Gaming News

Filed under: Community

PS3 Fanboy would sincerely like to ask you to donate one question for all the suffering answers out in the world. It's sad to see so many answers out there without a proper question. So please, pick up the phone write us an e-mail and help us in our struggle. You can really make the difference.

Keep checking back every weekend -- we'll be sure to answer all intelligent, fun, and relevant questions that you may have. If you haven't asked us anything yet ... why haven't you? Send an e-mail to majed @ ps3fanboy.com with the subject "Ask PS3 Fanboy." We'd like to stress, if your e-mail doesn't include that subject heading, your question will not be answered. If you've got PSP-related questions, be sure to ask them on Ask PSP Fanboy.

Continue reading Ask PS3 Fanboy: Volume 13

Ask PS3 Fanboy: Volume 13 originally appeared on PS3 Fanboy on Sat, 22 Nov 2008 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

 

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

The Montreal International Game Summit recently wrapped up, and keynote speaker David Braben of Frontier Development really took the industry to task on everything from the business model (broken!) to retailers (killing longevity of games!) to the 'online myth' of the next gen consoles. He makes some interesting points, though I'm not at all convinced of the veracity of some of them. Here's his take on the retail model:

"As an industry, we're in denial about the problems with retail," Braben argued, citing a common myth that online distribution will become the norm in the coming generation.

"Retail is killing the longevity of our titles," he said, with the massive used game market contributing to the problem. "The industry sees none of this" when it comes to preowned sales.

Meanwhile, the retail film industry puts its new films front and center, and the stores in which movies are sold are often more attractive and inviting than game stores.

"What's worse, if you ask for a new release, they'll offer you a used one, and it's not even much cheaper," said Braben. "What it's doing as an industry, means the long tail, which is what games rely on, is going to go away. And relying on online is killing ourselves."

Braben suggested selling higher-priced copies of games to rental stores, then lowering the prices of not-for-resale copies — thus making new games more affordable for players, while introducing additional revenue streams for rentals.

"We can add value for people who have actually bought the game," he said — designers should come up with additional content that rewards those who buy games new.

Well, I'm not sure if his suggestions are necessarily going to fix things (certainly won't make it any easier on retailers), but Braben sounds pretty passionate and inflamed about a lot of these topics. It's a quick and pretty interesting read, even if you don't agree with his solutions.

MIGS: Frontier's Braben On Retailers 'Killing The Longevity' Of Games [Gamasutra]

This is big enough to warrant an update I think. Reader Shawn B. found, in the great Xbox Live Loot Bonanza, that you can in fact get your gold plated Gears of War 2 Lancer, for free, off XBL via the web. In fact. I just did it. Here's the URL.

The Gametop Premium Gears 2 theme also is up and downloadable. Remember, the account holder needs to be 18 years old.

The rest of my original post is on the jump.

Alert reader Chris J. just sent this in. Banjo-Kazooie (the original) officially hits Xbox Live Arcade on Wednesday, but it's been available for early download for those who preordered Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. Actually, it's available for everyone. Even though this is only up on the U.S. marketplace, right now "I've successfully downloaded it using a European account and it plays fine," writes Chris.

If you want it, just go to this URL, plunk down your 1200 Microsoft points, and hit "download to my Xbox." I assume. I've never bought XBL games off the web before. B-K clocks in at 48 MB.

Chris also points out you can get the Call of Duty: World at War add-on that was free if you pre-ordered it too. That's over here. So if raiding XBLA via the web is a pro tip that n00bs like me and others don't know, don't shoot the messenger, I'm just telling you what's available. And if you want either, run go get it before this all gets "fixed."

Update: Reader invisiblewok went through his download history to see if he could run some URLs and figure out how to get to the freebies via XBLA over the web. He did find the URL for the Gears of War 2 flashback maps pack — but at a cost of 99999 Microsoft Points.

HOWEVAH — some of you have pointed out the Left 4 Dead demo has disappeared from XBLA. Oh, really? Many of you now say you can't get to the Left 4 Dead demo. Sorry. Also, it sounds like your Xbox Live account's registered user has to be over 18 for you to do any web downloads.

Xbox LIVE Marketplace | Banjo-Kazooie [thanks Chris]

I've mentioned my love for the delightful How They Got Game, which catalogues some of the neat holdings of the Stanford Stephen M. Cabrinety Collection (among other things); now, they're getting some love from the Stanford alumni magazine, which highlights the Library of Congress 'Preserving Virtual Worlds' project (including, naturally, the Stanford initiative). Curator Henry Lowood discusses what Stanford is doing, and how, while Beth Dulabahn of the Library of Congress talks about why the LOC is behind all of this:

One of Lowood's recent additions to the virtual worlds archive is a short compilation of screenshots and video on the evolution of games from text adventures, in which game action was typed out descriptively, to graphically sophisticated titles.

Perhaps the most compelling footage shows an attack from Eve Online, a science fiction game. An array of small spaceships serving the “Goonswarm” alliance assaults a much larger ship from another group, while the audio track follows the frenzied barking of commands to keep up the pressure. When the large ship is destroyed, there is a cacophony of online voices shrieking in triumph.

How do events like that fit into the larger culture?

“The Library of Congress has always collected across a broad spectrum of content types and subjects, ranging from works of serious scholarship to icons of pop culture,” says Beth Dulabahn, director of integration management for the Library of Congress.

“Video games fit right in with that tradition. Besides showing us how society has entertained itself, they also provide a graphic picture of how technology itself has evolved over the decades.”

Nice short piece on a subject near and dear to my heart. Even though the initial grant runs out next year, I hope this is just the beginning for some really fantastic collections of gaming history.

Saving Worlds: Preserving the Digital and Virtual [STANFORD Magazine via How They Got Game]

At VanaFest, a Final Fantasy XI event in Japan, Square Enix announced three new expansion chapters coming to Final Fantasy XI. Furthermore, the FFXI character Shantotto was revealed to be a playable character in the forthcoming Final Fantasy Dissidia.

Reader Boko was at VanaFest and caught the announcement, pointing us to the new splash page set up for the expansion packs. The titles of the three are "A Crystalline Prophecy - Ode of Life Bestowing"; "A Moogle Kupo d'Etat - Evil in Small Doses" and "A Shantotto Ascension - The Legend Torn, Her Empire Born."

The rollout begins with Crystalline Prophecy in the Spring of 2009, followed by Moogle and then Shantotto. All three will be available for around $10 and will be purchased online.

There's more via the FFXI Creator's Voice Blog. The full announcement from that site is on the jump.

The Adventure Continues With Three All-New FINAL FANTASY XI Expansion Chapters!
*Available for online purchase only

■Masato Kato, who oversaw the original plot conception on FINAL FANTASY XI from initial release up through the Rise of the Zilart expansion, will also play a key role in the creation of this new series of installments.

■The first installment, A Crystalline Prophecy – Ode of Life Bestowing, is slated for release for all languages and platforms in Spring of next year. Subsequent installments will then follow, being released in intervals of every few months.
These expansions packages will only be available through online purchase via PlayOnline. The projected cost for each installment is around $10.00.

Unlike its predecessors, such as Treasures of Aht Urghan and Wings of the Goddess, this original series of expansion packages will be distributed exclusively as online add-ons. Players may rest assured, however, that version updates for the Wings of the Goddess expansion will still continue for some time. Concurrent with the regular version updates, the new expansions are being developed as a with a “novelette” approach. Indeed, a separate development team has been established specifically for these new expansions.

Additional Scenarios?
Up until now, expansion packs have generally been developed from a perspective of “lateral expansion,” focusing namely on the introduction of new areas. These three new expansions, however, will deepen the storylines running through pre-existing areas by ushering in all-new plots and intrigues. While not necessarily containing as much content as traditional expansions, these episodic scenarios are designed to take anywhere from one to two months to complete.

Target Levels?
Though the quests can easily be started by a solo player somewhere in the vicinity of level 30, they will tend to become more difficult as the storyline progresses. By the end, completion of the quests will likely require a party of level 75 characters, with the rewards being geared towards high-level players as well.
Players can engage in these new storylines simultaneously with any of the missions from preceding expansions without conflict.

Final Fantasy XI Expansion Chapters [Site]
The Adventure Continues with Three All-New Final Fantasy Chapters! [Square-Enix]

Jason Rohrer (of Passage, Gravitation, and others) has put together a very different experience in his latest, Between. Hosted by Esquire as part of their 'Best and Brightest 2008' feature, it's a two-player game with a twist. In his latest Gamasutra feature, Ian Bogost takes a look at the game and the element of disjunctive play we find — a game designed to highlight just how far apart we all are, not bring us together:

When we talk about games, we normally use the language of conjunction, whether through accompaniment ("to play with") or conflict ("to play against"). Whether for competition, collaboration, or socialization, multiplayer games aim to connect people in the act of play itself.

Between takes on a very different charge: it aims to remind players of the abyss that forever separates them from another. In the face of this gulch, the best we can do is to attempt to trace the edges of our cohort's gestures and signals, as players of Between do when they interpret the origins of the weird, mottled colored patterns that appear as if from nowhere on their screens.

If most multiplayer games are conjunctive, Between is disjunctive. It is a game that aims to disturb notions of cohesion rather than to create them. And if any common sympathy arises from the experience, it is a feeling of comfort in the commonality of one's inevitable isolation.

Both Between and Ian's piece are worth a look — the issue of Otherness as related to gaming and the potentials for disjunctive play are certainly interesting to contemplate, and Between is worth a play simply because it's a very different multiplayer experience than most of us are used to.

Persuasive Games: Disjunctive Play [Gamasutra]