Ben-DutkaWait, so…Christmas is only like 9 weeks away? Is that really possible? Well, there are plenty of games out there, so I guess it's true. They always come out for the holidays!
PS3 on par with Xbox 360 sales in first year
Everyone has been whining and moaning about how the PS3 isn't selling, but I don't recall hearing that about the Xbox 360 10 months into its lifespan. I heard it was the least reliable machine in gaming history – which is unfortunately very true – but I didn't hear anyone complaining about 360 sales. And yet, that's all we hear concerning the PS3's "slow start." Why? The sales are just about the same ! Furthermore, the 360 had zero competition when it released; Sony is managing to sell a similar number of hardware units while competing against both Microsoft and Nintendo. The recent price drop and introduction of the 40GB PS3 will also help a great deal as well, and it shouldn't come as any surprise to anyone if the PS3 ends up selling more in its first year than the 360. The whole deal is, and always has been, the insane expectations.
The PS3 is like the New York Yankees. If they don't win the World Series, it's a failure. If they perform just as well as the Boston Red Sox but don't win the World Series, the season is a "failure." Because the PS3 isn't dominating the way the PS2 was (something that will never again be accomplished by any console manufacturer) and is only "on par" with 360 sales, it's somehow a colossal failure. Yeah. Whatever. I'm just sick of hearing it, so I liked this news story.
Warhawk is getting fixed! Yay!
Well, I could say something like, "it took long enough," but I don't know anything about this stuff, and I imagine the fixes weren't easy and took some time. After all, there were some pretty significant issues in this game, and it seems the recent server-side updates and the upcoming patch v1.1 is going to clean everything up. Well, maybe not everything, but hopefully pretty close. The thing that most annoyed me was the lack of stat-tracking. I put together some fantastic rounds in the past few weeks, and none of them were ever counted. 🙁 Only recently did my stats finally start to count again – it's not a coincidence this happened right after the server-side update – so that made me happy. I'm an Air Marshal now, although I'm not really sure if that means anything. Heh.
As for that dropship , I guess it's a good idea, but not one I care about too much. I try to spend most of my time in the air, and I don't really wanna do it transporting vehicles. It should add an interesting angle to the game, though.
Gran Turismo is "pure quality gold"
Damn straight. Being a huge GT fan myself, I've always considered the series to be the benchmark of video game racing realism. Of course, I like both Forza titles, too, but they're simply not as physically realistic. They never have been. Anybody who thinks that is sorely mistaken, and needs to learn a thing or two about the sport of car racing and the science of car physics. Tuning is a major aspect of the game, obviously, but unless those mechanical enhancements are accurately reflected on the racetrack, what's the point? Yamauchi admits Microsoft's racer has him beat when it comes to options and features, but when it comes to GT, it's " pure quality gold ." His analogy seems a little off to me (we forgive him; English isn't his native language), but we get the point. And for all those who care, we agree with it.
There's no doubt that Gran Turismo 5 will be an amazing game; heck, the damn demo – Prologue – is getting as much hype as a full game would get! You'll see our hands-on preview on the demo for that (a demo for a demo; weird, I know), but you shouldn't be surprised if we say it's good. Really, you shouldn't. And you shouldn't be surprised when GT5 comes out and it's awesome. Because it will be.