ShatterShock

I was never going to buy a Wii U for the sake of Rayman Legends. It was more like a game that I could consider buying after the fact of getting a Wii U for something else.

With it releasing in September, it'll just be lost in the noise of bigger games and the next-gen console launches.

Wow, Koch Media was definitely not the company I thought would take Saints Row, and at such a low price too. I was prepared to hear about some epic bidding war between Activsion, Ubisoft and EA.

Homefront sorta makes sense for Crytek. It was a cheap buy, and now they have a potential off-year franchise to differentiate themselves from just Crysis.

That Vigil hasn't been bought yet isn't surprising; Darksiders 2 wasn't that great of a seller, although Platnum potentially taking the franchise may be interesting. You'd think they wouldn't since they already have Bayonetta, but if they can make it work, why not? I just hope they don't forget the Zelda/RPG elements of the series and go all action.

@Legion_said:

We're not going to defend our hobby to the point where people have to die for our right to play COD, are we?

This research could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that every shooting from Columbine to Sandy Hook could've been prevented if it weren't for the presence of violent video games and I would still defend their right to exist and not be ghettoized away with porn and drugs. Line up every school shooter in the past two decades (or hell, mass shooters in general) and they would be completely dwarfed by the 10(ish) million people who bought COD: Black Ops 2 to no ill effect whatsoever. That is Black Ops 2 by itself, what if I added in the entire COD franchise? Grand Theft Auto? Mortal Kombat? Doom? These tens of millions of people do not deserve to have their hobby taken from them or otherwise expressively crippled because of a group of people you could count on two hands.

@Legion_ said:

@Hunter5024 said:

I'm 21 and got carded for Assassins Creed III, despite having facial hair at the time, and I'm not even a young looking guy. So they kind of already do that. Also I think if a parent thinks their 14 year old is mature enough to play COD then that's totally fine, the government shouldn't tell them that's not okay.

By that logic, I guess you think it's okay for a 14 year old to drink alcohol as well?

What a ridiculous comparison. Video games are just like books, movies, music and television: a medium consumed externally by the consumer. They are not mind altering drugs with a consistent effect on the user's mental capabilities. Parents can decide if their child or teenager is smart enough to differentiate fantasy violence from the real world, they cannot decide if their children will become drunk or not.

@Superfriend said:

@OmegaChosen said:

While I don´t believe anything like that is actually going to come out of this, I find the very notion to have videogames examined by psychologists AGAIN and AGAIN very troubling- And to be honest, more people should be up in arms about this. Because it´s freaking stupid. A colossal waste of time by clueless people who like to waste money.

If "videogames" were an actual person, they would've pointed out how they have been put into double, triple of maybe even quadruple jeopardy. I thought we were done with this after the Supreme Court ruling, but now we're back to square one. If enough people are hellbent on proving that society's problems stem from violence in videogames, then I don't know what can be done. They'll keep banging the drum and fighting the fight every time a tragedy happens until they eventually get their collar.

Nintendo will be making gaming hardware long after Microsoft and Sony have moved their gaming operations to the cloud. They have no reason to stop building and selling hardware that is (or will shortly be) profitable and the doom-crying over their relevance will likely be silenced with the release of Pokemon X/Y and Smash Bros. U.

Also, until smartphones can prove that they can sell $30-$60 games and implement a standardized gamepad, they'll never be a replacement for dedicated gaming machines, console or handheld.

Between Metal Gear Rising, Injustice, GTA V, South Park and Sim City the first half of 2013 is looking great to me.

Sometimes I feel like a ban on violent video games is ultimately inevitable. As long as humanity exists, you'll have crazy people who will act out extreme displays of violence. As long as these tragedies happen, you'll have people who want quick, easy solutions to their problems and political leaders looking to enact them so they can look good. Meanwhile, as technology advances, video games will become ever more realistic in their displays of violence, to the point where FPS games will look less like shooting at wax statues and action figures and more like an interactive snuff film.

The CDC research may end up clearing video games from any blame, but it won't matter. There will always be people who think that media should be controlled for society's own good, and all they'll have to do is wait for the next major tragedy or the next shocking video game to try all over again. Why shouldn't they? Either they win, and they successfully fought for family safety against the mean old gaming industry, or they lose, and they fought the good fight against the mean old gaming industry.

Word of warning: DLC Quest is super short and literally takes no more than an hour to complete. The game costed a dollar on X-Box Indies, so if the price is the same on Steam and you're willing to put up a dollar for an hour long joke, then go for it. Just don't expect a 'quest' as much as an interactive comedy skit.

You should probably try downloading the client from their website and trying it out before you get the console. I personally found that the muddy image quality and increased lag made the service into a non-starter for me.

@MikkaQ said:

Well who wants to spend 500 bucks on three game consoles every 5 years?

I don't know about 500 bucks on three consoles every 5 years, but 400 bucks on two consoles every 5 sounds right up my alley. As somebody who has lived through five console generations, the last two years of this cycle have been painful to sit through. Mobile devices are this close to matching an X-Box 360's performance for Christ's sake.

@Branthog said:

No. That illumiroom thing is an annoying gimmick. Keep that whacky shit out of the console, at least. Make it add-on. When you're already selling at a lost, make the money you're singing into each box count by putting in sweet delicious hardware that won't age quite so quickly.

I mean, what do you want more? Motion waggle shit and gimmicky "Visio behind-the-screen/out-of-thepicture" shit? Or better AI? Better audio? Networking that allows for multiplayer games with numbers as high as PCs have had for a decade? (32-64 and more).

Illumiroom will be a hit at parties. That's all that Microsoft cares about here. They know that as long as the hardware on the 720/Durango is good enough to be some sort of improvement over the 360, graphics focused gamers will have to eventually buy one and deal with sharing the platform with non-gamers.

Looking forward to the new IPs that will be started with the next generation, too many major games are coming with a number or subtitle at the end these days. Also it'll be great when the lowest common denominator goes up with the release of the new XBox and Playstation. Buy the best PC in the world, it won't amount to much as long as games are designed with the X-Box 360 in mind.