Discussion
PS3 Launch

In this episode I discuss what I saw a the PS3 launch and go a little bit into Resistance: FoM. Enjoy.

 

 Sado's Playhouse Episode 6 [11:18m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Discussion
Will Developers ditch the Wii?/Predictions

In this episode wii have a special guest Paris Arrowsmith and wii discuss whether or not developers will ditch the Wii and wii give predictions about the next gen console war. Enjoy.

Note: This is actually episode 5 not episode 4 even though I say it is in the podcast, sorry. WARNING: Mature Content 16+

 

 Sado's Playhouse Episode 5 [30:11m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Discussion
Wii/Rayman Raving Rabbids

In this episode I discuss some of the problems I have seen with the Wii launch thus far and briefly give an overview of the game cases and instruction manuals. Enjoy.

 

 Sado's Playhouse Episode 4 [18:52m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Discussion
Matchmaking

In this episode I discuss the problems with matchmaking in games and the advantages to keeping competitive gaming like it is on the PC. Discuss and enjoy.

 

 Sado's Playhouse Episode 3 [5:42m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Discussion
Sado’s Playhouse Episode 2 - PS3 and Wii Launch

In this episode of Sado’s Playhouse I discuss the PS3 and Wii launch and why the Wii may conquer all. Give us some feedback, let us know what you think of sado’s playhouse. Enjoy.

Note: Aggravated Gamers Podcast is still going to be every week as normal but sado’s playhouse will be an extra piece of content that will appear daily on the website.

 

 Sado's Playhouse Episode 2 [11:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Discussion
Sado’s Playhouse Episode 1 - Gears of War vs Resistance: Fall of Man

This is one of the new content that will be on our website on a regular basis staring myself, Justin Lowe, or as I call myself on the intarweb, sado. This will be an audio blog which will take up one issue going on that day or week and comment about it. It will also be a daily blog which will be less than 10 minutes long. The first episode discusses the comparisons that the game media makes between Gears of War and Resistance: Fall of Man and why they are not mute. Enjoy.

Update: The SP episodes will be caught by iTunes as well under the Aggravated Gamers Podcast listings, so you can now download the sado’s playhouse episodes through iTunes where you normally see the Aggravated Gamers Content.

 

 Sado's Playhouse Episode 1 [4:12m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The Gears launch event at Universal Studios Hollywood Citywalk has now gone and past but luckily Brian Eun managed to snap some pictures and has allowed us to post them. We would rather use one picture and direct you to the rest of them on his Flickr so here is the one we chose to show you all:

There will be an in-depth review on Gametap’s service sometime this week, as we get closer we will talk more about it.

No one seems to be sure when Gears of War is actually coming out. According to many people it could be coming out today or tomorrow or the 12th when it is supposed to come out but if it comes out today or tomorrow or the 12th you can be assured I will get it and if anyone else does hit me up on live - zirak and we’ll play some co-op.

That was one hell of a run-on sentence =\.

Update: (11/7/06) No gears at Target, 3 Gamestops, Ebgames, Best Buy, Circuit City, Walmart. Gamestop saying tomorrow, ebgames saying sometime before 3PM EST (most likely a lie).

We heard earlier today that Microsoft will start offering HDTV shows and movies over Xbox Live called Xbox Live Video. Now the idea itself is great and I can see the point in doing so but does Microsoft realize the amount of space that will be required to do so? Typically if you take the sizes the video files take up for normal hour long shows using the XVID codec standard the file size without commercials usually takes up 680-700mb of space (which is actually about 48 minutes worth of content) to produce 720p with 5.1 audio shows and 30 minute HDTV usually takes up 320-350mb of space (which is actually about 22 minutes worth of content) to produce 720p with 5.1 audio shows.XVID is not the only codec on the market however, many codecs like DIVX and WMV can do the same exact thing but XVID is by far the best for producing high quality HD at the lowest possible file sizes.

If Microsoft uses WMV for the videos they will be even potentially bigger file sizes due to WMV not being as good with compression as XVID or DIVX but it is most likely the route Microsoft will go. My question is then - at 700 or 350 mb each are people doing to bother downloading a ton of shows? As well as that you have the fact that the hard drive is effectively only 12 gigs because of the 8 gigs of space used up by backwards compatibility and we have not even started talking about movies yet. Using the same type of conversion method a 3 hour movie can potentially get to 3-4 gigs depending on what kind of codec Microsoft uses and who is going to want to delete that to make room after downloading it for hours?

This is what Microsoft says the content will be in terms of file sizes:

“Downloads are in VC-1 (aka WMVHD) at 720p, 6.8Mbps video with 5.1 surround.” (At least the quality is good)

“An average HD movie download should be between 4-5GB, and a two hour SD movie would be 1.6GB.”

“An average 1 hour (44 min) HDTV download should be about 2.2GB, and an average 1/2 hour (22 min) HDTV download should be about 1GB. A 1 hour SDTV download should be about 600MB, and a 1/2 hour SDTV download should be about 300MB.”

It is even worse than I expected.

“You cannot download programs through the Xbox Live web interface — they can only be transported to your 360’s removable drive.”

So you mean even though you BOUGHT the content you can’t choose to do what you will with it? SWEET. For some reason I get the whole “pre-crime” vibe from Minority Report coming on.

The biggest issue in this entire problem is the hard drive, even a 100 gig hard drive, by my standards, would be too small. We would have to see 200-300 gig hard drives come out for the console for this to really take off and by Microsoft’s ludicrous pricing of their 20 gig hard drive ($100 - $5 a gig, normal hard drive prices today are 2 gigs for every dollar) could we effectively see a 200 gig hard drive that would cost $1000? Maybe, but Microsoft has a LONGGGGG way to go before they can get serious about offering HD content for download. As it is aren’t you already paying your cable company for the content that is shown? Yes, you are and in fact one of the shows on the list (Jericho) is already available for free viewing online through ABC’s website, it’s LEGIT.

As far as I am concerned if you’re going to pay for that content a second time you deserve to get conned, go ahead and pay twice. I do not care what you do with your money, you can burn it for all I care.

Microsoft released the first TV commercial of Viva Pinata and I can only say…if I hear that song one more time I am going to shoot myself.

With the convoluted title for this article aside we wanted to analyze the popularity of game media websites to really see which ones were the most popular. All of the research was done on Alexa.com, images and stats are copyright from Alexa.

These are not all of the game media websites just ones we frequently visit:

1up.com:

Neogaf.com:

Gamasutra.com:

Gamersreports.com:

Gamesindustry.biz:

Gamespot.com:

Gamespy.com:

IGN.com:

Joystiq.com:

Kotaku.com:

Maxconsole.com:

Next-Gen.biz:

Shacknews.com:

There are two surprises on this list when it comes to popularity. The first is Gamespy, which personally I did not expect to be ranked higher than 1up but I was wrong. The second was NeoGAF, personally I expected it to be higher due to it being as active as GAF is. Interesting facts nevertheless and now you can all goto sleep as I am done with this article ;).

In one of my recent articles I broke the news that EA had completely borked everyone who bought the game through their EA Downloader. The reaction the article got was more than I thought. The article has recieved so far 590 diggs and 120 comments from various members of the Digg community. The article was also picked up by several gaming related blogs where it spawned off even more of a response. Now this is not to say the article was brilliant but it broke news that had yet to be reported by any major publication. More to that fact the article could have gone a little more in depth in detailing some of the comments from the people that were posting on the EA boards. Some of the people had even detailed “fixes” that entailed restoring Windows XP to a previous restore point before the upgrading of the EA Downloader, which most people like me would say “That is not a fix”.

However, earlier on Wednesday of this week an actual fix was found that detailed a six+ step by step tutorial on how to fix it but it did not come from EA, it came from the community. There still remains no comment from EA from what I have seen on their forums or website. This coming at the point where anti-EA hate is at its peak it opened the flood gates for bashing and flaming. Yet if there was any indication that bad news sells, that response was it.

If you haven’t heard already the Wii’s virtual console games have been announced. According to Nintendo the virtual console games will be the following:

NES: Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Ice Hockey, Pinball, Soccer, Tennis, Urban Champion, Wario’s Woods, Baseball, Solomon’s Key
SNES: F-Zero, SimCity
N64: Super Mario 64
Sega Genesis: Sonic the Hedgehog, Altered Beast, Golden Axe, Columns, Ecco the Dolphin, Gunstar Heroes, Space Harrier II, Toe Jam & Earl, Ristar, Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine
TurboGrafx16: Bonk’s Adventure, Super Star Soldier, Victory Run, Bomberman ’93, Dungeon Explorer

You might be tempted to say that is one pretty stellar list until I found out there is one game missing that needs to be there - Military Madness.

Many of you do not know of Military Madness and will most likely hate me for not being ecstatic about the list but I need Military Madness on the Wii. Nintendo, get Military Madness on the Wii virtual console, please!

Until Nintendo complies I have captured their Wii making factories! MU HAHAHA!

In today’s game media we have a bunch of different outlits that feel it is their job to give a broken game an 8/10 or above. Part of this is that PR wings of dev houses contact game reviewers to inform them that they have given their game a “harsh” review. In doing so they make it harder and harder for the game reviewer to give the actual score he/she wanted to give the game, not to mention the fact that if a company does not like the review you gave their game they can also complain to the company you work for and give less advertising dollars as punishment. What the hell?! In some cases, depending on how harsh the review, the reviewer can be fired but is this how the movie industry treats the critics?

Game reviews today are more complicated and convoluted than they were ever meant to be. Two games that are great examples for this point are BF2142 and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. First, take BF2142 an moderately fun game by many people’s standards but possibly the buggiest game I have ever purchased. Now considering what I just said what would you expect me to give it? You would expect me to give it an F and it deserves to have an F but many game review sites like Gamespot and others gave it over an 8/10…check GameRankings.com if you do not believe me. Second, take Dark Messiah, a game which on most computers, hardly runs. If you consider 3-15 FPS on even today’s best machines good then by all means give it an A but what it deserves, once again, is an F.

Even if a company fixes a game down the line, it is still DOWN THE LINE. If a movie house put out a movie that was unplayable would it get great reviews? No, but for some reason the gaming industry feels broken games deserve great reviews. This is one of the most fundamental flaws in ethics but is considered acceptable in an industry that is trying to get people to take it seriously…seeing it this way, no one should.

- Justin Lowe

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