PixlBit

This is heartbreaking, I'm in denial about it Julian. I still don't want to believe it. Just today I was catching up on some Mailbag and I Love Mondays videos, seeing Davis laugh and tell jokes, I love Ryan Davis. Him and Jeff always crack me up the most during the bombcast. You got me turned onto Giant Bomb in the first place back when I began spreading out into gaming press and enthusiasm a few years ago. I never heard of the gang until you sang their praises. I've listen to so many hours by now. Davis was one of a kind and he helped make the bombcast one of kind. He was funny, sharp, quick, he loved to joke about his friends and the industry and games, keeping things humble and in context, but at the same time having a genuine appreciation, enjoyment, and positivity about games and the work he was doing. Always that balance of being a professional and getting great high quality content out there for fans to enjoy, but always willing to go off the rails when it was needed, poking fun at anything, and never loosing his humor and humility about this passion we all share. We need more people like him around, loosing him so early and suddenly is crushing.

Nice COB shirt, Joe. I've been a Sessler fan for quite some time, It'd be neat to meet him.

That's awesome you're reading the books too Alex! I've watched the whole TV show up to the current, so I've seen all 3 seasons. I'm excited to read all the books because I want to see how the original writings differ from the show and how George RR Martin in changing things up between creating the book and show. I'm a huge Lord of the Rings fan and I haven't been so pulled into a world like this ever since LOTR. The A Song of Ice and Fire world fascinates me.

Last year when we were doing all our GOTY stuff here at Pixlbit I chose Minecraft 360 Edition as my game of the year. I played the demo and within the first 5 minutes I fell in love with the game and couldn't stop thinking about it and wanting to explore the mechanics, see the worlds, and listen to the music. It's definitely one of my favorite games I've ever played.

I've heard really good things about A Mote in God's Eye, I should probably find that book too. Ringworld has been fantastic, and I was excited to hear that it has some sequels and prequels. I should probably read the sequels first right, does it matter? Did you read all those other books in the series too? Since there's several other books in the Ringworld series I'm wondering where to start.

I love turn based combat in RPGs and in turn-based-strategy games. You can't find those tyes of games as often as you use to. One of my favorite RPGs ever is LOTR The Third Age and you mentioned it used a lot of the mechanics from the FFX battle system, so it should be pretty fun.

One of the things I didn't appreciate about the PS3, until now since I'm planning on getting one, is all the HD remasters and especially the collections they've done. I've heard some are better than others (I'll probably need advice on ones to avoid), but the ones I want to get are the Ico&Shadow of the Collosus collection since I've never played either of those, the Killzone 1-3 collection, the God of War 1-3 collection, that  one with Journey/Flower/Flow, FFX and X-2 remakes collection to name few. There's even an HD collection of the first 3 Splinter Cell games on PS3 I think, I'm a total fanboy for Splinter Cell so I'll have that. I don't know about the Resistance collection, it's a shooter and there's aliens so I'd probably like it but I'll have to do more research on that series before I get it.

All these collections are perfect for somebody like me who will be getting into the PS3 near the end of the console generation and wants to get as many games as possible without piling up game-discs for every individual game in a series. It's quite a boon and I can practically get entire series' of games for way less than the price of a single new game. As an RPG lover, looking around on Amazon at all the games is like looking through a chest of new loot.

Those are just the remakes and collections too, outside of all that I'll be able to finally play Demon's Souls, The Last of Us, Heavy Rain Director's Cut, Beyond Two Souls (I still have a big crush on Ellen Page...and maybe David Cage too, I'll be excited to finally see the games they made after Indigo Prophecy), Ninja Gaiden 1 & 2 Sigma, plus there's more weird games and JRPGs that I've never seen in the PS3 library.

For now I'm going to have to abandon my plan to get a PS2 and build up the old library of games I used to have for it. I was planning to get FFX to play it for the first time on a PS2 but I'm going to get a PS3 instead, as a bonus these remakes are coming and I'll play them instead. Since I spent all my time on a 360 this generation, getting a PS3 will feel fresh and fun, and there's a huge library of exclusive games I haven't played for it yet.

See you're still the nicest guy in the world Vic lol, I really appreciate you taking my complaints and points so well and being able to make sense of the walls of text and banter between Ben and myself.

A week or so ago when Jesse here at the site posted his Rage Quit blog about the Xbox One I actually touched on a lot of the points you mentioned here and let him know why I was upset with the Xbox One. I loved the games MS showed at E3, and I'm a huge Halo campaign and expanded universe fan since the beginning, but MS's policies killed the entire system for me at the time. Namely the internet requirement, and their apparent lacking (not absence of, but severe lacking) of inclusiveness and support for indie games. I'm similar to you in that I don't have much of a problem with digital downloads as long as they're done well and physical media is still an option for those consumers that prefer it and want to pay a little extra. On a side note I believe that over the course of this generation digital will become more and more popular to the point where it will be the primary method of consumption for many people and hopefully these companies will learn from Steam and keep the prices of digital lower and also offer big sales to entice people, but physical will always be a part of the consumer's options if they're willing to pay the premium for them like we do nowadays already. It's a fact that physical is still popular despite the growing popularity of digital, and seeing as these companies like to make money it would be a good business practice to always give those physical consumers options they prefer and continue to make some money off it.

Back to the Xbox One, the internet requirement made me angry because designing a console around the assumption that everybody is connected to not only high quality internet but reliable internet all day everyday is silly. It bones tons of people not just in America but especially worldwide like you mentioned your cousins in Chile, not to mention alienating most of the military personnel that play games offline and appreciate games as an escape from their everyday stresses. I personally prefer an offline console because I believe that consoles and PCs should remain different in at least that aspect. The infrastructure of consoles are totally representative of a PC now, but I want to still be able to play offline games, offline. Consoles are suppose to be simpler and faster than PC gaming, you should only need a system, a TV, AV/HDMI cables, and a power outlet. Adding internet to that requirement throws a wrench into the whole system that makes console gaming appealing in the first place. It's suppose to be simple and fast and I believe internet requirements hurt that appeal and would've kept the console out of the hands of quite a few people.

The sluggish and minimal support they showed for indie developers at E3 really put me off because inclusiveness is one of the biggest things I want to see expand in this coming generation. I want the industry to be more inclusive, I want tech to be shared even more, I want to keep getting high quality development tools and design education into the hands of as many people as possible so that we can build an increasing environment of community creativity, inspiration, challenge, and artistic freedom. I'm a budding designer and I'm not only interested in game building but also in education. I can tell that there's no shortage of creativity and ideas in the gaming industry. One of the big secrets of this craft of game design is that there's in fact too many ideas, the problem is there's not enough people who are technically qualified to implement them and create the games they want to see. The more educated designers we have out in the market with high quality development tools, the better chance we have to increase the diversity and quality of gaming content. Sony is definitely courting indie developers, but MS's minimal support of it has frustrated me a great deal.

MS showed a lot of great games I'd like to play but they killed it with those policies, meanwhile Sony won me over on every level. Now that the conversation has changed and the majority of the things I disliked about the Xbox One have changed, MS's product is far more appealing to me. Sony still has an edge for me because The Witness is coming out first for PS4, and Sony is also doing a much better job of courting indie developers. And I can't forget the $100 price difference, the PS4 is extremely appealing and I'm going to want one, but now finally the Xbox One appeals to me much more than it originally did. Maybe someday I can have an XBO as well and I don't have to miss out on the Halo games I love. If in fact I buy a PS4 first as I plan to, at least I'll have Bungie's Destiny to play and that will certainly scratch my sci-fi shooter itch really well.

I'm quite attracted to both consoles, I just want to see the Pixlbit community show some more positivity about the console war and not turn into a haven for any fanboys from any side. We had legitimate complaints about the Xbox One (some of us still do), but in no time at all those legitimate complaints got drowned out by hyperbole, "Lol's", sensationalism, and way more negativity than the situation probably called for. One of the things I've loved about this place and one of the reasons why I've championed Pixlbit for so long is the fact that when you look around the community users and staff they all have incredibly varied tastes in gaming. People play on all different consoles, have all different types of childhood nostalgia for the varieties of historical gaming companies, and have loves of very different genres. But throughout all the time I've been here we have all been able to have debates and discussions with a lot of positivity and inclusiveness. I was afraid that all of that was starting to change during this console war, people were being so negative and one-sided without stepping back to take a breath. Console wars are naturally pretty messy, but I don't want to see the positivity, inclusiveness, and constructive debates this site has always had be spoiled by it.

I don't agree with your statement that MS committed A LOT more bullshizz than Sony this generation, remember neither of us played on PS3s so we don't have proper context. PS3 users got boned too, hardware failures (most PS3 users I know are on their 2nd or 3rd PS3 now), PSN outages and hacks, even this week people are getting shit on by that firmware update that bricked quite a number of consoles already. There were a lot of problems this gen with MS and Sony's hardware but both companies have done pretty great jobs of making up for it during THIS gen. MS handled the RRoD really well by extending warranties, repairing them for free, and giving people free LIVE Gold among other things. Sony did a great job after the PSN outage by giving people some free PS+ and games, and PS is actually a superior service to LIVE so I think PS3 users ended up able to forgive Sony before long. Sony treated us like idiots at the launch of PS3 and insulted us as consumers and gamers by focusing a bunch on multimedia (people forget Sony is a giant movie and music corporation) and telling us to get a second job, so it's more than welcome to see them change the script this time and come to their senses. Meanwhile MS had a gigantic failure of policy and of the PR. The E3 interviews I watched of execs trying to explain the One and its policies made me cringe. Horrible business, total misjudging of their audience, and terribly naive.

I haven't been apologizing for MS or trying to get people to buy one, I'm just trying to vent some frustrations about the context people are putting this in. It's the subtle Sony fanboy undertones way of looking at things, that's what I gathered from some parts of Mr. Roman's blog here. Vic's not a fanboy, I've seen him on this site plenty, he actually designed the look of the site for anybody who doesn't know! I know Vic isn't a fanboy, he's a super nice guy, but he does enjoy the PS products which isn't a crime obviously. I absorbed undertones in the blog that set me off. People act like they knew what Sony was up to all along, they were always your buddy, doing the policies you love and making you feel comfortable.

Before E3 how much did anybody actually know about the PS4? Sony didn't talk about any of these controversial issues until the very last minute. Literally the last 5 minutes of their E3 presser, which leads you to believe (unless you see things from the fanboy goggles) that Sony's policies (as well as price) were likely in flux all the way till the last moment. They had plan A, plan B, and so forth and they finally decided which to go with once Microsoft had finished its press conference at E3. MS didn't touch the issues that it plagued itself with, people were still pissed off, and so Sony probably made the decision to avoid whatever policies MS was getting all the heat for. It's a very smart and sound business decision and strategy, but it doesn't mean Sony is anybodies buddy or gaming god and it doesn't mean Sony boned people "less". MS got muscled into changing its policies but it stands to reason that Sony likewise got indirectly muscled into their policies by watching MS take all the heat and acting accordingly.

On a side note I totally love you bringing up George RR Martin. I JUST bought the box set of the first four books of A Sony of Ice and Fire dude! I'm going to blog about it soon but you get the inside scoop I guess lol. I'm currently reading through Larry Niven's Ringworld but once I'm done I'll start reading the first book, A Game of Thrones. Way to be topical Ben, how did you know?

You kinda proved all my points. People have been boned by both these companies. Just because of their performance and rhetoric at E3 people are seeming to forget all that and forgive all of it just because Sony could talk the talk. Sony might've done all the same crap MS did if it went over more smoothely, we will never know now thankfully. People are free to love Sony and pre-order PS4s all they want but I'm not going to let anybody try to play to "Sony is our knight in blue armor fighting for the gamer! Sony is the one true path granted by the gaming God!" nonsense without me giving them some perspective and bringing people back to reality.

The landscape of the console war is changing for the better I think but people seem very unwilling to let go of that story that Sony is the savior and MS are still the greedy illuminati lizard men. Sony no longer has that leverage and can't advertise as "the one that doesn't need internet every 24hrs and supports used games" Now both consoles do all the same stuff and the only difference left between them is $100 which could very well change, we will have to see what their plans are I guess. I'm just pissed off because people are trying to act like they don't want to let go of the MS hate and they want to keep the post-E3 story going even though it's changing in front of their eyes. We should be happy, not spiteful. Both these companies have boned everybody before, consumer and developer, neither gets to wave the flag of justice. This is like the fucking presidential election all over again except in the gaming variety. If people want to say "Let's not forget what MS said originally guyzz!!" We can play that game for Sony on many different fronts too. People are forgetting to see anything in context and with level heads. It's typical console war stuff and this community nor any community is immune to it obviously.