trends

Home Theater PC Adventures

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I haven’t used my XBox in a week.

This is not some great statement on my ability to focus on work – I’ve been gaming, watching Netflix, and more.  I’ve just been doing it on an accidental Home Theater PC.

I say accidental, because it’s a laptop I got to let me work out of my home office more effectively.  But as I have thought of building a Home Theater PC (HTPC), I started experimenting.  See how the HDMI goes, try out a wireless game controller, take a look at Steam . . .

. . . and end result is that this is that I’m really not using the XBox anymore, which was my prime media system.

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The Best Laid Plans Of The Gaming Industry

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“What magical scapegoat will game companies point to when no one buys their $70 games on owner-proof, piracy-free systems?”
@ThiefOfHearts

ThiefOfHearts has a point there – a lot of what we’re seeing in the console and game market points to more and more restrictions on games that keep costing a pretty penny.  We can expect no backwards compatibility on the PS4, I’m not particularly confident on the Xbox 720 (or whatever), prices seem to keep going up for AAA titles that are repetitious,  though there’s a few signs of hope game companies don’t want to piss people off.

But in general, in gaming, there’s the sense of wanting to make more limits and more restrictions, at least in the console market, and with some concern in the PC market.  Of course this exists to preserve and expand profits, unless someone in the security divisions of various companies has some weird bet going on how many people they can annoy.

At the same time, with game prices going up and budgets going up, there’s the need to make, well, a lot of money.  As the next generation of consoles at least looks like it’s going to fail to impress, I’m wondering just how much is going to get made. There’s a reason I’m moving to PC.

Are these security changes going to cure the larger market problems?  Well, no.

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Dead Space In Your Face: Gaming and Rent-Seeking

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Well, that was quick.

Last week I was discussing how monetization was going to be an issue in your gaming career – since there were many options that would obviously affect how you get paid.  Or if you get paid.  Or if you have any hope in hell of success.  Well, now I’m still talking about it – along with my current obsession of analyzing game careers, of course.

One of my inspirations for that post, by the way, was the weird news in Dead Space 3 about how one could purchase quicker collection of crafting materials.  Yes, a big console game that just happens to let you act like you’re in a typical free-to-play game, in a way that seemed kinda obvious.

EA was appropriately and mercilessly skewered by Penny Arcade, as was appropriate.  However they were also skewered by resource collecting bugs that made the micro transaction thing a null issue.

I’m wondering if they’ll patch it or not.

Here we see another risk to gaming – and a factor to take into any gaming career you may want to have.

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