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Only Bill Gates can afford a PS3

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$500 for a stripped down system? And if I save up after buying it I still can never have all the features the full $600 version has? When Phillips launched the CD-i at $800 it was clear they were insane. The PS3 will be cheaper but not by enough to make it clear that Sony are in their right mind.

Sony justifies the cost by saying there is a Blu Ray player in the system. Guess who designed the console. No, it wasn’t me. It was Sony. So they decided to put a Blu Ray player in the system. The Blu Ray players cost a thousand dollars so we are all getting a great buy, Sony says. If the PS4 comes attached to a Lexus and sells for 30 grand Sony will praise the system for being much cheaper than a Lexus without the PS4. →  Read the rest

A guide to selling extra content

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Microsoft and Oblivion have shown the world that gamers will actually buy discreet bits of additional content for their favorite games. Designing a method that allows a game to create a constant stream of revenue is ingenious, and now that the groundwork has been laid for us all we need to do to take advantage of this lucrative business opportunity is jump on the bandwagon. So then the question is not how do we set up a system that continually milks our fans, but rather what exactly do we use to separate them from their money; what content can we sell and to whom?

Any mildly proactive person can see that things like weapons, armor, and other gear can be sold to players for additional fees. This is exactly what has happened in the game Oblivion. →  Read the rest

Weekly News We care About Wrap Up – 5.5.06

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Analysts analyze the future through use of crystal ball
My arch enemy Michael Wallace of UBS Securities predicts this next generation console battle will be different than the last because the systems are so expensive. Startling revelation number two is that the Wii is unique so publishers won’t just port every game they make onto it. Wallace and his crony Stephen Kam think the “Wii” is a kiddy name but it won’t matter if the system has good games. Somehow these guys, who I assume majored in bullshit in college, missed the classes on image and branding because A) people don’t have infinite time to research everything so they often need to go with their gut reaction B) people are stupid and shallow and C) the name really is god awful. →  Read the rest

To buy or not to buy?

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The Xbox 360 is now abundantly available at whatever retailer you choose to support.

What I’m saying is, right now, you can walk into your local wherever and purchase a brand new Xbox 360. No eBay, no scalpers, no friend of a friend. Just plain old retail. The question right now, is of course, should you buy an Xbox 360? Is availability enough? Do you climb Mount Everest just because it’s there?

That’s a question you’ll have to answer.

Also, there are a few things you need to consider before you buy your 360.

Look at the games, first of all. Is there anything there that you have to play? Anything there that isn’t already multiplatform. Will you no longer possess the will to live if you cannot play RockStar Games presents Table Tennis? →  Read the rest

Weekly News We care About Wrap Up – 4.28.06

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Nintendo renames the Revolution
Nintendo is the US after September 11th. They built up a great deal of good will, especially after developers revealed they’re making real games for the system. But like Bush II, Nintendo has squandered the world’s interest by pursuing a terrible PR campaign and bombing Iraq. So the analogy isn’t perfect. My point is Nintendo had everyone listening and now they have everyone laughing. Image has long been one of their main problems and they seem to revel in not fixing it.

I will stop being friends with anyone who actually calls it the Wiimote.

With that, I present to you the Nintendo Wii, pronounced “we.” In case the pun wasn’t painful enough, Nintendo has named the Revolution controller the “wiimote.” In order to stress how stupid their marketing people are, Nintendo’s press conference consisted of terrible puns. →  Read the rest

A multiplayer world

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Raph may want to think about updating his pic on his website.

The other day I was listening to the Penny Arcade podcast, specifically The Zone of Breakfast. First off, a quick shameless fanboy plug: although our glorious cult leader (may he always provide for us Kool-Aid), Jay, dislikes these guys, I’ve always been a huge PA fan. In particular, I enjoy their new podcasts because I get to listen to a lot of video game news I ordinarily would not. Rather than do research and reading, I can just listen to the voices from the computer, which is more comfortable to me, because I am illiterate and hear voices in my head. Anyhow, they were discussing a comment that Raph Koster, a designer for both Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies made at a E3 several years ago. →  Read the rest

Weekly News We care About Wrap Up – 4.21.06

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It’s not vandalism if it’s illegible.

Getting Up game mediocre enough to inspire Hollywood movie
This makes perfect sense to me. The game wasn’t very good and was style over substance. Why wouldn’t they make a movie out of it and say… seven sequels to the game? When has quality ever been something consumers cared about?


Guitar Hero 2 is coming
Awesome to the max. More songs than the first one and more importantly, new modes. Bass guitar I could take or leave, but two player mode with one doing rhythm and the other doing lead sounds like a lot of fun. Now I wish I’d invested in that cherry red second guitar. It’s a tad keyboard heavy, but I really hope Rainbow in the Dark is in this game.

Scratch that, just give us some Hammerfall. →  Read the rest

Weekly News We care About Wrap Up – 4.14.06

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Video game skills do not usually transfer to real life skills
Man in his 30s attempts to outrun cops in a car because he did it in GTA. Instead of putting age restrictions on games, there should be an IQ test. Is anyone else waiting for the guy who played too much Trauma Center to show up in the news?

photoshopped

Too good to be true?

Two Revolution games announced
Red Steel is coming to the Revolution, and check out the fake screen shots. Maybe they’re not polished, who knows. The game seems to be another attempt by Nintendo to convince gamers that they can appeal to an older crowd. The choice of a FPS is slightly odd, though. They tend to do terribly in Japan and if the Revolution is to stand a chance, my guess is that it’d have to repeat the DS’s and Allied Forces strategy of dominating the homeland. →  Read the rest

Weekly News We care About Wrap Up – 4.7.06

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Bloated cash cow, I choose you!

Nintendo engineers talk about the process of designing the DSLite
I personally find this article to be fascinating. More interviews with hardware designer’s would be a welcome thing.

Nintendo has great year financially
Despite having a dead console, Nintendo made a lot of yen this past year, thanks to the “favorable” performance of the DS. Maybe one day they’ll stop living off of handhelds and Pokemon and be a real player in the console wars again.

First Amendment bitch slaps anti-game lobbyists
Said the judge, “Video games are a form of creative expression that are constitutionally protected under the First Amendment. They contain original artwork, graphics, music, story lines and characters similar to movies and television shows, both of which are considered protected free speech.” →  Read the rest

Review – Megaman Powered Up

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Megaman Powered Up
Developed by Capcom
Published by Capcom
Released 3.14.06
Here, Megaman faces off against Cutman, who would later go on to challenge a variety of social norms by becoming the first gay hairdresser robot.

I often wonder whether games have gotten easier over time, or if I’ve just gotten better. This weekend I picked up Megaman: Powered Up, Capcom’s PSP remake of the original Megaman, and I can now definitively answer this question: old-school games were, and still are, hard as fuck. Still, a potent combination of 1337 gaming skills, perseverance, and far too much free time on my hands allowed me to conquer (at least a significant portion of) the game and bring you this delectable review!

For those who didn’t catch the Blue Bomber’s debut back on the NES, the game takes place sometime in the year 20XX, which I guess is a really long time from now because we still just use numbers for our years. →  Read the rest

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World of Warcraft Endgame Analysis part IV

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Parts: I | II | III | IV | V

Hardcore Instance Running

Ok, you’re a l33t powergamer. What is there for you when you hit 60 th level? Find 39 other friends and you’re ready to form a raid group for the baddest of the bad:

Red
This lovely lavafront property can be had for a cool $499,999. Dragon not included

Molten Core
The “original” hardcore dungeon, Molten Core was the first 40 man dungeon available. However, because it has been around for so long, it has been successively “nerfed” (made easier) in difficulty as new content has become available. As a result, at this point in time, the hardest part of Molten Core is finding 35-40 other people to get together at the same time and go raid it. The encounters, compared to the other 20 and 40 man instances, are fairly trivial (although still a challenge for someone who hasn’t worked in a 40 man team before). →  Read the rest

Weekly News We care About Wrap Up – 3.31.06

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Must miss
I did my part to support UMD movies by buying 25 copies of this classic story about a girl who wakes up a slut.

UMD movies failing
Is it possible Sony somehow is responsible for a failed format? Of course it is, they love failing, and I love to see their new formats fail. This is a good sign for those of us who want game systems to focus on playing games. To read more complaining, read this.

Blizzard sued by some guy who wants to sell Warcraft guides on the internet
This is a very interesting and possibly important lawsuit. The guy suing Blizzard sold his guides on eBay until Blizzard complained and they were taken down. They say he is trying to make money off of their good will and recognition they’ve built with their games, whatever that means. →  Read the rest

Weekly News We care About Wrap Up – 3.24.06

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PS3 to be region free.
Woohoo. Now I can buy RPGs I can’t play without getting the system modded. I expect this will increase the number of gamers who import titles from Japan, but also eat into sales of Western releases by a little, which is part of the reason console manufacturers always used region encoding.

GameStop makes huge profits.
Buying your competitors and selling used games as new really works.

Errrr
This pic of Representative Keeley is really a stronger argument against her position than anything I could write.

Jack Thompson and Delaware Representative try to brand violent games as obscene, thereby getting around that pesky First Amendment.
According to them games are not speech so they shouldn’t be protected. Since when did artistic expression need to be in the form of spoken words? →  Read the rest

Weekly News We care About Wrap Up – 3.17.06

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OMG itz a remote control!11111

Miyamoto confirms the new Zelda will use the Revolution controller.
Though in what regard, we are still not sure. If it’s simply for mini games or something silly like that, many fans may pissed off. I think Nintendo painted themselves into a corner with this new Zelda game. They wanted to release it as a GC game but then there are no other big games coming out on that system… possibly ever. So instead of supporting their own dead system they decided to launch it with the Revolution. Making it a Rev launch title makes sense, but then Nintendo would just alienate more fans because the game was originally promised for the GC. So now they’re trying to dress it up like a Revolution title to sell the system. →  Read the rest

Aborted game autopsy 2: Suspicions confirmed

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Besides learning some valuable lessons while working on my game, some things I already thought to be true were reaffirmed.

Suspicions Confirmed:

Kierga
The cliched plain female archer nearing a mid life crisis.

Games take zillions of man hours to make. Any game of substantial size cannot be completed by six people. Any game using more than a few 3D models requires more than one guy who knows how to do 3D modeling from classes he took. Any game with a few hundred characters needs more than one talented conceptual artist. And any game that has a 150 page plot and also wants to have dialog should have more than two writers.

Since I already mostly understood why development teams are so big and games cost so much, we’ll say that now these facts are burned into my brain. →  Read the rest

You never forget your first one

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PSO Ver 1 case
The future is colorful.

I really enjoyed Phantasy Star Online (PSO). I was there when it launched on the DreamCast. I was there for the DreamCast launch as well, but that’s a different story. There was just “something” about PSO that grabbed me. I’m not sure if it was the lineage of the earlier games, the sci-fi rpg trappings, or the Diablo II elements. Knowing me, it was a combination of all three.

I got hooked when I started playing the online component of the game. Initially, I was dialing in using the DreamCast’s integrated modem. When I first started playing, it was fine. Then I wanted a bit more.

After savagely beating a roommate for picking up the phone during a run of Caves-2, I ordered an ethernet adapter. I could play without any interruptions. →  Read the rest

Flash game review bonanza 1

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There are a lot of flash games on the internet, and most of them suck harder than a hooker on Christmas. So, in order to avoid having to write six angst-riddled reviews of six horrible games, as well as give the set of games I review some feeling of cohesiveness, I’ve decided to provide reviews for the top six rated games at the infamous flash portal at www.newgrounds.com. Enjoy!

Raiden X

Creator: Go0gley
Genre: top-down shooter

Water attack
Laser of Doom- $5000. Futuristic air force jet- $20000000. Getting your neighbor’s kid to draw your backgrounds – Priceless.

Synopsis: Raiden X was developed as a tribute to the Raiden games. It is a garden variety vertical shooter. Certain enemies will drop power ups that allow you to upgrade one of three types of weapons: a blue laser beam, red machine gun fire, or a purple lightning type energy.

 →  Read the rest
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Learning from Japanese Synergy

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Synergy is not a word to be recklessly tossed about. It is a seriously proactive relationship between outside of the box marketing and paradigm shifting branding that can result in untold of revenue for your company. The video game market has created new opportunities for the realignment of business models in this post category killer Ted spread. Tracing this synergy to its roots leads us across the Pacific.

The Japanese consumer will buy anything. Despite saving more than Americans, the Japanese are extremely hardcore in their loyalty. People who follow an anime will buy any worthless product tie in, people who like school girls will spend money on used school girl underwear, and people who like a game series will buy food and drinks as long as it has the series logo on it. →  Read the rest

Gold Farmers: Destroying the Fun (and economy) of MMORPG’s

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If you have not read Billy’s take on gold farmers, you may want to now.

Anyone who plays World of Warcraft knows them: they often have strange names (Ihugirls, Jobsister), but they may also have a name unnoticeable from others. Their guild tag might be your average WoW lore fluff, or it could be something along the lines of “Knightsofthepiratekitty.” They play as much, if not more, as any hardcore addict: 8-12 hour days. But rather than roaming about the game’s many dungeons and zones, you find them in them alternating between the auction house and the same hot spots: Winterspring hunting herbs, camping elites in Tyr’s Hand, or patrolling Burning Steppes for rich thorium veins. Every hour of the day.

Who are they? Gold farmers. Somewhere along the line, people figured out that there was in fact more money to be made in the secondary market of MMORPG’s (selling gold, items, and characters) than their was in the primary market (selling subscriptions). →  Read the rest

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The Ethics of Farming part II

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Continued from yesterday’s part I…

  • If you buy gold, you support Chinese sweatshops.

You’d think people on computers made in Chinese sweatshops would catch the irony of their argument. They don’t though, know why? It’s because they don’t want Chinese people on their servers period. It isn’t about keeping the game servers clean of trouble, it’s about keeping out people who don’t speak English or live in a country they like. Here is the truth though. There are no gold farming Chinese sweat shops. I have spoken to gold farmers in person and in the game. I was curious about the way they operate so I am always asking questions. Here’s what I have learned. There are no sweatshops; the majority of the gold farmers are college students. They usually operate three or four in a company and alternate between classes and so on and so forth. →  Read the rest