1. Nintendo fans are the most well represented online, yet Nintendo is a distant third.
This mainly applies to Australia and Australian sites with forums, but think about it for a minute. How many Nintendo fanboys do you come across when you're reading a forum? They're quite possibly the best represented fanboy posse, yet the Australian Gamecube user base is still under 100,000 units (to my knowledge, correct me if I am wrong). Do these fans ever buy any games, or do they have to wait for their parents to buy their games for them at birthdays and Christmas? Surely with such a dedicated fan base, Nintendo should be raking in the cash.
What about the 1 million PS2 and 400,000 Xbox owners in this country? How come they aren't better represented? Is it because the docile masses that are responsible for lining the pockets of game companies (because we gaming fans certainly don't account for much) are too afraid/inept to either come online, or journey outside of the official Playstation 2/Xbox forums? Who knows, and who cares? I already have a hard enough time trying to find a person to have an intelligent gaming based conversation with and I don't really feel like wading through more morons.
2. Importing is great
Two weeks ago I walked into my local EB with a wad of cash and a desire for a new game to play. Though I found some decent deals in the second hand section, I find the price of new games in this country to be obscene.
Since the great rise of the Australian dollar versus the Greenback, there hasn't been a better time for importing. Just consider this for a second. A US Gamecube costs $US99. That's $130, as opposed to the going rate of $199.95 for a PAL Gamecube. A Gamecube game in the US ranges from $US19.99 to $US49.99. That's $26.30 to $65.80. A Gamecube game in Australia costs $49.95 to $99.95. Are you beginning to see a pattern emerge? Importing is loads cheaper, even after shipping expenses. (XE.com's Universal Currency Converter provides the conversions)
Personally, I think it's time we sent a message to publishers and distributors in Australia. I will be doing my darndest to avoid paying more than $70 for a game this year, and most of you should too. Keep your eyes on the Australian Gaming Bargains article, and look for bargains wherever you can, and don't be afraid to share them with your fellow humans.
3. The Australian GBA market sucks
This ties in with the previous rant. A GBA title costs between $69.95 and $89.95 in Australia ($US19.99 to $34.99 in the US, meaning $26.30 to $46 in our dollars). The low attach rate of GBA software would reflect that this price point is too high, as there are less than two games sold for every GBA available in Australia (this is older data, newer data would be appreciated). GBA market share at Christmas was a mere 8.5% (with a 120% increase over November, thanks to Inform for the data) in Australia, whereas the system completely dominated the Japanese and American markets.
Surely a lower price point on GBA software would lead to better sales on games. I know that my friends and I would be more willing to experiment with GBA titles if they were at a more impulsive price point, and I'm sure the average person thinks the same way.
4. Magazine exclusives are a pain in the arse
Capcom held their annual Gamer's Day in the USA last week, and showed off brand new Resident Evil 4 footage. Every American gaming journalist is saying it looks awesome, and it's their most wanted game, but they cannot elaborate on how great it is because a magazine bought the scoop, and there's now a non disclosure agreement on details concerning Resident Evil 4 until the magazine has been released.
I should also say that those American journalists are evil for making me excited too. Excitement often leads to disappointment.
Surely the most important thing to a games company is getting wide exposure on their upcoming titles, and the Internet is a much more efficient way of doing this than magazines. Magazine sales are dwindling, while web numbers are increasing. It's all a desperate attempt by magazines to temporarily delay the inevitable.
5. Those review writers who don't show their face online are often wise to do so.
You cannot possibly imagine how I would love to berate Kevin Cheung for a variety of his questionable scores over the years. Of course, I would conduct such a discussion in a professional and high brow manner. The majority, of course, would want the blood of any reviewer that dared to challenge their preconceived notion of what each game should score.
6. Sega needs to make Streets of Rage 4.
When someone gave me a link to the homebrew effort Beats of Rage over the weekend, it lead me onto a search for homebrew Streets of Rage remake efforts and hacks of the existing versions. It also gave me a painful reminder of the Tokyopia article on what happened to the series.
A team of Sega developers including Yuzo Koshiro and his sister Ayano (music and art design from previous Streets of Rage efforts) took a presentation of a playable networked demo of Streets of Rage 4 to Sega of Japan, who then sent it on to Sega of America to get development approval. Sega of America rejected the plan, instead going on to make plans to produce "great" gems such as Blue Stinger. Videos at Tokyopia aren of a very early demo version of what would have been Streets of Rage 4.
I love you
7. Someone is making a Rocky sequel.
I'm really chuffed. Rage went bankrupt just when they appeared to have gotten something right. Though it initially appeared that Rocky had bombed, the game went on to do very well at a budget price, and thus enough interest has been conjured up to justify a sequel. Unfortunately, we have absolutely no information on what the new Rocky game will entail, and we don't even know who is developing it. All that we know is that Rocky vs. the World is the title of the game.
While Rocky was a great game (placing 2nd in our Top 5 Xbox games), but there was definitely room for improvement. I for one will be rather upset if Eye of the Tiger is left out for a second time, considering that the song is synonymous with the series. God knows that Survivor could use the royalties.
I must break you.....again
8. This year has a great line-up of games, but...
They're almost all in the bloody fourth quarter again. Fable, Halo 2, Metroid Prime 2, GTA 5, Gran Turismo 4, Metal Gear Solid 3 and DOOM 3 - all bound to be great games, all competing for that #1 spot at Christmas, while the rest of the year is virtually dry, with the exception of a handful of titles.
Many rants and editorials on sites in the last few weeks have detailed the problem of shipping at Christmas. Any of those above titles could easily release any time in the year and achieve great sales, but the publishers still want them to be released at Christmas. The problem with Christmas is that great titles can easily be overshadowed and lost in the glut of software, and there's a drought in the middle months of the year. Surely a few developers saw how well The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and Knights of the Old Republic did last year with their mid year releases.
There's handful of good titles (Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, Spider-man 2, Harvest Moon, Splinter Cell 2, Starcraft Ghost, Half-Life 2 and more) that are due before the last quarter, but I get the feeling I either won't be playing many games this year, or I will be clearing out my illustrious backlog.
9. Performance enhancing drugs in professional game playing contests?
Think about it for a second. I used to be a big fan of the Half-Life mod, Day of Defeat when it was in its 1.3b incarnation. I used to venture to my friends' house in Ashgrove every couple of weeks with my PC in tow, and play hours upon hours of games online. After some time I began to refine my skills, see where my game needed improvement, configure a more solid playing strategy, and so on. One other thing I used to do was load up on guarana and caffeine, thanks to a variety of deals at the stores around the Waterworks Road area. Playing Half-Life after 4 cans of V and two Viking bars really improves your game, right up to the point where people will accuse you of cheating via Aim bots or Auto Aim.
This got me thinking about professional competitions. They're giving out hundreds of thousands of dollars to these guys, but they never bother to check levels of caffeine or things like that. There are many types of stimulants freely available on the market that can assist in game performance - caffeine and nicotine being the most common. Try playing a bunch of games after a can of Red Bull, and you'll begin to see my point.
Makes you better at games
10. People like to hype games more than they like to play them.
People can spend as much as a year anticipating the release of a game, but seldom will you see them talking about a game for a year after its release. Hype is poison, but looking at the traffic that our previews are getting, it's an addictive poison. Obviously, gaming fans have a hard time containing their excitement when it comes to games being released, but some gaming companies can be real sluts when it comes to publicity.
My solution? I think if a company has a really high profile game coming out that they know is going to be great, they should remain mum about it until a few months before release. That gives the people enough time to get excited about a game, but not to dangerous levels. Such things have happened in history, and the games have been successful, but it's not exactly common place.
Well, that raps it up for my 10 random thoughts. Stay tuned to PALGN, and give me reason to continue contributing to the site, and all will be well.
The views expressed by Matt Keller in the Easy Mode editorial are his own, and are not indicative of the views of the PAL Gaming Network.
for pc its a minigame thought with 3d graphics and its called RAGE 
ive played the trial
Loading...
