Microsoft’s E3 Slagfest
July 16th, 2008
These comments are related to Microsoft’s E3 conference and showing. You can read an account here.
Considering that Microsoft has started loosing its grip on exclusive 3rd party properties to multiplatform-ism, unaided by weak first party support, they have done a fantastic job this E3 with the limited resources available. Much like my predictions, they flaunted their exclusives while added value to their already existing services.
As for their showing of casual games, I’m also quite pleased with how they avoided copying motion control and instead focused on key software to appeal to the casual audience (even though they still don’t understand them and everything except for Lips is destined for complete failure). The new front end and Mii styled rip offs are neat as well. What frustrates me though is how they have tarnished a more than solid showing with rude and outlandish comments regarding the “console war” and how the Xbox 360 is trampling all over it, casual gaming and the Playstation 3.
While Microsoft ought to be pleased about Final Fantasy XIII making the leap to their console, such a move doesn’t represent the pulling power of the Xbox brand at all, it represents a struggle to break even in a consolidating industry. This didn’t stop Microsoft’s cock headed gloating by Don Mattrick; “Final Fantasy joins a long list of former PlayStation franchises finding a new home on Xbox 360,”. He later raves of how Microsoft have been tallying the number of previous “Playstation exclusive” games making the switch to Microsoft’s console. Read the rest of this entry »
The Rains Are Comin’ – E3 2008
July 13th, 2008
Tomorrow, the annual E3 expo kicks off with Microsoft’s conference followed on Tuesday by Nintendo and Sony (much in the same structure as last year). I get so excited by E3 each year that I’m thinking of holding back content for a few days as we’ll all be absorbing the flood of information coming from the show.
All of the bigger sites, as by tradition, have already put forth their predictions of the show. I’d like to do the same but try to keep it focused on a few ideas of my own that haven’t really been discussed yet.
Microsoft
I agree with the idea that most of Microsoft’s show has already been done, we’ve already seen plenty of content on Gears of War, Fable 2 and Banjo Kazooie and I think that the hands on feedback with be quite similar to the video impressions. Banjo Kazooie though stands out with uncertainty and should clarify how the new Rare is holding up.
Microsoft’s showing looks surprisingly slim and with many of their big games already being shown in video form, I think that they’ll need to step it up on all fronts to hold their own (as their 3 key titles won’t be enough). This means, confirming their status on motion sensing controls, announcing a new Xbox Live interface and banking on their timed exclusives (Rock Band) as well as the GTA IV downloadable content. Read the rest of this entry »
Not Quite the Anniversary
July 10th, 2008
It would be convenient for me to crown today as being the first anniversary of my venture into the realm of video game blogging, unfortunately that would be far too easy considering that my step into the gaming blogosphere was quite the slow, transitional one.
A Bit of a History Lesson…
You’ll notice that on the 23rd of November last year I posted up an article titled “Welcome to The Gaming Blog” which if you did notice probably begs numerous questions. You see, for the past 4 years I have been merrily blogging away in my personal blog which I fittingly dubbed PrimeScape. Around February of last year I created a new site to house Primescape with a WordPress CMS and gave it the address https://danielprimed.com.
It was a few months later that I began slowly shifting my efforts towards video game writing, sticking everything on PrimeScape until I eventually decided that I’d be best if I separate the blog into two; one personal and one gaming, so back last Novemeber I did just that. Since then my focus has been firmly set on improving my video game flavoured writing.
Quick Flick Through the Album
Naturally this past year of blogging has been a challenge. It’s been an uphill battle between my dedication as a gamer with something to say and my inability to fluently translate that something into words. Behind the soft blues and not too saturated to be grey whites the journey to find my feet and on those feet stand has been a struggle. I consider myself as someone who has never been well versed in professional or at least entertaining writing and while the content might seem fair on the outside, it’s taken a lot of screen staring, proof reading, re-writing and research to get to the somewhat lustrous level that it is now. I’m not sure if it comes across but I do try really hard to make everything with my rubber stamp on it to be as good as it can.
Thankfully though, amongst the struggle I have been fortunate enough to be surrounded by a great community of gamer’s who genuinely care about the medium, where it’s heading and also pipsqueaks like me trying to cut a slice of the blogging pie. You know, before I started blogging about games I’d never read a games blog before. I didn’t know where to start, where to even find them! All I wanted was a platform to share my thoughts on games. It’s been through these people, their blogs and support that I have been able to become better accquanted with what exactly it is I’ve been wishing to say. I feel like I’ve my words now, so thanks for that.
A Few Ideas for the Future
Where to from here? The same route as I’m currently on, I suppose. My writing still needs massive improvement so I’ll be investing most of my time on that. I need to tighten up my articles and show you guys a little bit of mercy with the bloated length of my work. I’m also trying to bolstering my writing vocabulary, improving my general punctuation and finally creating a much more distinct voice. Hopefully these will become noticeable changes over time. Thanks again.
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