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urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ontdgames ONTD Games Games are srs bsns ONTD Games 2014-09-01T17:36:31Z urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ontdgames:269627 Davaron Hardy GML Farm WindowsPhone IOS Android Game ,You Play, You Earn! 2014-09-01T17:36:31Z 2014-09-01T17:36:31Z
GML Farm being the first Simulation Game for mobile device in the World which could combine to Cryptocurrency

 GML Farm was the first simulation game of mobile device in the world which could pay for cryptocurrency, also became the first game combine with crypto currency and passed Facebook developer review!

 You could play GML Farm both Android and IOS system ( Winphone version will coming later) ,During the game you could use GML or BTC to purchase some additional items or to accelerate the upgrading of construction etc ,and more importantly , we not only just let people consume in the game , but also will set a reward mechanism for player who complete some achievements .

 There also will be a series of promotional activities around the game ,you could take part in or invite your Facebook's friends to join the game .Then you will get some GML as bounty ,the more achievements you reach or the more people you invite ,you will get more GML , and you could trade GML into Bitcoin ,further more , Bitcoin could also trade into fiat such as US Dollar .

 That's mean in this game ,you are not only pure consumer ,but also could make a profit from it . Just think about it ,when you play game via tea time or on the way to work by subway ,no longer just for killing time ,but it could bring you profit ,the more your play ,the more you earn .What a beautiful thing .

 "Exchange used to has the most KPI of Cryptocurrency's application, but we think that will be changed in the near future, because more and more applications will come out."

The new type to achieve Cryptocurrency use value

 Many people think that Cryptocurrency is intangible and untouchable ,hence it's far away from our daily life ,and most of Cryptocurrency still keen on technology competition ,just as how to achieve anonymity . Surely technology is very important ,people know about bitcoin becasue of its technology and innovation .

 But for us ,as a gamers, we pay more attention about how to put the Cryptocurrency combine with the game's market ,to let more people know about it ,and then achieve its use value ,make it could recycle using ,no longer be pure speculation.

GML Farm WindowsPhone IOS Android Game

facebook.com

https://www.facebook.com/games/?fbs=1101&app_id=1454879048112138

windowsphone.com

http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/gmlfarm/ed4a600d-3fc3-47f5-b285-03b0ab66767

amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MHK28GU
 urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ontdgames:269562 firstname.lastname@example.com #BuySmashBrosonNintendoeShop New Challenger Confirmed in Super Smash Bros. + NEWS! 2014-08-29T12:24:02Z 2014-08-29T12:24:02Z

A couple of weeks ago, alleged leaks were posted revealing the character roster for Super Smash Bros. for 3DS. While the leaks claimed that these were not the entire unlocked roster, many fans were skeptical with the inclusion of Dr. Mario (introduced in Melee but excluded from Brawl), Duck Hunt Dog, and Shulk from Xenoblade. This morning, the Smashbros.com website just posted Shulk's intro trailer.

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In addition, the website has been updated with the following:

Buy and register both the Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U games to receive a special soundtrack from Club Nintendo!

For a sample of the (inevitably epic) OST: http://www.smashbros.com/us/music/

Smashbros.com has also provided direct links for online pre-orders from Walmart, Target, Kmart, Sears, and Toys'R'Us. Of course, both will also be available for purchase directly from the Nintendo eShop (3DS version being 2.1 GB). It has been confirmed that the 3DS version will be available at midnight, 10/3/14.

 LITERALLY ME RN BECAUSE OF THE HYPE

ONTD, what do you think about the previous leaks? Excited for Shulk? Will you purchase both 3DS and Wii U versions?

SOURCE SOURCE urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ontdgames:269198 forcestrong Steam removes Early Access game Earth: Year 2066 over dishonest marketing 2014-05-07T22:16:23Z 2014-05-07T22:16:23Z Steam removed an Early Access game from sale after it received fervent criticism for being something of a disaster. Muxwell's Earth: Year 2066 went up on the marketplace in April priced at $20, but it's come under severe fire from fans and critics alike, with some calling it "broken," "a scam," and "early access at its most literal."

According to a GameSpot review, the build that was on Steam was a "barely functional disaster" that featured "a road, a junkyard village, some hills, a radar tower, some robots - and that's about it." The Escapist's Jim Sterling showcased that in a gameplay video, in which the game appears to feature a small, genuinely desolate, lo-fi wasteland map, as well as its fair share of bugs.

(NSFW language)
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Valve stepped in to remove Earth: Year 2066 this week, but not because of quality issues; Early Access games are understood to be works in progress, and the level of finish can vary radically from one entry to the next. However, misleading marketing is another thing, and Valve clearly felt the game's portrayal on Steam didn't align with reality.

"On Steam, developers make their own decisions about promotion, features, pricing and publication," wrote Valve's Chris Douglass on the Steam forums. "However, Steam does require honesty from developers in the marketing of their games. We have removed Earth: Year 2066 from Early Access on Steam. Customers who purchased the game will be able to get a refund on the store page until Monday May 19th."

The game, which came through Steam Greenlight, is listed on its store page as "a first person sci-fi apocalyptic open-world game where your main aim is to survive. Set in post-apocalyptic future, you take on the role as a survivor of a nuclear war between USA and China. You became a mutant because of radiation. You need to get to the safe place, called 'God's House,' to survive. Dangerous journey is waiting for you."

As for current features, it claims to include an "early survival mode" in which players could "shoot enemies and try not to die." Players can take on the role of a droid who "moves like a human with realistic camera movement and freedom of movements," the listing adds.

The issues with Earth: Year 2066 may run deeper than false advertising. In a video for The Escapist, Sterling claims developer Muxwell took down critical posts in the game's Steam forum, and used an artist's copyrighted work without permission for the cover art.

(NSFW language)

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The Escapist : Jimquisition : Salt Of The Earth - A Steam Fail Story

There's precedence for Steam taking a game off its storefront for false advertising, after The War Z - now called Infestation: Survivor Stories - was removed back in 2012. That game eventually made its way back onto Steam for sale, but whether or not the same fate awaits Earth: Year 2066 remains to be seen.

Joystiq

Steam really needs some minimal standards and a better refund policy. With 'Towns' devs making the news lately, too, I hope they consider holding these Greenlight devs accountable for when they fail don't even try to deliver. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ontdgames:268912 world_dancer Urban Legend Proves True: Atari Games Found Dumped in Desert 2014-04-28T16:16:34Z 2014-04-28T16:16:34Z Video game archaeologists have found a cache of Atari games that were buried in the New Mexico desert 30 years ago.

Before now reports Atari had dumped millions of game cartridges were widely believed to be an urban myth.

But a three-hour dig at a landfill site turned up many Atari cartridges, including copies of the game ET: The Extra Terrestrial.

Atari made millions of copies of the ET game, but it sold poorly and helped to contribute to the demise of the firm.

"For a lot of people, it's something that they've wondered about and it's been rumoured and talked about for 30 years, and they just want an answer," said Zak Penn, director of a documentary being made about the search for the site and its uncovering.

The documentary by Fuel Entertainment is being prepared for Microsoft's Xbox TV channel.
Cash crunch

Atari was thought to have dumped truckloads of unsold games in the landfill site on the outskirts of Alamogordo in 1983 as the company was winding down.

The game maker's descent from its position as the dominant force in home gaming in the late 1970s and early 1980s was swift and has been partly blamed on the gamble it took on making a game of Steven Spielberg's 1982 hit film ET.

The game was made from scratch in five weeks for the Atari 2600 console. Even before the game was finished Atari, committed huge amounts of money and resources to it and produced millions of copies when it was done.

The ET game has been described as one of the worst ever created. Its challenging game play and poor graphics put people off buying it and left Atari with huge amounts of unsold inventory.

The search to see if the rumours about the dump were true was given new life by the efforts of one unnamed game enthusiast who did the detective work to narrow down its location.

Red tape surrounding the uncovering of the landfill site held up the start of the dig but once permission was granted excavations began on 26 April.

Three hours of digging with a backhoe uncovered significant amounts of Atari 2600 game cartridges - many of which were still in their original packaging.

Only a limited amount of material could be retrieved from the dump because the dig was only allowed access for one day. The local authority of Alamogordo ordered the dig site to be refilled on 27 April.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27187609

Atari tag please? urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ontdgames:268672 firstname.lastname@example.com #BuySmashBrosonNintendoeShop Super Smash Bros. for 3DS coming in Summer 2014 (AND MORE) 2014-04-08T23:34:59Z 2014-04-08T23:34:59Z

With today's Nintendo Direct, a LOT has been revealed and the SmashBros.com website has been updated.

Greninja (Pokemon X/Y)
Charizard (with Mega Evolution)
Yoshi
Sheik (separate from Zelda)
Zero Suit Samus (seaparate from Samus)

Source

Your thoughts? Will you be playing Fun Fun or For Glory more often? urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ontdgames:268387 . GameSpot Believes Nintendo Plans to Quietly Kill The Wii U With Quality Of Life Platform 2014-03-10T03:49:41Z 2014-03-10T03:49:41Z GameSpot writer Tom McShea has written a controversial article titled "Nintendo's Plan To Quietly Kill Wii U". Mc Shea believes that Nintendo is planning to quietly phase out the Wii U and concentrate their efforts on the mysterious Quality of Life platform. However, this goes against what Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has said in the past. As he previously explained that the platform will be entirely separate from their gaming ventures.

"The Wii U is performing dismally at retail. It's the depressing reality in which we live, and one that has caused us to think up ways to improve the console's fate. What if Nintendo no longer bundled it with the expensive GamePad? Or partnered with outside studios willing to create exclusive games for the Wii U? Then maybe the system wouldn't lag so far behind its competitors. Though such moves might help Nintendo in the short term, they would be mere Band-Aids on an open wound. The Wii U is in a dire situation. I believe Nintendo has reconciled itself to that fact, and has already planned a way to bail from this sinking ship."

"Enter the "quality of life" (QOL) platform. No one knows what to make of Nintendo's proposed QOL initiative, partly because we know almost nothing about it. Nintendo wants to improve people's lives in some indeterminate way–using non-wearable technology–and is going to introduce this nebulous product some time next year. According to CEO Satoru Iwata, whatever the QOL platform is, it will be entirely separate from their gaming ventures. Iwata said, "When we use 'health' as a keyword, some may inevitably think about 'Wii Fit.' However, we are considering themes that we have not incorporated to games for our existing platforms." But what if Nintendo has much grander plans for this mysterious device than they're letting on? This could be Nintendo's next big idea. An idea much more in-demand than their ill-advised tablet controller, and one that could propel the company to the same heights it enjoyed during the peak years of the Wii."

source
Gamespot's editorial urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ontdgames:268055 forcestrong The Elder Scrolls Online no longer under NDA 2014-02-21T23:00:08Z 2014-02-22T00:46:01Z
Now that the NDA has dropped for content level 17 and under, I feel like sharing the screenshots and video I captured in game. I think I'm convinced I'm going to be picking this up.

But it's also an excuse to make an ESO post so I can ask if anyone is in a guild that isn't full of offensive assholes. I'm so done with guild researching on my own. Even the LGBTQ-friendly guild I talked to said I'd have to expect members to use language like "retarded." Why can't I find a group of MMO players that don't want to protect their ~right~ to dabble in 'isms without being called out?

Anyway, let's talk about this game and look at the pretty.

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Click for larger images

My char @ roughly lvl 7

I was enjoying the lighting effects.

City of Daggerfall. I actually came to TES games with TES2 Daggerfall, so it was pretty neat to see the city and castle revamped.

This church I encountered in a pseudo-Oblivion looks a lot like the chapel in Kvatch to me.

At least when you roll in the Daggerfall Covenant, you're sent to Ayleid ruins pretty quickly. They haven't been large thus far. In fact, the 2 I've explored have been damn near identical. And I haven't been able to loot any these welkynd stones. But it's still sorta cool to see they're keeping true to the visuals from previous (and recent) games.

I also found a journal that mentioned a Delphine, but it seemed to describe a treasure seeker rather than the Grandmaster of the Blades. Probably not unintentional on the part of the devs tho.

I recognize the Daedric alphabet, but I dunno how to translate it.

Also, I'm running around in game taking pics of every mechanic I can think of that people might be curious to see; crafting, mounts, skill system, etc. Taking requests!
 urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ontdgames:267907 forcestrong Valve Introduces User-Generated Steam Tags (and it's already a disaster) 2014-02-13T16:55:52Z 2014-02-13T16:55:52Z
In an effort to help users more easily traverse the expanding mountain of content on Steam, Valve has launched Steam Tags, a user-defined categorizing feature.

Through Steam Tags, the community is able to tag games with genres, themes, attributes or any information they feel pertains to a piece of software. Yes, swear words will be filtered out, for everyone.

The most popular tags on a product are promoted to its Steam page, allowing others to find it and any similar products by searching for that tag. All products start with a default set of genre tags defined by the developer, but may be eclipsed in relevancy by community issued tags.

To compliment this new feature, Valve has added a section to the Steam Store providing the ability to browse by popular tags and filter your search for specific tags. You'll also have the option to view recommended tags, based on your interests.

Since Steam is a global platform used in many different countries, in many different languages, Steam Tags will reflect that diversity. Tags added in any given language will only be displayed to users running Steam in that same language. This furthers Valve's apparent global mindset, which plans support 12 new currencies this year.

"We want to ensure that it is easy for customers to find the particular types of games or software they are looking for," said Valve developer Al Farnsworth. "With this new feature, we are providing another powerful tool to help organize and browse products on Steam."

The feature is currently in Beta, but immediately available to all 75 million Steam users. Note that the initial categorization "might be a bit off" until the system becomes fully optimal.

IGN.com

So this post is basically an excuse to complain about the bullshit tags and that we're not allowed to remove bullshit tags. That's my screenshot. Noticed the slur in it? Yea, me too.
 urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ontdgames:267535 › Junebug Board Game Video Games 2013-12-24T07:24:31Z 2013-12-24T07:24:31Z I've been playing a lot of Ticket To Ride and I was wondering if anyone else had board game video games to recommend, whether on Steam or not. I'd prefer that it were on Steam but it doesn't have to be; also multiplayer capability is a huge plus. I've already got Catan, though I stopped playing because I now have the board game. I found video games are a lot cheaper than the board games so it'll be nicer to my wallet.

Also remember to check out The Humble Store and Green Man Gaming during this holiday. Sometimes their sales are better than Steam's. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ontdgames:267311 › Junebug [REVIEW] Far Cry 3 2013-12-15T00:23:28Z 2013-12-21T20:41:40Z Whoot, my first post! I finished my finals this week and, to my disappointment, completed Far Cry 3. I wasn't sure whether or not to post this here because I don't know how it'll be received but I think it'd be good for discussion.

THE GOOD
- I got this game for $5. Wish I got it for free.
- Ubisoft never disappoints when it comes to scenery, nature, and the animal animations and clippings.
- Gameplay mechanics are wonderful; very much like Assassin's Creed in FPS style. You've got the synchronizing in high places to map out locations, gain more ways to kill/stealth as you progress, do sidequests that don't have anything to do with the main mission, etc.

THE "F**K NO STOP THIS NOW" (TRIGGER WARNING: racism, sexism, rape; CONTAINS SPOILERS)

It's a long list of bad with a bit of profanity so prepare yourselves. If you found this helpful, please rate up on Steam so that it stays visible as it's one of the few honest reviews. Lots of Far Cry 3 stans but I expected it. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ontdgames:266805 forcestrong No girls allowed 2013-12-05T00:48:32Z 2013-12-05T00:48:32Z Unraveling the story behind the stereotype of video games being for boys.

Four-year-old Riley Maida stands in a toy aisle of a department store in Newburgh, N.Y. The backdrop is pink. The shelves behind her are stacked with plastic babies in pink onesies. To her left are hair-and-makeup dolls with exaggerated heads attached to truncated shoulders. The shelf above has rows of little dresses and pastel pink slippers. The shelf above that, more pink dolls in more pink dresses.

In the next aisle, there's a distinct absence of pink. This is the "boys aisle." Lined with Nerf guns, G.I. Joes, superhero figures, building blocks and toy cars, it has a diverse color palette of blues, greens, oranges and reds.

Maida looks down the aisle of pink. Arms akimbo, the cherubic 4-year-old with brunette bangs furrows her brow. She looks into her father's camera and begins a rant that will go viral on the internet and make its way onto television networks like CNN and ABC.

"Would it be fair for all the girls to buy princesses and the boys to buy superheroes?" she says, smacking her right hand to her head in exasperation. "Girls want superheroes AND the boys want superheroes!"

She points her index finger and shakes her hand at the pink boxes around her. Occasionally jumbling her words while giving her impassioned speech, she questions why boys and girls need separate toy aisles and why some toys are designated for one gender and not the other. Boys and girls can both like pink, she says. Why do companies have to make boys and girls think that they can only like certain things? Palm open, she hits her right hand on the top of one of the boxes to emphasize her point.

A few aisles over, in the video game section, there is a similar marketing story that Maida has yet to learn. Unlike in the toy aisles, she won't find an expansive selection of video games for boys and an equally expansive selection for girls. Most "girls' sections," if they exist, are lined with fitness titles and Ubisoft's simplified career simulation series, Imagine, which lets players pretend they're doctors, teachers, gymnasts and babysitters.

As for the boys section — there isn't one. Everything else is for boys.

If the selection at the average retailer is anything to go by, girls don't play video games. If cultural stereotypes are anything to go by, video games are for males. They're the makers, the buyers and the players.

There is often truth to stereotypes. But whatever truth there may be, the stereotype does not show the long and complicated path taken to formulate it, spread it and have it come back to shape societal views.

The stereotype, for example, does not explain why "girls don't play video games." It does not reveal who or what is responsible for it. It does not explain how an industry that started with games like Pong (1972) or the first computer version of Tic-Tac-Toe (1959) came to be responsible for a medium that, for most of its history, hasn't had even an aisle's worth of games for Maida.

Toy aisles are explicit in their gender divide. Clear signage indicates which toys are for boys, and which are for girls. In the video game section, there is little overt exclusion. It's a slower molding of our expectations over time.

Maida might not understand this right away. She hasn't even gotten to the video game aisle yet. But standing among the dolls in their pink tutus, face scrunched up and hands slapping her sides, she's starting in the right place. She's asking the most important question: "Why?"

Power of Marketing

Not every 4-year-old is as critical as Riley Maida. Most adults don't give a second thought to the way their local department stores are laid out or how things are sold to them. But there are few marketing accidents in retail. The aisle Maida stood in was not accidentally saturated in pink. It's no accident that most video game retailers plaster their walls with promotional posters for action games, shooters and war games.

Marketers have advertising down to a science, according to Rodger Roeser, president of marketing firm the Eisen Agency. They research and analyze consumer behavior: what colors make people want to eat more, what colors make people want to buy more and how people react to different imagery. "People like me get paid a lot of money to understand customer and consumer behavior," Roeser says. A lot of that money goes into research and finding the best way to send messages to consumers. He says that, whether we like it or not, we're conditioned from an early age to pay attention to these messages. "Very smart, creative, crafty people are tweaking your brain to get you to want something or buy something," Roeser says. "And while you might think you're arriving at the conclusion completely on your own, I promise you, marketing played a role in some way."

Long before a video game hits retailers, the marketing machine is already well in motion. Before games like Call of Duty, Madden or Grand Theft Auto are even made, marketers are working with game developers to determine the game's content, how they'll represent it, who they're making it for and how they'll reach that audience. Most of the time, they know exactly which market they want to capture before they even start considering game ideas. Many of the decisions about what gets green-lit and what doesn't are based on hard data and analytics. Marketers know who plays which games, how big the audience is and what they're hungry for. Like the pink aisle, there is little to no prodding in the dark.

Most marketers will explain that trying to target a general audience in one campaign is a bad idea. It dilutes the marketing message. People want things that have been designed just for them. A product is more than just a product; it carries meaning and often a promise — a promise that we'll look better, feel better, have more fun and improve our lives in some way.

President of the marketing firm A Squared Group Amy Cotteleer says that marketing is so powerful that it can shape our values and beliefs, and we're often not even aware that it's happening. Coca-Cola's marketing campaigns in the 1920s are the reason why the modern-day image of Santa Claus is a jovial, plump man in a Coca-Cola Red suit. Prior to Coca-Cola, there was no consistent image of Santa. He was often represented as a skinny man who sometimes wore green and sometimes wore brown. So if Coca-Cola could sell us the modern-day Santa, the game industry would not have had much trouble selling the idea that video games are for males.

"Marketing is insights-based," Cotteleer says. "People land on something, something resonates, it appeals to a certain gender or category of the population and it makes sense from a marketing perspective to go after it."

"You do the math, find the insight, and you figure, 'What's the biggest population we can sell this to?' That's who you need to target. That's how it breaks into a gender story."

There are plenty of ideas that have been sold to populations through marketing — ideas that go deeper than what color Santa wears.

Cotteleer cites the example of Coors beer. "There's not a lot to distinguish between American canned and bottled beers like Coors and Miller, and they were having a hard time figuring out what they could market," she says. Coors decided it would differentiate itself from its competition by owning "cold," she says, so that when people think of "ice-cold beer," they think Coors.

"It was Coors that said, 'We are the coldest of the cold. We are brewed in the mountains; we ship in refrigerated trucks.' They put a stake in ice-cold beer and people literally began to think and continue to think to this day, 'I've got to drink my beer ice-cold.'"

Of course, there is a practical reason for drinking beer cold: Chilled beer is harder to taste. Coldness neutralizes the flavor, which makes many beers — particular cheap beers — more drinkable. "So it actually does a really great job on two levels," she says. "It convinces you that you need to have a cold beer, and you actually think this product is superior because it doesn't taste as bad as the competitor, which is slightly warmer."

Marketing a product as being superior to its competition is one way of defining it and securing customers. Gendering a product is another. According to Roeser, personal-care company Procter & Gamble is the master of selling the same product to multiple markets because of the way it has gendered items like shampoo, body lotion, deodorants and shower gels. He says that the difference between something like Pantene and Old Spice is the packaging and fragrance. Both shampoos do the same thing, but one is sold as a product that women use to pamper themselves, while the other is sold as something practical — so practical, in fact, that its slogan is: "The original. If your grandfather hadn't worn it, you wouldn't exist."

Roeser explains that focusing on one audience, whether it be young men, young women, children or the older population allows the marketer to focus their resources on one demographic and increase their likelihood for success. If a company wants to direct the product at men, then its marketing department can focus its limited resources on winning over that demographic, rather than trying to reach too many people and risk failing altogether.

"You don't want to water down your brand," Roeser says. "You want to know specifically who you're targeting and go after that, because there are very few products that have a mass appeal. There's really only two — Coca-Cola and Pepsi — and inside those there are massive subsets like Coke Zero, Diet Coke, Pepsi Max etc."

According to Roeser, it makes sense from a marketing perspective for the video game industry to have pursued a male audience, which is exactly what it did starting in the early '90s.

We made the games we wanted

An Atari office in California the 1970s had two floors for game development. Upstairs was the home entertainment division, where about half a dozen developers made games for home consoles like the Atari 2600 and Atari 800. Downstairs was the coin-op division. It worked on games for arcade machines. There was hardly any interaction between the two floors. Both divisions worked on the same games, with the home console team porting arcade titles like Pong to the Atari home machines, but they went after different audiences. Pong on the console was for the family. Pong on the coin-op machines was for adults in bars.

Before arcades themselves became destinations, arcade machines mimicked the distribution of pinball machines. They were targeted at beer-drinking adults who were looking to wind down and socialize after work. Later, they spread to more family-friendly locations like malls, movie theaters, bowling alleys and Chuck E. Cheese. But before they did, they were a mostly adult affair. The arcade game Tapper, sometimes known as Root Beer Tapper, was originally released as Budweiser Tapper. In the game, players would play the part of a bartender serving drinks to eager customers. Likewise, Zeke's Peak — a mechanical arcade game where players navigate the playing field with a marble — originally launched as Ice Cold Beer.

Pong was a hit in arcades. The game required two players, which meant it was perfect in social spaces like bars and pubs where men and women spent time after work. Pong on the home console was an even bigger hit. It was the same game — two virtual sticks on each side of the screen hitting a ball in a game of virtual tennis — but it was marketed as a family game. It featured heavily in the Sears shopping catalog as something for parents to enjoy with their children.

In these early days of game development, video games were made by small teams, oftentimes only two or three people. At Atari, one developer often handled the game's writing, coding, design and art. Video game studios were predominantly male, largely a by-product of men far outnumbering women in the field of computer sciences.

Carol Shaw was the first female developer Atari hired. She is best known for designing and programming River Raid for the Atari 2600 at Activision. She says never got the sense that the games she made were for one gender or another, and there was never a mandate from higher-ups to target a certain audience. When she interviewed for the job, she didn't believe she was at any disadvantage because she was a woman, nor did she feel that video games were the realm of men. She knew not many women held bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science and engineering, but she held both. She was qualified to do the job, and that was that. "We never really discussed who our target demographic was," she says. "We didn't discuss gender or age. We just did games we thought would be fun."

Many of the games released were gender-neutral. Shaw herself made the computer version of 3D Tic-Tac-Toe and Checkers. At the arcades, games like Avalanche (where players attempt to catch rocks from paddles), Breakout (where players break down a wall with a ball and paddle) and Centipede (where players shoot at a segmented centipede) were huge hits.

The only time Shaw remembers the subject of gendering games coming up was when, Ray Kassar, who would later become president and CEO of Atari, remarked, "Gee, now that Atari has a female game designer, she can do interior decorating and cosmetic color-matching games!" He laughed. Shaw rolled her eyes. When Kassar left the room, her fellow game developers turned to her: "Don't pay attention to him," they said. "Just do whatever you want."

In the late 1970s in Oakhurst, Calif., Ken and Roberta Williams founded Sierra Entertainment, a video game studio that would come to be known for its adventure games like King's Quest, Quest for Glory, Leisure Suit Larry and, much later on, the full-motion Phantasmagoria titles.

Lori Cole, who co-wrote and designed Sierra's Quest for Glory series, recalls that some of the earliest video games she played were so simplistic that there was nothing gendered about them. The games mostly involved blowing up meteorites and spaceships. "Those games weren't exactly female-targeted, but it was guys who were making them, and they were trying to make what they could with this technology," she says. "So I don't think it was a case of the games being designed for guys. They were just designed by guys."

While the industry was male-dominated, much like it is today, Sierra was a rare exception. The company centered around Roberta Williams, who designed the company's cash-cow King's Quest. "She was the queen of the company," Cole says. It was hard for anyone at Sierra to assume that men were the primary audience when the company's best sellers were based on fairy tales.

Many of Sierra's audience were women in their 30s. They were by no means the majority. But the studio knew, based on the feedback it got, that it had a diverse audience. According to Cole, the attitude that games were for men didn't exist, at least it didn't exist at Sierra at that time.

"I remember when Sierra released a King's Quest game where the lead character was Rosella, a female character," Cole says. "We received the silliest letter ever from this guy who was calling Roberta a feminist for wanting to have a female as a main character. We passed it around the company and everybody at Sierra was laughing at this guy for being upset because we had a female main character.

"We didn't see this as a problem. In fact, we had several games that had female leads. Nobody thought it was an issue."

Ending the Wild West

The game industry from the '70s through the early '80s was a kind of Wild West. "Nobody knew what they were doing," Cole says. "Nobody was a professional at this." With the first popular home consoles launching in the late '70s, there was no marketer with game industry experience because there had previously been no video game industry. Both Cole and Shaw say at no point in their early careers did they even interact with a marketing department or receive instructions about having to target a specific demographic. Unlike today, some say there was hardly any player research being conducted, either.

"With the Atari 2600, games like Space Invaders, Combat and Adventure were being sold through toy channels, but they didn't know who was actually playing the games," says the current head of development at Other Ocean Interactive, Mike Mika, who began his game development career in the days of the Game Boy and has helped ship more than 120 titles. "Was it the father? The mother? The children? Registration data was rarely returned." Many studios targeted everyone. This strategy worked for a while. And then it stopped.

In 1983, North America experienced a massive recession in the video game industry, now known as the video game crash. The crash had devastating effects, bankrupting game company after game company. At its peak, the revenues for video games in the U.S. sat at $3.2 billion in 1983. By 1985, revenues fell a whopping 97 percent to approximately $100 million. There are many factors behind the crash. The key factor is that by 1983, the video game market was saturated with low-quality games, which resulted in a loss of consumer confidence. Anyone who could make a game was making a game, and there was little to no regulation on the part of the console makers. Players got burnt. Retailers got burnt. People stopped buying video games. The crash marked what many believed to be the end of the video game industry.

Nintendo is largely credited with reviving the game industry with the launch of its Nintendo Entertainment System and its stringent regulations on what games could be released on its consoles. All of its games came with the "Official Nintendo Seal of Quality" — a promise to buyers that the game would not disappoint them, and there would be no repeat of the sloppy and broken titles that flooded the market and led to the crash.

According to Ian Bogost, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology as well as game designer and author of Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Video Games, Nintendo re-established the favor of the toy business by presenting its Nintendo Entertainment System as more of a toy and less as a game. In the mind of the retailers, nobody was buying video games anymore, but people were still buying toys. "That shift to toy culture in the mid-'80s with the NES and its followers, and then the shift to what we now call 'dude-bro' games happening in the early '90s — I think those are the two most important marketing moments, and I think they're different from one another," Bogost says.

The marketing of video games and consoles as toys was a way of saving the industry at retail. Once video games were back in toy stores, the industry had a chance at making money again. It couldn't repeat the past. There could be no more Wild West.

"Knowing that you have limited funding, you can't just market shotgun. You can't just go after anybody," says Rodger Roeser. "You need to have a very clearly differentiated and specific brand because that's going to play into where you're running your ads and what kind of ads you run. That niche-ing, that targeting makes it easier for marketers to have a very succinct conversation with their target without overspending and trying to reach everybody."

The industry did the math. Companies like Nintendo aggressively sought out people who played their games. It began publishing its own video game magazine, Nintendo Power, which had enormous outreach and allowed the company to communicate with its customers. Publishers traveled to cities, held tournaments and got to see firsthand who was playing their games. "That was probably the first age of game demographic enlightenment," says Mika. The numbers were in: More boys were playing video games than girls. Video games were about to be reinvented.

The '90s shift

In a magazine advertisement for the Atari game Millipede (1982), a young girl stands in front of the arcade machine with her hands on the buttons, her face visibly excited by the action on the screen. An older woman, presumably her mother, stands beside her, hand on her shoulder, equally excited, a little bit awkward.

In another ad for Atari's home computers demonstration center, a woman with red hair and brightly flushed cheeks stands in front of the center with a controller in her hands while a man stands behind her. Cheesy grins on faces, both appear to be enjoying a game of Pac-Man. There's a company making Christian video games for Atari 2600 — it also has a magazine ad. "Bible Video Game BRINGS FUN HOME," it declares, as a little blond boy and girl sit in front of the television guiding a pixelated Moses across the Red Sea.

In the 1990s, the messaging of video game advertisements takes a different turn. Television commercials for the Game Boy feature only young boys and teenagers. The ad for the Game Boy Color has a boy zapping what appears to be a knight with a finger laser. Atari filmed a bizarre series of infomercials that shows a man how much his life will improve if he upgrades to the Jaguar console. With each "improvement," he has more and more attractive women fawning over him. There is nothing in any of the ads that indicate that the consoles and games are for anyone other than young men.

Even leading up to the '90s, the marketing had started changing and iconic video game box covers started to emerge. Like the cover of the game Barbarian, which featured a scantily clad, buxom woman at the feet of a barely clothed man. She's not a playable character in the game, of course. Her pixelated curves can be seen watching the game's action from the grandstand in the background. And the ad for Battlecruiser showed an attractive blond woman wearing only a bra, one finger coyly in her mouth, with a copy of the game placed in front of her crotch. "She really wants it," the caption reads. The game is about fighting alien aircraft in space.

By the late 1990s and early 2000s, video games appeared to be growing up alongside the young players who had latched onto the medium at the time of the Game Boy. Games and consoles were getting more sophisticated. Titles like Wipeout, Tomb Raider and Gran Turismo showed the world what video games could offer. For the most part, it showed what video games could offer men. There's a well-known commercial from 1998 for the original PlayStation where a grown man sits in a movie theater with his girlfriend. She's nagging him in an almost cartoonish way. Crash Bandicoot, from the PS1 game of the same name, is soon patrolling the theater, shining a flashlight on the man and telling him, "You are so totally whipped." A busty Lara Croft appears next to him, and he's given the choice of going home with his girlfriend, who is still nagging, or taking Lara Croft. He chooses the latter. The commercial ends with the tagline: "Live in your world. Play in ours."

"The Nintendo Entertainment System was targeted toward boys under 10. If you look at the Super NES five years later, it starts targeting boys ages 10-15," says Jesse Divnich, vice president of insights and analysis for Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR). "So we're seeing this natural progression of the idea of once you're a gamer, you're always a gamer."

The video game industry created something of a chicken-and-egg situation. When it conducted market research during the '80s and '90s, it found that more boys than girls played video games. Boys were more likely to be involved with new technology, more willing to be early adopters and more encouraged by their teachers and families to pursue science, technology, engineering and math in school. Girls have always played video games, but they weren't the majority. In wake of the video game crash, the game industry's pursuit of a safe and reliable market led to it homing in on the young male. And so the advertising campaigns began. Video games were heavily marketed as products for men, and the message was clear: No girls allowed.

According to Simeon Spearman, a senior innovation strategist at marketing agency Engauge, this kind of marketing becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. "If you look at the advertisements for games in the 1980s, you not only had an obvious assumption on the part of the marketers that video games were going to resonate more with young men, you also had them casting young men in the lead roles. They're cast in a way that perpetuates that stereotype — the belief that young men are the audience."

The ads made no distinction between different genres of games being for different people. Even nonviolent games like Tetris were painted with the same masculine brush when they appeared in ads for the Game Boy. It was, after all, the Game Boy, not the Game Girl.

Game designer Brenda Laurel started her career at Atari and Activision as a programmer and producer. She later founded Purple Moon, a studio dedicated to making games for girls, before it was bought out by Mattel. She says the studios she worked for assumed a male audience, even though there was no demographic subtlety.

"Generally speaking, it did not occur to any of the companies I worked for that they should be looking at female audiences for games," she says. "It was always, 'Oh of course girls don't play games.' I got that so many times. 'Of course girls don't play games — why are we going to waste money on this audience that doesn't exist?'

"Where in fact, the nonexistence of the audience was a self-fulfilling prophecy. When we did Purple Moon, one of the criticisms we got was 'Why do you need special games for girls?' I was like, 'Dude, everything else is for boys and you don't even know it. You're taking it for granted all this time.'"

The exceptions, the problem

First-person shooters, action games and sports games have been popular among boys ever since the early '90s. In 2012, the three categories combined were responsible for 58.8 percent of video game sales in North America. They're easily some of the most visible kinds of games, lining the shelves at retailers and appearing on television screens any time a story about video games makes the news. But not everyone buys the idea that games have become the realm of males.

"I've always known there were some games and genres that attracted a heavier male audience than others, like shooters for instance," says Brenda Romero, a developer who has worked in the game industry since the early '80s and has been credited on titles such as Wizardry, Jagged Alliance and Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes. "With the popularity of shooters, maybe we say, 'Well, men play shooters and then shooters are the most popular game,' then we can take this logical leap to say 'Men play video games — it's predominantly men."'

But Romero points out that if we go back to fall 1993, two significant things happened in gaming. One is the release of Doom, which heralded the start of the male-dominated first-person shooter genre. The other, in the same year, is the launch of Myst, which had an overwhelmingly female player base. "Myst dominated the charts, and we don't say games are dominated by women," Romero says. "So I've never felt that way. The Sims has more female players than it has male players, but I don't use those statistics to paint all of games."

In fact, the 1990s is filled with exceptions. There's Tetris on the Game Boy, which was popular with both men and women. Tim Schafer's LucasArts adventure games perform well across the board, demographically. Sim City was more popular with women than it was with men. By the end of the 1990s, we already had Bejeweled.

"Maybe our perception of the problem is the problem, rather than there actually being a problem," says Ian Bogost. "We're not looking at diversity in the marketplace. We're looking at where there isn't diversity and we're saying those games are the most valid games."

Bogost points to games like FarmVille, Candy Crush Saga and Words With Friends — hugely successful games that have enormous male and female player bases — but they're rarely acknowledged as being the same thing as what is traditionally thought of as a video game. "Those games somehow get the technology industry stories about the rise of these big companies, whereas something like Call of Duty is talked about as an example of gaming, and probably a negative example."

Part of the problem, he explains, is when people think about video games, they think Doom, Mortal Kombat and Call of Duty. Meanwhile, FarmVille and Angry Birds are considered something else entirely and associated with a different domain. This can be attributed to a different kind of marketing.

"It's worth pointing out that public sentiment and public discourse around video games is also a kind of marketing," Bogost says. "It's just not marketing that you pay for. So when Sandy Hook or Columbine happened, those events act as a kind of negative marketing for games in general."

Bogost believes the reason why so many people outside of video game culture think games are for young boys is because of moral panics — one of the most effective forms of marketing available. In recent decades, when video games have appeared in the news, it's often been bad news. There were the reports linking the Columbine shooters to Doom. There were the stories linking Norwegian killer Anders Breivik to World of Warcraft. Most recently, Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza was reported to have played first-person shooters. Bogost explains that certain categories of games are more visible to the mainstream public because of these moral panics — because they're the recurring images in the news whenever the media talks about video games. The result is whenever video games come up in conversation, those are the games that people associate with the medium. People forget that other games exist.

"All those people in 1993 who were up in arms in the Mortal Kombat moral panic were also in that very year all playing Windows Solitaire and Minesweeper on their office computers while they were bored on conference calls," Bogost says. Windows Solitaire remains, by quantity, one of the most-distributed games in the world because it was packaged with Windows. But most people who played it don't think of it as a video game. "They think, 'This is not a game. I don't play games,' and it's because when they hear about video games in the media, it's always a certain kind of game," Bogost says. "It's this kind of violent fighting game or first-person shooters. Those are the things they hear about. They just don't think about the subtleties of it because why would they? They're leading normal lives. It just doesn't occur to them."

This, Bogost says, is one of the fundamental problems with the way people view video games today. The most popular titles — stuff like Candy Crush, Draw Something, Bejeweled — are excluded from being 'real games,' both by those within and outside of video game culture. What that leaves is what he describes as infantile adolescent power fantasy games, which are possibly a minority game experience, but they're the "loudest." So even if video games as a whole aren't a gendered medium, even if there's diversity in content and players, the stereotype persists outside of video game culture.

A future for everyone

When Romero's daughter Maezza was 8, she returned home from school with a story for her mother. Maezza had told her classmates that when she grows up, she wants to be a game designer. She was a level 90 in World of Warcraft. She loved wearing her Blizzard T-shirt to school. She wanted to learn how to code and make games. A kid in her class turned around. "Girls don't play games," he said. "Fortunately, my daughter had a great response," Romero says. "She said to the boy, 'My mommy makes games.' She owned him entirely."

That the concept of "girls don't play games" exists even among children in schoolyards today has less to do with the actual numbers of players as much as it has to do with an idea that was heavily circulated from the '90s through television commercials, magazine ads, video game box art and the media. After all, a person who grew up in the '90s would have little or even no reference for what came before. Their first game marketing experiences would have sold a very black-and-white picture about who video games are for. But this idea is starting to break down.

According to Cotteleer, industries tend to look beyond their existing target demographic only when the market has become totally saturated. It can take a while — sometimes more than a decade. And when that happens, they ask, "Who's next?" She says Nintendo mastered this with the launch of the Wii console, which went on to break records in console sales and introduce video gaming to audiences who had previously never bought a console or played a video game. Its advertising also deliberately targets a different audience, using celebrity spokespeople like Beyoncé, Penelope Cruz and Robin Williams and his daughter Zelda.

But the process of breaking down the widely held stereotype of games being for boys doesn't end with game-makers targeting diverse audiences, Bogost says. In fact, he doesn't believe that is the right approach, in the same way he doesn't believe that the industry going after the male audience was a smart idea. "It seems to me an enormously stupid idea, actually," Bogost says. "All you have to do is look at the most successful games to see that it's only been possible for them to be massively successful if they don't systematically exclude half the population."

In order for video games to overcome their existing stereotype, they have to be sold to us as general purpose products. Bogost uses bookstores as an example. No one is surprised when they go into a bookstore and find that there are books for children, books about gardening or books about cooking. It's accepted that books are a general purpose medium that can address lots of interests. The same applies to television — it doesn't surprise people that there are channels dedicated to cooking, sports, animals or news. Bogost says that games are already there in terms of there being a diverse variety that can do different things — it just hasn't effectively gotten the message out there yet.

When the message gets out there — when video games are seen as a general purpose medium, and a person who plays Angry Birds can associate that with playing games on a PlayStation 4 — then perhaps the stereotype will begin to fade. It would be a big marketing challenge, but it's not impossible.

"Given enough money, I could make guys buy tampons," says Roeser. "I mean, I could figure out something to do with them. It all comes down to how somebody like me, and there's frighteningly thousands of me across the country and the world, creates a campaign that specifically targets an audience." Roeser believes that if the makers of Call of Duty came to him and said they wanted to pursue the female market, it could be done. It would just be a matter of making the message appealing to women and reaching them through the right channels.

Bogost proposes a similar way of selling video game consoles to a wider variety of people — the messaging would have to be different than what it has been over the past two decades. For example, if Sony were to plaster images of its new console on buses and billboards, that's not a different message. It's the same message, just in a different place. Bogost says companies like Sony and Microsoft would have to re-present their high-end game consoles as having something to offer everyone, and he doesn't think it would be that hard. If Sony were to release an Apple-like montage showing people playing games like Journey or any of its narrative-driven or broadly appealing independent games played on Sony devices, that would send a very different message than a montage of virtual bullets being sprayed into a war zone.

"The way we relate to consumer products through marketing is real," Bogost says. "In this industry, we think of marketers as these evil-doers who take the product and ruin it by hawking it in the wrong way to the public. And that might be true. I don't know. But advertising is enormously powerful."

Back in Newburgh, N.Y., wide-eyed and frustrated, Riley Maida paces back and forth in the aisle, occasionally looking into the lens of her father's camera.

"Why do all the girls have to buy princesses?" she asks. "Some girls like superheroes; some girls like princesses. Some boys like superheroes; some boys like princesses. So why do all the girls have to buy princesses and all the boys have to buy different-colored stuff?" She animatedly shrugs her shoulders and huffs as she asks why, and marches off. Her father's shaky camera follows. We hear his voice behind the camera: "That's a good question, Riley."

Polygon.com

OP: I highly recommend looking at the source because the formating + the other illustrations are worth seeing.
 urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ontdgames:266631 tcs0 Here's Some Dota2 Gameplay I Recorded...Anyone Else Played This Mode? 2013-11-18T21:15:30Z 2013-11-18T21:15:48Z
Its been a while, but I'm finally uploading new playthroughs. For this upload, we have Part 1 of DOTA 2 featuring Diretide mode gameplay. The next episode will be uploaded soon. Enjoy. (PS: The sound is late...sorry!)

What Is Diretide?

Diretide is a new Halloween themed mode that focues on teams competing for candy. Each team must race the clock to collect candy that appears on the map and avoid Roshan who stalks players for candy. The team that collects the most candy at zero hour wins.

Watch:

<lj-embed id="835" />
 urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ontdgames:266270 forcestrong How about some PS4 reviews? 2013-11-15T18:47:08Z 2013-11-15T18:48:22Z There are tons of PS4 reviews popping up and many of them are 3+ pages long. So, instead of posting all of them OR posting a huge roundup, I've collected some reviews that included a summarized opinion. Naturally, I've included links back to the full article so that you can read the rest if ya want.

Sony PlayStation 4 review: The console gaming fans have been waiting for
The PS4 features stunning visuals and a cleaner user interface

Highs
The PlayStation 4's simple interface makes it easy to navigate the menus and find your content. The visuals are impressive and definitely a step up from those of the PlayStation 3. A strong focus on sharing content with friends lends itself to a fun social experience.

The PlayStation Plus account, though required for online gaming, is not required for most online features, such as video streaming. You can now navigate the menu and launch some applications while installing games and updates. And you no longer have to wait for a game to be fully downloaded to play it.

Lows
Some of the PS4's features require additional accessories, which add to the overall cost. Unlike with the PlayStation 3, a PlayStation Plus account is now required for playing games online.

A growing trend in the smart-device world is the ability to access and control your set-top box. This is absent from the PS4, especially noticeable as it's present in the Microsoft Xbox One and was even included in the Nintendo Wii U; still, some may not find it to be a deal breaker. You can't use external media other than Blu-ray and DVD playback; so no photos, streaming video, or music playback, at least for now.
Bottom line

Here's the big question: Should you buy a PlayStation 4?
If you play only casually, you won't get a lot of entertainment options with the PS4 that aren't available on the PS3 and other cheaper devices. And some of the popular games available at launch, such as Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag and Call of Duty: Ghosts, are also available on the PS3. Finally, console launches can be a bit buggy. So you may want to wait to see if any issues present themselves before you make an expensive investment.

If you're a serious gamer and a fan of the PS4's exclusive games, though, then the answer is a resounding yes. The killer app for the PS4 might be Remote Play, so if you own a PlayStation Vita or are planning to get one for the holidays, that's also a good reason to jump on the PS4.

ConsumerReports.org

PlayStation 4 hardware review: Off to a mixed start
Sony fixes a few old problems while adding some new features (and new problems).

The good
 Beautiful, unique case design
 Relatively quiet operating noise
 Lighting, smoke effects, and character models look great
 DualShock 4 controller is one of the best we've ever used
 Stream game audio to any headset through the controller
 What's New section provides a look at friends' activities
 Automatic download of system and game updates
 Great new PlayStation Store interface
 Streaming gameplay online is easy and addictive
 Local Vita Remote play works surprisingly well

The bad
 Relatively high power consumption
 Leap in graphics doesn't provide the "wow factor" of previous generational jumps
 Controller only gets about 7 hours of battery life
 Flat system interface gets cluttered and hard to use
 Limited editing and upload options for gameplay clips
 Music Unlimited is clunky, and it's the only way to get outside music

The ugly
 Camera-based voice commands are practically useless
 iOS PlayStation App seems of limited use
 Bluetooth headsets don't work for some reason

The Verdict: Wait for the Xbox One review to compare and contrast.

ArsTechnica.com

PlayStation 4: A Comeback Console, Still Rough Around the Edges

The Full Package
What do you want your console to do for you? The idea of a strictly gaming machine was proposed at least a decade ago, as consoles added social and entertainment features to meet gamers' demands. But Sony's PlayStation 4 doesn't excel at all its bells and whistles.

Some functions, like sharing, work perfectly, but other entertainment features and web browsing were clunky at best. While the company's messaging may be all about the games, the PS4 still has a weak launch lineup and not many extra features to gloss over that. Many of these complaints can be fixed with firmware updates, and the console's evolution is far from finished. It's just hard to ask early adopters to get excited when some pieces are half-baked, even at a lower price point of $399.

The Good
 Beautiful new console
 The best controller Sony has ever made
 Easy-to-use sharing features will push gaming forward

The Bad
 Underwhelming first-party launch games
 Cluttered menus
 Some entertainment and online features are not worth your time

The Bottom Line
Sony's PlayStation 4 is a great taste of what next-generation gaming means, but some of its rough edges make the whole package hard to swallow.

Mashable.com

PS4 First Impressions: The Future Is Finally Here

Like
Man this is serious next-gen, and next-gen is seriously great. It goes without saying—but I'll say it anyway—that the graphics and performance on this sucker are badass. You've been seeing trailers and gameplay footage of this stuff for nigh on two years now though, so you know that already.

The DualShock 4 is boss. Sure, the Xbox 360 got this right years ago, but after suffering through DS3 for so long, the new controller is a real joy. And even not in the context of last generation's failure; it's a great piece of hardware that was clearly, painstakingly designed to sit in your hands for hours on end. You can feel that. It is great.

The updates to PSN are another breath of fresh air. The PS3 interface was old, tired, and slow, in need of a big overhaul on a skeletal level. And that's not to mention all the new social hooks. It's hard to believe, but social media as we know it—as we breathe it—mostly exploded after the last generation of consoles had already launched. It's easy to forget, but the rise of streaming also came after the PS3/Xbox 360 launched; in 2006 Netflix was still mainly doing DVDs, and services like Twitch and Ustream didn't even exist. So to see all that integrated into the PS4 on a deeper level—into any console—is pretty unsurprising, but also terrific.

No Like
The PS4 is definitely a great gaming machine in the tradition of the PS3 before it, but its new functionality comes off as a little half-baked. That's totally understandable for a launch console, but that doesn't make it any less disappointing. Sharing videos and screenshots is great, but your options of how and where to share them are limited. Having no option outside of Facebook for videos is a real bummer. Likewise having no way make video or picture and then just link to them instead of pushing them out to social networks is a drag.

Likewise the DualShock 4's new tricks are going relatively underutilized, and it seems likely they'll continue to. I mean, the occasion that you used six-axis motion control on the PS3 were few and far between, and almost universally groan-worthy. The PS4 is pushing indie titles in the store pretty hard this time around though, and maybe those will be more likely to take some chances and experiment, versus big, first-party games.

The good news is, almost all of the PS4's issues right now could be solved with creative developers and/or a software update, but for now the PS4 is very much a better PS3. Which is to say it's better in a whole lot of ways, but there's nothing here to really blow your hair back. It's what you'd expect from the consoles of the past brought into the present, a console whose form is primarily inspired by decade's old traditions, as opposed to what you'd expect from something that is made from 100 percent future.

Should You Buy It?
Not yet. I mean, if you're some sort of Sony diehard who can never possibly be swayed to the Microsoft side, then sure. The PS4 is a good console. There is nothing aggressively wrong with it as to scare away or displease a devoted fanboy. The console itself costs $400, games cost your standard $60. Both are reasonable. You will like it, you will be happy.

But if you're relatively console neutral, or even just open-minded? Wait. The Xbox One is right around the corner, and it'd be stupid not to wait a measly week or so to see what sort of counterpoint it offers.

Beyond that, take a look at the launch line-up before you go about and buy anything. If you don't need to play Battlefield 4 or Call of Duty: Ghosts on a next gen console right freaking now, you can stand to wait. You've still got some time before the really fun stuff, the potential system-sellers (Infamous: Second Son, Destiny, Metal Gear Solid 5, etc etc) start coming out. And in general, waiting a year or so on a new console isn't the worst thing in the world; games will be more sophisticated, graphics will be better, maybe you'll even probably see a price drop if you wait long enough. Just saying.

So yes, the PS4 is good. The PS4 is great! But it's only one half of an equation years in the making. You can wait like a few more weeks to see both sides of it.

Gizmodo.com urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ontdgames:266074 Krayzie Koki The Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses Second Quest 2013-11-13T15:15:34Z 2013-11-13T15:16:55Z Journey back to the land of Hyrule with Second Quest, the next chapter in the acclaimed world tour, The Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses, featuring new music and visuals from highly requested titles Skyward Sword, Spirit Tracks, and Link's Awakening, while preserving perennial classics Ocarina of Time, The Wind Waker, Twilight Princess,and A Link to the Past in the groundbreaking four-movement symphony that took the world by storm in Goddesses' first season. With over a half-hour of new content, Second Quest is not only a feast for the eyes and ears, but the definitive   Zelda experience, a magical event you won't want to miss!

I feel like a failure for missing the first quest and now this. For those close to Baltimore you should check it out! Psst! There's a Groupon available as well: http://www.groupon.com/deals/gl-the-legend-of-zelda-symphony-of-the-goddesses-second-quest-1

More info at: http://www.bsomusic.org/main.taf?erube_fh=tessitura&tessitura.submit.CalendarPerfLink=1&PerfNo=12643
 urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ontdgames:265960 forcestrong The 10 Best Nintendo 2DS, 3DS, and 3DS XL Games 2013-11-08T21:42:13Z 2013-11-08T21:43:50Z The Nintendo 3DS, the successor to the insanely popular Nintendo DS portable video game system, is the handheld to own if you want to game on the go. That may not sound particularly remarkable considering that Nintendo has dominated the handheld space since the GameBoy, but it's a testament to the company's ability to craft compelling "mobile" titles.

Here's a Nintendo portable primer for those who aren't hip to the company's hardware: The Nintendo 3DS and 3DS XL incorporates 3D—the latest technological advance that companies think the public goes ga-ga over—bringing games into the third dimension. Nintendo also unveiled a lower-priced 2DS that, as the name implies, lacks 3D capabilities. 3DS games with work across all three systems (alas, there's no such thing as a "2DS game.")

The games in the Nintendo 3DS library are excellent. Certainly, not all the games are top-tier, but those that are the best represent some of the finest titles in the video game industry. If you're familiar with Nintendo's gaming lineage, it should come as no surprise that Mario and Zelda games rank highly among critics and fans.

If you're ready to Nintendo 3DS game, check out the ten titles (in alphabetical order) in our slideshow, which covers the action, RPG, and shooting titles that will be red hot this holiday season—and beyond. Warning: Many of the video games in this roundup are Nintendo properties. Few video game developers and publishers manage to consistently create killer titles at Nintendo's pace. Its remarkable, really.

Think that we've overlooked a hot title? Sound off in the comment section below and let us know what Nintendo 3DS games stay in your heavy rotation.

Animal Crossing: New Leaf

$34.99 MSRP
Animal Crossing: New Leaf isn't a major change from previous Animal Crossing games, but it is a big departure from nearly every other video game out there. It's less a game with rules and objectives and is more like a lazy afternoon in your pocket, where you can just relax and do whatever you want in your little town. It satisfies collectors and fans of the cute and quirky and will keep you playing for weeks.

Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D

$39.99 MSRP
Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D packs a lot of content and some of the best Nintendo side-scrolling action this generation into a portable package that will keep you playing (and growing increasingly frustrated) for hours. Even with the easier New Mode, it's a lot less forgiving and more secret-filled than New Super Mario Bros. 2, making it an excellent addition to your 3DS library. It will keep you playing--if you don't end up throwing your 3DS on the ground first.

Fire Emblem: Awakening

$39.99 MSRP
Fire Emblem: Awakening emphasizes strategy more so than the obsessive, carefree grinding. It uses an Advance Wars-like grid to move units across maps to beat enemies and accomplish objectives. Different units have different classes, and almost everyone in your army is a named character with a unique art style, voice, personality, and story. One wrong move can lead to disaster, and like every other game in the series this is because when your units die, they die for good. Fight bravely and carefully!

Kid Icarus Uprising

$39.99 MSRP
Pit, Nintendo's long overlooked angelic protagonist, returns to action after 25 years of dormancy in Kid Icarus Uprising. Medusa once again threatens peace, so it's up to our hero to combat dark forces using bows, staffs, canons, and a my rid other weapons in a bizarre genre mash up that's one part rail-shooter and one part brawler. Kid Icarus Uprising uses the Circle Pad and stylus, as well as the Circle Pad Pro peripheral for southpaw gaming.

The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time 3D

$39.99 MSRP
Nintendo's Ocarina of Time, the most beloved game in the entire Legend of Zelda franchise, receives the remastered, 3D treatment on the Nintendo 3DS. The game follows the adventures of its hero, Link, in the epic tale of the creation of Hyrule and the struggle for control of its all-powerful ancient relic. Ocarina of Time 3D features a touch-screen interface, new motion controls, challenges not included in the original game, and a new hint system to help novice players experience all the game has to offer.

Mario & Luigi: Dream Team

$39.99 MSRP
Mario & Luigi: Dream Team is a JRPG romp, like every other game in the Mario & Luigi sub-series. It doesn't have the genuinely unique and fresh feel of Paper Mario's various games, and it doesn't bring much new to the table besides the puzzle-solving dream mechanic, but it's enjoyable and cheerful, and worth a playthrough if you're a Mario fan and want a light game to pass the time.

Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D

$39.99 MSRP
Hideo Kojima's Cold War-era stealth-action opus chronicles the adventures of Naked Snake—the man who would later become the legendary Big Boss—as he attempts to prevent the U.S.S.R. from developing the Shagohod, a hybrid tank-rocket designed to launch intercontinental missiles. This Metal Gear Solid prequel sets the stage for the events that transpired in the original Metal Gear Solid, Sons of Liberty, Guns of the Patriots, Portable Ops, and Peace Walker.

Paper Mario: Sticker Star

$39.99 MSRP
The Paper Mario series fulfills a unique niche among Nintendo and role-playing game fans that no one was aware existed until it came along. It combines Eastern RPG elements with Mario characters, and then flattens it all into a pop-up book. It's visually unique, always full of amusing gags and clever puzzles, and consistently offers genuine fun no matter how strange it might get. Sticker Star doesn't have any level grinding or equipment juggling, but it offers great action and clever puzzles in the same humorous Paper Mario package we've seen before.

Pokemon X/Y

$39.99 MSRP
The Game Freak-developed Pokemon X/Y doesn't radically change the Pokemon formula, but it doesn't really have to do so. Pokemon's accessible turn-based RPG mechanics are as fun as ever, and the slick 3D graphical overhaul is a treat. There aren't many surprises, and the addition of Fairy-type critters doesn't change the mechanics in any noticeable way, but Pokemon's still one of the best games on the 2DS/3DS.

Super Mario 3D Land

$39.99 MSRP
PETA may hate the game, but Super Maio 3D Land is one of the best games on the 3DS platform. It builds upon the roaming Mario platforming mechanic by adding features both new and familiar. The game's 3D visuals make it easier for players to judge the depths and distances, and Mario can don his Tanooki suit, which gives him a tail for hovering, jumping, or attacking. New foes include tailed Goombas and Piranha Plant that can spit ink to obscure your view.

PCMag.com urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ontdgames:265479 forcestrong Xbox One Will NOT Have Backwards Compatibility Via Cloud Streaming 2013-11-08T18:03:01Z 2013-11-08T18:03:01Z Microsoft has experimented with the possibility of playing Xbox 360 games on the Xbox One via cloud streaming, but it will not roll out this solution because it is too "problematic."

Hold on to your current-gen console if you still want to play any Xbox 360 games. As a solution to the Xbox One's lack of backwards compatibility, Microsoft suggested it could stream Xbox 360 games to the Xbox One via cloud streaming. In a meeting this week, Microsoft's product planning director Albert Penello has decided not to move forward with this option because it is "problematic" for consumers. Cloud streaming was too likely to fail for Microsoft to consider using it.

"It's really cool and really problematic, all at the same time, insofar as it's really super cool if you happen to have the world's most awesome internet connection," Penello told Polygon. "It works way better than you'd expect it to. So, managing quality of service, the tolerance people will have for it being crappy. Can you imagine, in this day and age, with the bad information around, and we can't control the quality of that experience and make sure it's good, or have to tell people they can't do it?"

Network troubles are too common for Microsoft to go through with using the cloud for Xbox One users to play Xbox 360 games. Microsoft's experiment running Halo 4 on a Windows PC and a Windows Phone via cloud streaming demonstrated cloud streaming technology was one solution for offering backwards compatibility. In an uncontrolled environment, Microsoft cannot guarantee that level of success for consumers.

"This is one of the things where the network just has to get better before we can do it. When that happens, you're going to have a really interesting conversation around that, can I actually run Xbox One games that way as well."

Sony plans to use its Gaikai service to stream older PlayStation games to the PS4. Penello is interested to see how Sony deals with similar network problems making cloud streaming problematic.

EscapistMagazine.com + Polygon.com

OP: Interesting that slower internet connections are a totally valid argument now. When people made the same case against the required-connection, their attitude was "be less poor, losers." urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ontdgames:265278 forcestrong EA CEO Talks (lbr, pretends to care) About Winning Worst Company In America 2013-11-07T22:03:12Z 2013-11-07T22:05:41Z

For two years in row, Consumerist voters have awarded video game publisher Electronic Arts the title of Worst Company In America. Unlike other WCIA champs, EA has publicly responded to news of its wins, but often in a dismissive tone that only made things worse. But new CEO Andrew Wilson is now claiming that the company is listening to angry customers.

Wilson, who took over after much-hated longtime EA leader John Riccitiello stepped down in the middle of last year's Worst Company tournament, recently sat down with Polygon.com editor Brian Crecente to answer reader-submitted questions, the second of which dealt with EA's two-time victory in the WCIA Battledome of Blood.

"I think it was a wake-up call," admitted Wilson, getting in a not-so-subtle dig at Consumerist by adding, "Whether you respect the source or not."

Continued Wilson:

 "It was something we spent a lot of time and energy over and continue to spend a lot and energy over, and for us it was less about 'How do we not get voted the Worst Company again?' but more about, 'Okay, are there things that we could do differently or things that we have done that have been misinterpreted that would cause people to feel that way?'

"And again, what we've done is said, 'What is our role?' Our role is to build great games and services. Is there anything that we're doing that is an impediment to that or an inhibitor of that?… What we've been doing over time is we've been working to either update those things or eliminate those things and really get back to our focus on game because at the end of the day, if we're making great games and services, we won't get voted Worst Company In America again."

While Wilson's answer can be viewed as too vague, this is certainly a huge improvement over previous statements made by EA execs about being named Worst Company. During the last tournament, EA COO Peter Moore posted a non-apology that blamed the inclusion of EA on homophobes and people who were upset because they disagree with the choice of the cover athlete on Madden NFL."

There are 4-5 months to go before we even open up the floodgates to WCIA nominations, so EA will have plenty of time to show that it's not worthy of being considered for a Golden Poo trophy.

Consumerist.com urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ontdgames:265047 forcestrong Your privacy and what Xbox One Kinect really sees 2013-11-02T17:03:43Z 2013-11-02T17:03:43Z With the privacy concerns games raised recently, Microsoft found themselves needing to fully detail what the Xbox One Kinect sensor sees and sends. A new privacy statement page gets into what Kinect data is collected and how it will be used.

For example, Kinect sees a players face, using facial recognition to sign players in. But Microsoft explains that the tech is really seeing the distance between key points on faces, and that they store a set of numbers, and not necessarily pictures.

During play, the Kinect records similar numeric values for your skeleton. Microsoft says that these numbers are temporary, and are "destroyed" after use. Beyond this, this skeleton data cannot be used to identify a player.

Voice commands can be sent to Microsoft, if you choose to participate. These will be used to improve the service.

The Kinect microphone section warns that players "should not expect any level of privacy concerning your use of the live communication features such as voice chat, video and communications in live-hosted gameplay sessions offered through the services." They also say that they may monitor communication to some extent, but will not monitor the entire service.

Also, keep in mind that third-party apps will have their own privacy conditions to watch for.

Take a look for yourself and see if you have any concerns. Note that each section of this privacy statement page shows a summary first. Some of the heavy stuff lies beyond the "Learn More" link. Sneaky!

Destructoid.com

OP: I clicked around in the privacy policy and it didn't do anything to address my concerns. Nothing in there says they won't use audio it records to target advertisements. If I turn to my hubs and ask what we should do for dinner, I don't wanna see the Xbox suggest Doritos Tacos. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ontdgames:264767 forcestrong Xbox One supports the things we just learned PS4 doesn't 2013-11-02T15:08:09Z 2013-11-02T15:08:09Z Recently, this giant PlayStation 4 FAQ went up, shedding some light on some of the console's capabilities. Of course, what people were looking out for were any disappointments, which included a lack of MP3 and audio CD playback and DLNA for streaming content from PCs to the PS4.

Penny Arcade Report reached out to Microsoft to see if the Xbox One could do what Son-don't.

Rejoice, the Xbox One plays audio CDs. It is also in the process of DLNA certification, meaning it can act as a media hub. As for MP3 playback, you can stream MP3 content using using any Play To supported devices such as a Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 enabled PC or a Windows Phone.

Sony is still considering enabling DLNA support via s system update so users can stream media from their computer using the PS4, though, Sony's Shuhei Yoshida has indicated.

Yes, the Xbox One can play CDs and will support DLNA streaming [PAR]

Destructoid.com

OP: Is this really a thing people want? Do we not have enough devices that can play music? urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ontdgames:264558 forcestrong ontdgames @ 2013-10-18T12:00:00 2013-10-18T16:01:02Z 2013-10-18T16:01:02Z

Microsoft's Xbox 360 monthly free game promo, "Games with Gold," is being extended indefinitely. The program is essentially Microsoft's response on Xbox 360 to Sony's PlayStation Plus initiative on PlayStation 3 and Vita: members who pay the monthly or annual fee to the programs receive a variety of free games each month. Sony announced an extension of its program to its next game console, the PlayStation 4, back at E3 2013 -- anyone who already pays for PS Plus on PS3 or Vita is automatically a member on PS4.

Microsoft, however, won't say if "Games with Gold" will extend to its upcoming game console, the Xbox One."We're excited to announce we are extending Games with Gold for Xbox 360. We will share more details on the program soon. Stay tuned for our plans on Xbox One," a Microsoft spokesperson told Engadget. There are, of course, many other benefits to paying for an Xbox Live Gold account on the Xbox One, the least of which is the ability to play online multiplayer games.

Games with Gold kicked off in July 2013 with the aged Xbox Live Arcade title Defense Grid, and has since offered a smattering of other titles, from Crackdown to Dead Rising 2. This month's free games are Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes and Halo 3.

engadget.com

OP: I have XBL gold and I forgot this program even existed. I've got no interest in Halo 3 so I'll probably forget about this offer again before they launch the next freebie. urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ontdgames:264345 forcestrong Twitch's Interesting Commercial-Free (except not) Experiment 2013-10-15T01:16:48Z 2013-10-15T01:16:48Z We take for granted that TV shows have ads, this 72-year-old notion (93-year-old if we're counting radio) that every so many minutes, the visual broadcast narrative is going to crescendo then cut off, replaced by pushers and hucksters and helicopter zooms on sleek automobiles darting around mountain turns like low-flying alien spaceships.

Some of us DVR past this stuff. Some of us turn the TV down or mute it. Save for the Super Bowl, I don't know anyone who anticipates commercials, much less watches them riveted in place.

I hate being pitched. It's how I'm hardwired. And given polling about ad receptiveness, I suspect more people in this country are like me than not. So I find what Twitch TV is up to — something they told me about last week and that I've had to wait until today to tell you about — very, very interesting.

The live-streaming, video games-focused Justin.tv offshoot is giving something new a shot, starting tomorrow, called "Commercial-Free on Twitch."

Here's the service's pitch:

For the product's first outing, Sony PlayStation 4 will be bringing Commercial-Free to Twitch viewers on Tuesday, October 15th, for 12 full hours between 9 AM PST and 9PM PST. During that 12-hour window, the only commercials viewers will see is a short bumper explaining the Commercial-Free program, followed by a brief Sony pre-roll, and then the rest of their viewing experience, regardless of which channels they may switch to, will be uninterrupted until 9pm PST.

In other words, "Commercial-Free" isn't completely commercial-free — take note! When I asked Twitch to clarify what it meant by "a short bumper" and that bit about Sony pre-roll, I was told this:

When a user comes to Twitch during that 12 hour period, they will see a short bumper and then a 30 second commercial. In total, the bumper + commercial should be about 45 seconds. After that initial bumper + commercial, a user will have no subsequent commercials until after 9pm PT.

So yes, there is a commercial, it's just the sort of preamble you'd see going into a YouTube video. On YouTube, after the ad finishes, you're free to go about your business for however many minutes. Twitch is just blowing that up to 12 full hours. (I'm not sure what happens if you leave and come back. Update: Twitch says "Your cookies will remember you so you will not have to watch the bumper/commercial again during those 12 hours.")

The idea here is that a "single premier partner" — in this case, Sony Computer Entertainment America on behalf of its forthcoming PlayStation 4 — pays Twitch to wipe the commercial slate clean for a given period. Imagine if that were the norm instead of the exception. Think what it might mean for content creators, no longer shackled by commercial pauses. Think what it might mean to you.

Twitch refers to what it's doing as a way to provide brands with "the massive exposure and community good-will they desire while simultaneously delivering a meaningful ad-free experience that viewers appreciate."

I usually bounce off those kinds of self-congratulatory claims. Not this time.

Time.com

OP: or.... you know... adblock. /shrug urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ontdgames:263960 Die Waffen - legt an! Happy Pokemon Day! 3DS Friend Code Time! 2013-10-12T16:24:46Z 2013-10-12T17:09:53Z

Also Also <lj-embed id="834" />

Anybody for 3DS Friend Code Sharing?
Mine is 0602-6270-1955 < Glenn urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ontdgames:263882 forcestrong Xbox One and PC cross-play? 2013-10-09T18:14:42Z 2013-10-09T18:15:06Z Xbox One and PC cross-play is a potential result of Games For Windows Live closing. One site has asked Microsoft's Phil Spencer if cross-play between both formats is a possibility, and he replied by saying he's not allowed to leak things. Curious.

Speaking with AusGamers, Spencer was quizzed if the Xbox One's PC-like architecture, coupled with its Windows 8 features and cloud support could see the release of cross-play titles down the line.

He replied, "I'm not allowed to leak things [smiles]. But I think what you're talking about makes a lot of sense. Now you have differences in Windows gaming and console gaming around control and input… in fact if you go back to Shadow Run on Xbox 360 — something I worked on — we had PC players playing against Xbox 360 customers. We didn't have tremendous success with that, but we learnt a lot from it.

"And then earlier this year we released Skulls of the Shogun, which was a game we launched on all three platforms on the same day, and you could start on one platform and then save the game to the Cloud and play across any of the screens and progress. And then Halo: Spartan Assault has some links between Halo 4 and Spartan Assault, even though they're very different games.

"This connected ecosystem across all the different devices is definitely where I think the future of gaming is going; you don't have to do it as a developer, but you have the capability and I think a system like Xbox Live across all those screens where you know who someone is and who their friends are, what their Achievements are and their progression is really critical to that."

If follows Major Nelson's suggestion that Xbox One could get mouse and keyboard support down the line.

VG247.com

OP: idk that they'd pursue this for all games. FPS fans talk a lot about the differences between aiming on PC v console. Someone always feels the other would have an advantage. But I'd think it'd be easier to do in other games, like Diablo perhaps? urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ontdgames:263521 forcestrong How long should you wait before buying a next-gen console? 2013-10-09T16:50:30Z 2013-10-09T17:53:02Z

The eighth generation of console gaming is closing in (sorry, Wii U), and both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One will land next month. Sony's new console will drop on November 15 of this year, and Microsoft's Xbox One will release one week later on November 22. With every new console generation, the launch consoles are either must-haves or must-waits. Will the launch PS4 follow the route of the PS3 and end up a must-have in hindsight? Will the Xbox One follow the Xbox 360 and launch with various console-killing bugs? We're here to help you figure it all out.

Console revisionist history

We've been around long enough to know that only one or two years after a console launch, it's likely a revision will be on the way. Sony likes to slim down its gaming boxes, with the original PlayStation, PS2, and PS3 all getting a Slim version; the PS3 receiving a second, even slimmer revision toward the end of its lifecycle. The PSP experienced four different iterations — the original model, the subsequent 2000 and 3000 models, and the ill-fated PSP Go. The PS Vita has only been around for a year-and-a-half, and it's already getting a 2000 model, as well as being turned into the PS Vita TV set-top box.

Though every single Sony console has been revised into a slimmer form, the PS4 may be the first one that isn't. The console is using x86 — or, standard PC — architecture, which means there isn't much room to get smaller without getting more expensive.

The same — more or less — applies to the Xbox One. The original Xbox didn't undergo a slim revision, though it received many different color variations and special branded editions. This might have been because the original Xbox employs x86 architecture. However, the original Xbox released late into its console generation, so it's possible Microsoft simply didn't get far enough into the hardware's lifecycle to slim it down. Microsoft did revise the original Xbox gamepad, though. Meanwhile, the non-x86 Xbox 360 received a number of revisions and redesigns.

Though both the Xbox One and PS4 are using x86 architecture, there is already room to slim down. A not insignificant portion of the Xbox One is composed of empty space for airflow. If Microsoft can figure out how Sony was able to remove all that empty space, the Xbox One could shrink in size. Meanwhile, both consoles use an HDD, so in a few years when SSD prices drop a bit, each console could employ the much slimmer, faster storage device and shed some weight while gaining some speed. Furthermore, Sony could remove the PS4′s internal power brick, freeing up quite a bit room within the console to rearrange its guttyworks for optimum space-saving solutions. The company likely wouldn't do that for a while, as the internal power supply is a source of engineering pride.

Should you wait for a revised model?

Now that we can look back on history, the biggest reason why the launch PS3 was worth an early adoption was because of the backwards compatibility with PS2 and PS1 games. Not long after launch, the feature was dropped, rendering your Sony back catalog useless unless you hung onto your PS1 and PS2. This time around, the PS4 and the Xbox One both won't be inherently backwards compatible, so neither console will be launching with a must-have feature that could be dropped in the future. Both companies appear to be angling toward offering backwards compatibility through cloud services, which will always be available as long as the consoles are internet-capable.

The only console revisions we can feasibly look forward to in a short amount of time would be the addition of an SSD, or slimmer units. If waiting a couple years for a somewhat smaller (but still giant) set-top box with a faster storage device is worth missing out on those couple years of games, go right ahead and sit this one out. If not, the eighth generation of consoles could easily be the least risky target for early adoption in video game history, thanks to the x86 architecture. This time around, it should all come down to how long you can do without the launch window games. You likely won't be missing out on some kind of special launch-day hardware feature that gets dropped somewhere down the line.

Unfortunately, console pre-orders are sold out almost everywhere, so you'll have to put in a bunch of effort to find one.

Geek.com urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:ontdgames:263190 forcestrong Nintendo Direct October 2013 2013-10-01T17:37:28Z 2013-10-01T18:52:02Z Kirby for 3DS, Pikmin 3 DLC, Donkey Kong delay and more

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- Sonic the Hedgehog is back for Super Smash Bros. Wii U and 3DS

Sega's iconic blue hedgehog is back for another round of Super Smash Bros., Nintendo president Satoru Iwata announced today during a Nintendo Direct presentation.

Sonic the Hedgehog will reprise his appearance in Nintendo's brawler franchise for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS. The "blue blur," as Iwata referred to him, will appear alongside Princess Peach, Mario, Luigi and Toon Link, as well as series newcomers the Animal Crossing Villager, Wii Fit Trainer and Mega Man.

Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS will launch next year. The game was announced at E3 2013.

- Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze delayed to February 2014

Nintendo has delayed Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze to February 2014, company president Satoru Iwata announced today during a Nintendo Direct presentation.

Nintendo said in August that it planned to launch Tropical Freeze on Dec. 6, 2013. In Europe, the game will now launch some time in 2014.

"In order to deliver the optimum gaming experience, we need a little more time for development of this title," said Iwata. "We would like to apologize for this delay, and hope you understand."

For more on Tropical Freeze, check out our E3 preview.

- New Pikmin 3 DLC includes Mission Modes, leaderboards and more

New Pikmin 3 Mission Mode stages are coming to the game as paid DLC today, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata announced during a Nintendo Direct event today.

The first, the Collect Treasure pack, will be released later today in the Nintendo eShop, and a second round will be released at a later date. According to the official Pikmin 3 website, Mission Packs will retail for $1.99.

New rankings and global leaderboards are also headed to Pikmin 3 in the game's latest update, which will also bring a free new add-on Mission Mode stage.

- The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds launching Nov. 22 in Europe

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds will launch for Nintendo 3DS in Europe on Nov. 22, Nintendo announced today in a Nintendo Direct presentation.

The game will launch day and date with the North American version. Check out Polygon's preview of the game, and learn how the game connects the series' past to its present.

- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies demo hits today

A demo for Capcom's Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies will be available today, Nintendo announced today during a Nintendo Direct presentation.

The free demo will go up in the Nintendo 3DS eShop at the conclusion of the Nintendo Direct. Dual Destinies itself will be released Oct. 24 exclusively on the eShop for $29.99 in the U.S. and €24.99 in Europe.

- New Kirby game for Nintendo 3DS launching in 2014

A new Kirby title is coming to Nintendo 3DS next year, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata announced during a Nintendo Direct presentation today.

The side-scrolling platformer will be the first Kirby game on the 3DS. In the game, Kirby will move between the foreground and the background, as well as from left to right. He'll also have an "inhale everything" ability that will allow him to clear the screen in certain parts of the game.

Iwata debuted footage of the game in a teaser trailer, which you can watch below.

- Mario and Luigi Wii Remote Pluses coming Nov. 1

Mario and Luigi-branded Wii Remote Pluses will be available to purchase Nov. 1 in North America, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said during a Nintendo Direct broadcast this morning.

You can check out the red and green Wiimotes above. They'll launch next month at a suggested retail price of $39.99 each.

- 3DS StreetPass Relay feature to start sharing six visitors at a time

The Nintendo 3DS StreetPass Relay, which lets a user download the StreetPass data of the last 3DS owner to check in at a Nintendo Zone location, will soon be expanded to increase the amount of tags you can pick up in one visit.

As announced in this morning's Nintendo Direct, folks who check in a Nintendo Zone locations will now grab the data for the last six visitors at that hotspot, exponentially increasing the number of StreetPasses you'll gain with a single visit. The update will launch "starting in a few days," according to a Nintendo of America representative.

- Super Mario 3D World gameplay trailer shows new powerups, stages

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A gameplay trailer revealed at today's Nintendo Direct focuses on the variety of new powerups and items in the upcoming Super Mario 3D World.

In addition to showing off the game's signature cat suit, which allows Mario, Luigi, Peach and Toad to run up walls and destroy enemies with powerful scratches, the trailer also shows off an item that duplicates the character on screen and an item that turns the player into a Hammer Bro. The classic Tanooki suit is also making a return.

Other items include a portable Piranha Plant to munch on one's enemies and a giant baseball to hurl at them.

- Mario & Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Olympics gets a new gameplay trailer

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A new gameplay trailer for Mario & Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games shows off the various sports and events in which characters from the two franchises can compete.

The trailer, which debuted today as a part of the Nintendo Direct presentation, shows both the game's standard Olympic events like speed-skating and ski-jumping as well as the Dream events, which are less realistic and would be unlikely to show up at the actual Sochi Olympics.

Mario & Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games hits Wii U on Nov. 15.

Polygon.com
(Some of these stories have longer articles which are linked to at the source.)