"What would drive Apple to strike such a deal with EA? Plants vs. Zombies 2 has launched on Android in China, and it’s outselling the iPhone version of the game six-to-one in that market"
But...but...I thought no one bought software on Android, especially in China where everyone supposedly pirates everything. At least, that's what the tech press constantly says and the tech press is always based in astutely researched facts!
Here's my Extra Life Profile Page and my Twitch channel where I will be streaming the event. I haven't filled out this year's profile page yet but will be doing that soon! I love this event and can't wait to do it again!
I still think these Android (or whatever) mini consoles that are focused around indie games and homebrew are a good idea that could find a niche to thrive in. They'll never be mainstream but I don't think that's what they should aim for. However, the people running Ouya really don't seem to understand how to work with indie developers or what makes the indie community different from the "mainstream." They're acting extremely corporate, putting the gross PR varnish over all the many problems this system has had, despite funding this thing through Kickstarter which you would think, would have taught them how to interact with the types of communities that consume this stuff. I really think they need to re-think how they message and present themselves if they want to get taken seriously. 2013 really seems to be quickly becoming the Year of Flubbed PR.
I'm also getting extremely frustrated with the new video player. At work, I'm on 10Mbit/sec fiber that can (and usually does) burst to 90Mbit/sec+. At home, I'm on 150MBit/sec cable (seriously, just got it, I pay a fortune for it) that regularly reports as over 100MBit/sec from SpeedTest.net.) I can download video files from Giant Bomb at 10MBytes/sec (as in, an entire Unprofessional Fridays in 5 minutes) but when playing videos in streaming, the quality constantly goes up and down and it stutters each time and when trying to play progressive (which is automatically worse because you lose the resume functionality), the download regularly stalls before completion. It happens on both connections, which are different ISPs with multi-homed backhauls. I can play 1080p YouTube videos no problem and every other streaming media I try works fine, including Super HD Netflix. But Giant Bomb still has issues. This happened before on the old site, then the new player (and supposedly new video host) rolled out, it worked great for a month and now it's crap again. I'm located in Ottawa, Canada. As a premium member who has multiple years paid in advance, these constant playback issues are becoming really frustrating and I don't know why it continues to be so difficult for a solution to be found, especially when it seems to be affecting a large number of people.
I stopped actively paying attention to PAR a while ago. It's become the Ben Kuchera Show. His original mission statement from the site was that game's journalism is broken and that he appears to perceive himself as it's saviour but he constantly breaks his own rules. Almost every article is an op-ed, as Patrick demonstrated, he tries to start meaningful dialogue with insults, he frequently bans/blocks intelligent critics and lumps them in with trolls and well, it's hard to call yourself a journalist when you all but devote entire articles to giving free PR to certain products (see Oculus Rift), especially when the aforementioned original mission statement accused large swaths of the industry of being in bed with business. He has a really good idea with that site but he's got to start adhering to it more and not constantly writing as if he's above so many of his peers.
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