This is…really kinda weird. Yup. I’d rather think that Pokemon are born the ether and shed into existence by a blissfully ignorant universe, as opposed to actually being born and nursing.
Check out the rest of his work!
Old GVL favorite, Rayman Raving Rabbids on the Wii has put out a new trailer.
I really hope that you don’t need the Wii fit tablet to play the next one…otherwise we’re all going to die.
Several months back, Electronic Arts (EA) filed an unsolicited buyout offer of Take 2 Productions (T2) at a price of $26 per share. To the casual hardcore gamer, these events usually don’t get noticed. Games just get made. Now, if you are a fan of the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) franchise, and you’re one of the teeming masses that can’t wait for the fourth number in the series, you really should have been paying attention.
Ostensibly, what this meant for you was that if the buyout was successful, GTA 4 probably would have been delayed until the 4th quarter of the year in order to make the holiday season more profitable. Take 2, on their own, needed this title to come out as soon as possible. Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t in dire straights. GTA simply would allow a greater cushion for the next year. Among their own intellectual properties, they have a larger number than EA does.
This seemed strange, overall. EA has the best selling game in history in its lineup, The Sim, which just recently got major press attention for having reached the coveted 100 million-unit mark, as well as a number of other AAA titles. Upon thinking about the rest of the games that EA has, Madden NFL 08, NHL 08, NBA Live 08, etc, and about T2’s titles: NBA 2K8, NHL 2K8, I realized something. EA really doesn’t need T2 for their innovation, what they could want is a monopoly over the sports titles.
You can see where this has already happened, in the missing acronym above, T2 has no NFL games for this year, or for the past 3 years. EA secured NFL and NFL players licenses after a pricing war ensued in 2005 where T2 offered their products at $19.99, and in order to stay competitive, EA released theirs with a price point of $29.99. The next year, when EA had the licenses, the games’ price rose to $49.99 and players either bought that or went home empty handed.
Take 2 originally stated that EA had undervalued their stock at $26, and declined the initial offer. Shortly thereafter, EA put in another bid, again at $26, going far enough to open a section of their website regarding their offer. Overall, it was laughable. On April 17, Take 2 had its shareholder’s meeting, where they encouraged their stockholders to deny the bid. I wholly stand by this position. Monopolies are bad. Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. Do not get lube as contraband.
*Update* I just got hit with the dumbass stick…I’ll be making another post about this shortly, that I wrote for the Ebbtide. I’ll put that up on Friday, when the issue’s in print.
Go ahead…take this the wrong way. I get scared when things get too big. If I see an indie movie, and I dig it, there is a small chance that everyone and their dog will love it, think it’s a life-changing experience, talk about it incessantly, and suddenly the fact that you like it tears you away from your baret and black turtle neck wearing artsy hip friends because you became trendy.
Big companies have this same effect for me. The bigger they are, the more popular they become, the more mindless drooling information whores they have spouting all that is good and wholesome, and how earth-shatteringly important their wares are. I cling to my hipness, my funny hats, and the uncomfortable shirts I stole from Steve Jobs by being a fan of particulars designer rather than the companies they work for. Really, if genetics and temporal anomolies could be controlled, I would be having Wil Wright’s baby. Please see our videos for more regarding this…or don’t because it’s horribly embarassing. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.
Now that I have your attention again, let’s talk about what’s happening this afternoon (6:30pm Eastern). Take 2 Productions is having it’s investor’s meeting. As a total side note, Jack Thompson (a shareholder) is attempting to get some time on the floor. This should prove interesting. Anyway, the meeting should be a good indicator of whether or not Electronic Arts is going to be successful in it’s buyout offer of the company.
This started me thinking about 800lb gorillas. Uh-huh…I’ll keep waiting.
Thank you. Now that we have have our King Kong (Blizzard/Activision), I’m looking at this as if I were looking at the nuclear blast that is going to wake up Godzilla. This, at first, scared the bajiggers out of me.
That’s when the part of me that is not simply a gamer, but an otaku of interactive digtal entertainment, smacked the rest of me. “No, you fool!” it said, “We need these! We need the makers sequels of popular titles to continue to make them. There has to be the companies that satiate the twitchy, homicidal Xbox owners, the MLB (insert year here) beer guzzling neanderthalic fans, and other “casual” gamers at bay so that true creativity can continue thrive.
There are several gleaming examples of this, ie: Valve’s Portal, and 2D Boy’s World of Goo. The greatest thing about these titles, aside from amazing (if not unconventional and subtle) writing, is there distribution methods. Not only are they amazing examples of design, but they are available through non-traditional methods of downloading rather than having to drag one’s rear-end to an archaic brick and mortar store and buy a physical copy of the game.
Sony has said that 90% of games will be downloaded by 2018.
I think this date is far too conservative. I’ve heard the arguments against this, one of the best one being 90% of gamers don’t have credit cards. This seems shallow to me since 54% of gamers are housewives, though their games of choice are usually flash based. (Curse you, Word Womp! Give me my mother back!) This already gives downloaded games a significant market share. “But these aren’t the hard core gamers!” I hear you cry. Okay, so most of the “hard core” crowd plays games that are larger than that. Perhaps these players don’t have credit cards, but points can still be purchased through traditional means in a store. Let’s call that argument debunked.
The way I see it, the biggest problem is bandwidth. But as I pointed out in an earlier post regarding high definition formats for movies, that will not be a problem soon enough with Comcast’s new uberservice. It’s just too expensive right now.
And this leaves the doors wide open for things such as Steam and the new Greenhouse Games to provide downloadable games direct to your hard drive, and allows smaller development companies to grow and give us new and exciting games.
So I say, “Let King Kong and Godzilla, future Mothras and other mythical beast fight it out!” Dinosaurs were huge and controlled the earth for millions of years, but it was the smaller creatures that remained. And cycles will continue as things merge, die out, divide, evaporate, and emerge. I can only sit back and watch right now, but honestly, I’m really excited.
Whether you’re a fan of Disney and other American animation or not, an important figure in the world of animation has passed. Ollie Johnston, the last of those known as the “Nine Old Men,” passed away yesterday, at the age of 95, in Sequim, WA.
If you have seen the movie “The Rescuers,” and have seen the character Rufus the Cat, then you’ve seen Ollie, as Rufus was a caricature of him.
If you’ve seen the Fox and the Hound, the Rescuers, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Robin Hood, The AristoCats, The Jungle Book, Mary Poppins, The Sword in the Stone, 101 Dalmations, Sleeping Beauty, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Lady and the Tramp, Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, The Wind in the Willows, Melody Time, Song of the South, Peter and the Wolf, The Three Caballeros, Bambi, Fantasia, Pinocchio, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Little Hiawatha, or a number of other Disney works (primarily early ones), then you’ve seen his work.
He and Frank Thomas were also the authors of Illusion of Life, an extraordinary book on the history and techniques of classic animation (it was actually my textbook for my History of Animation class).
If you care at all about animation, please observe a moment of silence for his passing, and the passing of the last of a group of animators who pioneered what animation would mean to the world for generations to come.
