The Midagedgamer Report for 3-1-2013
This Week: EA wants
to nickel and dime you, Stand up for your Video game rights! and perfect hair
forever!
Ok, you know how much I hate the money machine that is
gaming by subscription. It's not enough
to overpay for a game now the EA's and Activisions of the world want to keep
charging you for what you should already have.
Now comes a bald faced admission from
EA's CFO and Executive Vice president Blake J. Jorgensen that this is
indeed the new revenue model. His quote...
“The next and much bigger piece is microtransactions within
games. ... we’re building into all of our games the ability to pay for things
along the way, either to get to a higher level to buy a new character, to buy a
truck, a gun, whatever it might be, and consumers are enjoying and embracing
that way of the business,”
That's nice but if the EA and Activisions of the world want
to make it work then the next Battlefield or Call of Duty better start out Free
to Play. Free to Play's not a bad model when
its done correctly. In games like Star
Trek Online I've actually bought upgrades I didn't need just to support what I
felt was a great game. Free to Play and
Microtransactions are synonymous what isn't is charging me an inflated price up
front and expecting me to pay for the game twice.
This isn't gaming related which is exactly the point. Checking my twitter feed found a story about
the upcoming sequel to Will Ferrell's Anchorman , Anchorman 2 on IGN. Why am I getting movie news on a gaming
site? It's not even a movie based on a
game! Stop it!
It seems there's an active gamers lobby to keep the
politicians out of our chosen pastime. The Video Game Voters Network is out to stop
Washington from painting video games with a broad brush. It looks to be a growing grassroots lobby
backed up by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) Check them out at the
link below and give yourself a voice louder than any forum post.
HardOCP did a review of the new 140MM Corsair Hydro H90 and
H110 CPU coolers. The big difference? no
frills, no blinkin' lights, no colored coolant and 140mm radiator instead of
the H50/H70's 120MM size. The H90 has a
singlewide (like a mobile home) 140mm radiator while the H110 has a 280mm
radiator. These new coolers are single
core radiators roughly half the thickness of an H70. Check them out at HardOCP
What? It's a contraction...really..
AMD is bragging about hair.
Specifically Lara Croft's hair in the new Tomb Raider scheduled for
release on Tuesday March 5th. Apparently
TresFX is a physics implementation that makes items that are difficult to
realistically render, like hair, look more natural in video games.
Which makes perfect sense since Tomb Raider only allows a
third person view and all of us will naturally be looking at Lara's...hair.
Finally, Battlefield 4 is coming out next year not late this
year. EA Boss Frank Gibeau says it'll
stay in a modern setting. Hmm, we've
already went after the Russians, spent most of our BF time ripping up the
middle east so I guess it's China's turn?
It's also being developed
for next gen consoles like the PS4 and new Xbox. In other words, there's a very real
possibility that Battlefield is about to enter the trap of Call of Duty's
Modern Warfare series. That means It'll
look good but basically be a collection of new DLC following a copycat BF3 storyline. I hope I'm wrong but I wasn't about MW3! Talk about milking a franchise!
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