PixlBit

Sony's conference last night was an emotional roller-coaster ride and it all climaxed when Jack came out with the policy statements. It was the most exhilarating, satisfying, and ridiculous press conference I've ever seen in my years of following E3. To understand why it was such a huge relief and huge deal you have to think about it in context.

The whole internet, including our little Pixlbit here, has been in total meltdown mode ever since the reveal of the Xbox One. People have had their pitchforks out and they've been ready to burn modern gaming to the ground it has seemed. People have been pissed off about blocking used games, internet requirements with a daily verification, DRM, and the shunning of indie developers and putting up even higher walls to the "walled garden" etc. People going into Sony were really afraid in their guts that this is just what they were going to have to deal with in the new age of gaming. Even all us gamers who were actually excited about new games and new hardware still had a somewhat defeated attitude towards the changing times.

Well last night Sony came out and relieved a huge mountain of tension and hesitation people have had about the whole future of gaming, including myself, by addressing pretty much every one of these issues that have been pissing people off. Seeing Jack mention that the PS4 plays used games, doesn't require an internet connection or authentication to access your games, and comes out $100 cheaper than Xbox, and seeing the crowd roar for 5 minutes as all of us on Twitter totally go crazy...it was this great cathartic moment that we were all able to share together. Jack tackled all those issues that have been pissing us off and apparently it seems Sony wants to be on the right side of history, they want to be pro-consumer, and they want to fucking WIN.

For years E3 has been a little lackluster and without too much fervor or craziness, and last night offered something shocking and satisfying that you can only really get during a brutal bloodbath console war between two bitter enemies and entrenched companies. To be honest Microsoft launched an amazing salvo of its own early in the day, and I can be assured that anybody who decides to get an Xbox One will get a ton of great games and a good console experience, as long as they are willing to put up with the crappy policies that piss so many of us off. But Sony came out even stronger and in the end they not only launched a salvo of great games and big reveals, but they hit gamers where it matter on these policies and price. People will remember it for many years to come, just like we remember 1995 and what Sony did then.

I certainly needed to use some hyperbole last night, I was way too excited. When the screen came up listing all their policies my jaw dropped. And when they announced price I was pumping my fist in the air and whooping at the television lol.

Mackey probably still keeps tabs on you somehow, he's probably reading this and going off to some dark corner of the net to make fun of you. That really pissed me off when he did that. If he doesn't like you he could just be a normal person and talk about you behind your back in private, not go somewhere on the net where anybody can see it. He's quite the sensationalist and tries to get by with it by pretending to be progressive and feminist. But he uses the label wrong and gives feminists a bad name, he's just an asshole kid on the internet that somehow was lucky enough to establish somewhat of a presence.

I still use the term feminist but I have no problem with the equalist term you've always used. At the end of the day they are suppose to be the same thing. Treating women as no less than a man, both socially and economically. For all of human history they were treated as less than a man in every way, in the bible itself it says women were simply born from the rib of a man or some nonsense like that, as if women were an afterthought.

Just because some women are total assholes doesn't mean that the term should be forgotten though. Back during the civil rights movement there were black people that were violent and criminal and did their deeds in the name of civil rights, but it's a good thing we didn't have to change the terms or message being spoken by the peaceful ones. We still have the term civil rights today and it's managed to maintain a positive image and message over time. And the civil rights movement was way more violent and horrible, I don't see feminists getting hosed down in the streets by firetrucks and attacked by dogs. So I'm hoping the same can eventually be said for feminism and it maintains its name and message over the long haul. We shouldn't change the name or ignore the feminists just because some of them are assholes. You'll find jerks in every group.

Let's just calm down now guys, the NSA is always on the up and up, shutting down arms dealers in any country with -stan at the end of it, and taking on cyber hackers from any country named North Korea, and wiping out any moles that get into 3rd and 4th Echelon. He's on top of it, they've always been good to him. Except when they kidnapped his daughter...and lead him to murder his best friend in a dark basement, and hunted him down for an entire game because Director Reed was a mole for Black Arrow or something. Whatever, you trust this face don't you? Yes you do. He'll straighten this twisted government out one shady white-man-in-control-of-an-agency at a time. If Sam needs to use Kinect to peek in on you while you hastily fap to brief Game of Thrones sex scenes and dip your nasty hands into a bags of Doritos, just deal with it buttholes, or else you're going to get choked out and dragged to a dark bathroom!

Thanks Nick lol. They're trying to be PC gaming except they're "XBoning" consumers in the ass every step of the road and not having any of the perks the PC gamers enjoy or appreciate.

Yesterday's official confirmations and clarifications should be appreciated with a huge grain of salt from a consumer standpoint because we have a right to know these policies and they needed to tell us all, and they did. So I'm glad they're actually talking, unlike Sony who is keeping quiet and probably wrongly gaining the love of the entire web simply because they haven't said much at all about any of these topics. In the end the clarifications were like nails in a coffin. The connection requirements were what put me off. Halo will be great, Fable will be great, some of the new first party IPs will likely be cool, Kinect is rad finally for the first time (and effective), and the controller is great but the policies wreck the whole train. I'm planning to be a developer and having to move around to different parts of the country for new work is practically part of the territory for most people in the industry so if I can't have my console games for weeks at a time simply because I'm waiting to move and have infrastructure set up at my new place pisses me off. When I'm moving and my PC is packed up and and internet isn't set up and I can't game on it, with these new policies I ALSO can no longer play my console if I were to buy the XBone. No games at all during internet down time unless I have some installed on my phone or on a handheld.

A console based upon the assumption that owners will have broadband connection all day everyday is silly. This works for the PC because internet comes with the territory, people who play PC games and use PCs almost all seem to have internet at least most of the time. Consoles are suppose to be different, they're suppose to be a platform where things are SIMPLER than PCs and all you need is electricity and the proper cables and a TV. My Gamecube is just fine without internet, all I need is to plug it into an outlet and I'm playing Resident Evil 4 anytime I feel like it. With XBone if I don't have a connection for 24 hours I can't play Halo 5 single player, or Elder Scrolls single player, or Dragon Age single player, I get boned in the ass and told I can't play games, and all of it comes without the benefits and perks that PC gaming gives you as you detailed here.

They're trying to be PC gaming and they're certainly looking like they're not doing it right. I wish consoles and PCs could stay separate and embrace the qualities they've always had. Consoles are suppose to be simpler and quicker, now they're not. They're trying to be PCs and adopt PC gaming systems but they don't seem to understand what makes PC gaming work and what makes PC gaming digestible to all those who enjoy it.

I already let you and Mike know I'll be building a PC sometime, which I'm scared to do just yet since all the cards and tech are going to be changing wildly (so I've heard) in the next couple years as this new generation starts. But in the console world my last hopes are Sony and Nintendo. Nintendo isn't interesting enough for me to sink 300 into, sadly it'll only fit in as a second console and even then only if the price is dropped and there's a lot of games for it. I really WANT to like the PS4 and I want to get one and not deal with Microsoft policies, but if it turns out that PS4 does internet checks like that I won't be able to get it. I'll just get a PS3 and start building a library from all the games I missed out on this gen.

I like this one, it's very different and I've haven't seen anything quite like it, especially in the area of video game related works. I'd like to see things like this where you try to capture the emotion and impression that a certain character gives you. Do you think you'd ever want to do that with environments and game worlds as well? Maybe if there's any games with atmospheres and environment art that speak to you with their colors and texture and make you want to do something similar to this?

Kupo, lol! That is all ^.^

I saw on Live that you were playing Tomb Raider, I was wondering what you'd think of it since you don't often like games that are too chaotic or open, I was thinking that maybe Tomb Raider would be just perfect because it has barely enough exploration to sink your teeth into but it's not an open world game, and the combat and shooting seems like it might be difficult for you but with some repeated efforts you could overcome the encounters and still enjoy the game.

I've been with the mainline franchise since this game came out, and I'm very excited to play an HD remake along with Lost Chapters. I'm most excited that it's coming for 360, I really expected them to make it for Xbox One instead to get old fans interested in picking up the new hardware. I'm wanting to get a PS4 this next generation as I had a 360 this whole gen and I like to go back and forth. The fact that Fable Anniversary is coming out for 360 means I'll definitely be able to play it.

When this game came out my best friend and I both created characters and we took turns playing it during spring break and watching each other play and we literally turned into vampires. We hung out at my sister's house in her basement (dungeon) that didn't have any windows and we drank coffee and played Fable all week, it was crazy. There was so much transference that when we stopped playing the game I was still hearing English accents in my head and I could hear the Fable music in my dreams lol. I have a lot of nostalgia for this game, even with all its problems, so I'll be real excited for it. Except now I'm an adult and I won't let myself turn into a vampire this time while I play it lol.

Holy crap look at those dragons. They appear to be crawling on all fours, well actually the one doesn't seem to have back legs so I don't know what that makes it. But if those two beasts in panel 10 down are actually dragons, shit they're big and what do you think that could mean for the lore of the game if these concepts actually become used in-game at some point during the creation of this?

Real dragons, back in action in all their power and fury when they were suppose to all be killed by the Lords? Maybe they'd be descendants of the ancient dragons, just like how the surviving Everlasting Dragon down in Ash Lake is one of the descendants of the ancient ones. Sounds like crazy shenanigans that could totally turn Lordran, Balder, Carim and all the other lands into a crazy apocalyptic battleground that nobody has seen in the Dark Souls world since, well probably since the war of the dragons I guess!

It's more of a comical note but I like how there's at least two different pictures that show a boat stuck between a rock and a hard place. One boat is on top of snowy mountain and the other boat is stuck between two huge rocks hugging onto its sides. From Software artists obviously have an urge to show some boats in precarious situations.