Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 1.12.07

Analyst who predicted PS3 shortages till June worries about units on shelf
I generally support any news that doesn’t support Sony but my disdain for analysts trumps even my resentment towards Sony. The analyst in this case has already predicted Sony’s triumph this generation but is now “troubled” by recent news of PS3s sitting on shelves. At least Captain Obvious makes four times as much as the average American.

This one is called “Don’t be a 2nd player hater.”

i am 8 bit exhibit = awesome
If you are a game buff and have some money to blow on crap to hang on walls, check out i am 8 bit. “I’ll have one art, please!”

Kaz Hirai talks shit
Kas says a few things that are worth contemplating. First, is the technology in the PS3 actually cutting edge like he claims? →  Read the rest

What we hope to see in 2007

With a new year comes new hope and a new opportunity to have our dreams crushed.

Stefan —
Saturn Games on the Virtual Console: I know, there are significant disk space problems – seeing as a single game could use up the entire internal memory of the Wii. But if a way can be found, I’m holding out hope for Shining Force III and a NiGHTS re-release with a _real_ 3D Controller.

Panzer Dragoon Saga with motion sensing controls Second coming of Christ

Sony opening the PS3 Graphics hardware to Linux users: This is another one that’s not likely to happen. And by not likely, I mean no way in hell. Allowing direct access to the graphics chipset would essentially let anyone circumvent the price of their dev kit – and would deprive them of licensing fees for game sales. →  Read the rest

Microsoft to Buy Capcom: Tssyeah, Right!

Rumors were running rampant this week with the prospect that Microsoft (i.e., evil-incarnate) was going to buy Capcom, developer of the Resident Evil series and this week’s big 360 release, Lost Planet. This rumor is, in fact, not new. It was first started almost three years ago when Msoft was looking to get a better foothold in the Japanese market. They still need the foothold over there, but Capcom has been out its sights for sometime now. So once again, no, Microsoft is not buying Capcom.

But let’s think about that for a second.

Obviously, Msoft would get a huge surge in the popularity rankings by having Capcom in its portfolio. They’d get the rights to Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Dead Rising, Phoenix Wright, Megaman, Devil May Cry, and one of my personal favorites, UN Squadron. →  Read the rest

HD-DVD is the Bob-omb!

A few weeks ago, Joystiq ran an article that linked to an in-store flyer with an Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive priced for only $99. The actual price is $200. That’s a steal if I ever saw one. In my warped little mind, I couldn’t afford not to buy it.

So, with a little underhanded deviousness, I lied my way into getting the HD-DVD drive for half the MSRP. Obviously I giggled like a little school girl the moment I walked out of the store. But was it still worth it?

First off, the drive is very easy to setup. You just connect it to the 360 through a USB cable. You then update the 360 with the driver that comes with it. To then access the drive, the 360 will break the DVD Tray option into two different categories, letting you chose the DVD tray or the HD-DVD one. →  Read the rest

Can gaming magazines survive?

Super corporation Ziff Davis has seen better days. Both Electronic Gaming Monthly and 1Up are being sold because they have been losing money, which the ZD accountants claim is bad for business. Forget that 1Up is also failing for a moment and think about the printed gaming magazine. Has the internet replaced the need for EGM and Game Informer much like literacy replaced the need for PSM?

It’s almost hard to believe that at one time EGM was popular enough to sell two magazines.

Once upon a time, game mags were the only place to get video game news. The concept of waiting for your mailman to bring you breaking news is comical today; speed of communication is the internet’s forte. Similarly, attempting to contact a writer or respond to an article by writing a letter is almost silly, especially for tech savvy gamers. →  Read the rest

Best Game Ever – Master of Orion 2: The Battle at Antares

Master of Orion 2: The Battle at Antares was probably the defining game in the 4X genre (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate); it set the standard for a decade of games. Featuring a robust tech tree, intricate ship design, active ship combat, a big, goodie filled universe, and intense colony management, MOO2 had it all. Despite being well over a decade old, the game still has a level of depth that has been unmatched by its successors. Additionally, even though Microprose is long out of business (gobbled up by whomever), the game’s support has been taken over by fans (Lord Brazen, for those interested), who have kept the game playable on KALI and have steadily eradicated the last remaining bugs in the game. As exciting as it is to have a game so old with such a following, it also depresses me that the industry has yet to produce a worthy sequel. →  Read the rest

To Rumble or Not To Rumble?

After getting into a small discussion over at 10-hit Combo on the lack of a rumble in the PS3 controller, I started to wonder if rumble is really all that useful. Does having your controller vibrate at certain points in a game make the game better, or are we lying to ourselves, making it seem more interesting than it really is?

After much mental and spiritual discovery, I came to the realization that it probably depends on the game. For FPS’s, I really need a rumble. If I don’t feel the controller shake when I pull that trigger, I cannot connect emotionally with a game. The rumble for me is the closest thing I can get to actually “feeling” a game. I can attain a higher level of immersion in a game with a rumble feature than I could if it didn’t include it. →  Read the rest

Best Game Ever – Cave Story

When I was considerably younger, I had no disposable income but way too much free time. So I did what any sensible young gamer would do: I looked for free games on the internet. Back then, pickings were pretty slim, and the only downloadable games worth playing were severely limited shareware. Most of those, if they were any good at all, were not worth the registration price.

A dozen or so years later a truly great freeware game had finally come out. The game was Cave Story, and it had been painstakingly designed by one individual (who goes by Pixel) and later translated by Aeon Genesis. It comes across as a game that might have come out for the NES in its prime; simplistic graphics and basic music may lead you to believe this. →  Read the rest

Digging our own grave

This Friday, videolamer accomplished something it’s been striving to achieve for the past few months – an article of ours made it to the front page of digg.com. Unfortunately, what was supposed to be a chance for a much wider audience to read our work turned into a minor debacle. Ah, the cost of success.

You may have noticed the 40 hours or so where the site was completely down. Turns out Host Gator, our not so competent host, suspended the videolamer account after the digg traffic crashed their server and took out other non-gaming sites with it. Why their server couldn’t handle the thousand or so page views is beyond me, but we have been forced to upgrade our plan to a semi-dedicated server.

This means you can feel free to sit at home and reload the front page 46 times a second, eagerly awaiting our wit and wisdom. →  Read the rest

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 1.5.07

Crappy developer buys crappy developer
Traveler’s Tales, the awesome company behind such classics as Sonic 3D Blast, Crash Twinsanity and Muppet Race Mania has purchased Embryonic Studios, which is responsible for the all time great Looney Toons: Back in Action. Traveler’s Tales aren’t too bad, really, I’m just bitter over their multiple attempts at killing excellent franchises (Super Monkey Ball Adventure came from these guys).

I’d rather see a headline that reads, “Boring studios who make predominantly licensed crap go out of business due to the general public’s lack of interest in Disney for the past decade.” It’s always possible these companies are consolidating due to a shrinking market, much like the Great Abacus Consolidation of 1174.

Rare founders leave their company
The Stamper brothers, reportedly media shy partly due to their ugliness, have left Rare. →  Read the rest

Ten years without a new genre

A decade is a long time.

A few days ago in the comments to “Houston, Wii have a success story“, I made a rather old-fogey remark about re-hashes of games that I’d essentially been playing since 1992 or thereabouts. This got me thinking…when I complain about developers making the same game over and over, what I’m really complaining about is the fact that they’re making games in the same genres. Do you remember the sense of anticipation when you first played Wolf3D or Dune II? It didn’t just come from what you could do within that game – it was a realization of what that particular game meant for the future…because its underlying gameplay mechanics were simple enough and yet deep enough that they moved from being differently quirky games to inspiring an entire genre of development and expansion. →  Read the rest

N’Gai Croal to Phil Harrison: What’s Up With Rare?

Following yesterday’s big news story about Rare’s departing co-founding brothers, Chris and Tim Stamper, N’Gai Croal of Newsweek interviewed Sony’s Phil Harrison and asked him what he thought of Rare’s recent decline in fame.

Can someone explain to me why he asked Sony this question? Did he willingly pick the most irrelevant person to ask, or was it, “Damn, I have this huge hole in my Q&A sheet. Hmmmm. Oh, I know what to fill it in with!”

Phil tries admirably to dodge the issue a bit, and tries to assume logically what happened.

“… I think that they became quite insular and quite inward-facing, and they missed some of the trends that were going on in the business generally. Now also, if you sell your company to Microsoft and get hundreds of millions of whatevers, currency in the bank, it does tend to defocus management a little bit.” →  Read the rest

The Madden Cycle

Guess what the best selling game of 2006 was (or probably was)? Why am I even giving you guys a guess; its Madden 07 of course!

Like a lot of gamers, I guess you could say that Madden is wearing a little thin on me. I understand why it sells so well; the NFL has such a huge fanbase that even if a few disgruntled gamers decide to stop buying it, there’s an army’s worth to fill in the gap. I also understand the desire to play a good simulation of America’s most popular sport (I’m a diehard football fan myself). Despite this, I have no desire to play the game, and a lot of that has to do with what I call the “Madden Cycle”. Here’s how it goes:

1) EB/Gamestop employees remind me that Madden is coming out. →  Read the rest

Wii Virtual Console: Nostalgia Driven?

With many obscure and unknown titles being released for Nintendo’s Virtual Console, many pundits are saying the service is merely driven by nostalgia; older gamers trying to relive their pasts by purchasing any game they grew up with, even if those games are horrible in nature. Many also think games from back then are too basic when compared to current games, and are not worth the time.

Personally, if you look at most of the NES titles, then yes, most games are a little too basic and will only be bought for nostalgia’s sake. Games like Mario Bros. (Arcade) and Ice Hockey do prove most critics’ points. But that’s only one console out of the possible five. You can’t deem something worthless when you’re accounting for only 20% of the situation. →  Read the rest

2007 Predictions With Some Sugar on Top

2006 has come and gone, and it was one hell of a year. Nintendo raked in the dough like never before with the Wii and DS, Sony released the PS3 to somewhat lukewarm reviews, and the 360 started to come into its own with some stellar software. So what about 2007? What major stories are we going to be reporting this time?

For Nintendo, 2007 is going to be a hugely defining year. If the Wii can keep the momentum going, then it can truly be a comeback story. Wii Sports has done a great job at making the Wii an amazing experience, and it will probably keep the Wii’s popularity up for awhile.

Come this summer, however, and gamers are going to be asking for more. By then Nintendo will have probably revealed Brain Age and Big Brain Academy, as well as a few other titles to showcase the wii-mote with non-gamers in mind. →  Read the rest

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

From the gang at videolamer.

Here’s hoping 2007 bring you awesome video games, the money to buy them with, and the significant other to give you head while you play them (works for boys and girls!).

Rumor Rounds: PSP2 w/ HDD?

This one comes from a recent Samsung convention, revealing some sort of memory unit for the device, either designed for the existing unit or a future revision. Even though it would be awesome to have an HDD, I’m inclined to think that it really won’t save the PSP.

Technically, the PSP isn’t a bad system. It has all the pieces to make it a great machine, but Sony has done a horrible job making it useful.

First, regarding its multimedia capabilities, you can’t really watch anything unless it’s been properly converted. They gave us the Media Manager (which isn’t free, by the way), and the online community has given us PSP Video 9, the ultimate converter for the PSP. But if you want to watch video on the PSP, you have to learn about it first. →  Read the rest

Houston — Wii have a success story

“The Wii is just a gimmick, it’ll never work.”

“Everybody will have forgot about it in two months time.”

Those two statements have been on the tip of my tongue for a long time now, and I’ve been spouting them to anyone who would listen for even longer. In retrospect I probably sounded like a crazed ex-Nintendo employee hell-bent on putting a stop to their massive success, but it seems even my misplaced educated guesses have proven to be slightly awry. And so it is I announce with a mix of self loathing and excitement that I actually do love the Wii.

But then again, what’s not to love? The first day I brought my Wii home, all happy and proud like a cat that just got a pudding of monumental proportions, my whole family had had a crack at it. →  Read the rest

Beyond Good and Evil – Slightly less than amazing

Beyond Good and Evil is the poster child for several “Most Underrated Games of All Time” lists. It has a small army of dedicated fans who will just about yell and scream at the unwashed masses who haven’t played it yet. To even consider it as a bad game is an act of treason to every website and hardcore gamer on the ‘net.

See if you can follow this: She wears green lipstick, a green headband, green jacket, off green pants, and her name is Jade.

Folks, get the noose ready, because I’m about to go for broke. While I have to blame some of it on the hype that was slathered on it for months on end, Beyond Good and Evil is nevertheless one of the most underwhelming gaming experiences I have ever had. →  Read the rest

Wii Sells Like Wii-Cakes

In little over a month, the Nintendo Wii has sold over 3.19 million units worldwide, according to VG Charts.org. For any console, that is a fantastic number, and Nintendo is deservedly riding on clouds lined with freshly printed Benjamins right now.

But how could this have happened? I mean, Nintendo is supposed to be dead last in the home console market, right? How can a company become so popular after being the most underrated console maker in the last generation? Am I taking crazy pills or something?

I guess the Wii really is all that and a bag of potato chips. We have reports that moms and sisters have been getting into the action, and people are getting so excited that they’re shattering their TV’s to show how excited they are. →  Read the rest