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Sony posts first annual profits since 2008


It only wants to eat games like the XBox 360.

It’s like it literally eats money.

The New York Times has reported that Sony has finally made a profit. Sony has made an annual profit of $435 million USD, or 43 billion Yen. This doesn’t even begin to recoup losses the year earlier: 456.7 billion Yen. It’s rather tragic for the company that has been slowly declining in electronics sales. Samsung overtook the Bravia in sales, Nintendo sold more hardware in the handheld market (and the Wii prints money), and the Walkman brand might as well be dead if it isn’t already.

Still, this marks hope for the company. The Playstation 4 should have it’s debut soon, and hopefully the company won’t have to sell it at too big of a loss. The success of it could build the company back up or very well break it. The PSVita isn’t overtaking tablet, phone, or 3DS sales any time soon.

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Ender’s Game trailer released


A first, actual glimpse at the Ender’s Game movie is finally here. The film looks to be a visual feast, and the actual zero-gravity game looks well done. We’ll all have to hold out until November to see if it has the heart of the novel.

It’s also questionable if Tumblr and other elements will boycott Ender’s Game. Adventures of Superman, an online only comic still set to be released by DC, had several people opting to boycott it; it was enough to drive the artist to quit due to the controversy. The boycott had to do with Orson Scott Card’s anti-gay marriage views, and his lobbying to enforce those views.

Neither Ender’s Game nor his Superman work contain those views. Ender’s Game is set to release in November 2013.

Wolfenstein The New Order announced, features alternate history


Wolfenstein The New Order was officially announced. Bethesda is only producing, and MachineGames are developing. While that name may seem new, it’s actually a handful of former Starbreeze Studios employees (creators of the Riddick games and the first Darkness title).

The game itself is putting the protagonist in an alternate history from the looks of the trailer. It’s not quite The Man In The Highcastle, but it’s rather seeing the Nazi Germany depiction from the Wolfenstein series take over the world. It’s set to be released Q4 2013, but that’s only if it’s finished (or rushed). The game features the id Tech 5 engine currently featured in Rage.

EA has made a deal with Disney for the Star Wars rights


 

EA and Disney have made a press release announcing a multi-year contract dictating the future of Star Wars games. There is hope from this deal; EA could finish titles like the one shown in this video and Star Wars: 1313. DICE could be forced to make the next Battlefront instead of Bad Company 3 (which either situation would be good for us).

Yet the past tells us to worry. EA is still known as the killer of companies. Star Wars: The Old Republic was quickly dubbed, “TORtanic”, and is could be speculated as the reason why the Bioware founders took an early retirement. Battlefield 3 was a travesty with it’s browser menus and Facebook-lite friend system. EA has won Consumerist’s Worst Company of the Year 2012 and 2013 for their crimes in the past.

The company could be seeing a brighter day with the recent shake up of management and this license in hand. Star Wars sells. If they do release a halfway decent game, my wallet will already be forfeit; the EA symbol caused me to boycott in the past, but the opportunity to live a childhood dream is too much.

Expect stock in EA to finally crawl back up in price in coming months.

The Movement #1 Review


The Social Justice supergroup coming to a tumblr near you.

If this comic was supposed to get me to side with the Movement themselves, it failed. Horribly.

This is going to be rife with spoilers for the first issue. I’m still trying the Green Team in hopes of a story covering the venture capitalists of the DC world, but unless this is shoved in my face it’s not being touched.

The issue starts with a teenage girl being sexually harassed, soon to be assaulted, by two corrupt cops in Coral City. They’re stopped because they’re being recorded by several members of “Channel M” who all wear this mask:

Channel M Face

 

The only likable character, the police chief of Coral City, catches wind of this from the news and starts the usual, lawful procedures against the two cops. It’s later mentioned that the cops are protected by being union members, but that doesn’t mean the case is closed; it just has to go through city council first, and with video evidence against them it won’t be easy to defend.

The police chief starts investigating a murder case near a church while the suspect is still in the area. The Movement comes in to defend the suspect (because he’s mentally ill and super-powered), rejects the authority of the police, and has rats eat up one of the dead bodies to destroy evidence.

It was preachy, the art looked a bit rushed, and it made me dislike the entire team of heroes. Other comics have attempted what it’s trying to do, and have done it better. This is especially true for non-big-two comics from the past three decades, but even true for DC itself. Did you want a team with some diversity in it instead of the usual? Earth 2 has that, and it actually makes sense given that the scope of their problems are actually worldwide.  Did you want social justice or confrontation of social issues? The Invisibles did a better job tackling, “the system,” and Y: The Last Man did a spectacular commentary on third-wave feminism.

This is just the beginning for The Movement, though. It could get better. So far, however, I care for none of the heroes, dislike two of the police force, and feel sorry for the police chief that is left to handle everything. Now that a Joker event tie-in, and Batman, isn’t there to sell the title, it’s a wonder if it’ll still sell in six issues.

 

Total War: Rome II Teutoberg Forest Gameplay


Total War: Rome 2 shows off several new features in this Battle of Teutoberg Forest walkthrough. Unit camera angles, tactical maps, more varied terrain, and of course better graphics are all revealed. Total War: Rome II is currently slated to be released in late 2013 by Creative Assembly and produced by Sega.

LAN gaming is in dire trouble


LAN gaming is downplayed too often for the success of games. It was vital to the success of Doom in the 1990s, and until recently it was how PC games were played in tournaments. Even on consoles, the original XBox’s allowing of LAN multiplayer made Halo a lasting franchise. Yet now developers that had previously included the option are ditching it in order to fight piracy; the result is a game that will be completely dead as far as multiplayer goes once a central server is removed.

I’ll start by blaming Starcraft 2, the Call of Duty franchise, the Battlefield franchise, and the numerous Defense of the Ancients clones. Both the Battlefield and Call of Duty franchises started requiring a dedicated, non-LAN server for games; the LAN club at my university had people that would play the game, but we would never have the full room involved. Call of Duty was already shunned (we were PC gaming elitists), but Battlefield, a game that was known for it’s large player battles, was never played officially once Bad Company 2 hit (although we played it a lot on our own time). We reverted back to playing UT2k4, TF2, and CS:Source instead. Old games do get old eventually though, and nothing could prepare LAN events for Starcraft 2 and Dota 2/League of Legends.

Starcraft was played often along with Warcraft 3. It was common for one person to even get a Diablo 2 speedrun going in the middle of a day-long LAN party. They were loved games, and when Starcraft 2 launched it nearly killed LAN events for one of the largest universities in the USA.

It’s worth mentioning that removing LAN capability was a great anti-piracy measure. It killed the need for anyone to pirate it in the first place. Piracy happened at a LAN party unofficially. No one was allowed to talk about it, but if you didn’t have a game you just needed to speak up; someone would get it to you and get it working.

Starcraft 2, and after it Diablo 3, proved that you could force players to be online always to play with eachother and not suffer sales. Any boycott, same with Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, and Battlefield, would be ignored once the hype train arrived. It not only didn’t involve LAN options, but it was one of the most competitive games to date. The original game is/was a national sport of South Korea. Starcraft 2 almost killed my LAN club in everything but name only, and this is university that hosted the CSL Grand Finals in 2012.

It wasn’t just the DRM that Starcraft 2 incorporated, but it was the very competitive nature that made it popular. LAN parties were now segregated between SC2 players and everyone else; rather than try something new, or attempt to get a free game like Savage working, one game would be played all day. People stopped showing up as SC2 player took officer positions, because what’s the point of going to a LAN if you could play at home? Dota 2 and LoL only exacerbated tensions further. LANs that used to include over 100 diverse players were now down to 20-30 at most.

One of the disgruntled members started holding private LANs with a vast array of classic games, but anti-piracy gave him a headache at least once very LAN party. Westwood has been the worst (defunct) company so far; Nox has problems with the latest GOG version, and Red Alert 2′s anti-virus has completely broken it. Westwood Online would be the other option, but with the company gone it’s a non-option. These games are hardly viable any more because of the anti-piracy measures, and no one wants to give money to the IP’s current owner for supporting similar measures.

Anti-piracy and DRM effectively killed the multiplayer aspect of these games. Nox eventually worked, but only because someone grabbed an older version of it.

LAN gaming needs to be brought back. Valve has done a good job of keeping it in CS:Go. Smaller companies like Tripwire have been great about including it their games; if you haven’t played on a hacked (over six players) Killing Floor server at a LAN party, I actually recommend it (you’ll probably die due to the lack of perks, but it’s a great amount of fun). A few of us still enjoy the larger releases, but without LAN play they’re severely lacking an aspect that made the previous games fun. Diablo 3 hasn’t been played once. A Use-Map-Settings creation from Starcraft: Brood War is preferred over it’s sequel. Red Orchestra or Battlefield 1942 is played over 3.

EA is already facing troubles for it’s measures against gamers. Blizzard and others can’t survive on good name only. It’s not just LAN gaming on the line in the end. It’s games surviving their decade, and the consumer being able to actually use their purchase. The latest Sim City release is the biggest example of the horrific troubles of anti-piracy DRM; if EA ever went the THQ/LucasArts/Atari route, it’s doubtful they’d pull a Relic and incorporate the game into Steam. Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 set that precedent for EA. When the companies fall, their games will too. All because a person may pirate it at a LAN, and they might derive joy from the multiplayer without paying for it.

tl;dr: DRM and anti-piracy is bad and evil. LAN games are fun, and you should buy them even if you ignore my rant.