Tower of the North

E3 Press Confrences

Instead of just throwing these out there I will link you all to the full video of the press confrences by the big 3.

Microsoft

Nintendo

Sony

I have to warn you though, each of them is 2 hours long and a lot of it they just banter around. That’s why you have people like me who will sit here and just cover the important stuff!

Sony Highlights

Day 2 marked both Nintendo and Sony speaking; I will do Sony first. Some quick points: Face it. The PS3 is not selling…the console is too expensive for both consumers and developers and it has yet to show off a killer app that would give someone a reason to buy the console on a per-game basis. Microsoft is starting to take away Sony’s only steam with allowing Final Fantasy 13 to be on the Xbox360 AND the Metal Gear Solid spinoff, even though it is just a spinoff it shows a bigger picture. It shows Microsoft’s desire for complete control over the hardcore gaming market and while I am not a huge fan of Sony it is going to take the work of Sony and Nintendo both to keep the balance in check. Anyways onto the highlights:

• MAG — 256 Player multiplayer does look cool and they had a working demo of it, not some pre-rendered failure.
• True Metal Gear Solid sequel — This is the difference between MGS for Microsoft and Sony right now…Microsoft has rights to a MGS spinoff while Sony still technically has the real deal.
• New models of the PSP — I don’t know if you would really call this a highlight. That means hacking them is probably harder than it was before and it is just another price scheme. Although the PSP GO has 16GB of internal memory that’s cool.
• New Final Fantasies — Provided they are not the bust that FFXII was this can be considered a highlight.
• PS2 as a decade-cycle console — what this basically means is that Sony is not ready to stop developing games for the console. Fine by me the more use it gets the better, I don’t want to buy a PS3 just to play Beatmania IIDX.

I will post trailers if there is an interest but otherwise I think you get the idea. Stay tuned for Nintendo’s highlights.

Dante’s Inferno Trailer

Trailer for the upcoming “Dante’s Inferno” for the Xbox360. There is a second trailer just released awhile ago I am going to try and locate it.

Personally this is one of my favorite new announcements (besides Left 4 Dead 2) because I loved reading the Divine Comedy and I loved watching my school’s marching band perform the show! Can’t wait to see how the game will turn out. I will keep you all posted.

Halo 3: ODST

YES MORE HALO!

E3 Coverage

Yup, E3 is open again! As I type this post I am sitting watching the television based coverage and I will be updating all of you frequently with what is going on. There are some new crazy things coming out that may just change the face of gaming, let’s keep our eyes open.

U.S. Government releases “2009 Piracy Watchlist”

The United States government stated that piracy has reached “alarming or pandemic levels” in the following countries: China, Canada, Mexico, Spain and Russia. Says much more must be done about the situation.

Full Story Here

I, personally, find this to be ridiculous…it’s not enough that America, and the world, has enough problems to deal with; we have to spend our government resources on telling other people how to run their countries. Not only that, but we are specifically telling them that they should make file sharing illegal because a few lobbyists managed to pad the pockets of lawmakers? It definitely shows that the American government, regardless of conservative or liberal viewpoint, doesn’t have our interests at heart and is only working for the “investors” so to speak.

As taken from the article:

It also says that criminals, using the same distribution networks used for drug trafficking and arms smuggling is being used for a “virtual evisceration of the legitimate market for American entertainment.”

“In tough economic times it’s more important than ever to safeguard intellectual property,” said Senator Whitehouse (D-RI).  “American entertainment and software companies create millions of jobs, generate millions of dollars in tax revenue, and drive much of our country’s research and development.  Piracy threatens those jobs, those revenues and the value of that research, and we need bipartisan solutions to stop it.”

I have a bipartisan solution: Stop making everything so damn expensive and riddled with painfully ineffective DRM software and you might get some internet users who will support your products!! The industries cannot function on a broken and outdated business model forever; the time will come when they need to evolve or die. This can be said with regard to the country as a whole. We have to realize that there is more competition out there than just us and no dollar amount being pumped into lobbyists is going to change that. It is going to take a generation of up-and-coming, intelligent and creative people to solve the worlds problems, even ones as trivial as IP piracy.

Again, I encourage lawmakers to look out in their backyards (or maybe in someone else’s, really) and see that we have much bigger problems going on in the world.

The end of an era

Yesterday was my last day of school. On one side, I am the happiest person alive! No more homework, drama, things to do, rigid schedules to keep…at least for awhile. On the other side, I am leaving my friends in lower grades, some of my favorite activities and teachers. This is my first day off outside of high school and I don’t think that it has really hit me yet that I am done. Graduation is this sunday and I think then will be the real eye-opener that things are changing in my life.

All of my friends that I grew up with and have been by my side for all of these years will progressively make their way into their own respective destanies and going to make something of themselves. Slowly by surely, most of us will become disconnected from each other, luckily in this time of improved communication with the internet, it is much easier to keep in touch with people but still they change, and find new friends. This is destined to happen, it is bad and it is good but most of all it is the cycle of events. We can’t all stay together and we will come to this reality sooner or later, some of us want to escape more than others and I can’t blame anyone for that!

Before I started writing this post I didn’t consider that this blog could have another dimension. A dimension that keeps at least a few of my friends close by, by letting them know how I am doing in the world. I look forward to hearing from you all and I will be sure to link the more personal posts here to social networking sites like facebook so you can read up on me! Please leave comments if you feel the desire to do so.

Blog Reset

Yup. It’s True…I’m redoing the site from scratch; new server and everything. Once school ends prepare to see a lot of work done and a lot of posts made.