Microsoft Impresses with Windows 10 Event; Not with Xbox
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/25/15 at 02:05 PM CT
On Wednesday, January 21, Microsoft played host to tech writers and enthusiasts at a special Windows 10 event in the company’s hometown of Redmond. While it is unsurprising that the Xbox console brand wouldn’t receive much attention at an event specifically focused on the launch of a new version of the operating system that runs 90% of the world’s computers, what is surprising is just how many amazing things MS revealed with regard to the new Windows.
The first shocker announced at the Windows 10 event is that the new OS will be a free upgrade for users of Windows 7 and Windows 8.x for the first year after launch. Giving away the new OS for free is huge, and an even bigger move in the direction of consumer friendliness than when MS sold Windows 8 for a hefty discount for a time after it was released. Plenty of paranoid folks have raised questions about whether or not this free upgrade period is just a way to draw customers into a trap and start charging them an Office …
GOG Galaxy Client Begins Limited Alpha Testing, Looks Promising
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/17/15 at 04:29 PM CT
Back in June, our friends in Poland, CD Projekt, announced that they were beginning work on an integrated – but still fully optional – gaming client for their wildly popular GOG.com DRM-free game shop. After months of distressing silence, GOG Galaxy has finally reached Alpha status and excited GOG.com members can get into the queue for an Alpha key by signing up here.
I got my Galaxy Alpha key this past week and had the opportunity to take the new client for a test drive. While it is still clearly an Alpha piece of software, this early state mainly comes across due to the fact that Galaxy is not currently feature complete by any stretch of the imagination. The current Galaxy Alpha (version 0.2.2.662) only includes the core features of shopping the GOG.com website and downloading/updating games in a user’s library. Fortunately, the GOG website loads quickly in the Galaxy browser and the games I tested with the Galaxy downloader worked flawlessly.
There are still rough …
Internet Archive Liberates Thousands of DOS Games – Someone Needs to Register BOG.com
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/10/15 at 04:07 PM CT
The Internet Archive, also known as “The Wayback Machine,” started archiving retro videogames in 2013 and making them available via in-browser streaming. What started with ROMs for ancient consoles and arcade machines has now spread into the realm of old DOS games formerly dominated by GOG.com, the Polish company formerly known as Good Old Games and owned by ‘The Witcher’ franchise developer, CD Projekt.
I am a huge proponent of archiving old games and making them available for free to a modern audience for posterity’s sake. However, unlike old console games, where the emulators have been rock solid for years, DOS emulation is still a bit of a black art. I’m not sure if the Internet Archive is truly up to the task of maintaining such a library. When GOG.com started selling old, out-of-print DOS games online, they only picked the best of the best and made sure each title was in full working order via DOSbox emulation before presenting them to the public. Without …
Backlog: The Embiggening - January, 2015
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/03/15 at 01:19 PM CT
Welcome to another look into the near future. The sad, sad year of 2014 has come grinding to a close. While I’m sure some deluded folks will look back on it fondly, the first year for the PS4 and XBONE (and the second year for the WiiU) featured a lot of blandness, rehashing, and no good reasons to commit to any of the three 8th Gen platforms.
Will 2015 change gaming’s current dismal tone? Maybe… but certainly NOT in January! In our 2015 month of missed deadlines and overdue holiday releases, we have a whopping SIX games to look forward to… and by ‘look forward to,’ I mean ‘completely ignore.’
January will be our second month in a row with no shovelware. That’s good! Shovelware never really does anything but pad release numbers with terrible licensed schlock.
Unfortunately, without the looming specter of shovelware, the entirety of the January 2015 lineup looks to be multi-platform releases and ports.
The three 8th Gen platforms that matter to the …
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