Changing culture, one gamerscore at a time.

"1600? Are you kidding? Looks like I'm eBaying the bike." (Image courtesy of Eurogamer)

Sometimes I genuinely begin to wonder if game developers think that everyone’s earning an average salary comparable to Ben Affleck. Rockstar have priced The Lost and the Damned, GTA IV’s downloadable content due out in Febuary, and at a whopping 1600 Microsoft Points it leads me to wonder what kind of idiots they’re taking us for. Knothole Island, Operation Anchorage, both 800, hell, all the Burnout Paradise expansions have so far been free, to add insult to injury. Rockstar claim it’ll be another ten to twelve hours of gameplay, but realistically I doubt it. With achievements giving off the impression this is an extremely linear storyline, I have no reason whatsoever to believe people who’s Niko toons are rich as all hell aren’t simply going to taxi it around, as opposed to the heavily-endorsed bikes. Hopefully the storyline will be enjoyable, I just can’t help but feel a little sceptical due to the loss of Niko as my playable character, and I can’t see Johnny getting endless calls from Roman about going to “get somezink to eeeeeet”.

Moaning aside, it seems like I’m not the only one irked by the world of technology, as apparently, my laptop has better specs and a newer OS than all the computers in the White House. Obama and co moved in this week, and according to an aide, “It’s like going from an Xbox to an Atari”. What a legendary quote that was, and I can’t stop chuckling at the fact that Obama’s probably going to be more frustrated at trying to get his Mii to look like him, than bothering to sort out a battered edition of XP. Still, it’s a little worrying. What I found odd was the staff also moaning about not being allowed to access FaceBook. Now, for those sitting in tiny cubicles, whiling away the day on the internet with nothing to do at a boring office job, fair enough. But how are you running out of things to do there? In my honest opinion, I don’t want the office that’s running the largest superpower sending eachother pokes and tagging Obama in photos.

With Kaz Hirai and Aaron Greenberg, lords of Sony and Microsoft’s tech divisions respectively, battling it out via the press as to who’s outselling who, it seems someone has risen up to tell them they’re both right and to grow up a little. The summary seems to indicate the obvious; Sony will dominate globally, but not for another five years at least inside the USA. This is just common sense, really, though at the current rate of profit, I can’t see Sony’s dominance continuing in Europe. Personally, I’d just be embarassed that someone outside their companies had to wade in and cuff them round the ear to get them to stop making fools of themselves.

In an extremely recent news post on joystiq.com, it seems that Pokemon trademarks are being purchased at quite a rate, to future ensure they’ll have more original subtitles, like “brown” and “black”. The list also now includes the obvious red and blue, but more interestingly, two different spellings of “scarlet”, and “purple”. Now, shouldn’t Pokemon Yellow, the title supposedly combining the exclusive monsters from both the original titles, have had this name? They could have removed Pikachu altogether. Oh, well. I have no interest in the Pokemon franchise anymore. I tried with Ruby and Sapphire, but more than 151 pokemon is just wrong. There’s even robot pokemon now, it’s ridiculous. I think I’m going to copyright Pokemon White and see what happens.