• 31Aug 07

  Playstation Store

  Just a quick note - I'm APPALLED by the fact that the US Playstation store got oodles of content this week along with Warhawk, and the European store simply gets Warhawk and nothing else. Aside from the content US PS3 owners received this week, there are items that should have been on the EU store weeks ago that still haven't made an appearance - Blast Factor Advanced Research, for example.

  See, I plan to buy Warhawk when it comes out on BluRay so that I can get the Jabra headset with it. Presently, I have to wait about a month to get that, again, while US citizens will get it within days of the PSN release. However, in the mean time it's as if they decided not to give us a store update at all today, while we KNOW there is oodles of content sitting there waiting to be released. Who's steering this ship?!?

  I'm holding out hope that they're going to update the store later today/tomorrow with more content. However, it would not be a surprise if they don't. Us "Europeans" (me being Australian) seem to get the butt end of Sony's attention pretty regularly...

  • Posted Aug 31, 2007 12:34 am PT
  • Category: Games
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• 23Apr 07

  Random Goodness

  Over the last few days, I've come across some tiny morsels of goodness that I thought I needed to share with anyone who feels compelled to read this blog.

  First of all, there's this; the announcement of Beautiful Katamari, specifically for PS3. It will also be released on the Xbox360, but I presently don't have one of those, so my excitement for that edition is somewhat limited. Now, I'd heard rumours of this announcement a number of weeks back, but the official introduction of a new Katamari game really just makes my day. Katamari Damacy was never released in Australia, but having read shining reviews of the quirkyness of this game, I bought a hard disk and a copy of HDAdvance for my PS2, and then imported the game - allowing me to play it on my PAL PS2. I also am the proud owner of "We Love Katamari" and "Me & My Katamari" which were released in my region, making my Katamari collection complete. But now, with a new installment on the way, my appetite for Katamari has once again been sparked. I look forward to it with great anticipation!

  Next, the release of PS3 firmware update 1.70. I've been holding out for a firmware update for a while now, because I want to play Final Fantasy XII, but I'm not prepared to play it on my PS3 if my experience is going to be lessened by glitches. Now, the only problem I'd noticed pre-1.70 was that the FMV sequences seemed to have some stuttering. When I first installed 1.70, I thought it would be worthwhile giving FF12 another go to see if perhaps they'd fixed the problem. Sure enough, the game ran flawlessly and I got very, very excited. I'd recently imported a Memory Card adapter (they're still not out here), so now the pieces were all in place - I could play FF12 the way it had been intended. I booted it up twice before this morning, and both times the FMVs ran without a stutter. This morning, for reasons unbeknownst to me, suddenly it's stuttering again. This is not a good thing. So I'm keen to try and find an explanation for this. My plan at this point, is to try cold-booting my PS3 (ie: turn it off then on at the mains) to see if perhaps there's something being stored in the memory that's causing it to stutter.
  Anyway, aside from FFXII I was also very pleased to see that Guitar Hero II now runs. Now to find a PS2-USB adapter that will work. I own two. Neither of them function the way people descibe that they should.

  Finally, I was surfing over at EA's Australian site this morning, and they were running a simple poll in the lower corner of their site. The question was: "Which console will you buy?" with the options of Wii, Ps3, Xbox360 and PSP. Now, I'm a big PS3 advocate, and I have been feeling a little dismayed by the lack of sales thus far. Console Sales = Game sales = exclusives = the best games on that console. So basically, in order to see really good games on PS3, people have to buy it. And I was thinking that maybe people just aren't that interested. Well, after lodging my vote for PS3, the poll displayed it's results thus far, and apparently I was wrong:

  

   

  So there we go! Almost double the number of people planning to buy (or I guess having bought) a Xbox360 plan to buy a Playstation 3, or have bought one already. Based on the sample size, I'm assuming this is just people who have visited the Australian EA site (so mostly Australians), so to me that looks to be a good number of Australians wanting to get themselves PS3s. Hopefully, if the trend holds throughout Europe and Asia, Microsoft's efforts in the US mean that both systems will get the exclusives they need to stay viable. As long as PS3 gets some great exclusives over it's lifetime, I'll be happy.

  For the sceptics:
  Just in case you're thinking maybe this poll was on their PS3 subsection or something to that effect that would have slanted the results, I will draw your attention to the "Wii" watermark in the background of the image. The poll was on every page I viewed on the site, but at the time that I voted, I was viewing the page for the Wii game, SSX Blur. Speaking of which, I'm really hoping for an SSX game for PS3 sometime soon. I've quite enjoyed that francise thus far.

  • Posted Apr 23, 2007 5:16 pm PT
  • Category: Games
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• 29Mar 07

  2-degrees of separation

  So I'm sitting at work the other day, in my office in the suburbs of Sydney, and my boss who knows I'm a bit of a gaming afficiando comments that he recently got an email from an ex-student of his (he used to be a teacher not so long ago). Seems she's picked up a job with a game devloper in the UK somewhere or something, and he thought I'd be interested to hear. I am of course, and so I casually ask which company, wondering whether I've heard of them or if (more likely) they're some small start-up making retro games for mobile handsets. Anyway, my boss gets distracted by work, and I don't worry about it.

  Wednesday this week, the topic of games comes up in conversation, and I ask if my boss had a chance to look up the company this exstudent works for. He spends a few minutes combing his email, then fires me off a URL. The URL is a page from a mainstream media outlet in the US, singing the praises of what little they've seen of this new game called LittleBigPlanet.

  "She sent me this link. I can't seem to find the company name, but that's their new game." my boss says, obviously not grasping the significance of this game appearing in mainstream news.

  I proceed to lift my jaw off the desk, and explain to him that not only was this game one of Sony's two big announcements at GDC this year, but just that day I'd been reading Insomniac's Brian Hastings write up on why he thinks PS3 will succeed, in which he gives that game excessive praise, I believe devoting a whole point just to it. Basically, I explain, this game is a big deal right now.

  At this point, based on my boss's age and what little I know about his career background, I assume this exstudent must be younger then me, so surely she won't be too high up the hierachy over at Media Molecule. I mean, I assume she went to uni, and that she must have had some prior industry experience, so to cram that all in to the timeframe I'm predicting, she must be like... a receptionist, right? Or a code monkey? Maybe one of many graphic designers?

  "Here she is," says my boss, quoting from their website "Siobhan - Madame producer who shall shippeth our game on time to great acclaim."

  She's the PRODUCER. I collapse in a heap of astonishment and undirected admiration. My boss swivels around in his chair.

  "Did you want me to put you in contact with her? I'm just replying now."

  I quickly regain what little sembelence of non-game-fanboy-ism I can muster, and reply:

  "Nah, that's cool. I was just curious."

   

  Anyway, end story. However, I would like to mention at this point that getting a job in games has been something I've wanted to do for ages, and the smart and proactive thing for me to do may have been to get my boss to put me in contact, and then ask her how she got where she is. From here to over there making a game that is now so eagerly anticipated by (most of) the gaming community at large. How do you even do that? I personally don't know, aside from perhaps selling my organs for the cash to buy a politician who would make it law that I be allowed to work for whatever gaming company I choose. So I'm sure that her way is a lot better then mine, based purely on that last idea. Hence it might have been smart to know about it.

  Then I remember the reason that I've taken all of the jobs I've taken thus far is not because I want to do the work that I'm doing. I do them so that I have a means to look after my family, and keep doing the non-work stuff I love doing. So maybe games wouldn't be the best industry for me. I hear they work ludicrous overtime and stuff. So hey - if anyone knows of a game company who work 40 hours or less a week, are flexible about working hours and time off and stuff, and love doing non-work stuff at least as much as they like doing work stuff, then i'd love to hear about it. Also, a tree that grows money or a flying pig would be nice too.

  • Posted Mar 29, 2007 9:00 pm PT
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