Steve Anderson : End Game
Steve Anderson
The Video Store Guy
| The video game industry has gone from a mole hill to a mountain in no time flat, Chris DiMarco is your Sherpa as you endeavor to scale Mount “Everquest”

Longview IoT Boosts Energy and Wireless Efficiency

Some of the biggest challenges slowing down the adoption of IoT are security, efficient battery usage and optimized wireless communications.One company has...

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Hallmark's Simple, Inexpensive Way to Boost Customer Satisfaction

In an effort to boost margins, companies often push more users to automated solutions such as FAQs, chatbots, voice bots and anything...

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Huawei Places the World's First 5G VoNR Video Call

Huawei recently completed the world's first voice over NR (VoNR) call. The voice and video call service was made using two Huawei...

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IGEL Advances Future of Work

IGEL is a provider of a next-gen edge OS for cloud workspaces. The company’s software products include IGEL OS, IGEL UD Pocket (UDP) and Universal...

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Tata Communications and Cisco Collaborate on SD-WAN

Tata Communications and Cisco have extended their partnership to enable enterprises to transform their legacy network to a customized and secure multi-cloud...

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How to Win the 50-Year-Old China Trade War

Today and this week in-fact is historic - the left and right in the U.S. agree that we have a major trade...

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Extreme Elements Enables The Autonomous Enterprise

Extreme Networks just announced Extreme Elements which in-turn enables the autonomous network and subsequently the autonomous enterprise. In a dynamic webinar, Dan...

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Book A Trip To Solstheim This Christmas With Skyrim!

December 5, 2012

So yesterday was a huge day in gaming, as I finally got a chance to get some face time with a brand spanking new chunk of downloadable content. But would it prove to be worth the wait? There was only one way to find out.

Skyrim got its newest piece of DLC just yesterday, and I managed to take a bit of a run-through. While I had high hopes for this one, I knew it was possible to be disappointed.

Hitman: Absolution Marketing Takes Things A Bit Too Far

December 4, 2012

Recently, a new gaming marketing campaign came on line...and went off line in about an hour. What on earth could have been so preposterous, so potentially damaging to a company's reputation, indeed, so damaging to the reputations of gamers everywhere? Settle in, because this is a story that's likely to amaze.

The folks behind Hitman: Absolution, the newest story of Agent 47 and his regular murder sprees for hire, came out with a new marketing ploy to get folks interested in the release. Now, bear in mind that they were already treading somewhat on thin ice for the "half-naked nuns" concept from the trailer, so you'd think they might have toned down the outrageousness for the newest promotion.

They did not.

What they established was a website called "Hire Hitman", in which users were encouraged to "take out a contract" against various Facebook friends.





When Quirky Just Ain't Enough

December 3, 2012

It's no surprise to find that, in many cases, a lot of gamers are sick to death of the big pile of more of the same that so often lands on their store shelves. But what happens when quirky just isn't enough to carry the day? A recent report detailed just what happens, and the news isn't good for anyone.

A report from Gamasutra details the imminent closure of the Glitch MMO, which by reports of those who played it pretty much had the market cornered on quirky. Calling this game "unoriginal" represented standards that were absolutely impossible to meet; after all, what kind of game will allow you to massage a butterfly, with butterfly lotion, in order to obtain butterfly milk, or get wheat by squeezing a chicken?

DayZ Looking A Lot More MMO These Days

November 29, 2012

There's some interesting news about the DayZ conversion to more of a full-MMO model, which is at last report still on track to launch sometime by the end of the year, though there's some room for interpretation on that front. Apparently it's still proceeding apace, and has made some fairly significant changes as a result.

For those not already familiar, DayZ was a kind of mod package originally released as part of ARMA 2 and its later expansion pack Operation Arrowhead. Players join a zombie apocalypse already in progress where they go forth and search for food, water, and better weapons to survive the invasion of the walking dead, as well as other players out for an opportunistic load of free supplies.

But where it was previously a mod, now it's looking more like a full-on MMO, with a new server-client architecture model. It's sufficiently extensive, at last report, to make it almost a completely new game, running on a new version of the old engine.

Naturally, any question that comes up whenever there's a new MMO in the making is: "Can it beat World of Warcraft?" While for the most part the answer has been something along the lines of "No. Seriously, what are you thinking about?





Why The Apple Response To Boyfriend Maker May Spur HTML5 Development

November 28, 2012

Recently, there was an unusual entrant in the Apple App Store known as "Boyfriend Maker". This title focused on the ability to develop several young men, vaguely similar in appearance, and turn them into "boyfriend material". I know, it sounds bizarre, but it only gets weirder when you find out why the "Boyfriend Maker" app was pulled. It turns out that not only were the boyfriends either on some kind of medication or not on sufficient amounts of it, but they also had a disturbing tendency to lapse into sexual dialogue, violent dialogue, racist dialogue and dialogue that was just plain, well, disturbing.

Is It Worth It To Buy A Wii U?

November 27, 2012

With the opening frenzy of Wii U sales now officially out of everyone's collective system, there are likely plenty of fence-sitters out there engaging in a little pre-shopping navel gazing, wondering if it's worth it to go out and buy one of Nintendo's newest hardware efforts. But the smart ones stopped in here first to find out for themselves. So we ask the question: is it worth it to buy a Nintendo Wii U? The answer, meanwhile, is a somewhat helpful "probably".

Primarily, it's a question of value.

Is There Still Room In The Market For New Consoles?

November 26, 2012

For some time now, I've been hearing the various Jeremiahs of the gaming community scream that console gaming is dead and that the smartphones have taken over. But with recent word from Nintendo about the sales on their newest console, it's starting to look like maybe, just maybe, the console market can come back after all, and all it needed was a shot in the arm.

Indeed, there were many who said that no one wants to drop a hundred hours on the next Skyrim when they could play like 30,000 games of Angry Birds in that same space--your actual play time may vary--but then came the word about how many Nintendo Wii U systems were sold, which looked to be every bit as big a seller as the original Nintendo Wii. Word from Nintendo described a sell-out of 400,000 units in the opening weekend--brisk sales by any measure, though down from the original Wii's sales figures of 600,000--despite an overall sluggish economy.

This actually relates back to a projection we made right here not so long ago, that said the slump in the gaming market wasn't caused so much a change in the gaming market away from consoles and to mobile devices, but rather that the choices in the gaming market were simply starting to stagnate. This was a problem that could be fixed comparatively easily, with the release of new consoles, something that was somewhat overdue in recent years.

Getting some new blood in the market would be a great thing indeed, and there are plenty of people looking to 2013's E3 event--and the holiday shopping season that follows--to breathe some new life into the sector and prove that it's not yet game over for the console market.





Three Things I'm Thankful For In Gaming

November 22, 2012

With Thanksgiving in its closing hours, and some of the Black Friday sales already kicking in, I figured it would be a good time to settle in and write a little something I'm thankful for in gaming. There's a lot going on out there at any given time, so narrowing the field down and being able to pick a few things that make gaming special is difficult, but a task I welcome all the same.  So without further ado, three things I'm thankful for in gaming.

1. Bethesda Softworks

This company has given me most of my favorite games.



An Xbox Game With Hourly Rates?

November 21, 2012

I've seen plenty of different pricing models for games. From full retail to DLC pricing to indie fare that costs pennies to free demos, but with the appearance of a new Karaoke game, Microsoft may well have crossed the weird boundary into full-bore crazy.

What's truly noteworthy about this game is that it's a strange combination of Pandora and "Glee: Karaoke Revolution".  Much like a night at a karaoke bar, users will pay by the hour to get lyrics onscreen and music with the vocal tracks removed so that users can provide the singing themselves, but they'll also get access to over 8,000 different songs. The library is part of The Karaoke Channel's library, so it doesn't seem Microsoft will have to go through the studios for their deal.

This shows two critical industry-level points at once.



What Unexpected Device Tops Kids' Gaming Wish List?

November 20, 2012

A recent Nielsen study had a little something unexpected for those looking to shop for gaming hardware this Christmas, as an unusual device currently ranks tops on the list. Just what is this device that kids are clamoring for for Christmas and post-Christmas gaming?

As it turns out, the number one device on the Nielsen survey wasn't a Wii U, or an Xbox, or even a pack of Skylanders figures. It was an iPad. Yes, for the third year in a row--which makes this not quite so unexpected as could be thought--the nod went to the iPad as the tops in gaming devices, beating out the rest of the console lineup by a pretty fair margin.

The Wii U, oddly, managed to place second with a healthy 39 percent of the vote, but not healthy enough to distract from the 48 percent hoping for an iPad.

The interesting part about this survey is that it can be successfully used as fodder to support one of two arguments:

1. The console gaming market is doomed.







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