• 26Sep 09

  2009: The Year of Cancellations

  As far as gaming is concerned, the cancellations are just piling up. The latest? Looks like it's Alpha Protocol, delayed till Summer '10. In the beginning of the year, many were getting excited for Starcraft 2 and possibly Diablo 3 if they were lucky, only to be sorely disappointed. With D3, it looks like we'll be waiting until 2011, since Blizzard most likely won't put out more than 2 titles in one year. Last week we saw STALKER Call of Pripyat get delayed for us in North America (and England) after a press release stated it would only be coming to Germany and Russia this year. That was probably the most disappointing for me personally. Before all of this, we heard that Bioshock 2, Singularity, BF1943(PC), Jumpgate Evolution(no word on Beta either), BF Bad Company 2, Mafia 2, Huxley, Alan Wake and Mass Effect 2 were all getting pushed back into 2010.

  While that's a lot of games, maybe we'll see a more even release schedule for 2010, and not the typical sloooww Winter/Spring we've seen in years past. Maybe the summer of 2010 won't be as painful either, from a gaming perspective of course. On top of all this, we still have a great ARPG coming called Torchlight at the end of October, CoD6 of course, Dragon Age, Left4Dead2 and a few others. What's missing from the list? HL2 Ep3, which we'll hopefully hear about after LFD2 releases. 2010 could turn out to be another 2004/2007 where there were plenty of releases to froth over. Let's hope.

  • Posted Sep 26, 2009 8:12 pm PT
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• 7Jan 09

  A sad day for 1up

  To anyone that follows and loves 1up, this is as you know is a very sad day. The 1up Yours Podcast and Show were two of the best video game related podcast/shows I loved, and the people that were let go were of true talent. I really hope they all come together and form their own site. Time will tell.

  It was hard enough when CGW turned to GFW(MS Advertising) and then went down, and then the departure of my favorite editors of the Magazine(Elliot, Green, Gladstone, and Malloy), and now to see Ryan and the rest of the 1up family almost all gone now, it's a really sad day for the community. The new PC LAN party podcast was really starting to catch on, but as far as what they are saying, ALL of the production team was let go. The 1up show producers and editors and talent were amazing week in and week out. That was true talent, and the people behind the scenes are most often forgotten.

  RIP 1up. I will still give it a shot, but the site lost so much of it's personality(ie..People), I'm not sure how to spin this in my head that it's a good thing.

  Just another reminder to enjoy the moment, because you never know when it's all going to crash. This recent mass firing at 1up reminds me of the Jeff G debacle last year, and in my opinion, the only thing GS has left in it that I care about is the people I know that still come here, not the editorial. I don't base my buying decisions at all on these reviewers, but I once did. That degraded over the years here, but at 1up, and especailly for the PC side of 1up, their reviews were my favorite, and always far more proactive in their reviews and preivews, I LOVED their writing to put it plainly.

  Although I like some here at GS that never left(the few there is left), the personality of this site's editorial left little by little until the big blow up, and then the mass exodus. I'm just hoping that the peeps at 1up go on to do what Jeff and Company did with the Giantbomb. 1up had that very great chemistry of people that was really unique, and while I want all of them to find another place to call home, I would love for them to get their own deal going, together. We need more indie sites out there, it's better for all of us.

  Peace.

  • Posted Jan 7, 2009 7:45 pm PT
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• 21Dec 08

  Mouse and Keyboard on Consoles.I'm thinking for certain in the Next-Gen

  From my experience, "once a PC gamer, always a PC gamer", even if you only play console games at one point, that gamer will ALWAYS gravitate towards PC Like games on Consoles(just look at all the traditional PC titles on console today, especially the 360).

  Even though you will eventually get used to a controller to a certain extent where you WILL be able to play games at some comfort, it will never replace the mouse and keyboard, especially if you've been primarily a PC Gamer your whole life. It's a shame, you'd think AND hope that MS would include M/K support for their next console, I'd be all over that. Make it a standard option to chose from as well as gamepads of course(In racing games, we can play with a pad or a wheel, same sort of decision), and let us decide what we want to use. There are some really great lap pads out too that work well(since you wouldn't even need a full sized keyboard), and I see no reason at all to IGNORE a huge segment of the population that prefer M/K as the peripheral of choice. I know there are third party perifs to convert gamepad to M/K, but all of the ones I've used have been sub par at best.

  Not only will it bring in more gamers, it will sell a ton of official peripherals for them too, and add further revenue. For Multiplayer games, separate them, or allow mixed P2P games, it would just be up to the host. As we see on XBL, this would be something easily done.

  I think for sure, with the fact that the Xbox and PS are basically home theater PC's, (lets be honest here), I wouldn't be surprised if we see peripheral options in the next wave somewhere from someone. We already saw the Wii make a bold move, let's see what MS and Sony come up with. It would also solve the RTS and MMO dilemma on console(lack of inputs is all), which is pointless since they BOTH have USB connections! UT3 on PS3 proved they could do it and I'd like to see more of it in future FPS's like Killzone, talk about winning a segment of the Population over....

  • Posted Dec 21, 2008 9:12 pm PT
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