While the Wii remote’s motion- and location-sensing technologies are nearly inextricable from the console’s games, Johnny-Come-Later Sony’s SIXAXIS functionality seems generally an afterthought. Putting that hypothesis to the test, Ars Technica ran this article comparing how the PS3 controller’s tech contributed to those games which have been released thus far. Their opinions won’t shock anyone, but they might just provoke another defensive comment from top-level Sony executives, which is always cool. Who’d’ve thunk that poking bear would provide so many giggles, and so few maulings?
This piece of news item started out being about how there’s going to be an Elder Scrolls V, and how surprised we all are, but reading this article from 1up I’ve decided to comment on something else entirely. In the artcle, Patrick Klepek writes that "[a]n MMO seems like a natural evolutionary step for the series." I’m sorry, but what? RPGs and MMORPGs have so very little in common that Klepek might as well have said that a turn-based tactical game would be the next logical evolutionary step, as it apparently was for the Fallout games. I’ve had my share of complaints with the sparseness of the worlds in Elder Scrolls games, but I’m confused as to why anyone would think populating the spaces with illusion-shattering player-characters would contribute to the franchise.
Doug Lowenstein, the former president of the ESA, made an impressively volatile exit speech at this year’s DICE summit, noting among other things that game professionals are allowing themselves to be led down a road toward censorship. Now that his comments have had a chance to settle in a bit, industry types are responding. GamaSutra has collected a few pages of notable quotes which are interesting as a sort of survey couse of the state of the industry, as seen by mostly insiders. My favorite quote is by someone named Anonymous, who says: "The game industry can’t defend creative decisions when it isn’t in fact very creative to begin with."
Kotaku has some nice footage of demonstrations of the new CryEngine2 being put through its paces. This PC exclusive is running as the poster boy for DirectX 10, with all its pretty effects and natural lighting. All it does is make me pine for the day with I’ll be able to use a DirectX 10-compliant version of Poser and complete my masterpiece.
A while back, I posted a link to the trailer for the PSP version of the upcoming Hellboy platformer. Now Gamevideos (via Joystiq) has the trailer for the Xbox 360 version, which leaves a smooth, battery taste in my mouth. Some of the fighting mechanics seem to preserve the slightly-nutty style of Big Red, which will hopefully make the thing play distinctly from other brawlers.
Here’s a fun rumor: Microsoft could be releasing a firmware update to quiet down the hum of the 360. The sound is caused by the spinning of the disc drive, so, as the theory goes, the sound could be reduced by more sophisticated throttling. I wouldn’t mind one bit.