Archive for the 'In the News' Category

There’s currently a lot of buzz about the supposed firing of Jeff Gerstmann, a long-time editor at GameSpot (Penny Arcade! even has a comic about the incident). He was apparently fired based on a poor review he gave for “Kane & Lynch: Dead Men,” a game for the xBox 360. Eidos, who publishes the game, currently has a large advertising partnership with GameSpot for the game. This move indicates to me that Eidos was attempting to buy a good review, which they didn’t get. I have no trouble believing that they had a hand in getting Mr. Gerstmann fired.

It’s really sad to see when professional reviewers are forced to say one thing or another, but it’s not surprising. The almighty dollar seems to make most of the decisions these days. Years ago I subscribed to Computer Gaming World magazine, but I canceled my subscription after the quality took a nose dive. The “larger” gaming websites are starting to head in that direction as well, especially after shenanigans like these. I do most of my game review reading through Metacritic, checking out what reviewers as a whole have to say about various games. I also try to seek out independent reviews, from people like myself.

This kind of story is one reason that I decided to post my own reviews here on this website. Although I don’t have as much readership or visibility as the big review websites, I try to provide an alternative to the paid endorsements that publishers try to shove down our throats. Hopefully you find my reviews to be useful and honest. If so, then I’m succeeding where the large sites are failing. And that’s good enough for me.

I really hate how news outfits continually refer to Cyber Monday as ‘the busiest online shopping day of the year.’ If you take a look at the Wikipedia article, you’ll see that the term “Cyber Monday” is actually a neologism, undoubtedly created to generate public interest (and therefore, boosted sales figures). A number of online retailers point out that early December is actually a busier time than today supposedly is.

That being said, I love shopping online, and I try to do most of my holiday shopping through online outfits (though some things just have to be bought locally). How about you? Do you do your holiday shopping online, or do you head to the brick and mortar stores?

File this one in the “Oops!” department.

During a recent US Navy exercise in the Pacific, a Chinese nuclear submarine popped up in the middle of the US fleet, completely undetected until it surfaced. I’m guessing that the top brass in the Navy will demand answers for why the submarine was not detected. This was no doubt a shock to everyone aboard the US ships, as the Chinese sub was easily within range for launching torpedoes.

So a guy goes into a Best Buy, purchases a Western Digital hard drive, and finds out later that the box is filled with bathroom tiles. He tries to return the hard drive (since it wasn’t what he thought it was), and the manager says that they can’t do that. Instead, he should take up the complaint with the manufacturer. How is this even legal?

I’ll just add this story to the ever-growing list of reasons why I don’t shop at Best Buy. Amazon.com FTW.

Gizmodo has an interesting article on why they think Apple is offering the $100 coupon for early adopters of the iPhone. I happen to agree with the article 100%. Pretty clever marketing on Apple’s behalf.

Amazon.com recently purchased AmieStreet.com, a digital music store that uses a unique demand based pricing. There has been some speculation as to what Amazon intends to do with this acquisition, but I’m guessing they will use this idea in their upcoming online music store. A demand based pricing system is interesting: all music starts out free of charge and, as the demand for specific tracks increases, so does the price. There certainly must be a price cap (no one would shell out lots of money for a single music track), but I’m not sure what that might be.

I think this could do very well for Amazon. One of the biggest selling points is that all music will be completely DRM free. Only time will tell how well Amazon can do against the existing juggernauts.

It was announced on Monday that EA will reorganize into four labels: EA Games, EA Sports, EA Casual Games, and The Sims. This is an interesting move on their part, intended to “streamline the company” (don’t all companies seem to do this on a daily basis?). It should be interesting to see if this makes any real difference, though I doubt it does. I’ve heard that working for EA is like working in a sweat shop; it’s amazing that any products are released at all, if that’s the case.

What intrigues me most is the fact that “The Sims” will be broken off into its own label. Who knew that a single video game would spawn such an empire? I won’t deny that I was a Sims junkie at one point. I own all of the Sims 1 expansion packs, and I even developed several tools for that very game. The game was highly revolutionary at the time, and remains one of the best examples of an object-oriented programming model (Sidebar: Each individual game object contains the necessary sounds and animations used when a Sim interacts with that object. This programming paradigm is incredibly beneficial, since new objects can be added at a later time without a need to update the game’s core files.).

As one might expect, when the sequel (The Sims 2) was released, I eagerly picked it up. Surprisingly, I was disappointed with the game. Like many Maxis games, performance was sub par, even on my fairly beefy home computer (Sim City 3000, a game dating back to 1999, still stutters on my current machine). In addition, the game play mechanics had changed drastically: Sims had a finite life span, a number of goals needed to be reached through the Sim’s lifetime, and relationships were even harder to maintain. I lost interest fairly quickly, and haven’t played either title in several years.

So, to make a long story short, I’m a little amazed that the product line has continued to do so well. The Sims 2 has a total of 5 expansion packs (with at least 1 more on the way), 3 of which are essentially the same expansions as are available in The Sims 1. I get a “been there, done that” kind of feeling in that regard, but apparently lots of people don’t feel that way. Otherwise, EA wouldn’t have spun the franchise into its own label.