Sony

Sony at E3 – slightly less terrible than the competition?

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Max has been kind enough to fill in for Jay on covering the Sony press conference. When not reading videolamer, he runs the excellent website GameLemon.

I’ve already bitched elsewhere on this fine site about Sony’s presentation skills, but that little rant was small and only mildly satisfying, so I am going to say it again: Sony, please, for chrissakes, hire some presenters that are at least remotely cool and entertaining, and forbid your executives from ever appearing in public. I am sure they are all fine people and very important to the business, but they couldn’t excite a crowd worth a crap even if their bonus depended it.

Next, fire the idiots who wrote the script for the presentation. Those dudes need to get out waaay more if they think this is the kind of stuff that excites the gaming demographic. I mean, they brought out Chewbacca. Bad enough. But then they had Jack Tretton talk to him. On stage. →  Rayman Reading Rabbids

PSP 1.1 – Worst. Update. Ever.

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If there was one thing that I wanted to see at this year’s E3, it was the new PSP. I was dying to see what Sony had up their sleeves. I was especially looking forward to the much-requested hard-drive that was rumored to be included. But what did Sony do? Crushed my frail little dreams, that’s what. And they didn’t even apologize! Totally inconsiderate.

So, instead of an 8GB hard-drive, we get a faster UMD drive, a more efficient battery, a thinner and lighter casing, and a video-out connection. Yup, that’s it. And even worse, the damn thing looks exactly the same!

Now, I will say the ability to display the feed on a TV is a pretty cool feature, but when compared to how insignificant everything else is, having a video-out option isn’t a good enough reason to upgrade from the old PSP. Before, I was all ready to get in line and wait for the new model come this Fall, but now, I see no reason to. →  Read Band 2

matt’s E3 Predictions

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I’m sure you’re probably bored to death of reading the blogosphere’s predictions for the cleverly-named “Min-E3” event that’s going to take place next week, but I haven’t stated mine yet, so you’re gonna sit there and listen, whether you like it or not. I’ll try to make it short, so you only have to use 3% of your brain power. Fucking babies.

Microsoft

-Gears of War for PC. Why? Because it’s already true.
-No portable (Jesus people, forget about it).
-$50 price drop for each 360 SKU (Core, Premium, Elite).
-No MGS4. It will happen eventually, but it’s not going to be for awhile.
-Zune will be integrated more with the Fall Update. Songs and video bought off Marketplace, then transfered to your Zune.
-Some crazy XBLA game shown off, with a million crappy ones.

Sony

-$100 price drop for PS3 in North America. Also, true.
-PSP Lite shown in actual form, presented with the new PSP Store. (I personally cannot wait for this)
-MGS4 playable, but Killzone in video form only. →  When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called a game.

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 6.29.07

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Capcom not merging with another company
Sega and Sammy did it, Square and Enix did it, so why not Capcom? Imagine the awesomeness of Capnomi — crossovers like Phoenix Wright Solid, Gradius May Cry, and Silent Resident Evil Hill would delight fans worldwide.

Unfortunately (or fortunately if you live in the real world), Capcom won’t be merging with another company any time soon. They did announce they would go the Sega route of buying a bunch of crappy Western developers, at least. We can only hope Capcom nonchalantly hands over enormous franchises for their new developers to systematically destroy.

Dragon’s Lair DS
This game gets a bad rap just because it’s basically not interactive in any way. It’s true that if Dragon’s Lair came out today on the PS3 and looked amazing but offered little to no gameplay, my throat would be sore from all the screaming about how shitty it is. But back in 1983 this was a damn cool experience. →  Read Read Revolution: Disney Channel Edition

Nintendo confirms WiiWare: Indie Gaming on Wii

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This week Nintendo sent the word out that they are indeed working on a Wii channel where users can download original games, titled WiiWare. This is basically Nintendo’s version of Xbox Live Arcade.

Nintendo is working on getting indie devs to take advantage of the WiiWare channel, but it’s still unknown how developers can actually make a game on the system without open source API’s for the Wii’s architecture. It seems that indie devs may need to pony up the cash for a real dev kit. Thankfully, Wii dev kits are pretty damn cheap right now, estimated at a paltry $2000.

Now I’m sure most of you are thinking, “Yeah, Nintendo said this when they first announced the Wii and it’s online services.” You’d be right, but you must remember Nintendo rarely comes through with some of their really inventive ideas. Did you know the GameCube was originally going to have an SD card reader?

The reader/writer was poised to act like an HDD, with ideas like trees actually growing (think Fable) a reality in video games. →  Gotta get down on Friday.

Lumines sells like hotcakes. No, the original one. Yeah.

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See, I told you guys the PSP wasn’t dead. This week, Lumines, the damn-near-perfect musical puzzler for the PSP, saw a 5900% rise in sales on Amazon. And all because of a bug. Yes, Lumines is probably the first game in history to become more sought-after because of a minor bug that not even QA’ers can find. Yes, you’ve entered Bizarro World. Welcome.

Over the weekend, PSP homebrew programmers/hackers found an exploit in Q! Entertainment’s puzzler in the form of a buffer overflow. Basically, this allows anyone to run unsigned code on the PSP, which Sony’s been desperately trying to stop. Ya know, so they can actually make money on the thing.

And of course, the underground homebrew scene has already released a downgrader app to bring the PSP’s firmware version back to the coveted 1.50 release. Sucks for Sony, I guess. Ubisoft, on the other hand, is laughing all the way to the bank.

I have two things to say on this issue. →  God of War: Readnarok

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 6.18.07

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Sony announces 9,648,319 games by March 08
Unfortunately, they counted each individual household a game would end up in as a unique game. If you don’t count your copy of God of War 3 as a different game from my copy, then 145 or more PS3 titles are coming.

Sonic RPG on DS being developed by Bioware
Funny, whimsical RPGs can be cool. Mario’s Super Star Saga and the whole Paper Mario series attest to this. Cute, colorful cartoon characters in RPGs can hold their own, too. Kefka may look silly this day in age, but he is still insanely evil. So what is so horrendous about a Sonic RPG? I’m glad you asked.

Sonic is uninteresting in every possible way. Running fast makes for a subpar to decent action game (or awesome 2D platformer) but is not solid foundation to build a character on. He is blue, has an attitude, a bunch of irritating friends and a fat arch nemesis who might as well be Dr. →  I’ll get a job later, for now I’m going to read this

Sony decides PS3 is making a comeback

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Offering no sales figures or other sales facts, Sony CEO declared, “All the production problems have been solved. We are making a comeback already.” It seems Sony has figured out how important image is and so they’ve decided to take it upon themselves to tell the media what their image is. It would not be at all shocking if the PS3 begins to make a comeback only because an article has printed that it is making a comeback. Microsoft should try this tactic with the Zune.

In other breaking news, videolamer’s popularity is growing beyond all expectations.

Behind the names of our favorite companies and consoles

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Gamers speak the names of companies and systems on a daily basis, but many of us don’t know what these words actually mean nor their origin. And so here is a list of many of the biggest companies and consoles and what information is openly known about their names. I speak absolutely no Japanese and have no new information to add to this planet, but I have not seen all this info neatly compiled in one spot before. Thanks to Japanmanship and others who had already done much research on the topic.

Companies


Microsoft – Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems created the microcomputer Altair 8800 and Bill Gates offered to implement BASIC on their system. Micro is either from the Micro in the MITS company name or the micro in microcomputer, or both. Either way, it’s not terribly exciting.


SONY – Despite ads that say otherwise, SONY does not stand for So New York. The name actually derives from the proud language of South America – Latin. →  All happy games are alike; each unhappy game is unhappy in its own way.

How the UMD could have won

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Last week Gamestop had a Memorial Day weekend sale where they sold all their UMD movies for the awesome price of $4.99. And seeing as how I actually own a PSP, I jumped on that one like….well, something that jumps really fast.

For only $50, I got 10, count ’em 10, UMD movies, and all of them are actually worthing of being watched. I’m talking Snatch, The Fifth Element, and one of my all-time personal favorites, Ghostbusters. Now my train rides won’t consist of me reading a book. Phht, like books are ever gonna catch on…

So after having a full week of watching movies on my PSP, I have to say that it’s actually pretty damn cool. The quality of the video, as well as being formatted in a widescreen ratio, makes watching movies on my handheld a very enjoyable experience. I started wondering why I never got into them before.

And then I remembered: the price. These suckers used to retail for almost $30 when they were new, which is $10 more than a standard DVD. →  Snap! Crackle! Read!