Friday, December 21, 2012

A new Star Trek Game, THQ Bankruptcy and oh yeah, it's the 21st and we're still here!


The Midagedgamer Report for 12-21-2012        

This Week...Steam's got a sale! A new Star Trek game coming, THQ hits the skids and oh yeah it's the 21st and we're still here.

So it appears the world didn't end and you will indeed have to pay the credit card bill for all those games you bought on Steam this week during the Holiday Sale.  Speaking of that, the holiday sale is going on right now and ends January 5th.  The requisite daily and instant deals are all there as well as the special holiday sale badges you can earn for discount coupons and free games. 


If you're a fan of the new Star Trek "reboot" movies then developer Digital Extremes (Bioshock 2, The Darkness 2)and Namco have a special treat for  you.  Described as an "unprecedented co-op experience"  "Star Trek"  will be available on April 23rd with pre-orders open now.  The game will be available for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.  At this point they're asking $59.99 for the pre-order at Best Buy, Amazon and GameStop for the Xbox and PS3 platforms.  PC versions don't appear to be available for pre-order yet.


The world may still be here but troubled publisher THQ isn't.  They've filed for bankruptcy protection and sold 60 million dollars worth of assets including all 4 of its game studios and intellectual property including games currently in development.  Clearlake Capital Group is the buyer and reports thus far say nothing is going to change except the ownership with all talent and contracts being retained by the new owners.  THQ's assets essentially remain the same but the debts are left behind with the old company filing bankruptcy.  The move is called a stalking horse bid which is a way to better position a company for sale after it jettisons its debts via bankruptcy. 


If you've been wondering what Steven Sinfofsky's been up to since being jettisoned from Microsoft  weeks after the Windows 8 launch ponder no more.  He's going to be teaching "product development" at Harvard business school this spring.  I wonder if part of his curriculum will include dissertations on collaboration and teamwork...hmm.  His title, by the way, will be "Executive in Residence" 
No ego there...



In case you found yourself bumped off your favorite Battlefield 3 server Early Wednesday morning the reason was a server update to fix "3 bugs".  Apparently there was an immortality bug for certain player classes, broken spawn points on the "Strike at Karkand" map and a crash that occurs when playing in Gun Master mode which is only available to owners of Close Quarters and Aftermath DLC as well as Premium players.  Downtime was supposed to be 15 minutes but ended up being twice that.   The immortality bug is bad enough, worse it isn't map specific which should have been picked up sooner.  Will you be readjusting stats or continue to screw players unfairly affected by it?  The biggest bug in BF3 is EA's profit motive


We're at the end of a slow news cycle being so close to Christmas so the news is a bit light this week.  That gives me an opportunity to remind you that many of your favorite games like Team Fortress 2, Killing Floor and Lord of Ultima have holiday themes to keep you in the spirit of the season while your boost your stats. 

Finally,

I'd like to direct you to an article I recently published on Technorati concerning a new push to blame video games for the tragedy at Sandy Hook.  Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller from West Virginia is pushing a bill to get congress to look at violence in video games again.  He uses Starcraft as one of the examples of a violent video game which you and I both know are about as violent as Farmville with explosions.  Gamers usually aren't very political but it may be a good time to make your voice heard.  Games don't make people kill, sick minds do and we need to stop the hysteria and deal with the real problem.  Besides, you'd think with the country teetering on the brink of the fiscal cliff there'd be more important things for congress to worry about!


That's it for the last Midagedgamer report for 2012.  Yup, I'm going to give you the greatest gift of all and not do a video next week.  Mostly because I probably won't have Internet access anymore but we won't get into that... Anyway, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Kwanza and whatever else you people celebrate when it's cold outside.  Oh yeah, sorry, belated Happy Chanukah too..

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