As if you don't waste enough of your time in a gamer's haze, here's Kotaku: a gamer's guide that goes beyond the press release. Gossip, cheats, criticism, design, nostalgia, prediction. Don't get a life just yet.
- Tip us: tips@kotaku.com
- Editor:
Brian D. Crecente | Email | AIM - Associate Editor, Japan:
Brian Ashcraft | Email | AIM - Associate Editor, West Coast:
Michael McWhertor | Email | AIM - Associate Editor, East Coast:
Michael Fahey | Email | AIM - Associate Editor, Oceania:
Luke Plunkett| Email | AIM - Associate Editor, Weekends:
Flynn De Marco | Email | AIM
Sega Threatens YTMND With Legal Action
Who's the man now dog? Not Sega of Europe, as they've issued a threat to the proprietors of YTMND.com demanding that they cease and desist the display of one marginally NSFW posting on their site. If you're not familiar with YTMND, you're lame. I mean... the site generally consists of a tiled background image, usually humorous, with layered text on top, often accompanied by a looping soundtrack.YTMND is dying. Post your memories here.
Castlevania Breaks XBLA 50 MB Limit
After reading a good deal of discussion on the subject of the size of the Xbox Live Arcade version of Castlevania Symphony of the Night, I decided to check out the XBLA kiosk at CES to see just how big that file would be. As expected the download took up 97 MB worth of disk space, meaning that the game won't be available to core pack users equipped with a 64 MB memory unit.The premium console is, from a cosmetic standpoint, terrible. That "chrome" tray looks like ass. I waited until I was able to find a deal on a core (and a discount on accessories) that would offset the costs of having to buy the hard drive/HD cord/wireless controller/headset seperately. Bang - console that doesn't look like it's from Playskool's new "bling bling" line, with all the benefits of the higher cost model.
More on topic - the memory card has to be right around the corner, I doubt they'd release this with no way for non hard-drive core owners to play it.
Msoft: We Dominated December
The thing about numbers is that there are tons of ways to look at them. Take for instance The NPD Group's official numbers for video game console sales in the U.S. You could say that Microsoft is winning, you could say Nintendo is winning, or you could say Sony is winning.Ummm, yeah you outsold them cause a company can only make so many consoles in 2 months.
Ha! Only a "blind" loyalist like you would come up with some horseshit like that. Yeah, Nintendo said "OK! It's launch day, midnight, let's START MANUFACTURING CONSOLES!"
Guitar Hero 360 Achievements
You know, now that Guitar Hero II is coming to the Xbox 360 it's going to be that much harder to lie about how good you are at the title, thanks to the Achievements system. I'll go ahead and fess up right now. I suck on ice. I have large snausage-like fingers that don't lend themselves well to precision guitar movement, so if you see me with the "Start a Real Band Already Award" on Xbox live (Earn five stars on all songs in the Expert tour) I've either cheated horribly or kidnapped Edward Van...Start a Real Band Already - Earn five stars on all songs in the Expert tour
I HATE those f'ing "Smash TV" style achievements that require you to devote months/years of your life to one game just to get it. I'm all for challenging stuff, that's why they are "achievements." But even "finish all songs on expert" would have been more than enough for the most difficult achievement in the game. I'd be more disturbed than impressed if I saw someone with that. And what the hell is up with the point value? THIRTY points? I got that much for finishing a level of GRAW on default difficulty. That should be worth like 500 points, with the other 500 doled out among the other achievements.
Sony Fires Back at Microsoft
Sony is not taking Microsoft's sass talk lying down. In an interview with GamePro SCEA's head flak Dave Karraker responded to Peter Moore calling the Playstation network a disaster and inplying the company lacks the "DNA" or talent to launch a good online service. "I would argue that consumers worldwide, to the tune of over 200 million PlayStations, PS2s, PSPs and PS3s, have decided whether or not Sony has the DNA to deliver hardware, software and services to suit this industry.DefiantGSR: "People use microsoft's coined term "wii60" and don't even realize it."
Microsoft did NOT come up with that term. God damn it's annoying that people think Microsoft was seriously trying to "align themselves with Nintendo" to take on Sony. Just because Peter Moore didn't take a dump on the Wii in one interview, the morons blow it out of proportion. Microsoft doesn't want to help Nintendo succeed. What the hell is wrong with you people?
Carmack Prefers 360 to PS3
PS3 or Xbox 360? Quickly, which do you like? John Carmack (creator of Doom, Quake ) has been "pulling" for Microsoft. While he likes the PS3 better than the PS2 and doesn't think the new console is ugly, Carmack just isn't crazy about the PS3 dev tools. He says: But the honest truth is that Microsoft dev tools are so much better than Sony's. We expect to keep in mind the issues of bringing this up on the PlayStation 3... they're not helpful to the developers...Sony feels the need to reinvent the wheel every time. That's not beneficial to developers.
Sharp's AQUOS TVs Just For Gaming
Sharp had its line of "Game Players" televisions on display in the middle of their massive CES booth. Dwarfed by the massive 108" professional display, the pair of 1080p liquid crystal HDTVs were hooked up to PlayStation 3s, idling in attract mode. What exactly makes these built for gaming? I'll leave this one up to the Sharp marketing department, whose carefully worded slides are available after the jump.Oh, and the Sharp 92U line (supposedly) has a response time of 4ms, so it should be faster than this set anyway.
That said, once you hit around 6-8ms, it becomes pretty much unnoticeable, so it may not matter.
I'd hold off on this, since Sharp's most recent line (62U) had horrible banding issues on the vast majority of sets (check out avsforum.com in the LCD section and look for the thread on that model). I'm hoping they got that cleared up for their upcoming lines.
I wouldn't buy this "gamer" set though, since their new about-to-be-released 92U line looks to be quite good. They also include a DVI-I port so theoretically a VGA-to-DVI adapter would work with the 360 to display 1080p, since DVI-I supports both digital AND analog.
Live Camera Support for C&C; 360
Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars could give Xbox 360 fans a bit more live-action cinematic than they've bargained for, as EA announces Xbox Live Vision camera support for multiplayer matches. Now instead of just assuming you lost to a brilliant military thinker and feeling better about yourself, you can actively see that it was a bored 14 year-old who handed you your ass. And speaking off ass...That rules. I wasn't going to get this since I'm not a big fan of this genre, but I may have to now. Hilarious idiocy wins.
Sony VP On Those Stacks Of Consoles
Numbers, numbers, numbers. Stacks of unsold PS3s in America and Japan don't point as high sales as Sony was hoping for (though, we still think they did alright). SCEA's Senior VP of Marketing Peter Dille states: ...what we do pay attention to is that month in, month out, the PlayStation 2 continues to outsell Xbox 360. I think you see the consumers voting with their wallets on the PlayStation brand.Well, the Xbox was cheap too when MS discontinued it. There's obviously something about the PS2 that people still like; Sony did something right there that MS didn't.
MS discontinued the XBox as much due to hardware licensing issues as it did because it wanted to push the 360 and/or because of console sales. All were important factors, but it's not the same situation as the PS2.