Avermedia Live Gamer Portable Unboxing May 16, 2013
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Its a major milestone for GameXcess.net! Maniac unboxes the Avermedia Game Capture Device. It’s portable, able to be charged through USB 2.0, and can capture video up to 1080p30 while connected to a PC, or 720p30 by itself, so long as you’re using at least a Class 10 SDHC card to capture with.
Take a look with me at just what’s in the box!
Game Boys: The Animated Series Coming to DVD May 16, 2013
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One of my favorite movies released exclusively through the internet was the comedy, Game Boys. The movie was written and directed by Brad Jones, better known to the internet as The Cinema Snob. The film was about a bunch of slackers in their mid-twenties who obsessed with playing the classic games from their childhood, no matter how bad. To cheer up their friend after he suffers a bad breakup, they plan to have a classic gaming party featuring a very controversial game many of us would prefer not to talk about, just to see if it can be beaten.
Recently, Brad has brought back Game Boys as an animated series, which uses many of the voice actors of the original series along with all new animation. Its a great series for those who wanted to see what all the characters are up to after the events of the movie. So far we’ve seen how they play poker, talk to their girlfriends, and camp. Trust me, its nothing like what you’d expect. All of the original actors reprise their roles, with the exception of Bianca Queen, who sadly couldn’t lend her voice due to issues with distance.
After the release of the third episode, Brad Jones has announced that he plans to release the series in the form of a DVD which he will sell on the site for around $10 US. There’s currently no ETA on the DVD’s release, but Brad plans to include special features, including Bianca Queen’s original audio for the third episode. Here’s to hoping he includes the original movie with it.
If you want, you can watch the latest episodes, as well as the original movie on thecinemasnob.com.
The Starship Damrey Out Now May 16, 2013
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Nintendo made a lot of announcements for the new games they would be personally developing for the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS in the last Nintendo Direct video, but that wasn’t all they showed, they also showed some of the more unique games being produced by Level-5. One of the games that stood out to me was the game The Starship Damrey, which looked like a science-fiction horror game from days gone by.
A year ago, I remember watching the Happy Video Game Nerd’s review of the game Enemy Zero, which was a Sega Saturn exclusive science-fiction horror game. Having never played Enemy Zero myself, there was just something about The Starship Damrey which reminded me of it, and made me interested to learn more about it.
Well, I didn’t have to wait very long. The Starship Damrey is out now exclusive to the Nintendo 3DS. Take a look at the game’s latest trailer!
The game is currently download only. You can buy it for $7.99 US through the Nintendo eShop. Keep in mind, it takes up around 859 Blocks of space.
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance Blade Wolf DLC Trailer May 15, 2013
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Konami has just released the newest trailer for the third DLC expansion for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. The new Blade Wolf DLC will offer the chance to play an entirely new set of VR Missions as Raiden’s enemy turned ally, Blade Wolf. As you can guess it’s an entirely new way to play the game. Take a look for yourself what is in store!
Blade Wolf’s DLC can be downloaded right now through Xbox Live Marketplace and Playstation Network. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is required to play. It’s out now for the PS3 and Xbox 360.
Pokémon X and Y Gameplay Video May 15, 2013
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Nintendo and The Pokémon Company have just released the first official gameplay footage for Pokémon X and Y, the sixth generation Pokémon game, and the first Pokémon generational game to come to the 3DS. In it, we take a good look at the Pokémon Trainer characters, a little bit of how players can interact with the game’s environment, and what the game’s battles will look like.
Pokémon X and Y are coming October, 2013 exclusive to the Nintendo 3DS.
Next Generation Xbox Discussion May 12, 2013
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The next Xbox will likely be announced on the 21st of May and Microsoft has one sure-fire way to upstage Sony’s PS4 announcement, by showing new games from their well known franchises and from their best 3rd party developers.
Here’s some games that Maniac has in mind.
You Will Be Missed (Part 4) May 11, 2013
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I’ve been following gaming news for over ten years and I’ve been involved in the industry for over eight years as a staff writer on various sites. I understand that not all companies last forever, but there comes a time when you are so caught up in the activities of an organization that when it shuts down, a part of you goes with it. It’s happened to me more times than I can remember, but here’s a list of companies from my experiences that are no longer with us. They’ve either been shut down, gone bankrupt, or were taken over so badly that they are no longer the same company I loved. It is a sad story to see such great potential end abruptly, but like life we have to move on, but we will never forget.
After the article I did earlier in the week about the one year anniversary of the demise of Qore, I thought about some other journalistic pursuits that have also been shut down recently, and then I started thinking about a lot of other companies that I can remember quite fondly that are no longer with us.
So, kick back and relax as we dust off the You Will Be Missed series.
Game Developer Magazine – I first got exposed to Gamasutra because of a postmortem they published for Star Trek: Elite Force, a game developed by Raven Software in the year 2000 which I happened to like quite a bit. I was in High School at the time, and was taking Business courses along with my usual workload. One day, the teacher asked us to do research online for any available business articles, and with gaming as my primary interest, Gamasutra was the first site I went to.
A big portion of the same network which hosts events like GDC and websites like Gamasutra.com, was Game Developer Magazine. This was a monthly magazine which was made available for around fifty dollars a year. However, this wasn’t some magazine like PC Gamer or Game Informer, which catered to gaming players, this was a magazine for those game’s developers and featured articles about the best ways to make games. To me, the best part of GDM was there would be an Postmortem every single month!
In 2005 I got a subscription to Game Developer Magazine, and I immediately became hooked. I discovered that some great games received postmortems in the magazine and that many of the postmortems the magazine published have to this day not been reprinted on gamasutra.com. I only had the subscription until around 2007, so sadly, I know there were a lot of great postmortems that I missed out on in the years since. Hopefully Gamasutra will choose to bring these classic and insightful articles into a free archive anyone can view.
Nintendo Show 3D – Hosted by Jessie Cantrell, Nintendo Show 3D was a bi-weekly short series released for free through the Nintendo 3DS’s eShop. Each episode would be entirely in 3D and on average focus on previews for two upcoming 3DS games and announce any special promotions in the Nintendo eShop. The show would wrap up with a short segment of a random task in 3D. Jessie had a great personality which made her a great fit to host the show. This was the best way to learn about promotions, free content, conventions, and what games were coming out, and it was fun.
Instead of being downloadable like Qore was, Nintendo Show 3D streamed their episodes, similar to Netflix or Amazon, which meant it wouldn’t take up space on an external SD card, but you would need internet access on your 3DS to watch it. The big selling point about this series was that it was shot in 3D, which gave viewers an incentive to watch it on the native 3DS screen. Sure, you could probably watch these videos on Nintendo’s YouTube Channel, but unless you were watching it on a 3DS, you wouldn’t be able to get the full effect.
Sadly, the show has wrapped, and Nintendo is sticking to streaming Nintendo Direct videos on a regular basis through the service. While Nintendo Direct is a decent series which gives some in-depth previews and always seems to break news, the series seems more appropriate for the Wii U than the 3DS. It is not in 3D, and you’d be better off watching them on YouTube or your Wii U.
Well that takes care of some of these journalistic pursuits which are sadly no longer with us, but that’s not the end of the companies that are no longer with us.
Palm Inc. – This was the company that defined the Personal Digital Assistant, as they were the ones who could deliver a portable device that could do just enough that the user needed, had great battery life, a simplistic and easy to understand interface, and one of the best handwriting recognition systems ever developed.
The hectic and much publicized development of what would eventually become the webOS platform is considered by many to be what brought about the downfall of Palm, and eventually lead to it being purchased by Hewlett-Packard. Sadly, I believe that Palm’s party was over much sooner than that. As soon as Palm spun off it’s software and hardware divisions into separate entities in order to improve the chance of licensing their operating system to other handheld devices, the company could no longer maintain its original design philosophies which had served them quite well up to that point. When the corporate licenses all dried up as cell phones became the dominate personal devices, it should have been a big warning bell to Palm that they needed to reintegrate themselves in order to get the best performance out of the hardware and software they were selling separately, but they chose to go a different route.
I still have my Palm VIIx and keyboard hanging up, still working just as well as the day I bought them. However, I’m no longer able to use most of its best features, like HotSync or palm.net service as technology has long since passed the COM port, and the wireless infrastructure the palm.net service made use of has been shut down for over eight years. I keep it as a reminder of a once great company at its best.
Software Etc. – I know one guy online wrote a really nice article on the fall of Babbages, but I never had a Babbages in my area. I can’t think of any other store I appreciated having in my area more in the year 2000 as I appreciated having Software Etc. Software Etc. was like a beacon in an otherwise ignored monument to consumerism. I don’t normally get sentimental about retail stores because let’s face it they’re a business just like any other, but Software Etc. was anything but typical. They sold PC games and they were pretty much the only store in my area that had a wide selection of quality games they sold at a decent price. I could remember going into a Software Etc and buying classic PC games like Giants: Citizen Kabuto, X-Wing Alliance, and Messiah for around $20 a piece, with fully intact packages. Now Software Etc. is owned by Gamestop, and at least from what I’ve seen in the United States, pretty much all of the venues that had Software Etc. signs have switched to the Gamestop philosophy, and if I want PC games, my options aren’t as wide as they once were.
Ways Nintendo Can Improve Miiverse May 9, 2013
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One of the major selling points of the Wii U is that it offers players the chance to join Nintendo Network, which grants access to the Wii U’s social platform, Miiverse. For those of you who don’t know what Miiverse is, it’s a social platform through the Wii U which allows players to post their thoughts on a wide variety of Nintendo’s games or Nintendo exclusive communities. Just like in other social platforms, users can respond to comments or “like” comments by other users. Posts in text format are limited to one-hundred characters, so its very similar to Twitter in a lot of ways, but it offers options to users that Twitter does not. In particular, you can also use the Wii U’s gamepad to post simple handwritten drawings, and a lot of phenomenal artwork has been created since the service launched. You can even directly post screenshots from your games to attach to your comments.
Right now, Nintendo is doing a really good job with Miiverse, but there is a lot they can do to improve the service. Nintendo has already announced their intention to expand Miiverse beyond access through the Wii U, and they have made good on that promise. Miiverse can now be accessed through the web for existing users, but users without a Wii U can’t sign up just yet. Nintendo has also promised that a dedicated Smartphone app is in development, but there aren’t a lot of details about this.
First off, Miiverse needs Nintendo 3DS support. Miis used in the Nintendo 3DS will transfer back and forth between the Wii U and 3DS but for right now, 3DS owners, who a huge portion of Nintendo’s customers, can’t even access the Miiverse’s website with their internet browser. The 3DS has some pretty cool social functions of its own, with things like Streetpass, which allows 3DS owners who come in proximity with each other to share Miis for the purpose of using them in various minigames to unlock things like 3D pictures or hats for their Miis. Right now, all of that functionality is separate from the Wii U, and its a shame. It would be cool to have the ability to access Miiverse on the 3DS and interact with it using the 3DS touch screen or unlockable Mii hats. Right now, 3DS owners can’t even sign up for Nintendo Network, despite the Nintendo Network logo being featured on many recent 3DS games.
Another great idea would be for Miiverse to get opened to more users, including people who don’t have the Wii U. While PC users wouldn’t be able to use a large amount of the functionality Miiverse offers Wii U owners, like the ability to post screenshots or handwrite on the Wii U controller, they would be able to contribute in text format, check if there were any “likes” or replies to their already posted comments, update their friends list, and browse, “like”, and respond to new posts.
Adding an entire social platform to a game console was practically unheard of, and who would have imagined that it would be Nintendo to do it first? The Miiverse is a great selling point to encourage people to buy a Wii U and to encourage Wii U owners to keep playing it. I have just posted up a few minor ideas that I had that I thought Nintendo could implement to improve the service, but I want to hear what you think. If there are any ideas you had that Nintendo should implement to improve Miiverse, please post a comment!
About Direct Video Game Capturing May 8, 2013
Posted by Maniac in Site News.add a comment
Some of you regular viewers may be aware that I typically do not include directly captured game footage with my site’s videos. In the videos where I have shown game footage it would usually be restricted to during a convention, beta test, or when I’m doing a short commentary. In these cases, I have usually stuck to doing an off-screen capture using the same camera that I have shot all my videos on. The camera is quite good at capturing video footage clearly, but it has nowhere near the same quality that a direct video capture can provide.
There are several reasons why I have been unable to produce videos using a direct capture system, the most obvious one being the cost. The cost of some of these devices can range around what I paid for my site’s HD video camera, and with the amount of games (and game consoles) that have been coming out in the past few years, and with my intention to focus the site’s content more on written articles, voice recorded podcasts, and videos I would be appearing in myself, buying a new game capture device was not on the top of my list for site expenses.
The other reason was that up to this point, I have been quite unhappy with the wide majority of capture devices available at retail. First off, when I first started shopping around for them, the vast majority of them couldn’t capture in HD, even if they said they were HD on the box! Since I shoot my site videos in 1080p HD, I have been waiting for a decent capture device to release that would meet that specification, on top of all the other specifications I had for it. Some of these personal specifications included 1080p HD capture support, ease of connectivity, external storage support, console and PC compatibility and HDMI support. We live in the HD game world, and a simple SD capture device wasn’t going to be good enough for me. Lets face it, if I was going to pay money for something, I wanted it to be able to do everything I needed, and if I couldn’t get it I was willing to wait.
Well, some new capture devices have hit the market which now meet my specifications perfectly, and I have been considering finally putting one on order in order to capture game footage for upcoming site videos.
My question is this, what new kinds of video series would you like to see on the site that could make the best use of this?
You Will Be Missed, Qore May 7, 2013
Posted by Maniac in Editorials, Histories, You Will Be Missed.1 comment so far
I’ve been following gaming news for over ten years and I’ve been involved in the industry for over eight years as a staff writer on various sites. I understand that not all companies last forever, but there comes a time when you are so caught up in the activities of an organization that when it shuts down, a part of you goes with it. It’s happened to me more times than I can remember, but here’s a list of companies from my experiences that are no longer with us. They’ve either been shut down, gone bankrupt, or were taken over so badly that they are no longer the same company I loved. It is a sad story to see such great potential end abruptly, but like life we have to move on, but we will never forget.
The year was 2008. With Sony’s Playstation 3 out for two years and its Playstation Network Store looking like a viable distribution service for interesting commercial opportunities, Sony decided to take a page from the Substance.TV book of development and create their own DVD-style monthly magazine for PS3 owners. This was no new idea, even in the days when the PC CD-ROM was picking up, there were always companies trying to use this method to create an interactive magazine for consumers to purchase. The problem was, most of these projects, whether they were on CD-ROM or later DVD, ultimately failed. If you don’t believe me, I’m probably the only person in the world who remembers what Sweet Digizine was. But Sony had a unique idea, they were going to focus strictly on gamers and sell using a service they already had access to on a device they already owned. This would save a ton in distribution and manufacturing costs alone, as unlike previous DVD or CD-ROM magazines, Sony’s would be released exclusively through the Playstation Network without any physical media. The downside was this would only be playable on the Playstation 3.
Qore’s first year of sales came from a standalone yearly subscription. The price was actually quite reasonable, it was around $25-$30 US for twelve issues. In comparison, most yearly magazine subscriptions would have a similar price. I actually remember purchasing that first year’s subscription and thinking it had a great first year. Each month would have its own previews and reviews of upcoming games that would appear on the PS3, as well as content on upcoming movies on Blu-Ray Disc. They offered unique HD featurettes you couldn’t watch anywhere else, and every once in a while, I would get e-mailed a download code for a free PSN game I could keep forever, or early demo or beta access.
The only problem was that Sony was not offering physical copies of Qore on disc, and at the time, PS3′s didn’t really offer big enough hard drives that could hold a lot of issues of Qore. On the low end, a PS3 would have around 40GB of avalible space, and much of it would be taken up by essential programs on top of required game installation data, DLC, and PS Home. A normal issue of Qore took up about 1.5 GB of space on average. While Sony allowed users to redownload issues of Qore whenever they wanted to authorized PS3s, once the month was over, unless there was some feature a user really liked in it, there was no reason to keep it installed. In fact, I remember not being able to afford to renew my subscription for a second year at a discounted price, and just giving up on the service instead of renewing when the renewal price was raised. This would probably be considered the precursor to my Playstation Plus feelings.
After the second year, Qore moved from being a standalone subscription service to becoming part of the new Playstation Plus initiative, which offered free issues of Qore, discounts for DLC, and free access to games all for a whopping $50 US a year. I wasn’t interested in becoming a part of a service which would cut off access to my games as soon as I stopped paying for it, and I thought the price for such a service was unreasonably high, so I never became a Playstation Plus member, and I thought for sure that would be the end of my access to Qore. Issues continued to be released monthly, and they became stamped with yellow free price tags, making it clear to gamers that only Playstation Plus subscribers would have the ability to download them.
However, by the end of it’s run, something unusual happened. After a week or so of being released for Playstation Plus subscribers, Sony was actually giving away new Qore issues as a free download to anyone, not just Playstation Plus subscribers. I thought this must’ve been some mistake in the Playstation Network, or just some kind of temporary sale, so I downloaded all the new issues as they became available for free. There were some great features on new games I was interested in, including Sorcery, and Resistance 3, and even a great travelogue on Canada. However, my worst fears were confirmed in April 2012, as they announced during the introduction video that this would be the final issue. I was crushed.
It has been over a year since the final episode of Qore was posted on the Playstation Network. I don’t really want to go into why I believed the service ultimately was discontinued. There could have been a myriad of issues which contributed to this factor and being that I am not an insider on this I would not want to speculate. I just want to say what a shame it was that such a unique service had to be discontinued, and will join other similar failures like Sweet Digizine, and Substance.TV. In their heyday they offered great exclusive video content with decent production value, occasional free game downloads, and always had previews to games I was interested in learning more about. Perhaps with the internet being the de-facto distribution network for so much free information, this kind of product just does not work in today’s economy, even if it’s focused on gamers.
You will be missed.
