It’s probably a pretty odd question, but it’s one I kept brushing up against while I was brushing up on my Francis Bacon know-how for a previous article on Silent Hill right here on GayGamer.Net. Bacon had a massive influence on the artistic direction of Silent Hill, and his work often contained themes of sexuality and/or violence. As a gay man, however, most of the paintings that were explicitly sexual in Bacon’s work were focused on the male form – but as a whole, the Silent Hill series is very much a negative heterosexual male perspective on sexuality (particularly female sexuality).

This may not necessarily be as oppressive as it might sound, given that the narrative of Silent Hill goes to great pains to demonstrate that its protagonists have very problematic, negative ideas about sexuality. In fact, the narrative makes it pretty clear that any representation of human life the player comes up against (from sexuality to family, from guilt to being teased at school) are by definition the protagonist’s own profoundly negative ideas.

That doesn’t change the fact that most of Silent Hill‘s representations of sexuality come from straight male characters and their attitudes to female sexuality, whose perspectives can pretty much be summed up with “women’s bodies are mysterious and foreign and sexy and scary.”

[Trigger warnings for discussion of sexual abuse from here on out, and spoiler warnings for the main themes of Silent Hill 3, as well as bosses in Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill: Homecoming].

Given that this attitude is already prevalent in both the real world (exemplified by white Republicans’ misinformed ideas about rape, pregnancy and abortion) as well as across fiction (the Abort Gigyas theory of Mother, the revelation about Darkspawn Broodmothers in Dragon Age, the male gaze that’s encoded in scores of games from Dead or Alive to Mass Effect 2), the most horrific element may be that games are still going on about how weirdly “Other” women are, as though men are the default, standard sex, and any deviation from such is so rife with horror that it will be incorporated into the game’s monsters, environment, or heck, it might even become the entire premise of the game.

There is such a focus on the alienness of female anatomy, of exclusively female body horror, but the fact is, male-assigned sexual organs (both primary and secondary) are equally weird. Testes are literally wee egg things suspended in a fleshy bag suspended from someone’s groin! Semen is a sticky goo that’s one-half of a magic baby-making formula! The prostate is a magic pleasure button hidden up the backside! There’s even a wee skin-hood that some folk like to cut off for various medical or religious reasons! These elements are so absent from games that it becomes dubious and suspect to even bring them up, but it’s apparently banal to the point of unremarable that we play games with monsters that have glowing, techno-organic nipples (noticeably absent from their male counterparts), formerly dual-breasted folk growing rows of swollen breasts, or even have a boss battle taking place in what’s rumoured to be a cosmic uterus.

When the “monstrous feminine” is included in Silent Hill, they are almost invariably reduced to two things: tits and vag. The nurses are buxom; the Mannekins are bare, slender legs; Asphyxia and Scarlett have prominent breasts (despite the humans they’re based on both being at the younger side of adolescence); Closers have vaginal openings on three of their appendages; Amnion is a heavily pregnant woman; Needler is heavily suggestive of childbirth; Siam’s female side is on her back with her legs spread and flailing in the air, the Doll is a woman with half her face missing dressed in a very short, low-cut dress…

Not that any of these things may be problematic in and of themselves – in fact, including monstrous femininity (or female-ness) in a game that heavily implies its characters are sexually repressed or frustrated makes sense. It’s just that it must be acknowledged that Silent Hill’s focus on sexuality is explicitly male heterosexuality, and that its representation of women comes almost exclusively from the position of “women’s bodies are mysterious and foreign and sexy and scary”, regardless of whether the narrative justifies this by saying it’s the protagonist’s own repressed ideas of sex.

Even Heather – the only female protagonist of the main Silent Hill series – comes up against this in Silent Hill 3, which could be summed up, if reductively and simplistically, as the Mystical Pregnancy trope embodied in a game. Her nightmarish otherworld is filled with manifestations of her (and Alessa’s) fears about pregnancy: Valtiel is her midwife; the nurses represent pregnancy; the Closer represents abuse and pregnancy, the Pendulum may stand for the pain of birth… Silent Hill‘s only female protagonist – a teenage girl, no less – apparently has no overtly sexual frustrations, only those of the biological process of birth held by her “dark half”, Alessa. Heather’s nightmare world is neutered and reduced to the final outcome of sex – maternity and birth, the woman as a vessel for something else – rather than sex itself. Again, it’s justified in the narrative since Heather is slated to be the vessel for God, hence the game’s core theme is all about pregnancy and maternity, but again, women’s bodies are reduced to the biological function of pregnancy, whereas the visibly male monsters can represent just about anything else.

There’s one massive exception to the rule of female = sex, male = anything else in the Silent Hill series, and its our old friend, that Red Pyramid Thing; Pyramid Head is overtly masculine, and even partially symbolises male sexuality – but the sexuality linked with Pyramid Head is not anything to do with his inherent maleness, but the fact that he suggestively wrangles with a pair of overtly feminine Mannekins. His sexuality is derived from what he does to the women and female monsters in the game, rather than what he is. In contrast, the sexual symbolism of the Mannekins is due to their innate, inherent femaleness (slender female legs kicking and flailing about, often sexualised through male gaze), the symbolism of the Nurses is their inherent femaleness (miniskirts and exposed, pushed-up cleavage, again, sexualised by male onlookers) rather than anything they explicitly do. This is echoed in Silent Hill 0rigin’s Butcher, who similarly seems to delight in eviscerating female monsters.

A quick aside to mention one potentially glaring omission in the form of Silent Hill 2‘s Abstract Daddy, Angela’s monstrous incarnation of her father’s sexual abuse. There’re very little overtly male/masculine traits to Abstract Daddy, but this makes a great deal of sense: rape is sexual violence after all, and having Angela’s rapist take on overtly sexual characteristics would occlude the fact that sexual violence is violence first and foremost.

So, were Silent Hill to take a new direction, what would it look like?

Queering Silent Hill

Let’s first consider how Silent Hill would be altered if the only thing we changed was the character’s sexuality, from hetero to homo. Instantly we can write off the buxom nurses, vaginal passageways, and themes of maternity: the “fear of the feminine” is a preoccupation of straight men, not gay men, and it’s an archaic misconception that men “go gay” because of some unresolved discomfort around vaginas. It’s the other way around. That’s not to say that gay men are absolved of sexist or misogynist attitudes, however, which we’ll talk about later.

Maleness will be likely overt and apparent: male physique, male anatomy, all the way down to the plumbing. Would the sight of swinging appendages and dangly bits make gaming’s most privileged and catered-to demographic – young white men – feel uncomfortable? We can only hope. In all likelihood, though, that discomfort would be mitigated with dick jokes and angry internet commenters starting sentences with “I’m fine with gays, but…” Well, too bad. If they don’t like even vaguely suggestions of male sexuality, they’ll find something else to play, like the remarkably heterosexual Gears of War series, or even the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series, well-known for having an exclusively male cast of main characters. (I like those odds.)

The protagonists of Silent Hill often bring their sexual hangups with them, and there’s a vast slew that can be drawn upon within the well-documented history of gay male identity to create new monsters based on sexual anxiety. Anonymous gloryhole monsters hiding in musty, secluded bathrooms. Indistinct, writhing forms occluded by clouds of steam in the sauna, punctuated by the far-off squeal of rusted valves turning. A virus that hangs overhead, casting a shadow over bugchasers and giftgivers. Discreet glimpses of shuddering flesh in the ex-gay ministry.

The non-sexual aspects of gay male identity are themselves fraught with potential for people to become negatively obsessed over them – hellhouses in particular would be apropos for the Silent Hill setting, as would the very real fear of gay-bashing.

Maleness may well be overt and explicit, especially considering how many gay men have to come to terms with where they fit in a culture that’s often dominated by oppressive, patriarchal attitudes towards manliness, machismo and masculinity. In a culture where anything “feminine” is seen as anything from inferior to downright weak, “effeminate” men are often targeted for abuse by other men; this has lead to the glorification of being “straight-acting” and the demonisation of being camp or effeminate among gay men, a kind of subcultural internalised homophobia (and, in a sense, a kind of misdirected misogyny – hating the things associated with female-ness). This brings with it yet more fodder for the repressed, oppressive monsters living inside the gay psyche.

With a gay male protagonist, perhaps we would finally be more comfortable with tackling something that is rarely addressed in games: male sexual abuse. This isn’t a gay issue, or even a queer issue – male-on-male sexual abuse is neither exclusively perpetrated by gay men, or suffered by gay men, and it’s a dangerous fallacy to assume that the rape of men by other men is predicated on gay identity. To wit, it’s interesting that Silent Hill Downpour‘s Murphy Pendleton, who has apparently spent time inside a violent prison, has to fend off against monsters that represent the physical violence he witnessed (and perhaps took part in) while in the prison system, and even has to fight one creature that symbolises the sexual frustration he felt while in prison; and yet, he doesn’t seem to experience any anxieties regarding sexual coercion, abuse and rape, which is frighteningly prevalent in the U.S. prison system – a study of Midwestern prisons suggests that 1 in 5 inmates experience some form of sexual coercion or abuse in prisons.

That isn’t at all to suggest that the inclusion of male sexual assault or rape in the Silent Hill series would make the series “better” – as it stands, male rape (especially prison rape) is often glossed over, joked about and otherwise ignored, effectively silencing survivors of male sexual abuse from talking about their experiences and finding the help they need to overcome the issues that the abuse may have created. There are a million and one very good reasons not to include “rape as backstory” – but the fact that it wasn’t included despite the series unflinchingly including other motifs of female sexual abuse from its inception is proof-positive of the game’s heteronormativity; and, for those men who may be horrified at the idea of a game alluding to male rape, consider that Silent Hill franchise is a horror game (with horrific elements being par for the course), and that female players are already having to adjust to the fact that the game includes heavy allusions to women being sexually objectified, abused, or raped – Alessa’s “incubus”, the mannikins, Angela Orosco’s entire backstory, the nurses…

As a gay cis man, I can only really speak about how Silent Hill and gay cisgender male identity could intersect – but having had to come to terms with my own queer identity means I can at least briefly suggest how I think other non-male, non-het and non-cis identities could be tackled by the series.

What was previously said about the straight male perspective on female sexuality brings up an interesting point once we consider what a non-male, non-heterosexual Silent Hill would look like; would a lesbian protagonist in Silent Hill create similarly sexualised female creatures? Odds are, they probably would – and that would make for a very interesting discussion point. As mentiond before, the focus on the “monstrous feminine” can be problematic because women are inappropriately sexualised, demonised and objectified by male onlookers, but there’s a struggle that women who are attracted to women have to go through, especially living in a culture that encourages people to objectify women, facing the dichotomy of feeling passionately that women should not be sexually objectified, but still being fed narratives that say “It’s okay, all men do it, you can do it too, why shouldn’t you be allowed a turn?” Silent Hill could well end up making this psychological battle manifest in the form of overtly sexual female monsters in keeping with the series monster designs to date, but with a far more knowing, challenging concept behind them – sexual objectification of women by women. Although it’s also pertinent to mention that there hasn’t historically been widespread systematic and institutional sexual oppression of women by women across vast swathes of societies and cultures on every continent at all points in history, so, really, perhaps these things aren’t quite as comparable as they may seem.

Again though, we can raise the issue of aggressors – both male and female – when it comes to sexual abuse. Women the world over have to adopt defense mechanisms because they cannot be certain that a given man won’t sexually assault them; but how do you talk about female sexual abuse in a misogynist, queerphobic culture that can easily latch onto someone’s experience of female sexual abuse by a female aggressor and turn it into a story about locking up your daughters for fear of predatory lesbians?

Coming to terms with trans* identity in modern society also brings with it the possibility that a trans* protagonist would manifest their fears and anxieties in the form of monsters. The worry of conforming to the gender binary to be accepted by society could result in monsters that span the gender spectrum. The dichotomy of a body that is physically one sex, but with a psychology that is wholly another. There are also anxieties that come with sex reassignment surgery – when is flesh “male enough” or “female enough?” Does it even need to be either of those things? And what about intersex or genderqueer protagonists? All too often, identities that fit under the trans* umbrella have to be read into characters, rather than having their identities explicitly stated.

There’s a wealth of other non-heteronormative sexual and gender identities not even covered here, such as asexuality, third-gender (in its myriad forms around the world – Two-Spirit people would be especially a propos, considering Silent Hill’s connections to North-Eastern Native American peoples settling in the area).

Were a queer character to take their first steps onto the foggy streets of Silent Hill, it would likely give the series the edge that it seems to have lost recently; after all, the series’ hallmark is the fear of the unknown, and the territory that the series has covered from Silent Hill: The Room onwards is known territory. We already know our protagonist will be most likely be white, male, heterosexual, cisgender, and has probably done something heinous in their murky past that they think they need punished for. For many people, gender and sexual identity is a massive unknown, purely because they’ve never had to think about it for very long; perhaps it’s about time we had a foray into Silent Hill through the eyes of a character who is not like the previous protagonists – not white, not young, not male, not heterosexual, not cisgender and hell, maybe not guilty, despite living in a society that blames them for everything that happens to them. Maybe that glimpse into the terrifying and threatening territory of navigating your own identity in an environment that’s hostile to you may clear the foggy misconception that anything that isn’t white, male, heterosexual and cisgender is to be feared.

Geneva continues to be full of new adventures and excitement. The citizens keep saying they feel that the town is underdeveloped, so as Mayor, it’s my responsibility to keep pushing through those Town Work Projects. The thing is, some of them are really expensive! But thanks to a friend, I discovered a really easy way to make lots and lots of bells! I’ll share that secret with you, and detail all the fun of the past week right after you click “More!”

So Cyrus finally woke up and I tried out his furniture customization service. I forget where I got this minimalist vanity, probably as a reward or something, but I figured it was safe to use it as a guinea pig. He offered a few different color options, none of which sounded that great. This is supposed to be some kind of olive green or something. It’s kind of ugly. I kept it around my house for a little while, then sold it off. I’d heard he can use the gemstones you find around town to customize furniture, but maybe that comes later on, once he gets to know you…

So I totally forgot that this weekend was the Fishing Tournament. I didn’t go to town until really late in the day, and by then it was over. The tent was still up and Chip told me to go inside for the award ceremony. So I went to see who won, and it turned out to be Molly. So no fishing trophy for me this time. But I’ll get ‘em next time! That’s for sure!

I’ve been visiting the towns of some friends and some of them have swung by Geneva. Unfortunately nobody seems to have better prices for turnips than I do, so I’ve been losing money pretty steadily with the stalk market. Sigh. I never had very good luck with that. Ever. But it’s okay, because my friend Chris advised me to do my fishing on the island. I’d been fishing in the ocean because it had more valuable fish than the river, but over on the island, there are even better ones! Like sharks and big fish that are worth a ton of bells! So I’ve kind of been swimming in money this past week, and it’s pretty awesome!

It was Olaf’s birthday this week. I’d gotten a letter from him last week giving me a heads-up about it and letting me know the date to stop by. He had decorations and a cake, but it looked like Gabi was the only other person who showed up. That’s so sad. Naturally, I gave him a present, but I forgot to wrap it. Oops! It’s okay, though, because I was just pawning off an extra kart I won with my lucky ticket…

Sable gave me a mannequin just like the ones they use in the store! I forgot to take a picture of it in my house, but basically you can store an outfit on it, and then easily switch into it when you feel like it. It’s cool. I’ve got a great top and pants right now, but I still haven’t seen the right shoes show up at Kicks, so I haven’t changed yet…

I went out to the island with my friend Chris, and we did a bunch of the tours together. It turns out that they’re not competitive, though. You’re meant to help each other. Although at the end, Tortimer does award bonus medals and whoever does a little better gets an extra one. Although as you can tell, with us, it was hard to tell who was who! But it was a lot of fun, and I can’t wait to go back with Chris and my other friends!

Okay, what? I went to Olaf’s birthday party, gave him an awesome present, and he even said that we could be more than friends (he meant BEST friends)… and then he tells me he’s going to move? I don’t think so. I asked him to stay, and he was so touched he agreed to stick around. Although I guess I wouldn’t mind swapping out a couple people, since we haven’t had anybody new in ages.

Everybody in this town is kind of needy, always asking me to deliver packages for them or wanting to come over or have me over, but this was a new one. Molly asked me to bury a time capsule for her. She didn’t want to bury it herself because she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to resist digging it up. So she wanted me to bury it for her. The weird thing is that after I buried it next to the Town Hall, she said maybe she’d ask me to dig it back up for her one day, but later I noticed the little mark on the ground had disappeared! Hopefully it comes back if she asks me to go find it again, because I’m not sure I’ll remember!

I was surprised to see Katie, but even more surprised when she informed me that she wasn’t lost like she used to be when she was little. Nope, now she’s traveling all on her own having fun adventures! I’m so proud of her, all grown up and stuff! She wanted me to take her to another town, but unfortunately, when I ran into her, I wasn’t able to travel, and then later on in the day when I was, I forgot she was still around (that’s if she actually was still around). Sigh. Oh well, hopefully she found her way to a fun new town on her own! I promise I’ll help next time you swing by!

Gulliver showed up again this week, and this time his clues were super-obvious that he was talking about Italy. The next day, he sent me a thank-you present, but it was that creepy Mouth of Truth. It weirds me out, so I didn’t want it in my house.

Club LOL finally opened (although the sign looks like Club 101), and I was super-excited. The thing is, K.K. Slider doesn’t come out until 8:00 at night to spin records. But during the day, Shrunk is hanging around cleaning up and stuff, and if you give him a snack, he’ll tell you a joke and let you express emotion. Here I am being happy after his “performance.” Hopefully the emotions he teaches you aren’t tied to the food you give him, because I’ve only got a handful of different fruit!

The street lamp wasn’t too hard to complete, as it wasn’t very expensive, and my friend Chris finished it off for me when he swung by! It’s nice to have generous friends!

Later that night, Chris and Gian showed up for a visit, and it just so happened to be the grand opening of Club LOL! It was so awesome! We just danced around having a blast while K.K. Slider played DJ and rocked the house! The music was really good, but I don’t know how to take it home with me. I’m hoping that on the weekends or something K.K. Slider does a special acoustic performance with his guitar like he did in the old days and then gives you a recording of the song. I’ve got a radio in my house that’s just collecting dust!

I swung by Bam’s house and found him under the weather. Thankfully, the store has been selling medicine since the expansion, so I could try to help get him better. Can’t imagine if someone had gotten sick and I couldn’t get medicine! It’s sad that illness is still common in these towns, but at least the sick person stays indoors so they don’t infect everyone!

Okay, is Tom Nook even being serious? After I paid off my new upstairs, he offered to expand my house again. I could choose to add a side room on the main floor or a basement, so I decided to add a basement so I can store all the Nintendo tchotchkes that I’ve been collecting from my lucky tickets. But look at the size of it! It’ll hold like, four of them! And do you know how much this cost me? 428,000 bells! Seriously! What a rip off! And I’m sure he’ll charge me another 500,000 or so to expand it to be the same size as the main floor at some point! What a racket this raccoon is running!

The loan for my basement expansion was so big that I decided to throw all the money I’ve been earning from fishing towards more Town Works Projects. Like this park clock! It wasn’t that expensive, really. And I like having stuff around town. Although I’m not sure I really want to build the random fence or the campsite… those just seem weird.

This week, I collected the fossils to complete the Sabertooth Tiger and the T. Rex. (He’s kind of a small T. Rex, but whatever) The thing is, when I went to see them, I noticed that I’d also finished the Spinosaurus, Archelon, Ichthyosaur and Mammoth! When did that happen? I guess I was so excited that you can donate multiple items to Blathers instead of having to go one at a time like in the past, that I didn’t realize that doing so meant that he won’t tell you when you’ve finished something. Because that’s the only way I can think that I wouldn’t know I’d finished four dinosaurs!

I also got the Dream Suite to work this week. Oh, and it turns out that every time you update your town, you get 5,000 bells! So it’s totally worth it to swing by every single day and take a quick nap to upload your town to the server. Someone suggested picking a specific town, because if you leave it up to Luna, it seems to not work. I decided I wanted to dream about a town from Japan so I could see what it looks like after a good long time. I don’t even know what this town name means, but there were beautiful flowers everywhere and tiles laid down to create walkways (something I’ve never been inclined to do myself). It was lovely.

You can talk to the townsfolk, and see the sights, but you can’t actually bring anything back with you. (There were lemon trees, but when I woke up, the lemons weren’t in my pockets anymore…) She had a coffee shop, but it wasn’t open. There was also a police station, and Copper was there. There was also what looked like a lost and found! Although since I knew you couldn’t actually do anything for real, I didn’t bother seeing what the items were. It was mostly fun just to check out the house and see what decorating they did. I’m pretty sure this is what the furniture looks like after you’ve had Cyrus redecorate it with the gems. Rubies here, I suspect. A bit garish, but still kind of cool.

I kept going with the Town Works Projects and neglected my home loan because I wanted to expand the museum. I liked the idea of hosting my own exhibit. I mean, if I can’t fit all my Nintendo crap in my teeny-tiny basement, I can stick it in the museum!

Celeste showed up with the second floor of the museum and while there still doesn’t seem to be any planetarium, there is now a gift shop. There was special museum wallpaper, and an underwater carpet that I got because I’d donated so many fish to the museum. There are four different exhibit areas, but it turns out they cost 10,000 bells. I’ve got debt, woman! I don’t have extra bells to be throwing around willy nilly! Oh, who am I kidding. Come back next week and I’ll probably have set one up!

Now that I’ve read it and read it again, Ben needs to spread his legs and put his hands against the wall because he’s about to get fisked.

Accounts

So you can play your games on another system, but you must use your account. This is good news for households with multiple systems, or people who like to game with their friends.

Multiple accounts on a single console truly isn’t a big deal. You hit the Xbox button, switch users, and off you go. Using a single account on multiple consoles is a pain in the ass. Unless Microsoft has something impressive in mind, like a totally not creepy centralized Kinect database that’ll recognize your face at any console, the precedence is that it requires: 1) getting to the proper menu option, 2) typing in your email and password with the cumbersome controller hunt-and-peck method, 3) waiting for all the data to download, and then 4) hoping it all went off without any problems. This is in no way an improvement over just popping the disc in and playing.

Loans

 It also means you can’t “loan” a game to a friend anymore, as you’d have to give them access to your entire account.[...]For Microsoft, this isn’t a problem. If your friend wants to play the game, they can damn well buy it. [...]They’re not charging you a fee to play used games, because there is no longer such a thing as “used games.” Just licenses.

Ignoring for a moment that the “fee” is “full retail price”, this is a crappy attitude to have. Anecdotally, I wouldn’t have bought the Mass Effect trilogy if a friend hadn’t loaned me the first one to convince me that it was worth my time. Same thing with the Bioshock series. Loaning games are a form of marketing. When a game is loaned, another potential customer is made aware of an IP and a studio, and even if they don’t wind up buying the title that was loaned to them, they become familiar with the quality and will be more likely to buy future games from that IP and/or studio…assuming the game was any good, of course.

Selling back to Microsoft

 Based on this information, it sounds like you’ll be able to “sell” your used games, but no one except Microsoft will buy able to buy them. Microsoft becomes the entity that controls the entirety of the transaction, and no lower-priced tier of “used games” is ever created in this scenario. They simply give you some amount of something in exchange for turning off your license, while anyone who wants to play the game still has to pay full price.

THERE IS NOTHING ABOUT THIS THAT IS NOT TERRIBLE!

In the present market, you as the game-seller have options: you can sell to GameStop or other corporate chain used game store; you can sell the game to a local mom-and-pop game store or even a pawn shop; you can gift or sell the game to a friend; you can sell it at a garage sale; you can put it up for sale on Craigslist, Amazon, or eBay. All of these allow you to get the most bang for your buck. If GameStop is offering you $5 for the title you paid $40 for, you can throw it on Amazon for $10 and see who bites. Or you can decide a friend would benefit more from the game and pass it his/her way to enjoy.

In the Microsoft-only model, they will have no incentive beyond good will to offer you anything but an arbitrary bottom dollar for the title you’re selling. Either take the $3 they offer for the $60 game you bought, or just deal with it, because no one is going to pay you money for a disc that they’ll have to add full retail price to once they get it home.

Piracy

This is good news for a few reasons. The first is that piracy will likely be reduced. If the system phones home every so often to check on your licenses, and there is no way to play a game without that title being authenticated and a license being active, piracy becomes harder. You’ll never be able to stop pirates, not entirely, but if you can make the act of pirating games non-trivial the incidence of piracy will drop. This is a good thing for everyone except those who want to play games for free.

Yes, piracy would indeed be reduced from it’s whopping 4% piracy rate. Making life harder for pirates is not a bad thing, no argument here, but pirating on a console requires no small amount of technical knowledge and often requires both software and hardware hacks. Plus, Microsoft has already shown that they can efficiently track down pirates and nuke their Live! accounts. Given that the One is going to require an almost-always-on connection a nixed Live! account will pretty much kill the console, making piracy too risky for all but the most dedicated thieves. As Ubisoft and EA’s many DRM debacles have shown, it is not worth pissing off the majority of your legitimate consumer base with a broken product just to make life harder for the few that are going to go outside the law…and will likely hack around the DRM in any case.

Pricing

Once that secondary market is removed you can suddenly profit from every copy of your game sold, and as profit margins rise it’s possible we’ll see prices drop. Some stodgy publishers will likely stay with the $60 model, but they’re dead companies walking already. The smart companies will see this opportunity to play with pricing and see what works and what doesn’t.

As profit margins rise, what we’ll see is that successful publishers will make even more money. Consumers are used to paying $40-$60 for a new title, and since that is what the market will bear there is zero incentive for anyone to lower their prices by one cent. If anything, the elimination of the secondary market ensures that prices will remain what they are because you as the consumer have no options. If you’re undecided about Modern Warfare 6.5, your only option is to pay full retail price. So, if your consumers only have the option to pay what you demand and the market has already proven that they’ll pay what you’ve demanded in the past, why on earth would a sensible profit-focused company lower their prices at all, especially since now they don’t have to? It’s more likely that companies will start experimenting with higher prices before lower and see just how far they can push the consumer before they experience backlash.

Shortages, artificial and otherwise

Also, the idea of artificial shortages will go away overnight. The next time a GameStop clerk gives you shit about not pre-ordering, tell him to get stuffed; all you need to do is find a disc to install the game and then buy the license. Microsoft doesn’t even need to host the game files at this point, one person could buy a copy of a game, everyone installs it and buys a license, and suddenly ten people have purchased the game…

Ok, rude. GameStop has some pretty abominable corporate policies and business methodologies, but the clerks are beholden to said policies if they want to keep their jobs. Getting chided for not pre-ordering is tacky, but seriously, what are you doing going into a game store for a title that was just released and not being prepared to walk out empty-handed given how ubiquitous pre-ordering is?

As for “artificial shortages”, that implies that game companies are deliberately holding on to copies of games or that stores deliberately under-order. Game companies and retailers judge profits on the very short term, which is part of why Tomb Raider sold millions in a month and was still deemed a failure. There is literally no benefit to creating an artificial shortage for a product whose profitability can be analyzed in weeks and will take a sharp dip in consumer demand in mere months and even flatline within a year. This is confusing GameStop and EA with Zales, who have a product that has been and will be in demand for centuries. Diamonds are forever; video games have six months.

That’s neither here nor there, though, as acquiring a hot title that’s sold out in stores will STILL require you to track down someone who owns a physical copy of the game. Unless Microsoft goes purely digital (which seems unclear at this point) there will still be shortages, they will just be slightly less onerous than before. Incidentally, one market that this will affect are the gougers who buy a hot holiday title and then sell it for an obscene markup on eBay. Hate all over GameStop all you want, but they still provide a useful service. The gougers deserve to be hung out to dry.

Other digital media

These aren’t crazy ideas. You can’t sell your games on Steam, nor can you buy “used” Steam games. The same with iTunes. And e-books, with some exceptions.

The word that should accompany all of that is “yet.” Managing the transfer of ownership of something that can effortlessly be duplicated and technically doesn’t “exist” except as digital code is still kind of murky. PC users haven’t been able to sell games to stores for a long time now, thanks to piracy, so PC users are pretty well established in the mindset that whatever they buy is theirs forever, for better or for worse. I suspect that this is why there has been little outcry from Steam users about being able to sell back their games or transfer ownership to another user, but just because something is how things “are” doesn’t mean that’s how they “should be” or even “will be.”

As for iTunes and ebooks, what would need to be done would be to find a way of transferring ownership of files in a way that doesn’t cause the labels and publishers to have a stroke about all the evil consumers who are just waiting to steal their products. Barnes & Noble tested the waters by allowing Nook owners to “loan” ebooks to other Nook owners, and if Apple could find a way to allow iTunes users to sell back MP3s you can bet they’d devote an entire wing of the mothership to make it happen.

I realize I’m being incredibly cynical about all of this, and I would love to be wrong and for the Xbox One to wind up being the most magical thing I’ve ever plugged an HDMI cable into. For me, though, this would require placing a lot of faith in the console makers, the game publishers, and the retail stores to have my interests at heart. And I don’t. Not a single one of them.

All three – hardware, publishers, retailers – have at various times and to varying levels of offense treated their consumers as annoyances that they have to suffer through to get to their money. I get that’s how things work in a capitalist society, but it means they get no benefit of the doubt from me until they’ve proven what they’re selling doesn’t screw me over in the end, and right now Microsoft is all but telling me to lube up and pass the poppers.

In addition, they announced that there will be a GTAV Special Edition. This will include the game, a SteelBook with exclusive artwork, a blueprint map of Los Santos and Blaine County, a Special Ability Boost that lets your special ability bar regenerate 25% faster, single player stunt plane trials, additional weapons, bonus outfits, tattoos and more.

Is that not enough for you? Well, then maybe you’d be more interested in the GTAV Collector’s Edition. That includes everything mentioned above in the Special Edition, plus a Security Safety Deposit Bag with logo key, a New Era 9FIFTY Snapback Cap, classic GTA characters you can use within the Grand Theft Auto Online Character Creation System, unique vehicles and a garage. It also comes packaged in a collectible box.

Grand Theft Auto V is due out on September 17. The Special Edition will run you $79.99, and the Collector’s Edition will retail for $149.99. Ouch!

Looking forward to the day when Pokémon and gay gamers alike can get married in every state of the nation. (Though obviously not to each other, because that would be weird!) That’s McGonnigal on the right in the photo, with his husband on the left. Congratulations from all of us here at the GayGamer Castle!

Frank Fuentes

There was a tweet that best sums up how I feel about the event:

When I watch this Xbox conference, I feel like the game industry is embarrassed of itself for being the game industry.

— Emily Rogers (@Emi1yRogers) May 21, 2013

Microsoft spent way more time demoing the Xbox One as an entertainment system and not a gaming console. As a student who works part time and has very little money to spend on video games, this has me concerned that Microsoft only cares about gamers who have a bigger amount of disposable income. Since they didn’t talk about used games and barely talked about actually video games, I was left quite disappointed by the event. I am also quite concerned with the future of gaming.

Chris Eades

I don’t know who decided that videogame consoles are supposed to be home entertainment set-top boxes, but I would like to punch them square in the nuts. It was no big deal when the PlayStation 2 doubled as a DVD player, and I rather appreciated my PS3 making it unnecessary for me to buy a separate Blu-ray player. But I can tell you that I have barely touched the Nintendo TV service since it debuted on the Wii U, and have less than no interest in hooking up my cable box to an Xbox One. If I want to play games, I will play a game. If I want to watch TV or a movie, I will do that. I don’t need to do both at the same time. If I want to look up someone from a movie on the imdb, I will use my phone or tablet. That’s what they’re there for. I don’t even like it when those Xbox notifications pop up telling me a friend has come online while I’m playing a game. What makes them think I want all kinds of other distractions? And packing in a Kinect has me hoping that they seriously considered those of us with tiny apartment living rooms.

I have no interest in sports games, racing games or Call of Duty, so I can’t really say that I’m super-excited by anything they showed in this presentation. I know they’re likely saving the big guns for E3, but would it have killed them to throw us a bone with a brief montage of other genres? I mean, the only other game they showed, Quantum Break, had more live-action footage in the trailer than gameplay! I haven’t yet seen a single game that will convince me to part with my money for an Xbox One or a PS4, so I can’t say which one I will lean towards. Especially since they’ll likely cost quite a bit.  (Although if I’m being totally honest, Dance Central 4 could break me!)

Jesse Cortez

Caught up with the Xbox One news (and lack thereof). I actually have to say I like the look of the console. Its very sleek in my opinion and would fit in very well in any entertainment center.

Thats sort of where my praise of the conference ends. I know that their demographic tends to be the Madden sports crowd, but I was really disappointed that nothing in the whole presentation appealed to me. I think its an interesting idea to bring in the “Live TV” but I really don’t think that will be a sell for the system. Watching TV live is sort of becoming an relic of the past, as people such as myself gravitate toward the Hulu Plus/Netflix/Amazon Instant Video alternatives. Granted I know that those apps will be included with the system, but its just strange that the Live TV is apparently a big deal.

And as far as the Kinect being packaged in with the console, I primarily see that as being a way to navigate the UI. When I got my Kinect, after just a few Dance Central gaming sessions, the only thing I use it for is to pause and play Netflix when walking to the Kitchen to get a snack .  Finally….No backwards compatibility??? WHAT?

Who knows what E3 has in store, and I’m looking forward to finding out, but in my opinion, today was a bust for Microsoft.

 

Jamie M

Whenever I hear that some product “will change everything” I remember to lower my expectations.  I have never watched one of these console launch presentations in its entirety because of that very sort of very see-through, substance-free corporate messaging (that and because they’re usually – let’s be honest – boring).  They strike me as the sort of mission, vision and values statements that are very relevant to boardrooms, but rather disconnected from the consumer – in this case, me.

At this point, both the Xbox One and PS4 sit in suspension in my brain – ideas of consoles, nebulous entities, with little substance to them yet.  I may end up buying one of them; I may just save my pennies and go for a nice PC rig, which I know will have more of the all-in-wonder properties I’d like in a console than console makers have been producing.  (Cable and PVR?  No thanks.  Picture and video editing?  Yes, please!)  Right now, I really don’t know.

I look forward to E3 to see more about the games that PS4 and Xbox One have to offer.  (In all honesty, however, I’ll probably give them until their prices drop to audition for my money.)

 

Sal Mattos

I am already sick and tired of this new console gen and it’s barely begun. In my best RuPaul voice: “Bring…back…my…games!”

I thought the presentation started out well enough: Console sounds powerful, and the media things it can do are all pretty cool sounding but I wish they weren’t the focus. This is a gaming console! All the other stuff like TV and Skype should be cool extras that tip the battle in your favor, not your entire battle strategy. And let’s be honest, picture-in-picture has been done before and there’s a reason people stopped using it. Why would I want to watch a movie and a trailer for another and skype with someone all on one screen? Even my ADD-addled ass would get lost.

This console sounds cool enough, but until I see games I’m just going to jump on the bandwagon and hate it. And when I think of the games they did show, I’m just bored. Call of Duty trailer was nice but then I remembered that it’s Call of Duty and I don’t care. Sports games and racing sims aren’t my cup of tea either, so I was left with nothing. Not that there’s anything wrong with highlighting popular franchises and genres, I’m not so vain that I think all consoles should cater to my own tastes (well…maybe I am), BUT the fact that they didn’t even try to mention any adventure games, or RPGs, or even a shovelware music title….I mean what is Microsoft saying here?What I got is: We don’t care about gamers, we care about the living room (which to be fair we already knew about them). The gamers we do care about are the imaginary straight white males between the ages of 18 and 24 that also magically have enough income to support the high cost of this console, not buying used games, having cable, a big enough living room to use Kinect, etc. etc.

 

Mike Barrett

I understand what Microsoft was going for in this reveal. Their goal is to create the single box that you’ll go to for all of your entertainment needs and finally be the first company to control the entire living room. That’s an enticing proposition, something a lot of companies have their eyes on. Of course, the problem with that is how no one has been able to put together a device with realistic functions and interface options better than just watching something on my TV while fiddling with my phone for text messages and the internet. And the Xbox One is no different, except now I can shout at my television to bring up Internet Explorer. Hooray.I disagree with Wootini, though. The PS2 doubling as a cheap DVD player was a major reason a lot of people, especially families, picked one up in the early 2000s. Same goes for the PS3 as a Blu-ray player that also doubles as a way to keep your kids quiet. There’s a lot of money to be made in opening up a console to new markets through extra tech options, but to put that at the forefront of a presentation speaks volumes about Microsoft’s vision of the next five plus years. And it’s not a gaming centric future, at least not from what we can see now. The paltry handful of games mentioned and shown during the reveal, almost entirely sports and FPS titles, speak to a specific audience that right now buys games in droves. Thus, mentioning Call of Duty and FIFA gives Microsoft the credit they feel they needed to justify the gaming experience they’re offering and the primary market they want. It’s not a bad business decision, it’s just a disappointing one for those of us with different gaming tastes.

Remember how hard it was to find a Wii for years when Nintendo successfully marketed themselves to the then-untapped casual market? It seems like Microsoft is hoping for something similar here. Don’t get me wrong, there will definitely be some killer games that may tempt me into a purchase, but it just sucks to feel left out right now.

Chris Eades

No, Mike, I actually liked the Blu-ray player in the PS3. (The DVD player in the PS2 wasn’t a selling point for me because I already had one of those, but I remember that’s why it sold like gangbusters in Japan) It’s when they try to add on all this other interactive entertainment BS that it drives me up the wall. I feel like the Xbox started by playing games and they slowly added additional features as time went on. And I’m sure that some people love those apps, but I basically just play games and watch Netflix. I was intrigued by Nintendo TV when it was announced, but when it actually launched for the Wii U, I barely touched it. It’ll be interesting to see if Microsoft can find an audience for this kind of feature. Maybe they can. Who knows? I just want a videogame system that plays awesome videogames. That’s the meat. The rest is all gravy.

David Edison

I’m with Frank on that tweet and being generally concerned about elbowing games out of gaming. I don’t need or want another Netflix/Hulu/streaming/HBOGo/

Roku/iTunes content machine. I want the next step forward in console gaming, and it feels like Microsoft has gone out of its way to give me everything but.

It’s officially too late for anyone to “dominate the living room,” although i think that was always a unicorn. The best they can do is give me a targeted experience that I want, with the standard (redundant) multimedia features. Those features – no
matter how cool – won’t win anybody that unicorn, IMHO.

Jesse Cortez

I’m intrigued by your thoughts on the “next step forward in console gaming”. What do you really think that entails? Personally I feel like we are close to that upper limit in pure console “horsepower”. How much better can the graphics in games actually get? I sort of liked the fact that the Wii had limited horsepower because it forced developers to think creatively with games such as MadWorld and De Blob.

Anyway, I think thats why for this next generation and every generation beyond, the consoles feel they NEED to have some thing extra. Something that makes them worth purchasing. I believe thats what Nintendo was thinking with the Wii U GamePad (which I still think is a great idea/console and I’m just waiting for the games to come out). This whole “entertainment experience” that Microsoft is pushing, while not focused on games, I think is their way to stand out from the crowd just like Sony has things such as streaming integration (the Share button).

On top of all that, the consoles do need to deliver on the game front. Wii U is behind on that, but soon to catch up, and I’m sure we will hear more about Sony and Microsofts games at E3. Then I think the real discussion can begin.

Christian Walters

I think more creative use of peripherals – non-sucky iterations of the Kinect, Move, Wii U pad, etc. – should be what they start focusing on, in addition to a lower barrier to entry for indies.

I agree that we’ve about reached the upper limit in horsepower. Neither the One nor the PS4 are any meaningful upgrade over their predecessors, and it won’t be much longer before Nintendo’s consoles are just minor upgrades as well.

Also, they have GOT to get the stick out of their collective asses about the second hand retail market. Microsoft’s little move with manual installs being linked to Live! accounts was nothing but a super-shady stab at them.

David Edison

“Next step forward” is totes wrong-headed bullshit, but it’s still the expectation, be it genuine or self-imposed.  What form it would take is deffo a problem.  I think Share and Wii U (Everything post-Wii, really) are all about desperately and wrongheadedly finding some way to make *gaming* better, not make better games.  Don’t get me wrong, I think that “Own all the living rooms” and “Next step forward” are two really stupid goals any way you dice it.

I think there could definitely be awesome ways that console developers could help make games better – Sony ditching the Cell in favor of a more developer-friendly architecture for PS4 could be a great example of that, if it wasn’t just Sony scrambling to make up for another self-cockblock.  I dunno enough about Wii U to say much.

But in terms of THE HYPE MACHINE! that runs this thing, whatever bullshit they concoct has to either work well enough to sell (Kinect, barely) or not get in the way of developers making good games.  I guess, in terms of the latter, that Microsoft is leading the pack.

I think Share will be cool for people who like that stuff, and ignored by people who don’t, and I’m not sold on the idea of a dedicated button that a dedicated portion of the population will always ignore.

On the other hand, I think the touchpad on the new PS4 controller totally has potential to be “Next step forward” material insofar as it has the potential to not suck, to maybe be cool, and the five of us who bought a Vita have already integrated it into play.  Although I still feel creepy fingering the back of my device…

Agreed that there’s no real discussion until games are a bigger part of the discussion, though.  And not particularly surprised or disappointed that they didn’t do that for the console reveal.

The only thing I’d ask for in terms of horsepower is to keep up with PC gaming, which means making hardware that’s not completely timelocked, and being able to output to my 2560×1440 monitor.  I always play console games on PC because the console version is always equivalent to the Steam version at sub-native res with the lowest graphical settings.

…Not being derped out of the box by a Dell is all I’m asking.  >.<

Gavin Greene

It seems everyone has had the wrong expectations for approaching both Microsoft and Sony’s reveal press conferences. The desire for these companies to have two separate press engagements devoted to pleasing the hardcore gaming community is overzealous. All three console manufacturers have had their one-size-fits-all press demonstrations earlier and earlier with every E3, in an effort to distinguish their news from that of third-party publishers on the show floor and to appeal to a larger media market than what’s around during E3. This year, new hardware is the excuse they’ve needed for years to craft a wholly unique conference for the press at large, your Reuters, Yahoo News, etc. Nintendo’s E3-based reveal of the Wii U last year proved how big of a mis-step it is to try and replicate the cross-demographic, early success of the Wii by narrow-casting it’s coming out party to just the gaming press circuit. If you’re mad that Microsoft didn’t show games with the Xbox One, you have E3 for that exact purpose less than a month away.

But on the topics actually covered. The progression towards a living room set-top box has been a gradual ideal for the industry for generations now, as stagnant price ceilings on hardware and software make developing, marketing, and selling a $400 box with ever-increasing technical requirements an extremely difficult task. To this end, Microsoft continues to play to their earned ESPN niche well, although their push towards live television strikes me as a short-term gain, if anything. Dedicated televised broadcasts aren’t long for this world, with near-universal streaming content availability making TV production an expensive prospect for the future. It made more sense when the Xbox just had a UFC app.

But the big, potentially damning news followed the press event. In a interviews with the press, Phil Harrison outlined a used game plan for the console that is on one hand a perfectly logical extension of business, and in the other a near draconian market crackdown destined to bite the Big M in the ass. Requiring a fee for a used game disc is a practice that is sure to cause tension when Activision wants to give XBL exclusive ‘Call of Duty’ map packs and Gamestop exclusive ‘Call of Duty’ pre-order bonuses. But it’s in the diction and tone that came through in the interview that is emblematic of a corporate culture begging for some fan hate. Proclaiming your plan to be “consistent with the way the world works” comes off as arrogant in this context, but referring to consumer rights as purchasers of physical media as “privileges” is positively grotesque. It makes Adam Orth’s Twitter banter seem quaint.

At the end of the day, I’m doing what I’ve been planning for the past few months. I’m waiting for E3.

David Edison

Hmm.  I understand what you’re saying, Gavin, and it’s certainly thoroughly researched, but I wonder if it isn’t a little glib to decide what expectations are wrong or right based on your understanding of corporate psychology.  I think there’s a world of difference between understanding why a company behaves in a certain way and agreeing to judge them by their own yardstick.  I had expectations that Microsoft would do more than the bare minimum, lowest-common-denominator console reveal.  Those expectations weren’t met, and I wasn’t surprised, but I was still (justifiably, I believe) disappointed.  More to the point, there’s room for discussion about that before E3.

Sure, E3 will come around.  Sure, Microsoft wants a one-size-fits all press conference.  What I’m reading here is that it didn’t seem to fit that great for a lot of us.  I’m not “mad,” I’m disappointed that Microsoft continues the trend of trending games out of gaming device reveals.  Again, understanding why and abiding by it are two different functions.  Ghettoing your main product until an industry conference may make sense to you – it makes sense to me – but it’s still frustrating, and there is merit in the discussion.  Waiting till E3 is indeed the only possible way to get answers about games… I’m just not sure that the emperor is all that entitled to be naked for a month without mention.

I agree with Jesse about Kinect – if I see it work one day in my own living room I’ll reassess, but until then it has failed to capture my imagination or more than a few strained hours of play time.  The Big 3′s hatred of used games is definitely not new, and I’m not surprised to see them locking down their new system – but I worry that the secondary market for games is more important to the ecosystem than they seem to believe.  Even if not, games will be less available to younger and less-rich gamers, which doesn’t exactly fill me with joy.

I’m pretty happy with the One.  I don’t know enough about it not to be.  Vague specs, ugly box, some cool stuff, some disappointing stuff, no games.  I get their reasoning, but if the biggest take-away from their console reveal is that we need to wait until another reveal to talk about it, I feel justified in rolling my eyes.

Sam Einhorn

The most exciting part was the announcement of a Spielberg-driven, live action Halo TV series. That’s the sort of thing that should be exciting at a TV upfront, not a game console reveal. I get that each console wants to be the only piece of technology in your living room, but I really don’t think anyone at ANY of these companies seems to have any idea who their audience is for an event like this.

So I’m ho hum on it, but it was day one. The tech specs look nice, I actually kind of like the design, and I AM a person who uses my XBox as a media center, though not for live TV. I am randomly excited for the HDMI-in port, which may give you an idea of where my brain was for the reveal.

I prefer XBoxes over Playstations, for a few reasons, and as long as the Xbox One price isn’t prohibitive, I can’t see myself running out to get/build a gaming PC to play the games I know I’ll want to play. I imagine I won’t buy it at launch, but I’ll get it eventually.

Which is all to say that a disappointing reveal, which it was, won’t really stop me from purchasing the system.

Sal Mattos

I agree with Sam that at the end of the day I probably will still get this console. Assuming the games come (and they will, we’re all just a bunch of impatient journalists) the console will sell. But then I think about the Wii U and the games still haven’t come and suddenly I’m worried for the other two. Granted Nintendo is a weirdo, but nonetheless a valid concern when you consider how long it takes to make games these days. Both the PS4 and Xbox One better have some damn good launch titles actually AT launch.

The more I think about the presentation Microsoft made the more frustrated I am with it not necessarily because of the console itself but because of the overall vibe that was given. There were all of two women present, neither of whom actually talked about a game or piece of tech but rather existed solely to introduce Steven Spielberg.

The press conference’s opening video featured people of all different sorts talking about being gamer, and I thought: “Here we go, Microsoft is gonna make an effort to diversify and open the gates a little bit.” How foolish I was.

Two women on stage who didn’t even get to talk about any games or tech. One person of color. Only games shown were sports titles, a racing game, and a first person shooter.

Maybe my perception of change in the gaming industry is skewed because I’m privileged to more behind the scenes information and networking than most but watching the panel I felt like I was in 2006 again.

David Edison

One more thought: I think the best thing to point at to describe my frustrations with this reveal is anecdotal.

Did y’all catch/read about the part where, when referencing always-on connection rumors, a Microsoft exec said “Gamers can calm down.”

That’s symptomatic of the disdain everyone in the food chain – from CEOs to the media – seems to have for the consumer.  To me that says, “Gamers are people whose excitement is negative.  We want OTHER people to be excited about our game system.  But not you.  You are a problem who should be quiet and stop internetting all the time.”

Christian Walters

Three key features about games on the Xbox One that Wired discovered:

1. A hard drive install will be mandatory for all games
2. An installed game will be linked to a single Live! account
3. A fee will be required to link a game to additional accounts

WTF?

No, seriously Microsoft, what the fuck?

In no other form of media is the consumer penalized for buying used. Movies and CDs aren’t tied to single players or accounts (though now that the Xbox One plays Blu-Ray, I wonder if any movie studios will try to make them behave like the games), nor should they be; the idea is absurd on its face. This is a shallow money-grab, plain and simple, implemented for the sole purpose of attacking the second-hand market. This is just not even subtle. It’s a great big ol’ middle finger to all second-hand retailers (GameStop), rental services (GameFly), and people who decide they don’t want a game any more or want to share it with a friend (you, me, and damn near everyone). And for what purpose? To appease publishers who blame second-hand sales for financial shortfalls rather than addressing their own personal budget management problems and the quality of games they produce? Screw that. Or maybe it’s to address piracy, because that’s such a huge problem in the console arena. Never mind that pirating console games requires rather technical knowledge in regards to ripping and burning, and necessitates actual hardware modifications that will void the warranty and possibly brick your console, making it the bailiwick of only the truly dedicated pirates. (Note: The Wii and PS1 are exempt from the previous statement as they actually do/did have a severe  piracy problem).

This will backfire. Assuming Microsoft doesn’t abandon this boondoggle of an idea in response to consumer backlash, I anticipate the average consumer will  avoid the console altogether in favor of the PS4. Given that these consoles are typically sold at a loss, lackluster sales would be devastating and the used game penalties would come nowhere close to compensating for the financial losses. The non-average consumer – i.e. hackers and pirates – are probably already salivating at the chance to get their hands on the console to discover just how much work it will take to keep the console from dialing home and allow players to bypass the penalty fee altogether. Since consumers generally don’t enjoy being abused, it would not surprise me in the slightest if modded Xbox One consoles quickly become as ubiquitous as modded PS1s. And none of this is even touching the can of worms that is gamers who don’t or can’t go online to get everything registered in the first place.

I have to say, this is the first console generation ever where I have not cared about any of the contenders. The Wii U isn’t even on my radar, the PS4 didn’t impress me, and now the Xbox One has earned my explicit disapproval. There’s still a lot of time between now and when the consoles release at Christmas (let’s be honest, “late 2013″ =  Christmas) to make some minor changes, and hopefully this terrible idea will be one of them, but I’m thinking I just may transition back to being a PC gamer. Viva la Steam.

Jesse Gmitro

I’ve always found Kinect to walk that fine line between gimmicky and useless – delays in user input, no appealing titles, etc. – and for me, it’s non-gaming functions are all that inspires anything other than derision. Nonetheless, voice control in its forthcoming incarnation seems like it could be useful: in particular, using verbal commands to navigate television stations – fumbling through 600 different channels has long been a pet annoyance – could provide the kind of convenience that would aid the Xbox One in its war for our living rooms.

Speaking of wars, one would be remiss in failing to mention the potential jihad against used games, as detailed in an article posted on Forbes, which claims that the company will be charging an “unlock” fee for using a game on a different Xbox One. (http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/05/22/microsoft-answers-xbox-one-questions-used-games-always-on-and-more/) Nonetheless, things are not yet set in stone: Polygon reports that the prospective fee is nothing more than a “potential” feature of their strategy – something I hope will not come to fruition. (http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/21/4353538/xbox-one-perform-recurring-online-checks-even-for-offline-play) I understand that it’s in their own interests to crack down on those in the market – those cheap jerks who probably buy used cars and CDs, thus leaving musicians and auto workers to subside on salt & pepper sandwiches – and if Microsoft were to decide to go that route, talking points will undoubtedly pour out of its PR department. Nonetheless, I’m not enough of a masochist to defend the punishing of consumer choice, particularly for those in lower income brackets – never mind people who have ever entertained the idea of lending a game to a friend.

As for specter of “always online,” Microsoft’s Phil Harrison told Kotaku that the game will need to be to Microsoft’s servers about “once every 24 hours.” (http://kotaku.com/xbox-one-does-require-internet-connection-cant-play-o-509164109) Apparently this is to aid their Xbox Live services. It’s not too much of an issue – even my legendarily awful internet connection can shoot a couple megabytes across the cyberscape every few hours – but I’m curious to see if Microsoft has plans to give some recourse to those without stable internet access. As for the HDD drive, I’ve read scattered criticism that Microsoft didn’t opt for a SSD, and honestly, i think that’s a bit unfair. Yes, mandatory installation is a drag – one of the things that swayed me away from the PS3 is that installation and managing hard drive space is the mother of all bores – but it’s a consequence of our age. Moreover, one should keep in mind that SSDs are, for the most part, still a relatively new development in the realm of computing. Tiered pricing might be a good idea, and perhaps the HDD will be outright abandoned in the future – I could see a “slim” version including SSD, once the price goes down – but in the short term, it’s a choice between listening to people cry about the limitations of HDD, or listening to people cry about the price point. All things considered, I think Microsoft made the right call.

Despite the above grievances, I’ve yet to form a full impression of Microsoft’s magic rectangle – such things will have to wait for subsequent revelations. Used games wold be a potential deal-breaker, while Kinect’s non-gaming functions help to validate its existence. Plus, should the console earn my ire, there’s always the sweet satisfaction of ordering it around like the mechanical dog that, as per the voice control demonstration, it clearly is.

“Xbox, we do not sh*t on the floor in this house. Go to your shame corner, Xbox.”

 

Sal Mattos

Just as Frank did, I’m going to reference a tweet that I think tells a lot about the conference. It’s from one of our fave’s here at GayGamer, current skinhead daddy Adam Sessler:

The cheering in the audience is not coming from the press…

— Adam Sessler (@AdamSessler) May 21, 2013

I think that’s actually quite telling. The people that should presumably be the excited ones…well, aren’t.

I do have some positive things to say: I think Xbox One is a good name. I think the features they showed were interesting, even if they got more spotlight than they deserved (seriously, we get it, fantasy sports on your tv). I completely get why Microsoft did what they did but they need to stop pretending that they can make unicorns happen. They need to remember that before anything else people will hear the name “Xbox” and think “video game console”. They won’t think bluray player, they won’t think cable box, they won’t think skype machine, they will think CONSOLE. I fully admit that I use my Xbox 360 for Netflix more than anything else these days, but I sure as hell didn’t buy it for that reason.

I bought it to play Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball 2. Obviously.

Jesse Cortez

Moral of the story:
If this were Grindr, and the Xbox One hit me up with “Hi ”, I’d ask for more pics (games) until I make an investment of my time….

David Edison

Damnit, y’all keep saying smart things that make me wanna say other things.  (Dih*SKUSH*un!)

I think it’s super apt to point out the then->now race.  It was much the same this time during the last cycle, when we all got so sick of the phrase “next-gen” that we stopped using it.  It was as much a press revolt as a reader revolt, and it seems just as silly this time around.  But like last cycle’s PS2-love, it occurs to me that this cycle risks being the first time that a next-gen system leaves a large portion of its audience behind: can anyone see younger, less-affluent gamers staying within the 360/PS3 ecosystem where used games and existing game libraries are still relevant?  Iunno if I can see that, just throwing it out there.

One Box to Rule Them All.  Totally a corporate fantasy.  That said, I too got my only xbox-one-nerd-boner from the HDMI passthrough.  Playing nice with my other tech is a step in a helpful direction.  Any word about daisychaining a PS4 into that passthrough and having a single-input omnisystem?  Or am I just doing nerdporn now?

Grindr?  Child.  If this were Craigslist, Microsoft’d be all HOT NEW CONSOLE ISO PERFECT RICH MUTE TOP, NO PICS SO DON’T ASK. (NO USED GAMES OR FATTIES)

 

The collection features four full PSN games: The third-person adventure When Vikings Attack!, the musical platformer Sound Shapes, the animal survival adventure Tokyo Jungle, and the strategy game Fat Princess.

I’ve been tempted to check out Tokyo Jungle for a while, and Sound Shapes looks intriguing, but I’m not sure it’s worth picking up the bundle just for two games. Although if you don’t have any of these, Best of PlayStation Network, Vol. 1 will cost you $39.99, which is technically $15 less than you’d pay downloading all four of them from the PSN. (And presumably, if this collection does well, a Vol. 2 will be on the way soon enough… wonder what that one might contain?)

Such is the case of Caine, a boy whose story is dismally common in the unpleasantness that is childhood. Indeed, he has been subjected to verbal and physical abuse from fellow students, due to that most egregious of worldly wrongs: being different. Exacerbating matters is the fact that Caine has two moms, making him a natural target for those who have grown up with what we will charitably call the “traditional values” mentality. In order to provide some respite from the daily harassment. In his words, “gaming actually really helps me a lot to calm down and get out of the troubling parts of my life.”

Yet despite this outlet, the reality of bullying remains. Rather than turning to violence or hiding his experiences, our stalwart Texan has decided to speak out not only to The Bully Project; he decided to address the superintendent directly. So check out the video, and as always, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below!

via upworthy.com

When Dan went, “The very basic aim that makes a game a game is choice, so if you take the choice away then what’s the flaming point?” I damn near stood and clapped. Well effing said. Dan has now firmly cemented himself a member of an ever growing queer-positive rap world,  joining the likes of queer and allied artists Macklemore, Mykki Blanco, and Le1f. Times are a changin’ in the hip-hop and nerd worlds, both usually seen as homophobic bastions, and it’s artists like Dan Bull that are helping to bridge the gap between them as well as the gays.

To keep up with Dan Bull be sure to check out and subscribe to his YouTube channel. If you like what you hear you can check out his albums on iTunes, and of course give him a follow on Twitter @itsdanbull and a like on Facebook.

He made us a song! Seems the least we could do.

Developed by 5th Cell, Scribblenauts Unmasked has Maxwell on a fun quest through the DC Universe interacting with all the DC super heroes and villains. New puzzles called Heroic Feats are randomly generated every time you play to help with replayability. And of course, the series’ creativity seems to be in full effect in this game.

“Fans of both DC Comics and Scribblenauts can really let their imaginations run wild with the Super Hero Creator in Scribblenauts Unmasked,” said Jeremiah Slaczka, C.E.O. and Creative Director of 5TH Cell.  “Players will be challenged to craft new and never-before-seen characters such as Wonder Joker or Bane Lantern and use them to solve puzzles or share them with friends.”

Scribblenauts Unmasked will be available this fall  on the Nintendo 3DS, but the Wii U and PC versions will include the ability to create your own super hero or villain and sharing your creations with the community while downloading others. Personally, this is one of the first titles I’m going to be buying the Wii U version of. The GamePad touch screen will be perfect for interacting with the game, with the bonus of being able to create your own heroes! The game is supposed to contain all the DC super heroes ever, so my inner comic geek is looking forward to trying to stump it! (Or trying to use only female characters to solve the puzzles and see how far you can get) Sadly, judging from the screenshots, they’re using the New 52 designs… It would be awesome if the game included the classic costumes so I wouldn’t have to look at those ugly ones!