E3 Thoughts - How the PS3s Fortunes Have Turned

Its interesting looking back at the past year how the fortunes of the PS3 have flip flopped. At last years E3, most people were hailing the PS3 and its proof-of-concept pre-rendered video mock-ups as the greatest thing, many in fact commented that the PS3 demos stole the show and much of the thunder Microsoft was trying to generate with Xbox 360.

This year though the PS3 is looking dead in the water. The system itself is pretty lackluster in regards to its specs, the results that we are finally seeing of the games really isn't as impressive as the smoke and hot air Sony blew up everyone's asses last year, no one gives a shit about blu-ray and lastly the price is astronomically outrageous ($499 to $599 USD on release date depending on your model, $100 to $300 more expensive than Xbox 360, who likely will be even cheaper by November 17th when PS3 comes out).

Things look bleak for Sony, especially when you consider the fact that the Playstation is the only think keeping the overall company afloat (the rest of its divisions lose money). So what are the responses that Sony's leaders have to the industry, media and the gamer's sudden disgust for the PS3?

"we don't want you to think of it in terms of game machines ... For instance ... Is it not nonsense to compare the charge for dinner at the company cafeteria with dinner at a fine restaurant? It's a question of what you can do with that game machine. If you can have an amazing experience, we believe price is not a problem" - Ken Kutaragi

Well Ken, that might be true if we were getting some sort of awesome meal, but we aren't. The food that you are serving up in your "fine restaurant" is of the same quality, or less, than that coming out of the cafeteria, only difference is that we are feeling satisifed and that we got a good deal for our cafeteria food. You can serve crap up on a silver platter, but its still crap irregardless of what you garnish for it or the price tag you give it. Your arguement about the experiance is somewhat relevent... or at least it would be if your system wasn't so dammed expensive and provided the same thing that we get elsewhere.

Time will tell if the PS3 will be the juggernaught that the past PS devices have been, but yours truely isn't going to hold his breathe.

I Created a WoW Monster

My wife hit level 60 last night in World of Warcraft. She's been obsessed about hitting this level for the past week, so much so that much of her time has been spent trying to gain as much XP as possible so that she can be the first on in the group to do it.

Aside from the fact that she was the first one of our group to start to play WoW (which was entirely my fault, I coaxed her into it so she would be more distracted while waiting on me to get off the PC and stop working on games) and as such she should be the first to hit level 60, she also got very competetive this last week with one of our friends, "Puff", in a race to be the first to hit level 60.

So when I came home yesterday she grabbed me, dragged me upstairs an sat me down at my PC (it honestly brought a tear to my eye to see her wanting me to go use the computer, versus trying to get me off of it) and I helped her power through and get the last of the XP she needed. No supper, no drinks, it was work work work... it honestly must have been how some gold farmers feel at their day jobs ;) Through my help and some knowledge of where to get some easy quests in, she beat Puff to level 60 by 5 minutes, and with that my WoW Monster has been created and completed.

Sadly I am still 4.5 levels away from my level 60 eliteness.

E3 Thoughts - Square/Enix Has the Hate on for Microsoft?

Now that the pre-E3 news is starting to trickle out we, as in the general public, get to learn a lot about what fantastic game news or bullshit (depending on the story) we will have to deal with for the next year. One of the things I find rather interesting and obviously marks the topic for this post is Square/Enix and their obvious hatred for Microsoft.

Square/Enix has announced a slew of new games, all for the PS3 or the Wii. Now some of you might argue "well those systems are better" and I will argue that A) In my honest opinion Square/Enix has a big anti-american attitude, B) Sony has way more pull and swagger with how the company operates than it should for its 20% ownership and C) Any company that would ignore a large market like the Xbox360 (or Xbox) and an even larger market such as the PC is friggin insane because if their games are that popular the revunue will continue to roll-in and on even more trucks.

I guess time will tell if Square/Enix has hitched their wagon to the right horse when the PS3 and Wii come out. My own personal guess is that its a bad choice on their part and they will suffer for it with through this generation of consoles. I just hope that people remember this moment when it comes time for Square/Enix to come crawling back and pitch their games to the systems that they have blatently ignored and when they haven't offered second rate products onto.

Minor Updates

Unfortunately there hasn't been much to report/share lately as things have been rather quiet since moving into the new house (no sorry no pictures of the house just yet, still trying to find which box the digital camera was put into). In the meantime though here are a few tidbits that are worth sharing...

New Texture Monk DVDs

Four new Texture Monk DVDs arrived this past week from the UK. This latest batch contains 3 misc DVDs worth of textures and a very nice collection of medieval Europe textures and images. I think now I have something like 20 DVDs from these guys and overall I have been pretty pleased with the results (the sci-fi collection isn't so hot but the rest are pretty good), well worth the yearly investment :)

Palladium Books

If you are a RPG fan, by now you have probably heard that a great independent RPG publisher, Palladium Books, is in a bit of a jam due to one of their employees stealing and apparently embezzeling from the company.

I have made a few posts already (including one on GarageGames) recommending RPG fans head over to the Palladium Books site and help them through this trouble by either purchasing a special lithograph they have created to help get them through some financial troubles, donate some cash via pay-pal and/or buy some books. These guys are probably one of the truest independent RPG guys out there (and not doing D20 stuff), they make great products and all great guys to deal with.

Pixel Shaders

My group within Maxgaming Tech has recently moved onto the Torque Shader Engine now that it is somewhat feature complete and usable enough to make a game out of it. The past few weeks have been spent by Markus porting all of our code over to TSE while I become familiar again with the way the Shader Material System works and get a bunch of art ready.