As you may have read, Sony is trumpeting the fact that PS3 game downloads will have a 500mb size restriction, ten times the current limit for XBLA games. This is effectively no different from Sony’s claims that blu-ray makes the PS3 superior to the Xbox 360 in general. More megabytes == higher quality.
Right.
Posted in Platforms
US comic publishers are reaching out to female readers now that manga has helped prove (shocker of shockers!) that males aren’t the only audience. But in game-industry-land, there are still execs and analysts who insist that women will only play … Continue reading
I’ve been waiting patiently for a whole year to re-use this pic. Seriously.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Thanks for reading along, sharing your thoughts, and suffering my various inanities. :-)
Speaking of: if there’s a topic that you’ve been hoping I would write more about, but I just haven’t gotten ’round to it, by all means let me know. Some of my favorite articles were the result of friendly suggestions posted in comments on this blog or sent via email.
Posted in Personal Stuff
…sweet.
The last few days have been a sleep-deprived, continuous cycle that looks something like this: work, fix house, play Viva Pinata, work, play Gears of War, fix house, play Wii Sports, work…
Nintendo has actually managed to make virtual bowling fun. I mean laugh out loud, heckle and boast, drink-beer-with-your-friends-fun. There should be some sort of special award for not making yet another crappy bowling game.
Suffice to say, I’m enjoying my Wii, despite (or perhaps partially due to) the absolute hailstorm of bad puns I’m constantly subjected to while playing with it. I want to say that “I’ve heard them all”, but man, this gutter clearly stretches to infinity. Anyway, Super Monkey Ball is next on my list of Wii games. I’m looking forward to it.
IMO, from what I’ve seen, Xbox Live Arcade is still miles ahead of anything offered by Sony or Nintendo. Of course, they’ll both ramp up sooner or later, but I think it will be difficult for them to close the gap between the offerings. After all, we’re certainly not resting on our butts right now.
Lastly, and on a completely unrelated note: if you haven’t seen the latest Bond flick (Casino Royale), go see it. Right now. It was the best Bond experience since Connery. There were almost no gadgets (and no Q) but I didn’t even care because Bond is finally a charming-but-utterly-lethal badass once again. I could say more but really, you should just go see it!
Posted in Personal Stuff
Lazard Capital predicts 6% growth for Gamestop, thanks to Wii and Xbox 360 sales that will more than compensate for a $50M PS3-related shortfall. Both Nintendo and Microsoft (Gears of War, Viva Piñata) are enjoying strong holiday buzz, unlike Sony. … Continue reading
Tonight I spent about an hour helping my wife play Bejeweled 2 on XBLA. In what appears to have recently become a defining pattern in my life, I played the role of strategist; i.e. pointed out moves that were likely to result in big-scoring combos a few turns down the line, while Eve actually handled the controller. Funny how play imitates work sometimes. :-)
But anyway, this got me thinking (once again) about how there aren’t enough cooperative games on the market. I really enjoyed helping Eve play Bejeweled, despite the fact that the game was never designed for such a dynamic. And I can’t count the number of people who have told me that they enjoy playing World of Warcraft with their wives in part because they can help each other on quests. In fact, when you really think about it, the ubiquitous Korean Internet cafe gaming+dating scene starts to make sense. Games really can be an ideal mechanism via which to express your affection for someone and via which to enjoy their company.
If we console makers want to attract more female consumers, we can’t just focus on new marketing efforts, or producing more casual games (in general), or hardware redesign. All of that definitely helps, but it just can’t beat twenty minutes of quality time enjoying a game with hubby, or with son, or with brother…
Sony launch news: Lazard Capital Markets (analyst) predicts just 150K-200K PS3s for the US launch in a few days, and the software tie-ratio for the Japanese PS3 has thus far fallen short of one game per system (0.98). That’s rather … Continue reading
Tonight’s post has been temporarily put on hold because I literally just moved into my new house (finally) and I’m surrounded by an intimidating pile of boxes. I can almost see them glaring at me from the corner of my eye…!
PS. Moving stinks. And winter has arrived, so my backyard no longer resembles the lush landscape pictured to the right. Things are a bit more sinister now, in that “ummm… those trees seem alive” kind of way.
Posted in Personal Stuff
I’m always on the lookout for general business news and research that seems relevant to the video game industry, and there was some good stuff in the latest issue of MIT Sloan Management Review. In particular, let me draw your attention to Is Creativity a Foreign Concept?
To summarize: a team of researchers from INSEAD and Kellogg conducted a series of tests on graduate students who had and had not lived abroad for a significant period of time (at least six months). They found that having spent time abroad increased the chances of finding innovative solutions to tricky problems. An even bigger boost was demonstrated by students who had lived abroad for at least two or three years. From the article:
Posted in Design / Production
Via Raph Koster, a new portal called Pjio lets users upload games, which can be played and rated by other users via web browser. Players can actually embed games they like in their own website, ala YouTube. Developers currently get … Continue reading
Name: David Edery |
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