Microsoft Has Weaknesses?! NO WAI!
Ya rly, nerds of the internet. Two high-level employees announced this week that they will be leaving in the fall;Â Entertainment and Devices Division Chief Technology Officer J. Allard and the division president Robbie Bach both saw Microsoft through the development of the XBox brand both turned in their resignations. However, insiders believe that this was not a graceful exit, but rather a pre-emptive strike to their impending firing. In addition to the XBox, they are also responsible for Windows Mobile, which is being vastly overshadowed by the likes of Android, RIM, and Sony, and we all know how Microsoft doesn’t like anyone else to be good at what they do. With any luck, their release this fall will bring with it a wealth of bitter words and leaked information, it already has from other sources. Former studio manager for Microsoft Scott Bayless made a statement this week that the upcoming Project Natal will fail miserably. He apparently was asked to review the plans for Natal in 2008, at which point he was told they would sit on this idea for a while, a decision he calls foolish. He sees the ultimate outcome of this will be “spending tens of millions on a game” while “the last thing I want to do is lose 90 per cent of my market.” Which makes sense, the hardcore Halo fan that breathes Microsoft’s bullshit like pure oxygen could care less about a moving controller and the impending poorly-designed Hello Kitty game that will go with it, he wants a new game that has been painstakingly developed with love and care. Despite this, leaked details say that Microsoft’s projections for the peripheral are high, expecting to sell millions to non-traditional gamers in the first year, despite the steep US$150 price tag. The leak sets Natal’s release date at October 26th, so by year’s end, we will see what level of turd Microsoft has pawned off on us.
Call of Duty Fanboys Rejoice
Playing at Soap MacTavish, Solid Snake, and countless other men of burly muscle and hairy faces has long given the bright-eyed youth of America the impression that war is awesome. Fighting is awesome, killing is awesome, let’s join the military because it will be awesome too! Yes yes, we are a nation of meatheaded retards. So to compound all of our retardedness into one grandiose force of idiocy, the Navy has begun toying with the idea of using the Wii Fit for basic training. No really, I wish I was kidding. Navy Surgeon General Vice Admiral Adam Robinson stated that the past few years have seen new recruits of poor physical condition, and that a program involving Wii Fit and Dance Dance Revolution could improve the endurance skills of the new meat shields. However, for those of you who are worthlessly lazy or those terrified of the Navy’s impending doom, keep in mind that Robinson added “this isn’t about starting with computers and stopping everything else,” but instead is a kind of gateway to the more physically intense training that sailors will need to perform. So to all our international readers, wait a few more years before attacking us and just throw actual exercise equipment at our soldiers, they will have no idea what it is and run away frightened.
My Last Name, One Half of a Constant Star Wars Joke
I will sucker punch whoever is first to call me “Red Leader.” Furthermore, you will be able to do that soon enough anyway, with Bioware’s new The Old Republic MMO. The company made several statements this week about their perception of the current MMO and its lack of a substantial storyline. As Nate’s review earlier this week made clear, current MMORPGs involve lots of running and questing and more running and some gold farming and more aimless running and, as Bioware harped on, not much in the way of a plot. The Old Republic MMO has already been said to have earned the prestigious title of EA’s largest budget ever, a sum that requires the gain to earn at least one million subscribers, though they are aiming for double. Unfortunately, the massively expensive game is still incomplete, and is not expected to release in 2010 with no date in 2011 announced. If this is too long to wait until your next Jedi fix, then you will be happy to know that LucasArts has announced Force Unleashed II will be released on October 26th of this year for the DS, PC, PS3, 360, and Wii. You will again be playing as Angsty McEmopants Starkiller, now looking for his long lost love, which is of no interest to the fanboys in comparison to the announcement that—wait for it—you can now dual wield lightsabers. If you need more to wank to, you can go to Unleashed2010.com to go take a load of Lucas in your mouth.
M. Night Shamalama Just Shat Himself
Yes, I know that is not his name, and no, I do not care. The cinematic king of the twist would be thrilled to know that studies have linked the ability to control dreams to a person’s gaming ability. There is such a thing as the Games for Health Conference and it has been held in Boston for six years now, and the study was revealed there this week. Jayne Gachenbach first became interested in this in the early 90s when her son repeatedly kissed his Nintendo… weird ass kid. In 2006, she ran two different studies involving non-gamers and hardcore gamers, asking them to report the frequency of lucid dreams, dreams where you perceive the dream in a third-person sense. While the gamers did report a much higher frequency of lucid dreams, she did find that in both types of dreams, all participants were not able to control anything but themselves. Interestingly, she also tested the theory on nightmares and found that gamers often were able to minimize the feeling of being threatened, or even in some instances, completely reverse it so they became the threat in their dream. However, even Gachenbach acknowledges that this study was not done in a controlled environment like a sleep lab, relying instead of self-reported and potentially biased data. Even so, early results are being looked at as a possible way to treat the PTSD symptoms seen in war veterans with nightmares. By giving a video game, a sense of control over what is going on, perhaps games could help heal the mental battle wounds of our soldiers.
These pictures… I cannot get them out of my mind. My nightmares consist of thousands of tiny, chibi Japanese people following me around, trying to get me to buy Final Fantasy games…
My specialties are finding weird things about Japan, pornography, and lolis. :D
-I don’t want to know where she hides her RRoD.
-When will devs realise that the only viable MMO is WoW? The most expensive game that EA has ever produced? Sounds like it will end in tears.
-How would one even determine that someone is controlling their dreams, rather than merely dreaming that they are in control? This sounds terribly unempirical …
- I think I know where Jenifer finds her images:
1.) Take a phrase from the story (“xbox”, “star wars”, or “dreams”, for example)
2.) Append “loli” to the front of it
3.) Google Image Search
4.) ???
5.) Profit!
Not that I’m complaining, as it gives us such awesome specimens as the loli battle machine! Also, it makes Lane’s sysadmin at work think odd things about him.
- While I am glad that Bioware’s sticking to what they do best with ToR, I agree with SN that the market really can’t sustain 2 WoW-sized games. I think the best they can hope for is probably FFXI-levels of success. That being said, I don’t know how many subscribers FFXI has, but they might be happy with that, since it very well may be over 2 million.
- I’ve never had any lucid dreams :f. Apparently I’m not playing enough video games.
my dreams will sometimes turn lucid but then I wake up. it’s almost as if my subconscious doesn’t want me to have a harem of horny asian and latina women :/
@Breaka: haha, you obviously need to fire your subconscious
@DG- Yeah but how viable would FFXI be if you took Japan out of the equation? IMO the games continued success can be attributed in large part to Japanese xenophobia.
@SN: I’m not saying it’ll be the same players, though, just that the numbers could be similar (and I have absolutely no hard facts to back this up, it just seems the market is large enough to support WoW in addition to an FFXI-sized MMO). I know there are a bunch of people out there who are the same way about western RPGs as Japanophiles are about JRPGs, and Bioware’s arguably making the best WRPGs at the moment.
DG: Good guess, but not quite. Instead, I go to Gelbooru and Danbooru, which basically means it has already typed “loli” in for me. Also means it has already typed “porn” in for me, so I have all my bases covered! :D
In regards to the lucid dreams thing, I really have no input. The only time I ever dream is when I have a cold and have doped myself up with NyQuil, at which point my dreams seem to be Katamari Damacy and Silent Hill mashed together. But the concept of using this as a sort of mental retraining for battle-scarred soldiers is certainly hopeful.
…and I know nothing of MMORPGs except for Guild Wars and SMT Imagine, both of which apparently suck according to everything I hear. I liked them, but I’m not terribly picky.
@DG: What I was getting at is that there is only room for one WMMO, and that the only reason that FFXI is viable is because its Japanese origin creates a bubble for it, which WoW can’t penetrate.
We’ve seen this same song and dance many times, New MMO is released, a number of people leave WoW and play it until they’ve experienced a fair amount of the front end content, a bunch of people leave the new MMO because most of their friends are still playing WoW.
I have been brought back from the dead, over the long months of no longer having my wisdom, I am know returned to provide it once again.
Red Five standing by! Watch out Red Leader you’re approaching the trench too fast.
Falcon PUNCH! >.<
Oh admit it you liked being called Red Leader.