About the money, you know? It's not really about fan service unless fan service will bring the Bens.


It's done, ya know.

I've been thinking about it, because last I heard, Harry Potter 6 was finished, or at least would be finished for its original November release, but they're waiting until July '09 to release it. It just so happens they have a few months with no attention-grabbing flicks next summer, so they're saving it for then. You know, the way you'd save an Ace for just the right time.

So, of course, the fans are irate. How can they do this to us? That kind of thing. And it does seem pretty vile, but, ya know... it's all about the Bens.

It's the same in all markets. Down at the macro level, you might find folks in the industry who really care about the fans. They're emotionally invested. They want to give folks what they want or what they'll like, and/or they want to stay true the the pure, unadulterated expression of their craft, not because it brings cash but because it motivates and satisfies them to create content in such a manner, as artists.

But these kinds of producers are dangerous to the profit margin, and that's why the corporations severely limit them, in every creative market.


So's DQIV, complete with goofy dialects again.

As far as video games go, Dragon Quest IV on Nintendo DS, the remake, has been translated into English and ready for release here for nearly a year, but they've held it back until this September. Why? Who knows. I'd imagine profit is again the reason. They think September is the best time to release it. (We caught them in the act, because the Japanese version has a 90% complete English script embedded into the code for some reason. I bet they'll never do that again. We're too snoopy.)

Anyway, that's how companies operate. They look at the big picture, at their survival, and at how much money they're making. They're not doing it to make us happy. They're doing it to make us spend. They're doing it to make money.

Now what if we applied those same principles to our own habits? What if we really had no loyalty and focused only on what makes us happy as consumers? We'd do things like pirate games and movies instead of buying them. It saves us money, after all, and the more money we have, the more time we have to enjoy entertainment. In effect, we'd play dirty as well. We'd look at our bottom line and ignore morals as long as breaking the rules didn't land us in jail (and therefore damage our profit/happiness margin).

But then again, if we all played like that, the studios really wouldn't make money at all, they'd close down, and we wouldn't have fun entertainment anymore.

Or maybe it would just be the downfall of the capitalist system.

It's a shame things have to be this way. Maybe we, including these companies, should all be a little more moderate about things and look at the whole picture. It's the people with morals, in and out of the industries, who keep things going just as much as the money does. Without us, it would be chaos.