"a short term good-will program that would continue for years afterwards"

"Short-term" but "continues for years afterwards"? What?

Knowing Sony, they'll try to charge gamers for the privilege of playing the games they already bought on the new system. I look forward to that greedy scheme failing.

"When a feature allows the casual gamer to play through the same game without too much trouble, the aforementioned crowd gets angry and says that the game was dumbed down or made too easy."

That's very, very true.

I agree with Nick and others - achievements are an excellent way of giving those who need them bragging rights, whilst not preventing gamers with less time or patience for the repetition variety of "challenge" from enjoying a game and getting to see what it has to offer.

Frankly, the crowd that defines their enjoyment of a game on other people's non-enjoyment of it, are the last people that developers who want their games to sell should be listening to.

Exactly, I agree with asym.

SC is about the three unique and thoroughly different species, and even if they're all present in the multiplayer, if there's no singleplayer for two of them out of the box then it's a much lesser experience.

I'd much prefer three shorter campaigns, varied between the races, than one long one.

I think it's a terrible idea - the single player campaigns were a way to introduce the factions' various units and train you with them before playing the multiplayer. StarCraft's then-unique three race balancing worked because you got to try them all out properly before just being thrown into the chaos of multiplayer... SC2 abandoning that basic principle of the game is a real shame and greatly reduces the odds of my buying it until all three parts are actually available together.