They do have a perfectly valid point, though. Microsoft lost an antitrust suit against it for arguably less.

No, they are concerned. They're just not "overly" concerned. 180,000 lost sales isn't something you welcome, even if some of those people end up buying it eventually anyway (at a reduced price). That's what I'll be doing anyway.

Perhaps if they hadn't pinned their hopes on a mediocre game that scored very low on the value for money scale (too easy, too short, no multiplayer) they might have sold a few more copies. Perhaps gamers are more discerning than movie-goers after all, if Wanted (the movie) was anything to go by.

My music teacher was of the opinion that synthesizers were toys and not instruments, and so refused to see the different nuances that Tomita's music brought to classical compositions. Unfortunately it meant that I never took his teaching seriously if he couldn't understand that the world was full of instruments that weren't necessarily found in an orchestra.

As for Kind of Bloop, if you're going to approach a composition with a different set of instruments and constraints, you need to play to their strengths and not simply try to emulate what the original instruments do far better. It's a bold experiment but I agree with the article, too many of the musicians seem to be playing it safe, and that's the worst approach they could have taken.

Also playing the PC version right now, and it's far from what I'd call technically accomplished. It doesn't help that I recently finished Dead Space, a game whose engine really shows how poor Mass Effect's really is. But when Mass Effect works it can be beautiful and compelling. It's one of those games where your imagination elbows your common sense out of the way and you believe, just for a while, that the game can deliver on its promises. It's a pity that it rarely does so. Let's hope the imminent sequel brings out its potential.