News/release from quatist

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It's Friday! Time for, that's right, TELL US DAMMIT. here's how it works: We ask a question, you answer it. Simple and no strings attached! This isn't some marketing survey or whatever. It's an emotional investment in you. Yes, we're interested in knowing you, Kotaku reader person. You probably know ****tons about us — more than you even want to, we're sure. But, hey, we'd like to know about you. That way you won't be some faceless blob — and we might feel a tinge of guilt when we ban your ass. Or not, because really we're incapable of human emotion. Not sure!

There are many different game genres. We don't want to know which is your favorite, but rather:

Question: Which game genre is easiest for you or which one do you excel at?

http://kotaku.com/5037806/what-kind-...re-you-good-at ...

Here's the debut trailer for "K.O.R.E.", which we're told is the resurrected The Kore Gangthat was planned for Xbox way, waaaay back earlier in the decade. Now the "outvasion from inner space" is coming to Wii. Looks like a madcap action/platform sort of in the style of Destroy All Humans. You get to run around as one of three mad scientist aliens in funky exoskeletons. The developer is Snap Dragon Games. So do you like teh "K.O.R.E."? Do you not like? There's an 11-minute gameplay video on the jump if you want a closer look. No word on release date.

http://kotaku.com/5037876/kore-resur...-03-xbox-title ...

Independent developer Cliff Harris, of Positech Games, asked pirates why they choose to pirate his games, promising them immunity and anonymity in exchange for their honest rationales, which he would aggregate and post on his blog. They reciprocated, and of about six reasons, a righteous indignation at DRM seemed to lead the list. Harris is actually responding to the gripes in both the pricing and de-DRMing of titles in the future, with his own reasoning why it's a good idea.

The reasons pirates traffic his games, Harris found, were roughly (list quoted from Ars Technica)
• The information wants to/free anarchists think copyright shouldn't exist.
• Games are too expensive.
• The quality of gaming is too uneven.
• DRM is hurting the legitimate customers.
• Going to the shops is annoying.
• Because piracy is easy to do with low risk for getting caught.

Harris' response:
• Zero DRM. He said he only used it in one game before. He sees it as counterproductive, giving honest gamers an experience that treats them like criminals while the pirates have a cleaner, superior version.
• Longer demo game experiences.
• Reduced pricing: He dropped the cost of Kudos to $9.95 and will consider selling its sequel for far less than he'd planned.
• Regarding quality:

I get the impression that if I make Kudos 2 not just lots better than the original, but hugely, overwhelmingly, massively better, well polished, designed and balanced, that a lot of would-be pirates will actually buy it. I've gone from being demoralized by pirates to actually inspired by them, and I'm working harder than ever before on making my games fun and polished.

It's an intriguing back-and-forth involving pirates who aren't treated like thieves, and a victim who won't portray himself as such.

http://kotaku.com/5037902/indie-dev-...-pirates-reply ...

Let's try to keep the bad parenting bait to a minimum for this one, folks, but holy crow, I can't not show you this story. Yesterday reader tooji tipped me off to the story of Blake Peebles, a 16-year-old in Raleigh, N.C., whose parents have let him drop out of school so that he can focus on a professional gaming career via Guitar Hero.

Blake convinced his folks (that is, "We couldn't take the complaining anymore," said his mom) to let him drop out last September. They hired in-home tutors to continue his education there, at least, but there's no doubt priority number one is Guitar Hero. There's a vaguely defined goal of Blake playing it professionally, either through Major League Gaming or by winning prizes in a national and international competitions. But so far he's only made about $1,000, most of that value realized in meals and other freebies won at local competitions. The other pro gamer the reporter contacted for this story said he's cashed in about $25,000 in his entire career.

The description of Blake's room, his interests (or lack thereof) , and his folks' decision to let him do this just ... well, the don't make anyone look good. It would be one thing if the guy was a bona fide music or athletic prodigy. However quixotic a career in either field might be for the majority who pursue it, at least there's a long history of it paying off if you are that good enough. But Blake's never touched a real guitar (cue up the get-a-life bait). He didn't seem interested in much of anything in high school (a Christian academy where his parents had enrolled him) and wheedled his way out of going by complaining that it was a waste of time. (That line should sound very familiar to my folks. If only playing Master of the Lamps on the Commodore 64 could have won me some free Chik-Fil-A. I might have had better luck.)

You gotta read it to believe it, and nearly three weeks after it was first published, it is still one of The News & Observer's top e-mailed stories. Try to keep it civil in the comments, gang, especially if you aren't a parent. I'm not, but I'll admit this blows my mind.

http://kotaku.com/5037975/parents-le...on-guitar-hero ...

Here's an idea. Pick up a Street Fighter edition iPod nano. (We recommend Chun Li.) Then have it engraved "From Chun Li, thanks for being there through a difficult time." Bring it to school (don't let the teacher see it, of course) and bust it out at the lunch table nonchalantly, "What's this? Oh, just a little something I picked up from my girlfriend."

http://gizmodo.com/5037441/street-fighter-the-ipod ...

EA's version of Tetris was fine. There was nothing hugely wrong with it, except that $10 price. And since we've all paid for Tetris before on one platform or another, we'll gladly settle for the iPhone's free version of Tetris called Tris. Move pieces by sliding your finger back and forth and rotate them by tapping anywhere on the screen. The controls are quite responsive and, yes, the entire design feels like Tetris.

http://gizmodo.com/5037538/iphone-ap...-iphone-tetris ...

Super Monkey Ball is arguably the current zenith of iPhone tilt gaming. The gameplay involves navigating your bebubbled monkey through a series of elevated, edgeless mazes without letting him fall—it's fun, if repetitive. Nintendo’s Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble is similar: The player guides Kirby through mazes using tilt-sensitive control, collecting stars along the way. Both games are entertaining, and both won positive reviews for nearly identical control schemes. So why is Monkey Ball getting all the attention? Well, for one, Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble is only available for the the Game Boy Color. Oh, and it was released in 2001.

To be fair, Monkey Ball has improved a lot on its spiritual forebear, with lush, fully 3D graphics and over 100 well-designed levels. It superficially reflects a few generational steps forward in handheld gaming. One thing that hasn’t changed is the control mechanism. Consider this IGN review of Kirby from April of 2001:


This tilting feature is an integral part of the gameplay, and it really makes Kirby original and a lot of fun. The designers built the game around this sensor instead of putting a sensor into the game, and it really shows... Since you cannot zoom Kirby around the mazes without screwing up, patience is needed. Of course, you can't take your sweet time—the clock is ticking.
This could just as easily describe the experience of rolling AiAi around on your iPhone. The tilt sensor technology, built into the GBC cartridge, was functionally flawless, even by iPhone standards. The tilt-sensing scheme surfaced in a few more (equally impressive and well received) games, but none ventured too far from the navigation paradigm of Tilt 'n' Tumble. Over the next few years, position-sensitive handheld gaming faded into relative obscurity.

At least, until now. Tilt gaming is now lauded by some as the future of portables, with developers and engineers making inconsistent claims about how powerful and exciting the iPhone is as a platform, even throwing out very favorable comparisons to the PSP and the DS. But does the iPhone really bring anything new to the table? The answer, as you’ve probably guessed by now, is no. Absolutely not.

Think of it this way: The best implementation of iPhone tilt control is conceptually identical to a seven-year-old Game Boy title, which itself was based on the old wooden marble-in-a-labyrinth puzzles that have been around since, well, who knows? The iPhone doesn’t have the buttons of the Game Boy (or DS or PSP), and touchscreen control overlays don’t provide the feedback they need to be adequate substitutes. (Anyone who has played any of NES/SNES/Genesis jailbreak emulators can attest to this.) Perhaps most significantly, the iPhone doesn’t address the shortcomings of tilt gaming that were helpfully pointed out to them in nearly every review of Kirby. Consider again the 2001 IGN review:


You're limited to where and how you can play the game, really... I've played the game outside and in a hotel room with no problems, but on the plane it was a little difficult because of the position you have to hold the system — it's not exactly a game you can sit in your most comfortable position and play.
And another, from the New York Times:


Children who play Kirby in the back seat of the car will learn to loathe potholes and quick turns, which can make Kirby spin out of control.
In respect to the limited locations in which you can play tilt games, the GBC cartridge system is actually superior to the iPhone, as it automatically recalibrates at the start of every game, a feature that Monkey Ball could stand to include.

A portable gaming device that necessitates a certain type of location and position to play isn’t truly portable. Anyone who has tried to play any of the iPhone’s tilt games in a moving car, bus or even train will tell you that slight acceleration in any direction can make sensitive games like Crash Bandicoot Racing and Monkey Ball almost unplayable—and what good are handheld games if you can’t play them in transit?

Since the launch of the app store, nobody has come forward with a truly exciting and original implementation of tilt control. The iPhone has demonstrated that is it capable of retreading tilt gaming territory quite well, but that’s about it.

It sounds harsh to deem iPhone gaming a mere novelty, but until a developer steps forward with something profoundly revolutionary it may be just that. For the most accurate summation of the iPhone’s tilt gaming, don’t listen to John Carmack’s breathless speculation, or Scott Forstall’s eery, glossy-eyed presentations. Look back again, this time to Gamespot:


Yes, Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble is a gimmicky game, but it's a gimmicky game done well.
For Nintendo, handheld tilt gaming was a fanciful tangent; when the genre was exhausted, they were able to retreat to traditional controls. This option is unfortunately—and maybe fatally—absent from the iPhone, potentially ...

hoping for a PS3 price cut in the near future better not hold their breaths. A Sony spokesperson confirmed on Friday that the company had no plans right now to give you another deal on the machine, and anyone hoping for that kind of news at Leipzig will be sorely disappointed. Given that they slashed the price less than a year ago, this shouldn't be too surprising. Though PS3 sales are still trailing behind the Wii, it's relatively recent discount put it neck to neck for second place with the cheaper Xbox 360. [

http://gizmodo.com/5037868/sony-not-...kesperson-says ...