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CNet explains why PS3 is losing, thinks Wii Sports is online

By Stephen Munn | January 2, 2009

In a recent article on CNet’s “Negative Approach” blog called “Why the Wii and Xbox are killing Sony’s PS3″ by Dave Rosenberg, there are a number of interesting points made, but few of them are new. This is not special or important at all, but what is amusing is the list of factual errors in the article, the most glaring of which is not the unwillingness to call the Xbox 360 by its own name rather than that of its predecessor, follows.

Minimal modern touches (i.e. social features)
The Wii makes your goofy little Mii character come alive by connecting consoles online. Xbox Live has a community and marketplace. Playstation Home is compelling but empty, which should even out over time. But, the competition is so far ahead, Sony needed to do something much bigger and better.

Personally, I thought the social stuff was a little stupid until my nephew destroyed me in Wii bowling while playing 3,000 miles away. Now I get it.

No, he still doesn’t get it. Miis have nothing to do with connecting consoles online, and social stuff on Wii is not a little stupid. What’s stupid is that Rosenberg thought that he was playing Wii Sports Bowling online with his nephew, when in fact he was playing with an AI controlled opponent who was using his nephew’s Mii. There is no online play in Wii Sports.

In his favor, I find the argument that games take too long to start on PS3 surprising, as I’ve never heard that complaint before. I do find that some games take a long time to start up, but it’s not something that makes me “curse the machine” as he claims.

Source: CNet

Five years of consumerism is worth 680 coins, Nintendo? Really?

By Stephen Munn | December 31, 2008

Club Nintendo’s not acting up anymore, but I almost wish it was. Now that the dust has settled and the site’s performing acceptably, I can actually click around and figure out where they moved everything to in comparison to where it was on the My Nintendo system. I decided I wanted to see just how much of a discrepancy there is between the games I have registered over the years and the games I’ve been given Club Nintendo Coins for. As is usually the case, I am not pleased.

Despite the dozens of pieces of hardware and software I’ve registered since I signed up for My Nintendo at its launch in 2003, I’m only getting credit for a small handful of Wii and DS titles. Let me be clear that I accept that GBA and Gamecube titles won’t get me anything, but there are a number of first party current generation titles here that I’m not getting a single coin for, and there doesn’t seem to be any pattern to what’s worth points and what’s not. I mean, Metroid Prime Hunters isn’t worth anything, but Super Mario 64 DS is? I’m also not seeing any coins for any of my WiiWare or Virtual Console purchases. These have to be where Nintendo’s made the most money off me.

There are some good and bad coin vs dollar discrepancies here though. Wii Fit is worth 80 coins instead of the standard 50 for Wii games, but even that should be 90 when placed alongside its retail price. Link’s Crossbow Training is worth 50 even though it never sold for more than 25. Still, this doesn’t make up the difference in coins vs. money spent on Nintendo’s products this generation. I’m also a little disappointed that I can’t register games twice, since I have two copies each of Mario Kart DS and Animal Crossing: Wild World.

Check below for the somewhat embarrassing list of games I have registered, then look at the list of games I’ve gotten credit for.

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Games for Windows Live Gets A Standalone Client

By Joe Haygood | December 4, 2008

After a lot of talk by Microsoft, a Games for Windows Live standalone client has been released. The client is available for download here. While this was big news for me initially, it ended up being a downer as you find out that there is almost no functionality in the client at this time.

There is a marketplace, but there is nothing on there, with the exception of some trailers and a demo for Viva Pinata. Also, items like voice chat, messages or even checking your achievements are not in this release. Yep, you can see my gamerscore in this picture, but you cannot look at the games I am playing, or even try to send another person a message.

All this said, it is a starting point for Microsoft, and it does show a renewed commitment to the Games for Windows Live branding. Now lets hope that we don’t have to wait three months for an updated client.

More Granular LittleBigPlanet Moderation System Coming

By Paul Munn | November 11, 2008

If you’ve listened to Aeropodcast 57 with special-great-not-special-short-bus guest Julian “Rabbit” Murdoch you can hear how we all bemoaned Media Molecule’s heavy-handed moderation tactics that have blotted out some pretty fun levels from the online portion of the game. All we could do, really, is hope that somebody put a stop to the wholesale deletion of levels and show some kind of restraint. Yes, copyright needs to be protected, but if anything that even hints at some bit of intellectual property is erased — even if it’s in admiration of the work — people will just stop trying.

Witness Richard Windsor, whose longtime disdain for all things PS3 was all but forgotten once he joyfully started creating levels celebrating our shared experiences, be it about our election a short week ago or about traversing a refridgerator. Of course his anti-Sony attitude reasserted itself when his levels were wiped out and his account blocked from re-posting them (and possibly anything else), and can you blame him? These days he’s talking about getting his ball and going home, threatening to give away his copy of LittleBigPlanet. Take heart, Richard, this story is for you.

Media Molecule is now promising a much better moderation system than the throw-it-all-to-the-lions system currently employed by the copyright cops. Instead of you logging in and finding hours upon hours of hard work and cleverness deleted and blocked from being posted again from your happy hard drive, you will apparently get a message from copyright high command pointing to what bit of your level has tripped the alarm system of the great unsleeping eye of the content police. It’ll give you a chance to clear up the roadblock to your LittleBigFame and get the level posted again for all to enjoy. Of course this is a promise without a release date, but given the uproar over user-posted content I’m hopeful it lands very soon.

From PS3Fanboy.

EVE Online Keeps Expanding: Quantum Rise Then Tech 3

By Paul Munn | November 9, 2008

EVE Online’s been getting more coverage over at Massively in recent months and while I’m not a subscriber I’ve been keeping tabs on things. Aside from CCP’s home country of Iceland basically going bankrupt amidst this global economic maelstrom, CCP’s flagship game has been showing a clear pattern of growth and improvement. The best part of all of this growth is that it’s being provided at no extra charge to their thriving user base. All expansions to EVE Online are granted free to all players of the game.

Just how has EVE Online grown recently? Back in June the addition of faction warfare made a big splash with The Empyrean Age expansion. This week the revamp of industry and many of its ships occurs with Quantum Rise on November 11th. What’s coming next? Another expansion is coming in March 2009 which will apparently knock down of the back wall of the starship showrooms with the implementation of Tech 3 ships. A new Tech level hasn’t appeared since Tech 2 ships showed up in 2004. That doesn’t cover the highly ambitous “Walking In Stations” initiative that will bring 3D avatars to the game and is apparently still a ways off from having a release date.

All of this adds up to a truly evolving and growing game willing to bring every last player along for the ride. I can’t help but think this keeps them competitive in a tighter and tighter MMO market, and as someone who likes the game but hasn’t subscribed yet (and may not until our teensy little world economic problems subside), it definitely makes it more alluring. What do you think?

LittleBigPlanet Day 1: Meltdown

By Paul Munn | October 28, 2008

LittleBigPlanet 2 might have been on the drawing board earlier yesterday, but I’m sure that marker board has been wiped clean and schematics showing big server problems with LittleBigPlanet has been drawn in its place.

Last night I downloaded my preorder costumes and stickers then jumped into LittleBigPlanet to go online and play some levels. I was sure I’d be able to find lots of folks online even this early given that people like me who had preordered the game were able to pick it up on Saturday. I’d spent five or six hours over the weekend jumping joyfully through a few levels of the game offline and hadn’t even opened up the level making tools yet. Just being able to voice chat and make jokes with my brother James while we work together to reach some stuff out of reach to a single sackboy would be great.

What I found was a nearly complete meltdown of the online portion of the game.
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What happens in Maple Story should stay in Maple Story

By Joe Fourhman | October 23, 2008

The lines between real-world relationships and virtual-world relationships grow ever more blurred, as a jilted lover kills her online husband.

The sinister scene went down in Maple Story, of all places, and involves a Japanese couple who, in all likelihood, have never met outside of the online game. The woman logged in one day to find that her Maple husband had ended their Maple marriage… so, knowing his account details, she logged in as his avatar and killed it. When the victim realized what had happened, he went to the police, who locked her up “on suspicion of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data.” If convicted, she could go to prison for five years or a $5,000 fine. Police say that there was no real-world plot, merely the Maple Story murder (or, suicide, technically).

How do you even kill yourself in Maple Story?

Source: Associated Press / Yahoo News

Resistance 2 Gets Impressive Marketing

By Paul Munn | October 23, 2008

What has me excited about Resistance 2, aside from the fact that it dispenses with the irritating use of a colon and subtitle? It features a rich alternate history, tight integration with the story of the first game, more high-tech weaponry to have fun with, and hints that Nathan Hale’s journey down the interstate of interspecies genetic mutation might not be as pretty as its benefits thus far of regeneration and stylish gold eyes. All of this comes courtesy of some impressive advertising on the title along with a little alternate reality game with a bit of star power. Speaking of interstates, folks in Los Angeles have been treated to a building-sized ad for the game featuring its building-sized Leviathan enemy.

The feature set is big, and exhausting all of its options could take you a good long while if you love to wring every bit of value out of your shooters. In addition to the single-player campaign you have 8-player co-op campaigns as well as various other online competitive team based modes. My brother James recently made it into the beta and he said the experience was unreal. One massive fight ended and he saw his PSN ID place in the 40’s on a scoreboard of 60 players in the match. Important note: the beta is hosting 60-man games that seem to be working well enough to actually end safely. That’s up from the 40-man games you could get going in Resistance: Fall of Man. Their network code has chops.

Update: I forgot to mention that the game has split-screen online competitive and co-op play, too. “Now you won’t have to stop leveling up your medic just because your friend is over!” Sweet.

Resistance 2 releases on election day in the US, November 4th, but you’d better go vote first before you pick up this game, you hear me? Anyway, to set the mood, check out the video shown above.

Seen on PS3Fanboy.

Song Screwup Delays LittleBigPlanet One More Time

By Paul Munn | October 17, 2008

I have this thing about songs. I listen to the lyrics when I first hear a song a few times and decide whether or not I like the song partially from the lyrics and partially from the melody. My wife doesn’t get it — she’ll happily enjoy a song that has the most stupid and nonsensical lyrics anyone could ever utter until I point out just how stupid the words are. “Don’t you hear what they’re saying?” That doesn’t mean the songs have to be meaningful, just being playful with language is often enough.

Well I’m guessing someone at Media Molecule was innocently grooving to the music and assuming the foreign language they heard was just peachy when they chose to license a pop song that turns out to have two quotes from the Qu’ran, which offended a listener. Granted these are in Arabic and not English, which seems to make it an honest mistake, but Sony has nonetheless wisely issued a worldwide recall of LittleBigPlanet, which was just a few days shy of landing in everyone’s hot little hands, what with Gamespot’s 9.0 review, IGN’s 9.5 review, and the beta energizing the game’s fans.

Sony’s announced that the game will now be “shipped to retail” during the week of October 27th. I’m guessing we might see it just a day or two shy of Halloween instead of its original October 21st street date, so I’ll stop calling my local game store I reserved it at until then.

I do have to hand it to Sony for behaving very responsibly in the face of this type of criticism, for acting very quickly to perform this recall, and for immediately posting about this finding and the resulting delay on the PlayStation Blog instead of letting rumors get out of hand. These are three unusually nimble and fast things for a very large entertainment company to do intelligently in the face of possibly inflammatory materials in their game. I’m sure Rockstar would agree.

Early LittleBigPlanet Reviews Overwhelmingly Positive

By Paul Munn | October 13, 2008

The beta for LittleBigPlanet is over and it looks like the first reviews are hitting the web. Eurogamer’s 9/10 review and IGN’s 9.5 review (video review is shown here) are both overwhelmingly positive. They also make sure to preface them by mentioning the significant hype behind the game and the hopes Sony has pinned on it by saying yes, the press has been in love with this game for a very long time and yes, their expectations were high but yes, this game has met them and in the case of the editing tools exceeded them. That’s not to say the reviewers and beta players thought it was a perfect 10 in all areas.
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