Doobie_Wop

Huh, a negative article on the Japanese gaming industry, Giant Bomb sure are keeping up to par, especially when the whole Phil Fish incident was completely thrown under the rug by Patrick, most likely because most of the Giant Bomb staff agree with the indie developer that has never even released a game. I find it hilarious that a whole bunch of Western publishers have been hemorrhaging money most of this generation, have reiterated on old ideas and IPs to the point of making their franchises boring or completely destroying whole brands, have had a complete lack of new ideas when it comes to game design and have instead relied on the last 15 years of PC gaming to bring 'new' ideas to console gamer's, but it is Japan that is always criticized.

Keiji is bitter, it's so obvious, especially coming from a man in a culture that prefers to find fault in themselves instead of blaming it on others (unlike Western developers who only talk when it involves a head piece directly connected to their public relations agent). Continuing to listen to this man is like constantly posting articles and making a fuss over whatever crazy thing Peter Molyneux says anytime of the week.

Home is more successful than 75% of the games released on the PS3/360 that are struggling to sell 700,000 units a piece, it's online community has lasted longer than nearly every online game that isn't Call of Duty or Halo, it's probably generated more money than most MMO's (It also didn't crash and burn within it's first year) or just games in general, it only took three years to release and it's pretty much the first of it's kind on consoles and yet people are still ass-holes about the service.  
 
How is Home any different from League of Legends? They both offer a free entertainment package that can be enhanced by purchasing additional add ons and yet one of them is lambasted to hell and back, while the others service is praised to no end. This is just the whole Farmville and I-Phone thing again, something new that doesn't click with 'hardcore' gamers (this is Giant Bomb, so I'll limit it to COD, Rockstar and Halo fans) is immediately trodden and dismissed as some sort of failure despite being successful and actually being enjoyed by a lot of people.  
 
Also, like many other people in his position, Jack probably doesn't have the power or the permission to give out specific details about the service, he works for a damn mega corporation, why would he give out details on his service that isn't related to actually promoting it. Telling you that Final Fantasy 13 sold 10 million copies in Japan isn't going to make you want to play the game more and it's only releasing info that Sony would rather keep to themselves. The perfect example would be Nintendo on their Wii U reveal, a whole lot of 'hmms', 'aaahs' and stepping around corners because they either don't have permission to release any new information or they'd rather keep it to themselves. Another example would be game budgets or publisher dealings (Microsoft and Namco is a recent news piece), publishers are so tight on that kind information and they probably believe that  you, the every day consumer, only have to be on a need to know basis. 
 
I used Home for about 30 minutes back in 2009, turned it off and deleted it, it wasn't for me, but I also don't hate it with every fibre of my being and I'm not willing to throw false information and ridicule at a service that I know isn't for me. I also don't go out of my way to insult people using a social service network on a games forum, the hypocrisy is mind boggling and I really do hate the majority of the community on this  site a little more every day. If it wasn't for Patrick, Vinny, Ryan and their high quality videos and slick user interface, I'd be out of here. 
 
P.S. Your doing a great job Patrick, I'm usually kind of down on modern game journalism (hit lists and Kotaku), but your articles are frequent, interesting, in depth and very well written, I hope to read more in the future and like with this article, I hope you can stray from the norm and provide more random articles on  interesting things. An article on niche Japanese developers could be interesting, don't know much about them, but I'd love to learn more and I think it'd be a great read.

What evidence do people have that Sony are taking a huge loss on the PSV? They've already come out and said that the NGP doesn't cost that much to manufacture and that if they were to lose any money at all, then it would be very little.  
 
It's the same thing with the games, they've mentioned that the budget of PSV games are closer to the budgets of PSP games (I'm guessing it's because of asset re-use, like what's in Uncharted) which means around the 500k to 1 million range. Sony thought this thing through, the PSV isn't magic, it's not using alien technology, Sony just designed it really well in the hope to remain competitive in the handheld space. 
  
People are coming to the loss conclusion based on how they see the 3DS, they compare the two devices and then compare the prices and then think that one must be losing, only because the other is winning. The 3DS makes a $100 profit on every console sold and that's with an expensive 3D screen, they could have released it at $150 and still made a decent profit.  By comparison, a technology based company is using their own technology (cameras, sixaxis, OLED screen, PSP parts) to manufacture a product for around $100 more, they aren't burning money on this thing, just like how they weren't burning money on the successful PSP at launch.

Now watch as the Giant Bomb user-base ignores this post and then gobbles up whatever falsities the Giant Bomb crew throw out in their upcoming Bombcast, most likely because they're too lazy to research and learn things for themselves. This then leads to their user base becoming even more ignorant and that ignorance continues to spread throughout other silly sites until it becomes a case of 'Opinion/rumour = fact'. 
 
On the handheld itself, it looks boring, nothing has captured my interest yet, but Sony's  loyalty lies with Gamescom and TGS, so I'm sure the majority of their new releases will be shown at those two conferences.

Giant Bomb, the site where being prejudiced against the Japanese, spouting false info about consoles they don't care about and having cult followings based around game journalists is a normal thing. 
 
Article: Cool I guess, I'm not a big fan of the Move, so unless they can put some Guncon support in, I'm not playing it. Good for Headstrong Games though, the more money the better.

@Punk1984 said:

@trent82 said:

The people all over the various gaming communities calling people whiners, ungrateful, etc. are seriously driving me crazy right now.  I don't need or feel like I deserve free crap from Sony, but if they are going to offer a welcome back package, then it should absolutely benefit all users equally.  There really is no argument here.  And the fact that the one group of people that is not going to benefit from this is specifically the most loyal customers only makes it worse.

Hypothetically if a customer had purchased everything Sony ever put out before this there would be no way for Sony to offer them something free that they don't already have. So Sony did the next best thing thought up a list and said here pick two. There really is no better way to do this type of thing. The people that say we should have just been credited $20 to our wallet miss the fact that Sony can't legally do that across all territories (since PSN uses a cash value system and not make believe points)

The point is Sony couldn't please everyone and those few people that are gonna throw a fit are doing it because they feel entitled to special treatment above and beyond what everyone else is getting.

My idea was that they should have looked at the games that were supposed to come out over the last month and the games that are about to come out over the next few weeks on PSN (anything in the $10 to $15 range).  Sony should have picked one of these games that looks like it has promise but will likely not sell very well.  Strike a deal with the developer to give them some cash so that the game can be given out to all customers for free for a week.  This way everybody gets a free game that they are guaranteed to not already own.  Sony makes nice.  And some lucky talented developers get a lot of exposure to their work and a much larger audience to market DLC to going forward.  That's what I thought would have made the most sense.And your stupid comment at the end just shows your lack of reading comprehension.  The vast majority of people complaining aren't asking for special treatment...they are asking for equal treatment.  Everybody else gets 2 free PS3 games and they don't.  This really isn't that hard to understand.  I swear some of you are going out of your way to be as daft as possible.

The gamer entitlement mindset is disgusting and I'm losing respect for the social aspect of this hobby every single day

I don't see how any of this is Sony's fault, they were breached, instead of taking risks, they shut down the whole network. Hackers are supposedly fighting for consumer rights, while simultaneously taking away the rights of the consumer. No service is unbreakable, had this been a concentrated effort on any other online service, a similar situation would have occurred.