I've been thinking about this since this week's Hotspot. What does Gerstmann leaving mean?

Well, his departure itself is not the end of the world or a seismic event. There are a lot of talented people at Gamespot. I was sad when Carrie, Greg, Bob C, and Rich left. But people move on.

The problem, obviously, is the context in which Jeff left. The Hotspot's answers have been less than satisfying. I accept the extreme likelihood that forum discussions blew the Kane & Lynch conspiracy out of proportion, but as convincing as the excuse for taking down the video sounds, why was the text edited? That happens very rarely. And the reasons given for the edits are different from what we hear in other sources.

Who was the editor who anonymously posted on Valleywag (also quoted by Kotaku)? Ok, we can't know who it was as it would clearly cause that person to get fired, but that viewpoint doesn't seem to sit quite so well with what we heard on the Hotspot.

It's a disaster. The remaining staff are stuck with it. All they can do is take steps to make sure this never happens again, in their own words. The deal has been done, Gamespot can't ask CNET to go away. A new site set up by Gerstmann with a lot of ex-Gamespotters would be fantastic, but realistically they'd have a lot of trouble getting the finance in place to do even a fraction of what Gamespot does now.

So. What does it mean? For me, it means not being able to take a review seriously for a long, long time. It probably means opting out of the additional media (On the Spot, the Hotspot). That's particularly hard, as the Hotspot is one of my favourite things during the week. But I can't deal with it. The last episode (no longer ishdition) was little more than a cover-up. A cover-up driven by good intentions, and probably supported by Gerstmann himself, but a cover-up nonetheless. I will continue to come to the site, but more for user content now than ever.

Josh Larson has to go. That's the minimum. After that? The editorial staff can say what it likes, but it has effectively been cowed. This website will never be the same.

Dear Joshua,

Great work on your treatment of Jeff Gerstmann, just great. Have you any idea what you've done? You've ruined the site completely and done serious damage to your potential to make any money from people like me, who would typically check gamespot.com more than ten times a day, and get exposed to your precious advertising whether we liked it or not.

Do you realise how central Gerstmann was to the podcast and the weekly 'vodcast'? Do you realise that from this point on the reviews on the site will be seen as completely worthless?

You and your friends had a chance to make a lot of money from the site and do it in a way that would not have alienated a large section of the site's regular visitors. But hey, now you have a site with completely compromised ethics. You're free to offer advertising pricing based on reviews, with a 9.0 guarantee costing twice as much as an 8.0 and a special price for a 10.0; you can reach out to more casual 'gamers', and you can participate in ripping them off. Enjoy it.

If you're reading this, you can send him a message yourself here: http://www.imediaconnection.com/profiles/iMedia_PC_Overview.aspx?ID=3346

But please, if you do, keep it civil. A lot of us are upset, but writing somebody abusive e-mails only hurts our argument.

Well, this week anyway. Calm down, calm down. See the evidence for yourself here:

http://www.ukresistance.co.uk/2007/11/mass-suicides-at-sony-japan.html#comments

If you believe the good people at ukresistance. Which I do. What does this mean? Long term, it means nothing. The Xbox 360 is a disaster in Japan. It will continue to be a disaster. It just seems the Japanese aren't going to take. Maybe if Microsoft had pushed out Alan Wake in time for the launch window it could all have been so different.....

I used to live in Taiwan, which is essentially an extension of the Japanese market (or at least is treated so, particularly by Nintendo). I got back into console video gaming because the Halo edition Xbox was selling for virtually nothing brand new and the games were half the price they are in the States, which is significantly cheaper than what you pay back in Ireland. The Xbox was cheap because it was irrelevant. People did not see it as a games device. The Playstation, on the other hand, was ubiquitous. This is proving true in Europe as well and has to be a given in Japan. In short, the Xbox 360 will not even come close to selling the units that the PS3 will.

But this has to be symbolic, doesn't it? Sony took a sure thing and did their best to ruin it for themselves by subjugating the PS3's main function as a gaming console to the mission to drive Blu-Ray onto unsuspecting masses. Resistance: Fall of Man aside, I'm hard-pressed to find a game on the PS3 I want to play that I can't play on the 360. With achievement points, no less. The market wasn't ready for a six hundred dollar console Sony. Learn to live with it.

The new price point makes sense. You actually get more out of the PS3 for $400 than you will out of the 360. Microsoft WILL eventually bring out a HD-DVD Xbox 360, thus screwing everyone who bought the standard model. The 360's lack of wireless connectivity out of the box, something the $250 Wii had since day one, is a disgrace. The 360 DOES have games, lots of them, and achievement points.

The PS3 has Home. Waste of time. It's just there to try and squeeze dollars out of you, in a creepier manner than Xbox Live does. Sony have made so many stupid mistakes and they can still stroll to 'victory' in this generation. There are a lot of PS2 owners out there who would find it easier to get a PS3 than to go out and switch to Microsoft. That has nothing to do with fanboy loyalty: $400 is a lot of money to spend on a machine that plays games, and people will go for familiarity every time.

Sony continues to jerk itself around of course. Where's the backwards compatibility on the new $400 model? Why would you buy a PS3 before they begin including controllers with rumble? Microsoft's commitment to backwards compatibility might be questionable, but how hard would it be to have individual patches for games the way Microsoft does? I don't own a PS2, I don't have room in my apartment for one at this stage (assuming the arrival of a PS3 in the not too distant future) and I want to play some of the landmark games for that system. Come on Sony! Give me a way to play the first two God of War games on my new PS3. I'm really not bothered about Bee Movie: The game.

That's where the temporary defeat to Microsoft comes in. It's symbolic. However brief, 360s outselling PS3s, in JAPAN, is major. If this doesn't wake Sony up, I can't think what will.

So when my Xbox 360 broke down with three flashing red lights at the beginning of August, I was upset but it wasn't the end of the world. Microsoft paid for shipping and repair, and actually sent me a replacement console, which I received three weeks after I first requested a repair. I get my Xbox back on Tuesday the 21st of August, I'm playing Bioshock, and everything is right in the world.

And then the Xbox, the new Xbox 360 I received from Microsoft as a replacement, freezes and I have three flashing red lights again. So yeah, I'm impressed. I call up, I ask about how to complain formally and I get offered a free game from a list of launch titles, now available new for $20-$30. Then they stall. And ask me to 'have a talk' about my favourite games, in some bizarre attempt to make me feel better.

I'm less than thrilled. My formal complaint, in writing (the good old-fashioned way), is going out tomorrow.

Observe:

 

UT creates video game archive.

 

Pretty excellent, though probably a bit late for me by the time this stuff comes together. In not so long I think videogames can become a pretty serious academic field, and although that will invite a lot of rubbish post-modern criticism it's bound to promote some good stuff as well.

 

 

The following is from the BBC website:

04-09-2007

Dimension Films co-chairman Harvey Weinstein told Reuters news agency that he was "disappointed" at the film's performance.

"Are we disappointed about the gross? I'd be lying to you if I said I wasn't. I am disappointed," he said.

Weinstein said the public is always demanding new moviegoing experiences, "and then it takes a while to educate them."

He added: "What Robert and Quentin did was a very noble
attempt to re-educate American cinema-goers as to what's good and what
was great about seeing those old double bills.

----

Mr. Weinstein, I will decide what I want to watch and no amount of 're-education' will change that. Since when did you get off sounding like Mao Zedong? I know a lot of people that are really looking forward to this movie but I personally think it looks like a bizarre mix of thinly veiled misogyny and more over-indulgence from a once-great director and his talented sycophant. I'm just going to say this, if Kurt Russell is in a movie it takes a lot for me to not want to watch it. I resent the assertion that the fact the movie has not done so well means the audience is wrong. Grow up Weinstein.

Sony UK Managing Director Ray Maguire:

Asked why Sony opted for the slightly peculiar price point of GBP 425 rather than rounding down past the psychological 400 barrier and going for GBP 399, Maguire said: "We did consider GBP 429, but we wanted to get the best for the consumer."

Brilliant. In fairness, the UK launch of the PS3 is providing some of the funniest quotes I've heard in months.

I bought my Xbox 360 in the US.

When I first turned it on I only had my European credit card. Hadn't joined a bank yet.

Didn't seem like an issue until I got settled and wanted to buy gold membership for Xbox Live. They wanted 60 Euro, which is significantly more than 50 dollars.

So the only solution was to create a new gamertag and account, and my save games, are GONE.  Which is a pain in the butt. And my little pathetic goal of getting to 2,000 points is wiped. Points are lost on me now.

Sigh. A word of warning for the massive demographic that is the "frequently moving gamers". 

Well, for once in my life I've been actively putting off updating something and not just doing it subconsciously. It's hard to justify adding an entry to a blog nobody reads on a game site without anything about games in it.

Except this: man I miss my Xbox 360. Table Tennis and Oblivion are calling me from across the Pacific and my current personal situation in Taiwan makes things all the more into the grass is greener vibes.  I'm rocking out on the PSP now and then but deeply regretting not bringing the DS Lite (what was I thinking? Although I haven't seen any chargers here either).  Irregular Hunter X is a pain in the ass and is reminding me why I was never that big into games as a kid, and why I enjoy closing Oblivion gates with the difficulty set shamefully low.

It's only a couple more days but already I've started work on a book, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, in Chinese. I'm sick of reading in English having ripped through Masters of Doom in a day and a bit. It's very good, incidentally. All preparation I suppose for the big one.

Well,

I think my idea of doing a video tour of Ximen Ding in Taipei showing the games shops with old Japanese Dreamcast titles and stuff was cool, but I brought the wrong memory card for my phone. Well done John.

I consoled myself however with a Japanese Megaman (Rockman really, I guess) game called Irregular Hunter X for the PSP. Which is Mega Man Maverick Hunter X. I still can't believe I didn't bring my DS to rock out on some rhythm games.