Jamba

Soooo.... I got this for my birthday and I'm exceptionally pleased so far. Really nice to hear the Japanese voice acting and the written script is characterful and genuinely funny at times. Was quite surprised to find that the characters aren't all completely brain-dead and react to the kind of things that you notice, which most games would just glaze over. Hoping the different progression paths are going to give it some replay value. Trying to just burn through it at the moment to find out the story and go back for some serious challenge. Have just met G-OLM on floor B and getting excited to see if anyone's going to die in round 2 of the AB Games! Judging by the intro, I would say the probability is high.... One thing I concluded in the first round is that everyone should just hit Ally every time. That way, no one would every feel cornered to need to hit betray, everyone would hit 9 points at the same time and ta-dah everyone could walk out... But I'm sure the wabbit isn't going to make it that simple, IS HE.

So it's ok to use the "Thanks" system sarcastically right?

Yeah apart from the fact that we know that's not the case with Nintendo as they make a slim loss on the Wii U.

You say this, yet the Wii U has very little interest on the market and the people that control the money in the industry actually ignore that Nintendo exist most of the time. That's not the internet, that the reality of the market. Nintendo are heavily failing at communicating why people should buy their console and I don't think that the lineup they showed near E3 is going to change that. It may be good enough for people that already own the system but it's not going to win over any people waiting for the other nex-gen consoles or many people that have dropped the cash already. Nintendo need to wake up to the fact that unless they make the Wii U as exciting in terms of new experiences (and also communicate that fact) as the Wii then a very large group of potential customers are going to ignore it for the technically superior products. Why? Because they know that they have less limitations in terms of which of the games they want to play are going to turn up on that console. And let's not forget the downward spiral of low unit sales => dwindling 3rd party interest => low unit sales. Of course, all of these points could be totally moot if Nintendo is only interested in making a machine whose sole real KSP is being where you play Nintendo games. Forget the "new play styles" and the Miiverse stuff. From a certain perspective, Nintendo force customers to buy their machines to play their nostalgic franchises as you can't get them anywhere else.

New Batman TV series... oh dear. Nearly posted this in the bad stuff thread! http://kotaku.com/here-s-your-first-in-depth-look-at-the-new-batman-tv-sh-514365538

At the moment I'm still pretty happy playing Transformed. I enjoyed it far more than MK7 but hey maybe I just prefer the big screen This is very much a "woud like to try before buy" for me at the moment.

They were meant to be getting money from the Canadian Government but it never got transferred because Dyack did not complete the process properly. Whether that was his fault or whether the last criteria of the system are completely unrealistic are yet to be seen. Think there was a GI.biz article about this somewhere. EDIT: Gottit! http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-03-30-silicon-knights-confused-by-canadian-government-withholding-funding

I know a lot of you are happy about the conference but I think I can put my disappointment down to franchise fatigue. I don't want my gaming for the Wii U to be rehashes of gameplay from the GameCube era and as quirky as W101 seems, I don't want to drop £40 on it. Nothing i've seen or heard makes me think that any of the staples are going to be different enough for me to warrant buying those. I don't feel like Nintendo are anything but miles behind in terms of services either which is what makes me look elsewhere. They have so much to catch up on and at the moment they are moving at a snail's pace.

Been having major trouble streaming anything from the hotel in Tokyo but sounds like it wad a waste of time. What the fuck is going on honestly? How long can Nintendo take over making the fucking stuff again and taking 3 years to do it? It's not the fact that there's no new ip, it's the fact that they're spending time making 5 times recycled games that nobody has much interest in anymore. Frankly with a showing as it's sounds, it's like they don't even want to be in the industry anymore.

Don't you get my hopes up like that dammit!

I'm in a similar situation to Murr, just not with the mortgage yet ;-) [Wedding next Saturday btw!] bluey and I feel similarly, like there are a lot of things that we want to do before we have kids that we haven't had the chance to do yet. Which includes learning how to feel happier in ourselves and simply having enough life experience to pass on. Neither of us feel ready but then everyone that I've met who has kids says that you never will do and actually the growing up that you do in the process is the important bit. On a COMPLETELY different note, I thought I should tell you about my cousin. She got married about 6 years ago and her mum dies of cancer shortly after which was shattering. The two of them started working for a christian charity and effectively became missionaries shortly afterwards, with all of their income being from people in their community that sponsor them. Which is FINE. Until they had kids... Now personally, I think it's a bit morally grey to bring up your kids on money that is being donated to a charitable cause. I think it's a misuse of that money and I genuinely feel that on some level they have trapped people into being ok with it as to withdraw support would be very unchristian. This was made much worse by her getting pregnant again straight after their first child. I thought that was taking the piss quite badly (especially as that meant only 1 of them was doing the actual work now) and supporting not 1 but 2 kids on other people's money. Roll on 3 years later, my Mum tells me that my cousin is going into hospital for some major surgery and that she really needed our support. Turns out that she had inherited an extremely dangerous precursor gene from her mother and given the family history she had almost 100% chance of having one of the most aggressive types of breast cancer there is, making it even worse as it killed her mother in a long drawn out way. She was going in to have a double mastectomy, which is one of the most aggressive operations that is performed on anyone, followed by reconstructive surgery. She was absolutely amazing and thought about the kids the entire time and now has a healthy life expectancy. Turns out this was the reason that she had had kids in cannon as she was working on borrowed time in a massive way. It completely changed my perspective on the situation and their choices. They are some of the best parents that I know and the kids are fantastic. Still don't like the way they are using other people's money but hey... very happy for them all now :-)

I'd be good with this. Transformed kicks ass and I've had a lot more fun with that then I did MK7.

When was the last good Star Wars game? Rogue Squadron II?

Totally agree. My finger in the air of what people want is that most are happy with their PS3 / 360 and that if a game could be made for the platform that they already own then they'd prefer it. Nobody is going to want to fork out £400-500 for a new system at the moment. I'll be looking out for the companies going down the pan like they did at the beginning of this generation because they have ridiculous expectations of their games' sales and have to sell 5m units to break even.

See my post above about money and print runs.

It's ok mate. Did put it in totally on purpose to piss in your salad.

Well done chap, especially considering the circumstances. I remember people dropping hints, really REALLY unsubtle ones that genuinely put me off asking. I actually found it pretty offensive at the time. Sounds like a lovely experience and glad that it was romantic... you know... like not hidden in a toasted cheese sammitch or something.

Actually going to be on my honeymoon in Japan... probably would end up getting a divorce if I did it anyway!

Will be interesting to see what kind of price point this drop at and how it performs as I think this is a bit of a first. From what I know about the production costs surrounding the print runs of these cartridges though, I think this is a fantastic idea that this is going digital. The initial print runs for any game on the DS/3DS is very expensive and doesn't lend itself to a scaleable sales model. So if a game does really well or really badly then there's usually little anyone can do. This is why Castlevania games were always pretty rare, as was Ace Attorney because there was never quite enough interest to warrant another print, which limited exposure/publicity. By being digital, the sales can be relatively ever green and will sell as much or as little as necessary. It will also allow interest to bubble by word of mouth, which games like this and Ghost Trick needed to do.

There were animation problems all over that video.

Witness does look really nice, reminded me of Myst a lot. However I'm off to bed now... I think the rest of the show is likely to be trumpet blowing anyway.

Glad to see it's not easy to touch a nerve with you. I'll agree that Quantic Dream and Naughty Dog are excellent developers but team Ico have nothing to show after an entire generation. ThatGameCompany are also no longer tied to Sony. I won't go into the quality of particular 1st party franchises apart from to say that some of them aren't as strong as they used to be. As for GTA, that will go wherever the money is as Rockstar have always wanted it to be a blockbuster and is very much in the realms of a multiplatform series now. Kojima productions is one of the only big 3rd party franchises that stays loyal to the platform, which I expect to change once the numbers stack up. All of this is irrelevant anyway as the main point of argument still remains: Sony are still financially pretty fucked.

I could disagree with you more, if that would help.

Not sure if you're trying to misunderstand my point on purpose? I meant that I don't have much time for Crytek's philosophy towards games aside from them being a necessary evil as an engine developer. But games are not just graphics and Crysis 3 failed at being a game.

Back to the discussion at hand. For me the most likely culprit to go would be Sony. Their financial position is and has been terrible for a long time and developing a whole new system seems like a difficult stretch. The problem for Sony is that they still don't have enough strong 1st party content. Sure they have some great 3rd party support... which has mostly walked away and I've loved some of the indie work on PS3 but it's not going to keep a system afloat like say Nintendo's content.