Platinum Games released in ugly yellow colors

Kotaku reports that the new PS3 iteration of Europe’s and Australia’s Playstation budget game series called Platinum Games will not be sporting the classic silver grey box cover color used in the previous Playstation 2 version, instead it will have some bright yellow colors.

I used to buy some games in the Platinum Games series before, but it is sad to see that publishers approve of a too obvious cover design that reminds me of those cheaply designed PC budget games covers you can find in stores today. Hopefully some marketer will change his or her mind and switch the cover design fast. It seems that The Playstation 3 have already suffered from many poor decisions. Let’s hope this is not another.

In the wake of a real world Mirror’s edge

One of Sweden’s game journalist, Peter Ottsjö, made comments on his blog regarding the new electronic surveillance bill that got passed recently in Swedish parliament. This bill makes Sweden one of the states with the heaviest electronic monitoring system in the world, even stronger by American legislative standards. The purpose of the legislation is to monitor threaths through electronic channels lika telephone traffic, e-mails and text messaging on mobile phones.

Time magazine, BBC News and USA Today are some of the media that have covered the story.

Game journalist Peter Ottsjö comments how interesting it is that the theme from the yet to be released game Mirror’s edge has suddenly become very relevant. While journalist in both Sweden and Europe protest against the newly passed controversial legislation, the state in the game Mirror’s edge have aldready adapted to a big brother society. Mirror’s edge revolves around a courier named Faith who rebels against this society by helping people sending messages to each other without leaving an electronic paper trail.

In Sweden today phone companies have already started moving servers abroad and different solutions lika encrypted text messaging and proxy server solutions for hiding ones identity on the web are being presented in the media. Even the aspiration for a perfect society like in Mirror’s edge fails because not everyone wants to live in state where everyone is being watched. If the surveillance bill will survive the growing opposition is hard to tell right now. I hope not.

Faith should be running on a console near you sometime in the near future.

Lower hardware requirements for next Crysis – a solution for a decreased interest in PC gaming?

The next installment in the Crysis franchise, Crysis Warhead will have lower hardware requirements than its previous back-from-the-future-hardware-draining-nightmare-of-a-game. Knowing that I still could not play that game in a satisfying way half a year ago with completely new PC hardware still annoys the hell out of me.

I also think it was one of the final nails in the coffin at that time for the dying PC gaming platform. The release of high hardware requirements games like Crysis, combined with the piracy of PC games, and costly hardware, have forced developers, hardware manufacturers and publishers to collaborate to try and save the PC platform by lowering the price and demand for expensive hardware solutions.

The streamlining in performance in Crysis Warhead will not come as an update for the original Crysis any time soon. For me, I can’t play Warhead until I can play the original Crysis without suffering from lower frame rates. Hopefully Crytek will publish an update in the nearest future.