Rough day for next-gen MMOs

Well, we knew that Blizzard were working on their next-generation MMO Titan since 2006... and they're going to be working a bit longer as they basically did the "shake an etch-a-sketch" with the product, reassigning 70% of the group that was assigned to the product, leaving a core to make "large design and technnology changes" to the game, and now, the game is likely to have been a decade in development before it sees release... in 2016. Looks like we'll have a couple more "milk the base" expansions of World of Warcraft before then.

And in closer release news, Marvel Heroes was supposed to hit early release Tuesday, but unfortunately, they've discovered serious issues which meant the game wouldn't be ready today, and that's despite "96 straight hours of work" from its developers. They're hoping to open soon, but we'll see if this affects the game when it eventually comes out.

And in not so MM-Online games, looks like Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep will hit next month, and it will be the best game of Bunkers and Badasses (the BL version of D&D) EVAH.. well thebest game of B&B ever run by a foul mouthed, quite possible insane tweenaer with a fondness for high explosive. But nice to see the folks at Gearbox try something so different/silly with their final campaign DLC for Borderlands 2.

Microsoft has 99 problems, and the Xbox One.

Yes, one more Xbox One post.

But don't worry, it's the last one until at least E3, mostly because you're probably as tired of reading them as I am of writing them.

When noted non-Video Games site Forbes.Com writes a story about the "five biggest problems with your box", you know you have issues. It means that you can no longer dismiss the issues with the new Microsoft product as just propaganda and misunderstandings that a few killer games could fix.

It's obvious to all and sundry that either Microsoft were not ready for the reaction they got when they unveiled the Xbox One. They are constantly backtracking statements made by Microsoft spokesmen, and offering a bunch of nebulous "Plans haven't been finalized" bovine excrement when being quizzed about things like how lending games to a friend will be handled.

So one of two things are going on here.

Either they didn't have core protocols in place for how the whole system will work (for Used Games, etcetera) prior to the big reveal SIX MONTHS before we're expected to be purchasing this system... or they did, and completely misread the reaction they would get.

Considering how instantly polarizing these things are, I don't know what bothers me more, that they would be spending the last few months of a development lifecycle frantically throwing together such expansive plans.. or that they misread their customers and blithely expected that there would be a positive reaction to a games box that does everything but play games, (and those games look for new and innovative ways to change the way game players play games, all for the negative..)

Can Microsoft recover from this to be the winner (or even competitive) in this generation? Sure. It's a years long race, and things can change. However, Microsoft has not started well. It's a two person race (Nintendo is out of it in this generation, probably), and while Sony's car is still pretty much stuck in neutral, Microsoft is pointing in the wrong direction, and putting the pedal to the metal.

The Friday Funspot for 5/24

Let's see.. nothing much happened this week right.. er.. right?

Oh, Right.

Anyway, let's hit the Friday Funspot:

Xbox One: The first ever FBI-approved Console

I know, I know it seems like every day I'm finding new things to hate about the next Xbox console from Microsoft.

Well, that's because I am finding new things to hate.

Here's the latest bit of insanity:

"In one scenario, Kinect used its facial recognition software to scan a room full of people and determine there are people there it didn't recognize. It then told the console owner that there is someone in the room that it didn't recognize and asked the new person to identify themselves. Once the person said their name, Kinect welcomed them and saved their information to the console."

I'm sure that there is no way that this information could be hacked and used for nefarious purposes. Nope. No siree bob. What's next? Scan the room and prevent a R rated movie from playing if there are people under 17 in the room? Xbox One is a walking, talking (it is supposed to have a Siri like talking interface sometime during launch or shortly thereafter) privacy violation. I don't understand how Microsoft could get it this wrong.

It's a standing-eight count for the Fight Night Series

With EA Sports acquiring the UFC license, it was a natural to wonder what was going to happen with EA's OTHER Combat Sports series, Fight Night. It stood to reason that they likely didn't have enough backing, or an audience to release BOTH a Boxing game and a UFC game in the same year.. so one of them had to step back, and it looks like Fight Night's going to be the one standing in the corner for the forseeable future.

Yooooooo, JOE! The Card Game that is

Saw the news that they're making a mobile device card game based on the GI Joe cartoon. And normally, I'd scoff, call it a cash grab, or what have you.. but apparently the folks who make it are really big GI Joe fans.. they even are going so far as to negotiate for the rights for Sgt Slaughter and William "The Refrigerator" Perry. Yes.. if they appeared in the cartoon, or the toy line the cartoon shilled for, they want them in the game.

That's dedication.

Capcom offers 17 arcade games for the price of.. Um...

That's the problem with using Microsoft Points, you can't easily say things like 3 games for the Price of 2 or what have you.

But it's interesting to see Capcom offer all the arcade games it made from 1984 to 1988 in one big bundle (previously they had been available piecemeal)

Unfortunately, no Street Fighter in the list, but they do have some really good ones, like Black Tiger (featured in the novel Ready Player One), 1942 (and its sequel 1943), and hidden game Vulgus (which had no pre-set levels, just threw more difficult waves of enemies at you till you died.

And finally.... Atari dies (again).

Not to surprise anyone, but no one wanted to fork out the bucks for the Atari catalog, so they're going the THQ method and selling off their assets before the bankruptcy court tried to put the stake in the heart AGAIN. (seriously, they've gone through what, five, six, more iterations at this point). The company hopes to earn up to $22 million, so if you have a spare $3.5 million hanging around, you can buy the rights to the Rollercoaster Tycoon series, down to a mere $250,000 for Total Annihlation. That is, the series Total Annihilation, not Atari's Total Annihilation.

Although at this point, I think that folks who owned Atari systems and games WOULD prefer that Atari suffer Total Annihlation, rather than continuing to sully the name of a video game classic. 

The more I hear about Xbox One..

The less I like it.

Apparently, the big deal about the online connection is because Microsoft wants to offload as much of the computing power off the Xbox One as possible, and do it in the "cloud".

Fine, in theory.

Crappy in practice.

Here's a choice section from the New York Times article on the differences between how the PS4 and Xbox One function (I think I'm going to start referring to the Xbox One to as the X1, just as a shorthand.)

[b]So what does that mean? Imagine a typical game: there are characters in the foreground that interact with the player, and a background landscape with trees, hills or an ocean. Don Mattrick, Microsoft's head of interactive entertainment business said Microsoft’s new servers, which the company increased to 300,000 from 15,000 currently used by the Xbox 360, will be able to do some of the work creating images for that background landscape and then stream them back to the console and TV, while the Xbox One focuses on making the characters look as impressive as possible.[/b]

So, if you have a crappy internet connection, (or worse yet, no internet connection at all), your game will not look as shiny as others. That's.. not really a positive in my book, especially in an age where ISP's are always threatening data caps, and in households that might see multiple devices running full speed on an internet connection.

As for Backwards Compatibility.. and why not including it isn't a big deal?

[b]Microsoft’s Mattrick says he doesn’t think compatibility is really a problem. He said only 5% of customers play older games on a new videogame system anyway, so spending time and money to develop technology to allow them to play older games isn’t worth it.

“If you’re backwards compatible, you’re really backwards,” he said.[/b]

Yup, we're backwards for wanting to be able to play a software library we spent a thousand or more on (that sounds like a lot, but that's only 20 games at $50 each, which is less than what most games go for.

You know what the real driver is, at least what I think the real driver is? Microsoft's afraid that with all the restrictions on Xbox One content (no trading games, need a solid internet connection to get the best out of it), folks will play their old games on it.. and that earns Microsoft no money.

Well, that won't likely be a problem for me, as I won't make the step up, unless there's some real killer games..

More info on Xbox One.

And the more I hear, the less I like.

Requires the Kinect to even turn on.

Requires once-a-day online connection.

Full price installs to loan a game to a friend.

Folks, I don't swear on 8 bit mind much, but I suggest that Microsoft go back and look for the place they lost their fucking minds, because this is a drumbeat of stupidity.

You never get a second chance to make a first impression.. (Xbox One Revealed)

So the NeXbox is officially Xbox One.

Mixed thoughts trending towards negative.. a lot was the "everything but gaming" stuff I so decried about the PS4 reveal.

With E3 just a couple weeks away, that was pretty much to be expected.

But when you're touting a strategic partnership with EA Sports (nothing exclusive or different) as one of your big reveals, as well as timed exclusives to DLC for Call of Duty Ghost (not the main game, just the DLC).. it's extremely light on games..

Two big negatives here, as expected, Microsoft has a "feature" where if you want to play an Xbox game on more than one account, you have to pay Microsoft for the privilege. This seems to end the used games/rental games market before it starts. That's going to be a big depressor to me, as I like to try games before I buy them.  The second big negative is backwards compatibility.. or lack thereof. Sorry folks, I have about $1200 worth (original purchase price), and you want me to pay $500/$300 (depending on what rumors you believe and what service plan you go with) to lock me out of that content? Pass.

Let's see where it goes, but again, I'm a gamer. If I want to watch TV, I'll watch my cable box. If I want to use Skype, I'll use my PC. Show me next gen games. Show me a reason to purchase it. Xbox One has not done that yet.

Why is EA getting rid of the Online Pass not necessarily a good thing?

We have a company who has been ultra aggressive about monetizing their content. Let's look at the moves they've made to aggressively nickel and dime the paying customer:

Season Pass Content "Pay us $25 now, and play them 72 hours before each one releases! (You'll still have to buy the game). And a free hit towards our Weekly DLC money gravy train!

"Cheats" DLC: Want another extra home recruiting state in NCAA? How about some additional stadiums for FIFA.. or maybe some extra cards for the Ultimate Team mode? Yup.. we can do that for you.. for a price, of course.

Online Pass: You didn't buy new, did you, you dirrrrrrrtttyy pirate. You're playing our game without paying us. We don't care that we already got paid for that copy, we didn't get paid again when you bought it. So, we're locking down about 45% of the game till you kick in at least $10 to make our coffers richer.

Needless to say, EA has been grasping with both hands, so are we to expect they'll suddenly decide, out of the goodness of their hearts, that they'll remove one of the toll bridges, especially one that they hate. EA has been at the forefront of claiming that used game sales hurt the industry.

No.. Instead, I think, they're trying to get someone else to play the heavy for them.

It's long been rumored that Sony and Microsoft have anti-used games features built into their next generation systems (Sony holds a patent on blocking used games, for the next Xbox,, it's rumored that Microsoft has a built in check that can be sent on a game by game basis to require an always on connection, with the requisite checking of disc details._

It's no more than a rumor at this point (and I don't think tomorrow's Xbox reveal will do much of anything to debunk that), but call me a conspiracy theorist, but I think that EA's going for the bump in goodwill now by announcing it, and then hoping Microsoft and Sony take the blame when used games are locked out.

An extra large (and extra late) Friday Funspot for 5/17/13

Sorry about the delay.. but there's a lot to get to, so let's get the Funspot underway.

E3 or not to E3. That is the question....

Interesting bit of news, as low-end Android gaming console Ouya is amongst the companies to diversify AWAY from the E3 show floor (likely to be dominated by the new PS and new Xbox and all that goes with it), by running their floor.. from the parking lot across the street. While that's kinda cool, it does also say low budget to me. Not that's a surprise.. I do think that future versions of the Ouya could be kind of interesting, but the low-end stats (beaten by two generations of Android phones and tablets already, before the console hits full release), and demand that all games be free or freemium (with real money purchased content) means that they have a very long road to relevancy.

Nintendo to hold mini-E3 at... Best Buy???

And speaking of E3, We already knew that Nintendo wasn't going to be a huge presence at the gaming showcase, but this is an interesting way to step around the hoopla, holding 100 "mini-E3" events at Best Buy stores across the US and Canada all during the week of E3, featuring new and games coming to Wii U in the future. It's an interesting bit of synergy, and I'll be interested to see how this goes.. not to mention the fact that if it wasn't for the new systems being demoed, E3 would be more like E1.75

And if you just hit Powerball, you may want this..

UK retailer Costco is offering a replica F1 vehicle set up for racing games... for a mere 90 thousand pounds. I do like the classification as an ultrabook in the Costco system. More like an ultramegasuprultimabook, huh?


Version of Madden 25 to offer free access to Sunday Ticket

Interesting, for those of you who are football junkies, but can't get DirecTV where they are (like I am, our house can't receive the HD signals due to trees), or find the price of the Sunday Ticket Max package to be intimidating, you may want to keep an eye on Amazon. EA will be offering a special 25th anniversary edition of NFL 25 (so named for the length of time the game's been around), for $100, but the extras are huge.

It offers 17 free weeks of extras through Madden Ultimate Team, and a code for free Sunday Ticket. That's about $400 worth of stuff (if you already have DirecTV, you just enter the code, and can watch it on your TV, if you don't, you can watch it on your smartphone, tablet, or computer).

Interesting, and here I was thinking that Madden was a pretty good deal when you got it with a subscription to a certain sports magazine..

Nintendo Up...

Nintendo has an announced a deal with Sega for an exclusive to the next three Sonic titles. Two of them are already known (Sonic: Lost Worlds and Mario and Sonic at the Sochi Winter Olympics), while the third is yet unannounced. While Sonic is nowhere near the system seller that they were in the "good old days", I wish I had a time machine to go back and tell the young me that there'll be a day when Sonic is exclusive to Nintendo.

The young me would probably have the old me committed because I'd obviously be deranged.

And Nintendo Down....

Well, the relationship between EA and Nintendo hasn't been anywhere near good lately, but this is probably icing things over just a wee tiny bit.

EA Sports senior Engineer Bob Summerwill responded to a story that said EA had no games at all in the pipeline for the WiiU with a couple tweets that were brutally honest. Emphasis on the word brutal.

"The WiiU is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet. Nintendo is walking dead at this point. Nintendo still thinks its 1990." and went on to say that Nintendo would have been better served by farming their core characters (the Marios/Links/etcetera) out to other gaming systems

Folks, this is like being asked the proverbial question "Honey, does this dress make me look fat", and saying "No, at least not compared to Jabba the Hutt."

Again, it's honest, and probably true, but ow. Though the tweets have since been deleted, if Nintendo DOES pull out of the tailspin, you can imagine some frosty conversations between Nintendo and EA going forward.

Ubisoft creates a game about taking other people's loot.. while trying to prevent other people from taking your loot.

It sounds kinda bizarre, but you can consider The Quest for Mighty Loot a simultaneous tower defense/attack game. You build your castle to protect your loot. You set up traps, monsters and winding paths to prevent others from getting the stuff you stole fair and square. Meanwhile, you're off raiding other people's castles to steal their undeserved loot.

Intriguing. We'll see how it turns out, the game's entering closed beta soon

They called it Loadout.. because Gunporn is too accurate a name

Looks like Uber Entertainment, the folks behimd the endlessly amusing Monday Night Combat series, have their next game out in beta (available in Steam Early Access) called Loadout. Loadout is a Freemium shooter with an insane amount of weapon customization. I'm not talking about a new and better AK-47.. we're talking stuff that would make Borderlands 2 folks go "Bwuh" in sheer overload of options. We're talking a level of customization that would make Team Fortress 2 folks cry into their infinite collection of hats.

Check out the game on Steam (it's pay to access in beta) here

Slight delay on the Funspot..

As I Tweaked my knee, and cellphones aren't exactly great for writing out columns.

Further proof Nintendo has the engine in reverse gear.

One more thing before I run out the door this morning:

Nintendo is using copyright grounds to force their ads on "Let's Play" videos.

Utterly backasswards, is all I can say

next Xbox: "Upload your lets play videos without needing any special software straight from the box!"

Next Playstation: "Upload your lets play videos without needing any special software straight from the box!"

Next (current) WiiU: Screw you. We don't make it easy, and we're going to inject our ads into your stuff. Because we're Nintendo, that's why!

(then again, I guess Ninteno does need the free advertising.. with the current Wii U install base, they'll make what, $50? $100 in free advertising?)

EA to do away with Online Pass feature.

Saw this story on Kotaku about EA discontinuing the Online Pass program. Very interesting. Considering that companies have tried for years to create an incentive to buy new (otherwise known as the buy used, pay us $10 tax), it's interesting to see where EA will be going with this. I'll have further thoughts on this later today.

The Bureau: XCom Declassified makes me do a U-Turn

I will freely admit that when they announced that XCOM (back before the Turn Based Version was revealed) would be remade in the 50's, I grimaced.

The graphics weren't what I was expected.
The time line wasn't what I expected.
The gameplay wasn't what I expected.

THIS WAS NOT XCOM.

Thankfully, they listened and gave us XCOM.

Now, they're giving us XCom again, just in a different manner.

Look at this game play video of The Bureau: XCOM Declassified (what used to be XCOM before XCOM)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2aVslpAb17c#!

Wow.

That's.. That's XCom... Not QUITE the XCOM, but a hell of a lot better then what I was led to believe.

Oh, and please, Please, PLEASE give us Mass Effect 3 style Multiplayer.

Another sport goes on EA Lockdown

Saw the recent news that EA Sports has signed an exclusive deal with FIFA extending nearly a decade (through FIFA 22, I believe). FIFA has been one of a few positives for Electronic Arts in past years, consistently and constantly growing by leaps and bounds.

Thankfully, this deal is not as restrictive as say, the NFL/Madden deal.. since the NFL is the only major American Football League, the fact that EA had signed them to an exclusive deal pretty much locked everyone else out of the football market. This move is designed to protect the series against the Pro Evolution series of games.

No Post This Morning..

Let's put it this way:

Local bowling alley (candlepin) offers $9 "all you can bowl" from 8-10PM, shoes included
Friends are out doing other things.
A lane totally to yourself..

yeahhhhhh...

that's 5 and a half strings of bowling (three balls per frame, 10 frames per string.. somewhere tothe north of 170 deliveries. Finally, my body (mostly my shoulder, but also my back and knees) say "No Mas"

This morning?

My shoulder feels like a side of meat, just hanging there.

Ow.

More later, when less ow.

The Friday Funspot for May 10th

Greetings, Programs! (sorry, just rewatched the original Tron..)

Let's see what's going on.

Blizzard's World (of Warcraft) is getting smaller

Latest quarterly subscriber information is in, and the numbers are getting worrying for Blizz.. down another 1.3 million or so subscribers, down to about 8 million. Now, don't get me wrong, that's still the 800 lb gorilla of the MMO world, but it's got to cause some worries for the suits at ActiBlizzard. They've managed to commoditize (spell check says that's not a word, I say whatever) their other games (the Diablos, the Starcrafts) well, although that has it's own set of problems (see Blizzard shutting down the Real Money Auction House for days due to a gold duping bug that was introduced in the latest patch).

It's very hard for "pay" to compete with free, and that's what Blizzard has to do, with the competitors offering little or no initial buy in. It's very hard to convince someone to pay $200 a year or so to play your game while other people are offering the base game for free.

Again, don't cry for Blizz, they've made tons of money, and still will make money (albeit a lower amount), going forward, but at some point, the latest $50 expansion gravy train is going to grind to a halt, and it'll be very interesting to see where they go from there.

Precursor Games rises from the ashes of Silicon Knights

You remember Silicon Knights, right? The company that bought rights to use the Unreal Engine, made a crappy game, sued Epic Games for not sharing the secrets of, you know, not making crappy games, got countersued for misapproriation of trade secrets and misuse of the license, and got taken to the legal cleaners as a result?

Well, the folks from that studio have started a new company (Precursor Games) and are trying to crowdfund  a sequel to their hit Eternal Darkness.

Somehow, I have a feeling they'll have a problem finding someone to license a graphics engine from..


Guess Who's Back, Back Again, Sid Meier's Back. Tell a friend.

Yes, that is a dated reference. So are most of the actual games that Sid Meier actually worked on, as recent versions of the games he's known for (like the Civilization series) have had nothing really to do with him except crediting him as the originator of the series.. is back.. but before you start to salivate, here's the details..

It's a semi-port of a World War I flying game, turn based, for Iphones/pads. Not saying it's a bad thing, but it's a far far way away from making games that "stood the test of time"



Sony's thinking everything will come up roses with PS4 launch

Fresh off making their first profit from their games division in five years (and that mostly because they don't actually, you know have to make the consoles as much anymore), Sony recently said they do not forsee "major losses from the launch of the PS4, unlike the PS3".

Honestly, I'm a cynic here. In this market, releasing a new system at a rumored high price point.. the only way that this doesn't lead to a major loss for Sony is if they sell really well, something I don't see with the high price point in a recovering economy


And Finally... "Rock Not Included"

They announced the goodies that will be in the Rome: Total War Collector's Edition (what I call the Shiny box), retailing for $155. Amongst the items, a Total War Card Game, an ancient Roman Board Game, Ancient Roman Dice (back when the phrase "Rolling the Bones" meant literally that).. and the big seller here.

A kit that allows you to assemble your very own Roman Siege Catapult (called an onager).

If you remember the movie line say it with me now..

"You're going to put someone's eye out with that thing.."

Apparently EA HAS learned from SimCity debacle

They just announced The Sims 4, and the one of the first things they say, even before selling the PR is that Sims 4 will NOT require an always on Internet Connection, and will be playable off line in single player.

They then doubled own on making sure there was NO confusion in the Q&A

[b]Q: Will there be an online component for The Sims 4?
A:There will be additional fun and social gameplay elements for players who choose to go online (more to come on that later on) but the core game is designed to be played offline. It’s up to the player to choose how they want to play.

Q: Will The Sims 4 require a persistent online connection?
A: You will not require a persistent online connection to play The Sims 4.[/b]

 Apparently, EA finally realized that they left their hand on a hot stove and got burned (badly), and now are being very careful not to stick their hand near any hot stoves.








 

Nintendo gets eviscerated in money.cnn.com report.

Here's the review.

While I'm not in agreement with all of the statements in the article (the Wii grabbed the trend of casual interactive games pretty spot on), it's a damning indictment of the Big N at a bad point right now. Between the Wii U disaster, developers fleeing the system, and then the portable market no longer printing (as much) money, Nintendo's in trouble.

If I was at the head of Nintendo? I'd push for more fun/casual third party games. Come up with something new.. aggressively use the rich history of Nintendo for new games, because the Wii U is a decent system, with some nice twists.. but it is getting blown out of the water right now, and it won't take much to sink their hopes in this generation

ESPN starting to count down the 25 greatest sports video games of all time:

EA is running a weeklong story featuring the best 25 sports video games of all time, (5 Per day).


The first five are pretty solid (Bases Loaded, NFL Street, Ice Hockey, Tiger Woods 12, and Bulls vs Blazers and the NBA Playoffs). Interesting fact, EA Sports only came into being because ESPN threatened to sue Electronic Arts for using a similar name for their sports games (EA Sports Network, or EASN).

Things I expect to see:

Double Dribble
Tecmo (Super) Bowl
RBI Baseball
MLB The Show
Hardball
NBA 2K
EA Sports NHL

I could go on, but it's going to be interesting to see where they go.

The Unholy Alliance: Disney/EA (Star Wars)

Apparently, I am the last to know about today's announcment of the Star Wars/EA Hookup.

As my friend SackAttack (who I am still trying to get to write a guest column or two every so often for 8bitmind) put it, "Welcome to 12 hours ago".

These are the things that I think I'm thinking.

If you think that this means there's going to be a new KOTOR game, you're probably right.

Battlefield Star Wars? Probably.

A Star Wars-ish Dead Space game? Yeah, that too.

Too bad this probably means  the end of the smallbies (yes, that's a word, I don't care what spell check says), use of the Star Wars license. The Star Wars pinball tables were something different and interesting.. but Star Wars is a great license for EA to land, and it fits right in with their idea to have a foundation that multiple titles can be released in.

When I first saw the headline, I thought that EA was going to be Borg'ed by Disney. That would be scary. Disney owns so much of our video memories, our comic memories, and they'd take a big step to enter the full fledged video game market. Thankfully, this is an alliance, not the House Of Mouse taking over.

Ubisoft pulls a SimCity with new release, Marvel Heroes open beta weekend, Aliens developer Bankrupt..

Let's see.. what is there to see this weekend..

Nice to see Ubisoft learned absolutely NOTHING from the SimCity debacle, they released the latest game in the Heroes of Might and Magic series recently.. except no one can play it. Why? They botched the release, filling the Steam forums and the official forums with complaints about freezing, corrupt files, missing music, and more. Although it's not confirmed, it's believed to have something to do with their near-always on DRM. How many of these debacles do we need to go through before folks release that restrictive DRM punishes real customers, not the folks who download it illegally?

Marvel Heroes hit open beta this weekend (a special weekend celebrating the latest release of the Iron Man money machine, excuse me, movie series). And.. the crowd goes mild. I'm not like hearing the scuttlebutt I'm hearing about this. It's a shame, as with City of Heroes gone, there's room for a good superhero MMO to go with Champions Online.

And finally, how broke is Aliens developer Timegate Studios, who recently filed for bankruptcy protection? They owed money to the local pizza place. When you can't pay for two pizzas, that's broke.

The Friday Funspot for 5/3

Planning on doing some traveling on Friday, so you get an early Friday Funspot.. Lucky you!

Well, well, well, an interesting week in the news, so let's get to it.

Lawsuit filed against Gearbox/Sega on Colonial Marines

Saw the story that a class-action lawsuit has been filed against Gearbox Software and Sega about the release of recent stinkbomb Aliens:Colonial Marines. According to the lawsuit, the demos shown at E3 and elsewhere gave a misleading picture of the final product, and that Sega embargoed reviews of the game past release date so that gamers wouldn't know that it's a stinkbomb.

While I personally think that Gearbox and Sega took a well-deserved kicking for a bad game, I'm going to say that this is the very picture of a nuisance class-action lawsuit. Basically, they (and by they, I mean the plaintiff's lawyers) are hoping that the companies would rather accept a quick payout (with most of it going to the plaintiff's lawyers, natch), rather then fight a losing PR Battle. 

What Gearbox and Sega did was wrong, but newsflash: Two wrongs don't make a right.

Kickstarter moves inexorably forward

Two bits of information this week, as the Chris Roberts game Star Citizen hit 9 million in pre-release fan funding. This, along with private funding, is going to be funding an ambitious effort that promises over 100 star systems, a tablet companion app, and a free mission pack for every player. It looks like the backer-alpha will be this winter.

Also, 8bitmind favorite Shadowrun Returns is oh so close to release, they ended their backer order phase, and moved to Steam for the remainder of the pre-release phase (which is scheduled to end in June with the game's release).

Nice to see the crowd funding bandwagon is proceeding further.

EA/Wii U spat means no Madden, or NCAA

Man, it's not easy to find a side to like in this little spat, is there? EA Sports titles don't sell well on Nintendo,which is sad, because you have to think the Wii U controller would be ACE for this kind of thing, but if rumors are true, the reason why EA is not releasing their sports games on Nintendo is that EA wants Nintendo to rely heavily on their Steam-competitor service, Origin (with preferred product placement, etcetera), and Nintendo, who never wants to give anyone else a single bit of control over their hardware or software, said no dice, so EA turned around and said "Fine, no EA Sports sellers for you"

As I said, it's not easy to pick a side in this battle.

New Engine for New Release of Call of Duty: Ghosts

Call of Duty had been using the same game engine (with some tweaks each year) for the Call of Duty series since 2005.. so it's no surprise that the next Call of Duty game (which will release on current gen systems on November 5th, and next-generation systems at an undisclosed date), will have a new engine. But I have to call out Activision for a bit of tomfoolery (there's a great word, isn't it?) in their announcement:

This new engine is "coming from the developer who started it all, Infinity Ward".

They're counting on short gamer memories.. sorry, I still remember.

You mean the developer that you bought, and then immediately started looking for ways to withold earned bonuses? The developer that you bought and then sued? The developer you bought and then tried to illegaly break into their computers? The developer you bought that then saw all the main talent leave for a new startup after the above?

Activision may have the name Infinity Ward, but that's all they have, and shame on Activision for trying to pass off the shell of IW as the real thing.

And Finally, Rogue Employee installs BitCoin software on eSports client.

Saw this story about how a rogue employee at ESEA, one of the larger eSports Leagues out there.. enabled a BitCoin client on the eSports software, causing a spike in CPU and GPU usage, as temperatures soared to nearly 90 degrees Celsius. (here's a hint, the boiling point of WATER is 100). He made off with about $3,300 in the digital currency before this was discovered, the employee was found and disciplinary action is forthcoming. The disciplinary action should be two words. "You're fired" and three more words "Referred for prosecution)