Sony

One Thing Right, One Thing Wrong: Sony Edition

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In our final edition, we get to talk about everyone’s current whipping boy, Sony and it’s uber-beast of a console, the PS3. Oh boy, how the might have fallen. In one fell swoop, the Playstation brand went from the de facto system for anything “video gaming” to some machine that costs way too much. But, it’s not all bad.

Ummm. Hmmmm.

Yeah, let’s start with the bad things first.

Well, one thing that I can’t understand for the life of me is what you have to do when updating the PS3’s firmware. You have to connect your wireless SIXAXIS controller into the system with a USB cord. Can someone please tell me why? What the hell does the controller have to do with a firmware update?

And why can’t the system just connect with the controller through the Bluetooth? →  Read the rest

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 4.20.07

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Sony’s Q2 release schedule
Between the PS3 and Wii’s upcoming releases, I wish I had a 360. Though some (Matt) would disagree, it looks like adopting a next gen system early is a bad move. After Paper Mario there’s nothing I want to play on the Wii, at least nothing at the current going rates of titles. Maybe I’d pick up Metal Slug for $30, Excite Truck for $25 and only ask to be paid $20 to take Wii Play.

At least my stupid investment only cost $250 and there are plenty of good Virtual Console games to play. If you’re one of the few rich people with a PS3, look on the bright side — you’ll be able to download Joust soon.

New Wii/DS studio CEO speaks
I like what co-founder of Jet Black Games has to say:

“With game team sizes at the time already easily exceeding 100 or even 200 people, it seemed like this might be the last opportunity to work in a smaller, more creative environment… given our company’s values and goals, it was natural that we align ourselves with Nintendo.” →  Read the rest

Numbers are fun: Super awesome stock update

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While at work today, and trying to justify thinking about video games, I became curious about the recent performance of the three companies gamers (probably) follow most closely. Thus you now get to read a rundown of how Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo stock has performed since the launches of the 360, PS3 and Wii respectively. But first a few caveats. With nothing besides perception to back this up, I’m going to say that Wii sales are more important to Nintendo than either of the other consoles are to the their companies. While I’m not sure, and I would be willing to listen to arguments to the contrary, I would say Microsoft is least reliant on its games division, but Sony obviously has diverse business interests as well. This means that stock moves could have nothing to do with game sales, and I am completely spinning my wheels. →  Read the rest

One Thing Right, One Thing Wrong: Microsoft Edition

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Continuing our week-long series of “One Thing Right, One Thing Wrong,” today we turn our attention to Microsoft and it’s rather sleek-looking Xbox 360 console. Compared to the original Xbox, the 360 is leaps and bounds better, but still isn’t exactly perfect, which we’ll now discuss.
Xbox 360: So smart, yet so stupid.

In a move that Nintendo should probably take a lesson from, Microsoft gives each person a Reputation rating on their Gamercard, which is represented by a 5-star rating. It lets players that play games online know what kind of people they are playing with. The lower the rating, the more obnoxious the player will be while playing with him/her. All you have to do is view that player’s Gamercard and check the Reputation rating, which is to the right of their Gamer pic. →  Read the rest

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 4.13.07

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Bethesda buys Fallout IP
Anyone who thinks a series can change developers and still be the same series is encouraged to pay me to write the fourth Lord of the Rings book.

Cheap PS3 discontinued
No more 20 gig harddrive PS3. This makes some sort of sense because Sony loses more on each of the 20 gig sold than on the 60 gig. But it also doesn’t make other kinds of sense. Specifically, the “release two models for absolutely no reason,” and “eliminate the cheaper model because the console is too expensive in the first place” kinds of sense.

To make matters more hilarious, Sony is considering releasing a third model of the PS3. Some magical hardware that could play PS3 games (which are on Blu Ray) but not come with a Blu Ray player was what I was hoping for, despite the obvious impossibility. →  Read the rest

Console Predictions from a Gamer

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After what felt like three bajillion years (which seemed to be filled with pointless bickering), all three systems are finally out on the market, waiting for whomever wants to jump into the next-generation console war. The last few months have been a very telling period for gaming, with the PS3 not performing as well as some would hope, and Nintendo’s new console coming completely out of nowhere with some amazing numbers, especially considering it’s coming off the heels of possibly the worst performing Nintendo console ever, the GameCube. With that in mind, we can get into the nitty gritty: the future. What’s in store for each player in the console war? We can’t say for sure exactly, but we can have fun predicting.

Xbox 360: In a startling revelation that I’ve found while roaming this clogged series of tubes, many people who were on the fence about the 360 went straight for it the moment the PS3 stumbled coming out of the gate last November. →  Read the rest

Wii Shortages Will Continue

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Next-Gen has reported through an interview with Nintendo of America’s Perrin Kaplan that it may be awhile before the Wii Shortage of ’07 ends. Perrin stated that they are at maximum capacity right now in terms of manufacturing the system, but the demand for the system is still at a fever-pitch, making it very hard to keep an amble supply on store shelves. The Internet community has known about this situation for some time now, but it’s surprising to see that even Nintendo themselves can’t predict when the shortage will come to an end.

But let’s think about this for a second. Even though the Wii is doing gangbusters right now, you can’t call it a complete success when the demand for it far exceeds supply. It isn’t good to have virtually no stock of your product on store shelves when everyone and their grandma wants one. →  Read the rest

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 4.8.07

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Resident Evil games coming to Wii
Capcom loves to remake and rerelease Resident Evils. Resident Evil 1 was released first on the PS1, then the Saturn, and PC, then the director’s cut came out on the PS1. This was followed by the remake for Gamecube and the slightly modified Deadly Silence version for the DS. Somewhere in there a mobile phone game was released, but at least Capcom had the sense to scrap a GBC version. Some PS1 games don’t look good on an NES — who knew?

Good news for people who have only played this game eight times — the Umbrella Chronicles game coming to the Wii looks very much like a recreation of the first game (with some of the second thrown in to placate whiners like me). →  Read the rest

Review – God of War

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I hate making film to videogame comparisons, but in this case it seems appropriate. Back in the day, whenever a movie ended explicitly detailing that a sequel would be made, it always bugged me. Who the hell did those guys think they are? Were they really that confident in their production, or were they just cocky? It always seemed to be in bad taste to just assume people were going to buy in to your product.

Nowadays, the sequel hint is a common practice. Not only do we generally accept it, but sometimes we downright expect it (as in the case with something like Spiderman). After all, if it is good, then why not create even more of that good for us to enjoy?

The same logic seems to have carried over into gaming-land. →  Read the rest

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 3.30.07

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PS3 sells well in Europe
Is this a sign that Sony is turning a corner? I recently noticed that the PS3 has a lot more well-reviewed titles and fewer games the critics hate than the Wii. Surely that’s a sign things will start picking up for Sony.

But then there’s the recent news that Devil May Cry 4 is going to be on both the PS3 and 360. A lot of smart people have said stupid things about this generation not being about console exclusives. Considering the Wii will have Nintendo first party titles and the 360 already has a number of good exclusives, I wonder if the sentiment that exclusives are dead is really just a nice way of saying, “Exclusives still matter but it’s depressing to think about how many Sony is losing.” →  Read the rest

Is E3 Dead?

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The gaming community received a harsh slap in the face last year when ESA, the organization that is behind the megaton-laden E3, decided to completely change the way the yearly venue is run. They drastically reduced the number of reporters that were allowed to attend to around 20,000 (from last year’s 60,000), and turned it into a more intimate affair for the actual publishers/developers to showcase their games without having to scream over loud, thumping techno music.

In unison, developers around the world bowed down and gave thanks to the merciful Gamer Gods. Now they wouldn’t have to break their asses to create a (hopefully) bug-free demo that would probably get swept up in all the hustle and bustle anyway. The gamers themselves, on the other hand, found it hard to believe that the mecca of all things gaming was being changed into something that they would never have the opportunity to experience. →  Read the rest

GDC: D is for Developer

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Wooh boy, it’s been one hell of a week. GDC was filled with some crazy announcements. We had Sony’s “Home” thing, LittleBigWorld, and Peter Molyneux’s “dog” in Fable 2. It started to look like GDC was turning into E3’s successor in some respects. That is, until the Miyamoto conference.

Basically, Shigeru Miyamoto, the one person everyone was looking to for some steamy Nintendo megaton, denied the raving rabbid press and talked about, you guessed it, developing games. No big game announcement or anything of the sort. Just tips on how to make good games.

Apparently the press (or at least Game|Life) wasn’t too keen on how the big show turned out, almost calling it a complete waste of time.

Funny thing is, the damn show is called the Game Developers Conference, and is meant to help developers with their unreleased wares and brewing ideas. →  Read the rest

Two Gamecubes duct taped together

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Chris Hecker angered a lot of people by calling the Wii a piece of shit at this years Game Developer’s Conference. The thrust of his “argument” seems to be that games are art and Nintendo is focusing solely on making entertainment, not art, and therefore Nintendo is bad. It’s worth noting that on his website Chris says he is the Editor at large of Game Developer magazine, yet their website and the february issue I hold in my hands neglect to mention he holds any position there. But back to the issue at hand – some of the videolamer staff have been kind enough to tell us their thoughts on the situation.

Pat says:
This speech took place during a “rant” session, which seems to encourage hyperbolic, polarizing comments. So while my first reaction was “Who cares?” →  Read the rest

Numbers are fun: January 07 edition

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There has been a decent amount of industry news in the gaming spotlight recently. A next gen system (Wii) was finally the best selling piece of hardware over a month (January) in the United States with 436,000 units. While the DS (239,000) still outsold the PSP (211,000), Sony’s machine has started to close the gap. All it took was a few original titles and sales have started to pick up. In terms of raw sales numbers, 2006 was a great year for the industry, and, in the US at least, terrific January sales have started 2007 off on the right foot. Japan sales last month were lower than those in January 2006, but this is hardly troubling. There are reporting problems with both the US and Japanese numbers that make it difficult to tell anything very specific, but it does seem as though the industry is alive and kicking. →  Read the rest

Sony’s “big announcements” at GDC07

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I’m really unimpressed with Phil Harrison’s GDC07 presentation. Not one of the announcements made me re-think my choice to not purchase a PS3.

Playstation Home is basically “Second Life” or “There,” and not in any way new or innovative as the press keeps saying. Why would I want to use a $600 console to make an avatar and hang out in an online version of the Sims? And then pay real money for digital clothes and furniture to show off to people I wouldn’t want to talk to anyway? No thanks. This just seems to be Sony’s lame attempt at cashing in on the Web 2.0 market (the MySpace generation). “Hey kids, you can use this boxed computer and internet connection to talk to other people online. Don’t forget to make your avatar your own by giving us some cash for generic yet ad-supported mechandise. →  Read the rest

Kotaku and Sony Agreed to Disagree

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I’m sure you’ve all heard the huge controversy surrounding the rumor reported by Kotaku on the whole “Playstation Home” thing, so I’ll just give you the short story.

Basically, Kotaku searched the Internets, came across a rumor about something called the “Playstation Home”, and posted it for their fellow readers, which is what any good news service would have done. Sony apparently didn’t want the rumor posted, as it seems it may be something that’s going to be unveiled at this week’s GDC Conference in San Francisco, California. Kotaku defended the post, saying it signifies what journalism really is and that it is not a place for PR dribble (amen to that). Sony then blackballed Kotaku, banning them from any future Sony related event and asking for their PS3 dev kit back. →  Read the rest

Achievements: Crack for Gaming

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Hey guys. Sorry I’ve been a little lax on the whole “blogging” thing, but I swear, I have a good reason for it. In the last week or so, I’ve become addicted. To Achievements. Ya know, that thing on the Xbox 360 that gets you to play your games more? You know what I’m talking about. You’re probably going through the same thing right now, but are still in the denial stage. Don’t worry, it will come to you soon.

For the uninitiated, Achievements are points that you unlock when you complete certain tasks in your 360 games. Things like finishing a game on hard, or getting 100,000 points in that sch’mup all unlock Achievement points. The points then go into your Gamerscore, which is basically a barometer of how badass you are at gaming. →  Read the rest

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 2.23.07

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New Virtual Console consoles
It looks like Wii owners will now have the chance to download Neo Geo and MSX games. I’d like to see the original Metal Gear, which is supposed to be significantly cooler than the NES port, and Master System favorites (that were ports from the MSX) Miracle Warriors and Golvellius. Of course the West may never get the MSX emulator because most (or all) of the system’s games are in Japanese. Maybe after Nintendo translates Fire Emblem 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 I will believe there’s a possibility they translate super obscure Japanese computer games on a system 99.8% of Americans have never heard of.

Speaking of Master System, why not give us a Wii emulator for Phantasy Star, Wonder Boy, Zillion, Alex Kidd and company? →  Read the rest

Virtual Console Grumblings

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Not too long ago, news broke that Nintendo was offering an updated version of the VC title Military Madness, free for download to those who had purchased it. The new version fixed some horrible emulation problems, and all was good. Though in fact it really wasn’t – while people were glad to see them issue a fix, many more were worried and angry that TG16 emulation is so far less than perfect.

Then the shitstorm began – it was discovered that Mariokart 64 did not support ghost data saves, and some future n64 games would not support rumble. Then Kid Icarus was released without the ability to use certain cheat passwords that were available in the original. Soon everyone was after Nintendo’s head, their logic being “we pay exorbitant amounts for these downloads, and they can’t even give us perfect versions? →  Read the rest

WipEout for PS3: You Know You Want it

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This will be the game that breaks the camel’s hump for me with the PS3. Metal Gear probably won’t do it, Final Fantasy definitely won’t do it, and I don’t really have to worry about Fumito Ueda’s next opus because it will probably come out when PS4 is released, judging from their track record. Nope, only WipEout will make me get that second job.

A few weeks ago Sony revealed that the series would be released at some point in the future on the PS3. Details are scant at the moment, but they did say the game would utilize the SIXAXIS motion controls, as well as a possible online mode, which we can assume is either multiplayer or downloadable tracks and vehicles, just like they did with WipEout Pure on the PSP. →  Read the rest