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Didn't Nintendo's president say in a press conference just a few months ago that the Revolution will actually have some feature that is "Revolutionary" that no one has seen before and will change console gaming forever? I remember a slashdot article about it but I cannot find a link to the specific "story" I'm thinking about.
Perhaps something about the controller?
Or perhaps some obscure feature that we'll hafta wait longer to see?

I was hoping to see something about that in this article but I guess I will hafta wait longer... If anyone has a link to what I think I'm talking about, I'd appreciate it. :)

Have you seen the The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion preview? In the words of Paris Hilton: that's hot.

Yes, I just slapped myself...

Why is this is such a big deal? There has been no previous mention of Advent Rising hitting the PSP. What just because Square has released a ton of games for the PS2 that means all their content will be available on a Sony game device?

Pac-man is well settled in life.. in times of xbox and PS2, many (including me) still like to play this.. its time for him to get married now..

Good news for you: actually, there is Pac-Man for PS2 called "Pac-Man Fever" - and Ms Pac-Man is one of the key characters in the, ummm, storyline (if you could say so in Pac-Man). You can even run the game in "classic" mode, where it is just the old-school Pac-Man the way you remembered it.

Strafe jumping

double jumping

sliding around on ice and up ramps

and just the sheer speed of it all --if you can master it.

I don't expect Q4 to have these fun aspects though because I just can't imagine models like this : http://pcmedia.gamespy.com/pc/image/article/611/61 1006/440Building_B_Marines06_1115438005.jpg moving around so unrealistically like in q2.

Mmmm.. High resolution nipples!

The Heart - blatently stolen from Natural Selection's hive.

This guy does not know that he is talking about. Agreed that the gaming market will (theoretically) be busting at its seams after the release of the next generation of gaming consoles but the hardware is not the main revenue generator, its the software. Look at all the quality games that have come out recently and are coming out, ratchet: Deadlocked, Jak X Racing, Sly 3 etc. Not to leave out Age of Empires 3 (yes, i know it is on the PC), gamespy has wonderful previews, interviews, hands-ons and whatnots here
Not to mention the ongoing lukewarm sales of PSPs and DSes. The market is still making a huge profit, period. And anyone who invests in this is in for getting a little richer.

I think this comic from Dork Tower says it all.

Yes, you can play on linux!

Excuse me, I have to go wipe the drool.

Yes, I've played all the way through both of the missions (using wine). The linux client has a couple crasher bugs that need fixing.

So a game company is under a DDOS attack, and there's no other information about it. WTF makes this news worthy? At all?

How do you know that they didn't just break their network infrastructure yet again? I seem to recall a story on Slashdot a while back about FFXI trying to use the email port and getting blocked by a major ISP because of it. (Found it!) These people obviously aren't all the competant when it comes to running a network.

Try posting about this again when they announce whatever really caused the problem, like some intern tripping over their router or some programmer deciding to use Port 25 to connect to the game servers again.

Or you could just play Tribes

Half-Life 2 *IS* coming out for the Xbox.

Here is the story.

Check out Spore, a game by none other than Will Wright based around the idea of user created content.

The exceedingly large fraction of the costs going to create art is an anomaly. In the future the content will a) be taken from huge libraries of real-world objects b) generated procedurally and c) created by users.

There are also whole genres of games that do not require extensive graphics assets.

No it isn't

I used Steam for a while back when CS 1.6 required it. I quit after a couple weeks. I use to play games strictly with people I knew, but Steam really made the process frustrating. Occassionally we still play Pre-Steam CS.

Imagine a more spread out game were you cannot reach every corner in a few minutes. Perhaps it even takes hours if not days to go into the deep. ... ... Add a third group, the money grabbers and they might get their fun out of buying low and selling high. Travelling the lands in search if items to buy.

I'm slightly surprised the others in the office don't seem to play it - they are always playing battlefield vietnam

ET is completely free and standalone (not a patch to a commercial product or anything), and it is more popular than Battlefield Vietnam, with 3500 players at this instant, compared to 2300.

Of course, Counterstrike beats them both by far, with 61000 players tonight.

http://archive.gamespy.com/dailyvictim/index.asp?i d=174

According to GameSpy this was officially announced by Namco today.

I agree. I have to admit though, that my first reaction when I opened the PSP box for the first time wasn't anything like "wow", but more like "what the...".

For those of you who don't have press connections and haven't taken the plunge and imported one from overseas: the manual that comes with in the box is ridiculously huge - like the size of a phone book. Check out this picture over at Gamespy.

But, to tell you the truth, you really don't need it. The whole UI is pretty intuitive (aside from the fact that I don't speak Japanese, and some parts of Ridge Racer happen to be in Japanese - but that's hardly the PSP's fault). It's probably not so much "anyone can figure it out" (think Gameboy). But anyone who has ever played a PS2 game won't have a problem.

xCode is a programming environment. You're talking about scripting.

So you can't write a program in Python?
I suppose none of these projects exist, then. Would you call Quark a script? How about Yahoo Maps? Or Google for that matter?

According to this article the next-gen Xbox lacks the next-gen optical media meant for HDTV (Blu-ray/HD-DVD). Even though the next-gen Xbox can support 720p/1080i for the output, it seems a bit odd that MS put emphasis on the 'HD era' as the Xbox 1 already supports 720p/1080i for some games though not obligatory.

Check out Gamespy's article on this, actually. It is far longer (5 pages!), and talks about how Wright got inspiration from the Demo Scene, and how the animations and such in the game are done cleverly and procedurally. As well there are the consequences of all of this for the video game industry.

I wonder if Microsoft helped apple accidentally?
According to Gamespy The XBox Next is using the PPC processor. Rumors have placed it at the PPC970 chip (e.g. the G5) at 3.0Ghz w/ a dual core.

Clicky.

You can play parodies of cellphone games on your GBA.

The fees are based on Scrabble's point system, with 1 cent per point.

Related article on Gamespy from Tim Schafer's recent presentation. My favorite quote:

What disturbed him the most was this actual quote from an executive at a large publisher: "This is really great. This is creative. It's too bad people aren't going for creative stuff right now."

AFAIK, Miyamoto was never a developer. He started out as a character designer, moved up to "game designer" (not developer), and eventually became a project manager of sorts. Now he's more of a guiding force across many projects, rather than a manager.

At most "large" game studios, these are the people that most significantly affect the quality and celebrity of a game, not the developers. This is because these are the people that make the final judgements on gameplay, character, and story issues--the "feel" of the game. At smaller studios, that job can fall more on the developers, but I doubt that's often the case at Nintendo, and I'm almost 100% sure it's not the case with Miyamoto.

Check out GameSpy's interesting write-up of Miyamoto.

I'm saying the only way you'll end up with a big budget for your game is if it's like the (successful) competition or like previous games.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this - i believe that your game being different, however slightly, makes a hit of it.

You're kidding, right? That list is practically proof that the development market works as I've described.

That's to be expected since the industry currently develops the way you describe. But try mapping that list onto two other lists.

First, correlate it with the list of games that just cloned or slightly improved on an existing formula. It doesn't add up. Take Super Mario 64 for example - there are hundreds and hundreds of similar games, but SM64 was the one that started the whole genre. The Sims? Nuff said. Many, many games that are similar or sequels to Final Fantasy 7, but it was the great 3d rpg innovator that made the list - where are FF8 or 9? Or X or X-2 for that matter? Myst (where is Riven or Exile?), Half-Life, Super Mario Brothers, all of them were games that introduced new innovations and aspects to gaming - or at least ther respective genres - and are mostly remembered for standing out and being different/better.

Now try correlating it to another list - a list of the most innovative, most influential or even just most memorable games of all time. Like this one. There is considerable overlap.

Only a fool would argue that my ideal is how the industry works now - that dude's comments alone show how untrue that is, and how much less true it's getting every day. But I think I've got enough evidence to show that innovation drives success, not copying previous success - so logically the industry should develop games based on the goal of innovation.

Incidently:

(unless you define "A-title" as one that uses all the latest whiz-bang hardware features)

That's not a requirement, although it makes common sense. If you're not using all the features available, you might as well not be developing an A-class game. Hell, we could all just run games on refurbished Commodore64s.

A-list games will be the groundbreakers - the ones that either create new gameplay experiences or make old ones more immersive/fun than they have ever been before. Clearly there's room for games that don't quite use the state of the art's full resources, but there's a lot more room for games that do.

It sounds like you're saying that big financial backing *improves* the quality of the output though, and I don't think that is true at all.

I don't think it's necessarily true either - you misunderstand me. Big money doesn't make games better, it just gives the developers more choices, and more expressive power. That power may or may not be used (properly), and even if it is, it may or may not make for a better game. But there's still a chance that wasn't there before.

...but would you buy it?

Everyone says they want creative and original games, then line up in droves to buy the next FPS and MMORPG.

How will things like Katamari Damancy really sell?
Personally , I really enjoy something that's really really different, I had great fun with "Construction Destruction", Airfix Dogfighter and of course, the amazing Liquid War, but I think I'm the exception, and games of that style will never be really big.

I'd be happy to know I'm wrong, actually...

Gamespy has a far more comprehensive list of good games coming out this year, covering many genres and platforms and whatnot. While I don't necessarily agree with the order they put them in, my favorites all seem to be here.

http://mostwanted.gamespy.com/2005/?ui=gstop1 (Working link)

Possible sales figures.

PS 2 - 59,990,000
XBOX - 9,400,000

I still believe that the XBOX is the superior platform. Stronger set of features, better options all around, but projected sales figures show that hype and spin won out in the end.

Resident Evil 4 will be making its way to PS2 sometime late in 2005.

She's 5'5.5"!!! Her columns live here.

Tengen, I think, was a part of the Atari that sold home computers and consoles, while Atari Games was pretty much solely an arcade company

Then why was Atari Games v. Nintendo about Tengen's "Rabbit" modchip? And why was Klax published by Atari Games (arcade), Tengen (early home versions), and Midway (more recent GBC port)? It appears you have it backwards. Tengen was the brand that AG used for console ports of AG's arcade titles because the other "Atari" was taken by the consumer division, which was sold to Commodore, then JTS, then Hasbro, then Infogrames, which has since renamed itself to Atari. Search for more

But you're right about one thing: Midway Games West (formerly Atari Games/Tengen) did shut down two years ago.

bethesda has right to everything fallout, except for MMO style. this means there will be a fallout 3, and then sequels when it sells like hotcakes on consoles as well :)

i hope the 14 year olds of today enjoy it as much as i did, my older geek cousin bought it for me for christmas. bethesda is hands down the best company to develop fallout from here on out.

Well, I hate to say it but one of the biggest titles coming to Linux was pre-empted from Linux, OS X, and even Windows in favor of the X-box. Yes, eventually it shipped for Windows and OS X, but Linux was left out in the cold when Microsoft purchased Bungie. Bungie had plans for simultaneous release of Halo on Windows and OS X to be followed soon by a Linux release.

The Halo ports weren't big releases anywhere except for the Xbox. (Except in terms of hype.) It sucks that the Linux port was nixed, but Halo was no great shakes as far as PC games go. Gamespy stats says there are ~700 people playing Halo currently, which is respectable but also pretty much indicates that the game failed to captivate online gamers - eg, there are ~100,000 Half-Life players playing online currently. Call of Duty, a game that was released exactly one month after Halo PC, has ~20,000 players online now...

Just saying, it wasn't the be-all end-all game; to Xbox gamers, a multiplayer FPS was revolutionary, to PC gamers it was just more of the same. I bought it strictly out of Marathon: Infinity nostalgia, not because it was a groundbreaking effort. Linux gamers didn't miss much.

That all changed when Bungie was bought out. Honestly given the consolidation within the game industry, I don't see much hope for games on Linux for a few years yet

I think the best hope for Linux gaming is in the hands of Indie game developers, and Emulator (or fooglebarg layer, or whatever you want to call it today) devs as well. As far as I can tell right now, those are very good hands.

You know a game's good when people are inspired to adapt Dickens to it.

Well here's the Guy Game website,
and here's the Gamespot pics,
and here's PS2 pics,
and here's XBOX pics,
and here's XBOX videos,
and here's PS2 videos.

Can anyone figure out who's the girl in question? Or I guess we can just download it all, and then see what pics and vids mysteriously vanish from the websites in the next day or two. heh.

-

Well here's the Guy Game website,
and here's the Gamespot pics,
and here's PS2 pics,
and here's XBOX pics,
and here's XBOX videos,
and here's PS2 videos.

Can anyone figure out who's the girl in question? Or I guess we can just download it all, and then see what pics and vids mysteriously vanish from the websites in the next day or two. heh.

-

Keep an eye on Gametab's Frugal Gamer and you should be able to pick it up for ~$35 ($40 here). Whatever you pay, it's worth every penny.. it even just won Gamespy's GOTY award and a number of other awards (best character - Dog!).

Cool cover art too.

Take a look at the public server statistics .

It looks like the majority are playing counterstrike, which is pretty old. Even my old favorite, Quake 2, is still hanging in there, kind of.

I've been wondering lately about the state of gaming journalism. As an art form, videogames have only existed for twenty-five years or so, and really it's hard to call anything before the 8-bit era art (there are arguments that could be made about that, whatever doubts I may have as to their veracity, butthey are beside the point I look to make here). Yet for some reason, this is still the best gaming journalism can do, and its best, it must be said, is really, really pathetic.

Compare gaming criticism to music criticism, or better still to film criticism, and you'll see how badly, glaringly we lack. (I say we because I am including myself in the community ostensibly serviced by these publications) While there are magazines and sites such as Harry Knowles' and Entertainment Weekly in the film world who are just as sensationalistic and producer-fellating as anything in the gaming world, there are also thoughtful, interesting critics such as Roger Ebert, Paul Tatara, or David Denby, who bring a level of depth and insight into the collaborative artwork they contemplate.

Meanwhile, the best reviews available for gaming are arguably a paragraph-long offhanded comment in the latest Penny Arcade newspost. Film and Gaming are both business-driven, collaborative art forms that engage more than one of the audience's senses, generate emotional responses, and entertain for long stretches of time. Given these parallels, why is gaming criticism in a rut?

My first partial answer to that question lies in the multi-part review system. If you've read the gaming press, you know the drill. First up is a blurb of hype from the press packet, then comes a bit of discussion on the plot and the game's development process. Then the graphics are reviewed, and perhaps a score is given on graphics. Then the audio is reviewed, and this is scored as well. Next the controls, and finally the gameplay mechanics. Then it's all summarized in a paragraph or two at the end, and an overall score or grade is given to the entire product. This is the review we've been reading for years, just the way we're used to.

This review sucks.

I believe that gaming as an art form has moved beyond the point where it's appropriate to consider a game on its different components separately, and that we've been beyond the era when this would be considered appropriate since the 16-bit era, the launch of the original Playstation at the latest. For those of you keeping score at home, the Playstation turned nine this year. Yet in those nine years, the best gaming criticism can come up with is still the useless crap one can read at IGN.

1995 also marked the birth of one of the great experiments in gaming journalism, the US release of Next Generation magazine. Originally just an overseas port of stories found in the UK magazine Edge, Next Generation took on a life of its own and tried to ride the line between industry hype (the infamous Blasto cover, the year-early favorable Daikatana review) and honest, serious thought given to gaming as hobby and art. It was one of the first attempts to write about gaming from the same place that Rolling Stone in its heyday wrote about music. At its best, it even approached respectability. It was even one of the first magazines with serious on-line content.

It was also, naturally, a gigantic financial failure. By the end of its run, it had been turned into candy-coated hundred pages of glossy toilet paper, no better than Game Informer. The pioneering website was replaced with the dreaded (and thankfully deceased) Daily Radar, a name still spoken in hushed voices lest the ghost of Dan Egger's career somehow rise to haunt us all.

There have been other experiments in gaming journalism (eg. the short-lived but brilliant PCXL, basically Maxim for nerds), but all have fallen by the wayside. In the end, the bullet-point categorized review stands tall above a field of fallen competition.

And as mentioned previously, it sucks. These categorized

FYI, the PC release is supposedly in February.

Sony should offer players a free copy of Viewtiful Joe 2, which according to GameSpy has an official release date of today 12/7. They shouldn't pass up a chance for such perfect irony.

It's a tragedy that one of the best Acclaim 1st party games for many, many years had been submitted to Microsoft and Sony for approval before The End. The Red Star may now never see the light of day, which is a crying shame... I played it, and it was definately one of this year's top games. A sure win for any publisher who manages to pick up the rights to this title.

Sorry, but when game spy rates a NES game the best game Acclaim made it says enough about the quality. And don't forget No. 4: Bust A Move I think that was in the arcade Def Leppard released Hysteria.

Face it, it was gonna happen anyway.

Sorry, but when game spy rates a NES game the best game Acclaim made it says enough about the quality. And don't forget No. 4: Bust A Move I think that was in the arcade Def Leppard released Hysteria.

Face it, it was gonna happen anyway.