Category Archives: Games

My Initial Thoughts on the Next Generation Consoles

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So here is my take on the upcoming Xbox One and PS4. The Xbox One has some well documented problems. These primarily revolve around the utterly strange concept Microsoft keeps trying to drive down our throats in that we want to talk to our TVs. When are they going to learn? People don’t want to talk to things. If so, I would be dictating this right now. It is not natural. We don’t even talk on our phones anymore. This obsession to be “right” about the Kinect drove up the price and turned off the gamer audience. If the hope was to get the causal gamer / TV user to be the primary audience, they blew that with the price point. People bought Wiis because they were cheap. They are not going to drop $500 bucks for this in the numbers Microsoft wants.

The Xbox Ones problems have little to do with used games and “always on” technology. The US has 72% broadband adoption, and growing. The future of the cloud and working from home demands this to grow to over 90%, probably before the end of this decade. That means MS is hitting the 90% use case of the people they think will buy an XBO. I think this includes me and every one of my friends that has a 360. The 360’s compelling advantage has always been live, and everyone I know has live. What does live mean today? Always On and broadband. For us the proposed changes will have zero impact here. In addition, they think offering the compelling immersive living room experience will bring in a larger entertainment market share than the 360 that was more game focused. I think this is a great story; too bad MS did possibly the worst job of marketing this ever with inane focus on Kinect.

They also totally blew the marketing / explanation on the used game front, allowing Sony to sucker a lot of people. First off – no DRM on a PS4. Really? Does the PS3 have DRM? Yes! You have to have the disc in to play. Can you make a copy of the disc and have it work? No. This is the definition of DRM! I can’t believe how many people fell for this. However, because Microsoft hedged their bets with discs, they left themselves wide open. They should have had no disc and marketed the system as a modern device and ecosystem that doesn’t require any discs, just like people are loving steam on their PCs. In any event, I would not be rushing out and hugging the company that invented the CD root kit.

Kickstarter FTW!

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Have you been to this site:

http://www.kickstarter.com/

It is the perhaps the greatest site for good ever made, well except for nra.org of course. For a while there it was looking like some type of typical hippie clap trap being used to make bad indie movies about cowboys eating yogurt but then the site started to support video games.

That is when all hell broke loose and people realized they could actually influence what games got made. Games that they would actually want to play. Suddenly rainbows and unicorns starting busting loose as people dreamt of the remakes they would want, the sequels to long forgotten classics would come to fruition. The only real question about kickstarter is: why did this take so long to happen?

Might and Magic 12?

Wizardry 9?

And gulp… Star Control 4?

These dreams now live. Of course no one is funding them now. But for the first time in a very long time there is hope. Unlike the generic FPS clone crap we get subjected to each fall we now can help build the games we really want to play. This is what the internet was designed for, not flash mobs doing the Carlton, although I do admit that is pretty awesome. Ok, maybe the internet was designed for two things: kickstarting video games and Carlton dancing. And Porn. Ok the internet was designed for 3 things, but that is it.

There is one super awesome blast from the past that has been funded that is making the game sites go all aflutter and that is Wasteland 2. Wasteland was a good Fallout. With humor (thus making it good.) I loved that buggy incomplete game so much. It is on my top 10 of all time games and to think that it might get a sequel made by people with talent who care about the original and not repacking it into a cheesy rip-off of the past – I am looking at you Bard’s Tale remake, just causes a hope gusher. It’s enough to make you want the world to survive past 12/21/2012 just to play it.