• 2Dec 08

  An Inside History of Console and Consumer Failure (OLD)

  Despite the fact that this is indisputably old news, I wanted to post the link to this story regarding the history of 360 RROD's to share it with the people who didn't get to read it, and to get it the **** out of my Favorites list:

  Xbox 360 Defects: An Inside History of MS's Video Game Console Woes

  As a person who is on their 3rd Xbox 360 (YEAH, I'm still pissed!), this naturally hits close to home for me. But you don't have to own Microsoft's console, or even be a gamer at all, to find the complete dearth of ethics in MS's gaming division reprehensible. Perhaps what I find most troubling about all of this is that despite a ridiculous failure rate, these consoles continue to sell, and sell relatively well for that matter, with almost no effort by MS to fix the problem in the first place.

  • Posted Dec 2, 2008 9:04 am GMT
  • Category: Games
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• 25Sep 08

  The Broken Promise Of PS3 Backwards Compatibility

  "PSone runs on the PlayStation 2 through emulation rather than actual hardware. PlayStation 3 will offer the same compatibility for PS2 software and the format will continue forever."

  So said Ken Kutaragi to Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, four years before the so-called "Father of the Playstation" took the role of Honorary Chariman in an apparent forced retirement.

  Just a little over two years after this proverbial patricide, one has difficulty finding a Playstation 3 model with this allegedly eternal functionality, due to it infringing on software sales of the Playstation 3 (see related Gamespot article, "Sony: No BC = more PS3 game sales").

  The Playstation and Playstation 2 re-defined the structure of the gaming world, leaving behind a massive library of games, with the Playstation 2 continuing to deliver AAA software like Persona 3 and Yakuza 2. Both consoles have several games in their libraries that make regular appearances on "Best Games of All Time" lists, many of which are RPGs... a genre that you're largely missing out on as a PS3 owner even now, two years after launch. What's the solution for those who just spent $400 on a new PS3 without BC? SCEA President and CEO Jack Tretton says stacking.

  "If you paid $599 for a machine that had backwards compatibility, now for $529 you can get a PS3 and a PS2. You can stack them on top of each other if you really want to. I'm not saying that literally, but [that's] in terms of the financial investment that we ask people to make."

  Quite a different line than was being fed to former SCEE executive Phil Harrison a few years prior:

  "Backwards compatibility, as you know from PlayStation One and PlayStation 2, is a core value of what we believe we should offer. And access to the library of content people have created, bought for themselves, and accumulated over the years is necessary to create a format. PlayStation is a format meaning that it transcends many devices -- PSOne, PS2, and now PS3."

  A comforting statement for people like me, who, in spite of the Playstation 3's ever-expanding lineup of great games, could see themselves enjoying, for instance, the Katamari Damacy games long after even the PS3 is retired. A comforting statement but an untrue one, and only the few early adopters of the latest iteration of the brand that is now Sony's bread-and-butter can use their PS3 and, notably, it's upscaling capabilities to enjoy such essential titles as Dark Cloud 2, Dragon Quest VIII, and the oft-teased but yet-to-be re-released Final Fantasy VII.

  So what does the future look like for PS3 BC? According to Jack Tretton, bleak:

  "I would like to have had it in there, but Sony's collective strategy determined we could afford to lose it. We've now gone down that road, and we're not going back."

  • Posted Sep 25, 2008 4:28 pm GMT
  • Category: Games
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• 14Sep 08

  A Brief Word From Our Sponsor...

  I've seen a lot of threads on the Gamespot forums aboutpeople getting reamed(can I say reamed?) on trade-ins at EB/Gamestop and the myriad other retailers that buy and sell used games.In the spirit of the conviviality that I find myself perpetually overwhelmed by (/sarcasm), I've decided it was time to give a plug to one of the best things to happen to gaming in a long while: Goozex.

  You can visit their website to get all the details, but the bottom line is this: you list the games you want to trade, and when people want them, you mail them out to them and receive "points". These points are used to purchase games that other users are willing to trade. Prices are set according to supply and demand, as well as an average of what the game is retailing for in the marketplace.

  Each game you receive will use up one trade credit, which cost $1 apiece. This is how the site is funded.

  Visit: http://www.goozex.com to learn more, but -- in the spirit of reciprocity -- tell them that Goozex user "jqtaxpayer" told you about it. Then, after your first trade, they give me 100 points ($5 US) and a free trade.

  I encourage everyone who trades in their games or buys used to take a look.

  • Posted Sep 14, 2008 4:18 pm GMT
  • Category: Games
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