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Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

February 20, 2012 – 12:39 pm | 3 Comments

Tiny Diggers has just been released on the iPad and soon the Mac computer. Here’s the details on this fun, educational game from TouchTilt Games.
Tiny Diggers Delivers Learning With Construction Trucks For Kids on the …

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Home » Industry, XBOX 360, Xbox Live Arcade

2K Games Is A Coding And Compression Genius

Submitted by on September 20, 2007 – 1:20 pm6 Comments

Xbox

Ah downloadable content, how we have come to mostly like thee. The convenience of pointing and clicking to start a game instead of getting up off the couch. The pleasure of downloading new missions, weapons, costumes, what have you for our favorite or mostly-enjoyed titles. The resignation of gamers as they throw down $6+ per pack of three songs mostly recycled from earlier versions of Guitar Hero.

Yesterday 2K Games released a new $5 add-on on the Xbox Live Marketplace for NHL 2K8 which adds the 2K Reelmaker to the game. So why is this particular new feature a bad thing? The download is just 108K. That’s kilobytes, not megabytes. It’s amazing how they can pack all that movie-related (I’m guessing) functionality for their cutting-edge hockey game into 108K isn’t it? They’re geniuses at programming AND data compression, am I right?

Not so much. It’s just a patch unlocking a finished feature already on the game disc the end user already bought– oh, I’m sorry, licensed. Joystiq sums it up nicely:
We are not amused.

  • Joe (Aeropause)

    Score another one for microtransactions. I am waiting for the day when they tell you that it will be 400 points for a fuctionality patch that actually makes a game work.

    That being said, I would probably pay 800 points to make Vampire Rain fun to play.

  • http://www.farbot.com/ Paul (Aeropause)

    heheh 800 points on top of the retail price for it, or 800 points being just what the whole game is worth?

  • http://www.farbot.com/ Paul (Aeropause)

    And one thing I realized after writing this was that this microtransaction patch is really a testament to how locked down console platforms are. This would never work on the PC. Hackers would have found and switched on this feature in the PC version by now.

  • Brent

    I’m just surprised EA Sports didnt think of this particular scheme first.

  • Joe (Aeropause)

    Paul – One only has to look at the two hours it took from release to a crack being available for the horse armor in Oblivion when Bethesda tried to charge for it on the PC side.

    This is the problem for extending Live to the PC. PC Gamers like myself are use to having free online play along with free statistic counters like Xfire or All Seeing Eye.

  • Leon

    That is not cool. I will never buy this game.