The Lamer Gamer

http://gizmodo.com/5563483/power-a-makes-a-wireless-xbox-360-controller-for-the-ps3

It’s about time.  Someone essentially copied the Xbox 360 controller as an accessory for the PS3.  Finally I don’t have to cripple myself using the god awful PS3 sixaxis.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/174325/netflix_on_playstation_3_the_great_sonymicrosoft_equalizer.html

I really home MS figures out that it’s pointless to keep Netflix limited to Gold Xbox LIVE subscriptions.  Given that you can already stream it for free (with Netflix membership of course) via PlayOn to you 360, and now more importantly simply with your PS3, one would assume the beancounters at MS would cave and put Netflix on the Silver tier.  Sadly, I sort of doubt they will.  I wonder what the reasoning for that will be.  ”We feel Netflix on the 360 is a far better experience, justifying the added cost of a Gold supscription.”  Yeah right…

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/08/the-ps3-slim-is-coming-evidence-builds-for-updated-system.ars

Now this is a pleasant surprise.  Sony has been reasonably quiet lately, for Sony anyway.   New hardware accompanied by a price drop would be sweet before Christmas time.

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/59209

I’m truly shocked that a company like activision could lose upwards of 300 million by selling products for the PS3.  Still if that’s true, I can understand why they’d cut bait.  The royalties thing is really a great racket.  Pay me to let you build something that works with what I make.

Seriously!

Sony’s execs are roughly one step away from casting “Yo Momma” jokes at the Xbox and now the Wii.  In yet another case of diarhea of the mouth one of Sony’s execs again fails to get “it”.  This on the heels of another comment that’s fresh in my mind about how Sony was saddened that Xbox didn’t have enough zip.  Still not as good as when they dissed Halo 3 on Wikipedia.

So Kaz Hirai, Sony’s chairman disses both the Xbox and Wii in virtually the same breath, still failing to pick up on why people are buying more of those systems than his own PS3.  The knock on the Xbox isn’t completely without merit.  I’m sure the PS3 will have a longer shelf life from this point than the Xbox simply because it has more under the hood than the Xbox, so when it comes to the next big media movement, maybe the Xbox won’t be able to keep up.

Trouble is, Kaz is really saying “The PS3 is so technologically superior to the Xbox that people will eventually realize that they need one, oh and F#$% the Wii, they’re not a real competitor since

“they’re a different world and we operate in our world.” – Kaz Hirai

Yeah, Nintendo operates in a different world than Sony, the real one, where they’ve discovered how to print MONEY, wheras Sony, like a pimply, geeky teenager continually laments how nobody “gets them”.  Not only is the Wii the least technologically superior of the 3 systems, but it’s the crazy best sellingest.  WAKE UP!

Anyway, there’s a fun history of the recent trash talk at Technologizer.com

Funny looking Ice Hockey game coming soon for PS3 and Xbox 360.  The visual style resembles the MLB Stickball game released for Live Arcade a little while ago.  In a weird way, this one reminds me of NES Ice Hockey.  That is at least the Gigantism power up does.  

If there is any online/multiplayer it’ll be an easy 800 point pickup.  Gotta check out the demo.

3-on-3 NHL Arcade Interview

Being a bit OCD makes it only that much harder to ignore unlockables within games.  I remember killing myself to gold medal all of the stages in GoldenEye back on the N64, the reward for which escapes me now.  For that however, there was a tangible, if digital, reward that probably added a unique item/map/mode to the game thereby increasing my enjoyment of the game.  

But there’s no such guarantee of a reward with Xbox Achievements or PS3 Trophies. GamerScore and Gamer Level are much more bragging rights systems than rewards systems, and that’s fine, but their public and required existence creates some annoyances.  The Xbox 360 had them from the get go, and the PS3 has recently required them for all new games, so the experience on each system will largely be the same for both.   Goals, to use a neutral word, being required, inevitably leads to games with really poorly thought out implementations and on top of that it leads to GamerScore or Gamer Level whoring.  

Somewhere out there, someone bought or rented Avatar: TLA for the 360 simply because they saw this video.  And that is one of the prime examples of game studios clearly not giving a crap about adding that sort of thing, and punting when it came time to do it.  It doesn’t affect me that someone does that, but plenty of the hardcore whores look upon it akin to cheating, just read forums at achieve360points.com and xbox360achievements.com.  I tend to lurk both of those as I’m obsessed with finishing the titles that I pick up, and sometimes the achievements are based on really abnormal things.  

So fine, someone got an extra 1000 GamerScore from Avatar and that’s an ill gotten gain.  Unless you were specifically competing with that person in terms of accomplishment bragging rights, you don’t care, or maybe you do since you can now laugh at them for playing Avatar.  But there is a much more insidious side of poorly thought out goals. Those mixed with online play.  If you’ve played Halo 3, there was some jackass who spent the entire match driving around the map on a Mongoose, trying to splatter someone.  There’s at least a 50/50 shot that guy was just doing it for an achievement.  I know, because I was that guy.  That guy ruins games.  He doesn’t contribute, throws off the balance, and worse probably gives up a bunch of points to the other team because he’s not even looking out for himself.  

Developers really need to be mindful of how these affect play, or worse discourage play as above.  When designing a a game, you can look at adding goals in one of two legitimate ways.  The first, you’ve actually achieved something, e.g. performed an task that doesn’t have a likely avenue for cheating, ala Mile High Club in COD4.  Completing a game on a ridiculous difficulty setting work too.  The second way is more about steering gameplay, e.g. “X” kills with “X” weapon, or take route 1, take route 2.  Many games fall into the 2nd.  

I understand why designers use the 2nd, sometimes it helps to encourage the user to try something they wouldn’t have done normally.  Gears of War 2 did that with the melee 30 tickers achievement, had I never seen that it wouldn’t have occured t try.  Gears of War had a bunch that were tedious, 100 kills with every weapon in every way.  Mass Effect required a number of kills by weapons, or uses of abilities.  For boostable achievements Gears’ “Seriously” achievement was at least impressive, even if what it says to me is you probably play too much, but good for you.  Maybe Epic kept you playing just a bit longer by making go for 10K kills.  I do not have that one, I’m not that patient.

I think I’m going to have to get together my list of most annoying achievements. The insanely annoying, this could never happen naturally, get 13 friends together to play at 13:00 on Friday the 13th 2013 for 13 minutes achievement.

Okay, so I admit I’ve never come close to finding one that bad, but there are ones that come close…

Cause I don’t.  I’d rather have some decent games.  Something Sony apparently doesn’t feel is a priority.  PS2 had tons of exclusive games that I wished I could get.  Aside from Metal Gear, I don’t feel like I’m missing out.

So now, Sony is making some lame pitch about how the PS3 is clearly worth the extra few hundred dollars over the 360 and the Wii, complete with a table (which I stole).

For serious now.  Who the hell is taken in by this chicanery?  I have both the 360 and the Wii and I payed less than the PS3 cost at the time, and you can do just about the same now.  Or if you’re looking for parity, the 360 Elite sells for $399 at BestBuy and is missing the WiFi and Blu-ray, but has a bigger hard disk (yeah I know you can free upgrade the PS3 HD).  Plus didn’t I hear that Sony figured out how to bring down manufacturing costs by ~35%, are they still losing that much on this console?

I agree somewhat with the complaint that Xbox Live costs $50/year.  But then again, both free services for the Wii and PS3/PSP kinda suck (we’ll see if they can actually do something with Home).

But it isn’t really the price that bothers me.  I’d buy the PS3 with the bonus that I could play some old PS1 games I still have, if I could find one or two really great titles (I’ve seen Resistance and I do like it, but I don’t think that’s enough). And thus, it comes back to games. You have to think that if they had a few solid, exclusive franchises, people would buy the damned thing.  I bought an N64 solely for Ocarina of Time, though I got it early and with GoldenEye.  Same sort of thing for the GameCube, only that was Metroid.  The 360, pretty much for Halo 3.  Sony still has Metal Gear, but lost GTA, and Final Fantasy over the years and you have to believe that hurts them.