PixlBit

So, is this the result of all the Notch and Schafer back and forth we heard about recently, or will there be a Psychonauts 2 on top of this?

Actually, I just wrote a blog about that, but to sum it up in a single word:

backlog.

I know I shouldn't, but I think I'm going to end up picking this up at launch.  I just can't help myself.  

Weren't you all amped for that Tales game too?

I dunno about this one.  Rhythm games can be fun, but they can be stinky bombs too.  I'll check reviews on this before I pass out any cash for sure.

Not to be the buzz killer here, but how are they going to market this?  I've been doing a lot of research on the dev / publisher relationship and, while a lot of it is money, there's a lot of 'who knows who' in there as well.  

Well, take my choices with a grain of salt then.  Even though it didn't make the list, I loved the hell out of Lost Odyssey.  Last Remnant looked interesting, but everybody I talked to told me it's pretty much unplayable on the 360.

My introduction to the Tales franchise was through De Jap's fantastic translation  of the original Tales of Phantasia. The only way to do that is by patching a rom and playing in an emulator, but at the time, the franchise was completely unavailable in the US, so that's my justification. It amazes me what they were able to pull off on the SNES hardware in that game.  Fantastic graphics, action combat in a JRPG, and a sountrack that actually had vocals.  I was really shocked.  And while his translation is... liberal at best, it's still the most entertaining take on the game that I've seen.

Honestly, translation is the main reason I stayed away from the franchise since that game.  The localizations provided by the actual developers  were all very dry, cheesy, and not fun.  I would much rather they take some liberties with the story in order to make it more appealing. Vesperia nailed it though.  I'd say if you were looking for a good, modern Tales experience, Vesperia is the best one out there right now.

And you know I'll be playing Abyss pretty soon too.

Magnetic tape isn't really that outdated in large scale data management.  It's very commonly used to store huge amounts of data in a cost effective manner, like backing up a server.  I don't see much use for it when it comes to entertainment media however.

"He believes that in five years we will be technologically capable of switching over fully to cloud computing and non-physical means of data processing and storage.  But whether or not the world will have the infrastructure available for it..."

That's a very very big deal when it comes to entertainment, and the main reason I don't think we're too close to seeing the end of physical distribution any time soon.  It took me the better half of an evening to download the Kingdoms of Amalur demo and it really wasn't all that big.  Imagine if the entire game had to be downloaded!  Now imagine how large a next gen game would be and imagine downloading that!  My ISP is simply not ready, and I honestly don't think Sony or Microsoft would really even be ready to distribute packages of that size.  Streaming video from a game processed server side a-la  Onlive, as you referenced, seems much more probable than this alternative currently does.

I'm probably the minority, but I found it interesting that I had a radically different top 3 current gen Japanese games than you guys did:

1: Tales of Vesperia

2: Dark Souls

3: Etrian Odyssey 3

Same here, although I have to say seeing this thing actually worked on a GBA impresses the crap out of me.  I wouldn't have bought it, but the fact that it exists and is somewhat playable is downright awesome.

I think that's actually the thing here.  Remember that ad run for the PSP that had a black woman beating up a white one, then another one with the reverse?  There was an uproar over that.  In japan, they don't have the racial context to even make that offensive to them.  It's only offensive in places where stuff like that happened as a hate crime, or with a history of racial slavery like what we have here.

I think it's the same thing with RE 5.  In japan, they probably never even gave it a second thought that it was some white dude mowing down black guys, but over here that takes on a whole new meaning.  I think they are starting to understand that now.  Look at how they treated Sazh.  In Japan, he was handled as very over the top, comic character that would have been very offensive here.  There's no doubt if that material was directly and literally translated, the script would be considered racist here in the US, but when they localized the game, they put effort into making his caracter something that wouldn't be loaded with prejudice in our cultural context.  Not every developer understands this yet, but I think they will get there eventually.