Truth Set Free

So this week we’ve seen quite lot of trailers and gameplay videos coming from CES 2009 but I was wondering how helpful or not trailers and gameplay videos are to us end users?

To be honest trailers aren’t bad, they help build lot of hype to the title even if the end product turn out to be not good as advertise while gameplay videos just show you exactly how the end result is going to be.

So which category good for trailers and which is good for gameplay videos?

♦ Trailers are good for movies plain and simple and not so good for video games in my humble opinion because they are cut-scenes which always look good even for the worst game and they don’t tell us anything about the actual gameplay or how the battle system is.

♥ Gameplay videos in other hand are very good and useful for us end users as we know straight away how good the game is and if it’s something we will like although we don’t know much about story.

For us here we watch trailers but we love gameplay videos, if its movie related then fine but games related we only want gameplay videos.

If the game is truly good gameplay will add more hype than trailers but if it’s not so good well trailers will do it good while fooling us buyers.

We encourage developers to give us more gameplay videos instead of load of trailers with pre rendered videos which at the end don’t tell us how the game really is, at least if you must trailer, make a trailer which include few real gameplay please.

We know quite few people will disagree but again give us your thought and as we aren’t any guru this is our own view.

Valkyria Chronicles is my number one rpg right now on ps3 and it got almost everywhere from reviews to magazines a rate of 8+ but it still has only made 33000 copies in North America for November 2008 .

JRPG can do better

As a big fan of JRPG whenever I read about bad sales when they hit US or Europe I always wonder.
People love jrpg in our side of the continent but still don’t buy it much, why is that?

- I think the answer lie in the delay between Asia releases and translated version releases for outside Asia.

We love the game but don’t want to wait 3, 6 month or even a year for a game we love to be translated while I already even see all the spoilers videos online even the ending videos some dude post on YouTube.

Now how can it be improved?

I think right now the simple solution is worldwide releases or at least a very short delay between Japan and outside Japan releases.

Some might argue but will you buy a game twice? Maybe yes if you are really a pro or fans but the simple truth is most gamers are just casual players, so it will take lot of passion to own an import and still want to buy the translated version.

Companies should start adding at least foreign subtitles to their games, people who import games don’t really need the audio to be translated , they only care about subs as most people really preferred the original audio since the beauty of it sometimes is the accent.

Final Fantasy Dissidia for PSP out in Japan and sold about 350000+ copies in first week and imagine just adding an English subtitles to it how sales flood the demand will be, but now people who import it have to rely on internet for translation and maybe even a patch which greatly refrained them to buy the game again even if its translated version been released.

Another issue is the universal playback where you don’t even need to hack your consoles anymore, wherever you buy a game it will work on your console like the PS3(x360 and Wii still have regional lock though).

My New Year message to the gaming world is : “please JRPG developers, start adding foreign subtitles to your games and you can minimize the cost (audios translation) and maximize your sales, or less the gaps between .jp and .us, .eu releases dates.”

If internet was not around companies can still get away with this long gaps but with internet, game videos sites, YouTube you can’t afford to let customers watch every videos in the game online or even the ending online before decide to buy it as the suspense and surprises which push you to the end of a game already extinguish.

If you can do it worldwide or even add subs,  do it,  don’t let people see every hidden videos in the game online before make up their mind and doing so can reduce greatly piracy as well , killing two birds with one stone.

Since this morningdashboardthe newest Xbox 360 dashboard update aka The New Xbox Experience is now available.
Just Connect to live and you will be asked to update.
Very easy and no hassle.
After the update the intro is one hell of intro , done very well and smooth.
Check some screenshot

[Show as slideshow]

Happy gaming

I hate this versus this type of talks but I just cannot stay quiet as last week I bought a DS Lite for my kid and was very intrigue by the graphic.

First of all I own ps1, ps2, ps3, xbox, x360, gba advance, dreamcast, 2 psp , so only ds was missing and I was happy that we got one .It was overdue but at last we got one.

When we started to play, I realize that this isn’t for me, it looks too kiddie (sorry fan boys), and it still feel like playing my gba, maybe too much psp spoiled my eyes, I really don’t know but for sure I was disappointed of the graphics but hopefully the immense DS game library will keep us so busy we won’t even worry about the graphic (well let’s hope).

Two weeks or so ago i download from xboxlive arcade megaman demo , then i started to play it for a bit and switch to the dashboard then everything went wrong.

The xbox360 start freezing whenever i try to connect to live , i ve tried everything possible, from cleaning the dust to clearing the cache , even deleted all the demos and the megaman , but nothing works.

It was very frustrating , i read online quite few people have that problem too so i follow all of them solution and didn’t work.

So two days ago i unplugged the network cable again for the 1000 times again and deleted my profile, then used the recover gamertag from the dashboard .

Feeew… after few minutes of heart pumping wating , the recovering done and Voila! my xbox stop freezing and working again like a charm.

So if you have same problem and tried everything but not yet delete an recover gamertag , give a shot.