By Head881 , 8th July 12:01 am
By now I’m sure most of the interested parties have heard, but for those of you who haven’t; Evil Avatar is reporting via GameDaily.BIZ that Sony is going to be slashing $100 US from the price of the PlayStation 3. Taking the much maligned price from $600 to a somewhat less absurd $500. No, I don’t want to hear about what a great deal it is for a Blu-Ray Player. I don’t care about Blu-Ray or the format war it and HD-DVD have started.
This was going to be an article questioning the readers as to whether or not the price drop would affect their perceptions of the PS3 and whether or not you were willing to run out and buy one when the price did indeed drop. However, Sony can’t buy, steal, or cajole good publicity these days and promptly denied they had such plans.
» Read all of “Course Correction? Maybe“…
By Cyrris , 29th June 1:25 am
Not too long ago, Nvidia released their GeForce 8800 series of graphics cards, and ushered in a new level of pixel pushing performance. As has become the norm, the flagship 8800 GTX offered performance almost double that of it’s predecessor. Just the other week, ATI released their latest high-end Radeon and it too shows impressive performance well ahead of anything they have previously released. Now, I have never been one to spend copious amounts of money on any single piece of computer hardware, so to be honest I am not usually too interested in the exact performance of these pricey monstrosities.
When shopping for a graphics card to get my game on, I take one of two routes. Typically, I will get a high-end model from the previous generation. I bought a GeForce 2 Ti when the GeForce 3 came out, and a GeForce 6800 when the 7800 was released. The second route is to just get a mid-range card from the current generation, such as when I got my Radeon 9600. In each case, the cards were easily capable of handling every game out at the time on reasonably high detail levels, with a bit of longevity assured. So the key issue for me is to see which of those routes to take, and usually it’s not too hard an option. However, after viewing the recently released benchmarks of the latest mid-range cards from Nvidia and ATI, it’s become a lot less simple. That’s because neither company has been bothered to release anything worthwhile.
» Read all of “Mid-range Cop-out“…
By Vermouth , 23rd June 1:49 pm
A little while ago GameTap debuted to a collective sense of “meh”. The game selection was not particularly impressive and $9.99 a month to play a bunch of old games seemed like a steep fee. But as the months went by, they kept adding more and more to the game catalogue. They also introduced a cheap first month for only 99 cents. Earlier this month I decided to take the leap and wow, this is a quality service. The game selection is excellent and the quality of the program is surprisingly nimble. The game library for this service includes three categories of games: regular “real” retail games, retro games and original games.
» Read all of “What’s on Tap?“…
By Cyrris , 4th June 9:28 pm
Frustration in gaming is something which I wrote about quite some time ago, and is still something which I think every game developer needs to be acutely aware of. That is not to say that frustrating games are unpopular - in fact I would say that Counter-Strike has single handedly proved that is not the case. However, I do think that player frustration is something that needs to be dealt with. Consistently frustrating experiences invariably lead to bad attitudes. Road rage would be an extreme example.
Given my past experiences in online browser games, this has been at the forefront of my mind throughout the development process of The Project. Seeing as it will be a game where there are no computer opponents, both the winners and losers are human. The last thing a player wants when they’re on a losing streak is to be plagued by irritating problems which serve only to frustrate, and stop the user from getting on with the game. For a project with such a big focus on community, bad attitudes are something to try and minimize.
» Read all of “Game Development - Frustration“…
By Head881 , 25th May 2:44 pm
Nintendo.
Few words mean so many things to so many people like “Nintendo.” Whether you used to play video games, currently play video games, will play video games, know some one who plays video games, or hate video games, you know the word Nintendo. You probably also have an opinion about it…or them, depending what definition of the word you are using. Despite hemorrhaging market share since the advent of the Nintendo 64, “Nintendo” was always synonymous with “video games,” though in recent years “PlayStation” has been creeping in as the generic term for the hobby.
All that has changed through the one- two-punch Nintendo laid upon the industry. Of course I’m talking about the Nintendo DS and the Nintendo Wii. Both systems were initially derided when they were announced and the former wasn’t even taken seriously in the face of Sony’s PlayStation Portable until the release of Nintendogs. However, now, six months after the launch of the Wii you still have to wait in line to get one and the last time I went shopping for a Nintendo DS Lite, I had to travel between sixteen stores in a densely populated area of America to get one. One might be tempted to ask the question: “why?” Why is it so difficult to get two under-powered game systems that are (arguably) lacking games for serious gamers? The answer is quite simple: My mom wants one of each.
» Read all of “Nintendo’s Gambit“…
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