October 23, 2011

Are You Ready for Some Foot.…. Battlefield?

Ok so I’m sure some of you are get­ting sick by the total media blitz that has hit every type of video/data stream enter­ing your dwelling but you have to admit this game is going to be Epic to say the least. Now that there is less than 48 hours before launch and some last minute trail­ers have hit the You Tube! One is a fan made trailer for “Bat­tle­field 4″ and totally backed by Dice being that they put it up on their Face­book page and the sec­ond is a live action/CG trailer also up on the Bat­tle­field Face­book page dar­ing you to choose whats real and whats memorex!

First is the “Bat­tle­field 4″ made by Fred­diew hit the link to check out their You Tube page they have some really well made video’s for your view­ing pleasure!

Now here’s the live action/CG video that dares you to pick out the live action from the CG to me it’s a lit­tle obvi­ous but still looks total kick-AZZ check out the Bat­tle­field You Tube page for all the lat­est updates and freebies!

July 16, 2011

Uncharted 3 Beta Stats

It came, it saw, it blew our minds. The Uncharted 3 beta has wrapped up and now we have to wait until Novem­ber to get to the fun again. Playsta­tion posted some num­bers on the beta say­ing it was the largest beta on the Playsta­tion net­work to date. Here’s some food for thought:

–Total unique Beta play­ers: 1.53 mil­lion people

–Total kills: 1.9 billion

–Total Cash col­lected: 1.4 TRILLION dol­lars (that’s greater than the gross domes­tic prod­uct of Spain, the eleventh high­est GDP in the world!)

–Total shots fired: 48 billion

–Total matches com­pleted: 22 million

–Total time played: More than 362 years worth of matches

Yea pretty insane it what I thought too.

July 14, 2011

One does not simply Tank Cat into the Emmy’s.….

We here at the TheGamers­Blog would like to con­grat­u­late our favorite show (at least for most of us) that just debuted a few short months ago for being nom­i­nated for 13 Emmys, Game of Thrones. The series, based on George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” nov­els, pre­miered on HBO back in April and was quickly picked up for a sec­ond sea­son herald­ing to rave reviews and high rat­ings. Mak­ing sure to watch every episode, we would explode in dis­cus­sion over that week’s episode; it’s still the only rea­son out­side of some sport­ing events, that I keep my cable. The series had some great twist, a huge WTF moment, and a strong lead into its sec­ond sea­son. Peter Din­klage was nom­i­nated for best sup­port­ing actor for his role of Tyrion Lan­nis­ter. Unfor­tu­nately Sean Bean was snubbed, a much under­rated actor in my opin­ion, but the Emmy’s are just too small for Bean to tank cat into. Either catch the series On Demand or via HBO GO, regard­less you should check it out oth­er­wise your miss­ing one of the best series to hit T.V. in quite a while. Also there is a RTS based on the series com­ing some­time this fall, just to keep this post rel­e­vant to gam­ing. Below is a list of the nominations.

CASTING FOR A DRAMA SERIES

COSTUMES FOR A SERIES

DIRECTING FOR A DRAMA SERIES

HAIRSTYLING FOR A SINGLE-CAMERA SERIES

MAIN TITLE DESIGN

MAKEUP FOR A SINGLE-CAMERA SERIES (NON-PROSTHETIC)

PROSTHETIC MAKEUP FOR A SERIES, MINISERIES, MOVIE OR A SPECIAL

SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES

DRAMA SERIES

SOUND EDITING FOR A SERIES

SPECIAL VISUAL EFFECTS FOR A SERIES

STUNT COORDINATION

WRITING FOR A DRAMA SERIES

July 14, 2011

For some reason stat tracking needs tested.….

If any­one signed up for the Call of Duty Elite beta, the first wave of emails are being sent out today for you to start test­ing their new stat track­ing ser­vice CoD: Elite. I really didn’t know you needed to test a stat track­ing ser­vice; Bungie had no prob­lem imple­ment­ing the same ser­vice in 2007 with Halo 3. But for all you CoD fans out there you will need the email and your copy of Black Ops, funny how they are test­ing a fea­ture in a Tre­yarch devel­oped game yet it will be imple­mented into IW’s MW2.5 MW3. I do believe Activi­sion is the one imple­ment­ing this but I just find it funny since Tre­yarch and Infin­ity Ward are just the best of pals (rolling sar­casm). If any­one dies get a chance to try this out let us know and how the ser­vice com­pares to other ser­vices like this already in exis­tence. Now this por­tion of Elite will be free, just to cor­rect any­thing that has been over heard in the uproar. The monthly fee por­tion still has yet to be shown out­side of early access to their already over­priced map packs ($15 for 5 maps that have no edit options out­side of game type is absurd). Now please don’t get us wrong, we here at TGB do enjoy CoD now and again, really haven’t had a great time with one since CoD 2, but the re-skinned game design and com­mu­nity of scream­ing 12 year olds is what keeps me away. Black Ops had a mun­dane, generic, and schiz­o­phrenic cam­paign but what I did play of the mul­ti­player (until I reached level 20 some­thing and became bored) was fun while it lasted. So grab your copy of Black Ops, hope you got an email, and test that num­ber sys­tem away. Again, if any­one is test­ing this please, let us know you opin­ion in the comments.

July 14, 2011

3DS Netflix goes live today.….

If you need a rea­son to dust off you 3DS and give it some love, Nin­tendo has your anti-static cloth in hand. The Net­flix app that was dis­cussed at last year’s E3 went live today on the3DS’s E-Shop. A bevy of con­tent will be avail­able as well as 3D movies that don’t require you to look like a hip­ster with those funky glasses. The parental con­trols on Net­flix will work on the 3DS appli­ca­tion as well as the 3DS parental con­trols will keep your rug rats from expe­ri­enc­ing any­thing not age appro­pri­ate or from them wit­ness­ing the bevy of crap movies and shows avail­able on the ser­vice and scar­ing them for life (Glee needs destroyed!). I am one excited to down­load this app. If I can have the 3D ver­sion of Tron Legacy avail­able to me on the portable I will be in heaven, plus it will make work more tol­er­a­ble (not this job, this is the fun job). The only prob­lem I can see would be the bat­tery life suck­ing hor­ri­bly due to the 3D being used while the WI-FI is stream­ing. The app is set up a lot like the PS3 app and my whole instant queue is there, I had to try the app out with my favorite Futu­rama episode (as seen below). The app is great and I can see using this a lot while I am typ­ing arti­cles or on the go at an air­port. Hope­fully this will entice more peo­ple to pick up the hand­held that have won me over (OoT FTW!). Any­one else excited that the 3DS fea­tures are finally com­ing to fruition?

July 13, 2011

Netflix Raising Prices

In an announce­ment that angered a great num­ber of peo­ple, Net­flix has announced that they will be redo­ing their pric­ing plans.  Cur­rently users are able for $9.99 to get 1 DVD and unlim­ited stream­ing.  Net­flix, start­ing in Sep­tem­ber, will be sep­a­rat­ing the two ser­vices.  The new pric­ing scheme is such 1 DVD out for $7.99 or unlim­ited stream­ing for $7.99 or both for $15.98.  This state­ment led to out­rage because users were furi­ous with the fact that they had to pay more money.  Net­flix is also in the process of rene­go­ti­at­ing their stream­ing con­tracts and as such sev­eral stu­dios have pulled their movies from Net­flix instant streaming.

While I don’t like the price change I think peo­ple need to look a lit­tle deeper into the price increase.  Most peo­ple think “I’m just steam­ing a mov­ing how much can it really cost” and the answer is… alot.  First there is the band­width required to deliver stream­ing ser­vices to every­one who wants to watch it and some­times on mul­ti­ple devices.  Band­width isn’t cheap in mass quan­ti­ties that would be required to serve users across the world.  Cur­rently Net­flix uses level 3 com­mu­ni­ca­tions for all of their band­width needs and they prob­a­bly use a good por­tion of that com­pa­nies band­width.  The band­width alone prob­a­bly costs the com­pany over a mil­lion dol­lars a month just to keep data flow­ing to con­sumers.  That’s $12 mil­lion dol­lars a year.  That’s not chump change by any mea­sure.  Then in addi­tion to this they have to pay licens­ing fees to movie stu­dios to have the right to show their movies online.  When Net­flix first started offer­ing this ser­vice they got a steal on licens­ing because no one really watched movies online.  Now, how­ever, there are mil­lions of peo­ple who are using the inter­net to watch their movies and movie stu­dios know that they can make a killing and as such they are going to raise those costs.  Lets take the aver­age TV show for exam­ple, it costs net­flix around $100,000 to $1,000,000 per episode to have the rights to stream any given sea­son.  Lets take Star Trek: Voy­ager, it has 100 episodes, that’s $10,000,000 just to have the rights to stream that to con­sumers and thats only one show.  Mul­ti­ply that by the hun­dreds of TV episodes they have avail­able and you get an idea of the immense cost of oper­at­ing that kind of busi­ness.   Those costs have to be paid for some­how and if movie stu­dios and band­width pro­vides raise their costs so does Net­flix, it’s just sim­ple business. 

What do you guys think?

July 12, 2011

EA Acquires PopCap for $750 Million

EA is buy­ing Pop­Cap games for $750 mil­lion dol­lars.  The pub­lish­ing giant is yet again pur­chas­ing another com­pany to add to it’s lineup of devel­op­ers. Pop­Cap games is the devel­oper of mas­sively pop­u­lar games like Plants vs Zom­bies and Peggle.

“EA and Pop­Cap are a com­pelling com­bi­na­tion,” said EA CEO John Ric­c­i­tiello. “PopCap’s great stu­dio tal­ent and pow­er­ful IP add to EA’s momen­tum and accel­er­ate our drive towards a $1 bil­lion dig­i­tal busi­ness. EA’s global stu­dio and pub­lish­ing net­work will help Pop­Cap rapidly expand their busi­ness to more dig­i­tal devices, more coun­tries, and more channels.”

“We picked EA because they have recast their cul­ture around mak­ing great dig­i­tal games,” said David Roberts, CEO of Pop­Cap. “By work­ing with EA, we’ll scale our games and ser­vices to deliver more social, mobile, casual fun to an even big­ger, global audience.”

There have been rumors cir­cling for a few weeks now that Pop­Cap was going to be pur­chased it just hasn’t been con­firmed until today.

July 11, 2011

Digital Distribution… Competition Bad for Business?

A war is brew­ing on the inter­net for your money, sup­port, and loy­alty (no it’s not the PC vs Con­sole war that you see flames on a daily basis) and the out­come could have dire con­se­quences for the gam­ing indus­try.  That war is the supremacy over Dig­i­tal Dis­tri­b­u­tion.  Cur­rently there are sev­eral key play­ers in the indus­try, Steam (Valve Soft­ware), Impulse Dri­ven (GameStop), Direct2Drive and GoG.  Steam is by far the most pop­u­lar and largest of the group by sev­eral times how­ever sev­eral com­pa­nies are look­ing into pro­vid­ing their own ser­vices instead of sell­ing them through a ven­dor and com­peti­tor like Steam.

We often hear the phrase “com­pe­ti­tion is bet­ter for con­sumers” and in many cases this is true but in the case of Dig­i­tal Dis­tri­b­u­tion is this truly the case?  Con­sider this, the major­ity of major title games can be had through Steam and Impulse at this point in time.  And they can gen­er­ally be had below the stan­dard retail costs of $50 — $60.  This pro­vides the cus­tomer with a reli­able source with a large and estab­lished cus­tomer base, prices below mar­ket stan­dard, large selec­tion of mer­chan­dise to choose from and many friends to social­ize with.

Now enter EA and Activi­sion that see the suc­cess of Steam and want to piece of those prof­its.  How do they bring cus­tomers over to their side that are per­fectly happy with another, pos­si­bly supe­rior prod­uct.  Sim­ple, they cre­ate their own dig­i­tal dis­tri­b­u­tion ser­vice.  That alone, how­ever, is not enough for cus­tomers to come crawl­ing to them.  In the case of EA and Activi­sion the chances of them pulling cus­tomers away from already estab­lished enti­ties in the mar­ket is slim so what they do is with­draw all of their prod­ucts from their com­peti­tors ser­vices.  More com­pe­ti­tion is good right?  Maybe?  Per­haps not…

In some cases in a free mar­ket there is an argu­ment for a nat­ural monop­oly or per­haps a oli­gop­oly.  Util­i­ties are a prime exam­ple of this because it would be harm­ful to the cus­tomers to have more than one Util­i­ties Com­pany and it could even be dan­ger­ous.  This isn’t to say Steam, Ori­gin or any other Dig­i­tal Dis­tri­b­u­tion ser­vice is as impor­tant as util­i­ties ser­vices, because they most def­i­nitely are not.  How­ever, it does cre­ate a inter­est­ing dilemma for cus­tomers who are now forced to choose between their favorite game and their plat­form of choice.  It’s in this way that large com­pa­nies force cus­tomers to their prod­uct even if they don’t want to.  Cry­sis II was recently removed from steam because EA was vio­lat­ing Steam poli­cies by dic­tat­ing user con­tent.  Shortly there after EA announced the rea­son for remov­ing their games and announced that Cry­sis II, Mass Effect III, Bat­tle­field 3 and The Old Repub­lic would all be Ori­gin exclu­sives and that they would not be avail­able on other platforms.

Cus­tomers will now be forced to have not one but two or more of Dig­i­tal Dis­tri­b­u­tion soft­ware plat­forms adding more over­head to their sys­tems.  They also have to split up their game col­lec­tions across mul­ti­ple plat­forms and this can be incred­i­bly frus­trat­ing to con­sumers.  In addi­tion to this these com­pa­nies will now have exclu­sive monop­o­lies of their prod­uct and now can dic­tate price as there is no longer and com­pe­ti­tion for their prod­uct.  This is almost NEVER good for consumers.

Cus­tomers should be wary as we star to see the mar­ket frag­ment as more devel­op­ers try to develop their own Dig­i­tal Dis­tri­b­u­tion ser­vices.  What will con­sumers do as this hap­pens?  That remains to be seen?  While I don’t think it will get to the point where there is leg­is­la­tion involved (not to say that it couldn’t) , I do expect there to be some major chances in the PC gam­ing indus­try as the mar­ket con­tin­ues to move towards Dig­i­tal Dis­tri­b­u­tion.  What do you guys think?  Is more com­pe­ti­tion in the mar­ket when it comes to online games a good or bad thing? Do you think it will cause more harm than good?  Should com­pa­nies be able to hold a monop­oly over their games?  Let us know your thoughts!

July 10, 2011

Games for Windows + Xbox = ?

Games for Win­dows will merge with Xbox.com tomor­row July 11^th mak­ing Xbox.com a sin­gle stop for con­sole, PC and mobile gam­ing no specifics have been released other than the date of the merger con­firmed at Joystiq.com and Eurogamer.com. Here’s a link to the forums at xbox.com to check up on the “heated” debate on the merger. Check it out  here:

    I think this is a sen­si­ble move to have one site for all gam­ing plat­forms. So what you think? Will this make a dif­fer­ence? Will it affect Steam in anyway?

July 9, 2011

Mass Effect 3 to be an Origin Exclusive

We now know that Mass Effect 3 will be an ori­gin exclu­sive on the PC along with The Old Repub­li­cand will not be avail­able on any of the other DD plat­forms such as Steam, Direct2Drive and Impulse.  This will most likely be one in sev­eral upcom­ing exclu­sives to the Ori­gin plat­form.  Other title that are expected to be Ori­gin exclu­sives are Bat­tle­field 3, Cry­sis 3 and any future AAA title releases that will come from EA.  

Mass Effect 3 will of course be avail­able on PS3 and Xbox 360 for those of you who do not wish to play on the PC.  What do you PC  guys think about Mass Effect 3 being Ori­gin exclu­sive?  Will this be bad for busi­ness?  Good or bad?