Cassius

I work at EA Montreal and I truly love my job and wouldn't go anywhere else.

Mmmmh, if this WiiCade takes off, you can expect paying versions of this popping up everywhere within a few months.

I must add that I was sad when I learned that Wii News, Wii Forecast and Wii Opera are all delayed.

I also came up with some sort of issue;
You Wii card will come with 2000wii points and 1 N64 game is 1000wii points meaning that with a Wii card you can buy up to two N64 games max.

Now, those Wii Points have all of a sudden become very precious since we can not really foresee what will come out on the Wii Shop Channel so I will retain myself from buying "cool" old titles only to buy the "awesome" old titles for fear or wasting my points only to find out the week after that an even cooler game came out which will leave me to buy more points. Bottom line is, it would be nice to have some sort of channel which would list what is coming soon.

VC Soon:
Week of XX December 2006
-Game 1 | System
-Game 2 | System
etc.

That way you can plan ahead with your points or buy more points for the coming week...

I truly hope this feature will be integrated or is already present for it would generate alot more profit.

I am pretty sure I am speaking for everyone when I say we just can't wait until GoldenEye, Perfect Dark and Ocarina of Time come out on the VC. Well wouldn't it be nice to get a date 3 weeks in advance?

Will be there on Saturday, I'm showing off a game we built at school in the Academic area for the NAD Centre.

Hey, I'm going. I'll actually be at the Centre NAD booth showing off a game level we made. Free Pass to show off the shit we did at school. Woot! It's sad our Free Pass won't get us to cut the Wii waiting line though. :(

The day after the EB Games pre-orders came I went to Gamebuzz a store here in Montreal. They offered me a 2 way deal with my Wii pre-order; either I pay an extra 50$ on the Wii and I get off clean or I buy 4 games and 2 accessories with it. At first I thought this stupid and wanted to pay an extra 50$ but then I thought; Hell, I wanna buy those 4 games anyways. So in the end, I'll walk in for a wii and 4 games and 2 accessories on the 19th.

also, even though they say there should be enough Wii's on the 19th, you never really know what might happen hence why I'd rather get a pre-order just to secure my console. On the other hand, I'm not hardcore enough to go wait a few hours. The solution came up easy: buy 4 games and 2 accessories. Nobody waited in line to get those preorders because your Wii ends up costing like 600$cdn so I walked in during the day and on the 19th, I'll walk in during the day. No wait time at all. Just the way I want it.

Novacharged, you little kid you made me laugh quite alot.

You reminded me of the Sony Fanboy on GameSpot Radio:
http://web.utk.edu/~ascott9/SonyFanboy.mp3

I actually work very near Dawson College and knew quite a few students from over there. What happened is an act that needs to be classified as a murderous act by a person that had specific motives and needs. Unfortunately for the sake of many, Medias need a large audience and to reach so they need larger subjects. Mentionning the killer was dressed in black, was a gothic and was listenning to metal music as well as Godsmack and on top of that was playing violent video games will attract the public's attention much more than if they said: The killer was mentally hurt and needed some help. It is very unfortunate but most mass mediums need to make money and to do so they need to sell their products. I spent two years researching on the Columbine killers to make two short movies that attempt to explore the killer's mind before and during his actions and I simply came up with the following: his surroundings will make him do that. It's a very large explanation and yet it clearly states that if the Dawson killer had been raised another way he would have probably never done such an act. Unfortunately it is impossible to effectively predict such acts by a killer's family thus rendering any attempt of explanation in hope of correcting the problem, null.

I am a gamer, I love Grand Theft Auto and other violent game, I am in my mid-twenties, I own firearms and love sports shooting, I hate hunting, I was in the military, I listen to heavy rock music and yet I would never attempt any of those acts. Any outside influence is futile because it can't shape your mind the way its set. It can give you ideas but if you are not disposed it will remain useless. The only thing that can change your mind is your direct surrounding, the people that raise you or mis-raise you. It also comes down to the ever-lasting question of : Are we fundamentaly evil or good? Do we come to life with the need to kill or do we develop it with our direct surrounding?

In 1990, Television was apparently too violent for kids, when games became widely known and used, Television stopped being violent and Games became violent. The medias just need attention so they can make money and they will use whatever is au gout du jour. If tommorow games are suddenly unused by everyone the media will find something else that will generate violence simply because they need to feed the average joe public and in the meantime fill their pockets.

Same goes with the Fear of Piracy. Back in the 80's and 90's The movie corporations were saying that VHS will kill the movie industry. It didn't do a small wave. Now that we have internet and filesharing, all of a sudden VHS will not kill the movie industry but Internet will!

Same old cycle over and over again. What can we do in the end? Focus on listening to the people surrounding us and stop listening to the crap the mass medias are trying to feed us.

Very well animated, you can almost believe it's in-game.

Coke's subsidiary (the guys who did that) actually grabbed the only thing missing to GTA; good graphics.

and why is it that everytime someone speaks of Coke another dude must complain that Pepsi is better?

This is a Coka-Cola commercial and is not related to pepsi in any way.

to ZeroCorpse,
I must agree with you on the copy protection problem. As an example, the game Earth 2160 released on Steam had a major problem (now fixed) that couldn't let anyone play and other reported problems of activation keys not working are scattered here and there while a pirated version of Earth 2160 will work instantly.

The gaming industry has taken a considerable shift once the MPAA and RIAA complained of the supposed "loss" in profit in music and film and so game copy protection became more and more invasive (see Starforce).

Steam with its authentication system attempted to build something different from the crappy standard copy protection (SecuRom mostly) yet it is not perfect.

In my opinion, I strongly believe copy protection should be abandonne since it is not stopping pirated games, you can still get Half-Life 2 easily and get its updates easily for free. There are numerous ways to emulate Steam or to emulate any other copy protection or to simply disable them. In example, the game Prey was available throughout internet nearly 2 weeks before its release and still Prey is selling considerably good. Developers know the pirated world known as the Scene is a rather relatively good way to get your game known + get feedback on features and bugs. Publishers however tend to go with political opinions.

Finally, my above comment was to specifically talk about Steam + Independant developers. Your reaction to my comment seems to be targetted at protection in general. SecuRom protection won't let you publish your game as Steam will. Let it be a bad authentication system if you wish yet you can still easily get your game / mod on Steam's storefront. You can distribute it for free or you can even simply sell it. That's where the goods are. Create a similar system and kill the authentication module and you've got the perfect auto-publisher non complaining with no pressure and no stupid content constraint. No internal advertisement and no cutout. You have the dream publisher. That's where I'm putting my money.

Gaming on PC is still one of the strongest avenue. It has ALOT of space for home made expansion and development while on a console game you got what you got and your only option might be online updates. Good PC gamers know best and don't buy an HP, they build it up by themselves or get a small shop to do it. My PC is extremely silent yet it has multiple fans and that is because Antec makes good cases but alas that doesn't come in an HP Compaq PC and that is where the problem lies; if the pc gaming population was aware that clones are the best computers, developers would not flock on to consoles because the outcome of a PC is just so grand for developers and gamers.

Finally, the PC has its indie way; Steam. I'm not saying Steam is the only way but by having similar systems like Steam we can easily distribute indie games and for a low cost too. For a recent example, the game The Ship which was just released on Steam is an indie game made by newcomers Outerlight and it's 20$. The Steam system gives developers a pseudo-publisher and even if needed a full game engine with the world's best physics engine; all you need is a coder and some artists. Steam opens doors for indie devs to create new genres and new styles because they are not limited anymore; they have the freedom and the tools to realize their coolest gaming fantasies and that is where I personally see the future of pc gaming.

With the current Steam system, for small time developers to have their game listed next to Half-Life 2 or other big titles means alot of media coverage without doing much of a big job. It goes same way for big games such as Dark Messiah which will be released on Steam; it already gives out so many options; The possibility to get a discount, the possibility to play it the minute it's released because you will have pre-loaded it and the possibility to cut the install + plus protection and finally the possibility to have your game instantly updated without you doing anything.

In other words, Steam offers big and small developers an excellent way to get your games known and spread and it is with systems similar to Steam that we will see pc gaming evolve to the next level where the fun factor is back to priority number 1.