jperna-blog

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XBox One Revealed, My Faith in Humanity Restored?

I have found myself struggling to find something to keep my mind occupied lately, especially after a rather messy break up. My normal habits have been shaken up to the point of no return and being around people has held little appeal to me.

Enter my savior, the XBOX One. 

Or more appropriately; the insane stupidity that the internet is throwing at it.

For those of you that don't follow gaming news, or tech news then let me give you the broad strokes that have led to this veritable shit storm online. 

Microsoft announced a couple days back their new Xbox console, the unfortunately named 'Xbox One'; or as I like to call it for short, the XBone. (really has a frat party guy ring to it I think, and that's Microsoft's target demo)

The thing itself is rather nice to look at, anywhere between 8 and 10 times more powerful than the previous model depending on source, comes with a ton of neat bells and whistles and a Kinect to boot.

So whats the problem you ask? Something that anyone with half a brain should have known was going to be addressed sooner rather than later, Used Games.

Lets jump back, say about a month or so ago, EA (Electronic Arts) announced it was ditching its online pass service. This is where if you wanted to use the online portion of a game, or buy its DLC and weren't the games original buyer (hence acquired it second hand) you needed to pay them money to do so.

Gamers who don't have half a braincell between their ears rejoiced that the consumer had spoken and EA had put its tail between its legs and backed down on its 'greedy' policy (of wanting to be paid for making a game, those righteous bastards).

However I knew as did any self thinking person should have known, this meant change was coming. EA no longer needed to worry about getting its cut off the used game market, remember this because it will come up later.

Back to the present, Microsoft announces the console, it leaves the used game market out of its keynote and its architecture panel. The press start sniffing around and catch a couple MS employees who haven't heard the company line yet. 

They say, well used games wont work on the console, then they say they will but you will need to pay the games full price to activate it, others say its just a small activation fee while still others say there's no fee at all.

By the time Microsoft saw the damage and tried to correct it, it was 'too late'.

But too late for whom? 

Will this cause any problem for Microsoft? No. Not at all. Why you ask? Because Sony will be doing the same damned thing.

Much earlier this year, Sony announced their PS4 and also were cagey on the used game question. Stating they would work on the console, but further details would have to wait for later. 

You could say, well that doesnt mean anything! Sure lets break it down logically.

Activision, EA, Ubisoft and SquareEnix are some of, if not the largest game publishers on the planet. They together probably amount for a very large portion of any consoles games, and therefore a consoles sales.

These guys have two options to release next gen titles on (don't be an r-tard and bring up the Wii U, its not a next gen console)

Both are about equally powered and both will give them roughly the same market share to get their games to. 

However, one of these two has made it so the BILLION dollar used game market has to cut you a check for every game they resell, whereas the other does not.

You are running the companies, quick who do you make exclusives for and push exclusive content to? QUICK! 

Its business people. If Sony doesn't already have this used game policy in place, the big publishers will force Sony to have it in place by favoring the other heavily, which we know works because we saw it this last generation with publishers favoring the 360 over the PS3. 

Think for yourselves for once, it's empowering. 

Now I get to look forward to all of these self righteous overly self entitled half wits melt down when they find out they wont be able to 'speak with their dollar' when Sony announces they will be doing the same.

PS, Before the illogical argument of video games being the only medium that is being treated this way, try reselling your iTunes music, your digitally downloaded movies, any of your steam games or those digitally bought comic books. 

Get it through your thick skulls, physical media is a thing of the past. The used game market is a relic of a bygone era that you are seeing come to an end. I promise you, the next generation after this one wont even have disc slots. 

Deal with it.

[jperna-blog]

BACK!

Kinda.

Now that I got rid of the picture that shut my site down, maybe I'll use it agian. We'll see.

[jperna-blog]

XENONAUTS: PROBABLY WORTH EVERY PENNY

Independent Game maker Goldhawk Interactive is making a re-imagined and uprezzed version of one of gamings greatest games ever created; X-COM: UFO Defense.

Hit the source to find out more and support these guys.

[jperna-blog]

LADY GAGA COMPLETELY SELLS OUT

Lady GaGa has stated that she will be revealing some of the tracks from her upcoming album, "Born this Way" via Zynga's "game" Farmville. 

It'll change its name to GaGaville and ask you to complete a series of tasks in order to unlock the songs. 

Of course it wouldnt be a Zynga game if you couldnt buy your way to success, Best Buy will offer a 25 dollar Farmville buck card with the album on it.

I kind of hope its called "Born this Way" because some people are just born ugly, people like GaGa.

[jperna-blog]

SONY LIES; SAYS A "FEW MORE DAYS" IS ALL THEY NEED

Following last weekends missed deadline Sony stated that they only need a "few more days" to bring PSN back up. 

I'll lay money on end of this month. 

[jperna-blog]

NOW THE HACKER IS THE HACKED

In a story not worth mentioning outside of the most staunch nerd dens, the main Anonymous IRC servers were hacked.

For those of you that grew up in the 20th Century, an IRC server is a place for people to go and talk about how shitty the last season of Fringe was and trade kiddie porn.

For more info hit the source.

[jperna-blog]

MICROSOFT SEES SKYPE ROLLIN; SO BUYS IT.

Microsoft purchased Skype yesterday for a grand total of 8.5 billion dollars, leaving most industry watchers puzzled; which in turn leaves me puzzled. 

The move is brilliant, now with one of the best VOIP companies on the market theirs, Microsoft can easily integrate voice chat across all their platforms, want to talk to your XBOX720 friends on your Zune? Talk to the losers using the Zune and XBOX720 friends and that one weird friend who only has a PC using your Windows Phone? Go for it, Microsoft has a platform neutral service with infrastructure in place to help with that.

For more info hit the source. 

[jperna-blog]

WOW LOSES OVER HALF A MILLION SUBSCRIBERS, STILL CRUSHES ALL COMPETITION COMBINED

When Cataclysm released World of Warcraft had 12 million subscribers, 12 million people paying them money every month to play the grind fest that is WoW. In catastrophic news yesterday during an Activision earnings call, it came to light that WoW now barely has 11.4 million subscribers. 

WoW lost over half of Rifts subscriber base and still has over 11 million users, when a game gets this big and successful, does it fall prey to itself? Will Blizzard be able to pull the plug on it before it truly jumps the shark and becomes terrible, or will all that money and inertia lead to it going on for another 7 years?

All I know is I have a 78th level Paladin to grind up to 80th before Friday, and Im already getting the itches just typing this.

[jperna-blog]

OMFG Cata Latest Update regarding 4.1 and 4.2

[jperna-blog]

FIRST UNCONFIRMED CASE OF CC THEFT VIA PSN

The first unconfirmed report of a CC used for PSN having fraudulent charges applied to it has come out of Norway. 

A user of NeoGAF named Progmetal has reported a 12,500 dollar charge to his card that he did not make, and provided photographic proof of the transaction. 

Ive been saying it for two weeks people, all your PSN credit cards were stolen, cancel them and get new cards and never use it on PSN again. I am wise and know all!

There was an earlier report on the 28th stating that a hacker group has claimed to stolen all the credit card information and has been shopping it around on various black market forums to varying degrees of success. I cant verify it so I wont post the link, but just know its happening guys. Sony will come out sooner than later and say "oops" again.

[jperna-blog]

SONY ADMITS NOTHING; OFFERS MONTH FREE

Sony held a press conference that the translated details are still leaking out on, but that the moment, just know they are still not admitting that your CC info was stolen, only that theres a possibility it happened, and a month free of PSN+ and their dumb online magazine, Qrioctiy.

Now, if you would please stop threatening to sue, that would be great. 

[jperna-blog]

Sorry

Sorry about the lack of posting, Im currently powering through leveling a Paladin Tank in WoW and its consuming all my time. I'll put some stuff up tonight.

[jperna-blog]

NETFLIX PROVES PEOPLE RATHER HAVE CHOICE

Netflix has proven once again that no mater how much internet providers, Movie Studios and theaters want them to shut down or no mater how hard all those people try to make Netflix's life hard they will continue to come out on top.

Netflix's global subscriber base grew almost 70% over the past year, weighing in at a healthy 23.6 million users toppling the largest US Cable provider Comcast as America's biggest video service provider, thats 7% of all Americans using Netflix.

All of this is on the heels of both Amazon Prime and Hulu Plus emerging as competitors in this market. 

Of course toppling a cable provider that is throttling its users, imposing ridiculous bandwidth caps, blocking its content from legitimate outlets and charging outrageous amounts of money for all that isn't exactly a huge deal, heres to hoping Netflix continues to crush Cable TV providers and forces them to react by bringing their over priced and under performing services in line with the real world.

[jperna-blog]

PSN STILL DOWN, SONY TOYS WITH IDEA OF TELLING TRUTH

PSN is still down guys, which Im sure some of you are painfully aware of. Thats not the news, the real news here is that Sony is just now playing with the idea of telling us that more than likely a shit ton of personal information (as guessed at on this blog) might have been compromised too!

Fun times! In a related story, Microsoft Europe offered a free XBOX Live weekend last weekend, thats nice of them isn't it?

Anyways, get ready to cancel your cards bro-hams! Fun times are ahead.

[jperna-blog]

NINTENDO CONFIRMS NEW CONSOLE; WORLD YAWNS

Confirming reports I had already posted about, Nintendo confirmed to no one suprise that they will be releasing a new console, moreso they continued that details will be at this years E3.

The only thing here that is interesting is the fact that this confirms Nintendo releasing their console in 2012. Meaning that Sony and Microsoft will probably react by announcing their consoles at E3 2012 to steal Nintendo's thunder and burying gamers in a mountain of technical jargon proving their system is the best.

Here's to seeing if Nintendo can hit a real life meme on the head again, or if they ran out of luck with their last shitbox.

Isn't gaming fun?!

[jperna-blog]

WORLD OF WARCRAFT 4.1 LIVE

The latest content patch for World of Warcraft is currently going live on a server near you as you read this. Along with a slew of class tweaks this patch will bring us two new instances, new loot and a multitude of changes to how you aquire higher level end game content. 

See my previous post for more information or hit up Blizzards site.

[jperna-blog]

Experiments in Minecraft! OMFG Cata has something of an obsession with Minecraft and has started a neat experiment on his youtube channel, making an RPG world using the in browser world builder based on user suggestions. Already 5 full episodes with 1 minisode, give it a look guys!