Destructoid has posted an image of what looks like a (prototype?) PlayStation 4 controller, plugged into a development kit. That, or clever mock-up designed to fool suckers like us.
The source of the image isn’t immediately clear, but it actually looks pretty legit. Thus, time for some observations and wild speculation!
The official unveiling of Sony’s next-generation console could be close. Very close. Today, Sony sent out a press invitation for a Feb. 20 media event in New York City, teased as PlayStation Meeting 2013. While the cryptic invitation makes no mention of what will be shown, the process of elimination all but guarantees this will be where Sony announces the first concrete details of its next-gen console, currently codenamed Orbis and often referred to as the PlayStation 4.
If this is indeed the PlayStation 4 reveal — and I’ll eat my hat, your hat and your grandma’s gross old musty hat if it’s not — it means Sony is playing the first hand in the poker game between it and Microsoft, as both companies strategize about when, how and where to reveal the first details of their next-gen machines.
I’ll be at this event next month with bells, gongs and klaxons on. Meantime, if any other concrete news comes in, we’ll letcha know. For now, check out the mysterious trailer at www.playstationmeeting.com.
Remember when Sony first unveiled the PlayStation Vita, and we all rejoiced? “It’s got two thumbsticks! Finally, we can play proper first-person shooters on a handheld!” And then: crickets. And then: Resistance: Burning Skies, which was very bad. And then: crickets. And then: Call of Duty Black Ops: Declassified, which was even worse. Maybe this is a dream that just needs to die.
Killzone: Mercenary is Sony’s next attempt to bring a full-fledged, big-boy console shooter experience to the Vita. Will it work? Should it work? Can it work?
Maybe. Yes. And I’m not entirely sure.
This just in: video games are not historically accurate.
In an editorial that sparked a minor twitter firestorm Thursday, the Globe & Mail lashed out against Ubisoft Montreal’s action-adventure game Assassin’s Creed III, claiming the game “distorts history” by imagining a Native American hero who fights against the British redcoats during the American Revolution. That sound you hear are thousands of gamers’ palms simultaneously slapping against their faces.
Don’t be fooled, youth of Canada. This Native American assassin killing redcoats as part of a secret war against the Templars, as experienced by a guy from 2012 who is inside a high-tech brain-scanning machine that also allows him to visit the First Crusade and the Italian Renaissance, is NOT historically accurate.
If you have a charitable gamer in your life, you probably know this weekend marks the annual Extra Life fundraising drive, a 24-hour gaming marathon in support of the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals.
Tons of gamers, including myself and fellow Button Masher Matt Dykstra and his sprawling team of Edmonton-based players, will be playing games straight through from this morning until tomorrow morning to raise money for our chosen kids’ hospital charities. (I’m backing the SickKids Foundation, Matt and the Extra Life Edmonton crew are supporting the Stollery Children’s Hospital Foundation.)
I’m about to get settled in for what could be a long day and night — I’ve got a nice big coffee and egg n’ peameal bacon sammich to get the engine running, and tons of food, caffeinated bevvies and Visine for later on. It’ll be fun, at first. But I have a feeling that even by this evening this is going to feel like a bad idea. And at 3 a.m…. well, we’ll stagger across that bridge when we get to it.
The Ouya console will run on relatively low-powered hardware and sell for $99. This makes some people unhappy.
If you have even a passing interest in video games, you’ve probably heard about Ouya, a low-cost, Android-based video game console that’s in the midst of a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign. They’d hoped to raise $950,000 by Aug. 9 to fund production of the thing. Two days into the campaign, they’re at $3 million and counting.
And so begins the backlash.
Watch Dogs is one of several Ubisoft games blowing minds at E3.
The French are good at making many things. Cheese. Wine. Sweet, sweet love.
Know what else the French excel at? Making video games.
PlayStation Vita makes this man almost as happy as his purple hoodie does. Will it do the same for you?
Sony’s big gaming gamble is just a few days away.
PlayStation Vita, the electronics giant’s follow-up to the reasonably successful but never quite beloved PlayStation Portable, hits stores Feb 22. At $249.99 – only $50 less than a brand new PlayStation 3, and $80 more than the rival Nintendo 3DS – Vita is Sony’s powerful, pricey new platform aimed at gamers who occasionally wander away from their homes. The sun! It burns my pasty skin!
But in an age where our smartphones are capable gaming machines that also do e-mail, apps and those weird “telephone call” things, an expensive dedicated games device is a risky proposition. Sony is out to prove that a big screen, familiar controls and deep games can woo people away from smartphones, tablets and a miniature Mario.
Grand Theft Auto V will see the series return to the fictional city of Los Santos. Apparently Dead Rising's Frank West lives there.
It says something about Grand Theft Auto that the release of a mere preview trailer for a new installment in the series generates more buzz than some game franchises get over the course of their entire existence.
