Activision Blizzard has a plan in the works that would require gamers to pay a subscription fee in order to play the online-multiplayer mode for games, including Call of Duty.
James: This is pure greed through and through. Between paying for the console, the live subscription fee for Xbox owners and the game itself, gamers are already shelling out roughly $410 to play. Does Activision really need the money that bad?
John C: Activision Blizzard is starting to make Scrooge McDuck seem like a charitable guy. Soon, Xbox gamers might be paying for the Internet, Xbox Live and an Activision subscription. At first glance, this seems unfavorable for consumers. With any luck, it could stop people from playing the lazy, redundant games that Activision has started spitting out year after year.
After a summer that involved 19 deaths at a German concert, the closing of the Sound and Fury Festival after riots, and the macing of Bamboozle Roadshow attendees, concert security is becoming a larger and more fequently debated concern.
James: No one should ever have to go to a concert with the thought that they might die in the back of their head. Venues need to have enough staff on hand to handle a crowd of a few thousand people. Period.
Vanessa: If security is resorting to using pepper spray on teenagers and allowing motorcycles to drive into the pit, then just maybe there aren't enough staff to keep people safe. Problems should be squashed or prevented before they escalate to proportions that endanger the lives of concertgoers.
Power-pop heroes (and Snuggie enthusiasts) Weezer are releasing their own clothing line through Hurley, which will be sold exclusively at PacSun. This has lead many fans to believe the band is selling out and has lost touch with its roots.
John Hugar: Weezer has sucked for the past decade now. As soon as the Raditude cover came out and they started working with professional songwriters, it became clear that the band most fans fell in love with was dead. Ironic jokes became more important than music. This band sold out a long time ago and whoring themselves out to a mediocre clothing line is just one more nail in the coffin of what used to be a great band.
Jameson Butler: The Blue Album came out 16 years ago when Pinkerton was 14, and it's been all downhill from there. Now they have a clothing line? To be sold at PacSun? I think it is time to say goodbye to one of the cornerstones of pop punk music and say hello to the new Green Day.
