General gaming news

[BRP]

http://boardsus.playstation.com/t5/P.../td-p/46201493

USB ports fucked?

[Kaisha]

OP is extremely overexaggerating. All of my random USB shit (mice, keyboards, headsets, thumb drives, etc) all work fine still.

[KuroTsuki]

Yeah, I was able to transfer movies/anime and shit to my PS3 still. That's all I care about at the moment.

[OzzofAsura]

The stuff I got plugged in works fine. I'm not too worried. Even if they screw some normal shit, they'll probably tweak it.

[Hyan]

This is pretty lol-worthy.

Basically I've heard that the new firmware 3.50 patch blocks quite many 3rd party gamepads for PS3. Aaand what is Sony's reason for this amazing stunt?

http://us.playstation.com/news/consumeralerts/

It is possible that some counterfeit product may ignite or explode, resulting in injury or damage to the user, your PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system or other property.

EDIT: Oh, the above posts already talk about it. Well, I'll leave this here anyway.

[Kaisha]

What I wonder is where these counterfeit dualshock controllers are from as I've yet to hear a single story about them in North America/Europe. I know somewhere in China is probably manufacturing fakies (what isn't made in China anyways...), but still...

[BRP]

I thought my controller was going to explode when I beat the final boss of Bayonetta.

[Lazytowner]

I thought my controller was going to explode when I beat the final boss of Bayonetta.

Are you sure it was your controller? 8==D

[Diamicles]

Serious question, looking for lots of opinions from people who own PS3s, or PS3/X360.

I have a 360 right now, but I'm thinking about trading it for a PS3. There are a few exclusives that I'd like to have for PS3 (like Demon's Souls) but there doesn't seem to be enough exclusives being released anymore to justify getting a PS3. Would it really be worth it to switch just for PSN and a couple of older exclusives? I don't have to have a 360, I'm not a Halo player at all, so those exclusives don't mean anything to me.

[Boyiee]

I'm almost in the opposite boat... although I used to have both xbox and ps3, but now never touch either.

I currently, as mentioned, have a PS3 that I never touch. I loaned my sister my 360 years ago, it has since RROD'd... I'm debating buying a used elite for 100-150, is it worth getting? Friends play halo reach, but not too much. I play all the major shooters on my pc since I have a pretty high end gaming rig. I do know a few other firemen and officers that I work with that play cod on xbox.

[Shojin]

Stick with PC imo. Especially if you are a graphics whore, consoles at this point in time are pretty dated.

Serious question, looking for lots of opinions from people who own PS3s, or PS3/X360.

I have a 360 right now, but I'm thinking about trading it for a PS3. There are a few exclusives that I'd like to have for PS3 (like Demon's Souls) but there doesn't seem to be enough exclusives being released anymore to justify getting a PS3. Would it really be worth it to switch just for PSN and a couple of older exclusives? I don't have to have a 360, I'm not a Halo player at all, so those exclusives don't mean anything to me.

If you want to play Demon's Souls, you would have to be a little quick about it if you want to be able to get the full experience out of it. The online servers won't be online for too much longer as Atlus has said. As for what console, that is entirely your decision to make. Contradictory to what you said, there are plenty of exclusives on the PS3 and more coming, Sony has a very strong first party studio line-up. And take other factors, if you pay for live vs. free online, interested in blu-ray movies. etc etc.

EDIT: Btw, I own PS3, Xbox 360 and a Wii, console-wise.

[Diamicles]

Yeah I'm big on stuff coming up like GT5 on the PS3 for sure. Guess I might need to look into what exclusives will be coming out in the next year or so.

Doesn't PSN often have old PS1/2 games on there to download? That would be a big plus for me. Free online would be a bonus too, since I don't play online enough to make paying for it worth it on 360.

[Kaisha]

Only PSX games and a very small library of PS3 games are purchasable on the store.

Might be PS2 in the future, who knows.

[Shojin]

Yeah I'm big on stuff coming up like GT5 on the PS3 for sure. Guess I might need to look into what exclusives will be coming out in the next year or so.

Doesn't PSN often have old PS1/2 games on there to download? That would be a big plus for me. Free online would be a bonus too, since I don't play online enough to make paying for it worth it on 360.

Coming out in the next year or so... hmm, off the top of my head.

Infamous 2
Gran Turismo 5
Socom 4
LittleBigPlanet 2
The Last Guardian (hopefully, lol)
Twisted Metal
Sly Cooper HD Collection
Ico & Shadow of the Colossus HD
Ratchet & Clank All 4 1
Killzone 3
Resistance 3 (next fall I think)
Sorcery
Bunch of Move shit that I'm not gonna bother listing

If you've never played any PS3 exclusives, there's a bunch to catch up on, I would definitely recommend Uncharted 1 & 2, God of War 3 (and the God of War collection if you never played 1 & 2) and Demon's Souls like you said. Has a bunch of PS1 games on the store, PS2 has been hinted at although they seem to be remaking PS2 games in HD and releasing them on PS3.

[Boyiee]

Stick with PC imo. Especially if you are a graphics whore, consoles at this point in time are pretty dated.

Well yeah I am one, its just the thought of playing a few non-pc games and some games with friends. It's not worth it for me to pay 150-200$ on console+game just to play halo reach a couple times with my friends, so I was looking for more reasons. I used to own all 3 consoles before I let my sister borrow my 360, and I just don't touch any of them now. I beat ff13, still haven't finished twilight princess or played anything besides a few mario levels on wii... Can't tell you how many xbox games I haven't finished. So hard to play consoles with so much time occupied by my pc.

I guess I wanted someone to say yes/no in regards to getting a 360 for 100-150, if that was worth it, even though for how I am with consoles lately it isn't. Thanks for saying no lol.

[Diamicles]

Coming out in the next year or so... hmm, off the top of my head.

Infamous 2
Gran Turismo 5
Socom 4
LittleBigPlanet 2
The Last Guardian (hopefully, lol)
Twisted Metal
Sly Cooper HD Collection
Ico & Shadow of the Colossus HD
Ratchet & Clank All 4 1
Killzone 3
Resistance 3 (next fall I think)
Sorcery
Bunch of Move shit that I'm not gonna bother listing

If you've never played any PS3 exclusives, there's a bunch to catch up on, I would definitely recommend Uncharted 1 & 2, God of War 3 (and the God of War collection if you never played 1 & 2) and Demon's Souls like you said. Has a bunch of PS1 games on the store, PS2 has been hinted at although they seem to be remaking PS2 games in HD and releasing them on PS3.

I like the looks of that list, even the old exclusives - which I haven't played at all. I think I got rid of my ps2 before GoW came out, so lots ot catch up on there. 360 exclusives aren't as eye catching to me (I like j/wrpgs a lot) as the PS3 upcoming ones are.

Now I just have to get a price on my 360, games, and accessories and decide if trading is the best route or just sell it outright.

[Hiryo]

What is the list of Xbox exclusives to look out for anyway? Gears 3 and what else? (serious question, I don't know what exclusives to tell people to look out for when they want to buy a 360)

[jmc]

What is the list of Xbox exclusives to look out for anyway? Gears 3 and what else? (serious question, I don't know what exclusives to tell people to look out for when they want to buy a 360)

Fable 3 and gears 3 the only ones I'm looking toward to

[BRP]

Company Wars!!!
gifs stolen from 'gaf

Kotick:

"The guy comes out and says I'm a prick," Kotick told the latest issue of Edge magazine.

"I've never met him in my life – I've never had anything to do with him. I never had any involvement in the Vivendi project that they were doing, Brütal Legend, other than I was in one meeting where the guys looked at it and said, 'He's late, he's missed every milestone, he's overspent the budget and it doesn't seem like a good game. We're going to cancel it.'

"And do you know what? That seemed like a sensible thing to do. And it turns out, he was late, he missed every milestone, the game was not a particularly good game..."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...ff-tim-schafer

In it, Kotick spreads light on the bitter departure of the ex-Infinity Ward bosses - who've now formed a studio with EA - telling the mag he feels "betrayed".

"It shook my belief in two specific people, who were my friends," he said. "The frustrating thing about that is, the stuff that these guys did, I never would have expected them to do. We're a public company, we've got ethics obligations, and the things they did were... I would go to jail if I did them.

"You can't use the company and the company's assets for your own personal benefit, and you can't use the leverage that you might have for personal benefit - you're not allowed to do that! And so we didn't have any choice."

Kotick said Activision "knew what the consequences would be," when West and Zampella departed, because most of the core Infinity Ward staff were all close friends.

"When we bought the company, they were 20 or 30 guys - these were guys that shared vacation homes together, they were all best friends, they were at each other's weddings. We knew that when we had to fire Jason and Vince we were going to lose a lot of really talented people," Kotick added.

"That's one of those really difficult decisions as the CEO of a company, where you step back and say, 'No good is going to come of this. They're going to leave and probably have a really hard time ever being productive or successful ever again, and we're going to lose some talented people, and there's nothing we can do about it.' And there wasn't."

Kotick went on to claim he's received "something like 5,000 resumes" for the empty Infinity Ward positions.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com....php?id=266753

Activision Blizzard CEO, Bobby Kotick, believes that the publisher's success is due to allowing studios to retain their autonomy and personalities, rather than creating internal studios like EA. Speaking during an exclusive interview in issue 220 of Edge (available from UK newsagents tomorrow), Kotick says that EA is struggling to attract the best people due to unattractive working practices.

"The core principle of how we run the company is the exact opposite of EA," he says. "EA will buy a developer and then it will become ‘EA Florida’, ‘EA Vancouver’, ‘EA New Jersey’, whatever. We always looked and said, 'You know what? What we like about a developer is that they have a culture, they have an independent vision and that’s what makes them so successful.' We don’t have an Activision anything - it’s Treyarch, Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer.

"That, to me, is one of the unassailable rules of building a publishing company. And in every case except for two, the original founders of the studios are still running the studios today. The only thing that we try to do is to provide a support structure to make them more successful. If you do a really good job - and a lot of our studios do - you get to pick what is, in my view, the most difficult thing to pick in the industry: to make original intellectual property."

http://www.next-gen.biz/news/kotick-...cating-studios

It begins.





Tim Schafer:

Speaking exclusively to Eurogamer, Schafer responded to Kotick, calling his comments "sad".

"It's sad is that instead of just insulting me personally, he goes after the product of my hard-working team - a group of people he almost put out of work a while back," Schafer said.

"But what's even sadder is that it took him two months to think of a comeback."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...back-at-kotick

Hmmm.....



EA (Jeff Brown):

"Kotick's relationship with studio talent is well documented in litigation," Brown said, referring to Activision's latest lawsuit with developer Infinity Ward over the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare franchise and previously with Double Fine over Brutal Legend.

"His company is based on three game franchises – one is a fantastic persistent world he had nothing to do with; one is in steep decline; and the third is in the process of being destroyed by Kotick's own hubris."

[BRP]

Twitter:

TheKevinButler
Contrary to the rumors, no, I was not the one driving the bulldozer. Wasn’t me. Not at all. Ok fine, I did it. http://bit.ly/bo4lCY.