“One of the reasons is that the NBA Live series simply doesn’t have a stranglehold on the market the way Madden has for years, so by signing an exclusive deal with EA, the NBA would actually be losing money. There are simply too many NBA video game properties that sell big units for the deal to make sense, from the ESPN NBA series to NBA Ballers to 989’s games that are set to hit both the PS2 and PSP. “

Or how commercialism milks talent

In all honesty, I was hoping this wouldn’t happen. Katarmi Damacy was a great thing wrapped in a small package. Some things deserve NOT to have sequels.

So what does the sequel bring? Well not all that much. Rolling over more things, creating balls of different objects, etc. Some levels have you build your ball as big as possible with the fewest items as possible. New dynamic, sure, but it’s so not nearly as inspirational as the original was. With a hurried _spring 2005_ release date I feel as though we’ll be getting a Matrix sequel rather than an Indiana Jones installment.

All that having been said, if you haven’t played Katamari Damacy yet, get it! NOW. You can play the game in arcadey 10-minute installments, and there’s nothing quite like it out there.

Well - I guess I always thought it looked good.

Wired News: Middle-earth a Middle-Tier Game: “The best thing about The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth for the PC is that it incorporates nearly every character, creature and military unit from the movies. Rohirrim and Uruk-Hai clash, Ents and Oliphants march across the battlefields, and Saruman and Gandalf go staff-to-staff. Ever wonder who would win in a fight between the Balrog and the Army of the Dead? Here’s your chance to find out.”

Ok.. this is downright disturbing.

Accoridng to Gamespot:

What we heard: According to dozens of forum posts and lower-end game sites, many of the first batch of PSPs suffered from a variety of defects, including “dead pixels, dead drives, analog sticks not working and even falling off, and even screens with dust and ‘air bubbles’,” according to Engadget. A more spectacular alleged problem was the so-called “Master of the Flying UMD Guillotine Trick.” According to reports–one of which even featured video evidence–if you twist the PSP a certain way, the UMD drive opens, causing the disc to come flying out like a throwing star. Luckily, GameSpot can address both these rumors head on. While in Japan last weekend, GameSpot editors did observe some PSPs with dead pixels, but did not see any evidence of the other defects. As to the flying-disc glitch, we were brave enough to use one of our precious PSP units to test the theory. Amazingly, with just the right touch, out it popped.

Some people are starting to think that U:O is in its decline, and that its death is pending. Here is their evidence:

a) From what I’ve read, virtually everyone involved with the game’s
inception has left.

b) The game’s live team seems to be attempting to change it into a
large-scale clone of Diablo 2. By that I mean that the dungeon Doom
has become the primary focus of the game, and gameplay has become
primarily item-based as opposed to skill-based. If you don’t believe
me, look at tradespot, check out the demand for LRC armour (as one
example), and also read about the “relic” phenomenon. Relics aren’t
much more than clones of the exact type of items that were present in
Diablo 2.

c) EA’s “Return to Britannia,” campaign last year did not instill
confidence in me, and I’m sure possibly did not in some other users as
well. It implied that the game was not as successful as it had been in
the past. Logically, why else would they be giving away free game
time, and offering free downloads of Age of Shadows, an expansion
which previously cost in the neighbourhood of $40 US? They seemed to
be attempting to regain an older portion of the player base who had
apparently stopped playing. I’m assuming the previous point may have
had something to do with this.

d) UO’s current population is approximately 165,000 according to
mmogchart.com. The game’s peak population level of 240,000 was
reached in April 2001. The current numbers indicate however that the
game’s population level has fallen by 32.25% in the last 28 months,
which also means that the population level is dropping consistently at
an average rate of around 1.5% per month. While this is not
necessarily meteoric, it does indicate a steady population haemorrhage
rate.

e) EA are no longer directly selling UO CDs or any new expansion packs
in Australia (as one example), which is the main reason why I myself
am sadly no longer able to play the game. EA also seem to be
attempting to gradually force all subscribers of their MMOGs to adopt
credit card usage as a primary means of payment. Since I do not have a
credit card, this means I am unable to play UO, and it also means I am
unable to play The Sims Online, which is another game I wished to
play. I have long suspected that the insistence on credit card
payments is the reason why The Sims Online has not met projected
subscription targets.

f) There is some evidence to suggest that the game’s current
programmers are frustrated with the age/possible obsolescence in some
respects of the game’s codebase. Although attempts at creating a
sequel have generally failed or been cancelled, work on the 3D client
has been incremental at best.

We’ve heard of this before in other games, but one die hard trader has done a write up of currency trading in WoW. Its pretty interesting stuff. It does make me wonder however, about wether or not Blizzard (or Vivendi) will try to shut this kind of thing down like they have with other sales of virtual items.

Crazy.

I don’t find this surprising at all. Not a direct comparison - but every first generation Powerbook from Apple often has these same types of issues - like screen - keys - and from general use they couldn’t predict.

I can only hope they fix them for the US release and aren’t making them now and storing crappy versions in some warehouse. Here’s to hoping.

Gizmodo : Sony PSP Hardware Problems

HSW has done it again with another interesting Halo 2 article. This time its all about Halo 2’s networking. Very neat stuff.

“The thing is, we run the simulation and we run the world, that’s one part of what we do, but then every frame we also have to do things just for the local player, like you have to figure out what their first person weapon is doing, whether they’re reloading or throwing a grenade. We actually render their view of the world as well.

So those actions — because they only take place on one machine — those actions can’t be allowed to affect the deterministic state of the world. So basically we have a separation inside our game. This is the stuff that is deterministic — it’s all the objects in the world and how they move. This is the stuff that is not deterministic — the sounds that you can hear on the local machine, what you are rendering with your graphics and a couple of other things. We have to separate those two.

If we keep them separated, then the game will stay in sync between the other machines. But if they are not separated correctly — if there is information transferred between the two — then the machines will diverge in the simulation, and you might not necessarily notice that because one machine could be like the player is here but the same player is [in a slightly different place] on somebody else’s machine, so you might not necessarily notice that, unless you tried to shoot them and the bullet hit them in such a way that hit them on one machine and missed them on another machine. Then the divergence basically cascades like that until eventually the game is completely different on different machines and then it’s meaningless of course.”

Yesterday I got some bad news from my Import Company:
“NCS PSP Update for Dec 13, 2004 - PLEASE READ CAREFULLY

Suppliers in Japan offered us PSP units to ship this past Saturday. Since we have sizable deposits in their respective accounts for the launch, they would be able to ship approximately 500-1500 units to us immediately depending on how many we needed. That was the good news.

We balked when the price was started at the yen equivalent of US$491.59 per PSP Value Pack without any games. We inquired about the price for the PSP regular pack and were met with a price of US$426.90. These were to be our per unit costs before shipping charges. If we were willing to pay their quoted prices for up to 1500 units, they would be able to supply them. Needless to say, we asked them to hold off on shipping anything until we could consult with customers to determine who was willing to be gouged.

This week’s situation:
If you are willing to pay US$491.59 per PSP Value Pack + our actual import shipping cost per unit is, we will import it for you and have it ready to ship on WEDNESDAY. Guaranteed. There is apparently lots of supply available… at that price. No shortage… at that price. Import costs would be approximately US$21.30 per unit for a total price of US$512.89 per PSP Value Pack. Games will also be priced higher at US$58 for the five titles that were released this weekend: Armored Core: Final Front, Lumines (still $49), Mahjong Fight Club, Minna no Golf, Ridge Racer, and Vampire Saviour. There is no shortage of any of the games and they will all be readily available on Wednesday.

As we have mentioned many times before, our advice would be to wait a week or two. If suppliers are unable to make a quick killing on high priced stock over the next few days, panic will eventually set in and prices will be dumped. It only takes one member of the fragile cartel to break rank before all of the prices start tumbling. Sony will also ship more supplies of the PSP to market in the coming weeks and speculators will not be able to absorb all of that supply to keep any artificially inflated pricing stable.

Since we are asking customers to wait, we will keep everyone updated on the pricing situation and still process preorders in the order that they were received. We doubt that many customers would be willing to pay such a premium to have the PSP this week but if you are, please contact us with your full name and preorder number and we will ship your order this Wednesday. Please note however that we will not accept any PSP cancellations once you confirm at the higher price and your credit card will be charged today. We will also not accept any returns of the PSP because of dead-pixel problems. Yes, there are numerous reports of units with dead-pixel problems in the market. None of our suppliers or Sony themselves, apparently, will accept dead-pixel PSPs for return and you must agree to accept this condition. “

I was hoping to have PSP late this week or early next, but I am at the will of greedy people!
Needless to say once my PSP shows up (with Vampire Chron. and Armored Core) I will have a full preview.

This makes Dave angry. ESPN football, a continuation of the great NFL 2K series, and Madden football’s only real competition, has been growing in quality since 2000. Madden hasn’t made many innovations with their engine and have fallen off a bit in comparison. 2004 was the year that ESPN trumped Madden by selling at a cheapo ass price of $20 - it was attempt to break down the huge mega-wall that is John Madden Football, the biggest franchise in all of gaming.

As most of you know ESPN football is an incredibly large and solid title despite its bargin bin price. ESPN recently announced that next year’s release will again have the cheap price of 20 bucks.

And this is how EA responds - buy removing another software house’s ability to make great games.

EA - you tried to do this earlier this summer when the ESPN price and early shipdate were first announced. That pissed me off. Now you’ve just gone and pulled a Microsoft. You suck.