Saturday, November 16, 2013

Remembering Sex

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You Lost Me, Sony

Playstation is the console of my childhood. It was the console I grew up with, and so it was the console I got as an adult. It has served me well as an easy, inexpensive platform for gaming. But it hit its peak early in the PS3 life-cycle, and is basically dead to me now.

According o reports, the PS4 is not going to allow users to play CDs, DVDs, or Blu Rays because Sony wants people to have to use their music and  movie digital-download stores. The PS4 isn't going to allow streaming media like it used to, so even though you have this computer console plugged into your TV, it's useless to you as a home entertainment console.

Well, Sony, you have fucking lost me. You and your silly restrictions were looking pretty good back when my only other choices were XBox or Wii. But Steam Machines are here now, and I'll be damned if I don't build a custom gaming and multimedia computer, install SteamOS onto it, and have a home entertainment system that will put consumer consoles to shame. With that, an Ouya, and a Roku, I can't imagine wanting for anything.

So thanks for the memories, Sony, and sorry you are such a god awful company. Enjoy your next gen failure.

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

MORE STEAM

So exciting!!! And so funny.

The exciting steamnews is the new Steam controller. It looks really cool, and like a very safe bet between a totally traditional controller with some new features. By "traditional controller" I mean more like a PS or Xbox controller than a Nintendo Wii Wand or Tablet. Thank God. And yet, it does have a touch screen on it, and it does use a lot of tactile interaction. So just how traditional is it?

Exactly my point.

I am not in the mood for a reinvention of the controller. Nintendo's latest offerings have partially been to blame for my alienation from NIntendo (the other part is their really bad game offerings). I don't know how many serious gamers feel the need for a reinvention of the controller. I wouldn't call this sanctimony or traditionalism, I just think that controller design that we've all been living with for the past 10 or 15 years really really works. Well. Very well.

And yet you still have die-hard PC gamers who insist that the only way to game is one hand on the mouse and one on the keyboard. So even the controller isn't fully integrated within the gaming community! So why try to reinvent it?

The funny steamnews is not about Steam but about some of the reactions online. Mostly I've only seen positive reactions. I mean, what gamer in their right mind would not be excited about the Steam Machine? I know of no one, but then there's the internet.

Here are two particularly asinine comments.

Why do we need another OS?

 Well, first of all, this isn't technically "another" OS. It's the same old boring Linux OS that you didn't even realize existed until SteamOS was announced. Which leads me to my second point: you have not been living in a two-OS world. Open your eyes, see the Matrix for what it is, and you will start to understand.

At this point, any "technological" device in this world has an OS of some kind. It might not be what you think of as an OS, but the fact that the device turns on and performs some task generally means there's an OS inside of it. WIthout an OS, you are the operating system. Very few tech devices now use mechanics for much of anything, sadly. At one point, microwaves were largely mechanical; you turned on the timer, started it, the timer triggered the switches for the plate to rotate and the heating element (or nuclear core or whatever it's called)  to turn on, and so on. But now almost all of them are controlled by a little chip with a tiny little OS on it. Your phone, of course, has its own OS. It might be branded by some other company, but really it's a very different OS than anything else that company makes for other devices. Computers have operating systems, but there are far more than just Windows and OS X; believe it or not, the internet runs on Linux and BSD, OS/2 is still alive and kicking in some indutries, there are still instances of BeOS and its open source reimplementation Haiku,


 and "Valve is taking advantage of gamers by offering a console that is just a custom built PC".

No fucking duh, internet.

Steam in December??

The internet says that Steam Machines will be for sale on December 19th. On one hand, I find that hard to believe. It just seems too soon. On the other hand, Sony and Xbox are obviously going on sale for Christmas, so why wouldn't Valve? But then again, does Valve want to go head-to-head with Sony and XBox's next gen consoles or do they want to wait until the Christmas craze has died down and then slip Steam Machines into people's living rooms once the hubbub has died down?

I don't know, the internet doesn't know, only Valve knows. So we will all have to wait and see.

One thing I do know, is that the Steam Machine is absolutely MY console of choice. Yes, I'm walking away from Playstation.

I was not 100% decided on this idea when the Steam Machine was announced. I knew I wanted one, but I wasn't sure I wanted only a Steam Machine. But the more I hear about Playstation's refusal to play CDs, DVDs, or stream media, or register games, the less and less I want to support it.

Don't get me wrong, I am not under the illusion that Steam and Valve are going to be wonderful open source magic. I know completely what I'm getting into. I use Steam, I know that it is a beast all its own. But at least it's a reasonable beast, and so far it has treated me like a valued customer, not like a criminal, which is what Playstation and Xbox both do. It's like everyone who buys a game for a Playstation or XBox is basically a suspected crook, guilty until proven innocent. It makes me feel dirty.

At least Steam deals with you like a customer. You sign in, you pay your money, you play your game.

Get over yourself, gaming industry. We love you, but you don't own us.

So I'm going to Steam and Ouya, I'm totally decided, and I'm totally excited.