Unfortunately, this was not to be:

Based on Twitter and forum posts by (now former) 1UP staff, it appears all but certain that the 1UP Show video podcast and 1UP Yours audio podcast are no more.

…

[Update: Joystiq has obtained what is, according to our sources, the full list of 1UP / EGM staffers laid off in the wake of the ZD/UGO deal: (eds. note: we can confirm that this list is accurate based on our own sources)]

Adrian Frieg
Amy Mishra
Amy Moran
Andrea Garcia
Andrew Fitch
Andrew “Skip” Pfister
Anthony Gallegos
Cesar Quintero
Christina Rosa
CoyLou Steel
Derek Chinn
Doug Parsons
Eric Ellis
Giancarlo Varanini
Greg Ford
James “Milkman” Mielke
Jason Bertrand
Jason Wilson
Jervilyn Jaramillo
Justin Frechette
Leslie Gelfand
Marci Yamaguchi
Matt Chandronait
May Tong
Meredith Stowe
Michael Donahoe
Monique Convertito
Ndubuisi Madu
Nick Suttner
Norris Boothe
Philip Kollar
Rey Serrano
Robert Bowen
Rosemary Pinkham
Ryan O’Donnell
Ryan Scott
Shane Bettenhausen
Simon Cox
Tammy Ross
Tipler Ubbelohde

This is our first post in about 10 months, and I wish it were under better auspices. However, this will not be the last. There may be a period of silence while we finish formulating plans that we had been discussing for some time, but eat-sleep-game will be back in action soon, with a new look, and some new faces. In the meantime, our hearts are with our friends at 1up (of which there are many). See you real soon, bitches.

-Arthur Gies, eic, eat-sleep-game

Medal of Honor Heroes 2 Review (Wii)

The Simpsons Game Review (DS)

The Sims: Castaway Review (PSP/PS2)

Dawn of War: SoulStorm Expansion Preview

Frontlines: Fuel of War Hands-on Multiplayer Preview (360)

The above is only a portion of the work I have been doing. I have also been working on several strategy guides, but choose not to post about them here. However, should you desire a link to a game guide, just shoot me a message or a comment telling me which game, and I’ll see what I can do.

Chufmoney

p.s.-Before anyone goes hating on my MoHH2 review–anymore than it already has been hated on–please realize that the score I gave means it is average–not bad.

A stir was caused this week when EGM’s Dan Hsu revealed in the magazine’s editorial section that they had been essentially blacklisted by three companies for what those publishers viewed to be low review scores. While I don’t know that anyone is too broken up about Midway’s Mortal Kombat studio or Sony’s sports studio picking up their toys and going home, everyone seems surprised that Ubisoft has pulled all marketing and has now refused to send any preview builds or early review copies of their games to EGM or Ziff-Davis publications. Ubisoft may not be quite the powerhouse they were a few years ago (releasing a lot of bad games for Wii and emulating the worst sequel tendencies of Electronic Arts circa 2002-2006 will do that), but they’re still a large publisher that puts out a lot of popular games.

So why? Well, Hsu is of the opinion that a 4.5 for Assassin’s Creed in the last issue (which was one score out of 4 that Ziff Davis has assigned to the game, including the three in the magazine and one on 1UP) was the “final straw”, and well, I’m inclined to believe that that’s true. However, the Ubisoft shenanigans don’t surprise me. While it’s not well known in the general gaming populace, rumors have swirled for a long time over the crazy, nepotistical and egotistical crap that happens at the highest levels of Ubisoft. Yves Guillemot is rumored to be an egomaniac, who routinely craps on his underlings while promoting family within the company to positions that were already filled, creating entire studios for family members to have new positions within the company, and generally running the company like a child.

The real problem here is really for the studios involved. Assassin’s Creed is a controversially love it or hate it game, and despite a lot of very conflicting reviews, it still sold phenomenally well. Why? Because magazines and online sources covered it relentlessly. Reviews on a game can only hurt it so much when such a massive amount of hype and anticipation is built within the media for a title, and save for possibly Game Informer, EGM is the most widely circulated gaming magazine around, and their credibility has only gotten stronger over the past 18 months.

Blacklisting sources for reviews that aren’t in line with your projections is an act of pissy ego that isn’t going to help you. Maybe in the past, that could gain leverage with media outlets, but in this case, EGM has called Ubisoft et al’s bluff and exposed them, a move which is oddly reminiscent of Sony’s own PR catastrophe last year. It didn’t work then, and it isn’t going to work now. I would venture a guess that this will be conveniently forgotten once Haze has come out and gotten bad reviews, and Ubisoft needs publicity for Endwar. At least, it will if their smart.

-Aegies

For those of you that do own the game — and I have a hard time imagining that that isn’t everyone who reads this site — next week will give you a reason to get back on the saddle. Starting monday of next week, the final expansion, the Fighter’s Stronghold, will be available on XBL and for the PC. And, while this is enough to get many Oblivion fans salivating, it also comes with the fantastic price of free.

The Fighter’s Stronghold will be a base that is themed more to the sensibilities of the fighter classes in the game — in the same way that the Thieves Den was themed towards scouts and what have you.

The final expansion will only be free for the first week, so don’t miss the chance.

Chufmoney

[via 1up]

Medal of Honor Heroes 2 (PSP, Wii)

Kane and Lynch (360)

Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron Hands-on Multiplayer (PSP)

Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron (PSP)

Jam Sessions (DS)

Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness Episodes I (PC, 360, Mac, Linux)

So, as you can see, I have been busy. Lots of meetings, talks, travels to game companies. All in all, it’s been amazing. Either way, just wanted to share, some of these games are looking pretty good.

Chufmoney

Check it out here.

Chufmoney

“In general, a) we’re bringing user generated content to our platform. Look at what’s happening with Forza Motorport 2 with the auction house and the livery editor, that’s just taken off huge. It’s not the same kind of user generated content model that Epic is going to do with UT, but it is user generated content. We have just as much interest in that space as anybody else, but I will tell you that there is a lot of value to managing the service and system the way we do on Xbox Live, versus the wild, open, supposedly open PlayStation Network. You’re going to have to be very careful about what happens and we’ll see how much responsibility the platform holder actually takes there in terms of managing that stuff….It’s not unlike Sony PlayStation HOME. It’s great to talk about all this, but assuming you could even build it, one of the biggest challenges is actually managing the behavior. We have a lot of experience doing this on Xbox Live and that’s part of the value proposition we bring to our customers, is that you’re going to have a great experience on Xbox Live and we take care of a lot of problems for you and don’t just say it’s the responsibility of the publisher of the responsibility of the community to manage this. We take accountability, we do that as the owner.”

Peep the rest of the interview for all the Microsoft questioning-dodging goodness!

“As a result of what Microsoft views as an unacceptable number of repairs to Xbox 360 consoles, the company conducted extensive investigations into potential sources of general hardware failures,” said the company in a statement. “Having identified a number of factors which can cause general hardware failures indicated by three red flashing lights on the console, Microsoft has made improvements to the console and is enhancing its Xbox 360 warranty policy for existing and new customers.”

This follows the resent European uproar, 1up’s report of a gamer and his eleven failed Xbox 360s, and Forza 2 players who have complained of failing consoles while gaming. Reportly, Microsoft will be taking a “1.05 to 1.15 billion dollar” hit because of this resent warranty change. You can read Microsoft’s official statement here. All in all, this is the victory that 360 owners have been waiting for.
[via 1up]

Jayslacks

Jayslacks

The shit is going to hit.  And soon.  The below story is, I feel, only a precursor of what is to come.

Today 1up covered the news about how their own trailer site, gamevideos.com, was forced by the ESRB to take down certain offensive videos.  In some cases, like with the title The Darkness, the site had to make sure it had age gates up.  Some Gears of War content, on the other hand, was forced to be removed.

The ESRB has always had rules in place about responsible video game advertising,  but, as 1up News Editor Patrick Klepek points out, several of the videos had been up since January.  The ESRB appears to have finally decided to gear up its enforcement of its advertising principle #4 which states, “No advertisement should contain any content that is likely to cause serious or widespread offense to the average consumer.”

The ESRB appears to have the right to decide, based on the invidual video, whether or not the video is even permitted to see the light of day (and if it does, they can decide if it needs an age gate).

As 1up correctly calls into question, this seeming rush to start issuing non-compliance statements to game companies about their videos appears to be possible fall out from all the publicity about Manhunt 2.  The ESRB has either decided to step up its vigilance or is afraid of something.

Chufmoney

I’ve contacted the ESRB about how they determine exactly when game videos should have an age gate and when they should be banned outright.  Update coming ASAP.

However, even Entertainment Weekly, who are essentially a critical joke and are known as a home for marketing fluff, post articles that go beyond previews or joke features and provide insightful analysis and commentary of trends in the industry. Rolling Stone finds time among reviews that are taken progressively less seriously and innocuous interviews with pop stars who will be forgotten in 5 years to publish interesting pieces related to music that don’t need to be contextualized within a “this album is coming out soon, so let’s associate something with it” construct. We’ve seen more of this kind of content in Magazines like EGM and GFW, the latter of which recently featured an article interviewing major developers outside of the context of their newest releases to get their opinions on where computer gaming is, and where it should go. It was a feature that was infinitely more interesting than a 5 paragraph review of the Burning Crusade, or a preview of the Company of Heroes expansion. Neither of those were badly written mind you, but in an era where previews and news are transmitted instantly across the internet, making their availability much more trivial, its unique content that will set content providers apart from the blogs and their competition. Not only that, but as I mentioned in a recent post, critical analysis is good for games, and we need to see more of it.

But let’s be honest: the blame doesn’t lay solely at the feet of editorial content providers here. First, gamers need to support content that goes beyond fluff and we need to stop being such unrelenting whores to preview coverage. There have been some serious efforts in the last couple of years to push forward content both online and in print. Some magazines have been focusing more and more on games as art and focusing on the development efforts that go into creating games, especially Play magazine, and this is a good thing. Then there are the magazines that have started to make a stand against pure ass-kissery; One of the best examples of this continues to be EGM and their online component 1UP, who have both taken a new, more investigative tone and no bullshit attitude in their interviews and features.

They should be especially commended for this given the risky and rock nature of PR relations; after the especially aggressive interviews with Microsoft figure Peter Moore in early 2006 and Sony America’s President Jack Tretton in early 2007, Nintendo of America head Reggie Fils-Aime backed out of his planned interview with the magazine (as mentioned in their April 2007 issue). Gamers, Nintendo fans and non-fans alike, should be outraged that such a public figure is avoiding discourse with the gaming public, because the situation makes it appear that it’s because he’s afraid of responding to direct questions. Support for interviews that essentially boil down to blowing sunshine up the asses of execs for guaranteed PR access should stop. We’re disrespecting ourselves when we settle for less just to look at pictures of a game that isn’t out yet. As a culture, we need to show support for intelligent content on games that goes beyond previews, and it makes me sad to see readership for EGM decreasing as the magazine is really coming into its own and putting out the best work it ever has.

There are other implications that Dyack makes regarding the ways that some outlets both online and in print tend to favor certain platform holders over others: in this case, he insinuated that they presented demos that were in significantly worse shape than Too Human while attached as a second part developer under Nintendo and received comparatively little criticism. However, his previous statements regarding previews (and his subsequent flip-flopping) lead me to believe that this is the sort of statement that Is not only unconfirmable, but may be half heartedly retracted should he be confronted about it. This is a topic for another discussion entirely.

-Aegies

Then he went and gave an extensive preview to IGN:

Dyack, just weeks after his now infamous argument with Mark Macdonald on the EGM Live Podcast, goes and does a full preview with IGN, their competitors. I understand that there are probably plenty of other forces at work, and that he may not have had that much say in giving this exclusive to IGN, but this seems incredibly hypocritical of him.

Too Human shows well and the preview does the game great justice. It made at least one more editor on our site decide that it was worthy of a pre-order, because there is an awesome preview of Too Human out there. I think this pretty much proves why previews exist.

I think the lesson to be learned from all of this is that previews, even negative ones, are not always a bad thing. If Too Human had showed amazingly at E3 2006 it would have got a great preview/review in the magazine and then it would have come out and been amazing and sold on its own merit. The shitty preview and all the press that has come since is going to work out in favor of the franchise. People are going to want to see how it is coming along and watch previews so that they can see how shitty it is. But, as the IGN preview shows, it is not shitty at all. People will then spread the hype about how good the game looks and how much it has come along since E3 2006.

Previews are a necessary part of the industry. They help build community hype for a product. Let’s hope we no longer have to hear anymore about aborting previews from the industry.

Chufmoney

Video Gaming is a nascent form of entertainment in the modern era, and one that exists on the fringe of cultural acceptance. As a sort of bricolage (look it up) construction derived from other forms of popular and fringe media entertainments like movies, books, more conventional games, and music, it has gone through painful birthing contractions that continue today as it tries to carve out an identity for itself among countless distractions and competitors, as well as politicians ambitious and desperate alike who seek to use a little understood form of media as a stepping stone to position. This isn’t surprising; I think the last time a form of popular entertainment faced such steep obstacles in its push toward cultural acceptance and importance would be either rap music (and the hip hop culture it brought with it), or rock music, and both of those were forms of entertainment that played on previous cultural iconography and aspects to create something new, and something that represented the unknown and the frighteningly unfamiliar to the mainstream.

If you look at the history of new forms of media (or aggressive departures from previous standards of media), there’s always a cultural reaction that leans most heavily towards bemused confusion, with a more or less equal minority on the sides of fascination (which in the case of video games and interactive media would be you and I and all our friends that get games) and horror/disgust. Our site is the former; Jack Thompson, Joe Lieberman, and Hilary Clinton (which I’d like you to remember when the Democratic primaries occur next year) would fall in the latter. And that majority that sits in the middle either lives in blissful ignorance of entertainment on the margins of culture, or are given their opinions by whoever is loudest from whichever of those minority camps is most convincing.

Make no mistake; this is a fringe skirmish of the culture wars that you may hear about. Because video games are viewed as the redheaded stepchild of the entertainment industry (probably at the same level of pornography, albeit couples oriented story based pornography), and because they aren’t understood by the majority of what’s considered the “voting public”, attacking video games as immoral and damaging to children and to society is essentially a free way to score political points in the family values crusade. This is no different from the way that rap music and rock music were treated during their formative periods, and are occasionally treated even now.

I would argue (and by all means, feel free to disagree with me in the comments) that until about 18 months or so ago, this is a battle that we, the members of this sub-culture that is labeled the catch-all of gamer, were losing, and losing badly. When pushed, the games industry stepped backwards; the threat of constitutionally unthinkable censorship is proposed by senators like Joseph Lieberman so they can score points with the “moral majority” and the like, and the gaming industry says “wait, wait, we’ll censor and rate ourselves!”. This attitude was lifted wholesale from the MPAA, but that doesn’t make it right or desirable to do so. The Columbine incident and almost all other school shootings are linked to video games, and the industry hopes it will just go away. Print magazines avoided all mention of Columbine or any other incident that the “mainstream press” attributed to gaming, perhaps in the fear that their place was to provide purchasing advice, and little else. Let’s not beat around the bush here, you and I: for the majority of its existence in symbiosis with electronic gaming, gaming “journalism” has been fluff, a half cocked consumer reports with none of the investigation, that has done little for gaming save for helping people be aware of the games coming out 2 months after the date on the cover. Which is fine, to a degree, as I’m sure it was really important to my 11 year old self to know what system Bubsy was going to be on, but gaming magazines have been in need of an evolution since Gamefan died a horrible and prolonged death in late 99 (and the last few issues don’t count). With the rise of the messageboard (and its origins in BBSs and the like) coinciding with a new wave of politicians looking to make games a target to make a name for themselves, magazines and the old guard of gaming journalism was looking more and more like a marginalized entity destined to fade into obscurity.

When gaming blogs started becoming more prevalent, they served a similar role, unfortunately. Until recently, online gaming coverage has served the same purpose that old gaming publications did, only on a much more on demand basis on a vastly more impacted timetable than the print publications did. And again, there is a place for constantly updated news, and the ability for readers to comment on stories is great, and very web 2.0 and all, but to be honest, this does nothing for gaming as a subculture save for allowing the escalation of the infighting, bickering, and exclusionary crap that’s been the purview of gamers since there was more than one platform to play games on. Hot Coffee in particular signaled a low point in my opinion, as the gaming press served only as a means to stop and stare in horror as Rockstar painted yet another target on our hobby.

If this is the way gaming journalism is going, or where it should be, then we as a subculture are screwed. Enthusiast media coverage shouldn’t just tell us how awesome our hobby is, or provide us with a place to shit on each other about which console is better.

This is where we need to demand or strive to push for our enthusiast media to be more, and this is where the idea of new games journalism comes from. I understand that most people go a big rubbery one when they hear the term, but hear me out. This is one thing that the video gaming subculture seems most hesitant to learn from other forms of media, and it’s the one lesson we most need to take to heart. I’ll put this simply, so that everyone can understand me: criticism, like movie criticism, like music criticism, hell, like art criticism, allows society at large to understand a sub culture and give it legitimacy. Critics help give things context, so that others can better understand and process things. It took one art critic (Clement Greenberg, for the curious among you) to not only take Jackson Pollock (he of the drip paintings that are often used as humorous fodder in making fun of art) and make him a household name, and to cause the American public at large to view modern art and its successors as a valid form of cultural expression. The context that Greenberg helped give to Pollock made for one of the most famous issues of Life magazine ever (again, look up Life on wikipedia if you don’t know what I’m talking about), and while it didn’t achieve it singlehandedly, it went a long way toward making something formerly fringe and maligned into something acceptable. Doesn’t this seem like something we want for gaming? I understand that there’s a fear of the “mainstreaming” of gaming culture, but that isn’t what this is, neccesarily. That issue of Life didn’t make everyone into artists who did drip paintings; it didn’t even make everyone into people who liked modern art. But it signaled a point where cultural consciousness at large began to include modern art as something that was acceptable, and maybe even important. It paved the way for Warhol, et al to be a part of cultural discourse outside of just people who were really, really into art.

This is where gaming journalists like N’Gai Croal, Stephen Totillo, Chris Kohler, and yes, Luke Smith, come in to play. Each of these journalists are doing a part to make culturally relevant discussions of gamings in a way that goes beyond “this console is better” or “this game is coming out soon, and it’s awesome”. While Croal, Totillo, and Kohler are much more known for waxing artistic about gaming and what it is and could mean, Luke Smith has brought the fire of hardcore investigative, critical journalism to gaming. He isn’t solely responsible, but he’s a figurehead for the movement toward a gaming journalism establishment that is less psychophant and more critical of the content and industry that it covers, and I feel like his presence at 1UP signaled a shift among Ziff-Davis publications toward this increasingly critical approach toward the industry. Let’s be fair and give credit where it’s due, as the first really clear move toward this was Dan Hsu’s aggressive interview with Peter Moore of Microsoft regarding the failures of the Xbox 360 launch period, a move Penny-Arcade labeled as (paraphrasing here) “games journalists getting their balls back”. Also of note is Jane Pinckard, whose drive started the 1UP Show and likely the 1UP network podcasts, which are consistently excellent and which frequently feature discussion of games that goes beyond the superficial. Nonetheless, the popularity of Smith’s aggressively investigative approach, one that puts an emphasis on accountability for companies and asking hard questions, has marked a shift in tone not only on 1UP and its sister publications, but also on the gaming blogosphere as well. While the more analytical and content critique heavy focus that Croal and his colleagues are focusing on is still working to take hold and make headway among gaming journalism, Luke Smith’s influence (and in turn the attitude that his hiring, and his tenure at 1UP indicated) is here to stay, and will only grow from here.

There will be growing pains to be sure; the snarkiness that is often apparent in Smith’s style is probably the most easily imitated, and is definitely the thing we see the most online (which is one reason why I hope we avoid it here on eat-sleep-game as an editorial philosophy), and its overuse is something that leads to traffic attracting flame-wars in comment sections all over the internet. Flame wars won’t move our subculture forward, and I personally find them mind-numbingly irritating, but increasingly I think we’re seeing a greater discourse happening in those flame wars, so I suppose they give me hope that we are moving forward. In the meantime, I hope that wherever Luke Smith is going after 1UP, it’s somewhere that has to do with gaming, and that he continues to push gaming journalism forward however he can. Here’s to you Luke. I wonder if 1UP is hiring.

Perhaps more interesting news in Gears of War territory today is the internet furor over comments made by Epic Head Tim Sweeney on last Friday’s 1UP Yours podcast, which some people interpreted to mean that Microsoft was prohibiting Epic from releasing maps that had been finished for quite some time already because of Epic’s inclination to release them without any additional charge. I can understand why this would piss people off, because I like free things too. However, the bizarre sense of entitlement people seem to have for content that was not-negligible in cost to produce does confuse me from time to time. Anyway, Mark Rein has a history of being open with the community, and in an official post on the Gears’ forums, he announced (via Joystiq) that Microsoft and Epic had made a “Bungie”:

Epic thinks the way to maximize the return on Gears of War is to give the maps away for free and Microsoft thinks the way to maximize the return on Gears of War is to sell the maps. So what we’ve agreed to do is to put these maps on sale at a reasonable price then make them free a few months later. They did this with the original Halo2 map pack and it was a huge success. Lots of people bought the maps and lots of people downloaded them when they became free. That’s what is going to happen and it seems like a fair compromise for both companies and a win-win for Gears players.

Why does Epic not have control over this even though we created this content on our own time and our own dime? Quite frankly Xbox Live Marketplace isn’t our store. It’s Microsoft’s store. Like any retailer they have the right to figure out what goes on the shelves of their store and what price they sell it at. They spend the money to operate the store and deliver the content. They’ve also spent billions of dollars to create and build Xbox and subsidize it’s the price so you can afford it and we can make games for it. As our publisher, they also invested tens of millions of dollars marketing Gears of War, and have done an awesome job for us, so they have a right to a good return on that investment.

As Tim Sweeney and I said in the podcast, we want the download economy to work – it is something the industry needs, something we hope to use in the future, something that will help bring more variety to end-users and ultimately could help bring prices down for end-users. If we had to put this map pack on a disc and sell it in retail it would be more expensive to end-users and maybe we wouldn’t have done it because of all the extra work and cost involved.

There are still sure to be a number of pissed off internet denizens, some people on this site included, but considering the realities of the vast amount of money that Microsoft invested in Gears and in the Live Marketplace, I think that this was probably the best compromise that could have been made. I don’t know if I’ll buy the new maps, but I’ll have that option, and if I decide not to, I can wait a few months. However, I do think that Microsoft is missing the good PR that would result from caving and releasing the maps for free, especially after the poor online reception of the Elite announcement and the shenanigans surrounding Live on the Windows platform.

-Aegies

What exactly is this new content for Gears? And how much will it cost us to buy the co-op add on for Dead Rising? I am sure it will be sold over XBL and I would personally be willing to bet it will run you around 1200 points. As for the Gears content I suspec this content will not be free, like the last release, but I have confidence that Epic will make it worth your money. What do you guys think it could be?

Chufmoney

So what does this mean for those PS3 owners who have been lucky enough to find one of these rare systems in stock? Hopefully it means that Sony will move towards putting in “last-gen” features into their controllers. I hope that rumble becomes a feature that you can turn on and off. With the feature of an on/off switch being useful for games where the rumble feature would otherwise screw up the six-axis controls. [eds. note: maybe they'll fix that pesky little bluetooth syncing issue as well, you know, the one that causes the controller to "lose" the console every 45 minutes or so.]

Chufmoney

[thanks to 1up for this one]

SSX Blur, for example, would never have made any sort “best of” list under normal circumstances. Admittedly, I never played the original titles, but if something wasn’t worthy of a purchase the first time through, why would a sequel be any different? On the flip side of that coin, if a game like Resident Evil had been re-released on other previous platforms, it seems silly to expect customers to actually want to buy the game a third time, solely on such a limited addition as a first person view mode.

Even some of the bigger names on the list incite hesitation rather than excitement. I played the original Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles title when it came to Gamecube, and I felt with every fiber of my being that it was the most poorly designed Final Fantasy title to date. I’m sure some of you will beg to differ, but I’d at least like to point out that chaining a player to a rigid object carried by a lazy Moogle for longer than, oh I don’t know, 5 minutes, makes for terrible gameplay. Enough said.

As for the new Metroid, I enjoyed the first immensely, but I rapidly grew tired of the second, since continually backtracking through not just one world, but also a copy of the world became immensely tedious. Based on that, I find myself skeptical about the third title’s quality, and I think I’ll let it build some credibility before I purchase the game. And what about Dragon Quest’s new “on rails” setup? How does such a linear style sound like a step in the right direction for such a traditionally expansive series? I’m at a loss, and am saddened by the realization.

Let me make one thing clear: there is nothing wrong with 1up’s article. The fact that some of these titles made the top 10 is certainly not bad taste, it’s a lack of choice. But again, I’m an optimist: the next year will certainly bring a greater volume of quality titles to the Wii. Right? Please?

-Bedlam-

Regarding the Blu-ray format and the PS3, Tretton, stated, “I don’t think we can single-handedly drive the Blu-ray format….Blu-ray is a great value for consumers as a movie format, but most importantly, [it's of value] to the gamers.  Blu-ray does wonderful things for the development community…that’s something that no other machine offers.”  I do not know that anyone here at ESG would swallow any of the above points concerning Blu-ray.  Besides higher content capacity I see no advantages to the Blu-Ray format for gamers or developers.  What details am I ignorant to that would make this format a distinct advantage to gamers or developers?  It seems like Blu-ray would make for slower load times, but that is just a guess.  I hope SCEA can focus on pushing the PS3 as a video game console rather than a Blu-ray player.  We need games for this machine, dammit!

I am not a Sony fan-boy. Nay, if you read previous posts you can see the many time I deplored Sony for the things they have done and the PS3 in general.  Sony is a corporation that above all wants our money.  So is Nintendo and Microsoft.  But if Sony really means it when they say that they will back the system for many years than I might purchase one….in two years.  I am still waiting for an exclusive besides Killzone 2 that pushes me into Sony’s Next-Gen arms.

 Chufmoney

This news is unsurprising, but it is disheartening. Combined with widespread conjecture pointing to a late summer or fall release for Smash Bros. Brawl, the release schedule for the console is looking more than a little sparse, with a hint of foliage in a very optimistic prediction of a June release for Metroid Prime 3. I don’t think it’s saying good things for a console whose marketing and motif has been originality when the major predicted game releases of the year are sequels, especially when the bestselling game on the console is another god-damned sequel.

Thus far in the console’s admittedly short life span, there has been very little increase in support from third party publishers in comparison with the start of the Gamecube’s life cycle. It’s understandable. Third party games on Wii thus far, with the exception of Red Steel (how’s that for irony), have sold for crap. C-R-A-P. Ubisoft is jumping behind the platform in a strong way, but I also don’t think it’s in a way that gamers would like too much. They’re putting as many games out as cheaply as possible, while adding some semblance of wii-mote functionality, because it’s a quick and cheap way to make money off of currently existing content. Rather than making original and uniquely compelling content for the system, their shoveling onto it, and I really think this is what we’re going to see more of in the next 8-12 months.

Also, the system is bafflingly difficult to find, given hardware considerations. Combined with demand, the only reasons I can logically conceive of for the scarcity of the system revolve around the intentional and conspiratorial. Rather than indulge my second-gunman rants, I’ll just say this, and any of you are perfectly welcome to dispute this in the comments: the hype behind the Wii, right now, is being driven almost entirely by scarcity, and by the trickling release of Virtual Console titles. I hear (hear meaning read on the tubes, for the most part) the frequent lament from Nintendo faithful and others that titles are released on the VC in such a halting manner. Frequently, this seems to be from the people who buy titles weekly. They’re released slowly because 95 percent of these titles would be dead on arrival amidst any competition at all. You’re buying R-Type because you can’t get Super R-Type. Next, you’re buying Super R-Type because Super Gradius hasn’t been released. Out of the three, you only wanted Super Gradius, but you bought them all, because that’s all there was. Are you starting to get the idea?

The Wii will eventually have enough compelling content to stand on its own. Hopefully for Nintendo, that will happen when it’s no longer positive buzz to be scarce.

-Aegies