The Select and Start News Report 06.11.07
Posted by Vincent Chiucchi on 06.11.2007
Video gamer becomes a hero, possible PS3 price cut coming, worst PS3 commercial ever, and a show about grade school intelligence
Welcome to the Select and Start News Report, which almost got cancelled this week because A-Rod suddenly got up behind me and shouted "Hey!" What an A-hole. Now I bet I'm going to get some bad feedback for that joke tomorrow (read the feedback section for more).
Big News
ADAM MAPLESON: HERO [credit: The Sun, Joystiq, Pure Pwnage]
24-year-old Adam Mapleson is an IT tech and an avid video gamer, and a few weeks ago in the UK came to the aid of a woman security guard being robbed by two armed assailants. Adam tried to tackle them and was shot in the chest at close-range. According to a witness, "There was blood all over the floor and all over the wall." Adam was taken to a hospital where his condition is said to be serious but stable.
With all the bullshit stereotypes that gamers get from people like J-T, it's nice to see someone like Adam Mapleson be in the news for a change. Of course playing video games and being a gamer had nothing to do with why Adam tried to do what he did, but then again niether did they have anything to do with the VT Massacre but were mentioned nonetheless.
Some people would say he was stupid however for trying to tackle armed gunmen, but as I've always believed, the line between "Bravery" and "Stupidity" is so thin it's almost non-existant.
PRICE CUTS? YEAH RIGHT [credit: GameDaily, GameSpot]
Sony has recently cut the price of their BDP-S300 Blu-ray Disc player to $499. Reasons for this are from increased demand and cheaper production costs. With that in mind, questions are immediately coming out about if Sony is finally going to drop the price of the PS3, which was priced so high because of the blue laser diodes.
I remember when PS2 was released, DVD players were starting to get cheaper at around $100 to $200. How much was the PS2? $300. Fast forward to today, and I'm pretty sure that even though Sony is cutting the Blu-Ray to $500 (and it was just a year ago that it was a freaking $1000), the PS3 is still going to remain at $600. Even if there was a price cut, it'd probably be at $500. Would you still buy a 60GB PS3 at $500?
THOMAS TULL STARTS GAME COMPANY, GETS $400,000,000 [credit: GameSpot, Gamasutra, GameDaily]
Legendary Pictures CEO Thomas Tull has started up a Hollywood-based game developer called Brash Entertainment, who received $400 million in funding from private investment firm Abry Partners. The company will be producing mostly movie licensed games, with one of the first games being based on Saw. Later titles will be based on other horror films as well as children's animated films and action-paced thrillers (300 is rumored to be one of them seeing it's from the same studio). The producers working at Brash have worked on other major games including God of War, F.E.A.R., Silent Hill, SOCOM II, Gran Turismo 4, Tony Hawk's Underground, and more.
$400 million for a company to do movie based games? Sounds like they're trying to be really serious with this one, which could mean that we'll getting a lot more games that are actually good. A game based on 300 sounds like an awesome idea, so here's to hoping it actually happens.
Tidbit News
-Since New York obviously has nothing better to do (I guess because NYC is now the "safest big-city"), the senators are fighting each other over the babysitting bill of jailing people who sell M-Rated games to minors. [credit: GameDaily]
-One more reason for me to not play MMORPG's: Gold farmers. Long time WOW player Antonio Hernandez is suing a gold-farming company from Hong Kong called IGE, for making a "calculated decision to reap substantial profits by knowingly interfering with and substantially impairing the intended use and enjoyment [of the game]." [credit: GameSpot]
-Sony has officially reached the 1 million mark for PS3's sold in Europe, and yes, it's to actual consumers and not how many shipped to stores. Also, Resistance: Fall of Man has sold 600,000 units and Motorstorm just over 500,000. [credit: Gamasutra, GameDaily]
-Speaking of price cuts, the rumors are not flying that Microsoft will be doing the same thing before the Christmas season in order to compete with the Wii. But just like the PS3, odds are that it isn't happening. [credit: Gamasutra, GameDaily]
-The rumors are continuing (I didn't even know they started) of an upcoming Mario Kart game to the Wii. Nintendo may be announcing new details about the series' Wii debut at this year's E3 along with other hardware announcements. [credit: CVG]
-Is Tomb Raider Anniversary coming to the Xbox 360? According to the ESRB's website it could be, but the game has not officially confirmed by publisher Eidos. [credit: GameDaily]
-With Nintendo of America moving their HQ, 90% of the sales and marketing staff have not decided to not make the move and will be leaving with a severance pay. This includes three top executives at the company: George Harrison (Senior Vice President, Marketing and Corporate Communications), Perrin Kaplan (Vice President, Marking and Corporate Affairs), and Beth Llewelyn (Senior Director of Public Relations Beth Llewelyn). Nintendo, however, says that they "hadn't heard anything" about their employees leaving. [credit: GameSpot, GameDaily]
-Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter thinks that Take-Two could be delaying GTA4 by a few more weeks in order to not get overshadowed by Halo 3. I think that's why Nintendo moved Metroid Prime 3 up to August. [credit: GameDaily]
Profits and Losses
MAD CATZ: Sales for the quarter ended March 31st were put at $19.3 million, up 12.1 percent from the same time last year, while profits rose from losses of $3.3 million in 2006 to a profit of $0.7 million. For the full year, sales fell by 1.0 percent to $99.7 million from the previous year. Profit was up to $3.7 million from a net loss of $6.7 million over the previous twelve months. [credit: Gamasutra]
The Other Crap
IT'S OFFICIAL: SONY SUCKS AT ADVERTISING THE PS3
Check out what is no doubt the very worst in PS3 advertising. (VIDEO CONTAINS NUDITY! YOU MUST BE 18 OR OLDER TO VIEW THIS!)
Of all the things to make me want to buy a system, men masturbating to soccer games is not one of them.
OMG FEEDBACK?
A couple weeks ago I got an e-mail about the comment I made about how recently on the news some cop killed an unarmed black man, and the guy asked me something about black people killing unarmed people or something. I don't really remember because he answered his own question by typing in his own answer for me so I deleted it right away. Douchebag.
This week I get more feedback, but this time from someone who actually lets me answer the question. Except this guy is also a douchebag. This one comes from Donald Jan who disagrees on my opinion of Sarah Silverman. :
Of course you don't like Sarah S. You have to have a mind bigger than a pea. You must be as successful as she is to put her down. What have you ever accomplished PEA BRAIN
Or maybe I don't like her because of what she said at the 2006 Spike TV VGA's. From my recap: Sarah Silverman comes out and calls this the "4th Annual Nerd Awards". She explains to the crowd that she is a real live woman, and then gives advice for the serious gamers over 15 out there: kill yourselves.
Besides, I'd rather be a pea brain then some unfunny worthless piece of shit like Sarah Silverman. While I'm on the subject, what the fuck have you ever accomplished to put ME down? Douchebag.
PROGESS GAMING: Final Fantasy XII
So I just started playing this and reached that castle/whatever where Vaan plans to steal a bunch of stuff for the people of Dalmasca. Before I set off on my robin hood rip-off adventure I save the game, and it actually warns me to make another file because it's going to be hard to escape from this place. Premature warnings in video games? The last time I had one of those it was not to save in Metal Gear Solid 3 when fighting The End. That's messed up. Will I survive this treacherous journey? Probably.
On a sidenote, I HATE how when attacking a target and you decide to attack another target instead, the queue starts all other.
OTHERLY GAME REVIEWS
Ever since Deal or No Deal there have been all of these "EPIC" game shows popping up where it isn't just a regular damn game show, but rather more like semi-reality television. Today I'm going to review one "EPIC" game show that's bound to have a million different home versions of in the following months: Are you Smarter then a 5th Grader?
Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader? Format: Game Show Genre: School Trivia
Who better to host the show then the guy well known for putting down those of lower intelligence, Jeff Foxworthy? Probably Sarah Silverman, but only douchebags like Donald Jan would like her. Anyway, unlike Deal or No Deal you have to actually do something to earn money. You start out with 10 Questions that you can pick in any order ranging from all sorts of school subjects from grades 1 to 5. Once you get all 10 right, you can go for the Million Dollar Question, but you have to answer it or else you lose everything. Helping you out are some 5th Graders who are involved with your three lifelines...er, "helps." You can "Peek" at their answer to get a clue, you can "Copy" their answer and hope it's right, or if you get it wrong but they got it right, the "Save" help automatically kicks in and you move on. They can't help you at all with the MDQ.
At first I thought this show was going to answer some really easy questions and we'd all laugh at just how stupid these people are, but I was wrong. Even though these questions are from elementary school, you have to actually know the subject well in order to get the question right. I, for example, pretty much suck at the Astronomy questiosn, but anything related to Math and somewhat Measurements are usually too easy.
One thing I really hate about this show is that because they try to make it so "EPIC", it's got the same problems I have with Deal or No Deal. First off, they give away what's going to happen. As I said before, they talked about how some guy was going to reach the MDQ, so you knew he was going to get all the other questions right. 57 minutes later when they finally get to the part they talk about, he doesn't go for it and so we've wasted an hour of our lives for nothing. Second, they cut to a commercial at the most innapropriate of times. But at least on this show they don't do it EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TIME compared to Deal or No Deal.
Overall, I'd give the show a couple watches before deciding whether or not to start TiVoing from now on. As for me, I've taken it off my TiVo season pass since I only need to watch the last 5 minutes of the show to see what happened anyway.
WEEKLY SMASH BROS. ROUNDUP
Here's what we learned this week from the Smash Bros. Dojo:
-Yoshi's Story Ending music. This is obviously going to be used for one of Yoshi's stages and it also obviously means Yoshi is still on the character roster. But WTF are those dinosaurs saying at the end?
-Pokeballs and Groudon. One of the most powerful items in the game returns, and a new Pokemon has been added to the roster. Groudon is one of the dozen or so legends in Pokemon, and this one takes up a lot of room on the stage and will burn any opponent who touches Groudon.
-Recovery. Did you get your ass knocked outside of the stage? Remember to press jump and use the Up-Special to get back in.
-Profiles of Pikachu and Kirby. I love how they describe Kirby in his profile: Yeah... He's the only character who really hasn't changed much from his appearance in Super Smash Bros. Melee. He's round, pink, and soft.
So just when it seems like nothing big was going to be announced, we learn about...
-The Control System! We've been wondering for so long on what controller we were going to use, and we finally got our answer: All of them. You can use either the Wii Remote on it's side, the Wii Remote & Nunchuk, the Classic Controller, or the GameCube Controller. Just pick whichever feels the most comfortable, which in a lot of cases would probably be the GameCube controller.
It was minor announcements all week until the last one was something we've been DYING to know! I think I like this kind of format for updates.
GAMING CALENDAR
August 20th - Metroid Prime 3 to be released
September 25th - Halo 3 release date?
October 16th - GTA4 to be released
March 1st, 2008 - Metal Gear Solid 4 to be released
July 29th, August 19th, November 17th, and December 15th - Airdates for the 2007 Season of WSVG on CBS Sports
Guys who don't masturbate to soccer games (I hope)
