BionicRadd

Or did we miss Tuesday and it's already Wednesday. Did we all sleep through Tuesday? I don't remember getting stupid drunk and passing out for 24 hours, but then, I guess I wouldn't remember that. My whole world has been flipped upside down and topsy turvy. This madness must stop!

What I think is ironic is a guy making an internet tough guy video about internet tough guys.

And why not? MMOs do this as a standard practice. It's a way for MS to offer more AI power for games that need it without having to beef up hardware across the board. XBLA games and most basic single player games aren't going to need this, but huge, expansive games could make good use of it. It should open the door for big scripted events in Multiplayer games that everyone sees at the same time.

I think people are trying to make this into a big, in-your-face feature, when it's really more of a behind-the-scenes thing.

Ive spent a ton of money on XBLA games, so what Ill probably do is just keep my 360 around and skip the One, altogether. Xbox exclusives rarely impress me, anyway, so I'll buy everything on PC through Steam. Yes, there are certain old games that can't run on modern systems, but they're few and far between. I can still play Duke Nukem 3D on my Windows 8 64 bit OS, with no issues.

It will stay free. There's a reason Dust 514 is only on PS3. Could they charge? Sure, but I think they will continue iterating on PS+ to try and get more people to sign up.

Pre-Metro, I turned on my 360 and either hit the button to play the game in the disc drive or went up one time to get to the row with all MY stuff. Not a fraction of my stuff plus a whole bunch of other crap MS wants to sell me. Ads for games, movies and music that I can buy on the 360 are still ads. Claiming the current dash has one square per block for ads is disingenuous at best and delusional, at worst. The stuff I bought doesn't even get highlighted on the current dash. It's hidden behind the one tile per group that we are given for our stuff. It would be like loading up Itunes and having to scroll past albums they want to sell you to get to your music collection. For the record, I don't like how the Playstation Store works on the PS3, either, but at least Sony put their Marketplace in one spot, which is what I wish Microsoft would go to. I bought a game console 5 years ago and they have since turned it into a storefront that happens to play games that I have to pay them to be able to use to it's full potential.

Let's be clear, though, none of that would actually matter if everything on the 360 was not so insufferably slow, now. The apps we're supposed to buy Gold to have access to are all vastly inferior to the same apps offered on other platforms that don't charge an extra fee for access. Netflix is better on PS3 (continuous play is something all Netflix apps should have), HBO Go (I can't delete stuff from my watch list if I didn't add it to the watch list through the 360) and Hulu (holy god, don't even get me started on the nonsense that is your queue) are both leagues better on Roku and I can't even make purchases through the Amazon Instant Video app. I have to go to my computer, buy what I want to watch and then go back to the 360 to watch it. Or I can just shut off the 360 and do it all through the Roku, which is what I do. Why does it take 10 seconds for Youtube to load? Why do I have to hit 3 button prompts to get back to the loading screen that eventually takes me back to the dashboard so that I can surf through more ads to get the content I paid for? Again, so we're clear, I am not saying the PS3 is demonstrably better at this. I am saying 360 is worse at it than it used to be. Aren't these things supposed to get better as we go?

I hate to say it, but every time I turn around, Microsoft is doing something that just baffles me. No, not Windows 8. I like that, just fine. However, I've been reading up on Iron Brigade for PC, since I suspect it will get added to the Double Fine Humble Bundle, next week. Between that game's apparent issues with Games For Windows Live and the issues I've had with the service when I've had to use it, I kind of just wish it would go away, entirely. It has to be one of the most anti-consumer PC "games services" out there, at the moment. On top of that, you have the Metro-style 360 dashboard that has, in my opinion, just ruined my experience on that console. It's to the point where I don't even like booting the thing up, anymore. On the subject of Windows 8, I'll acknowledge that completely removing the start menu and forcing people to use Metro is just dumb. It doesn't bother ME because I am comfortable enough on a PC to go out and get Classic Start Menu installed.

So, yea, I hope Microsoft gets knocked down a peg or two, next gen. I have no idea why game companies keep repeating this cycle, but here we are, again. You'd have thought after Sega got defeated by it's own hubris, companies would try a little harder to keep their ego in check, but they all just ignore the size of their heads until it starts dragging them down. Sony did it with the PS3, Nintendo did it with the 3DS and I feel like Microsoft might be headed that way with their next console based on how they're handling the 360, right now. Also, to be fair, Nintendo's ego has been ever swelling since the N64 came out using carts despite the fact that everyone else knew disc-based was the future. Strangely enough, the more I hear about the PS4 and the moves Sony has been making, the more excited I get for that piece of hardware. That's saying a lot, since I waited 3 or 4 years to get a PS3 and still don't like it as much as I liked the 360 pre-metro.

I say I hope they eat dirt, but it's only because I want them to be humble, again. They had a lot to prove with the Xbox and then the 360 after it and it showed in the output. They put their full weight behind trying to get people on board with their consoles. Now that they have us on board, it feels like games have become this secondary thing that our 360 happens to do, as opposed to being the entire reason we own the damn thing.

God Damn Batman:The Game

Seriously, I love the name Injustice. This is obviously a bit of an Elseworlds kind of tale, as opposed to DC vs MK which could actually be considered canon if they wanted to. Gotham by Gaslight wouldn't have been better if it had been called Batman Vs Jack the Ripper. I like vague names. More to the point, I like evocative names. Injustice: Gods Among Us doesn't sound like a fighting game. It doesn't evoke any specific genre at all. When people that don't know what it is see the case, they'll likely be intrigued. It's a name that has a better chance of hooking in casual gaming fans, because they won't know right away that it's a fighting game. They might read the box and get hooked into the concept, even if they aren't fighter fans. Giving it a name like DC vs MK had would make it sound like it's a fighting game and nothing more, when it seems like they actually have a story to tell in this one, so I like the fact that they went with a title that makes you wonder what the game is about.

beginning of Starbounder was very reminiscent of F-zero.

I have a simple litmus test for buying new consoles. I look at the games lineup and find 5 games that I want and that I can only play on that console (or that are the best version of said game). Then I decide how badly I want to play those games. Basically, I don't buy consoles, I buy games. Consoles are merely a means to an end.