Living LIVE News Report 05.16.11
Posted by Trace Aber on 05.16.2011
News and thoughts on Crysis 2's new DLC pack, PS3 owners switching to the Xbox 360, Eidos Interactive's website attack and user data theft and Mortal Kombat Arcade's release date! Plus discussion of Games on Demand's pricing and more!
REPLY POSTED
Thanks. I see I made the right decision. I got Sonic 1 & 2
Posted By: Guest#7623 (Guest) on May 01, 2011 at 11:38 PM
Great choices! I've played through both of those games more times than I care to count, Sonic 2 especially. Once you finish with those you'll definitely want to check out Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles as they both introduce quite a few new things to the series. Let me know what you think of our speedy blue friend!
yes, some ps3 owners are going to switch to 360's just in time for live to get hacked and go through it all again.
Posted By: Steve (Guest) on May 02, 2011 at 11:44 AM
While that's a pessimistic view on things, if there's one lesson to learn from the PSN attack is that no network is perfect. For the time being at least it appears as though hackers aren't too angry at Microsoft right now (at least their video games division), so we should be safe for now. While I'm quite upset with the whole situation (read the introduction for more details on that), I don't plan on getting rid of my PS3 anytime soon. Then again, I already own a 360 so my desire to switch is moot.
A few of you guys had some comments on the Games on Demand service getting closer to retail prices, so let's read them all then address them afterwards.
Is the Games on Demand service finally getting a reality check? All three you listed are actually in line with Amazon and Best Buy. This doesn't count for the used market of course but maybe this is hope? They should start making every big title available on the service at launch day. Maybe they know what they are doing after all...
Posted By: Wii60 (Guest) on May 06, 2011 at 03:52 PM
"All three you listed are actually in line with Amazon and Best Buy."
Games on Demand pricing has been the MSRP on them for quite some time, but stores will often sell below MSRP if it's an old title. Microsoft can't, without the stores raising a fuss about losing sales of games that weren't selling well anyway...and until digital distribution is powerful enough to tell brick and mortar stores to pound sand, we have to deal with prices that stick to MSRP.
Posted By: Rod Oracheski (Guest) on May 07, 2011 at 01:44 PM
Has anyone ever bought from games on demand though? Are the figures good?
Posted By: Stewart Lange (Registered) on May 09, 2011 at 03:34 PM
MS can easily match prices if they really wanted to. I ran a warehouse for many years and can tell you physical distribution is far more expensive than digital distribution. It's just that companies are too scared of b&m chains dropping them and that they love the windfall profits.
Posted By: mogamer (Guest) on May 13, 2011 at 11:09 AM
The Games on Demand section has been slowly presenting newer and newer titles and more reasonable prices, though there is still plenty of room for improvement. As Wii60 brought up, some of the games are even matching other online stores such as Best Buy and Amazon – but the argument still remains that delivering digital content is less expensive than physical media and thus the prices should be even lower.
Personally, I don't think too many brick and mortar stores will notice much of a hit on older video game sales if Microsoft offers competitive prices for their digital counterparts. Gamestop is the place most gamers stop for older and less expensive video games already, and Microsoft won't be beating those prices anytime soon. If they were to release new titles on the service at a discounter price, well, that might cause some problems. You can offer all the pre-order incentives you want – a cheaper price will almost always win.
The official reason for the prices, according to a Microsoft rep in a recent interview regarding Halo: Reach's ridiculous price tag, is that GoD allows for 24/7 shopping convenience. That doesn't seem like a good justification, but that's the official line. As for official figures of the service, I was unable to find anything but if one of our readers can find something do share.
I've purchased exactly one game on the service and that was the original Mass Effect for $19.99, which was the lowest price I was able to find on a new copy so I decided to give it a whirl. Out of my friends I'm the only one I know who's purchased off the service, so from my point of view it doesn't appear too popular. Surely they're making enough to justify keeping them up for download, though.
Welcome everyone to another issue of the Living LIVE News Report, and as always, I'm your host for the evening, Trace Aber. Last Friday I became an official victim of credit fraud and the only plausible explanation for as to why is that my account information was indeed stolen and used from the PSN attack. Luckily, I was able to catch it almost as soon as the purchases went through and cancel the charges, though I'll still be waiting for nearly a week for the funds to be returned to me. The douchebag who used my card manage to use about half of my money, and apparently a single guy as he signed up for an account on Match.com. So let this be a warning to everyone – if you had your information stored on the PSN be sure to constantly check your bank statement. Otherwise you might not get so lucky. Also, I'm not interested in covering all of the Modern Warfare 3 stuff because it's been covered to death and we all know what to expect. You can check out a report here on 411Mania however.
PSN Outage Actually Leading to New 360 Owners
According to a recent report in EDGE Magazine, retailers from Europe are beginning to notice that PS3 owners got tired of hoping for the service to return and have begun switching out their PS3 for 360s. One store noticed a 200% increase in PS3 trade-ins, with 50% of them going for cash and the other half opting for a 360. To top things off, they've also noticed a huge drop in PS3 sales.
Most of these fans, according to another retailer, are hardcore first-person shooter fans. This makes sense as those games thrive on online competition and are pretty useless without it. Recently released Brink also saw a drop in PS3 pre-orders, as the game relies heavily on its multiplayer component. As a person who bought Mortal Kombat for the PS3, I can attest to this and regret being a month behind from online competition. Even worse, I've grown tired of the game as playing against the same group of friends and AI opponents can't keep my interest forever.
The most telling reason for the trade-ins can be directly blamed on Sony according to some people. One source told EDGE, "a lot of people have been phoning asking us about personal details on PSN as they are struggling to get a response from Sony themselves. Overall, people that have traded with us seem annoyed at how Sony has handled all of this, and say they would not trust them with details again in the future." Even in places where sales didn't change, complaints about being unable to play online have increased, and apparently some no longer care about LIVE's price, which can be seen in a lot of online discussion.
Sony has announced plans to compensate players for the lost time, but they're losing customers that they won't be able to win back anytime soon. A lot of these hardcore gamers, who are hard to win over anyways, aren't going to give Sony another shot this console generation and will likely be reluctant on their next console as well. Sony was just starting to earn a lot of fandom and trust back after a shaky start for the PS3, and a lot of that goodwill was quickly lost over the last month.
That being said, over the weekend most of the Playstation Network returned back to normal, with only the online store being disabled for North Americans. Sony will continue getting the network up in all regions over the next few days. The next month or so will be very important for Sony as they run damage control.
Hey, Another Company Got Hacked!
The website for Edios Interactive and their yet-to-be-released blockbuster Deus Ex: Human Revolution, were recently hacked by a splinter group of the much larger Anonymous. Taking place just days after the group was announced as responsible for the Sony attack, both sites were first defaced with this image before being unreachable for several hours. The banner read "Owned by Chippy1337," with several handles of other hackers involved attached at the bottom.
One hacker known as "evo" mentioned in chat logs obtained by KrebsOnSecurity.com that he downloaded on 9,000 resumes from the Edios website and the potential release of "src," which could be the source code for multiple Edios games, including Deus Ex. They also intend on releasing the data of 80,000 Deus Ex users for download on file-sharing networks.
The story takes a strange turn though, as the hackers began turning on one another, pinning the attack on other hackers. The person supposedly responsible for the hack, Ryan Cleary, had all of his information released including his phone number and address. One source, who wished to remain, ironically enough, anonymous, claimed that "ev0 and nigg got the 0day they used to break in [to Eidos.com] from one guy, then got Blackhatcat to execute it and then screwed everyone, stole the database."
For those not familiar with Anonymous, it's an umbrella term used to describe users of the popular 4Chan message boards, particularly /b/. Due to the very nature of the group, there are no official leaders, though there are many groups that work on sometimes entirely different projects under the same name. Some people call them cyber-activists while others call them cyber-terrorists, but the problem is that you can't pinpoint Anonymous. It's not one group, its multiple groups who hide under a much safer umbrella. It's also worth noting that just about every hack seems to be blamed on Anonymous nowadays, which made be true or may just be the media needing somebody to blame.
One person familiar with the attack explained it like such: "One day they work together, the next they war. They drop dox on each other like it's a game. Just like they did pinning the defacement of Dues Ex on Blackhatcat. Then denied the whole thing. Its psychotic behavior like I have never seen. Its like they hate each other but will work together on certain ops if it suits them, but then might turn on each other in the end…and then laugh it off."
The link above includes the full chatlogs planning the attack, and it's an interesting read if just to see how things like this go down. This attack could have serious implications with the information released, as if they chase down Ryan Cleary he'll likely have information on other hackers, and so on and so forth. While it wasn't mentioned was kind of information was contained from the 80,000 Deus Ex website users, one would hope it doesn't involve any credit card information. We'll be sure to follow this story as it develops.
Indie Game Developers Now Allowed to Choose Release Date
A couple of weeks ago Microsoft banned silver accounts from voting for Indie Games, something many indie developers were very adamant about. Another problem with the service was the inability to choose the date your game releases, which made promotional events like the Indie Games Winter Uprising (which produced a fair number of good to great games) extremely difficult. As you may remember, that program started out strong but suffered as the games were not released on schedule due to the peer review process all Indie Games must go through. Well, that is about to change as Microsoft has allowed for developers to determine their own release date, as long as the game passes peer review. The official statement is below:
"Based on developer community feedback, we have enabled developers to control the release of their games that have passed peer review. This feature will help developers to better coordinate social networking, press, and other opportunities for the release of their titles on Xbox LIVE Indie Games."
"By default, games will automatically be published when peer review is complete. This change adds a check box that developers can check if they want to control their games' release. If the developer checks this box, the game will stay in a "ready to publish" state after passing peer review. The developer can then return to the game's page and click the "Publish Now" button, which sends the game to the Xbox LIVE Indie Games channel on Xbox LIVE Marketplace within 24 hours."
Many indie developers were happy with the change, though some felt it should have been in there from the beginning. I've been confused by the way Microsoft has handled the service until recently, and it seems like they're actually willing to let the little guys have a chance. Being unable to pin down a release date for your game makes it hard to build up hype, because going off of, "Sometime soon, hopefully" only gets you so far.
This now begs the question of whether or not Microsoft will continue to make positive changes to the Indie Games Channel. One frequently requested feature is the addition of achievements to Indie Games, which to me seems like a long shot but would definitely help increase sales (sadly). What kind of changes would you like to see to the Indie Games channel?
Random News and Notes
Microsoft recently purchased popular video service Skype for $8.5 billion and announced plans to add support for the service to Xbox, Kinect and Windows Phone. Skype will continue to be on non-Microsoft platforms as well.
Microsoft plans on updating Xbox LIVE on May 27th, adding support for the new disk format they've been trying out, as well as a PayPal option for purchases. They will also launch Avatar Kinect, the virtual hangout space announced earlier this year.
Crysis 2 will be seeing its first set of DLC on May 18 in the Retaliation Map Pack. It includes four new multiplayer maps including Park Avenue, Transit, Shipyard and Compound. While no price has been set, you can be safe that it'll set you back either 800 or 1200MP. The trailer is shown below.
The Mortal Kombat Arcade Collection, a trio of early Mortal Kombat games, will be released digitally on LIVE, PSN and PC this summer. The games included are Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2 and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.
The Digital Downloads Arcade Games
Bangai-O HD (800MP)
Moon Diver (1200MP)
Star Raiders (800MP)
Gatling Gears (1200MP)
Games on Demand
Monster Madness ($39.99)
Call of Duty: Black Ops ($59.99)
Vanquish ($39.99)
Velvet Assassin ($19.99)
DiRT 2 ($29.99)
Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising ($19.99)
Demos
Red Faction: Armageddon
LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video Game
DLC
Call of Duty: Black Ops Escalation Map Pack (1200MP)
Minions! (80MP)
Minions is not a pretty game and looking through the screenshots I expected it to be absolutely terrible. But, then again, something made me want to play it – perhaps it was because of the promise of mission based gameplay that allowed you to play from third person or overhead perspective, or because I'm a sucker for hideous graphics. To my surprise, the game is actually pretty fun and ends up being well worth the $1 asking price.
You play the role of a super military hero who's hell bent on destroying any and everything that is the color red. Why? I don't know, but the dude is motivated and that's all you need to know. You run around the various levels from either one of the game's views, but I prefer the third person view myself. You collect weapons lying randomly on the ground, and in the first two levels I encountered a machete, handgun, rifle, rocket launcher and even a Gatling gun. There are various objectives in each level, which usually amount to killing a certain number of enemies or collecting something. After completing a level you can level up your character out of six stats including health, shield regeneration and the amount of gold killed enemies drop. Players can also customize the titular minions, who run out and help you in larger battles.
The game features some good sound effects and some really nice music. Controls are tight, though the aiming seems sketchy at times. As mentioned previously, the game isn't going to break any ground graphically speaking, but it does add a bit of charm to the title. For a dollar you're getting customization and character building and fun, if simple, gunplay. Give this game a whirl if you can look past the graphics. Rating: 8.0
G.O.R.K. (80MP)
G.O.R.K. is an experiment gone wrong, and of course you're the experiment. Starting from a small petri dish to overtaking semi-trucks, the little green ball that is G.O.R.K has a lot of fun gameplay to offer, even if it can be a bit frustrating at times.
Played from an overhead view, G.O.R.K. tasks players with completing certain objectives such as finding an exit or killing enemies, with its main mechanic similar to the popular Flash game Fishy. You start out small but by eating smaller enemies you grow, allowing you to eat more and so on and so forth. The gameplay fits surprisingly well in this format, and ends up being relatively challenging. As with any game using this mechanic, it can sometimes be hard to tell what is smaller or larger than you for some enemies, and with G.O.R.K. shrinking with each hit it can be frustrating if you're bounced between enemies.
Solid art and music direction complete the package, and the game offers plenty of levels for its asking price. Some people may be turned off by the bacteria-eat-bacteria gameplay, but if you've ever enjoyed the genre you'll love this twist on it. Rating: 7.5
Signing Out
That does it for me this week. Be sure to check back next week as we discuss all of the latest Xbox 360 news, including releases, rumors and reviews! Also, don't forget to bookmark 411Mania! And a note to all of the Indie Game developers out there – if you have an upcoming title that's going to be released soon drop me a line at traceaber@gmail.com and let me know. I'll write a full review of your game to be posted on 411Mania.com, which is a great way to get your game promoted!
Posted By: Guest#0803 (Guest) on May 16, 2011 at 01:17 PM
Well written article, alot of great points. I'm sure there are the few that have traded in their PS3 for a 360, but I highly doubt very many. The jump of 200% is a best guess in the past 2 weeks. Percentages are used to make it sound like a significant increase. The stores that would get on average 3 or for ps3's a month got 2 or 3 more basically. I'd say the PS3 owners who traded within the first two weeks were most likely idiots and we can do without em. The last 2 weeks, I would guess to switch consoles this late in the game they most likely didn't have much vested into their systems in the first place. I couldn't imagine trading my ps3 considering how many games I have now. Trading in anything anywhere is always an ass raping w/o a reach around. Just not a smart move imo.
As for the hacks. Is it honestly surprising? Square Enix was hacked a few days ago as well. Anonymous? That I am unsure of still. The name of the group is obviously beneficial. Apparently effective name as well. They are quite smug in their responses, I guess professionalism does have a profound effect as well. For image at least. But fortunately for them being smug does not constitute guilt.
Posted By: Josh@Work (Guest) on May 16, 2011 at 01:33 PM
Yesterday when I woke up I logged in and changed my password with no problem.
I've read alot of comments from people having trouble with their passwords. I'm sure it's because they were trying to sign into an account created on another ps3 through their current ps3. I would assume most people have terrible reading comprehension and didn't see that emails will be sent for those. Most likely in a few days all the emails will be sent out.
I'm sure since the update was mandatory you have hackers or those that are in a frenzy doing whatever they can to make it inconvient for anyone else. So expect it to be a little difficult for Sony to distinguish those trying to fuck the system and legitimate users.
Anyway, I was online for most of the day playing Socom 4, Killzone 3 and Crysis 2 and had no problem with connectivity or matchmaking. For about 2 or 3 hours I was in the same game with most of the same people in Socom 4. Got a new Wifi connect yesterday (live in apt and paid someone for their access code) and I'm at 100% connectivity. So that worked out well. Until they move that is :/ hah. Anyway if you're now active and online add me on PSN Old_Poptarts. I play the above as well as a little COD: B-Ops
Posted By: Josh@Work (Guest) on May 16, 2011 at 02:37 PM
This hacker stuff is getting out of hand. There really needs to be a way to curb this behavior.
Posted By: Steve307 (Guest) on May 18, 2011 at 11:09 PM
I wouldn't bet the farm that the Xbox Live is somehow more secure than the PSN. If you connect to the internet, then there is a way in. Just look at another MSFT product, Windows, probably the most hacked thing ever in the history of mankind. To bail on Sony because of their network errors is just silly. Sooner or later these hackers will take out Xbox Live too. Pick up an Xbox because of the games not because you can't play Call of Duty for a few weeks.
Posted By: Wii60 (Guest) on May 20, 2011 at 06:25 PM
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