Having had a few days to digest the two very different launch events for Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One, I’ve come to a realization. As much as people don’t seem to like the Xbox launch, it wasn’t a failure in and of itself. In fact, I believe that Microsoft successfully accomplished what it set out to do.
The Xbox One and PlayStation Four both play video games. However, if you were to watch the two launch events, I’d understand if you were a little confused by that statement. While the PlayStation 4’s launch emphasised how it plays games and how it augments that with the social networking and sharing features, the Xbox spent comparatively little time talking about the games.
The difference in the launches was an example of how the console manufacturers are positioning their next-gen consoles in the market.
May 23
This gallery contains 16 photos.
I’m not sure it was intended to be a game of one-upmanship when a Reddit user with a basement arcade posted a photo gallery of his arcade a few ours after the guy with a garage arcade. The thing is that I, and I’d imagine several thousand other people, would be very happy with either. […]
So the planned BioShock film helmed by director Gore Verbinski didn’t work out but that doesn’t mean that we’ll never have a live-action return to Rapture.
A group of Vancouver film students did their own short fan film looking at the rise of plasmids and the downfall of Rapture from the prospectives of two brothers who travelled to the underwater city to be artists. I call it a fan film but the sets, props and special effects are absolutely fantastic. You mean to tell me that students can manage this but Hollywood can’t do it without breaking the bank?
I’ve been thinking about why Microsoft was going more casual with the Xbox One and this infographic gets at the reasoning behind that move. It all comes down to money. When you see what the best-selling console of the last generation was and know what it did best, it all makes sense.
To examine the shifting balance of power in the gaming industry and its growth, we have a handy infographic for you.
A new piece of costume DLC hits the LittleBigPlanet and it’s from a series that we quite like around here (most of the time). If you play LittleBigPlanet 2, LittleBigPlanet Karting (which Sony PR still owes me a copy of) and LittleBigPlanet for the PlayStation Vita, you can buy a new costume set based on the Mass Effect Trilogy.
The new costumes for sackboy allow you to play as sackperson versions of Shepard, Liara, Wrex and, of course, Garrus Vakarian. The package will cost you $5.99 US or your regional equivalent.
It’s not everyday that a Nintendo 3DS game gets ported over to the major home consoles. It’s also not everyday that a quasi-spin-off game set between two games in the main series is better received than the main series entry that tried to be a triple-A megahit.
So here we are with Resident Evil: Revelations. Rather than an action-oriented game, Revelations goes back to the series’ horror roots. That move away from big action seems to have benefited this game in the critics’ eyes.
Okay, I might have come off a bit cynical in my examination of the Xbox One announcement. In fairness, I tried the best I could given the information at hand. There just wasn’t a lot of talk about games. Don’t take my word for it. Check out this short summary of the Xbox One reveal.
Microsoft didn’t hide that yesterday’s big announcement would be for the next-gen Xbox but they sure did manage to surprise with that name. The third-generation Xbox console is the Xbox One whose name represents that it’s an all-in-one system for the living room.
It was that all-in-one nature of the Xbox One that formed the majority of Microsoft’s presentation. Unfortunately, that emphasis on the all-in-one Xbox came at what was essentially the de-emphasis of games as the core of the Xbox One.
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Alright, I may have been a bit optimistic by saying things would be better this week than last. My own personal pull list is busier this week but not by much.
My big three picks of the week include a couple of brand new series and one issue that may as well be a new series. From the mind of video game designer American McGee is Akaneiro #1. DC is finally getting in on the whole economic disparity thing after Chris Nolan did in The Dark Knight Rises. A group of the super rich are funding projects that sounds like it’ll eventually run afoul of some superheroes in Green Team Teen Trillionaires #1. And it all begins again in Superior Spider-Man #10. Did you read SSM #9? It wasn’t as good as some earlier issues but I’m counting on it to set the table big time for future issues.
May 21
This gallery contains 12 photos.
We’ve all done the thumbs-up thing on Facebook (which, by the way, you can do on our Facebook page) but what if superheroes had their own thumbs-up to like things on Facebook? Artist Jaime Calderon came up with his own version of the classic Facebook thumbs-up for some of your favourite Marvel and DC superheroes.
et geekera 