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15 Jul 05

Odd, I can't get people to tell me that they want a contest, but some people want to donate to the site. It was pointed out that if I accept game donations from companies for contests, I should accept other donations as well. I can understand that. I can also understand that people might want others to enjoy free games, but not want the headache of running a contest. I've added donation information to the About page. We shall speak of it no more.

You know I can understand if someone hates me for what I write. I try not to be too offensive, but if you write enough, someone is bound to take a disliking to you. I don't mind the nasty emails, and thank you to whoever signed me up for the Japanese dating service. That's part of the territory. What I don't understand is people who find an announced vulnerability and search the net for sites they've never heard of to try and hack. Why? Why go after the little guy? You won't gain much. Who is going to be impressed? As you can guess, we had another hack attempt. This one was stopped, but this site isn't super secure. It's just a matter of time before the next successful hack. It makes me sad especially since it's so senseless.

I've been thinking about yesterday's topic. I just can't see it. I can't see one of the next generation of consoles failing. I'm sure they won't hit all their goals, but there are enough people out there who want the latest, hottest thing. What do the Paris Hilton's of the world do with their PSPs? Add them to the hardcore console crowd who've already preordered. There will be enough excitement to go around. It could be 18 months to two years after the consoles launch before the software sales start to tip to the next generation, but that's still in line with history. It will be fun.

Jason
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14 Jul 05

Happy Bastille Day in France. Today we'll content ourselves with storming the prison of ignorance. Ok, that was bad. In case you couldn't tell, I haven't been overly inspired lately. I guess I tend to get a little down when the readership numbers drop off. I should try to remember even our low numbers now are higher than our high numbers a little over a year ago.

It seems the gaming media is in a tizzy about Jack Thompson's open letter to the ESA. I'm not sure why since the thing reads like a scene from a Lindsay Lohan movie. I did admire the gall to complain about ad hominem attacks in the middle of one.

What I really wanted to talk about today was this article. It's a summary of an industry analyst's report on the future of the gaming industry. In short, the analysts seem to think that the industry has grown so large that there's huge inertia against moving on to the next generation hardware.

It's an interesting doom and gloom what if. It's quite possible that if people are looking for reasons not to upgrade, they'll be able to find them. It doesn't look like the launch titles will pack the graphical punch (in upgrade terms) that the current generation had. And until there's mature middleware, development times will be longer. Then there's the problem of high quality games coming out for the current generation.

The analysts also downplayed online gaming until 2008. That could be a major problem for Microsoft if true. Speaking of bad news for Microsoft, one of the games that might have helped jumpstart their console (The Godfather) has been delayed, possibly until after the PS3 launches.

I guess it's time to review the truisms for console launches.

1. Great games for a system come out at the end of the lifecycle so the best games around launch time will be for the old console.

2. First shipments of consoles have disproportionately more hardware problems.

3. Most launch games will be sub par.

4. Good games will start to show up in quantity from six months to a year after launch.

5. Consoles will ship with less features than promised.

6. Hardware price drops are inevitable if you're willing to wait for them (except accessories).

7. One killer app can make a launch a success.

8. Success is relative (and to marketing, everything is a success).

9. If it's a highly anticipated launch title and it's not first party, expect delays.

10. Immediately after launch, someone on the internet will declare the launch a complete failure (they will be countered by their opposite number, probably neither will actually own the system yet).

Jason
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13 Jul 05

No response on the contest. I guess either the need isn't as pressing as I thought or everyone is still on vacation. Please read the 12 Jul 05 update if you need the info again.

I think I'm ready to officially give up on trying to solve my crashing problem with those three games. I have every driver up to date, the latest version of DirectX, etc. I've gone through every one of the suggestions/workarounds available for those games. For some reason they just don't like this rig. Given that I've tried or replaced everything else, it's probably the motherboard or processor. Odd that it's just those three games out of all I've played. With my backlog, there's no real loss in moving those three to "wait until the next rig" category. It's more disappointing that I couldn't solve the problem.

Since I am down, I'll just leave you with some news.

Rumors were true; Romero is gone from Midway.

Blu Ray is the early favorite in the HD format wars.

Rockstar issued a statement on the Hot Coffee mod controversy. What gall. They knew what they were doing.

Mythic's Imperator has been indefinitely delayed. It had potential as a concept, but I guess it wasn't coming together in a post World of Warcraft market.

There's a new Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Map available.

Finally, Hip will survive in one form or another.

Jason
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12 Jul 05

You know it's about time we had a contest again. Unfortunately, the budget is still tight. On the positive side, Circuit City is having a PC game clearance sale. If there's interest in any of those games, I can raid the local CC to see if I can grab some copies. Note, this would work like the last contest where you'd have to write up a gaming experience to win. If you'd still be interested post a comment here or drop me an email telling me which games you'd be interested in as prizes (I'd prefer to stick to strategy/tactical games as prizes, but I might be persuaded otherwise). I'd suggest you act soon so the shelves aren't bare when I get there.

Slashdot Games brings word of a new online magazine dedicated to the gaming life called The Escapist. Looks like some interesting reading. They have an interesting pool of talent. I wonder how you get recruited for something like that.

Doublejump books, publishers of the excellent Disgaea strategy guide, have released another strategy guide for free PDF download. This time it's Phantom Brave. I like this trend.

It looks like Havok doesn't want to be left out in the next generation of processors/consoles. They're releasing a multicore edition of their middleware called HyrdaCore. With competing physics middleware taking advantage of the multicore capabilities of the processors, perhaps the CPU's won't be as underutilized as Anandtech predicted. Certainly the wait shouldn't be as long.

Jason
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11 Jul 05

Well, my weekend of Battlefield 2 didn't happen. I had applied the patch. Then EA says to uninstall the game and reinstall without the patch. I hate that. I finally got around to doing that today so I haven't had a chance to play.

Fortunately, my weekend was not a gaming loss. I got sucked into Darwinia. You may remember the gushing over Darwinia a while back. It truly is deserved.

Just as I was praising the refined game design of Kohan II for its polished, streamlined take on an established genre, I come across an equally stunning design. The difference is that where Kohan II is refined, Darwinia is innovative.

There's really nothing to compare Darwinia to. In a pure strategy sense, you're retaking a world overrun by a ruthless enemy. But the imagination of the world itself is amazing. Even the darwinians themselves that felt so hollow in the demo, grow on you as you progress in the game. You see their connection to the world and they start to take an active role in helping you.

There are so many neat little things to discover that I wouldn't want to spoil any of it for you. I will say that almost all of it is done with clever art design. There's nothing overly complex in the game yet everything is visually striking. I could see where screenshot might merely look confusing, but the experience in the game world is immersive and breathtaking.

It would be hard to find an innovative game to compete with Darwinia, so for this week's game we'll look again to polishing up a classic genre. It's Heroes of Might and Magic V (official site) from Nival Interactive. At its core, it's another HOMM game. You build up your cities to create your forces lead by your heroes in a turn based environment. But oh my the graphics. My eyes, they can't take the beauty. Just take a look at the three movies on the site. Everything they're saying right now sounds good, but we'll see come the beginning of next year.

Jason
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