Zoltan and Gilbert spend some quality time together.

Download: Produced 2013.07.28

Lusipurr (voiced by Gilbert Gottfried) assembles a panel consisting of SiliconNooB, Blitzmage, The Legendary Zoltan, and Mel (all voiced by Gilbert Gottfried), to discuss Denis Dyack, Don Mattrick, and Stephane D’Astous (all voiced by Gilbert Gottfried).

Xbox Live: Pay to Play (with your friends)!

Released back in 2002, Xbox Live holds the distinction as the longest running console gaming service. After over ten years in service, it would be expected that Xbox Live would feature the best experience for a console gamer. The truth, however, is that Xbox Live offers very little in terms of online gaming. The future of Xbox Live seems to be drifting further away from gaming and going more towards the way of an entertainment hub.

A big criticism of the Xbox Live service is that at the free level of service, next to nothing is offered. Sure, a free subscriber can voice chat and download DLC packs, but that is about it. Besides missing out on Xbox Live’s many entertainment apps, free subscribers also can not play online with their friends. That is where the Xbox Live Gold subscription enters. For a mere sixty dollars a year, gamers can upgrade to a Gold subscription and have the ability to play online with other people. Granted, online gaming is not the only feature of a Gold subscription, but it is a huge reason Gold has so many subscribers.

So what else does a sixty dollar Gold subscription bring? For one, Xbox live Gold offers nearly thirty different entertainment apps, all in varying degrees of quality. The downside is that on top of the Gold fee, many of the entertainment apps also require a subscription to their service. This is in stark contrast to the PlayStation Network which offers many of the same apps, however a PlayStation Plus account is not needed. One benefit that Gold members do enjoy over PSN users is timed-exclusive content. Fallout 3,Grand Theft Auto 4, the Call of Duty series, and Skyrim have all featured downloadable content that was timed exclusive for Xbox Live. Again, a Gold membership merely allows gamers the option to purchase these full price DLC packs before gamers on other platforms.

Want DLC while the game is still relevant? Buy the 360 version!

Even with no official announcement of the future of Xbox Live, it is easy to read between the lines. Executives from Microsoft have made it known that they plan to shift Xbox Live’s focus towards becoming and entertainment hub. Microsoft sees a future where the family will use the Xbox, not just to watch Netflix, but to exercise, watch the news, connect with friends, and, lastly, play video games. Turning Xbox Live into the entertainment hub of a household is a daunting task. Price and functionality will prove to be massive hills for Microsoft to climb.

If the next Xbox launches at a similar price as the 360, Microsoft may find it hard to convince the average family that what is missing from the family room is an Xbox. Many families already own iPads that do all the entertainment features of Xbox Live and more. A family that owns an iPad may compare the next Xbox with an Apple TV box and realize that not only does Apple TV offer all the major apps that Xbox Live does, but also allows them to stream their iPad content and certain apps to their TV. It will require some unique and extremely useful features for Microsoft to beat out its competitors. However, this may prove difficult. At this time, there exists little synergy between Xbox, Windows 8 and Windows smartphones. Sony has both the PS Vita and their plans to bring the PSN to just about everything Sony makes. Apple, the king of simplicity, has many features that allow their products to work seamlessly with one another. Microsoft, on the other hand, allows consumers to stream some content from their PC to the Xbox, and that is about it. This lack of connectivity could prove to be what prevents Xbox Live from becoming the center of every family’s living room.

Finally, a big thing that needs to happen for Xbox Live to compete next generation is changes to the Gold subscriptions. Microsoft’s lead in sales this generation was largely due to hitting the market first. Early adopters of the 360 have been punished for not showing patience and waiting for the PS3. With most predictions having the PS4 hit the market first this time around, Microsoft will not be able to con gamers out of sixty dollars simply to play with their friends. Part of Microsoft’s next generation strategy should be to make the free subscription of Xbox Live comparable to PSN, then make upgrades to Gold in much the same way Sony did with their Plus service.

This article brings the conclusion of my series on the online services of this console generation. By virtue of having the least negative to say about it, the PSN is the current champ of the 3 services. By offering the most content without a paid subscription as well as is paid offerings, Sony has really jumped ahead this generation. That is not to say that Sony is untouchable for the upcoming generation. Should Sony fail to deliver on their numerous promises and Microsoft and Nintendo step up their game, Sony could easily find itself at the bottom of the pile. With each company striving to be introduce new and unique things, the next generation could turn out to be a quite interesting battlefield.

Sony’s entire executive branch requires a sound drubbing.

What Do the PS4′s Used Game Commitments Really Amount To?

Despite the PS4′s rather poor initial showing on the software front [and its complete lack of showing on the hardware front], it nevertheless delivered several implicit messages which were of some importance to core gamers. The take away points of the presentation were that the PS4 console is likely to be the only hardware of the next generation that has core gaming as its primary focus, and that the appropriate investments have been made to insure that the PS4 will be the most powerful games console of the next generation. These two points were then supplemented shortly thereafter when in an interview Shuhei Yoshida seemingly confirmed that used games would be compatible with the PS4. When pushed for clarification on Sony’s stance on the used games trade, Yosida responded:

“So, used games can play on the PS4. How is that?”

The issue of used game sales on the PS4 is an issue of some importance to all parties involved, seeing as moribund and greedy dinosaur game publishers have been throwing a tantrum about the issue for the better part of the seventh console generation, and have been demanding unprecedented protections from this perfectly legitimate pre-owned market. All reusable physical goods are subject to a secondhand trade of sorts, yet this fact has done little to lesson the game industry’s undeserved sense of entitlement, leading to a situation where many gamers have been wary about the introduction of new consoles. Thus, when Yoshida seemingly confirmed that the PS4 would not travel down the dark path of used game lock-outs, many viewed the situation as settled and breathed a collective sigh of relief. Not so fast.

While Yoshida put on a good performance [no doubt aided by a convenient natural buffer in the form of interpreter mediation], not all Sony employees are gifted with such convincing proficiency in circumlocution. Case and point, Worldwide Studios vice president, Mike Denny, gave an interview which should cast some significant doubt on Yoshida’s original promise.

“It’s a massively important issue and I understand why it’s one that keeps coming up and will keep coming up, because people want to know what the exact stance is. At this moment in time the announcements have been about our philosophy and vision for PlayStation 4, our motivation to put the gamer at the heart of it and why we’ve got the development community on it. In relation to points like that, of course we’re mindful of what the game development community wants and what the wider industry issues are with those things. I think in good time that will become clearer. It’s not something that I feel I have any further announcement or comment to make on, other than to acknowledge with you that it’s a massively important issue and of course we are going to do the right thing.”

To translate: “we know that this issue is important to gamers, but we are also concerned about the demands of the major publishers, and in any event our policy is not yet set in stone – but please trust us to make the right decision“. This is a message which hardly inspires confidence, and requires that Yoshida’s initial pledge be reevaluated. The sentence “So, used games can play on the PS4. How is that?” does not actually mean that much when one pauses to further examine its implications. It is a promise which would still remain technically true even if only a small handful of used games were compatible with the system. Moreover, Yoshida’s promise remains fulfilled even if every used game required the user to pay a reactivation fee to Sony before their game would function on the console. Both of these eventualities are clearly unacceptable. At any rate, it would appear that Sony’s stance on used games is still undetermined, and will be finalised at a later date.

Sony would later state: “We are just now announcing the basic vision and strategy of PS4 and will have more information to share regarding used games later this year“. Sony has something planned with respect to used games on their new system, and will share the details of this later in the year. One is inclined to think that the best console of the next generation may just turn out to be the Steambox.

Australia’s new classification guidelines were drafted by the loli police.

Australia, You Are Doing it Wrong

When the various Australian federal and state governments at long last implemented their much discussed R18+ rating earlier in the year, many gamers [seemingly bereft of the capacity to order goods online at a significantly cheaper price] applauded the medium’s coming of age in the land of booze, semaphore, and Welsh Prime Ministers. It would seem that this transition has not occurred without a few slight hiccups however.

One is not much of a connoisseur of lolisploitation otaku games, and so is ill-placed to know whether the forthcoming Gust title, Atelier Totori Plus, is some sort of shocking and edgy reboot of the series, but assuming that it is not, then some sort of stunning error must have occurred during the classification process. Atelier Totori Plus has been classified R18+ for high impact sexual violence under the new rating system. To contextualise this, previous entries in the Atelier series have been rated either ‘PG’ or ‘M’ [Australia's closest equivalent to a 'PG-13' rating], yet Atelier Totori Plus manages to completely leapfrog the next rating up, ‘MA15+ [Australia's closest equivalent to an 'R' rating], and has managed to become one of the first games in Australia to receive an R18+ rating [Australia's closest equivalent to an 'NC-17' rating].

Assuming that this result is no mere aberration, then it would seem to suggest that there is some significant deficiency in the text of the new classification guidelines, probably driven by a personally held ideological bias against Japanese schoolgirl fan service. One has not had a chance to play this unreleased game, and so is not in the position to know whether it does indeed contain anything in the way of legitimate adult content, yet would nevertheless hazard a guess that the game has not been rated based on its content, but rather on the fact that it features as its protagonist a young girl with a suggestively short skirt. Lending weight to this theory is the fact that Dead or Alive 5 Plus was earlier this month slapped with an MA15+ rating, which is shockingly out of line with the content of that series. Thus it would seem that Australia’s new ratings guidelines were either drafted by excessively dour feminists, or whoever wrote them had a severe antipathy towards games with the the word ‘Plus’ in the title.

Problem solved.

Absentee ‘Parents’ Fleece Ill-Deserved Boon

The cause of personal responsibility has suffered a major setback this week, with Apple settling with a group of entitled fucktard parents who wish to abrogate their responsibility for allowing their children to access their credit cards, and then turning them loose on the App Store. iOS devices have parental controls and they also will not save an individual’s credit details unless instructed to do so. More to the point, it would take a morbidly retarded child to not realise that they were spending their parent’s money, given that doing so prompts a pop-up button to appear in order to confirm purchases.

In any event, having their child rack up a bill in excess of a thousand dollars due to a lack of supervision stood to be a valuable learning experience for both parent and child, but will instead be rendered meaningless by Apple’s decision to settle. These bad parents are everything that is wrong with society, and yet they will materially benefit from their own stupidity, with Apple giving away $5 iTunes gift cards to parents who were marginally effected, and in-store credits and/or a refund to parents hit with a more substantial bill.

This week, Ignatius J. Reilly finally meets his fate.

Produced 2013.02.03

Zoltan’s Reading Room finally attains to a glorious and satisfying conclusion, Lusipurr inveighs against the Culture Machine, and SiliconNooB speaks out against censorship in what may be the last of the really long Lusipurr.com podcasts. Brevity ho!

This is a novel way to dispose of surplus stock.

Black Ops II and Mass Effect 2 – Switched at Birth

Call of Duty bros made a shocking discovery this week when upon opening their brand new copies of Call of Duty: Black Ops II on the PC they discovered that the game’s second install disc was missing, and in its place was the horrible abomination to entertainment that is Mass Effect 2. Then to add insult to injury Electronic Bioturds proudly announced that the first fifty people to send in a photo of their terrible burden would receive free copies of the entire Mass Effect trilogy, thus compounding misery with dire misfortune.

The story does not end here however, as unbelievably the same thing occurred with an entirely different game, Lego Lord of the Rings. More specifically, the problem was isolated to the game’s Xbox 360 release, and saw the game disc replaced with the demo disc. If anything this situation may be even more extraordinary than the Call of Duty: Black Ops II mix-up, given that conventional thinking on the industry seems to suggest that it is the console manufacturer who is responsible for producing and packaging a publisher’s games. If that is the case then congratulations are in order to Microsoft for royally fucking up a procedure that should be routine and fool-proof.

And not a single shit was given by anyone of merit.

Zynga’s Social Bubble Continues to Burst

Back in June Lusipurr.com brought word that Zynga were in dire trouble after their stock plummeted below $5.00 off the back of disappointing quarterly results. It would appear that very little has actually changed during the intervening months, save for the fact that the company’s share-price is now even lower, and Zynga’s CEO, Mark Pincus, has allegedly been brought to the point of tears after the company’s shareholders brought in Apple director, Bill Campbell, to give him a grilling.

From the point at which Zynga’s share price peaked at $14.69 in March of this year, the company’s stock has fallen steadily until this week when it hit a nadir of $2.21. Since Zynga’s initial hardships began the executive level of the company has opperated like a turn-style, while the company has recently announced the termination of 170 employees, and retired thirteen of their older games. The company is to shut down a studio in Boston, while studios in Japan and the UK remain in the balance – but even so, the company still looks decidedly bloated given the decreasing revenues supporting their 3,200 employees worldwide.

Zynga has produced five of the current top ten games on Facebook, and still accounts for 7% of the total revenue brought in by the platform, yet that figure is down from 10% in the second quarter, and 12% in the third quarter of 2011. All of this is occurring while other Facebook developers are growing their market-share. Zynga still has some strong fundamentals; they have a lot of development resources coupled with vast amounts of cash on hand, and their games still bring in significant quantities of revenue – yet it looks increasingly as though the company’s revenue-base cannot hope to sustain the size of the operation. This is all made worse by the fact that Zynga has locked themselves into a social/mobile focus, even as the platform’s popularity is dwindling and the social gaming ecosystem is becoming more competitive. Do not be surprised if Zynga is not here this time next year, as the people calling the shots may have taken their bags of money and run by that point.

THQ have their figurative finger on the pulse of what is hip and cool!

THQ Defaults On Loan

Zynga is not the only publisher to stare into the yawning abyss this week, as a cash-strapped THQ has gone on to do them one better by defaulting on one of their loans. THQ incurred a technical default on their loan from Wells Fargo, as they allegedly borrowed more money than the terms of the loan allowed for, and then could not pay it back. THQ and Wells Fargo are currently in talks to renegotiate the terms on the loan, so everything will likely be fine in the short-term, yet it is a worrying sign for the company that they did not possess the wherewithal to service the loan.

That is not the extent of the company’s problems however, as even before news of THQ’s default had hit the press, investors were already divesting themselves of THQ shares. THQ lost 55% of its share value ($1.10) over the course of the week off the back of disappointing financial results and the promise of more short-term pain resulting from multiple big-ticket game releases being pushed back into 2013 and beyond. THQ famously blundered their way into this predicament when, following the successful launch of the casual-oriented uDraw game and tablet for the Wii, they actually thought that it would be a good idea to develop and release uDraw for the PS3 and 360 – in large quantities. The game tanked, was shovelled en masse into landfill, and allegedly cost an already beleaguered THQ in excess of 100 million dollars.

Yes, THAT game is getting another sequel.

No, Square Enix did not announce the continuation of Lightning’s saga via the medium of radio drama (yet), but they did announce the next best thing, unveiling the ridiculously named Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII. The title looks to be a massive departure from previous entries in the series, with the established battle system being pretty much scrapped in favour of an Action RPG battle system replete with realtime blocking. Despite this, it is said that the game still notionally maintains at least some semblance of an ATB system, though it will feature no menus, as attacks and magic can now be mapped to buttons. In continuing its shift into Action RPG territory, Lightning will be the game’s only playable character, with the supporting cast relegated to the role of NPCs, one presumes. Accompanying this change in battle system is a corresponding change in design philosophy, with Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII moving to adopt an open world as seen in popular RPGs such as Skyrim.

In terms of setting, the game will take place in an all new world known as Navus Partus, which exists many hundreds of years after the locations seen in the previous games. The world consists of four large islands, each one connected by a monorail. All of this is then surrounded by a blue lagoon, which eventually gives way to a sheer descent into stark nothingness, creating the impression that the world is to exist beyond the confines of normal time and space. In fitting with this end-of-the-world setting, the game is also set to feature a doomsday clock which allots players thirteen days (presumably not timed on a 1:1 scale) to save the world as it counts down to the end of humanity. Time can additionally be spent when using special moves and extended by solving storyline events. If a player runs out of time they may find themselves forced to restart their game, making the time mechanic somewhat reminiscent of the system used in Breath of Fire V: Dragon Quarter.

Despite indication that Square Enix were looking to change-up the formula of their latest offering in the Final Fantasy XIII series, one was truly surprised by the extent of the bold (or reactive) changes made to the formula, and look forward to seeing how it plays out for the existing audience. This move is not without its own inherent risks, as many Final Fantasy XIII fanboys have already displayed their vocal disdain for the less drastic changes made to the series formula with the release of Final Fantasy XIII-2, meaning that Square Enix risk turning away their existing audience while being somewhat unlikely to attract lapsed players of the series. That said, gamers who have stuck with the series up to this point are passing unlikely to quit it now, so it is not unreasonable to expect Final Fantasy XIII-2 levels of performance from the game at retail.

Square Enix Botch the Launch of Final Fantasy: Dimensions

Square Enix’s flash-games could stand to be more attractive.

Much has been made this week of the ridiculous pricing structure that Square Enix have adopted for the iOS release of Final Fantasy: Dimensions, which will run punters upwards of $29 for access to the complete experience. As if this was not a significant enough burden for a cheaply made phone game to carry, the launch of Final Fantasy: Dimensions saw the application made available with a bug which prevents users from paying to access further chapters of the game, forcing many to endure a day or more of waiting while a revision of the software was rushed to Apple’s iOS store-front.

Significantly, this delay constitutes something of a forced cool-down period for early adopters (read: the majority of people who were anticipating the game) when Square Enix was likely relying upon this group’s proclivity toward making impulse purchases in the immediate afterglow of the game’s opening sequence. Allow these people to put down the experience for long enough and they will begin to question whether it is truly worth their thirty dollars to pick it back up again, especially when the game exhibits all the worst aspects of flash-game production values.

While Square Enix should rightly be flogged for launching Final Fantasy: Dimensions at this price-point, and while one sincerely hopes that this hiccup is enough to allow the sheep to see through the wolf’s ploy, one thing must nevertheless be said in Square Enix’s favour on this issue: at least they have had enough confidence in their product to provide a representative sample gratis. Prospective customers are given a warts-and-all slice of the game completely free of charge, and thus consumers cannot complain about being duped into paying top-dollar for a low-quality game – anyone who ponies up the cash for Fianl Fantasy: Dimensions walks into this noose willingly.

Sony Botches the American Launch of PSOne Classics on PSVita

Sony: “We’ll make you work very hard to love us!”

The release of PSOne classics on Sony’s Vita platform always should have been a slam-dunk for the company, and to be fair this is exactly what it was for the European arm of the company which launched with dozens of quality games to amuse and delight their users, yet the American launch did not fare so well. Sony of America in their calculating hubris launched with a mere nine titles, stymieing the availability of PSOne titles in order to artificially bolster their system’s dwindling release schedule on PSN in the coming months. After the vocal user outcry directed toward Sony, the company was forced to make an impromptu update to the available titles on PSN, more than doubling the number of PSOne downloads, yet oddly managing to do so while adding very little of value to users. Case and point, the initial offering saw the release of Arc the Lad, while the update saw the release of Arc the Lad II, which is perhaps not quite the diversity that people were looking for in their demand for a larger selection.

As of writing, there are over one hundred PSOne Classics which are compatible with the PSVita, and which may be transferred to the system by a very round-about method involving the use of the PS3 to transfer a game’s download ‘bubble’ to the PSVita. Understandably, this method involves quite a bit of unnecessary effort on the part of users, which is a completely unacceptable burden to foist upon the system’s early adopters who have paid a high price to support the system as it makes its initial struggles to be brought up to speed. Moreover, even this work-around remains completely unavailable to users who lack a PS3, leaving them SOL, to quote the vernacular. European users have access to over half of their compatible downloads, including heavy-hitters such as: Vagrant Story, Resident Evil 1-3, Metal Gear Solid, and Soul Reaver. Meanwhile the luckless holders of US Vita accounts are left to suffer through a second-string launch catalogue of PSOne ‘Classics’.

The Happy Children of North Korea!

Produced 2012.07.29

Chris ‘Sabin’ Privitere stops by to remind everyone of just how wrong he can be, whilst Lusipurr gladly revels in his own constant and enduring rightness. Imitanis decides that no news is good news, Ethos reports on Limbo 2, and Ginia simply vanishes.

It came as little surprise when Ubisoft were seen to be recently scathing of the longevity of the current generation. The company have carved for themselves a lucrative racket by waiting for a new console to launch, and then dumping a plethora of sub-standard ports onto early adopters at launch, before there is much in the way of quality competition to be had. Gamers saw this at the launch of the PS3, where quick Ubisoft ports of Xbox 360 games were found to be lacking many of the technical elements present in their 360 counterparts, and gamers will find that the same will hold true for the launch of Nintendo’s Wii U.

No one milks like Guillemot!

This week Ubisoft kingpin, Yves Guillemot, has been surprisingly frank about just how incredibly cheap Ubisoft is being for the launch of the Wii U, when he claimed that Ubisoft “doesn’t have a huge investment” in the Wii U. Of the nine Ubisoft games that will be available at launch, seven of them will be ports. Guillemot claims that these seven games were ported to the Wii U at just over 1.2 million dollars a piece, Paving the way for mega ill-gotten profits.

Ubisoft is not just about the ports though, with the publisher planning on releasing two original pieces of software for Nintendo’s new system at launch, one of which is a completely original IP. One might have expected that at least these titles would constitute some form of significant investment on the part of Ubisoft, but not according to Guillemot: “As we’ve always said when there is such an innovation, the need is not to have big production value but to concentrate on innovation, this is what we are trying on Rayman and ZombiU”. What an amazing company.

Jade Raymond Opens Her Mouth, But Only Fart Noises Come Out

In other Ubisoft news, silly bint cum oblivious studio figurehead, Jade Raymond, has this week decided that an insurmountable obstacle to successful mainstream gaming is the onerous burden of having to use a perfectly intuitive controller. While that no doubt comes as a shock to the many millions of people who would consider themselves to be mainstream gamers (and who love their controllers), it nevertheless appears that the twenty+ million sales generated every year by the latest Call of Duty release is still insufficient to be deemed ‘mainstream gaming’ by the photogenic gamer girrrl head of Ubisoft Toronto. To Raymond, the controller is something that is feared by mainstream ‘gamers’, with its tyranny of buttons and analogue sticks; what this crowd really wants is something nice and simple like Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo’s boggling array of motion control nick nacks.

Some scary buttons.

“I still think that one of the huge barriers is the controller, and even people who played games when it used to be just one big red button and a D-pad can’t play games now – you have to master face buttons, triggers. So obviously we’re never going to get to that really mass-market place where we’re touching a really broad audience with our messages with controllers, so Kinect and other more natural ways to interact with games are incredibly important. I think we can go further. As more of a hardcore gamer I want to see that stuff integrated into hardcore games in a way that makes them better [Ed: a fine oxymoron] because as fun as all those are – I don’t really play exercise games; I can’t picture myself doing that – I’d love to be able to lean and look round the corner and just integrate more natural motions. The tech for those things isn’t quite there, but I hope it will soon.”

One gets the distinct impression that the homogenisation of AAA gaming which has occurred during the current generation is but the tip of the iceberg compared to what is in store for gamers going forward – which will be nothing less than the strong concerted push to compel core gamers to begin playing titles with varying amounts of crossover potential with the casual market. One has long noted the incredulity exhibited by corporate executives when discussing the fact that their bread and butter of core gamers refuse to play the same sort of games which sometimes ensnare the elusive and lucrative casual herd, denying them their rightful 7,000,000 plus unit sell-through, and well deserved mega-profits.

During the current generation there was not much that they could do about this, as gimmicky hardware was non-standard, yet, assuming that Kinect and Move are built into the next Microsoft and Sony platforms, then this degree of protection may suddenly vanish – leaving the world of core gaming exposed to feature-creep from the casual market. And why is any of this necessary? Because the moribund thinking of profit driven mega-publishers has lead to the erroneous belief that with but the right tools they will be able to coerce core gamers into consuming the same entertainment products as people who are too stupid or fearful to operate a standard dual-analogue gaming pad. The whole console gaming scene has become so depressing that one is sorely tempted to just sit out the next generation in favour of PC gaming…

Gabe Newell Bestows His Wisdom From on High

…Or rather one would if the PC was not beset with its own problems caused by Microsoft’s attempted cross-pollination of the Windows OS with a casual friendly smart phone interfaces. Designing Windows 8 as a smart phone operating system is great for all five of the people who want to buy a Windows smart phone, but even Apple, the undisputed leader in smart phone interfaces, is smart enough to know that a computer interface must be substantially different from that of a smart phone. Enter Gabe Newell – a man with so much inherent dignity and charisma that he does not even need to wear a hat, but does so anyway. Readers may have wondered at the point of Valve’s recent push toward Linux compatibility for their Steam platform, well as it turns out this is a harm minimisation strategy for the calamity that is to be Windows 8. Newell sees turbulent times ahead for companies that have traditionally operated within the Windows ecosystem, and presumably wishes Steam to become something of an open door to bridge the transition to a more accommodating operating system.

Gabe Newell AKA Western Sakaguchi.

When asked recently about Valve’s intentions for the Linux OS, Newell replied: “The big Problem that is holding back Linux is games. People don’t realize how critical games are in driving consumer purchasing behaviour. We want to make it as easy as possible for the 2,500 games on Steam to run on Linux as well. It’s a hedging strategy. I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space. I think we’ll lose some of the top-tier PC/OEMs [Ed: original equipment manufacturers] who will exit the market. I think that margins will be destroyed for a bunch of people. If that’s true, then it will be good to have alternatives to hedge against that eventuality.”

If that is not a damning indictment to Microsoft’s approach, then one does not know what is. It is funny to think that in ten years time owners of shitty Windows operating systems may have to run Bootcamp just to play the latest games on their computers. One would also love to see a near future where new PC games uniformly carry bold stickers proclaiming: ‘not compatible with Windows 8′, whilst retailers continue to sell Windows 7 as the preferred operating system – though of course Microsoft will likely try their hardest to kill off their superior legacy operating system.

This week, amid news that the Wii U port of the upcoming Tekken Tag Tournament 2 was coming along ahead of schedule, Tekken producer, Katsuhiro Harada, dropped the truth bomb that the Wii U CPU is clocked at a lower frequency than its PS360 counterparts. While it has been clear for some months that the Wii U does not possess the power to distinguish itself significantly from the aging PS360 architecture, and while it is almost certain that developers early on in the piece are not fully harnessing the tricks and shortcuts available to the processor, it is nevertheless unthinkable that a supposed next generation CPU cannot even muster the raw power to best the output of seven year old technology.

When discussing the progress of the Wii U port of Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Harada stated: “I think maybe the game is coming along smoother than most people would think, as far as the look of the game. As far as graphical processing and such, it’s not much of an issue. But as far as the CPU goes, the clock is kinda low. I guess they’re trying to keep power consumption down so we have to come up with creative ways to get around that and that’s taking a little bit of time.” When asked specifically whether the Wii U was clocked lower than the PS3 and Xbox 360, Harada confirmed: “Maybe a little bit,” an entirely consistent answer, though it would appear that “them’s fightin’ words”!

Enjoy Assassin’s Creed III at a more leisurely pace on the Wii U!

Somewhat predictably, Harada’s words have led to Nintendo fans launching such quaint accusations as: Namco Bandai are just making a lazy port that does not take advantage of the Wii U CPU’s additional (imagined) features, and producers are not involved in the technical aspects of game production, so what would the Tekken producer know about something so fundamental as the system’s CPU frequency anyway? Then there are the laughable idiots who point to footage of the Platinum title Project P-100 as undeniable proof that the Wii U is capable of physics that would be impossible on the Ps3 and Xbox 360. When console warriors begin their cloud-gazing, one knows that the next console generation is not far off.

Harada went on to further clarify: “For example on PS3 it was kind of difficult at first, but if you made good use of the cores, you could split up the processing tasks and you could achieve very good effects. But this is kind of a different issue than that.” Indeed, this is a very different issue to that of the PS3, which had plenty of headroom to expand the CPU’s efficacy by offloading tasks to the chip’s multitude of slave processing cores. By contrast, the Wii U possesses three processing cores, which, by the looks of things, are all clocked lower than the Xbox 360′s three CPU cores. In all likelihood the chip is probably theoretically capable of performing at the same frequency as its Xbox 360 counterpart, yet has been underclocked to reduce the system’s power consumption footprint, and to improve component yield and console mortality. Ultimately, one would not be at all surprised if the Wii U’s CPU chip is eventually found to be more robust than that of the Xbox 360 when powering Wii U exclusive software, but the lack of raw power is sure to present difficulties in porting the PS360′s back-catalogue to the Wii U, making third party releases seem less appealing to publishers.

Square Enix’s Technology Director Is an Imbecile

Square Enix’s worldwide technology director, Julien Merceron, has this week single-handedly justified the company’s tendency to muzzle employees by dint of his ability to speak absolute rubbish. This generation has seen many developers retreat from the manufacture of console games, opting instead to test the waters of iOS and browser development – according to Merceron Sony and Microsoft are to blame for this development because of the length of the current console generation, a contention made without reference to logic or common sense.

When questioned on the topic, Merceron stated: “I would suggest that maybe we don’t want long generations. We have Sony and Microsoft talking about this generation 7, 8, 9 or even 10 years and it’s the biggest mistake they’ve ever made. This generation has been way too long, and I say this because you have a lot of developers that work on a new platform, and perhaps will not succeed, so they will wait for the next generation, and will jump on that platform. You could not do that with this generation though. So these developers went elsewhere to see if the grass was greener. They found web browsers, they found iOS, they found other things and a lot of them won’t come back to the hardware platforms. So you could look at it that thanks to Microsoft and Sony and the length of the generation, it helped the emergence of other platforms and helped them get strong before the next hardware comes out.”

Julien Merceron, Square Enix’s technology director.

What Merceron is essentially saying is that he believes that there were developers who did not meet with success during the current generation, and so they were waiting on the sidelines for the next console generation to begin, whereupon games would cost exponentially more for them to produce – because that makes perfect sense(?!). In reality this console generation has driven many developers to the wall with high development costs, and has led many others to implore Sony and Microsoft to prolong the current console generation so as to generate more of a return on their technological expenditure. Indeed, the only people one sees agitating for a hardware refresh are the representatives of the industry’s several megapublishers, because they know that another bump in development costs will further weaken the hand of independent development, entrenching the positions of Activision, EA, Ubisoft, and, yes, Square Enix as the content gatekeepers of the console world. It is, however, particularly galling that Square Enix should call out Sony and Microsoft for a long console-cycle when they announced Final Fantasy Versus XIII before the PS3 had even launched, and yet look no closer to delivering on it than they did back then. Square Enix could stand to learn to use the hardware they have now before they start clamouring for access to updated specs – because processing muscle is no panacea for what is rotten in that company.

Iwata on the Failings of the 3DS’ Design

Nintendo 3DS Circle Pad Pro XL

Nintendo president, Satoru Iwata, has this week admitted that 3D visuals are not the magic bullet that Nintendo thought they would be, noting that consumer excitement for the effect seems to be wearing a little thin: “I think when we launched the 3DS there was a kind of 3D boom, which is perhaps slightly on the wane again, but there are plenty of people out there that create 3D video and I think that some of those who create and distribute 3D video would be very interested in the 3DS XL. But as human beings are this kind of surprise effect wears off quickly, and just have this 3D stereoscopic effect isn’t going to keep people excited.

Nonetheless, Iwata still defends the inclusion of 3DS for the console, stating: I think it’s an important element, it makes graphics more impactful, it proves a sense of immersion that 2D doesn’t have, so I would say generally that 3D is better than 2D.” What this very simplistic argument fails to take into account is that it is not the mere question of whether 3D is better than 2D, but rather the question of whether 3D is better than 2D when it is displayed at half the resolution that is important – given that one can only stomach playing one out of a total of six owned 3DS titles with the 3D switched on, the inclination is to wager not.

Exclusive Cid Artwork from the upcoming Final Fantasy VIII

Produced 2012.04.22

Digging back into the mists of time, Lusipurr uses his Chrono Trigger to uncover a podcast from the early days of the internet, predating Lusipurr.com, broadband, both the PlayStation3 and PlayStation2, the iPod and iPhone, and the word ‘podcast’ itself!

PopCap Logo

PopCap Gamers announced today the launch of an all new Bejeweled adaptation as well as a new “freemium” edition of Bejeweled Blitz for the iPhone and iPod touch.

With the launch of these new titles PopCap plans to retire Bejeweled 2 to make way for the next generation of the land mark franchise. Mobile gamers can purchase the new Bejeweled title from the Apple App store for one dollar, alternatively they can download Bejeweled Blitz for no cost. The all-new Bejeweled will feature new high-res graphic and retina display support, three game modes: Classic, Zen, and Diamond Mine, in-game leader boards, and seven achievement badges plus three elite badges. Bejeweled Blitz will offer 60 second game action just as it did in the original Bejeweled titles along with, an entirely new user-interface, “The Daily Spin” where players can test their luck and try to get bonus coins, retina display support, full Facebook integration, and online leaderboards.

“With nearly 40 million mobile units sold over the past eight years, Bejeweled is the second best-selling mobile game of all time, behind only Tetris,” noted Giordano Bruno Contestabile, Bejeweled franchise Business Director at PopCap Games. “As we strive to reach virtually everyone with a mobile communications device, PopCap will continue to make games that are even more accessible to that ever-expanding global audience. We’re taking a critical step toward this goal with the introduction of these new Bejeweled titles that will enhance our offerings on the iPhone for years to come.”

Nintendo DS Logo

Smartphone-centric webzines have been crowing this week with the release of modeling which suggests that the Nintendo DS will generate a mere 36% of handheld revenue in 2011. Advocates of smartphone gaming are interpreting this development as a sign that Nintendo will soon be developing games for their preferred telecommunications OS.

The analysis firm Flurry has this week released modeling based on NDP data which suggests that the DS’s share of handheld profit is set to fall this year from 57% in 2010 to a scant 36% in 2011. To further contextualise the fading fortunes of Nintendo’s mighty handheld, Flurry have noted that in 2009 Nintendo’s DS held a princely 70% of a market worth a cool $2.7 billion, while in 2011 the aging console will accrue just 36% of a market worth $3.3 billion. Flurry suggest that cheap Android and iOS games have made spending $40 on portable software seem redundant, likening Nintendo’s response to the encroaching smartphone marauders to a sleeping army’s failure to detect an enemy attack. The firm have suggested that Nintendo will soon be forced to abandon their hardware business in favour of developing games for competing platforms.

While few would argue with Flurry’s contention that 2011 has seen Nintendo caught flat-footed with respect to their hardware business, their analysis nevertheless leaves several big questions unanswered. Chief among them is where does the 3DS fit into their prognostications, along with the need for them to give account for exactly why it is significant that DS sales have tapered off when the console is all but ready to be retired.

Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

Produced 2011.10.09

Ladies and Gentlemen, pray silence this week as Reetin sues, Enrei doesn’t sue, and Lusipurr announces the death of an icon.

* * *

Here’s a link to our Extra Life Donation Page!

In Communist China, Tank Drives You!

China’s Gold Penitentiaries

In this day and age, human rights activists in the United States have deemed chain gangs a violation of the civil liberties of prisoners and demanded they be made a thing of the past, relegating rock crushing and license plate stamping to being seen only in Hollywood portrayals. However, in countries less concerned about labor laws, like glorious China, criminals are expected to pay their debt to society with some actual effort. At the Jixi re-education through labor camp in Heilongjiang province, this does include the expected crushing of rocks and the whittling of wood into chopsticks and toothpicks until their hands were raw. One would assume that after several hours of backbreaking labor, the prisoners would be allowed to rest for the next day’s work, but that is not the case. Instead, they are repaying the debt to society quite literally, making approximately US$700-900 per day, by farming gold. A 54-year-old man who was imprisoned for three years recounts twelve-hour shifts spent behind the keyboard, required to farm as much gold as possible, with harsh punishments for falling behind. “If I couldn’t complete my work quota, they would … make me stand with my hands raised in the air and after I returned to my dormitory they would beat me with plastic pipes,” he said of his torturous years at the facility. Shocking as this is, University of California San Diego researcher Jin Ge has found in his studies that this is not uncommon in China. Even with 2009 legislation making it illegal to trade real currency for virtual currency without a license, it is still estimated that 80% of the world’s gold farmers are in China, and for good reason. Gold farming was estimated in 2008 to be a US$2 billion industry, and pay in gold farming facilities tends to be higher than that of other factory jobs. While there are groups opposed to the forced labor industry working to get more legislation passed, it does not seem that the trend of gold farming, voluntary or mandatory, will be slowing down anytime soon.

It's so adorable!

Have Cooler, Will Travel

There are a handful of organs in the human body that are unnecessary, especially anything that has a partner. However, for the organs that are necessary, hospitals and their sick patients can be very desperate to find a replacement for one that has gone bad. We have all heard stories about the black market for organs, where anyone with a kidney, a disregard to hygiene, and no qualms about breaking the law can make a quick buck for giving up the second of their organ pair. This is exactly what a 17-year-old boy in the Anhui province of China did when he found himself in need of cash to buy, amongst other things, an iPad 2. Going to a hospital in the Funan province, the teen had a kidney removed and was paid US$3,500 for his organ, which he promptly spent on his Apple product as well as another computer and other assorted tech gear. Knowing that the teen was usually broke, his mother thought something amiss and questioned him about his purchases until he confessed. Authorities went searching for the perpetrator of the crime, but his missing kidney has yet to be found. He expressed regrets about the sale, but who needs to filter pee when you have Steve Jobs at your side?

I would pay a monthly fee for kitten grenades.

Pachter’s Obvious Predictions Coming True

Emperor Palpatine Kotick of Activision has struck again, though to be fair, we expected this for a long time. Shed a tear of Oliver Motok’s impending bankruptcy, as the fabled Call of Duty subscription service has finally been announced this week. The price has yet to be identified, but the details of the subscription make sure to as misleading as possible, referring to everything as “free” while ignoring that while the content is not being paid for individually, there is definitely a monthly fee. Multiplayer Call of Duty will still be available to all users regardless of Elite subscription, but those with the subscription will get all of the DLC without paying for each one. There will be exclusive CoD Elite apps for Android and iOS devices, where players can track their stats on customized leaderboards and work with their customized loadouts. Players will be able to create their own clans or join groups based on similar interests, as well as analyze their kills and deaths to improve their skills. Many features were left undetailed because they will debut with Modern Warfare 3, but the Elite service will go into beta with Black Ops sometime this summer. Anyone wishing to sign up for this beta can do so at Activision’s CoD Elite website. Perhaps Oliver can sell a kidney for it…

Love the gargoyle Batman.

Hopefully Not Halle Berry

Rocksteady Studio’s 2009 blockbuster Batman: Arkham Asylum got no less than four out of five stars on the majority of gaming websites in addition to winning multiple awards for story, characters, and even several Game of the Year awards. One of the only criticisms of the game was the optional character, The Joker, being little more than a remodel with the same moves as Batman. For the highly-anticipated sequel, Batman: Arkham City, it has been revealed that Catwoman will be the playable character this time around, and she will actually be a full-fledged playable character. She does not have a cape as Bats does, but instead moves through the environment with a series of parkour-style moves, using her own version of Detective Mode to identify things to steal. As expected, she is not an ally of the Dark Knight, but as the player levels Batman, Catwoman will also grow and be able to improve her armor, abilities, and gadgets. It is still not confirmed or denied if Catwoman’s role is indicative of a much requested multi-player mode, but developers do confirm that she is only playable for about ten to fifteen percent of the game, so Batman still takes the lead in the sequel.

A curious narrative has emerged with the first half of the year’s two biggest WRPG releases: BioWare’s Dragon Age II and Polish developer CD-Projekt’s The Witcher 2. That is, one may not survive while the other lives.

Geralt gets up close and personal with a BioWare developer.

This is rather disheartening; the games have literally no similarities except that they are big-name Western RPGs released in the first half of 2011. But from this one tenuous connection, gamers are lead to believe that unless The Witcher 2 is the reciprocal of Dragon Age II in every way that they personally find deficient, then The Witcher 2 shares in BioWare’s infamy.

Instead of judging each game on its own merits, gamers have divided themselves into two camps, girded themselves for e-battle, and descended into review comments sections to either defend the honor of the besmirched maiden of BioWare or champion the “AAA-RPG with an indie heart” found in CD-Projekt’s game.

I will not, however, be reviewing the latter, although my views on the former are well-known, and, I think, unimpeachable in their objectivity and correctness. I suspect that my fellow Lusipurr.com writer Julian “SiliconNoob” Taylor Wallaby Fosters Didgeridoo Boomerang New South Wales Mate will wish to review The Witcher 2, and that honor I shall leave to him. Instead, I wish merely to express my exasperation with gamers for allowing themselves to be duped into this binary holy war for no apparent purpose.

In most societies, merely glimpsing BioWare artwork is enough to send fanboys into frothing rage.

As stated earlier, the games are almost entirely dissimilar. The complaints that many people have of Dragon Age II are… repeated… within The Witcher 2. There is no tactical view. Combat is fluid and action-oriented. The UI and control scheme of The Witcher is totally abandoned in favor of a new, faster system. Strange choices in dungeon design were made that reverse the feeling and soul of the first game (never mind that some of them actually improve the game).

But people are heralding the game as if it is somehow the answer to BioWare’s alleged failure, resorting into fanboyish factionalism that recalls the heady, early days of the PlayStation 3′s release. And I fear that, in the ensuing fracas that is sure to result, any sense of reviewing objectivity will be lost, and gamers will suffer. We will not be able to have an honest conversation about Nilfgaard and Temeria without also bringing up Qunari and Kirkwall, when in tone, technique, style, and aim the games could not be more divergent. Which is sad, because then two eminently worthy and respectable entries in the WRPG canon will be set at loggerheads, and those that enjoy one will be put off enjoying the other for fear of upsetting their respective factions.

Well, that was awful. My sincerest apologies.
Anyway, to the point of this post.

Evil Empire Microsoft bought Skype, better known as the world’s most useless VOIP program that for some reason Lusipurr insists on using to record our legendary podcasts. What this means is that now any time one of us says “PS3″ on the podcast, Bill Gates is going to pop in and say, “Hey, remember when the PSN was up? Neither do I!”

But more troubling is the dark prophecy uttered by James I of Cameron, that a virtual worldwide computer network SkyNet will soon unleash unholy hell upon us all, and somehow summon up a robot army to destroy all organic life for some reason… who knows? Robots are fucking scary, people!

Anyway, Cameron is kind of a weirdo with a fetish for vaguely racist blue-skinned cat-people, so of course he forgot that technology is managed by incompetent boobs, like Kevin Butler, who still cannot figure out how to reboot PSN servers after a month. Flip the switch off and back on, you frat-boy gutterslime!

GET TO DA CHOPPA, BIG BOY

So what if SkyNet were real and not the diseased dream of a guy that decided that the world needed not one but two evil robot movies staring former homosexual porn star and governator of Kalifohrneeuh Arnold Schwarzenegger (WARNING: We here at Lusipurr.com strive for a family-friendly environment. Unfortunately, that family is the family in all of those Aristocrats! jokes, so discerning readers should probably not click the Schwarzenegger link at work, school, mosque, synagogue, church, temple, Satanic coven, or library!), it would be managed by the gormless schmucks that run our current technology companies, and we would all likely survive. Here is why!

Microsoft

If Microsoft ran SkyNet, every Terminator would have glowing neon green eyes, be made of ugly matte black and off-white plastic, and kill their victims by the ungodly heat that radiates off their separate power-units. Because Microsoft makes terrible decisions, they will not include any high-capacity magazines, and if they are not powered down every night, they will start to run slowly until they eventually crash with the dreaded “blue eye-screen of death.” That is, if the first virus released into the wild by some typhoid cyber-mary does not cripple them first.

Sony

What, can Sony products even get online any more? Hell, at this point, I might welcome robot overlords if it meant that my PS3 became something more than an expensive and clunky-looking BluRay player. The one consolation of a Sony-SkyNet future would be that John Connor (and not the wussy 12-year-old version, the Christian Bale version) would shoot robots that looked like Kevin Butler, and that makes me happy.

In apology for the PSN outage, I shall now shove this in my nose. SIGMA DELTA CHI FOREVER!

Nintendo

In a rare move, this is the only future in which humanity wins outright. Because Nintendo is incapable of creating anything even vaguely menacing, all Nintendo Terminators would be made of obsolete technology, but covered in non-threatening gray, white and purple rounded plastic. And because they are uniquely Japanese, these robots would be rather helpful and do things like assist old ladies across the street and grope underage children on the subway.

Because that is how Japan rolls, Lusibots. They would probably also transform or combine somehow and defeat evil space demons, after which Ultraman would show up while riding a giant lizard monster that for some reason has to fight a giant moth. Because Japan.

Apple

Finally, what about those hipster schmucks that used to employ me? Yes, that is right, I used to be a Mac Genius. Wanna fight about it?

The iMinator, as it would be known, would be only six microns thick, contain a touch-screen interface that would allow the user to select any of a number of brightly-colored icons that would inflict any number of slow and painful deaths upon users. Fortunately for humanity, simply by gripping the iHeel of the robot in the patented “Death Grip,” people could cause it to lose connection with the mother ship or whatever and stop the robot revolution before it got off the ground.

Google

Honestly, who cares? Google is a software company.

Valve

Why resist? FREE HATS FOR EVERYBODY! Yay!

Michael Pachter is an INDUSTRY leader now?!

Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata failed to endear himself to smartphone developers this week, after comments made during his keynote speech at the Game Developers Conference, to the effect that they are more concerned with volume over value in their games:

We want consumers to appreciate the premium value of software through our platforms. Although Microsoft and Sony are different to us, I believe we all share this idea 100 per cent. We demonstrate a high value of game software. “However, smartphones and social platforms are not at all like ours. These platforms have no motivation to maintain a high value of game software. For them, content is just created by someone else.

Quantity is how they profit. The value of game software does not matter to them.

Our industry has certainly expanded but it also gives me concern. It is difficult to gain true hit status. With such competition even being noticed is extremely difficult.

The majority of people here are creating games for social and mobile. I fear our business is dividing, and that threatens the employment for those of us who make games for a living.

Game development is drowning.

Brian Reynolds: BAAAWWWWWWWWW!

I happen to agree with the guy 100%, the quality standards of app approval are far too loose (while also turning a blind eye to blatant plagiarism), though the hypocrisy of his words absolutely kills me. Nintendo pioneered the popularity of cheep and nasty shovelware, and now that they are made to reap the whirlwind of their own devising they raise their imploring hands to the sky and cry FOWL!

Well isn’t that just bloody typical?

Nintendo nurtured the shovelware industry though its infancy, yet they still ran their Wii platform under a game console business model, hindering casual gaming’s full banal potential. Now that Apple have arrived on the scene, and opened their sluice gates wide to the rivers of shit which couldn’t even negotiate Nintendo’s emaciated approval process, Nintendo finally find themselves with a competitor capable of selling a cheaper and nastier product in greater volume to bigger profits. In short Nintendo are being under-classed, and find their market segment melting away.

The 200 to 300 million people who play games on Facebook ARE wrong.

Unsurprisingly gaming INDUSTRY ‘leaders‘ (read: Michael ‘soothsayer’ Pachter + Facebook app developers) were scathing of Iwata’s words:

Leaders in the gaming industry reacted negatively today to controversial comments made by Nintendo’s President Satoru Iwata at the Game Developers Conference this morning.

“Long-term, Nintendo is doomed,” said Michael Pachter, equity research analyst of Wedbush Securities. “He’s under full frontal assault by Apple.”

“He may be right, but then the 200 to 300 million people who play games on Facebook are wrong,” said Jeff Brown, the VP of corporate communication for Electronic Arts  ”Social gaming as a whole aggregates into a business that is undeniably big money.”

Brian Reynolds said while Zynga has made huge gains since last year, it still hasn’t been fully recognized for its work.

“What we’ve done has permeated everywhere, but we don’t have the recognition from the old guard. The young guys — they get it, but the forces of the industry are living in the past. The longer it takes them to realize that, the more it will cost them to buy your way back in.”

SONY: Looking to their long-term security in the INDUSTRY

A while back I attempted to pour cold water on Sony’s strategy of putting out an uber-balled multicore PSP2, please allow me the opportunity to eat humble pie, that was a statement made in full ignorance. Sony’s planning is impeccable given the market situation. While releasing a portable HD console may be sub-optimal in historical terms, it is an area of the market that smartphone development isn’t really able to touch yet. Sure the Unreal Engine running on a retina display looks absolutely stunning in Infinite Blade, yet I strongly doubt that we will see anything approaching the complexity of HD console games running on the hardware any time soon.

Sony has staked for itself the high-end segment of the portable market. Moreover, Sony’s forays into integrating PSN with the Android market will likely provide the PSP2 a new lease on life even if Smartphone development is able to catch up with the system’s capabilities over the next several years. Hell, the system is even made of overpowered smartphone parts, so a broad range of cheap downloadable software should be all but assured.

The 3DS by contrast is underpowered when compared to most of the current smartphone hardware, while competing for the same market. Characteristic of their online myopia, Nintendo have failed to integrate the 3DS in any way with the smartphone market, opting instead to stick with their mediocre DSIware platform. In fact the only useful application Nintendo appear to have found for the Internet is for keeping an invasive log of gamers 3DS activities which Nintendo may access at will, and use as the basis for remotely bricking your system.The only asset Nintendo actually have in their corner is the 3D gimmick, which appears to make every second gamer sick …

Any portable system is at an automatic disadvantage in competing with iOS and Android, given the Swiss Army Knife nature of the devices. Smartphone owners will almost always automatically have their smartphone with them, and so have to ask themselves each time before they go out whether they can be bothered carrying an additional game system on top of that. I can speak for myself in saying that my iPod Touch is the only device that I have ever used as a de jure portable gaming system, while my PSP and DS get used as mobile home consoles.

In light of this Sony have looked to the future and carved for themselves a niche of console games on the go + Smartphone content (potentially), while intransigent Nintendo look to tackle Apple head-on, a battle they cannot hope to win with $40+ games and lacklustre online content delivery.

Nintendo learns how to use the Internet

The 3DS could very easily turn out to be another Game Cube: a system only purchased in order to play Nintendo’s first party titles. Nintendo have some market advantage in the consumer confidence given the rolling success of their previous handheld consoles, and also the fact that they are going to market a good ten months before the PSP2 is to début, yet they currently give the appearance of putting on a high-wire act over a yawning abyss.

Meanwhile, the game media pundits are beginning to loose interest in this thoroughly ordinary system.

Fart!! is exactly what one would expect from reading its title.  Users load up the Fart!! app and simply press a button to simulate the best fart sounds the iPhone and iPod Touch can provide.  There are many different fart sounds to use, even including the infamous leg farts.  Graphically, there is not much to say as the app is pretty much just a single button the user presses to activate the various fart noises.  The app even has the ability to combine with other iPhones or iPod Touches that have already downloaded the app to create a giant fart bomb that is deafening to the ears of listeners in the nearby area.  One of the best aspects to this app is the fact that it is available in both English and Italian, something most other fart apps do not have.

Overall, Fart!! is an amazing fart simulating app.  It is simple enough for all users, yet does not lose any of its enjoyability.  The multi-app abilities and the addition of an Italian language option just make the app even more worth downloading.  What makes it even better is the fact that it is a free download.  For any user of the iPhone or iPod Touch, this is a must-have app!

Nate Liles is Amazing!

Produced 2010.12.19

There’s nothing bigger than Christmas antipodean style, and Australian Christmas doesn’t disappoint. Earnings forecasts are down, Foster’s sales are up, and Nate Liles is conspicuously absent and almost certainly drunk. Get out your semaphor kit, mate!

Assume the position!

Produced 2010.11.07

The countdown to the 100th Episode begins with the release of Microsoft Xbox Kinect. When no one on the staff buys it, the Lusipurr.com panel searches high and low for someone foolish enough to have purchased it. And they find that person in Oliver Motok.

Kudo Tsunoda

Produced 2010.10.31

Lusi and Biggs set about taking an enormous poo on Micro$oft, but it isn’t undeserved. The prophecies of Kudo Tsunoda are exposed as lies. M$ stock takes a tumble as a result. Meanwhile, Emperor Kotick grows powerful at their expense.

''The industry rebellion has been foiled. The remaining developers will be hunted down and defeated. The attempt to curtail my profits has left me scarred and deformed, but I assure you, my resolve has never been stronger. In order to ensure security and continuing stability, the industry will be reorganised into the Global Activision Empire!''

Darth Lane uses the force to ensure that the panelists eagerly report on the Tokyo Game Show, show their love for Activision games, and profess their unswerving belief in the right-minded thinking of Emperor Kotick. All hail the GLOBAL ACTIVISION EMPIRE!

For all those who had their money stolen: DOINK!

I Accidentally the iTunes

What is the laziest way to make money that’s taking the world by storm? Make an app. With the phrase “there’s an app for that” running rampant, developers ranging from well-known businesses to lonely nerds in their basement know that where there’s an app for that, there is money for it too. The problem with this is, as with any product, competition. So what is a lonely basement nerd to do when no one downloads their app? Hack people’s iTunes accounts of course! A Vietnamese developer did just that this week, stealing anywhere from $100 to $1,400 on various accounts by using them to download his apps. His hacked purchasing spree sent his illegal manga apps to claim the top forty-two spots on the list of top fifty books downloaded in the U.S., raising eyebrows and eventually leading to him being caught. Apple, as expected, takes no responsibility for this, instead suggesting that all hacked users cancel their credit cards and work through the creditors to get a refund for their stolen money.

Her acid-spitting breasts are so awesome that even her hair has to cop a feel.

I Accidentally the Tits

Any video game fan knows one thing is true of all female characters: women are more functional on the battlefield as our breasts get bigger and the clothing covering them gets smaller and/or tighter. This week, Sony got a bit confused on this point, both condoning and condemning it. First up, the Guinness World Records has awarded the title of Best PS3 strategy RPG upon Valkyria Chronicles and, presumably, Selvaria’s sweet melons. This decision was based upon its Metacritic and GameRankings ratings, as well as a claim of Game of the Year and Strategy Game of the Year, though it does not say who gave it those two honors. But as they applauded the great SEGA game, they also removed an episode of the titular (literally) anime Queen’s Blade. For those who have never watched it, the series follows one simple rule: attacks do not result in bleeding wounds, just exposed breasts. Because of the explicit nature, the free episode was only on PSN for a short time before it was quickly removed, acid-spitting nipples and all.

Right up there with coolface.jpg.

Trolls Trolling Trolls

So you want to log in to World of Warcraft and play a fun game of PvP the noobs. You must be Ginia Herrell! Now, the entire world will know that you are Ginia Herrell, douchebitch extraordinaire! Except you and the rest of the internet bitched, so now you can troll anonymously til the end of time. In the span of a week, one of the biggest stories to come out of Blizzard was announced and almost immediately retracted. In principle, the RealID system proposed by Blizzard was to remove the mask of anonymity that encourages otherwise ordinary people to act like fucktards on the internet, revealing the user’s actual first and last name on the Battle.net forums. The effects were set to occur before the end of the month before the launch of the StarCraft II community site, but in the three days following the announcement on Tuesday, the internet went berserk. Thus, on Friday, Blizzard stated that they have taken the overwhelmingly negative response into account and have decided not to implement the system “at this time.” So for the time being, continue trolling, Ms. Herrell, continue trolling.

Not art. Or shut up.

Gamers Threw A Tantrum, Ebert Gave In

We may not have gotten candy or a new toy, but after much screaming and pounding our fists on the ground, the gaming community got what it wanted: Roger Ebert shutting the hell up. In his latest journal entry on the Chicago Sun-Times website, he writes:

I was a fool for mentioning video games in the first place. I would never express an opinion on a movie I hadn’t seen. Yet I declared as an axiom that video games can never be Art. I still believe this, but I should never have said so. Some opinions are best kept to yourself.

He goes on to speak of the nearly five-thousand comments that his blog received, only about three-hundred of which concurred with his opinion. With his foot in his half-of-a-mouth, he acknowledges that not all were “cretinous comments from gamers,” but rather “intelligent, well-written, and right about one thing in particular: I should not have written that entry without being more familiar with the actual experience of video games.” He goes on to elaborate how he was wrong and to admit one critical thing about himself: he has no desire to play video games, and thus, cannot understand how they can be seen as art. He admits that he may not understand it, but as our site discussed at length, art is experienced differently by each viewer, or in this argument, by each player. He concludes his article with something we all knew from the beginning, “I was a fool for mentioning video games in the first place.”

She's not touching the sides, you should be okay.

I Blame Virginia Herrell

If you live under a rock, you may not have heard of this miraculous device called an iPhone. Another reason you may not have heard of it is because your friends who have it cannot actually call you on it unless they hold it the right way. With the release of the iPhone 4 also came the newest technical problem for Steve Jobs to ignore, in which the user’s signal strength will almost disappear simply by putting their hands on the metal sides, an almost unavoidable task. This is not the first time that a phone has had a design flaws like this, Nokia released models with this type of problem several years ago, and as I was lucky enough to own one of these piece of cheap Chinese garbage, there is one clear difference between Nokia’s fail and Apple’s fail: the Nokia phone explicitly stated “do not touch this antenna area” and you were fine as long as you heeded that warning. Apple’s shining representatives did not state the antenna problem prior to its release, and have been rather unapologetic, with King Jobs even saying “just avoid holding it that way.” And you paid how much for that device again? Enjoy!

Eyepatch, check. Underboob, check. Loli panty shot, check. Its definitely a Lusipurr.com picture!

Nintendo Cures Googly Eyes

Amblyopia, or severe lazy eye syndrome, left young Ben Michaels with a severely compromised right eye, with such deterioration over the course of two years that his doctors feared permanent blindness in the eye. After taking him to the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital in London, his mother was shocked at the treatment plan for her son: video games. Per the doctor’s orders, Ben played Mario Kart DS for two hours every day with a patch over his left eye, and in no time, the boy’s prognosis went from rather grim to absolutely stunning. Because the youngster’s functional eye was covered by the patch, this forced the right eye to work harder and concentrate more on the figures on the screen. “When he started, he could not identify our faces with his weak eye,” his mother told the Daily Mail, going on to say that he now was able to read with the afflicted eye. Doctors are, as always, wary to say that video gamers are the cure, but admit that they certainly help as the child tends to stick with it more than with traditional methods.

RPGamer finally made Lusipurr's game, and the gameplay videos are out.

Gameplay Videos Are Piracy

For as many tech pirates inhabit the internet societies of Western civilizations, Japan still manages to ravage us in terms of piracy, so much so that publishers are cracking down with an iron fist. Visual Arts and Aquaplus, two visual novel publishers, have started warning users that posting gameplay videos to sites like Nico Nico Douga and Youtube is an act of piracy itself, classifying it as unauthorized distribution and threatening fines and jail time. Since visual novels differ from other games in that all players will follow the same dialogue prompts and answer the same choices, the argument is that these videos show the potential buyers exactly what will happen, thus eliminating the need to buy it. While calling this an act of piracy is not unheard of in Japan, many gamers and other industry watchers warn that any legal action could set a dangerous precedent and perhaps even hurt the developers themselves when sites refuse to even show trailers for fear of litigation. While the U.S. has several statutes regarding the fair use of such media, Japan does not, so the future of video game videos is yet unknown.

Probably not in the next update.

Julian ‘SiliconNooB’ Taylor: Master of Moustache Science

Valve is surely making a name for themselves as the most frustrating cocktease ever. In addition to releasing several new Portal 2 videos, they have also updated the Team Fortress 2 blog this week with a new comic. In addition to declaring Australia a cesspool of idiocy allowed to survive only by some strange gold brick, it reveals new details about the RED versus BLU backstory and the history of the Engineer. But what if you could care less about all that and just want to shoot things? We do know that the Engy will soon be getting a golden wrench, rumors are abound that a new shotgun is in store…and a new machine. The comic makes it sounds as if it will be some kind of invulnerability device, dubbed the Not-Dying Machine. The guys at Valve have the good of making English. What they are not good at, however, is giving a date for the next update.

Oliver 'Waddles' Motok

Special guests Waddles and Twats of Waddletwats return to Lusipurr.com for a reunion. Waddles is shown to be nothing more than an anthropomorphous Eeyore, and Nate does his best to provide a graphical representation of the two special guests at work.