Grave Gamer News & Views — console

The Reddening

Behold the arduous process of turning my 360 into a console more befitting of The Red Herb.  Missed out on the limited Resident Evil 5 edition of the system back in ‘09 thanks to a sudden affliction of joblessness (fuck you very much, Gamestop).  Recently, though, I got my hands on this fine shell and decided to put my shoulder to the wheel and tear apart my horrifically dusty console (and, to my surprise, found a whole cat lodged inside).

The undertaking lasted 'bout ten minutes – would’ve taken closer to five if I wasn’t snapping useless pictures.  I pondered making a How To but, really, what the hell for?  There’s a million informative videos on YouTube detailing significantly crazier shit than cracking an Xbox and slapping a shell on it.  The best Pro Tip I can impart is picking up this Opening Tool.  It includes a little allen key perfect for those T8/T10 sized security screws (when I did console repairs, you’d find those screws stripped to hell because the kids who’d rip open their Xbox’s didn’t have the right screwdriver).

I’m still on the fence about the disc tray being white, I’d prefer either chrome or simply painting the thing black to nicely offset the red.  Knowing me and my bottomless pit of laziness, I’ll likely leave the thing untouched and allow another pound of dust to gather on it.  But, hey, at least I got that red part down pat.

Sony’s live conference has come to a close and if you happened to miss it, or felt too guilty having your Xbox stare into your soul as you attempted to watch the stream, kindly allow me to spill the beans.  Focusing on immediacy of use in playing and downloading games while also trying to destroy technical limitations between developer and machine, Sony officially announced their next-gen beast tonight: the PlayStation 4.  And it’s coming this Holiday. 

Over the next few months leading up until E3, where we’ll see way more of the system and the games racing to its launch window, you’re going to hear a shitload about the PS4.  You’ll hear so much about it, even the system’s logo is likely to give you a migraine.  Or send you into fits of animalistic rage which only warm blood can calm.  Happens every goddamn time they announce new hardware (just relax; gamers are given, like, three grace kills before the law takes notice).

So I’ll keep this quick and sweet, folks.  Hit the jump for a full lowdown.

Is Console Gaming On Its Way Out?

“I’ll go on the record and say that the next generation of hardware will be the last consoles. And they should be.

"I’m going to go out on a limb, because why the fuck not? I don’t care if I’m wrong, I’m not a business guy. I think next-gen consoles are going to do 40 percent of [the sales volume] of the current gen hardware. The asteroid has hit the Earth, the dust cloud is covering the sun and the dinosaurs are on the way out - but not the games! We’ll always have great games and bleeding edge graphics… it’s just going to be a new delivery mechanism.”

David Jaffe in an interview with Games Industry.

It’d be an interesting evolution – a change one shouldn’t expect without kicking and screaming. Whichever usurping medium of gaming is introduced, it’ll have to conquer an untold barrier of accessibility before being openly adopted. That and its games have to have the potential of complicity. Smartphone gaming, a financial influx turning industry heads, won’t be enough to kill the console until the scope and nature of its games can rival experiences found on those machines.

Whatever’s next will probably harness the strengths of both, but that won’t be enough on its own. See, gamers have a tendency to simply go where the games are, and so long as this next evolution can meet that demand, the battle is half over. But would you be willing to see consoles made obsolete?

How’s Diablo III for Consoles Coming Along?  Blizzard: “It’ll Happen When it Happens”

Diablo III has been set loose upon our reality, and as hundreds of thousands of PC gamers relish in their click n’ kill nirvana today, console people may feel left out in the cold.  Well, never fear, as the game’s director, Jay Wilson, has confirmed today that, yeah, it’s gonna be cold for a while.

The console space having been consistently untapped by Blizzard, the company isn’t confident in firmly announcing home platform ports of the long awaited PC sequel.  Namely, Wilson attributes this to the fact that “we’re not sure yet whether we think it will work.”

The only progress made in development so far has been the accumulation of new employees experienced in the console arena. At this early, aloof point, Blizzard’s best hope comes from piling enough manpower atop the project until a successful port is squeezed out.  “The better people we hire, the better chance we have to actually make it,” according to Wilson.

Personally, I only possess a netbook that has trouble running the calculator app; a console iteration of Diablo III would be the one opportunity I’d get at owning the game, sure, but if there’s too much lost in the translation, I’ll be none too sore if the port never sees the console light of day (at least this generation, that is).

While the design might be subject to change, this is the gist of the console Nintendo hopes to ship into your living room late this year.  To this day, the Wii’s library has not (arguably) had enough contending titles to make me buckle and shell out for the system.

If Nintendo can truly back up all their third-party supported talk, then the Wii U may leave behind a very different legacy than its predecessor.  And when I say different legacy, I mean to actually say, “No more casual-targeted abominations like Wii Music.”