Aspirations, thoughts, and Operator overloading

Prince of Persia might be a new release, it might be hyped as a NODRM game, and going by the reactions from anti-DRM proponents it could be a great seller, but where is it? I see it online at Amazon, Toys”R”Us and other online retailers (such as NewEgg.com), but I couldn’t find it locally at Walmart, Target or Toys “R” Us over the weekend.

If you don’t see it in the retail stores, you’re really hurting sales. I saw Assassins’s Creed and Far Cry 2 though (two other Ubisoft titles), so I know Ubisoft sells through those stores.

Weird. It’s almost like they want this experiment to fail? I wouldn’t think so, but it does seem a little odd.

Edit: I also found it for $30 or less at CD Universe.

Edit #2: Perhaps the hold up is due to the game just being released last week? I’ll check those stores again late this week to see if they’ve arrived yet. In the meantime, I may go ahead and order through CD Universe; the Target option via Amazon.com seems to have disappeared.

Edit #3: Found it on Walmart.com and GoGamer.com for $30 or less.

I had some uplifting news come across my feed reader today. Now granted it wasn’t anything as spectacular as a war ending, the economy righting itself (mine might be worsened by $30-$50 actually) or other dancing in the street worthy celebration.

Instead, it was a somewhat quiet revelation that a new retail release (digital download copy still has DRM) in a popular franchise is DRM free. What’s the game?

Prince of Persia, from Ubisoft. Yeah, that’s right. The same Ubisoft that DRM’d the hell out of Far Cry 2. I had no idea this was coming.

That’s right, if you buy the retail copy, you’ll get a DRM-free game and likely at a good price. Amazon (via Target) and Toys”R”Us currently have it priced at $30 USD. Other online retailers (such as NewEgg.com) are $40 and up, but they may also come down once they take a look around.

Metacritic.com currently has it rated at 86/100 and with only 2 days since the release, Ubisoft’s goal of PoP reaching a score in the 9s seems feasible.

From Metacritic.com:

Set in a land rooted in ancient Persian mythology, the Prince finds himself caught in an epic battle between the primal forces of light and darkness: the God of Light, Ormazd versus his brother Ahriman, the destructive God of Darkness. The Prince arrives just in time to witness the destruction of the legendary Tree of Life – an act which threatens to plunge the entire world into eternal darkness. Manifested in the form of the Corruption, a dark substance that physically contaminates the land and the skies, the Prince must partner with Elika, a deadly companion, to heal the world from the evil Corruption.

I don’t think I’ve ever played the Prince of Persia series before, but I’m off to download a bunch of trailers to make my mind up. I’m almost 90% sure I’m going to get this to support Ubisoft in this decision.

The system requirements don’t look too crazy; they’re pretty standard for recent releases. If your system is several years old though …

Edit: Shacknews just stumbled across the news.

Top 10 Frag Videos from Wiki.WeGame.com

A friend shared that with me months ago and I found it interesting just how many of the games I hadn’t played. If you’re big into FPS games you’ll likely enjoy these vids.

I would copy a profile from a user’s system, wipe it, reinstall and then copy the profile back only to find that if the person had admin rights, no problem – everything worked. If not, even after I gave their new account full permissions odd things like missing backgrounds would happen (Windows XP theme settings).

With the help of my wife (who made me describe in length the process), I tracked it down to the SID being different in the profile registry settings. The registry hive for the profile had security set to the old SID, whereas the new account had a totally different one.

Once I followed the steps here and changed the permissions to allow the new account full access, everything worked.

Just thought I’d pass that along. Hope it helps someone.

View leaked console port trailer

View (currently) the ‘crack in the wall’ teaser

From what I can tell, CD Projekt Red is doing the Blizzard ‘thing’ and teasing fans with what three titles they’re currently working on. The first link is to a user posted video where one of their developers is talking about his work on the console port, the second is a link past their age gate where, at the moment, there are three cracks in the wall.

The user posted video should be considered a leak as forum moderators were frantically removing links to the video as soon as they came across it. Though CD Projekt Red personnel claim that posts are not deleted, posts do indeed go missing. Those who quickly posted the video either found their post(s) deleted or edited to remove the link. In the past I’ve had one or two of my posts be deleted for various reasons. One was because I poked fun at a mod. I guess he didn’t appreciate my humor or realize the policy of not removing posts.

Lastly, here is a forum thread where I’m guessing the devs meant to incite the famed Blizzard fan fervor for their latest announcement. Instead it’s dissolving into conspiracy theories ranging from ‘PC as the target platform’ abandonment to soaking up fix suggestions for the PC version and releasing it on consoles.

Personally, I’m just bummed out that the improvements they’re putting into the console won’t be coming to the PC.

That post was made before they made the official announcement that they have three projects. One of which is the console port, but of the other two no mention has been (officially) made. So, my disappointment is on hold, but the holding the breath thing isn’t much fun either.

Let’s hope Tuesday brings some awesome news, because at this point I’m barely staying optimistic. But for now I am; really. I keep reminding myself of what they did for their first release customers (free EE pack) and hope they’ll do the same again.