Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 10.27.06

The proud owner of four Xbox 360s.

360 breaks all sorts of records in Australia
Watch out Master System, there’s a new kid in Australia. By selling over 100,000 units, the 360 has become the fastest selling console down under. The first European settlers in Australia were criminals and we have Australians to blame for those rambunctious reptile lovers, Crocodile Dundee and the Crocodile Hunter (“that’s not a terrible accent, THIS IS A TERRIBLE ACCENT”). Clearly Microsoft must take these facts into account before celebrating the good news.

Gamasutra interview Clover’s Inaba
Prepare yourself for an only marginally related rant. Oh, and read the interview, it’s interesting.

The way the games media goes from one golden boy of creativity to the next is pretty odd. Why do gamers get three or four different interviews from Inaba but not one from Takahashi, Ueda, or Mizuguchi? Because they aren’t the flavor of the month, that’s why. Maybe when they release another game the games media will care what they have to say, but for now Okami is on the store shelf and that’s what we are going to hear about. Personally, I want to know what Ueda is up to so that I may shed tears over my Wii and curse Sony for charging so much for their new system.

Is it possibly not journalists fault? Publishers may not allow designers to grant interviews about their games, so this may explain why we get a bunch of interviews from one guy in a few weeks span and silence from everyone else. But at a trade show it seems likely a journalist could interview anyone on the floor. I’d also be interested in hearing from smaller developers and I’m sure they’d be anxious for the exposure.

Nintendo profits up 72%, Sony profits down 94%
So it goes.

Analyst unhappy with 360’s performance
Consumers seem content playing that one level of Medal of Honor in their local Best Buy because despite its wide availability, people aren’t buying the 360. At least not enough to satisfy fancy Wall Street analysts. Some gamers have suggested that consumers will not buy a system until all next generation consoles are out. This theory seems to explain why Sega sold 18 Dreamcasts. But then so does the, “Sony overhypes the shit out of their systems and consumers still can’t wait to buy them,” theory. In order to tell if the public is just waiting to see everybody’s cards or if they are specifically waiting for the new Sony system, we may have to wait until the next-next gen, or possibly construct an alternate universe in which Sony employees are incapable of lying.

Flames added for dramatic effect.

Importer Lik-Sang goes under, blames Sony – Sony says, “Oh no you didn’t”
Lik-Sang has a spot in my heart for selling me a 4M Saturn memory cart I never used so it is with some sadness I report this news (I mean report in the loosest sense of the word). Lik-Sang claims lawsuits levied against them by Sony have caused them to close their doors. In a press release, Lik-Sang not only placed full blame on Sony, but released the names of Sony employees who bought imported PSP’s.

Sony claims they are not the reason Lik-Sang is closing and call the move “sour grapes.” They rightfully argue that releasing customer’s names is against any decent privacy policy but then unconvincingly state that Sony Europe execs individually bought imported Lik-Sang PSP’s for “investigatory purposes.” You know, the same reason people buy porn.

This just in — Lik-Sang responds to Sony’s response to Lik-Sang’s response to Sony’s lawsuits. Response.

Jack Thompson may be held in contempt (by an American court as well as everyone with a brain)
False alarm; Thompson is out of trouble for now. Possibly the only good this guy is doing is bringing important journalistic questions to the forefront. If the press keeps reporting every asinine thing he does, they simply feed into his egomania and give him the publicity he wants. If the press ignores him then it will be doing a disservice to the populace by not reporting possibly important happenings.

Killing him would be too illegal (and possibly unethical) and would just prove gamers are violent. Plus, he’d end up in heaven with 72 virgins, a solid gold mansion and 13 six-packs of hotdogs, or whatever fundamentalist Christians believe. No, we need to do something far more cunning and slightly less tasteless than murder.

I recommend taking a cue from Dan Savage, whose hilarious column Savage Love has popularized the term “Santorum.” Rick Santorum is a shitty politician and Dan knew no matter what he did, the guy would constantly be in the public eye. So Dan decided to publicly humiliate the Senator. Santorum is now defined as “the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.” In this fashion, I suggest that we attempt to degrade, offend, and humiliate Jack Thompson. Since I’m just one untalented man, I leave the task up to you.

Thompson sues Midway
Fuck, I’ll help get people started on the task I outlined above. Enjoy (just not at work).

Both look scrawny to my muscular eyes.

Burning Crusade delayed
Hahaha. Take that, you millions of people who play World of Warcraft. Also, there was some crap on the Blood Elves in the news. Something about making them less wussy, which I’m all for. This is America god fucking damn it.

Sony delays Blu Ray player
Mwahahah. Two cackle worthy stories in a row.

Controller emulates the Wiimote
Now to show my fanboy colors. Let me list the reasons why this barely matters:

1) It’s a third party peripheral. About 2% of the gaming populace will own it (based on a highly scientific experiment I just performed in my own ass).

B) Publishers are unlikely to add (or keep) Wii functionality for games they release on other platforms, mostly because of reason 1.

3) The majority of games worth owning on the Wii will probably be first party anyway. These games will not be making appearances on the PS3 and 360.

Seedless grape) The Wii controller is an experiment and may entirely suck and fail (or be awesome and fail). Publishers will wait to see if Nintendo and the big guys (Ubisoft, EA) can manage to sell movement based games.

B) The company already released a previous version of a motion sensing controller, albeit with less dazzling technology. It did not take the world by storm. It was also distributed by Mad Katz, who many big analysts have downgraded to a, “strong sucks balls.”