The Future is a Little Closer

Thanks to Nintendo and Lionsgate in their plans to offer TV shows and movies over the internets. Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PS3 already offer such services, but the Nintendo's much greater influence on the world could really give this market the puch it needs to really get to the public. The downside of the service on the Wii is its lack of a HDD and the fact that it isn't Hi-def. Despite these things, it is much more popular than the other two things, and let's not forget with the internets, we still have the option to stream, so the HDD problem isn't as much of a problem as it might at first seem.

Excitebots

Alec Baldwin Learns How to Play the Wii

Some Mad Shit

Platinum Games' MadWorld is looking fucking awesome. If you haven't hit play, you need to right now. It's good to see more games of this nature finding their way to the Wii. If this does well, I don't see why we shouldn't be seeing a new Grand Theft Auto soon.

New House of the Dead Scheduled to Kick Ass (and Cunt)

Christmas 1999ish. That's when my brother and I got the goddamn Sega Dreamcast--what would end up being one of my favorite consoles and ultimately (due to alienation of third-party publishers) under appreciated by most of the masses. Packaged with the console was a demo disc with a demo for the latest, upcoming game in the The House of the Dead series, The House of the Dead 2. Neither of us ever purchased the game. We didn't even really play it all that much, but we found it to be pretty sweet nonetheless. It even contais a line we still quote to each other today: "Don't come! Don't come!"

Deciding the Wii would be a perfect opportunity to channel their popular light gun video game into homes, Sega published The House of the Dead 2 & 3. Despite a lot of interest, I continued to not purchase the game. I'm not sure if I'll be able to stay away from what they are doing with the new Wii exclusive. Take a look at this video of Sega's new first-person rail shooter The House of the Dead: Overkill, and try to tell me you didn't cum all over your keyboard (or controller).


Developer: Headstrong Games
Publisher: Sega
Platform: Wii
Modes: Single-player, two-player co-op
ESRB: M
Release: 2/10/2009

Nintendon't What Micro...soft?

Have you ever wished someone would chronicle Microsoft's entire 119 year console defects? Well, as they say in the business, "Her legs...went on for days."

Due to the major success of Microsoft's Ensemble Studios, Microsoft has decided to shut down operations upon the completion of Halo Wars.

The internal Microsoft game studios e-mail on the subject:

Today, we shared with our employees at Ensemble that we have plans to close the studio after Halo Wars RTM. Such a decision is never easy. Like any business, we’re accountable for making tradeoffs and the right level of investments that will drive profit and future growth. However, as we reviewed our first-party portfolio and where we need to invest and divest our resources to achieve our long-term strategies, it became clear to us that closing the studio and redeploying those resources to other more scalable ventures is the right thing for our business at this time.

Unfortunately, our decision to close Ensemble will adversely impact many of the studio's team members. Following the closure, the Ensemble leadership team will form a new entity and have agreed to partner with Microsoft to develop future products and provide support for Halo Wars post launch. While the new company will be hiring a portion of the Ensemble employees, its size and resources prevent it from offering positions to the entire Ensemble team. We hope to integrate much of this creative talent into MGS or the broader IEB team, where we have relevant openings.

Ensemble Studios has produced many notable games over the years – including the Ages franchise – that have helped MGS become a leader in interactive entertainment. And now, Halo Wars is already proving to be a hit by people who have seen and played early versions of the game. The Ensemble team is committed to continuing its development, testing and support of Halo Wars through to the completion of halo wars. We're also working closely with the studio’s leaders to ensure a smooth launch of the game in early 2009 and continuing support thereafter. We will support the studio in every way possible as they work to deliver this highly anticipated game.

This action notwithstanding, I want to emphasize that the overall investment Microsoft is making in video game development is not diminished, and we will continue to bring in talent to work on titles and franchises where we'll see the most ROI. Our priority is to continue to nurture the creative freedom that allows us to successfully drive our business strategy forward. Meanwhile, we're launching some outstanding games over the next few months. We've just launched Too Human and Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise, and soon we'll see many other games hit retail store shelves, including Scene It! 2, Fable 2, Gears of War 2, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, Lips and, of course, Halo Wars.

I want to thank you for your hard work and focus as we head into the next few months and make this a blowout year for first-party games. Please be supportive and respectful of our Ensemble colleagues as they go through this tough time.

Phil

This is, obviously, great news for everyone.



On a lighter note, Microsoft should be selling a few more Xboxes, due to the latest price drops.

The arcade model is now $199.99 (down from $279.99).
The premium (60GB) model is now $299.99 (down from $349.99).
The elite is now $399.99 (down from 449.99).

This price drop officially makes the Xbox Arcade the cheapest of the current generation video game consoles, beating Nintendo's Wii console, which retails for $249.99. It will be interesting to see how this affects sales for all companies. My guess is it won't do much, considering Xbox 360 is nearing the end of its lifespan, and the fact that it just didn't sell all that well when it was still fresh.

And how is Sony reacting to the news? As Julie Han told Gamasutra.com:

"We're really confident that consumers are making choices driven by value," she says, "and we know PS3 offers that value across the board, with the built-in Blu-ray player the broadest and deepest software lineup in the industry, with LittleBigPlanet, Resistance 2, Motorstorm [Pacific Rift]... we're quite confident our holiday sales will be good...We try to stick to our strategy... we feel the PS3 offers the value at that price point. More than anything, you'll see with the 80-gigabyte announcement at E3 as well as with the recent 160 gig, consumers are telling you they want more storage for photos, music... new games are also getting quite a bit of pickup through PlayStation Network. There's also our new video download service that consumers are going to want to do. It's showing that we're moving in the right direction."

Nintendon't What Nintendo Do...Fuck

Have you ever wished someone would chronicle Nintendo's entire 119 year history? Well, as they say in the business, "The past is past; the future is now."

If you've tried playing your Wii or DS online, you probably realized Nintendo wi-fi doesn't work too well with your router. It might work for a few rounds of Smash Bros., but then comes the crash. I know, it's a bitch. You might not have experienced this problem, had you been of the lucky few to purchase the Nintendo Wi-fi Connector for the Windows PC before its discontinuation long ago. Luckily, Nintendo has finally come to its senses (kinda). They just announced the Nintendo Wii/DS wi-fi router. The great thing about this piece of equipment is the amout of customization it comes with. You can hook it up to your PC, and use it like a normal router. You can hook it up to the Wii, and it will connect to other wireless routers. You can stand it upsidedown. You can look at it. It even has a sweetass switch on its backside. The possibilities are endless. The best part of it? It retails for only $53, unless, that is, if you live in Japan, where you'll be paying ¥5800, which is about $53.998 right now. (More information.)



So, what do Mario and Family Guy have in common?