playstation

Slashdot is reporting an "explosion" of emulators running under Yellow Dog Linux on the Sony Playstation 3.

What does that have to do with Bungie?

Because with Linux running on the PS3, you can install Aleph One on it and play Marathon.

This article boils down to this paraphrase:

Everyone agrees sequels are bad. I mean, not all sequels are bad, but sequels in general are bad. And just like every game downloaded by a pirate is a lost sale, every dollar budgeted for a sequel is a dollar less for one of the kind of fun and original games they made when I was a kid and they just don't make anymore because the industry is full of beancounting sellouts who like sequels because they're safe. And that's why I don't want another Bioshock game.

This is almost complete and utter poppycock. It's so ridden with nostalgia masquerading as judgment, logical fallacies taken as common knowledge, and flawed premises that it's hard to know where to begin. But the beginning is as good a place as any.

"this is not a hate piece towards the Bioshock franchise. It is a deep look at one of the biggest problems in the video game industry right now, sequels and how they kill originality/creativity."

So we've got sequels kill originality/creativity. Let's separate those out.

 Click here for the complete text.

Thank goodness Sony is a Japanese company, because they can at least claim that English isn't their native language when someone points out the nonsense in claims ilke the latest regarding PlayStation 3 sales.

Things start out fairly innocuously:

"In terms of units, it is true that PS3, as compared to last year, is slightly worse, but on a full-year basis we believe we are on track to sell the 10 million units that I said at the beginning of the year."

Okay, that's not so bad. Specious perhaps, but possible. After all, the fact that 2008 was not as good a year for them as 2007 doesn't necessarily mean that 2009 won't be as good as they are planning. It would strongly indicate that, given that presumably they predicted that 2008 would be as good or better than 2007 (which they did); and if that prediction turned out to be wrong, might not this one, too?

Then they start digging:

"...Relatively speaking, [compared to] the growth of other platforms, we are behind, but it's not the case that we are not meeting the target."

If they are behind the other platforms but still meeting their target, this means they were planning to be behind at this stage? I think that's not true. I seem to recall that initial projections from Sony for the PS3 included catching up to MS and the Xbox 360's one year head start fairly quickly, and in no way included getting trounced, month after month, quarter after quarter, by Nintendo, a competitor that many commenters gave up for just about dead last generation, myself included.

 Click here for the complete text.

BioWare CEO Ray Muzyka's advanced the possibility that someday gamers would play games on one ubiquitous console. There are "valid reasons," he says, why the market would trend that direction, with the exception of "Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo maybe having some issues with that [as] they might want to continue their platforms."

You think?

This has come up before, and I'm pretty sure that it was Muzyka behind those earlier remarks also. I find it hard to consider the idea anything but the most fanciful of wishful thinking. Bioware makes great games with huge amounts of content, and their efforts would be greatly simplified on a number of levels if they could target a single ubiquitous platform.

The problem is that the benefits for such a scheme are asymmetric, and skewed sharply in the direction of the content producer, offering little or no benefit to platform owners or gamers. If BioWare makes its games for several different platforms-- say, Xbox 360, Windows, and the Sony PlayStation 3, it means that gamers have a reasonable amount of choice for gaming platform and can still assure themselves of access to BioWare games. Reducing the number of platforms BioWare has to target might make developing their games less expensive, but it seems extremely unlikely that this savings would be passed on to gamers in terms of lower title prices. After all, with only a single ubiquitous console platform, there is no longer any choice-- if you want to play a BioWare game you'd have to use that platform. If you don't want to, tough luck. If anything, standardizing on a single platform would likely increase prices (although the higher prices rose, the greater an opportunity there would be for someone to enter the market and therefore blow your "single platform" market right out of the water by undercutting you.

 Click here for the complete text.

Wideload Games, developers of Hail to the Chimp and Stubbs the Zombie, is developing a new game: Texas Cheat'Em for Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network, due out this spring. Later it will come to PC. No details yet on the Wideload site, or an indication of whether this is either "Hot Sauce" or the "Rainbow Space Car", still listed as "coming soon" on the site.

UPDATE: According to GameSpot, this is actually a production of the Wideload Shorts division, which previously produced Cyclomite.

Several websites have picked up a review of Hail to the Chimp by Billy O'Keefe of the McClatchy-Tribune news service, including the Star-Telegram of Dallas, the Miami Herald of Florida, and Macon.com in Georgia.

Don't bother hitting all the links as all the reviews are the same text:

Fortunately, "Chimp's" glitches are sporadic, and they don't severely impede play if you're taking on friends. (Four-player support is available online and locally.) Moreover, the absolutely frantic nature of the mini-games lives up to "Chimp's" billing as a party game. Given the inviting price ($40) and the fact that traditional party games on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 have ranged from terrible to non-existent, "Chimp's" positive fun-to-flaw differential makes it easy to recommend to anyone hungry for a game of its distinction.

O'Keefe does have complaints about Chimp's pathfinding and thinks a lot of the mini-games are too similar, but thinks that won't get in the way of those who are looking for a funny party-style game for the 360.

The team at TeamXbox rated Wideload's sophomore effort, Hail to the Chimp, a 7.9 out of 10, scoring highest for audio and innovation. One of the game's greatest strengths might ironically become one of its weaknesses:

While the game presents a unique take on the party game formula, Hail to the Chimp is actually at its funniest when you're not even playing. The main menu of the game is presented as a news broadcast from the GRR News Network. From the deadpan delivery of news anchor Woodchuck Chumley to the hilarious commercials and PSAs, you'll find yourself watching the game more than actually playing it.

TeamXbox suggests that when you are playing Chimp, you play with friends, since that is where the game really shines.

It's tough for a game to be funny. So it's no slight praise when GamesRadar says that Hail to the Chimp is funny-- if you're in your 20s:

Through it all, the comedy keeps flowing, often in the form of commercials or news reports. Just how funny these bits are is debatable here in the office, but we have the same arguments about Family Guy and Saturday Night Live. However, we can all agree that Hail to the Chimp is definitely a step above most games that bill themselves as "hilarious." And also that you have to be in your 20s to appreciate it.

Maybe feeling like in you're in your 20s will be sufficient. GamesRadar scores Hail to the Chimp 7/10, or "good".

The news isn't all bad for Crackers the chimp, though. 1Up's reviewer gave the game a B+, and the average of users and editors on the site is an A.

The site praised the game for the humorous news segments as well as the unabashedly strange gameplay elements.

And when this plays into the objectives, the game becomes great fun. One of my favorite modes places campaign posters in a literal mud-slinging competition -- the more clams you collect, the more mud you can throw at opponents' posters, and the last person to keep their poster clean wins. Every mode is built around competition, so the game is more replayable than something like Mario Party despite having fewer modes.

Hail to the Chimp is a good concept executed well, and available at a discount price-- remember this is $40, not the usual $60 next-gen minimum.

For a game company that made its name with a game about a zombie who used his body parts as weapons, it's ironic to say that only now, with the release of Hail to the Chimp, are things starting to get ugly. Problem is, the ugly thing is the reviews.

Citing game modes that are too similar to each other and AI that was often unclear on the concept of how to play the game, IGN gave HttC a 3.5 out of 10 and said it had "zero redeeming qualities". Ugly, indeed.

Another disappointing review for Hail to the Chimp: Variety says this political humor game isn't funny, and isn't really political. Ouch!

Kotaku's list of game releases for this week has Wideload's Hail to the Chimp slated to hit store shelves on Tuesday, July 1-- and features the cover art for the game as the lead for what they call a "thin week".

Monsters and Critics is reporting that Wideload Games' sophomore effort (at least, its second full-length offering) is now shipping: Hail to the Chimp is available for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

The PlayStation Network may have its work cut for it catching up to the onlin gaming experience offered by Xbox Live, but Crackers the chimp is lending a hand with the demo of Hail to the Chimp, the party game from Wideload, now available on the service.

ShackNews is reporting that Wideload Games' Hail to the Chimp, originally announced for a May release, is slightly delayed until June 24 so that some final finishing touches can be put on the game. Chimp is to be released on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and is priced at an affordable $40.