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2K Marin's Jordan Thomas has said that the console wars are "silly".
"There's a cognitive effect known as confirmation bias which leads people to latch onto conclusions that support their preferences and ignore data which doesn't," Thomas told Destructoid (thanks VG247).
"This leads to wild, unreasoning loyalty to a chosen platform, sports team, or brand of soda." There's only one Dirk Kuyt.
"From a development perspective, the console wars are a bit silly. Our target is consistency, and it's always kind of sad to see people throwing their energy into platform partisanship, because it seems to flood the critical channels and drown out other creative discourse."
Now that Sega has finally announced the real Sonic the Hedgehog 4, I thought it would be nice to talk about the fake one that has been floating around for over a decade now.
As you can see in the photo to the right, Sonic the Hedgehog 4 was made for the Super Nintendo. Blasphemous, I know! As you might imagine, this was in no way an official product, and was sold mostly in black markets and in regions where piracy wasn't really an issue.
The game itself is a rather extensive hack of Sunsoft's Speedy Gonzales: Los Gatos Bandidos, a game that already shares more than a passing resemblance to Sonic (as any Speedy Gonzales game should, really). The hack was done in 1996 by a Peruvian outfit calling themselves Twin Eagle Group, which did quite a few similar hacks for the system. Its softography shows, among others, Flubber, Street Fighter 2 Vs. X-Men, Men in Black and The Man in the Iron Mask.
The hack is ultimately kind of sloppy, with quite a few weird mistakes and a strange soundtrack, but it's passable for what it is. I've certainly seen worse. Gameplay is below, do try and enjoy. Note that Sonic is rescuing little Marios stuck in cages, I always liked that touch.
Lucasarts has just announced Lego Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Full release follows...
LONDON, UK - 8th February, 2010 - LucasArts and TT Games today announced the development of LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars. The next chapter in the award-winning LEGO Star Wars videogame franchise, LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars will combine the best elements of all previous LEGO games while adding brand new gameplay to make it the most action-packed LEGO videogame to date. Developed by the same team at Traveller's Tales that created the critically acclaimed LEGO Star Wars and LEGO Indiana Jones series, the game will ship on the Wii, Nintendo DS, PLAYSTATION3 computer entertainment system, PSP (PlayStationPortable) system, and Xbox 360 videogame and entertainment system from Microsoft and Windows in the Autumn of 2010.
"LucasArts continues to set the bar for next-generation family entertainment," said Darrell Rodriguez, president of LucasArts. "The LEGO Star Wars franchise is a massive hit with fans, bringing in sales of over 20 million units worldwide. We're thrilled to extend this experience to LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars, delivering the humour and fun players expect from this award winning franchise."
"LucasArts is an amazing partner, and working with them on the next iteration of the LEGO Star Wars series continues to be a great experience," said Tom Stone, director at TT Games. "The team at TT is working hard at making this simply the best LEGO game ever with all new gameplay and features never before seen in a LEGO game."
LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars will include all the characters from both seasons of the hugely popular animated television series, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, as well as some fan-favourite characters from the beloved theatrical Star Wars Saga. The game will feature brand new battle modes, giving players unique, head-to-head combat and an upgraded level builder, allowing the creation of customized bases and in-game battlefields. Play either as a Jedi or Separatist with all-new character abilities, such as Squad command, Lightsaber slicing, Lightsaber jumps, long distance Jedi attacks and Grapple Tie-Ups, all within a new, easy-to-navigate hub.
The political struggle in China over the regulation of the online games space has once again hit the operation of Blizzard's World of Warcraft in the country, with operator NetEase announcing a suspension of new registrations for the game yesterday.
The move comes as the governmental department, the General Administration of Press and Publication, ordered NetEase to stop charging people to play the game as a result of "gross violations" of regulations, reports Reuters.
NetEase has denied that is the case, and that the game complies with local laws, but this latest event is the outcome of an ongoing clash between government departments - with both the GAPP and the Ministry of Culture flexing muscles over who should oversee the online space.
The warning bells first rang in March last year when the GAPP announced its intention to target non-Chinese titles in a bid to "avoid the excessive penetration of foreign culture among Chinese youth" - with WoW mentioned specifically by Digital Publishing Bureau director Kou Xiaowei.
Since then Blizzard opted to change operator from The9 to NetEase, but as the changeover took place the game was forced to remain in a beta phase while the Chinese government processed a new permit.
That took several months to conclude, but when the game was finally relaunched in September, the GAPP's "surly interference" (according to the Ministry of Culture) created more issues, and NetEase was ordered to stop new registrations for a period of time in November.
The issues were finally cleared up at the beginning of this year - but the game was untroubled for only a month before this new bump in the road.
But Blizzard's VP of International, Michael Ryder, refused to criticise the process of getting the game back online after the operator transition when speaking to GamesIndustry.biz last year.
"We're working hard to complete the transition - we're working with the government to get the final approvals, and we've made a tremendous amount of progress in a short period of time in transitioning from one partner to another in going to NetEase," he said then.
"Our servers are up-and-running now in a beta test phase, and concurrency is running quite high, so we know there's continued interest with the players. We've transitioned everyone over to the Battle.Net account management system, which has been a big success for us as well.
"We've upgraded the technology and the server hardware across the board and everyone's very pleased with how that's performing. So we feel pretty good about the progress we've made, and hopefully we'll be getting the rest of the approvals we need in the near future and then we'll be back on track."
Blizzard has not yet commented on the current situation.
Mass Effect 2 has remained at number one in the UK all-format chart this week despite stiff competition from former chart-topper Just Dance.
With sales dropping 64 per cent on last week, the game was just 850 copies ahead of Ubisoft's casual title.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 sales were down 12 per cent, but were just enough to beat EA's Dante's Inferno, which entered the chart at four.
FIFA 10 climbed two places with a sales increase of 26 per cent to five, and Wii Sports Resort sales dropped 18 per cent to move the game from fifth to sixth position.
Atari/Namco Bandai just failed to make the top ten with new entry Star Trek Online, which reached number 11. Other new releases were THQ's MX Vs ATV Reflex at number 18, and The Sims 3: Design & High-Tech Suff at number 20.
The full top 20 for the the week ending February 6 is as follows:
01 Mass Effect 2
02 Just Dance
03 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
04 Dante's Inferno
05 FIFA 10
06 Wii Sports Resort
07 MAG
08 New Super Mario Bros Wii
09 Wii Fit Plus
10 James Cameron's Avatar: The Game
11 Star Trek Online
12 Assassin's Creed II
13 Mario Kart Wii
14 Army of Two: The 40th Day
15 LEGO Batman: The Videogame
16 Forza Motorsport 3
17 Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games
18 MX Vs ATV Reflex
19 Football Manager 2010
20 The Sims: Design & High-Tech Stuff
The newly published ESRB ratings certificate for Battlefield: Bad Company 2 mentions that "players conduct missions on an unnamed Japanese island during World War II and then move into the modern day."
Earlier, we mentioned that Battlefield: Bad Company 2 would support weapons from last spring's Battlefield: 1943 (pictured above). It sounds like this could be a beginning mission establishing the BFBC2 continuity, not a flashback level. But it could be that DICE is testing community reaction to the World War II genre, which of course many have complained is played out within FPSes. That said EA's ramping up a competitor to Modern Warfare, and this might tip off ideas of going after World at War.
No surprises in the rest of the certificate. "Characters use profanity (e.g., "f**k," "sh*t," and "a*shole") during cutscenes and in the heat of battle." As I said, no surprises.
seek3r sends news of a recent test of six web application security scanning products, in which the scanners missed an average of 49% of the vulnerabilities known to be on the test sites. Here is a PDF of the report. The irony is that the test pitted eah scanner against the public test files of all the scanners. This reader adds, "Is it any wonder that being PCI compliant is meaningless from a security point of view? You can perform a Web app scan, check the box on your PCI audit, and still have the security posture of swiss cheese on your Web app!"
"NTOSpider found over twice as many vulnerabilities as the average competitor having a 94% accuracy rating, with Hailstorm having the second best rating of 62%, but only after extensive training by an expert. Appscan had the second best 'Point and Shoot' rating of 55% and the rest averaged 39%.
Championship Manager Online co-developer Jadestone has laid the blame for the game's termination squarely at the door of Eidos.
The news comes after swarms of CMO fans today wrote to CVG to express their upset at the game's demise.
A Jadestone rep said in a statement to the CMO community:
"We - at Jadestone - cannot talk about the decision to close the game, due to contractual obligations. We will not answer or comment any such questions.
"The game, the brand, the internet domain and the subscriptions are all owned by Eidos and the decision to cease the service is entirely theirs to make. The decision was made unilaterally by them, and we are not at liberty to comment on any reasoning.
"Finally, we only have one more thing to say:
Thank you, and we're sorry."
The company said three-month subscriptions to the game were not possible to sign or re-sign and that one-month subscriptions will cease to work on March 30th. However, all accounts that are premium on March 30th will be extended to April 30th.
Kung Hei Fat Choi! It's Lunar New Year again! Some of you may be wondering what this Lunar or Chinese New Year is about: The Traditional Chinese Calendar is based on Moon cycles and starts a few weeks after the western New Year. This festival is the most important, and joyoys time in Chinese societies. People buy new clothes, sweep their house and children get red pockets.
Every lunar year is represented by an animal. Last year, it was the ox that represents hard work, and this year is the year of the tiger, promising adventures and dynamic. These big cats are natural leaders, we certainly hope that they'll lead everybody to a happy and prosperous year.
To welcome the Tiger, Play-Asia.com will start into the New year with the Roaring Lucky Lunar New Year Sale, with thousands of brilliant bargains and a chance to win awesome prizes.
Look for the goodies left on your Christmas wish list, there's a good chance that they're now available at a lower price. We have carefully reviewed our inventory and the result is a total of around 5,000 in-stock items, we have around 2000 games, 200 console accessories, 400 toys, 200 books, 800 music CDs and around 1000 movies.
We just added, and restocked more bargained items, some of them are real hot actioners such as Left 4 Dead 2, Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway and Turning Point: Fall of Liberty. The greatest thing about these products is that they are Asian versions, they are not only cheaper and are region free. We know that some countries censor and cut games and we know that real gamers don't want to settle on a copy with reduced content.
Other goodies, such as Tekken 6 [Collector's Edition] gets another price cut, it falls from US$ 129.00 to $99.00. A real good deal, you get both the official fighting stick and the game in one beautiful package. Another Collector's Edition worth taking a look at is the Batman Arkham Asylum which comes with bonus DVDs and the batarang, the price just fell from US$ 99.00 to US$ 69.00.
For more details on the bargain items, please take a look at our bargains section!
But this is not all! Like we've done with our sales in the past, you will again have the chance to win fantastic prizes such as consoles, games and store credits. So what are you waiting for?
And this is how it works:
Now Tiger will guide you to where the Sales and the Lucky Draw are. The cheerful big cat will stop by the bargained products between February 2nd and February 11th, snap up the goodies and there you go, entered into the Lucky Draw. The more you buy, the more you save and the higher your chances of winning our prizes.
The winners of the 30 main prizes will be announced in this news post during the last week of February 2010 and will also be notified by e-mail.
Yet, be aware. Some products are restocked regularly, so the tiger comes back time and time again, yet for limited versions, such as toys and music, once the tiger leaves (out of stock) he never returns. Set your priorities and plan your shopping strategies.
Prizes:
1st Prize: A: PlayStation3 Slim- Final Fantasy XIII Lightning Bundle (250GB Model Asia version)
2nd Prize: Nintendo Wii™ Console [Black or White] (Japanese Version) + 2 Wii™ Games of your choice*
3rd Prize: A: Nintendo DSi™ LL Console + 2 NDS™ Games of your choice*
OR
B: Sony PSP™ Slim & Lite Console + 2 PSP™ Games of your choice*
4th Prize: GP2X Wiz Game System + Leather Case
5-10th Prize: A store credit voucher worth US$ 50 each, redeemable for any purchase at Play-Asia.com
11-30th Prize: A store credit voucher worth US$ 20 each, redeemable for any purchase at Play-Asia.com
BioShock 2! BioShock 2! On Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, that's what I'll be playing this weekend, drilling my way toward the end of the game and hopefully unlocking a World's Greatest Big Daddy coffee mug reward for my Avatar.
Oh, they don't actually have such a thing (as far as I know) in BioShock 2, but that would be a fine unlockable, something that would quickly replace the Left 4 Dead 2 medpack that my Xbox Live Avatar is currently sporting. If I get a free moment, meaning if I beat BioShock 2 and get in enough multiplayer time, I'll either continue my new game+ run of Demon's Souls or crack open that copy of Mass Effect 2 that arrived earlier this week.
What about you? What new, old or recently released games will you be playing this weekend?
