Xbox: Done - Don't Be Fooled Again
Chris Kavan - wrote on 07/31/13 at 05:33 PM CT
As my friend George "Dubya" Bush so eloquently put it:
"There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."
After having what has to be considered one of the most disastrous launch campaigns ever conceived, it seems Microsoft has done a complete 180 and taken out all that nasty stuff that pretty much everyone was complaining about: the always on requirement? Gone. The crippling DRM preventing trading and selling used games? Gone. The Kinect 2 watching you while you sleep? Now you can turn it off. Giving Indie Gamers the finger? Now they're invited back to the party.
What does this all mean? To me, nothing. For one, if Microsoft has that little issue in turning things around so quickly - it just means they could just as easily change their minds in the future. Hell, if they would have simply stuck to their original guns, I may have at least …
OUYA vs. Steam Greenlight: Clash of the Indies
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/26/13 at 06:21 PM CT
As my first impressions showed, after all the hype, I was not actually impressed with the OUYA Indie console – or its games – once I actually got some hands-on time with it. On the other hand, my love of Valve’s Steam gaming platform only continues to grow. Yet, when it comes to the distribution of independently developed games, both platforms seem to want to wear the crown.
While OUYA went the Kickstarter route of so many Indie games, turning itself into THE Indie Console, Steam’s endeavors to court Indie developers mainly revolve around a new section of their web services called “Greenlight,” which was launched in August 2012. After a scant year of existence, Steam Greenlight has found itself home to hundreds of candidate games and, at the time of writing, has ‘greenlit’ 125 of them for inclusion in Steam’s library once they are finished. Of those greenlit games, 47 have already been made available for sale.
Both OUYA and Steam Greenlight remove most of the …
The Steam Community Market: A Misstep or the Start of Something Good?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/21/13 at 08:12 PM CT
Recently, Valve, the company behind the popular Steam PC gaming platform held an open beta test of a new Community Market feature built right into the Steam client. I didn’t pay much attention to this feature, as Gabe Newell’s statements about the motivation behind the creation of the Steam Community Market didn’t resound with me. A place for users sell each other insignificant virtual McGuffins? Pass! And, besides, with the well known lack of correspondence between “Valve Time” and any time-related mechanism in the real world should have meant that the Steam Community Market would possibly come out of beta In the Year 2525.
But Valve has exceeded expectations, yet again. After first releasing Steam Big Picture Mode within our lifetimes, they have also added the Steam Community Market, just in time for it to serve as a tie-in with this year’s Steam Summer Sale. So, what can one actually do with the Steam Community Market? Well, not a lot right now. In these early days, …
OUYA First Impressions – Part 2: The Software
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/14/13 at 07:05 PM CT
(Before continuing, please be sure to read the update addendum at the bottom of the first part of my OUYA first impressions.)
No game console is worth a damn without actual games to play on it. Many of the biggest failures in the Console Wars have learned this lesson the hard way. The OUYA strives to build its library of games both by catering to Indie developers in the hopes of landing some exclusives and by catering to OUYA owners by enabling them to try every game in the OUYA shop without paying a penny for the privilege. Indeed, the OUYA motto is, to paraphrase, “You shouldn’t have to pay for it unless you absolutely love it.” And with the years of Android game development standing behind them, the OUYA (theoretically) shows a lot of promise.
With the purchase of my OUYA, I was hoping to be able to play some of my favorite (read: ones I don’t absolutely despise) smartphone games on my TV: “Angry Birds,” “Fruit Ninja,” and “Jetpack Joyride,” along with my …
OUYA First Impressions – Part 1: The Hardware
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/07/13 at 01:38 PM CT
Ever since the Indie startup behind the OUYA console announced their project via Kickstarter, I’ve been intrigued. Not intrigued enough to actually back the project via Kickstarter and potentially end up with a fistful of vaporware to show for it, but intrigued enough to buy an OUYA on day one. Thanks to the American Independence Day holiday this past week, my OUYA took its sweet time getting to me from Amazon’s shipping warehouses, but it did actually manage to arrive two days earlier than anticipated. As of this writing, I have owned an OUYA for approximately 24 hours. In order to test out this all-digital, all-Indie console in the best possible environment, I took it to the MeltedJoystick HQ and connected it to the 30Mbps Internet available there. While I was able to get a good feel for the OUYA hardware in my single day of testing, the available software is still a bit of an unknown. So today I would like to share my first impressions of the OUYA console itself, with a …
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