Monthly Archives: June 2014
PlayStation Now Rental Prices Are Higher Than Retail
In the run up to the open beta of PlayStation Now that is scheduled to launch in July, PS Now users in the closed beta have noticed a major change as Sony gets geared up for that milestone. Sony has added prices to the PS Now menus and those prices have potential customers up in arms.
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How Steam is Striking Gold with the Summer Adventure
When Steam launched the 2014 edition of the Steam Summer Sale, it came with a new wrinkle that no one saw coming. No, I’m not talking about the four packs of Community Picks. This time out, Steam introduced the Summer Adventure to the sale. While it looks like a little competition between users for prizes, it’s actually another quiet way for Valve to make a few dollars more from Steam.
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Steam Summer Sale: June 22, 2014
So if I called yesterday’s deals the critically acclaimed set of games, right now, you’re looking at the Something For Everyone pack. there are shooters and RPGs and horror games and even some casual games. Chances are that if you really want to spend some money, you’ll find something to spend it on today.
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Steam Summer Sale: June 21, 2014
The red team won yesterday’s Steam Adventure challenge which doesn’t do me a bit of good because I didn’t win anything off my wish list. If we use today’s peak of 7.2 million users as a proxy for the number of players on all the teams, that means you have a one in 1.44 million chance of winning some games. It’s not the best incentive ever when you do the math.
Anyway, today’s daily deals are the critical acclaim set. You have Dragon Age: Origins and Skyrim for the RPG and fantasy fans. Indie gamers can pick up The Stanley Parable and Terraria if that’s more their speed.
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Geek Links of the Week
eSports just hit another small milestone. Robert Morris University is creating a League of Legends varsity team to compete in the Collegiate Star League. It’s going to be a real team complete with scholarships, a coach and practice squads. This could be the start of something big. [GamesBeat]
In the battle between the Oculus Rift and the Project Morpheus, which VR machine reigns supreme? [Rolling Stone]
Couldn’t make it to E3 but want some E3 swag? It’s on Ebay and it’ll cost you. [Yahoo Games]
I don’t know if you’ve heard but the media can’t get enough of PewDiePie’s $4 million annual YouTube earnings. [New York Post]
Remember when local cable channels had various call-in shows to fill in the time? Here’s the tale of Ten Forward, a Star Trek TNG fan show from Scarborough, ON. [Blog TO]
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Steam Summer Sale: June 20, 2014
So the Purple Team won Day One of Steam Summer Adventure. What does that mean? I have no idea but you best believe that I’m going to be writing a column explaining why this is a new way to reinvigorate the Steam Marketplace. As if Valve wasn’t going to be making enough money from this sale to begin with.
Like yesterday, I’m a little at a loss for games that I haven’t bought yet. At a certain point, you’re going to run out of games you want to play that you don’t own. Maybe it was for the best that there wasn’t a Spring Sale this year.
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Who is Phil Fish?
Phil Fish has been in the news lately over his views about the monetization of Let’s Play videos on YouTube. Whether he’s right or not is something that will be up for debate among lawyers, fans and the various content creators for a while still so let’s leave that point for another day.
The thing is that we haven’t really heard much from Phil Fish since he cancelled Fez 2 and left the games industry last summer. Well, he may not have completely vanished but we may never know because Phil Fish is only famous for being famous in the wrong way. The Phil Fish we know isn’t so much famous for being a games designer but being a media creation designed to generate page views
So just who is the real Phil Fish? Innuendo Studios attempts to figure that out.
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Amazon Goes Full Mobile with the Fire Phone
It’s been rumoured to be coming for years but we’ve never actually seen the long discussed Facebook phone. However, the far less hyped Amazon phone is actually a reality. On Wednesday, Amazon through their hat into the increasingly crowded smartphone ring with the new Amazon Fire Phone.
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eSports Weekend Calendar: June 20 – 22, 2014
I don’t know about the rest of you but I like tuning into a few eSports events over the course of the weekend. The problem is that I often just stumble into most tournaments thanks to notices on Twitter rather than having one go-to list of what’s on during the weekend.
Today, I try to launch a new weekly feature on et geekera. It’s a schedule of some of the bigger eSports events of the weekend including links to where you’re likely to find them.
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The 2014 Steam Summer Sale is Underway!
IT BEGINS!
From now until the end of the month, many of the games you’ve been looking forward to playing will be on discount during the annual Steam Summer Sale. As usual, the sale will include the Daily Deals that run for 48 hours, Flash Sales that run for 8 hours and Community Picks that also run for eight hours. If you want to buy a game, make sure it falls into one of those three brackets or you’re spending too much.
By the way, Community Picks now come in four packs. You vote for the set you want to win rather than just the individual games. More discounts for everyone!
et geekera 