That's kind of hilarious.


I posted that already, damn it!

Why would the masses buy a $400 console when they could just get a $50 Roku that does what they want?

This conference was even worse than I feared.  Multimedia crap!  Kinect!  Their biggest reveal (Call of Duty) is multiplatform anyway.

BTW, Wired has a story that is far more informative than this conference.  Interesting tidbit:


No used games confirmed.

Yeah, seriously.  Panopticon was an awesome name.  "Freedom Wars" sounds terrible...

Interesting.  Reminds me of the original fat PS3s a bit, which isn't a bad thing.  (I think they're rather attractive systems, just the size...)

That's kind of the thing.  Vofan's concept art for the game is gorgeous, and I wouldn't mind an artbook with it.  What actually made it into the game is another story...

Anyway, I've settled down and recalled that the soundtrack for the game is actually pretty bad...meaning the artbook and poster are the only things in that set I would actually care about.  And that's just silly for the asking price...

Once just for the heck of it I tried to calculate what it would cost to ship a person FedEx or UPS and concluded that it was substantially cheaper to just fly on a normal airline.  Shipping something the size and weight of a human being is expensive!  Though I don't know how much of that comes from the door-to-door nature of the service...there isn't really an option for "leave my package at the sorting facility, he'll find his own way out".

This has been said before in the PS4 thread, I believe, but memory is a huge limiting factor on current consoles.  512 megs is just not enough (heck, phones have more than that these days...).  This isn't just about graphics, it actually does limit what developers can do in there games.  Especially if you like huge open-world type experiences.

Not to mention that Sony at least (and I wouldn't be surprised in MS does it too, but they obviously haven't said anything yet...) has been putting a big emphasis on the ease of development for their new system as well as reducing the red tape for indie devs.  With a PC-style architecture and a much more indie-friendly ecosystem it should actually reduce development costs for the new systems for smaller devs.  It's the big developers who feel like they're obligated to push graphics to the limit! and all that who are complaining about costs.

I really do think there are still substantial improvements to be made over the current-gen systems, but the next gen might actually be the last.  Graphics are starting to get good enough that it's more about art budget than technical requirements.  With one last push on the hardware side and improvements in the ease of development the next gen ought to be with us for a looooong time...

I usually go to Sakura-con since I live in Seattle and it's right there (even did the staff thing one year, but then I decided that was way too much work and I would leave it to others...).  Back when I lived on the east coast I would make the trek down to Otakon every year with members of my college anime club, but I haven't done that in a while.  Otakon was my first convention (of any sort) and is kind of what got me into the whole thing so I have some fond memories of it.  I'm not as regular about it but I've been to Anime Expo as well, and plan to be there this year too.

Outside of anime stuff there's PAX, of course, which I've been attending every year since like 2006.  Though with the way tickets for it sell out these days who knows if I'll be able to keep doing that...

I guess I'm quite the convention vet. when I look back on it.  But there's still a lot I haven't seen.  One of these years I do want to attend SDCC.  And I really do want to go to Comiket sometime...that ought to be a totally different experience...

I don't want this game but I sort of want that limited edition...what the hell is wrong with me...

Well that's rather dismissive.  While it's certainly true that there have been many versions of Guilty Gear, that's a problem most fighting games seem to suffer from.  But this game is something completely new.  It's a big change in direction.  And there hasn't been a really new Guilty Gear in a very long time now. An appropriate analog would be the jump to Street Fighter 4 (another franchise that always had way too many iterations...), except without abandoning the style and presentation of the previous games.

The trailer blew me away, at least on a technical level.  I had to watch and rewatch it, in utter disbelief...these are really 3D character models?  I have no idea if I'll even play the game (Frankly, super-technical fighters aren't my thing.  P4A was enough for me...), but I'm just amazed by what they were able to accomplish.  With the Unreal engine, no less...

I have a lot of respect for ASW's games, even though I suck at them.  I'm just really interested to see what they do with this tech.

Boob hearts.


That is all.

The Trails in the Sky series is what keeps me studying Japanese.

OK, that's a slight exaggeration...maybe.  There are several reasons I'm studying Japanese.  But it's definitely one of them.

I kind of hope it's not a Monster Hunter clone because I feel like the Vita has enough of those.  First there was Ragnarok Odyssey, then Soul Sacrifice, and now Toukiden and God Eater 2 (which, stylistically at least, is much closer to this game) are coming out soon. Sure none of these games will do Monster Hunter numbers but how many Monster Hunter clones do you really need?

At the very least Panopticon seems to be putting a larger emphasis on its setting, which is a good thing as far as I'm concerned.  Of course we don't even know for sure that it's a Vita game yet...

As far as a Gravity Rush sequel goes, I don't think that was ever officially confirmed.  I could be wrong, though.