absolutezero, if you don’t like the avatars then subvert them.
http://kotaku.com/346371/these-miis-are-not-suitable-for-work

Oh, and I predicted this whole MS medal thing, therefore I win, or something.

/bathes

Excellent.

As for all the copying, personally I want PSN to match or better Live’s feature set, I’d be happy if Microsoft made a Wii remote style pointing device for RTS on my tele , and I’d quite like my Wii to have hi def output, and a unified easy to use friends list.

I want the companies to learn from each others successes and failures, not sure it matters greatly who did what first. Without the competition MS perhaps wouldn’t be trying to make it possible to play games on a quiet 360, or make games my family might play, Sony might not have cross game messaging yet, and Nintendo might not have bothered with any online at all.

Woa! I totally missed the way this conversation was going. I agree that nicking others great ideas is a good thing for the end user. It must sting if you are the inventor but hey. Steal something back. Hopefully Nintendo will start doing achievements on the Wii now.

Small little box with controllers in-front of the TV built for gaming??

MAGNAVOX INVENTED IT and ATARI stole it… then NINTENDO barged in… then SEGA jumped on the bandwagon… then SONY decided to HIJACK the market… then MICROSOFT muscled its way in!

Lets face it. Neither Nintendo, MS OR Sony have really invented anything original here… They’ve just tweaked and bolted on to the way the original system should have worked in the first place, but what the technology didn’t allow for.

But WHO CARES!?

Just play the games and stop whining!

That’s called “revisionism” and it’s bollocks.

I am in agreement with DrDramn - the way the medals have been described sounds as though it’s just going to be a slightly different way of displaying your achievement icons. Like putting them on a gold background or something. I’m not sure it’s actually worth the effort for all the “copycat” comments it’ll earn them.

I do like the claim that Microsoft invented numbers though. Which is all a gamerscore is. It’s a highscore league. It’s implemented very well, but it’s just numbers at the end of the day.

I invented blinking. Once my patent goes through, I’m going to be obscenely rich.

YESSS! Exactly! That’s the way to go.

@Morriss
“Because it’s Microsoft”
Bollocks - Nintendo are the only ones immune to criticism of this kind. Not because they don’t do it mind, just because there isn’t the fierce rivalry there as there is between Sony and MS.

Everyone copies and steals ideas. Mii’s was a bloody good. An excellent idea. Should no-one copy just because Nintendo invented it even though they think it can help XNA developers and actually be a worthy addition to their service? Should they say, yes it’s brilliant but we won’t touch it because Nintendo thought of it first? That’d be ridiculous.

Nintendo have shown everyone the way to ‘tap-in’ to the casual market. If you, as a company, don’t follow that route and cut your nose off to spite your face saying, “No, that route is too easy, we must spend shitloads more money on R&D and think of a new, original way that might not work,” then you’ll go bust.

I really don’t see why people are so riled up about it. I really don’t.

Same goes for Vista btw: It’s a blunt copy of Mac OS Leopard.

The only thing they “invented” for their online-service is that you have to pay for it!

The console market is built on taking competitors ideas and improving them (think of the whole evolution of the gamepad), every company does it so I dont see why everyone is crying about it.