Oh snap! NHL 10 came out today. Which means, if you’re a decent human being like me, you’re going to do two things. First you’re going to buy it. And then you’re going to take run after run at Sidney Crosby. It’s not that I want to mercilessly paralyze him in the game forever. I mean, that’d be cool and all. But I’d settle for knocking him over and tearing a shoulder-socket out or something. It’s going to be therapeutic. I’ve been suffering night terrors since the little bitch won the Stanley Cup like three months ago.

So do your part. Buy the game, choose your favorite team, and just wail away on the little punk. I wish it was like old-school SNES NHL ’94. Then I could drill him and receive that beautiful little graphic of the sprite rolling around on the ice in agony. But I’ll just have to settle for a Lucic slam against the boards. Again. And again. And again.

Another day, another freakin’ FFXIII video. What the hell is going on. We went years without this game even being mentioned, and now it’s everywhere! I can’t handle it. It gets me too excited. I watch the videos and then I’m all, OMFG YES, IT’S REAL, IT’S COMING, IT’S COMING…And then I just sort of sit there. Waiting. And waiting.

And don’t give me, “You’ve waited so long, you can make it.” I’ve waited for god damn ever! That’s why it’s so painful! Anyways, join me in beautiful misery. Check out the video after the jump.

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I think the Wii is a piece of under-powered shit. I think it’s a glorified peripheral. The Wiimote hasn’t revolutionized anything, and is just a gimmick. Fuck you Nintendo. You make old-ladies cream with your amazing Wii Suffer Menopause, where you shake the control vigorously to beat the cold shakes. So when I heard that your sales are dropping:

Via Destructoid

The world is spinning out of control, people. In a recent talk with IndustryGamer, analyst Michael Pachter has said just as much, revealing that the Wii’s sales are down 50 percent year-to-year over the last five months and he expects them to continue dropping if Nintendo doesn’t start selling a new bundle or cutting the price of their system as its two competitors have done.

I DANCE A DANCE OF VICTORY! Seriously though, I’m not surprised. Every one in the god damn universe owns a Wii. Sales were bound to drop eventually. But I’m just going to focus on the potential brightside, of a world where everyone is playing a PS3 and a 360, and Nanas are doing what they’re good for: cooking pies and dying.

Oh Kenny Kutaragi, if only you were still active at Sony! You’d be doing cartwheels! The PS3 is selling like god damn hotcakes:

Via Gamesindustry.biz

Our top retailers have reported a 300 per cent lift in PS3 hardware sales and an increase of 140 per cent in total hardware revenue across the PlayStation portfolio when comparing the first week of September to the week before the USD 299 price adjustment,” said Sony in a statement.

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Wait, you mean three-thousand music games, four zillion peripherals and a thousand downloads will over-saturate the market? I don’t understand. Guess that’s why I’m not an economist.

Via Destructoid:

NPD Group’s Anita Frazier has cast a grim outlook on the formerly booming music game market, revealing that sales are down 46% from last year.

I just can’t understand how this is happening!

My name is Ian Drinkwater, and I want streaming pornography on the Playstation 3. I want it sold from the Playstation store. I want to be able to click on a menu selection and choose from Goopy Load Wunders 9 or Teasing A Tasmanian She-devil. I want all of this, and I don’t see any good reason why I shouldn’t receive my wish. While there are countless valid arguments for the prohibition of porn from the PS3, I don’t think any of them are solid enough to keep my beautiful dream from coming to fruition.

I don’t have any sort of moralistic argument in support of porn. That debate is old-hat, and either you watch porn or you are miserable and kick kittens. I have done some research, and this is precisely how the two groups break down:

People who dabble in the pornographics

People so unhappy they go straight in the “Right Hand Turn Only Lane”, spend their time writing Left 4 Dead manifestos, try and tell me I have a chemical addiction or two, and still write checks at the supermarket.

I’m arguing against this argument I usually hear:

You want pornographic movies to be sold on a gaming console marketed to kids. And let’s be real, no matter what sort of restrictions you put the console, them kids will always find a way to get around it.

That’s the sort of shit my girlfriend came at me with when I initially broached the topic of PS3 porn with her. I described what I found to be Heaven to her:

Babe, you don’t understand! There’s this network, and you click on it, and they sell movies. Well, the dude from Vivid (do you know what Vivid is? Oh, okay, good), wants to put porn on the network. You could just click on a button and get porn! Isn’t that amazing?!?!!?!?!?

It freaked her out, because I was actually yelling “QUESTION MARK, EXCLAMATION POINT, QUESTION MARKRRRRRK.” I had lost it. Let me tell you, if you combine porn with caffeine, my head almost pops off.

But yeah Ian, you want on porn on something marketed for kids.

Not really. Not at all. Listen, the PS3 is an expensive piece of impressive technology. This isn’t some Nintendo 64, or even a Wii. It’s got Blu-Ray, it has equipment that is significantly more complicated to set-up. Kids who are in little league are not going to be the majority demographic here. That’s not what Sony is marketing towards. Their core audience is people like me. In their twenties or so.

Wonderful girlfriend hopped onto the Internet. With the clickety-clack of the keyboards she asked Mr. Google if I was right. Mr. Google has become the great ender of debates for my generation. Everything can be proven with minimal keystrokes.

Do you think I’d bring this up if I was wrong? Of course not!

Via Gamer.blore:

Nielsen Media Research tried to prove the point by tracking usage data by age and gender for all three of the home consoles. Console activity in all National TV Panel homes was measured.

The PS3 generally seems to appeal to the older generation, with no young kids anywhere in the mix… Both males and females saw the largest usage amongst the 18 to 24-age range.

In an interview about the Playstation Network, where this porn would be bought, PSN director of operations says the PSN demographic is:

Via Kotaku:

Primarily male. The average age is 28 years old, in usually the middle- to higher-income range. They over-index against those with graduate degrees.

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The newest Final Fantasy XIII clip to leak from god knows where and uploaded by god knows who to the internet shows clips from the newest trailer that was totally secret and not shown to the public. How do I know? Because I find this at Kotaku and they were like “This is exactly like the stuff we saw and you didn’t. Because it was secret. But we saw it anyways. We saw the secret clip. That you didn’t.” Check out the video after the jump.

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I like keeping it real with ya’ll. When I’m running on raw emotion, I’ll admit it. And so for full disclosure, I’ve bought both of the games I’m about to discuss.

The very same day that I report that Arkham Asylum has sold TWO MILLION ZOMG copies, EA CEO admits that Madden sales are dropping:

Via Kotaku:

Madden NFL 10 leads the NPD Group’s top ten with 928,000 units sold on the Xbox 360. That’s a drop from last year’s cool million. And while Madden sales were up year-over-year on the PlayStation 3, the game suffered on the PlayStation 2 and Wii, with the sports game moving less than half of what it did on the PS2 from the same period last year.

All told, Madden NFL 10 managed to move 1.9 million copies across all platforms in August, down from the 2.2 million-plus Madden NFL 09 managed last year.

Now listen, that’s still an insane amount of copies. But I’ve always looked at Madden as something primarily for frat boys and jocks. And not cool frat boys and cool jocks. There, I covered myself. So to see it getting outsold by a comic book character‘s video game makes me swell with glee. It’s juvenile, but I cackled a little bit to myself. Sorry EA! Sorry your recycled money-machine that really doesn’t change much every year isn’t printing out the cash like it usually does.

C’est la vie, blowhards!

Arkham Asylum sells two million copies in two weeks. Good god damn! Pay attention, gaming companies! Usually comic book/movie video games eat raw ass. Tons of it. Gobble them out. And maybe the titles, while craptacular will sell to a few mouth-breathing fans and diehards. But spend some time on a comic book game, and what happens? Shit blows up! Arkham Asylum is one of the highest rated games of the year. It’s selling a million copies a week. And more importantly, Eidos has just established a franchise. Churn out crap, and maybe you’ll trick people into buying a title. But blow their god damn heads off, and you’ve gotten repeat customers.

Seriously, anything that follows this game up will be automatically bought by many, including me, because it’s the sequel to Arkham Asylum.

It’s simple, you can churn out slop and hope some tardholes pick it up. Or you can be the rare company that doesn’t rush out a comic book or video game movie, and reap the rewards.

If you know me, you know that I buy all multi-platform games for my 360. Why? Because I’m a douchebag, duh! Just kidding about the d-bag part. But seriously, why? Because they’re better. Apparently European Microsoft Czar Chris Lewis agrees with me! Go figure!

Via Destructoid:

We have a great journey through to Christmas,” boasts Lewis. “There are key titles that are exclusives but also great cross-platform titles that will just work better on Xbox Live. And in terms of content and networking, we have more content partnerships for Xbox Live.

Countless friends of mine want to punch me in the face. Listen, I’ll break it down for you. And here’s a caveat and please don’t disregard this: I’m buying Final Fantasy XIII on the PS3, and should policy and quality shift, I will flow with it. I’m not a blind fanboy. Click the jump for my reasonings.

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