Of course this is about the 3DS price drop. Wow. For those that haven't seen it, you can get the news from anywhere that does news... It dropped $80, and early adopters are being rewarded with VC games that maybe cost Nintendo a cent to give away. I have to say my one thing about Nintendo and I'll be done... I learned with Nintendo from the Wii, GBA, and DS is don't every buy anything at release, or near to it a minimal 1 - 2 years waiting is mandatory before I buy any hardware from Nintendo these days. With the Wii, I got it fairly early... everyone that got it later got better controllers, better straps, better support... what did I get? the free browser that I never use. The DS? If I would have been right at the start I would have got a phat. Instead I got a lite with good battery life and more. The GBA, same thing. Does anyone really wonder if the 3DS isn't going to do the exact same thing? The Wii U? You better believe they will. As such if it is such an amazing system it will be ready for me in a few years - after they are done beta testing it on early adopters. Not only will the games be cheaper, but the battery life will be better, and form factor improved and I'll have more selection... or it will die before I get to it. Either way, I come out ahead having not risked on the early adoption gamble.

No it isn't upgrading the hardware, or configuration files for getting the hardware to work right. It isn't the DRM either... it is the default keyboard keys for the games. It isn't hard to fix, but really who in the heck thought moving forward with 'W' was a good idea? Lets all take a step back for a second and talk ergonomics and PC gaming. What finger do you use to move forward in PC games? It is your left middle finger right? OK, now put your hands on home-row as if you were going to type something... where is the middle finger? On 'D', now move it up... 'E'... Not 'W'. Every PC game without fail has me need to open up the keyboard commands and customize them all one to the right. Every key, shifted one over. Why? Because I refuse to cave into putting my hands on a keyboard like someone that doesn't even know how to use the keyboard. By having 'W' as the up key you have to shift you hand one key to the left. This reduces the amount of keys you can hit without shifting your hands. 'T' and 'G' are just one out of reach... there is a reason keyboarding 101 (in elementary or middle-school) teach you to keep your left index finger on 'F' chances are your keyboard even has a little bump or line on the F and J key to remind you this is where people that know what a PC is keep their index fingers. PC gaming on the other hand gets it wrong right from the start... Without fail the first thing I do with EVERY PC game is find the options, and move every key to the right by one key. You would think after all these years people would have started putting in two modes, one that is called 'Lame Legacy' that has the movement keys W,A,S,D and the other, 'Not a tool' that set it up on E,S,D,F... Nope. I think the only reason this bothers me so much is I'm still installing all of the games I got during the Steam Summer Camp sale and I'm still shifting all the keys over every new game I install. Wow. Anyhow, Portal 2 is great by the way. $25, that was a deal worth not passing on.

Have I mentioned how I hate steam? I hate it because I'm still buying games that go on sale for 75% off. There is no way I would ever buy a full priced digital download, but steam takes all those $20 games and makes them $5... for that I'm willing to have a digital copy. But then they get the bright idea to take $10 games and make them $2.50... Man, another 5 more games bought for the grand total of $21. The problem is all of these games I install, play for an hour or so and then shift back to the ones I really really like. I have 30 something steam games now, after only 5 months or so, and only 3 games I have played for more than 3 hours... But like I said, at $2.50 it doesn't take much to decide I like it or not and move on without worrying about how much return on my investment I got. I have been able to try out some games enough to realize I don't really care for them, others enough to know I might come back and play it sometime. Anyhow, if you like PC gaming you should try some of these games out. Just head over to the store and happy shopping. If you don't like the indie games or less expensive ones, most publishers catalogs are selling for 25-33% off right now... -------- On a side note, this is how I know the console generation is near death (for me that is). I found I go on cycles where a new console comes out and I buy it, play it and then get bored, I move on to another console... eventually all the consoles are old and I move back to PC gaming.

So, is there anything to talk about other than the Wii U? Here's my take on it, for better or worse: 1. It streams to the controller what is on the TV screen. Cool. Finally when I'm heading to bed I don't have to play iPhone or DS games if I don't want instead I can stream my console to it. 2. Going along with #1, it means I can play a console game and still be in the same room as the TV watching people. Much better. 3. It doesn't act as a portable device - This is disturbing to the point I think they really screwed up with this one. I'm assuming this controller is going to cost $100 or so. They could have really done something about that by integrating in the 3DS as a controller for the Wii U. Buy one, get another controller for Wii U. I'm sure some games will still be limited to Wii U specific features (Touch screens and the like) but they should have made this work better. 4. They didn't talk much about the controller being a multiplayer view into the same game. They mentioned that the person with the controller is usually 'against' other people in the room and have different perspectives. This leads me to wonder about horsepower. The reason online is huge and local multiplayer continues to die is because it is hard to render all the views in the same console / screen. Because of #3, the controller doesn't have any processing power... meaning local multiplayer will continue to be gimped. 5. Fully back-compatible with the Wii. This is a win. It means games can still be developed for both if they so desire (at some level). It also means my Wii, which is starting to sound pretty sick is going to get an upgrade instead of a replacement when it dies (if it lasts that long). 6. It is HD. If I cared for that I would care. What it really means though is X360 / PS3 / Wii U cross platform development. I never saw the need for a X360 and a PS3 other than exclusives one way or the other. With the Wii U I can probably put my X360 to rest (other than Rock Band of course) seeming it will get the same games. * fingers crossed * 7. It appears they are readying the console with a Super Smash Brothers sequel at release or close to it. They mentioned it being 3DS and Wii U compatible... maybe #3 and #4 will be solved and announced with this over the next year. 8. They showed NSMB Mii... First off, Mii's suck. Everyone had fun creating one once on the Wii, but it was tedious and I don't know a soul who still cares about them. They integrate them into their games - fine. Back to the topic though, they didn't demo this but if they made each Wii U controller contain a users screen for the level being played we have a winner. NSMB Wii is frustrating because it is forcing everyone to stay on the same screen. For example, castle levels suffer from "too fast, player at the bottom dies" syndrome that still haven't been fixed since Contra on the NES. Allowing each controller to see their own area around them and remove that constraint would be an epic win. Here's hoping the Wii U has the processing power to make it happen. 9. Price point. Really this is all that is going to matter for my family when it comes down to it. If it is $400 I'll have to wait (pending more info). If it is $300, that's pushing it and some of my other concerns will have to be wrapped up first. At $200-$250 I'd probably buy that out of the gate. All in all, they showed a lot of flash and it looks really exciting. It is applicable uses that I'm still worried about. My #1 question isn't answered, "Local multiplayer". If they give me the Online play featuers for local multiplayer I'll pay $500 for that. Imaging a Burnout (or racing game) that we all play together, locally - without the Online strangers and swear-holes... Image sports titles, FPS (local multiplayer without split screen problems)... This is what would sell me day one. Color me impressed though. Finally something in the Gaming industry to be excited for again.

This is going to be a short blog. After watching about 30 minutes of the press conference I turned it off and went back to doing something useful with my life. Kinect control of TV, Movies, FPS, 'gun customization', and more I realized it all demos really well, but it would do the following to me mentally: 1. Annoy me: "Xbox, Home" - "Xbox, Movies", yeah this is great and all, but once you are in there then what? "Xbox, play Castle", no I don't think so it would then probably force me to do the hover junk with it. Yuck, I hate Kinect. 2. Just watching they guy hunched over in the FPS reloading with massive arm swipes and attempting to aim... it just looked uncomfortable and lame. He did the expand and changing of gun parts and it just looked flashy but I couldn't fathom this being any more fun than doing it with a controller. "Customize - Close range"... how about "Xbox - get lost". And then there is Mass Effect 3. I can now 'Say' the dialog wheel... WOW... or I can tell my teammates to move up and fall back... but see the problem is they then do what they think I meant. With a controller I point to the spot and tell them - Go right there. Much less chance the moronic AI would get that wrong. I don't know the Kinect inclusion just looked horrible, and unfortunately it drags down with it my enthusiasm for playing it. This just isn't cutting it. I'll already admit, other than playing RB3 my Xbox gets hardly any use at my home. Unfortunately they have moved past what I want a game console to do. I doubt they will ever turn back so I don't think I'm going to worry about the Microsoft stuff moving forward.

Well, I continue to play games, just not talk about them as much. It is amazing how switching to older games immediately makes online chat mostly irrelevant. It must be because it isn't new that there aren't enough people wanting to talk about the games anymore - the new is all anyone really wants to discuss. Probably the 'been there done that' mentality of talking about games. So in the last month or so my games have been pretty diverse - well at least I think so. I played Borderlands through again with a different character and with someone in multiplayer. Honestly I think it is a brilliant FPS. It makes me feel like I'm playing the FPS's of the past where it was more about pushing through the levels and shooting stuff than unlocking stuff, or competition. It is a 'relaxing' shooter I guess - as relaxing as shooting stuff can be I guess. I didn't like the multiplayer that much though. Everyone said playing with someone takes the game to the next level, but really for me it took the game to a different level. One were the game pace was based on everyone playing it instead of just me. As a group we felt pressured to keep pushing forward instead of looking at the loot we got (one thing both of us really like to do). And the way to play it didn't change that much, only now there was a bit of lag. It also was pretty much required that we were close in character level... which means you can't play on the side. You either play together the whole time or else one will get too far ahead. I've seen similar cases with Diablo. It seems like a lot of fun multiplayer speaking, but when it comes down to it, it has to be a habit for everyone in the group or it isn't even worth playing as a multiplayer game. Next up, I rebought my lost Advance Wars Dual Strike. While the story is piss poor, something they improved with Day of Ruin, there is a lot to do in this game. I really want to compare them to each other but each has their strength. I think I still prefer Day of Ruins strategy, but I prefer the leveling up system in Dual Strike and the method for unlocking new things. Regardless, Advance Wars as a game series is probably in my top franchises of all time. Also I started playing Fire Emblem Path of Radiance again (I must be in a turn based mood). I must be the only one that plays Fire Emblem like this but if I lose a character or even a visit for the map I start the map over. I got through the first 10 levels fast enough, but now I spend some extra time getting everything just right. The next thing that annoys me is I like to level up more than one set of characters during the game. So as soon as some get too far ahead I bench them and bring in someone else. If you play the game you will know this ups the difficulty a lot because if you aren't leveled you don't hit as hard and then it is even harder to level them up if they don't kill anyone. I'm probably playing it wrong. Fire Emblem caters to the hardcore strategist, but I really think their difficulty levels need some tweaking. Permadeath needs to go in all but the 'insane' difficulty level. At least make it so people can get injured, benched, and then get back out in the fray in a few levels again. Or make it so permadeath is possible only if the enemy hacks up the fallen character during the battle or something. Another idea is make 'mulligans' for the game. Where you can go back 'X' number of turns based on difficulty. That way you don't have to play the whole level over again for one little mistake. Anyhow, there are a million ways to make Fire Emblem (and other TBS) games more accessible. If they did, more people might actually play them. Other games, I'm playing a iOS game called Stickman Golf. I think it is a very fun 2D puzzle game, where golf is the theme of course. It is a pretty fun game though the levels are getting ridiculously hard now. As with all iOS games I downloaded it during the 'free-app-day' that happens every week with a different game. I haven't purchased a iOS game since I realized iOS games weren't worth paying for. There are enough free games, and good ones, that there is no rush to pay for them. About every two weeks there is a game worth downloading to try out, which will get you to the next free game. Another game is Steam had a sale (I know right) on Trackmania United / Forever bundle. TM Forever is free, I have played it to death and always wanted to get United but it still retails at $40 for how old it is. Well Steams 75% sale dropped it into my budget and I picked it up too. If you have tried Trackmania Forever you should, it is free you know. The whole point is race from start to finish as fast as possible. No collisions, no battling a rubberbanded AI this game is purely race strategy. How you take a corner and maintain speed is all that matters.

Each race also only lasts 30 seconds to a minute or so about, so you get to race new and different stuff often enough and this is one reason this game really stands out. How many tracks does Forza have? Need for Speed? They claim to have "60"ish but really they have 10 or so with variants of 'Forward', 'Backward', 'Mirrored', or an additional loop tacked on here or there to increase the length. These get really boring to me. Great, same track different car. Myself personally I like to have one car I love to drive and then play lots of different tracks. Trackmania delivers on that. It is all about the skill of your driving an less on how to tweak your car for each race. I'm also pushing my way through Final Fantasy IV on the DS (the remake) again. I'm over half-way right now. I don't know exactly what draws me to this game above the other FF's but I replay this every couple of years. I know this time I started playing because I wanted to play 'The After Years' once I finish it up again. I hear it got slammed and wasn't worth playing, but screw the media. I've come to the conclusion the media is wrong for me. I don't want Halo, CoD or 'generic' M rated game so I'll play what I want instead. I'm looking forward to the after years. And lastly Rockband 3. I never really stop playing that. When I like to listen to music at home, I usually just pop this in and play along with it. Now if only the music was better. I haven't seen a song on the DLC list that I wanted in months. So, Advance Wars, Borderlands, Fire Emblem, Stickman Golf, Trackmania, FF IV, RB3... yep, that pretty much covers it. The interesting thing is the DS, Wii, X360, PC, and iPhone all getting pretty good use at the same time. You know, I'm going to do a Top X list again. Maybe look for it in the future.

I'm on vacation all this week using the company condo. Upon arrival one of the first things I noticed was the Kinect attached to the TV in the living room. It looked like I would finally get my chance to experience Kinect... Honestly the only game that looked somewhat fun up to this point was Dance Central, I know my wife would love it, I would probably tolerate it for her. But there was no way I would spend $210 just to try it out (150 Kinect + 60 game). Of course they have a few games to go with it, one of them was dance central. Of course when time came to play some games at night, that was the first one in the tray. It was really fun actually... then it started to wane, by hour 2 I was sick of it, my wife still likes it though. Kinect Adventures got put in the next time we played. The reaction times with some of the games was poor. And the mini-games weren't much fun either. My 8 and 5 year old liked them though. I spent most of the time looking at it wondering how the hell they masked these activities as games and got it to pass as ok. River rafting where you spend most of the time not in the river... playing 3D breakout with balls that bounce against you and fly to the end... The obstacle course was a bit more fun at times than the Wii Fit equivalent, but still fairly laughable as a 'game'. I then tried out MotionSports. This pile of dross is just a waste. It makes sense it does have Ubisoft on the box, maker of find garbage and 3rd party trash. (sorry, Ubisoft fans...) We also have joy-ride we could try out, but I have no desire to put it in. Holding my hands out pretending to move a virtual steering wheel in a avatar nightmare just doesn't make me jump with excitement at all. My wife put in Dance Central again today and I decided to take a nap instead. Poor Kinect, you didn't even keep me entertained for a week...

EA is having sales all this week. So far they have had Dragon age, NFS, The Sim, Mass Effect, and now Crysis all on sale. I'm tempted to pick up Crysis for $10... is it worth is? hum, maybe I will, but of course I still haven't played Bioshock 2 that I got recently. I'm pretty sure I'll just skip it, the sales will come around again sometime anyhow. I did pick up PC copies of both Mass Effects. Then I realized ME2 doesn't come with any of the DLC, so I guess I should have just held off and got the platinum edition when it comes.Oh well, $7.50 wasted I guess... who knows, maybe they never will release the full expansion pack. I also picked up an Indie game called Universe Sandbox for $8. It is actually a really cool universe simulator. You have to see it to believe it really. It has a lot of preset 'levels' that have the current orbital balance for the solar system, local galaxies, stars, etc... and then you can change stuff. Ever wondered what would happen if the sun exploded, or the earth got bombarded with asteroids to a pulp, how would that affect other planets and such? All sorts of nerdy crap like that. It is a fun to play with diversion. I've been chugging through Borderlands again, that I also had bought on steam a few weeks ago for $7.50. Almost at the end again. Working through Max Payne, so I can get to playing Max Payne 2 (which I never had) and someday I'll get back to Bioshock 2 for the first time. I also finally started playing Eternal Darkness, which I had bought on the Wii a couple of years ago. It is pretty fun so far - puzzle horror thing that is pretty fun. I also picked up something for my DS, but I'm still waiting for it to arrive. And I'm working through Advance Wars DS for a second time. The best part of having all these games is when my moods change I have the perfect game to cure the itch.

Taken from comments I found on Gamasutra: [QUOTE="Some dude with a fake name said"]"Nintendo president Satoru Iwata told Bloomberg News, "We would like to propose a new approach to home video game consoles" with the Wii successor. He added, "It's difficult to make 3-D images a key feature, because 3-D televisions haven't obtained wide acceptance yet." " "Combine that with rumors about dual analog sticks and 6" touchscreen? And streaming games to the controller? Is the home console going to act like a server? And everyone will have their own personal controller/screen? This way you can buy a game for $10, for example, from Nintendo's online service. And it can be played by anyone in the house even at the same time on devices that only cost as much as a relatively cheap touchscreen controller. Streamed from console to controller. A home networking On-Live setup. A system with 3 or 4 cores each with perhaps more power than the Wii's cpu would seem to be able to play right into this setup. Possibly would also work on 3ds. Also possible for new types of gameplay. Easy setup of multiplayer where no one can see your screen. TV screen could be used as scoreboard and other more creative aspects. This would be in addition to traditional gameplay. There's also the 3d streaming to controller angle of course. Where would the 3ds would fit into this speculation? Not sure.

THAT! would be awesome. Instant DS multi-card play, via the controllers, for local multi-play. The catch the DS always has had with my family is I have to buy 4 copies of a game to play it with everyone, that's lame... and my kids absolutely love the iPhone stuff (it is simple pick up and put down sort of stuff) and it would be a blast to play those little games with them, but I can't afford 4 iPhones or iTouches for everyone either.

Regardless, the awesome I would get out of local-multiplay from this idea would be amazing. I actually would buy one of these on day one release. Even if all it had was another Mario clone. Image New Super Mario Bro's Wii without the annoying pauses and screen limitations that you get all playing these games on the same TV. If the controller truly has 8 buttons again and actually fits in my hand, the touch portion would be limited to a few things here or there... ah, the awesomeness continues. Point out that the 3DS 'is the controller', or one of the options to control into the Wii 2 and now I have a reason to get a 3DS (didn't have one before that's for sure), because I think it would be fun to get my Wii 2 control and games on the go at the same time... but that would require the 3DS to drop in price a lot... anyhow, thoughts? This is definitely the best idea I have heard about the Wii 2 so far. Online? don't care. HD? well, that's a given, but HD doesn't make a game. 3D? pass. Touch controller? pass. But the thought of Nintendo maybe staying focussed on local multiplayer has me all happy again.

Well this week I finally bought some games on Steam. I had bought Half-Life a year or so ago when it was Free or $.99 (can't remember which), but I haven't been one to play games on my PC much because I kind of get sick of sitting at a computer all the time from work. But lets face it, most console games never get under $20 and $20 is starting to seem a little much for me at the end of the console cycle. Over the last two days I have bought Bioshock 1 and 2 and Borderlands + all the DLC for $17.50 - I already owned Bioshock on the Xbox, and Borderlands on the PC (but no DLC). Why buy it again? Well, I wanted to buy Bioshock 2. You can get it for $20 on the console. or $5 on the PC... no brainer there. But I like to play a series at a time, and I don't want to be bothered with playing on the Xbox for the first game, then the PC on the next. So I bought both and still saved $10. Works for me. Next, Borderlands was one of my favorite games on the PC in the last year. I don't know exactly why but I thought it was a great experience. I wanted the DLC. Well, today I could buy the DLC for $7.49 (all 4), or 3 of them for $7.47, or the game + the DLC for $7.50 (and not have to worry about the disc as long as steam stays in business)... No brainer again. And... I still saved $2.50 from if I only would have bought Bioshock 2 on a console. I like sales. Consoles never seem to have them anymore. Sales turn into price drops and price drops bottom out at $20 before you can't find them anymore. Downloading could work, if the price is right, but look at X-Live, is the price ever right? You can still pick up horse armor for the same price it was when they released it... give me a break. Thus I think I finally might be converting to Steam. They understand what a sale is. They also understand what it means for a game to age a bit and actually cost less. Given the fact they never run out of copies (seeming it costs nearly nothing to host bits) then I think there is a price that is right for downloadable games.

I will still buy physical copies from time to time I'm sure, but this will let me trial and toss more than I have in the past. Who knows, maybe I'm swinging back to PC gaming for the time being at the same time.