Chinese Company Tencent to Show Microsoft How It’s Done
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/14/16 at 03:23 PM CT
Between 2000 and 2014, videogame consoles were banned in China, which is ironic considering they are all made in that last bastion of functioning Communism. It seems that psychotic Chinese parents lived up to the ‘Tiger Mom’ stereotype and demanded that their country’s government ban electronic gaming devices due to their potential for corrupting the youth and wasting precious brain power.
Whether the Tiger Moms have a point is neither here nor there. What is interesting is that the Chinese holding firm that owns a huge portion of China’s booming PC gaming market (because, of course, the government couldn’t ban PC use when they temporarily shut down consoles), Tencent, has recently decided to throw their hat into the console arena now that the ban has been lifted. And the way they’re going about their foray into consoles should make Microsoft sit-up and take notice.
Tencent will be producing the TGP, a Windows 10-powered console with the company’s own custom …
Nintendo NX to Return Cartridges to the Living Room?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/08/16 at 05:42 PM CT
The rumor mill is currently churning away to itself, working on half-baked “facts” coming out of a very tight-lipped Nintendo about their upcoming platform, codenamed NX. With Nintendo foolishly all but skipping E3 this year and supposedly launching the NX in March 2017, the rumor mill is willing to take any minor thread and run with it.
The thread with the most immediate interest is that the NX will supposedly be a discless platform. A few months ago when the term “discless” started floating around, people immediately began jumping to the conclusion that the NX would follow in the ill-fated footsteps of Sony’s PlayStation Portable GO and be a digital only platform. This line of reasoning was supplanted this past week with a new idea: Nintendo won’t be taking a bold misstep into an all-digital future, but will be taking an even bolder step backwards into a time when game consoles and game cartridges were gaming’s proverbial bread and butter.
Nintendo famously held …
Backlog: The Embiggening – May, 2016
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/30/16 at 01:59 PM CT
Time for another painful look into the not-so-distant future! May signals the end of Spring and the beginning of the long, dry months of the Summer Game Drought. Before things wither away completely, devs and publishers are gracing us with one last diarrheal splatter of moisture before clamping shut until Holiday 2016.
Shovelware is back from its hiatus. In May, we’re getting a new ‘One Piece’ game based on the hideously-drawn anime/manga, and a new ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ game based on Chris’ favorite series of action figures from the mid 1990s… but more likely based on the recent series of Megan Fox movies.
Ports and remasters are still showing no signs of going away, or even slowing down. In May, every platform that ‘matters’ is getting a compilation remaster of the ‘Dead Island’ games (Chris would love that… if he hadn’t already played all of them), while the PS4 is living up to the title ‘PortStation’ with a remaster of the ‘Adam’s …
Sixense STEM Delayed Until Q2/Q3 2016, Hopefully for the Last Time
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/23/16 at 03:02 PM CT
April 2016 is almost over, and I have been waiting with bated breath for more news about the much-delayed Sixense STEM motion controller – the wireless, VR-ready successor to my beloved Razer Hydra. Unfortunately, no news was forthcoming, and in the case of hardware/software development, no news is usually not good news.
I emailed Steve Hansted, Sixense’s Business Development Director and sender of STEM update emails, and asked him what was up. Here’s the reply:
“Late last year, the STEM System passed all the required FCC tests with good margins and is now ready to enter into production (details below). But, as the final engineering and testing took longer than we had originally anticipated, we’ve missed our scheduled production slot. The current schedule from our CM (contract manufacturer) has STEM Systems coming off the line and starting to ship at the end of this month (author’s note: April 2016).
It’s been a long ride, obviously longer than anticipated and …
Open Windows: It’s Time, Microsoft
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/16/16 at 03:04 PM CT
Ever since its beginnings as a GUI frontend for IBM’s PC-DOS, Microsoft’s Windows operating system has been the dominant platform running on personal computers. To this day, Microsoft is the biggest provider of OSes for non-mobile devices. However, where Microsoft once held over 90% of the market, their current numbers (according to Wikipedia) hovering around 85% of the market is a noticeable drop. Among developers, this percentage is even lower, at 52%.
For gamers specifically, DOS and Windows have always been the only two operating systems that mattered. Apple’s Macs have never been particularly gamer friendly (though iOS is very popular as a time-wasting platform among non-gamers), and Linux on the Desktop is nothing more than a long-running joke at the expense of an open source OS that has never managed to garner a double-digit market percentage. Valve may be working toward the goal of a gamer-centric, Linux-based open gaming platform with SteamOS, but I don’t think …
Valve Makes VR Look Great with HTC Vive
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/10/16 at 03:08 PM CT
Steam’s parent company, Valve, is pushing ahead with promotional material for the Virtual Reality Headset they co-developed with HTC. The HTC Vive, a not-so-bargain-priced headset and motion controller combo, breaks the bank at $799, which is significantly more expensive than both the ruined-by-Facebook Oculus Rift and Sony’s PlayStation VR (formerly known as Morpheus).
In an attempt to show potential buyers just how nifty VR can be, Valve arranged for some play testers to try out a Vive in a green screen room, thus allowing spectators who aren’t actually wearing the headset to see the person playing the demo games embedded within the game environments. The results look incredibly immersive.
Unfortunately, the way things are looking now, the Vive will really only work with games designed for it. Sure, it would be very easy to remap older games’ inputs to use the Vive’s motion controllers, but the core features of head tracking and independent head/body movement …
Backlog: The Embiggening – April, 2016
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 04/01/16 at 01:58 PM CT
April’s fools are out in droves, feverishly pre-ordering (or importing the Asian version) “King’s Field 8,” while simultaneously forming masturbatory circle-jerks in order to prepare their e-peens for the raw rubbing that game will give them. For the rest of us, April looks like yet another month of bland crap… except for 3DS owners, who will be seeing the most interesting single month of releases since the thing launched. The other upside of April is that every platform will be getting at least one exclusive! Yay?
No traditional shovelware again this month. An optimist would take this dearth as a sign that publishers have finally decided that preying on the fans of a given IP with a terrible game isn’t the best way to win a reputation… but I’m not an optimist. The only shovelware coming in April is an annual ‘R.B.I. Baseball’ release.
To make up for the lack of traditional shovelware, plenty of devs and pubs are shoveling games from platform to platform via …
He’s Everywhere! 10 Videogame Characters that Remind Me of Chris
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/27/16 at 03:45 PM CT
When you are best friends with someone for a quarter of a century, you really get to know them. And, as is universally known, familiarity breeds contempt. As only children, MeltedJoystick’s Community Manager (and database slave), Chris and I are practically brothers, so some good-natured brotherly ribbing is not unexpected… especially when someone seems to go out of their way to be as bizarre as Chris. My familiarity with his idiosyncratic looks and habits has conditioned me to see Chris-ness and Chris-like behavior everywhere, from the Warhammer Fantasy universe’s Squigs to Universal Pictures’ Minions to “Southpark’s” Eric Cartman. I often see these resemblances in videogame characters as well. Inspired by my recent exposure to the number one character on the following list, and in honor of Chris’ birthday at the beginning of March, I’m mildly-annoyed to present a Belated Birthday Roast for MeltedJoystick’s favorite indistinct lump. I only used one rule in …
Upgradable “Consoles” are the Logical Next Step
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/20/16 at 03:42 PM CT
The world of gaming news and rumors has been blowing up this past week due to rumors coming from sources exclusive to the debased Gawker Network regarding the potential release of an updated PlayStation 4 revision that is not only different in form (like all of the PlayStation console revisions of prior generations) but different in functionality, supposedly with much higher capabilities than the PlayStation 4 that released in 2013. This theoretical PlayStation 4.5 rumor follows in the footsteps of other rumors circling the Xbox One and its own alleged Revision.
While these rumors encircling the 8th Gen consoles should be taken with a grain of salt, Nintendo, being the closest thing to an innovator in the current console market, has already successfully (more or less) tested the public’s willingness to re-buy the same console with a minor update, though in Nintendo’s case the word “console” should be replaced with “handheld.” Both the DS and 3DS have received mid-life …
Xbox on Windows 10: Microsoft Does Everything Wrong
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 03/13/16 at 02:59 PM CT
I have been extoling the virtues of the death of Xbox as a line of consoles and its rebirth as a dedicated gaming platform within the Windows operating system for years. With Windows 10, it seemed that Microsoft finally saw reason and decided to move toward merging Windows and Xbox into a single platform. Unfortunately, Microsoft is no longer a company that innovates, but is instead a company that mimics already-established technologies. And instead of mimicking Valve’s Steam or CD Projekt’s GOG, which are both loved by PC gamers, they decided to mimic Apple’s iTunes, which is hated by everyone with the least bit of technological savvy.
Microsoft’s job of uniting Windows and Xbox should have been painfully easy. Of course, Microsoft already tried (and failed) to create a unified PC gaming platform with the horrible always-online DRM known as Games for Windows LIVE, so they have a history of screwing-up the implementation of such things. Microsoft’s current debacle is the …
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