BLIZZARD STARTS OVER ON THEIR NEW MMO; but we have f**king pandas so who cares?!
Whoops. It looks like things are not fairing well on Blizzard’s new MMO. Not the best time for such news either, seeing as that WoW is bleeding heavily out of their player base-anus. The hive-mind at Blizzard is restarting their super-secret MMO, as well as pushing the son of a bitch to 2016.
E3 vs PR – Part I: XBox One – How Microsoft let their key moment get ‘xboned’
Welcome to E3 vs PR – A blog series on the Gaming Industry’s Most Important Season from a Communications Perspective.
You’re having a bad PR week with the media if you’re one of the following two clients:
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, following allegations of crack-cocaine use caught on tape, or, Microsoft’s Games and Entertainment Division, following the incredibly confused and poorly communicated debut of their next generation platform, the Xbox One (XBO).
I’m a gamer. Have been since I was 3. I’m also an upcoming communications and PR graduate. The lens I’m looking at this industry through is changing radically, but the last week has been bad enough that the popular opinion is all on the same side.
We all threw our hands up at Microsoft’s lack of a coherent set of key messages throughout the eight days since launch. Everything we’ve been taught not to do, they’re doing.
While Microsoft didn’t match Ford and (allegedly) break the law over the last poorly-planned eight days of the XBO PR launch, you’d definitely call most of their actions criminal, from a communications perspective.
A game and entertainment console ‘reveal’ is one of the most critical and risk-laden PR events that can take place in the interactive entertainment industry. A console, like the XBO’s predecessor, the XBox 360, typically lives on the market for a healthy five to six years. That’s before being relegated to second-tier status upon its successor’s launch for the next three or four years.
NINE INCH NAILS ANNOUNCE NEW ALBUM. ERRBUDDY ANGST NOW.
I typically abstain from covering music here at OL, as I find it pushes the Internet community quickly into hair-pulling and name calling. However, I’m making a special exception for Nine Inch Nails, a band whose importance is great to many of us who contribute to the site. In fact, and while I’m not supposed to mention this, our own Patrick Bateman actually lost his virginity to The Fragile. Yep, that’s right. One wonderful Autumn evening, he galavanted into the woods wearing his WalkMan for a seven-mile run. There a druid spied his overdeveloped abdominal muscles, and offered him a deal he could not turn down. One luscious evening of deep butt interrogation, in exchange for Bateman’s own soul. While the fire has died in his eyes ever since that evening, having sloughed off his eternal soul, Bateman says he would never do it any other different. With equal certainty, he believes that it was Trent Reznor’s overly-orchestrated nonsense that spoke to the druid on a level he never could have conjured on his own.
WELL SHIT: Dan Harmon really has been asked back to ‘COMMUNITY.’
Those rumors about Danny Harmon being asked back to Community that seemed ludicrous? Apparently ain’t that ludicrous. Multiple sources pig piling on the report. And Dan? Say yes. Please say yes.
MINECRAFT CREATOR gets GOLDEN PSONE from Sony. MICROSOFT sends box of tacks to Team Meatboy.
Sony has sent the creator of Minecraft an invitation to an E3 Event in the form of a fucking golden PSOne. It’s awesome seeing Sony rolling out the red (golden? ha!) carpet for indie developers. Meanwhile, Microsoft is ripping the carpet out from underneath their indie creators’ feet. You know. Blowing smoke in their eyes, getting rid of their dedicated XBL channel, and telling them to be grateful to even be able to find a third-party publisher to push their pretentious swill.
Definitely different vibes from the two camps.
WATCH: Red Letter Media’s ‘STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS’ review.
RLM’s Half in the Bag humorously takes a run at Star Trek Into Darkness. I’d recommend it. Smarter minds than my own delineate DARKNESS’ failings, and also what it gets right. Though if you put me up against the wall, I’ll say: Abrams is really good at making a pretty movie that hits all the same thematic beats as the first film, while not advancing the Universe along what so ever, and he also really doesn’t seem to give a fucking shit about anything like plot, or narrative coherence.
But like I said, RLM does it way better than me.
Pre-CG RHINO REVEALED up in these ‘AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2’ set pics.
…My preferred title for this post was “Rhino what Paul Giamatti looks like in Amazing Spider-Man 2‘, but I was not brave enough to pull off such nonsense. Perchance another time. But oh yeah, here are a bunch of pictures of Paul Giamatti looking dumb as shit in whatever he is wearing that will indubitably be supplanted by CG soon enough.
CHINESE HACKERS have stolen US WEAPON DESIGNS. LAUNCH THE POLARIS!
Don’t blame me, I just wanted to reference Rust In Peace. Chinese Hackers have totally traversed the Metaverse, snagged the Golden Bauble from our DOJ hives, and returned him as victorious warriors. Of course, that’s what I imagine it all going down. I’m probably completely incorrect.
Press Start: XBOX Consumergeddon
So, about that new XBOX.
Only a week ago, Microsoft managed to enrage what seemed like the entire gaming sector of the internet with the announcement of the XBOX One. Now, for the non-gamers out there, the window-shopper if you will (otherwise why the fuck would you be reading this?) I should inform you that gamers, on the whole, are a fairly irrational bunch. Whereas most consumers can happily walk away from a product that just isn’t right for them, gamers – as part of their perpetual, existential quest – will desperately search for logic and some sort of conclusion as to why they shall not be purchasing the next new console. If anything, it’s almost as if we’re struggling to comprehend the idea that we’ve been told we can’t have the XBOX One: its list of baffling, anti-consumer ‘features’ being part of an effort to politely tell us to fuck off.
