Post-E3 has been incredibly dull, so less news and more ranting this week:
Speaking of E3, rumors have been crawling over the interwebs the past couple of weeks regarding the location of next year’s event. Some have E3 in Vegas, while others have it taking place in our memories. Apparently, there is a significant (or at least vocal) group who found this years E3 to be disappointing. I’m not sure how large the group is. Those in attendance that I spoke with said that they were more than pleased with the event.
As for the actual complaints, they range from logical to asinine. The complaints about the difficulty from having to go cross-town for meetings, especially considering the traffic and hassle, are sensible. But the complaints about the lack of party atmosphere and surprise announcements by the Big Three are ridiculous.
I cannot imagine what these people expected. Sorry that you didn’t have some college game-tester reeking of marathon Halo sessions, squeezing into their tight fitting message t-shirt that’s about a hip as a BarettaCon, bumping into you with a shopping bag full of Metal Gear diecast figurines and Heroes autographs reaching their sweat-coated arms around you as they grab some free Warcraft concept art with their grubby hands. Maybe next year.
As for the lack of surprises, what do they think it this is, May Sweeps? You want a fucking cliffhanger? How about right before Reggie announced Wii-Fit, a masked individual could have shot him? Then have everyone would spend all summer guessing who did it. Does that work?
E3 is a business conference for a multi-billion dollar industry. All the better that one of the industries main get-togethers isn’t some loser circus.
Law & Order: Down Under
One of the funnier stories of last week was of the theft and prompt recovery of a truck carrying about $1 million (US) of PS2s. Police quickly found the stolen PS2 after locating the vehicle via the truck’s GPS unit. When authorities arrived, the thieves were in the process of unloading the 4700 PS2s into a shed.
How did they plan to make money off of this? Open their own PS2 specialty store? Street deal the PS2s? Were they planning to go to whatever the GameStop equivalent is in Australia, (probably GameStop) and try to unload them? Obviously, these aren’t the sharpest tools, but they had to have something lined-up, right?
Shoo-Fly
Wednesday, rumors started popping up about Gamefly adding a distribution center in Austin, TX. Great, another location that won’t have the top choices on my GameQ.
But what would even be better than increasing their stock, would be for GameFly to take some of that monthly membership price hike and build a website that doesn’t take 25 minutes to load.
Game Heroes
Ubisoft confirmed that they will produce a Heroes video game. Straying from the show’s main storyline, designers will either having the group fight against the villain Cataclysm as he attempts to use superhumans to power a diabolical machine or players will choose one of the heroes, represented by an yellow circle missing a triangular slice, and try to save the world by collecting power spheres, as they are chased by apparitions.
Collection Game
As inspired by a post on the boards about a copy of Final Fantasy VII goingn for $70 on eBay, I was wondering why there is any market for old video games.
I’ve seen the original SNES Chrono Trigger (with box) climb close to the $100 mark on some eBay auctions. There is no difference between a Chrono cart, CD or file on a hard drive. If I wanted to play Chrono and didn’t have it, I’d just buy the $15 PSX disc. So why pay the extra $85?
Can there be any joy in firing up the ole SNES and play Chrono the way it was originally designed? I doubt it.
These games are trophies. Some sort of ego boost of “I’m so awesome, I have an original Chrono Trigger.” It can’t be anything else. I guess there is some of that allure for comics and albums, but there is some difference between listening to Who’s Next on vinyl and a digital file. Those nuances don’t exist for video games (this is different than buying Final Fantasy IV Advance with 15 hours of extra gameplay or on PSP with a completely revamped design). With Chrono Trigger, these people are buying the same exact program.
I can understand collecting something that was truly rare like those games they gave out to the Nintendo World Championship competitors or a quality Mega Man game. But for a game that’s been reproduced a million times, can be purchased for considerably less and for a current console, I see no point.
If there is anyone out that collects games, please e-mail or post on the boards why, because I don’t get it.
That’s all for now.