Julius

It's still unconfirmed from the looks of things; Victorian premier Daniel Andrews: What a mess. The F1, FIA and the local government just passing the ball along on who is calling the shots. The decision is simple. Call it off.

Yeah, it's crazy. And "eerie" is the perfect way of describing it. My train to work yesterday was dead silent, like we'd just witnessed someone die. I only ever hear one or two people talking in a full carriage. Buses are quiet. People are keeping their distance. And it certainly doesn't make me, or anyone else I've spoken to about it, feel better that the world unfortunately runs on money, and until the government declares the country going into lockdown (which is probably going to be a bit too late), big businesses are going to continue to risk peoples' health. It just feels like an inevitability that someone you know will get coronavirus, and that's a worrying thought, regardless of the death rate.

NBA season suspended. Tom Hanks and his wife have it. World class athletes have it. Monkeys are swarming empty cities in Asia. You really couldn't write this stuff. This year's been a wild ride and we're not even halfway through March. But in great news, China are sending 10,000 pulmonary ventilators, 2 million face masks, 20,000 protective suits, and some of their doctors to Italy after the spread of coronavirus has started to plateau across China. EDIT: They're sending 9 experts, and all of the equipment and supplies are approx. 31 tons.

Yep, 100%. The way I'm dealing with the "it's just the flu" talk is "well, I've never seen the flu spread this quickly or be talked about this much", to at least attempt to get them to open their eyes to how big of an issue this could become. I feel like the media oversaturation and exaggeration of almost all major news stories in the last 5 years in particular has made it difficult for the average person to come to terms with how serious this already is. And it is disgusting. I don't understand how any human being could ever do that, but hey, with over 7 billion people on the planet I suppose that there statistically has to be some of those idiots around Hope you don't mind me asking, but what do you do for work H-o-T? Your talk about x-ray machines has piqued my interest, hope you don't mind me being nosy I'm working in a call centre at the moment for one of the bigger banks in the country, there must be around 1000 people in the building in total and we're located in central Birmingham. They just seem to be far too relaxed about the situation for me to believe that they have any inkling of what's going on out there. And because of how poorly set up my job is, even though it could easily be done from home, we haven't got the systems set up to allow for us to do that. Damn, it's crazy to read but at least I'm glad to hear that they're taking the action necessary at the moment. I'm concerned about that as well. At least in the UK, I feel like shutting down supermarkets and having those businesses focus almost solely on delivery (online, putting out catalogues and having a number for the not-so tech savvy) or something along those lines would be drastic, sure, but for the best - I'd put closing supermarkets down as being as important as closing schools, in all honesty; there are just too many people from too great a distance for it to be safe at this point. Your family is in my prayers, your wife especially for continuing to carry out her job in the face of all of this! Definitely sounds like a crazy time for the three of you, all the best @MindFreak!

Stop. Rubbing. Salt. Into. These. Wounds.

I love the WHO. Over 125,000 cases worldwide across 121 countries, and now it's a pandemic? Some of their statement was ironically self-referential: Yep. Well if the WHO called this a pandemic when it should have been, over a month ago, then I think this would have been maintained much more effectively than it has been. It's gotten too big to prepare for - now we're just reacting and being brought along for the ride. Had a small talk about it in a team meeting at work earlier today. Embarrassing how misinformed some people are on the matter, going "iT's JuSt ThE fLu" and saying that X or Y hasn't been cancelled, so not to worry. I don't get how these people can be so boneheaded: there are literally lives at stake if this is not handled effectively. It's a joke. To sum it up, at work at the moment, listening to my manager: their stance is that if one person on our floor does have coronavirus and tests positive for it, if they're the only one, then everything will go along as normal, and the only people potential in self-quarantine are those sitting within a 2m radius of them on a regular basis. So yeah, I'm sure the NHS is in a great position to test our entire floor for coronavirus. Do they not understand the words "asymptomatic incubation period" at all?! And I did I mention that we hot desk at work? Urgh. It's definitely frustrating. Exponential growth + limited number of hospital beds = way more severely ill and dead people, probably at an exponential rate once the beds are filled. Won't be surprised if most schools in the UK are shut by the end of next week and if the country is effectively on lock down by the end of the month.

It's official.

Man, I got mentioned three weeks ago a couple of times in this thread, sorry for the long wait time on the response! That was the week I started feeling under the weather (a bit better over the last half a week or so, though!), and only just remembered I didn't respond, so yeah, sorry to turn back time. Long story long, had a rough time of it in terms of my physical (and mental - it felt pretty cyclical at a point) health since leaving high school back in 2015. I got pretty ill and stressed out in particular in February 2016, and I recall just constantly watching and listening to videos. I just wanted out of everything that was going on in my life at that time. More and more, as things got worse and worse, I found myself escaping into video games - and the world surrounding them: forums, news, reviews, everything. I'd loved Pokémon growing up (got a lot of stories there, which I hope I bring up again some day!), put thousands of hours into Battlefront II, and have so many memories of video games as a child (many of which I'd love to share here at some point). But I would have never called myself a "gamer"; honestly, still not sure if I could, I feel like I'm just a fan of a lot of people's great work. As a bit of a side note, funnily enough, looking back, I started an unhealthy obsession with film about a year before that, though I think my relatively better health at that time meant most of that obsession was just poured into Star Wars and classic films in particular. Huh. Anyways, I started reading more and more about the Nintendo NX. It would pop up on Neogaf, Reddit, everywhere (though I didn't have accounts anywhere). Started reading about Zelda for NX, watched all of the footage again and again and again, watched and listened to so much of the Gamexplain videos about it and the NX. This was a few weeks before Sun and Moon were announced, and so I was watching a lot of Pokémon related videos at the time as the 20th anniversary drew closer; of course, this meant a lot of checking serebii.net, a website I'd visited since learning about it back in primary school in a Pokémon World magazine! Even have plenty of memories of growing up on the forums. Man, what a time. While doing this all, I, completely by chance (or search algorithms), happened upon this video, featuring a talk with @Serebii: Damn, that's the first time I've watched the video since joining - only just realised that I should be give a belated thanks to @Kaepora_Gaebora! Seriously, because, well, yeah, I got a good feel for the place from the vibes of the video, checked out the forum in the description, and frequented the place for nearly an entire week without signing up before finally taking the plunge. Fast forward four years (holy cow), and here I still am! I love this place. H-o-T, you mentioned Reddit, Era, etc., somewhere in your original post, and I agree: those places, while lively for conversation, just feel a bit too big. I don't have any social media platforms at all, in large part because I felt like I was shouting into an empty echo chamber, and looking back, that was definitely the last thing I needed at that point in my life. The small, tightly knit community here provides a sense of intimacy you just won't find in many other places on the internet these days, and while petty arguments can get out of hand - and I've been around long enough to see some stumble away from this place almost as a result of that - there are great discussions of all sorts going on here. As someone with a lot of friends who just aren't as in touch with the games industry as we are here - as you'd expect from my generation, I do still get a lot of "PC master race", "Xbox is more powerful than PlayStation" comments, but no-one seems to actually care about the games that they're playing - it provides me with a near-perfect environment to use as an outlet for my excitement and discovery of games, new and old - because while I certainly have a history with games, there's just so much that I just didn't experience because of when I was born, or not being as interested at that younger age. Being surrounded by so much gaming knowledge on here has really opened my eyes to video games - I owe a lot of my love for them to this community. Thanks, that was really nice for me to read when I was starting to feel under the weather definitely owe a lot more to this community than I can really express through words read on a screen, I just wish that I could play and share my experiences more than I already do!

Yeah, was reading about this earlier; it's an absolute mess how the majority of countries have handled this situation. Not sure if it mentioned this in the article, but the reason people were leaving in the first place as a way of bypassing the quarantine is because the mass quarantine was planned, and I can't recall if it leaked ahead or, much more likely, just seemed like a possibility, which was pushed over into certainty by the point below. Problem as well was that their PM (I believe it was him, anyways) called for an emergency conference on the day that it started at something like 2 AM - it's the best way to enforce quarantines, sure, but I feel like many would have caught on after reading that similar quarantine measures were put in place in effectively the same way, and at the same time, in China a while back. I'm scared for America, and I'll leave it at that for the moment. I wonder how long it's going to be before we in the UK start closing things down. Our public transport links, whilst a bit unreliable at best, are actually pretty amazing, and a high volume of passengers, a high population density per settlement in most places, and everything being connected as well as it is in this country just seems to be begging to be at the mercy of an outbreak like this. I take a bus, tram, and a train to get to work in Birmingham, and you can bet that the train will always be rammed at the typical 08:00/09:00 starts and 17:00/18:00 finishes; it just seems like a terrible idea for public transport to be ran how it traditionally has been to this point, considering the potential health risks at play.

It's to do with the how many tests they've carried out, as well as being proactive rather than reactionary in their response to the matter. For example, South Korea has tested over 140,000 people, a much larger sample size of tested individuals than many of the other countries relative to the size of their population (around 52 mil.). It is also because in many countries with a higher death rate, their reactionary response means that most patients testing positive are those who already have reason to believe that they have COVID-19 (i.e. they are already showing severe symptoms); in places like South Korea and the UK, where the death rate is much lower, the proactive response means that those with mild (the majority of cases, around 80% at this point) symptoms are also being diagnosed and treated much earlier on. It also means that those with mild symptoms might not even be reporting their having the illness to public health agencies as a result. South Korea in particular have also put in place a lot of travel bans, and even have other, more draconian (and perhaps less appealing, at least to the west) measure in place, such as emergency text alerts for when someone tests positive to warn others who might also be carrying the illness, and where they tracked the illness to. For example: As a result, it's widely believed that a more accurate death rate is nowhere near the world average of 3.4%, but those above the average are China (who had details of the disease, and reason to believe that there would be an outbreak, as early as back in December), the US (who have handled this miserably, with the CDC -i.e. international health board- not taking action and states taking it upon themselves to handle things, such as testing and quarantine), and Italy (who have also handled things terribly). I'm curious to see how the UK responds, as I imagine that we're going to see a spike of cases over the weekend, what with most people being off from work and having more time to be able to get tested.

SXSW has been cancelled, after concerns that it wouldn't be due to the 70,000 or so visitors it would be bringing into Austin. And it definitely didn't sound like the organisers wanted to... ...so, without any confirmed cases in Austin yet, their Mayor flexed his political power to declare an emergency and force through the cancellation of the event. Nice to see that some people in the US are starting to take this as seriously as it should be. This is after it has been reported that the US sits at a death rate of 5.4%, well above the 3.4% global average, though it's worth noting that only 1,895 tests have been carried out so far on US soil, which is likely having a large impact on their figures. Two more cases have been confirmed in Seattle, and further south along the west coast, 21/46 patients on a cruise ship in California have returned positive results. And, in other news, Trump is still an idiot, saying that "[he] would rather [have those aboard the Diamond Princess stay there so that US numbers don't increase] because I like the numbers being where they are. I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault". Nice to know that Pence has company in not being the only idiot in the administration over there. Elsewhere, Wuhan has increased the quarantine period from 14 days to 28 days due to the number of patients testing positive after the quarantine period. And, closer to home for many of us, Germany's number of cases have jumped by 290 up to 640. Most EU countries seem to be starting to go the way of Italy now, which only had 3 confirmed cases just some 15 days ago. And that's been your more serious Saturday morning roundup on the matter; stay safe, folks!

How can you not love the soundtrack to Pokémon Ruby & Sapphire? Moreover, how could you not fall totally in love this medley? Some of those transitions are heavenly! Gives me a real hankering for simpler times. The music in those games were something else. Probably on par with Diamond & Pearl for my favourite core series soundtrack.

Different editions have been detailed by the US PS Blog (still find it funny seeing Andrew Goldfarb's name anywhere but at IGN, but seems like he's doing well at SP!): Digital Deluxe Edition - $69.99 Special Edition - $69.99 Collector's Edition - $169.99 EDIT: Japanese dub sounds great, think I'll be playing with subtitles for a change with this game! EDIT 2: Pretty sweet dynamic theme from pre-ordering.

Was going to tack this onto my post in the Ghost of Tsushima thread, but figured it might be better off here. With the release date for that game being announced as June 26th, I think we can start to get an idea for Sony's PlayStation 5 marketing plans. In terms of first party and marketing/timed exclusivity AAAs over the next few months on PS4, we have (shadow edit...) Nioh 2 at the end of next week, which is being co-published by SIE; Resident Evil 3 at the start of April; Final Fantasy VII Remake one week later; The Last of Us Part II at the end of May; and Ghost of Tsushima at the end of June! With this being the last first party exclusive we know of for the console, and with Avengers in September being the only big marketing exclusive game I think they've got left for PS4 after that (which isn't part of an annual franchise like FIFA or CoD), I think we're going to see the PS5 reveal and marketing kick in around E3 time. That'd potentially be a 5 month period from full reveal to release, in line with the Nintendo Switch launch marketing schedule, which in my opinion worked out really well. That'd be my bet, anyways. It seems almost redundant to have the full reveal of it too long before TLOU2, because you know they want to lean into that game as a PS4 title and have otherworldly sales with a great critical response as a last hurrah before shifting gears to the PS5. With Ghost of Tsushima being a new IP, while I'm sure it will sell amazingly well, I don't think it could potentially take eyes away from a PS5 reveal as much as TLOU2 and it's marketing potentially could.

Story trailer and release date shadow drop! Coming June 26th. Much earlier than I was expecting, had been thinking this could be an August release.

100%. Could also see everyone just following a Direct-style, straight-to-video format that week in place of their conferences, which can be streamed live as an alternative to allow everyone to stay at home, which is ultimately the safest way to contain this. This would be in line with how Microsoft and some other vendors seem to be handling GDC. Could also livestream some demos like Treehouse, and maybe even, *gasp*, release some demos during E3! The irony of this all is that the ESA have been in hot water for how they were planning to run this year's event, and now the power is almost completely back in the hands of publishers and developers: no-one is going to blame them for playing it safe and not going to E3 this year, especially if they do still try to share their visions for the next year through other means. Definitely going to be interesting to see how it's all handled. Tangential, but something I think they could have done anyways but might want to try out even more now E3 is on the rocks: as Xbox seem to be planning a grace period for transition between generations from the One/One X to Series X by utilising xCloud, heck, imagine if they turned around and released demos during E3 which allowed people to practically try out next-gen with a public trial of xCloud? World Premiere. They show us the Halo trailer. Power Your Dreams... ...now. Play the future with xCloud today. Demo available now. Unrelated to E3 but along similar lines, seeing as we don't have much of a serious topic talking about the coronavirus around, I'll just put it here: I imagine that we're going to see similar announcements for other international events in the coming weeks, the biggest of which obviously being the Euro's and Olympics taking place this summer. I don't think there's any excuse to not delay the Euro's considering this year's format invites more travel across the continent than ever before, with games being played all over the place, but I am a little bit concerned that Japan and the IOC will view the Olympics as too large an investment to delay/cancel, considering how many contracts are typically lined up for alternative venue uses after the completion of the Olympics. Cancelling/delaying contracts and allowing the new stadiums and venues to sit around for a year just isn't something I see them allowing.

Just let me be optimistic about people having other people's best interests at heart!

So, I'm thankfully starting to feel a little bit better. While I was really ill (last week in particular), I watched a lot of videos about the series as a whole, listened to some podcast thoughts and watched some analysis videos for New Horizons. Safe to say that I'm thoroughly hyped for my first AC game. Also: Time to start brainstorming...

I know

No Time To Die has been delayed from April to November (12th in the UK, and 25th in the US). Kudos to those who agreed to the move, especially after tickets had already gone on sale in some places. For anyone wondering, some Bond fan clubs sent an open letter requesting a delay few days back, as the coronavirus outbreak's number of cases is currently projected to peak at the end of March/start of April (the original timeframe for premiere and general release). Peoples' health should always come before financial gain. Sure, the audience might have been reduced as a result of the outbreak at that time, but even if it's a move which serves both them and the audience, that's still a win in my books. Now, if only we would see some governments in the West take some actions a bit more seriously in line with this to help prevent the continuing spread of COVID-19, then that would be great.

New publishing project: This is just phase one. Got to imagine if it does well enough they have some ideas cooking for a film or two and/or some games. Also nice to see that they have an ending which they're working towards from the get-go.

Ill for the third time this year already, and the second time I've been too exhausted to go into work, so I'm not having a great time in 2020 so far had a lot of illnesses to deal with in the last three or four years or so, and I'm sick and tired of always being sick and tired. A lot of it seems connected, but I've only had blood work done once in those years (mainly for the purpose of seeing if I was diabetic) and had a horrible time at the ENT I was referred to a couple of years ago, so it doesn't feel like as much investigating has been done as perhaps could have been to figure out what's going on; to give you a quick idea of my ENT treatment: I was advised that(/threatened with) I needed surgery on the walls of my nose or take some nasal spray which historically hasn't worked at all for me, and the only testing done that day was a hearing test before being told I had a chronic condition which nothing can be done about. Not a sleight at my doctors, though I'm not too happy with that ENT, but I really just want to get to the bottom of this. Have an urgent appointment with my GP for later today, and I've got Bupa cover through work now, so to speed things up I might need to try to see a specialist through them, but yeah. I eat healthy, drink plenty of water everyday, and the only reason I don't exercise more than I do now is because constantly getting ill keeps getting in the way of making it a habit. When I've exercised lately it's been a case of not feeling tired but rejuvenated like I used to, but just completely exhausted. I love exercise. I hate whatever this is. Really just want this sorted. It's getting in the way of me trying to do much of anything with my life, which is even more annoying now that I think I know what I want to do with it. I'm only a couple of months into being 21 years old, for goodness sake! I don't drink, I don't smoke, I eat well, etc. I should otherwise be pretty healthy. The whole thing kind of sucks. So, I'm going to take a short break from this place while this is going on, and hopefully I can come back with some good news. Because I can barely focus enough to write at the moment, my Gaming Diary entry for February will be on hold for the time being, but it will definitely be going up when I return, because I played some great games this month for which I have plenty to talk about! I'll hopefully be back sooner rather than later, but until then, hope everyone here stays happy and healthy

Aren't most tech companies with production in China undergoing massive issues at the moment? Apple, Nintendo, PlayStation...I very much doubt that Microsoft's production schedule and plans aren't under some kind of strain at the moment, too. Seeing a lot of talk about PlayStation being in a bad marketing position seeing as we still haven't had that widely speculated upon February reveal for the PS5, but honestly, I'm not sure what all of that fuss is about at the moment either. I think they could be taking a note out of Nintendo's book with regards to their marketing, seeing as the Switch went 4.5 months from official reveal to release, and I think that worked out great for them. Heck, wasn't the Switch Presentation in early January 2017? I'm not worried yet. If we don't have anything by the end of June after a supposed Microsoft blowout at E3, then I think we've got reason to worry. Also, yeah, the Series X will be dead on arrival at that price band. There's no way that Microsoft pulls something like that after the PS3, even if they have were to have a higher (£750? I think £600, at a real push) and lower (One X/£400) tier of console available from the off. More than ever they have a reason to sell their consoles at a loss, and for all of the great work they're doing I feel like that would be shooting themselves in the foot. The Switch has shown how important nailing that price from the start is: there hasn't been a price reduction on the base model in the nearly 3 years since launch, and you know production is only getting cheaper as they streamline their production and parts have become cheaper as production has ramped up. Heck, for everything PlayStation has over Xbox from the perspective of a casual gamer, I think anything more than £500 at launch for the PS5 is really pushing it. I just can't see Xbox pushing their luck and having it all blow up in their face again, and they know how great PlayStation are at reacting. It could go something like this: Xbox at E3 blowout: £699.99. PlayStation in a second long video released hours after, before even revealing the damn thing: £499.99. And you know who would instantly win the start of next gen if that were to happen. If nothing else, I think that's what PlayStation are doing: waiting to react. That's just their MO.

Yeah, I think that's been floating around for a while, and I agree it does seem like a good time (would be a great change of pace after something like TLOU2, I imagine). Do wish that more JRPGs got mid-summer releases in late June up until early August though, just makes more sense to me from a time investment perspective for many - summer holidays for those in education, parents will probably take some time off over the summer, etc. - and it's typically a pretty quiet time as far as gaming goes.