices and versatility of the iPod touch, iPhone and iPad have all but killed the market when it comes to kids and casual gamers. The versatility makes it more of a useful tool for adults to justify and for kids you can go through 30 games to find one your kid likes cheaper than buying 1 DS cartridge. The quality of iOS games have been steadily improving as well with more and more genres being covered. Even for hardcore gamers there are games with depth showing up that have better multiplayer options and equal gameplay. Some games even look better than anything on the other handhelds. It will be interesting to see what happens with Sony's next handheld offering but I have a feeling that dedicated handheld gaming platforms are going to be a niche product from now on. The only way to really counter that is with pricing and I dont see either sony or nintendo wanting to play that game at all. Nintendo's most reasonable prices stuff are on their download store and the cheapest are 200 points (roughly $2) which sounds reasonable but the stuff in that range generally wouldn't qualify as a demo much less a full game. On the sony side many of the 3rd party games coming out are ports of iOS games at a higher price. I just dont see them being willing or able to compete. The casual war is lost the only thing they can do now is go for the highest specs possible and hope the hardcore can't resist.

Comment: let me get this straight?? (Score 1) 346

by grapeape (#36967752) Attached to: Amazon App Store 'Rotten To the Core,' Says Dev

So some developers really thought that Amazon was actually going pay them 20% per app downloaded for free out of the kindness of their hearts? Why? How would that possibly benefit Amazon? The way it works now is Amazon eats the hosting costs, and creates thousands of possible "word of mouth" advertising walking billboards...

The greatest productive force is human selfishness. -- Robert Heinlein