Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Im saying WHAT now?
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Game platform makers need to sort their $#!t out..
Here’s a rant based on a conversation between myself and
four friends over the weekend on the somewhat troubled situation the gaming
industry is finding itself in. The current situation is something that a
corporate press release would describe as a "Challenging time" for
console manufacturers in the same sense that a tube with barbed wire down the
middle would be a challenging time for a prison inmate's @$$hole.
Console gaming is going through a strange and slightly traumatic graduation and no one seems o know what it’s going to do with its life afterwards. Maybe get a job and build a future, maybe move back in with its parents, or maybe it’ll just drink a load of mentholated spirits and pass out on a public train. It might be time for a rundown of the candidates now that all three have at the very least made some kind of awkward stammering announcement about its new console. So far it’s been like watching the most retarded game of Texas holdem ever played, where everyone just sat and eyeballed each other for 6 months before someone finally called in the most wheesely non-committal way in the hopes it would make someone else show their hand whereupon the flop cards were revealed to be a joker, a get out of jail free card, and a mages of the vineyard from magic the gathering. Of course the odd man out is Nintendo and keeping with the poker metaphor they were dealt a pair of 2's right at the start and immediately went "ALL IN MOFO'S!" only to realise later that one of the 2's was actually a 4 that had been partially covered by a big fat touch screen controller someone had left on the table *cough**cough*. there’s not much left to be said about the Wii U, suffice to say that everyone is trying to find SOME new innovation to keep themselves alive but Nintendo's innovative idea to have a console with no friggin games doesn’t seem to have payed off as well as they hoped. Maybe it could still come back if it brought out the usual suspects, but even Mario has a shelf life, and recently a critical blow was dealt when someone at EA announced they weren’t making any games for it. Because if they had to bring water to a dying man in the desert then giving some to the one with no arms or legs who refuses to stop eating crisps might be a bit of a waste. They did end up backtracking on that remark though perhaps realizing that before you burn a bridge it might be good to wait and see if the other two bridges aren’t going to spontaneously combust.
Which brings us to the first of the two enigmatic candidates, the PS4? Announced earlier this year although announced might be too charitable a word because they didn’t reveal the console or the price or the release date or much of anything really....besides the new controller! Which they were super excited about because they came up with the idea of a dedicated "annoy all your friends" button. As I said everyone is trying to find a way to innovate because previously you'd sell a console by showing that it lets you play bigger and better games, and that’s not going to work this time because the increasingly inefficient ways AAA games are made is only making them blander and blingier. Next Gen can’t even bring itself to pretend that if all you want to do is play the best games available all you have to do is stick with current gen or BUY A PC..... Especially since everyone is shunning backwards compatibility like it’s a physically abled person trying to enter the Special Olympics. So instead Sony is throwing its eggs into the social media basket with the ability to instantly show your friends what you’re doing and even let them take control. So the PS4 is for people who not only want the latest games but also don’t particularly want to PLAY them. This is like a hair dresser buying up all the advertising space in a cancer ward. Surely if someone sits down and turns on their PS4 it’s because they want to PLAY something. Not watch someone ELSE play something. If I was trying to enjoy a game and some ass kept pestering me to watch them play something else and maybe fight the final boss for them because they couldn’t be bothered, I tell them to become intimate with a cricket bat. Any chance of getting a dedicated boot-to-the-head button Sony? It also has the ability to record video footage and upload it to YouTube but little to the degree in which you can edit it, because this will be the difference between Sony enabling a culture of criticism, and Sony just trying to get everyone to do their marketing for them. And I think we all know which one Sony would prefer, being a console manufacturer, which in the current climate is an entity with the demeanour of a cornered wolf and the financial stability of a tin miner in a super nova. If it came down to a snarling fight for pack dominance id probably bet on Microsoft because it seems to be the slightly more desperate of the two.
The Xbox One then! Which gratifyingly was already called the "Xbone" by the end of announcement day. An announcement day that seemed a bit premature because no one at Microsoft seemed to have a clue what this big black ring binder of a console actually did. First it was going to be "Always on", then it wasn’t, then it has to call home once a day or else Microsoft won’t pay the randsome, first pre-owned games wouldn’t work, then they would, but only if you payed a fee, then you can only INSTALL them if you pay a fee..... Why is the seller of an alleged entertainment system being as evasive Julius Malema during an audit? What we DO know is that you can’t use it without internet, can’t play 360 games, can’t use 360 controllers, can’t use an SD tv,cant turn the gorram 'connect off so it will permanently stare at you from the corner of the room occasionally licking its pencil and taking notes on your preferred wank material. This is sounding more like a CANTsole....eh? eh?! Oh never mind. Oh but the connect needs to be on so it knows when you’re barking orders at it? But I want to be comfortable talking about in front of it. I might unguardedly say something like "I hope Xbox does not nuke china" and then who knows what might happen.
You know, video games didn’t always need marketing events that resemble political rallies because used to sell themselves. "Here’s a thing that lets you play fun games!" it would say. "Which games?" we would ask "These ones!" they would reply "Ooooh they DO look fun!" we would agree. Now the same statement has so many asterisks next to it, it looks like a gorram star map. The only reason a console would need a spin doctor is if it benefitted the corporation selling it allot more than the poor saps buying it..... or anyone who just wants to play fun games... At this point I personally would only buy a next-gen console if it had an exclusive game I really...REALLY wanted to play. But it would not be a healthy consumer product relationship, it would not be a console providing access to some thing I want. It would be a console holding something I want hostage until I give it my wifi password and credit card details. So to summarise this buyer’s guide to next gen consoles.....DONT....
Console gaming is going through a strange and slightly traumatic graduation and no one seems o know what it’s going to do with its life afterwards. Maybe get a job and build a future, maybe move back in with its parents, or maybe it’ll just drink a load of mentholated spirits and pass out on a public train. It might be time for a rundown of the candidates now that all three have at the very least made some kind of awkward stammering announcement about its new console. So far it’s been like watching the most retarded game of Texas holdem ever played, where everyone just sat and eyeballed each other for 6 months before someone finally called in the most wheesely non-committal way in the hopes it would make someone else show their hand whereupon the flop cards were revealed to be a joker, a get out of jail free card, and a mages of the vineyard from magic the gathering. Of course the odd man out is Nintendo and keeping with the poker metaphor they were dealt a pair of 2's right at the start and immediately went "ALL IN MOFO'S!" only to realise later that one of the 2's was actually a 4 that had been partially covered by a big fat touch screen controller someone had left on the table *cough**cough*. there’s not much left to be said about the Wii U, suffice to say that everyone is trying to find SOME new innovation to keep themselves alive but Nintendo's innovative idea to have a console with no friggin games doesn’t seem to have payed off as well as they hoped. Maybe it could still come back if it brought out the usual suspects, but even Mario has a shelf life, and recently a critical blow was dealt when someone at EA announced they weren’t making any games for it. Because if they had to bring water to a dying man in the desert then giving some to the one with no arms or legs who refuses to stop eating crisps might be a bit of a waste. They did end up backtracking on that remark though perhaps realizing that before you burn a bridge it might be good to wait and see if the other two bridges aren’t going to spontaneously combust.
Which brings us to the first of the two enigmatic candidates, the PS4? Announced earlier this year although announced might be too charitable a word because they didn’t reveal the console or the price or the release date or much of anything really....besides the new controller! Which they were super excited about because they came up with the idea of a dedicated "annoy all your friends" button. As I said everyone is trying to find a way to innovate because previously you'd sell a console by showing that it lets you play bigger and better games, and that’s not going to work this time because the increasingly inefficient ways AAA games are made is only making them blander and blingier. Next Gen can’t even bring itself to pretend that if all you want to do is play the best games available all you have to do is stick with current gen or BUY A PC..... Especially since everyone is shunning backwards compatibility like it’s a physically abled person trying to enter the Special Olympics. So instead Sony is throwing its eggs into the social media basket with the ability to instantly show your friends what you’re doing and even let them take control. So the PS4 is for people who not only want the latest games but also don’t particularly want to PLAY them. This is like a hair dresser buying up all the advertising space in a cancer ward. Surely if someone sits down and turns on their PS4 it’s because they want to PLAY something. Not watch someone ELSE play something. If I was trying to enjoy a game and some ass kept pestering me to watch them play something else and maybe fight the final boss for them because they couldn’t be bothered, I tell them to become intimate with a cricket bat. Any chance of getting a dedicated boot-to-the-head button Sony? It also has the ability to record video footage and upload it to YouTube but little to the degree in which you can edit it, because this will be the difference between Sony enabling a culture of criticism, and Sony just trying to get everyone to do their marketing for them. And I think we all know which one Sony would prefer, being a console manufacturer, which in the current climate is an entity with the demeanour of a cornered wolf and the financial stability of a tin miner in a super nova. If it came down to a snarling fight for pack dominance id probably bet on Microsoft because it seems to be the slightly more desperate of the two.
The Xbox One then! Which gratifyingly was already called the "Xbone" by the end of announcement day. An announcement day that seemed a bit premature because no one at Microsoft seemed to have a clue what this big black ring binder of a console actually did. First it was going to be "Always on", then it wasn’t, then it has to call home once a day or else Microsoft won’t pay the randsome, first pre-owned games wouldn’t work, then they would, but only if you payed a fee, then you can only INSTALL them if you pay a fee..... Why is the seller of an alleged entertainment system being as evasive Julius Malema during an audit? What we DO know is that you can’t use it without internet, can’t play 360 games, can’t use 360 controllers, can’t use an SD tv,cant turn the gorram 'connect off so it will permanently stare at you from the corner of the room occasionally licking its pencil and taking notes on your preferred wank material. This is sounding more like a CANTsole....eh? eh?! Oh never mind. Oh but the connect needs to be on so it knows when you’re barking orders at it? But I want to be comfortable talking about in front of it. I might unguardedly say something like "I hope Xbox does not nuke china" and then who knows what might happen.
You know, video games didn’t always need marketing events that resemble political rallies because used to sell themselves. "Here’s a thing that lets you play fun games!" it would say. "Which games?" we would ask "These ones!" they would reply "Ooooh they DO look fun!" we would agree. Now the same statement has so many asterisks next to it, it looks like a gorram star map. The only reason a console would need a spin doctor is if it benefitted the corporation selling it allot more than the poor saps buying it..... or anyone who just wants to play fun games... At this point I personally would only buy a next-gen console if it had an exclusive game I really...REALLY wanted to play. But it would not be a healthy consumer product relationship, it would not be a console providing access to some thing I want. It would be a console holding something I want hostage until I give it my wifi password and credit card details. So to summarise this buyer’s guide to next gen consoles.....DONT....
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