Friday, September 9, 2005

Sayonara bitches? o_O

So, I'm not sure who of you reads theOtaku.com's front page, but myOtaku was recently featured as #1 site on G4's Filter program. Since the G4/TechTV merger, we haven't been getting the channel in Australia (which is probably a good thing, as far as I've heard). Nevertheless, being featured on television (and at #1 position, no less) is pretty cool. More than anything, I think it tells us that in some way, we're moving in the right direction. I have seen the footage of this show, but I'm not allowed to link to it right now, due to bandwidth issues. However, I might be able to upload it to my own space and link to it from there, via my blog (and since much fewer people visit this page than the front page of the site, it might be doable). So yeah, hopefully soon you will get to see the clip, it's quite cool, except that the host is highly obnoxious. Anyway, I am glad that the weather here is finally warming up again. Apparently our winter was the warmest in 84 years. That's so odd, because it felt incredibly cold to me. Oh well. I am hoping that my family will go down to Phillip Island again within the next few weeks. We normally go once a year and I always enjoy it. So far this year though, we have not yet been. I hope that my parents can both find the time to go. I also discovered that the domain name I was wanting (anabiosis.com) is taken. I had done a search on this using Telstra's domain finder tool a while ago, but either something was wrong with that, or it was registered since then. In that case though, I must have done the search longer ago than I'd thought. So it means that I'll have to come up with something else. I wish that I had not been so preoccupied - the more I think about it, the more appropriate it seems. Blah. Back to the drawing board, I guess. I have also been talking with Desbreko a little bit about the QKT site. I'm getting ready to begin work on that and hopefully it shouldn't take too long to put together. I expect it to be reasonably simple, except that over time, it will contain more and more information. Obviously it will contain data on all the guild members and so on. But I am thinking that it would be a great place to include some resources on Guild Wars itself. For example, little walkthroughs, or character builds, or tips for players. Those sorts of things would be great. And I know that Desbreko has a lot of experience writing that type of thing. In fact, when we were working on ShineGet together a while ago, I remember being highly impressed by his very detailed and well-written walkthroughs. And Deb seems to enjoy writing articles like that, which also seems to be reflected in the quality of his work. So, it will be great to get that stuff rolling. I am really pleased with the guild so far and the new guest system might become pretty useful, as I know that there are people who want to join us on Guild-related activities, but who are members of other guilds. Sammy: Yeah, I'm not sure how widely it was actually read, other than some people jumping in and out. I think mostly it's fun for the actual participants. But then again, I'm not entirely sure which events are better for non-participants. Survivor might be a good one, though. SugarCone: Okay, but that's not quite correct. PS3 will have a Blu-ray drive, yep. But Xbox 360 will have a dual-layer DVD drive. J Allard recently pretty much killed any talk of including HD-DVD in the system, either now or as a future upgrade. As for Sony coming out on top, that's simply something you should not say with absolute certainty. This is the first generation where Sony have started to make some big mistakes - and where they have far more serious and dangerous competition. If Sony come out on top with the same market share as last time, I will genuinely be surprised. If they come out with more market share but their competitors are closer, that'll seem more realistic. But there's a strong possibility for Sony's dominance to be killed off in a significant way. In this case, it's important to understand the history of the industry - the same thing was said about Nintendo in the 8 and 16-bit generations. SunfallE: That's true. In the early stages, most gamers will not know the difference. The differences will largely depend on how different companies make use of these technologies. But also, any kind of prolonged war with these formats would not be good. It would mean lots of confusion and wasted money for consumers. Sara: Me too. My hope is that we can have some sort of variety to these things, so that we are not always attracting the same people each time. indifference: Yeah, these things do eventually sort themselves out. Hopefully it won't come at the expense of consumers though. Aaryanna: You're very right there. It's taken so long for Sony to make a PlayStation 2 model without fundamental disc reading problems, afterall. Still, I guess it's the same with anything. The very first DVD players were slower and more troublesome too. John: Well, I personally care because I follow the industry. It's the same as how a comic book fan would care if there were major changes coming along for that industry. More broadly, it can be said that they're "just video games", but the industry is now much larger than the film industry. So, this type of issue has an impact that goes well beyond enthusiasts. Also, even if you are someone who does not play video games, this format situation will still impact you. If you ever buy movies or ever use any computer medium at all (like CDs or DVDs), this type of thing will have a direct impact. In a real way, it can affect both the type of content you get as well as the cost of that content. So I am interested more as an enthusiast, but there are repercussions that go well beyond the game industry itself. choku: Thank you for commenting anyway! ~_^ Baronness: That's true, but there will always be people like that. There are people like that who argue over what forum or what site is better, too. However (and thankfully), there are a lot of level-headed people and people involved directly in the industry, who actually want to see the best possible outcome. Like all things though, both of these formats have advantages and drawbacks. I think it's mostly just a case of waiting and seeing who will come out on top.

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