Jamba

BTW I picked up RAGE for free last night. Might still be that price if you check it out. Liking it so far considering it's on rails and keeping an eye out for ammo and being tempted by stuff all over the place makes for a great experience when balanced with choosing your weapon and reloading time at any given point. Definitely feels more like a light gun game but hey, I'm a big fan of those. HoTD please SEGA?

My cousin and I were discussing this. For several reasons, especially in the handheld space, I personally think that the answer should be yes. Firstly, Nintendo are pricing themselves out of the handheld space at a fantastic rate. 3DS games are too expensive as the value that the customer gets is rarely 8x that (or more) of some of the better iOS games. Think about it from a customer point of view for the 3DS: Buy 3DS (now £120) Buy game (£25-40) Enjoy game Compare with iOS: Buy mobile contract (that you are likely to buy anyway) which we will argue is £75 on top of what people would usually spend on a phone Buy game (FREE-£6) Enjoy game, enjoy all phone features, have on you at all times no questions asked. From a value point of view alone, I think that financially an iOS device wins as a consumer option. I believe that the quality of games will continue to increase and that Nintendo will find itself in a position where it is charging 4x the price for the games alone of similar quality. The business plan for the 3DS makes no damn sense in the current climate even with the price drop. And let's not even get onto mass market sales. Apple have deals going through to distribute in both Russia and China, 2 of the biggest countries in the world. One of the main reasons why Angry Birds and Cut the Rope and so on have made such a huge impact is that they are practically textless and have a global appeal that is easy to understand. I won't argue for their quality but they hit not even mass but a global market. I know my post is likely to be unpopular and I really would like the 3DS to do well but Nintendo has made that very difficult this time around. I think that they should stick to their guns on the home console but handheld... well it doesn't matter what I say does it? Nintendo are completely obstinate and they can't really "pull out" of this generate anyway.

So the issue is with the WiiU then, not this slimlined Wii surely? Nintendo won't even advertise this as a separate product, in exactly the way the Sony cutely removed it's backwards compatibility early on. All it means is that there is technically a different SKU but will be treated the same (possibly with the same price). What you should be reading is that Nintendo want a bigger profit margin.

I'd be interested to see where the price lands. Honestly though, this suggests to me that the Wii U is further away than I had originally thought. Isn't also a bit of a piss take that if sold for £60, then Nintendo would be selling a console for half the price of a handheld

I was just reading about Killer Freaks and had an idea. You're creeping around the streets, it's nice and quiet and you start to hear some rustling and growling. Suddenly on your Umote display a new point of view pops up, showing you in the center of the screen. Hang on? Who's watching me? Oh that's right... it's POV of the monster that's waiting to jump you but you only get a second before he snarls and your little clue gets it's feed cut. How would that be for a suspense builder?

I personally think it is based on what kind of company you work for. I now have friends working at lots of different devs/pubs and I hear different things all over the place. But let's be honest, any project like a game is going to have some kind of crunch or push at the end to get it finished. Even with very good management, you will need to push people to keep up the morale and energy to get it done. But the Bondai situation is a nightmare and I have been involved in projects where the devs have been in crunch for well over 3 months which is unsustainable. My personal feelings on this are that the majority of management within the industry are amazingly poor. There is minimal communication, especially down to the lower echelons which are of course the people who will be picking up the slack for everyone else. This leads to a situation where the people who are being worked the hardest are the ones who are told the least which is obviously completely demoralising. My experience with working for a publisher is that devs can be little bastards. They can be secretive, unhelpful and suspicious to the point where I wonder if they understand that the game doing well is in everyone's interest. For instance, the game I worked on first got started 3-4 months behind schedule. To me that's inexcusable. Most games have a producer within the dev and one at the publisher (or equivalents). Now my experience of working on 8 games or so is that the producers/management within the dev are not serious about keeping the project on track and feel that going off on a creative tangent that shatters the timetable is a valid option. It is more important to keep your team happy and productive than it is to stress them out by trying to insert some bullshit game mode that no one will play. There is the other problem, that projects are often taken underway before important questions can be answered. Such as: Can we get the licence for all of the characters that we need? What territories/languages will it be released in? (If storyline based) Which bits can be cut/added in if we have time? Can our engine do what we need it to? Do we have a member of staff that can actually do the job required to implement our new key game feature? This leads again to poor time management. Oh and lets not forget that there will be a crunch for each milestone (e.g. Alpha complete, Beta complete) because apparently a lot of management forget about those dates at the beginning of a project.

It's pretty obvious that WB turned around to Nolan and said, "We need a teaser to tie in with the Harry Potter release.... You have 3 days".

I'm liking that they will be focusing on the hole that his parents leave in his life. I always liked the way the Ultimate version dealt with that.

Looks like a pilot whale to me. The body profile is very similar and the placement of the occipital cavity look about right. That's also why I don't think it's a killer whale. 99% sure it's a mammal though just by looking at the spine. Oh I just realised this washed up in Canada so it could easily be a Beluga whale.

It's an upsetting game sometime! You think you're on top so much and then the entire game flips over and you're screwed!

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=6678261245&sk=wall&filter=1 I think this is the facebook App.

The poster does look a bit earthquake stricken.... is Cain (sp?) involved in that story arc? EDIT: Sorry Bane!

No it's no surprise at all.... I swear I've told you this story personally Ash :p Chris Nolan is a UCL graduate and likes to use the settings from around WC1 to film his movies. I first knew of Batman Begins as big American police cars were parked around. I looked at the side of one, which read GCPD (I was thinking Georgia County Pol Dept) and when I read more closely I started snapping photos But anyway... does this poster mean that they are going with the Cataclysm story (sorry, my Batman lore is a bit shabby... is that what it's called?)

Go for it! Finally chosen a base (got bored and annoyed and went for the basic one). Now only 2 weeks until we move.... are we nearly there yet

They gone bro... we were in there at 10AM. Went and got the stuff we actually bought and went straight to the checkout after it opened at 11. Went around again, just looking at stuff and by the time we got back to the counter again ALL of the lack tables were gone. And there was a small mountain of them before.

Been on a bit of a shopping spree for the new flat. Got 2 of these. To go with 1 of these. Tried out and really liked this so we decided to get it for the stealth price that is £90. And we tried out one of these puppies which we decided to get in the future with a bedframe which has not been chosen yet. Strangely that's been pretty exciting.

Ash I'd recommend taking anything that you need to do. If you take things that you want to do instead then you always end up not wanting to do any of them. Surely you have a portfolio website that needs designing?

That's registered to a non-commercial user. More likely to be someone who is trying to squeeze money out of Murdoch surely?

Was it Step'n'Roll Dyson? I've always found that falling over all over the place puts me in the mood for love

Right, so I've been thinking. Although the launch window isn't perfect to fit in with the Wii U, I think that solely putting Skyrim on the system would be a major game changer. For one, what I have seen from the game suggests that all of the stats system and inventory would fit perfectly on the Umote. Checking loot or boosting your stats can be a pain as you generally have to trudge through menus for this kind of thing but that second screen could make it hassle free. Plus you could watch out for dragons whilst doing so! Most importantly though, Nintendo has NEVER had a high quality western RPG hit it's system. Granted we have been talking about Mass Effect also but I truly think that having Skyrim on the system, possibly around release and pitched as a definitive version, would send a serious message. It would tell everyone outright that Nintendo can host hardcore games.

Happs to the Josh.

Thanks guys :-) Knew that she was getting her results yesterday and spent a good section of the weekend worrying about it. S'all good now though.

So my Mum has been to in and out of hospital recently as they found that she had a melanoma. Last time that she was in, they had just found out what it was, so took extra tissue away to be sure and also removed one of her lymph nodes to find out if any cancer cells had travelled away from the original site. She got the results back yesterday to say that they have found no sign of migrating cells which means that they are very likely to have got it all. Massive relief as melanoma does not respond to any current treatments. Happy day :-)

I'm pretty sure that all of the multinational companies feel like this though. There is so much of a push and pull between who gets the credit for what happens. For instance, if anyone wants to look at which of the following carefully: Sega of Japan, Sega of America and Sega of Europe. Ask yourself, who is in charge of the profitable franchises? Then ask who do most people perceive as being the heart of the company? It would be very likely that orders come from on high from Japan in Nintendo and I wouldn't be surprised if they get very little explanation as to why they can and can't do things.