So you’ve had all the family togetherness, awkward dates, spoiled sports stars and overrated high-brow writing you can take this weekend? We’ve compiled The Favs, some of the best connected entertainment stories from this past week. It’s all that you need to feed for intellectual growth — short of going back to work tomorrow morning. Some of it is original reporting, and some of it is the work of others.
This week Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo and just about every singe video game developer with a project launching later this year head to the Electronic Entertainment Expo. We don’t yet know what we’ll, see but in honor of the event we’re profiling nothing but the best thinking on video gaming and Xbox related topics this week. You Windows and Windows Phone folks will just have to sit this week out.
On The Stupidity of Resolutiongate
With both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 off to an interesting start, die-hard fans have slowly began to all wake from their gaming commas. That’s great; what the industry needs right now is people who know what they’re talking about, people who are passionate about gaming and know how to separate problems from the imagined ones. Unfortunately, as a piece from XboxMAD points out, we’re only getting about two out of three of those qualities today. Both Xbox One and PlayStation 4 owners have taken to the internet to blast each other. Some think the Xbox One isn’t worth buying because game developers haven’t been able to produce titles that run at 60 frames per second, a benchmark of how smooth it looks, while having the highest resolution technically possible.
On the Stupidity of Resolutiongate doesn’t strike all the tones I think it should. It eloquently argues that we’re very early in the console generation and that users should expect developers on the Xbox One to get their act together as they learn the tricks of the console. However, I’d add that not a single normal person who walks into GameStop is looking at the Xbox One or the PlayStation 4 and turning to the clerk to ask about the resolution of games running on either. Of course, maybe I have more faith in normal people than I should.
How to Dig Up a Landfill
Very recently Microsoft’s Larry Hryb and a production crew took to the New Mexico desert with digging equipment and video cameras. Xbox Entertainment Studios, the original video production arm of the Xbox product group was there to uncover cartridges for the E.T., a game based on the alien-related masterpiece of the same name. Polygon documented what the company and production company Fuel had to go through to get to that moment and how it planned the final dig. How to Dig Up A Landfill is an interesting and lengthy behind the scenes look at the process and how it almost didn’t happen. Microsoft should be ready to announce that documentary’s release any day now.
Kinect Died in the Uncanny Valley
Finally, if you’ll forgive me for profiling a slightly older article, I promise it’ll all make sense. This past weekend I stumbled across Kinect Died in the Uncanny Valley. In it Giant Bomb goes in search of the real reason Microsoft has had such a hard time getting users excited about the Kinect. It concludes that the real problem was the “Uncanny Valley”. That’s what those in the technology industry consider the point where technology makes things so lifelike that something in the human brain makes it undesirable.
Have any big stories you’d like to share? Post them in the comments for all to read. After you’re done reading these I suggest you turn in early this evening. It’s going to be a very, very busy week.
