There's more to this PlayStation Vita game (more coverage coming later today, too), but isn't spine ripping sword-swinging all you really need to know?
SOUL SACRIFICE 第１弾トレーラー [YouTube]
May 13 is Mother's Day in Japan. At supermarkets across the country, children can submit drawings of their moms to have tacked up in the store. The drawings are cute, simple reminders of the joys of motherhood. There's nothing sweeter than children's art.
But these drawings? Some are horrifying.
Convenience store chain 7-Eleven also let children draw their moms with "Mother's Portraits" that were then displayed in its stores. These kids were mostly big kids—like 25 or 62 years-old big kids. And they are much more skilled at drawing, resulting in some amusing pictures of dear old mom.
ちょｗｗｗセブンイレブンの母の日似顔絵展がカオスすぎるｗｗｗｗｗ [2ch via アルファルファモザイク]
Oh, those government warnings that appear at the start of every DVD and Blu-ray disc are so wonderful. Which is why we should all be extremely happy that there are going to be more, and they're going to last longer!
The US government is rolling out two new notices: one to "warn", another to "educate". Because we don't understand piracy and two short messages will prevent our involvement with it.
They'll run back-to-back, last ten seconds each, and be unskippable. Great! [Ars Technica]
Tinkering around with Directx 11, Romanian developer Silviu Andrei is building an engine capable of rendering not corridors, or arenas, but entire planets.
Similar to the Outerra project that we've featured previously, Andrei not only has a very nice ocean up and splashing, but seamless travel between space and the planet's surface.
While there's the argument things won't look so nice or smooth once you have to get an actual game running on it, that's not the point. We're here to look at a pretty engine, and that's exactly what we're going to do.
The gallery above shows off Andrei's planetary chops from a few angles, like showing a spacecraft entering from orbit and close-ups of the ocean. Those of a technical persuasion should head to his YouTube page, where he goes into great detail in the comments section as to how everything was done and how it's shaping up.
Directx 11 porting & other changes [Silviu Andrei, thanks Tales of a Prinny!]
Sony is blaming a price-cut and the 2011 Thai floods for a big loss in the company's PlayStation division, with $2.8 billion walking out the door never to return. PS3 hardware sales were also down. [Sony]
Hobbyist Blair Kelly has been working on a project called Arduino Wifly Mini, which takes a remote-controlled Mini Cooper, crams it full of cameras and has you controlling it with your choice of video game peripherals.
You can use either an Xbox 360 or PS3 pad, but the car also supports force feedback if you opt for Logitech's G27 wheel or F510 controller.
Best part is that there are multiple cameras, so in addition to being able to see out the front of the car, you can switch to looking out the sides, just like a real racing game. Only, instead of passing an Aston Martin, you can watch as you whizz past...your cat.
WiFi RC Car Has Camera and Force Feedback [MAKE]
Mark Molnar is a concept artist and illustrator who has worked with of the biggest names in entertainment. People like WETA, Games Workshop, Time Warner and Square Enix.
To see more of his work, check out his personal site.
Mark Molnar is a concept artist and illustrator who has worked with of the biggest names in entertainment. People like WETA, Games Workshop, Time Warner and Square Enix.
To see more of his work, check out his personal site.
It's not hard finding things that are wrong with the video game industry these days. From rip-off DLC to paid-for cheats to games that are sold essentially incomplete, consumers are increasingly getting short shrift.
If you want to push back, though, what are your options? Stop buying games? Effective, perhaps, but that's also cutting off your nose to spite your face. And hands.
Emailing a publisher? Hahahahha. Hahahah. Haha. Oh, that's a good one.
There is one thing you can do, though, to get a little back (provided you actually do it in the first place). And that's to stop preordering video games.
Preorders really picked up steam around a decade ago as a means for eager and loyal customers to reserve a copy of a game before it was released. They were usually used for the biggest games, games that ran a serious risk of being sold out, meaning if you wanted to get in early and avoid having to wait for restocks, you'd preorder.
Over the last ten years though, things got a little perverse. Publishers started manufacturing enough games so that if you walked into a store two days after a new Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto was released, there'd still be copies available. Yet we've become increasingly encouraged to preorder games anyway. Even though we don't actually need to.
Um, why?
Retailers like GameStop track them as a measure of success, and you may have noticed between all the free action figures, maps and ageing comic writers being offered, really want you to preorder stuff. Publishers use them to gauge the expected retail success of a game once it actually hits shelves. The worst union of the two now manifests as retailer-specific preorder bonuses, ungodly partitions of content where someone preordering a game from Best Buy will get a different incentive to that of a GameStop customer.
Beyond the immediate benefits to both party's bottom lines, though, there's something more important going on, something that's the real reason preodering a game is so important to them: these companies want you on the hook before anyone has had a chance to warn you off it.
There once was a time video game reviews and word of mouth played the most important part in determining the success of a new title. There'd be a chance for either professional critics or like-minded peers to get their hands on a game and tell you whether it's actually worth your time or money. With games being so expensive, those opinions can be - and to be sure, are still in some way (especially word of mouth) - important!
They can also be bad for business if you're in the business of making or selling video games, though, so removing that roadblock is in both publisher's and retailer's best interests. The cult of preordering is how this is achieved. By getting your commitment to purchase a game in advance, when all you've got to go on is a marketing campaign, you're signalling that you, as a consumer, are totally cool spending $40-$60 on a game simply on the strength of how it's been marketed.
And it works, with many games tallying up preorder counts in the millions.
Want to know why there aren't any demos anymore? This is why. Want to know why content is withheld from everyone's game and is instead sprinkled across various competing retailers? This is why. Want to know why there's now an accepted norm where those paying more for a game gain competitive advantages? This is why. Publishers don't need to sell you on their games, because by slavishly throwing money down before they're even out, you've signalled your intent to take whatever it is they give you.
So...maybe we could all just stop doing it? At least for big or even big-ish games (those that will be genuinely rare, well, do what you gotta do!). Walk into a store the day a game is released, or a week after, and just buy the game then. You won't notice much of a difference. But retailers and publishers will. Eventually.
It may not be a glorious victory for the consumer in their never-ending struggle to avoid getting fucked, or stop many of the other major problems this industry saddles us with, but seeing retailers and publishers stage a forced retreat from preorder madness would still be a small victory for the little guy. And a small victory's better than a never-ending streak of losses.
UPDATE - Sorry, should have clarified, some of this stuff - like availability - obviously only applies to bricks-and-mortar retailers. Outlets like Amazon and other online sales, well...that's another problem for another day!
