WTF

To be fair while I agree with your and fuchi's sentiments I can understand how the changes come about. Honestly the 360 controller seems to be an evolution of the Nintendo controllers. In fact it's quite similar to the gamecube controller in some ways (body-wise not position-wise). So while some people say the DS evolution is what caused the issue for some, the thing is it's honestly because no one teaches you how to hold a controller right or wrong. If you've been to progressive schools in the 70s and 80s (I guess most schools these days) they never expect you to hold your pen in any specific way and you just learn to in one way or the other. The hand adapts to what it believes is comfortable and then it gets stuck. Personally I don't find either controller a massive pain though my preference is to the DualShock, the Megadrive 1 and the boomerang aero (I managed to get one during the PSX era) controllers. I'm not too keen on the controller system for the wii because I really would like to connect the special amalgam weird controller to the wii just like the gamecube controller does but instead it's supposed to go onto the wii remote which just feels weird and is a drain on the battery.

Well considering they've actually gone about to say certain features of the NN I believe it could mostly be like what Dex said. It's a rebranding and new trademark technically as they're scrapping a lot of what exists today including the wii points.

So you guys in NA should get Motorstorm RC for the vita while it's still FREE. It was worth the low price I paid for it here and it's definitely more than worth free. Thank the promoters for the giveaway .

Nintendo has trademarked Nintendo Network, which would be unnecessary if they were just using a modified steam. There's even been rumours about PS4 being the steambox, but no this is either something separate or something that most likely would go with gaikai or onlive.

If memory serves me right, the issue with the word catholic came from different meanings in Greek, Latin and early English. It means on the whole in one, universal in another and in general and/or all-inclusive in old english. But all of these existed way before the dictionary.

Game technically is EBgames or whatever's left of it. EB games bought out Game, however they had some issues with monopoly they couldn't rebrand all the stores as EB games. So instead they stuck with the GAME branding. The GAME of the past is long dead. This new mutant bought out Gamestation which was a sad demise really. Now that it's slowly dying and I suppose once it heads into admin or something someone will buy out a few stores. It's how it works here sadly.

I agree, Gamerbase usually functions like a LAN internet cafe and most people just sit and play WoW and the machines with geometry wars are largely unused. I mean that's well and good but they have decent amounts of real estate and it could be something but instead here we have a LAN area where they hold fighting tourneys from time to time. I suppose it's mostly cause the arcade in the trocadero is still functioning alright that there's no need for them to do anything beyond a cybercafe. Funnily enough I've not set foot in that building in over a year despite walking past it several times in a week.

Well you could do it like I do. I'm sure your wife like mine doesn't need the TV all the time and you could just connect your PC to both your monitor and the TV. When the TV is in use just disable the TV as a monitor and it functions like a single monitor setup. Otherwise it's a two monitor setup. As long as you've enough HDMI ports on your TV i.e. I have 4 so that's good enough for the PS3, 360, PC and satellite.

Yeah. I guess I wasn't really clear. The sales of revelations has been quite lukewarm that they've been dropping the price fairly quickly. The interesting thing I took from the ubisoft conference was that despite low sales Rayman Origins was profitable and they believe it will continue to be so. However the funniest bit was that, and I believe it was Yves who was giving the investor report, they disliked to admit that Rayman Origins was profitable.

If I were in the army, I'd probably hire a batman. Just realised that there's a fair number military terms here that would sound amusing to a lot of people. Oh not to mention there's also John Batman of Oz. I wonder if we've touched upon the fact that the American Heritage Dictionary at one point defined the word Catholic as meaning liberal.

Yeah like I said you know it and so do I. But the average gamer wouldn't and would probably not care enough until reviews hit that indicate positive. The main issue with revelations was that it was meant to be a 3DS game which they shifted over to the home consoles and the PC midway.

When it comes down to controllers in all honesty it is muscle memory. Whatever controller you've used first and what you've used the most in the past 10 years plays a role in that. That combined with the flexibility of your hands and wrists. Honestly it's right down to how dextrous you actually are. Because of that it's a very personal thing. It's as personal as the way you hold a pen. The worst controllers however are rectangular and have sharp edges since that's just against human hands (our hands curve naturally, it's what caused the lines on your hands to form when you were a foetus).

But the thing is don't most of us already connect our PCs to the TV to play games. I would like steam's big screen mode but more than that I'd like them to make sure every game on their storefront has some clipart instead of using the icon from the executable (there are some that do that). Annoying as it may be. I think of the steambox as one for the indie gamer and also for the ones who wait to play certain games but other than to create a market for those who buy stuff from steam sales it's not quite progressive. Why would it be profitable? I really think they'd just add the steam brand to an external PC manufacturer rather than do it themselves since that way they don't lose out and the manufacturer gets to use some components that would've gone obsolete faster. Basically that would be ideal as it uses the steam branding and the pc manufacturer branding and no one loses out. I don't really see how this can be a really profitable venture if they were to do it on their own unless they were trying to split their markets a bit.

To be fair Ubisoft does know how to run a series to the ground. I'm sure at some point AC will stagnate just like Prince of Persia did, just like Rayman did, like splinter cell, like driver, just like well every other Ubisoft game. They just do not know how to keep a series on slow burn until after it fails. I know revelations left a bad taste for many, so we'll see how AC3 fares wrt that. I mean remember the public wouldn't care about the setting as much and would just assume this is just another AC game. Honestly this should've been released next year but I do get why they want to release it this year in terms of story. Also I don't see the RDR connotations in the public's eye but more like call of juarez. Mind you, all of us here play a lot of games. We aren't the ones that are responsible for making games multimillion sellers though we are responsible for making them sell a few million.

Oh it's definitely dominated by 3,s there's also far cry 3 and assassin's creed 3 amongst others. I'm sure you can find everything you're looking for elsewhere too. Reward cards weren't a bad thing but some of it is just forced onto you. I wanted to get the preorder bonus for the vita but couldn't unless I signed up for a reward card (i did though I got the vita from elsewhere, just the bonuses were limited so I needed to get it quickly). You're mostly talking about game's online presence though. As a shop it's long lost the edge and we do need something to fill that place. The thing is these days if you want to see gameplay you don't need to see a demo in a store you could just look it up on youtube around release. However I suppose we could do with a gamercafe and not that ridiculous HMV gamerbase thing at the trocadero which is crap to be honest (though lol I shouldn't say much since i know a few people who're associated with the place). There could be an independant gamercafe where you could buy a few specialist games, play and hangout and a place that could function like how a cinema like say the curzon soho or the rex but instead for games.

The Webb group entered administration today, they own Choices UK (or rather bought it when it last went into admin) UK retail is just shrinking day by day. Physical retail. While I do believe games can be sold in physical retail, the mistake with Game was switching their focus from specialised retail to top10 and family. It's the same thing with the Nintendo focus on casuals and of course the price wars. It's only going to be sad when there could come a time that we can't find niche titles here anymore and would have to go back to the days of importing it from elsewhere. It's only going to get worse before it gets better, and that's the fact about the game industry in general. We need fewer games in every area from iOS space to Console Space (PC, DD, handhelds etc come in between) otherwise we could see a few years where there canbe mostly just sequels. Next week ME3 will be number one and everything else is probably going to sell like shit. Following that the next major release probably could be Diablo 3 in April followed by Max Payne 3 in May. For those who thought SSX's increase in sales meant it was great if memory serves me right the title barely broke half a million in Europe so that's not an indication of anything much.

This is about that Mass Effect 2 steelbook isn't it? and yeah I can understand.

Well the thing is I don't really see the 'steambox' or valve technically heading to AMD or Nvidia asking them to make a card for their specifications. Not to mention the card rumoured to be in this is a Go. Based on the parts the architecture is going to be a PC with a smallish form factor. While consoles today are similar to PCs they still use chipsets that are purpose built for these things. Mind you there are subtle differences between AMD and Intel processors to begin with in terms of calculations itself. As Sean said I doubt they'll go with their own OS but at the same time it'll be purpose built to run steam and reduce memory leaks so that all it runs is basically steam some essential OS processes including network and the like. As for MS and Valve, I suppose they could negotiate some stuff between themselves. I mean technically there's not a lot of bad blood between them, Newell is an ex-employee and could be investing in MS again. The thing is when you get down to the architecture of a console and a PC, it's quite a different beast. Valve makes PC games and they're optimised to run for PCs, sure they can make it exclusive stuff for the steambox and use specialised hardware components but why would they? It's an additional expense right now. A boxed PC that's $500 would be the case. But then here's the thing. PC games are going to try and see how much they can stretch the best components available in the market and every 3-4 years people would buy new parts. For instance back in 2008 people were still buying 9800 and 9600GTs by early 2011 they were pretty much the low end of the spectrum. A good look at the average rate of change of components based on steam surveys gives you an indication that most steam users who take part in the survey upgrade components of their computer every 2-3 years. While there's not been a world of difference between gen 1 and gen 2 intel core processors, graphics card, space and RAM requirements have changed over the years. The difference is unlike the early 2000s and late 90s we don't have to totally upgrade our computers every 1.5-2 years and games don't impose shit like you can't play this game without a T&L 2.0 card. These days if you buy a top end processor you can expect it to run your games for at least 5 years unlike 10 years ago. You will however need to increase your RAM at a slightly faster rate than that (possibly every 3 years) and your graphics card every 2 years or so. That too announcing a steambox right when there's new graphics cards, gen 3 processors and the like coming up doesn't seem smart. Unless they want you to buy a very expensive machine which beats the purpose. Or they're trying to expand on the emerging market of people who are playing games that are a year or two old. Ideally they'd lend their name to consumer PC manufacturer and steambox would be a brand like Alienware is to Dell if they were to enter the hardware market. Unless of course they have ulterior motives which could extend PC lifecycles and actually bring about true 10 year life cycles for next gen consoles...

It's Monday so here we go

Sorry to hear about your vita but you should get a replacement asap. There have been a few cases where there seems to be some issue or the other mostly with triggers for some and/or 1 dead pixel in the case of a few people. And let me tell you this, several people have experienced the weirdness of not being able to hold it right when it's connected to the security cable - it's pretty nicely gripped when you're playing in fact the grooves at the back are the spots for you to rest your fingers, it's just hard to hold it right with the cable. Just see if you can try the vita on its own as most people big hands or little hands don't have problems with it with the exception of a few who do not like concave sticks and find their fingers slipping.

Well in all honesty it is a fairly logical progression from Israel, Jordan etc to Italy to Half English-Half Native American second generation first settler since Desmond is obviously settled in N. America and definitely not first generation it would seem like they could bring it earlier than later. Though we might see a scoot back to Victorian England possibly with Jack the Ripper playing a role in the late 19th century before they take us back to the present.

Honestly I don't really the point of Valve trying to sell that PC unless they bought one of the consumer PC companies that are going down. Best thing for them to do would be to let something Lenovo or Asus make a PC entertainment box that's branded with steam and functions as a plug and play. But honestly this exists as such, and if you want I'm pretty sure someone can make a loader that works such that it loads steam from the get go instead of taking you to the windows menu, just like most of our ATMs and other devices.

While I've no doubt about Game slowly folding, getting sold or whatever the source that everyone's reporting is The Express :/ I mean really next thing we know they'll say that Diana's responsible for bringing it down or something or it's somehow Germany's fault.

Have to agree with excel in the fact that rpgs need not sell decently on other consoles. However that said the last story barely managed to do more than 180k LTD and that's pretty low for a game with its budget. Putting into perspective even tales of graces on the wii did more and that was a flop (TLS opened at 115k and ToG at 150k). Actually a lot of rpgs sell more than that in Japan. The thing is the last story wasn't/isn't a particularly great RPG and that's what the sales and opinions reflect. If you're going to play this right after Xenoblade I'd recommend keeping your expectations low. It's not terrible, just it's not that good. Lost Odyssey was a lot better than this. Even Blue Dragon (if you can overlook Toriyama's artwork) can be said to be fairly better than this. However it looks very pretty, much prettier than the Mistwalker 360 titles despite not being HD. Pandora's tower ends the wii rpg late release trio and that's eh okayish. Comes out here on April 13th.