Month: November 2017

WRUPing Break

One has to love Saturdays that start with work because something broke. Even better when you don’t know how to fix it. Anyway, while I wait for someone from the IT department to maybe show up (but more likely not, because they don’t work on weekends), let’s do the WRUP! Read more

The Xbox 360: A 12-Year Anniversary Retrospective

Happy Birthday, Xbox 360! Believe it or not, today marks the 12th anniversary of the launch of the Xbox 360. Despite a somewhat lengthy initial period of supply shortages, followed almost immediately be several years of technical issues (including drives that would occasionally render game discs permanently unplayable, and, especially, the infamous "red ring of death"), the year-long head start the 360 enjoyed over the competition helped it to become arguably the most popular home console of a generation.

Of course, it wasn't the earlier availability alone that made it such a stunning success. Questionable decisions from Sony and Nintendo with their own PlayStation 3 and Wii consoles, in addition to early commitments by Microsoft to bring scores of fantastic games to the 360, made it the obvious choice for enthusiastic gamers around the world. In fact, not only did Microsoft manage to score several popular third-party franchises that had previously only appeared on the competition's hardware, but they also arranged publishing deals which resulted in the creation of brand new and amazing titles you could only experience on the Xbox 360. Speaking of amazing games, we went ahead and included a few examples of those below. So, read on for a look at 12 of the finest reasons to have ever owned an Xbox 360.

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Disney Pulls The Plug On Marvel Heroes

It was announced a couple of days ago now that the free to play Isometric MMO, Marvel Heroes will no longer be supported by Disney as they have "...ended [their] relationship with Gazillion Entertainment...". Of course this quote from Disney doesn't outline any detail toward the situation but does go on to say that Marvel Heroes will "...shut down".

Sad news for those of us who enjoyed the Diablo-esque ARPG for sure but not a huge surprise to those who've kept close tabs on the game its projects. Gazillion have been keeping up with updates and new content related to the newest Marvel movies and TV shows for as long as Marvel Heroes has been around. That support suddenly stopped a short time ago and folks started putting two and two together to make the assumption that there was, at the very least, a serious problem.

In fact servers will shut down on December 31st and in-game purchases are being removed now. That means that for rest of its existence the game will be 100% free to play. R.I.P. Marvel Heroes. You had a decent free to play formula and pretty dang fun game play. I will personally mourn my own Captain Marvel. Together we irradiated and captured countless criminals and villains via her near limitless celestial powers. You will be missed.

Nonstiq: Movie Pass Review

Movie Pass. The now 600,000 member large subscription service that has everyone scratching their heads. Well I've been using it for about a month now and figured Nonstiq would be a good place to express the many opinions I have about it.

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Before you start, please be aware I’m not a journalist and most of my facts and data come from quick Google searches and some bits of info off Wikipedia. If you want to look further into the history and specifics of the Data surrounding Movie Pass, go ahead and do some Googling if you read or learn something here that you wanna check up on. 

What is Movie Pass?

Movie Pass is a Movie theater subscription service. You pay a fee every month, and in return you can see one film a day throughout the course of a month.

So how does a theater make money with this system? Well if you are a Movie pass subscriber you get a prepaid Debit Card in the Mail that is used to purchase your ticket. So you pay Movie Pass for their service, and they pay the theaters for your ticket. So not only are Movie Theaters not losing any money from a Movie Pass user, they are more than likely getting more people to buy tickets from people with this service.

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I’ll explain in more detail how this works a bit later, but first a brief history about the service and its current state:

As you may well be aware though, on August 16th 2017, Movie Pass dropped their monthly price to $9.95 a month. Sounds too good to be true right? Yes and No. 

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This fee used to be roughly $50 a month, but in certain areas the fee was $99 a month. With the average ticket price in the US being around $9 a ticket, Movie Pass worked by betting that most of their users couldn't go out and see more than $50 worth of movies every month. As you can imagine they made a fair amount of money this way despite only having around 20,00 subscribers.

Obviously your first thought is a should be, “If a ticket price is nearly the cost of my subscription to Movie Pass, once I see two movies Movie Pass is losing money from me that point forward.”

You’re entirely right, they do lose money far more often now with this subscription price, especially since they’ve gained over 500,000 subscribers since the price change. 

The next question is of course, how can Movie Pass afford to do this and is it sustainable? Well they didn’t do this price drop out of the blue. Just before their price drop, they were given $27 million dollars from Helios and Matheson as a price infusion to offset the cost of losing money with this cheaper subscription model. 

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Helios and Matheson Analytics are a large scale Data collecting company. Whom have clearly bet it all on the Data they will be collecting from Movie Pass users. And you definitely will want to read over what Data they will be collecting in the TOS. H&M have also thankfully been quite open about how they see the potential in what movies people see, who is seeing them, and when they see them. This Data, in their eyes, will be incredibly valuable to Movie Studios who will jump at the chance to finally have VERY accurate data about their film goers and what projects they should be focusing on. 

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Regardless of whether or not this company's big bet pays off in the long run, or if this service is destined to fail and run out of money, I think it’s still worth looking at how the system currently works and if it’s worth trying out.

So after you sign up for the service on their website, they send you a Debit card in the mail. So wait around for that, and once you have your card, it’s time to download the App. Once installed you can select your closet theater and scroll through the showings to find a film you want to see. Now you only get One ticket a day for one person, one showing, so make sure you are positive the movie you select is the one you want to see. Once you’ve chosen a film on the app, Movie Pass will send the price of a ticket for that showing to your Card, and you’ll have 30 minutes to go and actually buy the ticket.

And that's it! Once you do that you can’t use Movie Pass again until the next day. But after paying them $9.99, getting your card, installing the app, and using their card to buy a ticket, you still can do that 29 more days in a month! With no extra cost to you.

The service works really great, does exactly what it says it will do, and I haven’t had any issues yet with the app or the card.

So is Movie Pass something you should get?
Well it depends on a few things.

First and foremost you need to ask yourself if you are okay with letting Helios and Matheson both collect and sell your movie going history. If you’re not then obviously the service isn’t something your should be doing.

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For those of us that are, it is definitely worth making sure that you live by or near one of the supported theaters of the service. Movie Pass claim they work in 91% of theaters throughout the US, so check their website to make sure you don’t live in the 9%. You can also do this by installing the app before even subscribing and checking out theaters near you. 

Of course maybe if you do sign up for Movie Pass and you rarely go the theater, maybe having a movie pass will lead you to be willing to go to the theater more often to get the most out of your monthly fee. Which wil hopefully be good for more films like this year's Wind River or Ingrid Goes West.

You also should ask yourself if you are someone who would go to the Theater AT LEAST twice a month. Otherwise the service simply isn’t financially worth it. So if you only go to the movies for something Disney owns and don’t care about seeing films that don’t have action figures for them, it may not be for you. 

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I personally love this service so far, and while I’m concerned that their risky model will end up being too big a risk down the road, for now I am happy to take advantage of being able to see every movie that even slightly peaks my interest. And it's that influx of extra cash from Movie Pass users like me that will hopefully will show the Movie Studios how valuable this Data truly is. Maybe even help them create better films for us to see in the future. Only time will tell, but if you are thinking of diving into this unknown territory with me, I think it’s worth it for now.

basic WRUP

I’m really fucking exhausted from this week. Things are happening, but in the gaming sphere it’s mostly Mario, Destiny, Assassin’s Creed and shooting Nazis. We all know how that goes, so let’s get to the point:

What is everyone playing over the weekend? Read more

womanly WRUP-Boxes in the black Normandy

Call of Duty WW2 is out now, so that should be it for big releases this year, right? Did I miss something? Oh, the new Battlefront… yeah, who cares. Star Wars, innit? Back to Call of Duty. Remember when certain people were certainly outraged about the fact that you could play as a female or black Nazi? I mean, that’s positively scandalous… Blacks in the German army? Females holding guns? THIS HAS NO PLACE IN A REALISTIC DEPICTION OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR! Read more