SteelAttack said:

Man I have never done even one face of a physical Rubik cube. I feel they only exist to remind me of my intellectual inadequacies. They smirk at me with squarely shaped, shit-eating grins.

I took mine apart and put it back together so all the colours were in the correct places. Then I smashed it on the wall, got on the ground with my face right up to the shattered pieces and screamed, "Who's laughing now!?"

travo said:

Guacamelee vets! I'm fighting Xtabay.  How far am I into the game?  Btw, her final form is tough as nails.

I like this game, but have the PC version. Wish I had it on Vita instead.

robio said:

I just cancelled my HBO with my cable company, so HBOGo may be the future. I can't believe they called my bluff though. I was on the phone with customer support and I decided to play the "pissed off customer" card and asked if they would cancel my HBO package since I didn't really need it anymore. I was anticipating they offering me a discounted rate or a free month or something since I've had it for a year. Without so much as a second going by the rep agreed to cancel it and told me my new rate. So long as I've been adult, anytime I've tried to cancel a premium service someone has always tried to wheel and deal and offer me something to hang around. The one time I bluff.... no argument whatsoever. Shit....

lol, yeah go DirecTV, they are better. Usually you can roll it into an XM/Sirius grab (at least when I lived there). I loved XM radio.

Bloomberg: Sony Breakup Would Be Better Late Than Never: Real M&A

One year and about $2 billion in lost market value later, it may be time for Sony Corp. (SNE) to take Daniel Loeb’s advice about breaking up.

Even after making restructuring attempts such as the sale of its personal computer division, Sony remained 12 percent lower as of last week than when activist investor Loeb first urged a separation of the entertainment business last May so that the company could focus on its struggling electronics business. Last week, Sony forecast an annual loss, its sixth in seven years, mostly because of swelling restructuring charges. The shares subsequently plunged 8.8 percent as of May 16.

“Last year there was some hope, and now we’re seeing a capitulation of that hope,” Daniel Ernst, an analyst at Hudson Square Research Inc. in New York, said in a phone interview. “The worse the electronics part of the company does, the more pressure there will be to look at” Loeb’s suggestion.

While Sony is banking on ultra-high definition, or 4K, televisions and high-end smartphones to reverse the declines in its electronics unit, those products won’t be the saving grace it needs, Ernst said. Separating the entertainment division, which makes the “Spider-Man” films and represents music artists such as Miley Cyrus, would let investors value the more profitable parts of Sony separately while it tries to fix electronics, according to RiverFront Investment Group LLC.

Good/Bad

Loeb’s Third Point LLC urged Sony last May to sell as much as 20 percent of its profitable entertainment unit in an initial public offering so the Tokyo-based company could focus on the electronics division.

While Sony rejected the plan in August, it said in February it would sell its PC business to buyout firm Japan Industrial Partners Inc. and also split its TV manufacturing unit into a separate operating entity.

Market Pressure

“Pressure is mounting,” Mike Frazier, president and CEO of Bedell Frazier, which oversees about $400 million including Sony ADRs, said in a phone interview. The market has “been frustrated for a while, but even the bull case is starting to get frustrated. For the time being, we’re staying in there but we’re contemplating our next move.”

Disparate Units

“What does the film entertainment and the audio entertainment businesses have to do really with PlayStation or with TV sets or with camera modules? The answer is not much,” said Brian Barish, president of Denver-based Cambiar Investors LLC, which oversees about $11 billion, including Sony ADRs. “The chorus to break off the entertainment assets from the rest will grow much louder.”

Conglomerate Distaste

The cost cutting and restructuring only go so far and those actions don’t solve the problem of reviving revenue, he said.

“What Sony really needs is new product momentum,” Ernst said. “Based on what we see now, I don’t see that in electronics.”

Trailing Smartphones

Sony accounted for 3.8 percent of global smartphone sales in 2013, compared with Samsung’s 31 percent and Apple’s 15 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from International Data Corp.

“They’ve got competitive threats from many different angles they didn’t have in years past,”

Those challenges may argue for getting rid of the electronics business altogether, he said.

Looking Better

“For Sony to give up its best businesses, its highest cash-flow generating businesses, when it needs it the most, doesn’t makes any sense,” Anvarzadeh said.

“It seems like the electronics business in general continues to just disappoint,” Konstantinos said. “After some of the bad quarters they’ve had, some people were starting to get the idea that maybe all the bad news was priced in. This was sort of a wake-up call. It’s ripe for some sort of shake-up.”

Full article at the link in the updates.

Dvader said:

edgecrusher said:

Fuck I just tried to go back to Dark Souls after leaving it for months. I got 10 hours into it apparently months ago and now I have no idea where I am going or what I've already done.

Maybe I should start over?

Yeah getting back into a game like that is super rough. Probably for the best to start over.

I decided to start over as you said. Not too big a deal, I wasn't all that far into it yet. Plus since I already have a good idea of how the game plays it'll let me get off to a strong start.

I love the fucking atmosphere of these games. They have a feel of a game from the late 90's or early 2000's....its a vibe I don't get much from games anymore.

Hyrule Warriors details:

Hyrule Warriors details are now starting to emerge from this week’s Famitsu. You can find a roundup of what’s included in the magazine’s report below.

- Premium box will be available for at least 10,000 yen (exact amount unknown)

- Retail release is at least 7,000 yen (exact amount unknown)

- Producers: Hisashi Koinuma, Yosuke Hayashi

- Supervisor: Eiji Aonuma

- Developers: ω-Force / Team NINJA

- Link sets off to rescue Princess Zelda

- Zelda has been kidnapped by the evil witch Shia

- Link, Impa, Shia introduced in the magazine

- Some of Shia’s minions shown as well

- Shia might be under control of a force of dark magic (not clear)

- Locations include Hyrule Field

- Will have unexpected playable characters

gamingeek said:

So there's a new PS4 commerical doing the rounds. Has anyone else noticed them promoting the system with games that aren't even out for months from now? Has games production got so bogged down with these new systems that publishers can't manage a regular release schedule? And so they have to advertise for unfinished, unreleased games?

Epic were saying that there were 3x less games being made with 3x the budget compared to last gen.

EDIT: So I'm speculating here, but wont this shoot the industry in the foot, if it can't keep our attention leaving us with weeks and months with nothing to play? Waning interest etc?

The PS4 is only a few months into its lifecycle. It'll struggle a bit before it hits its stride. Of course incremental costs of development also play a part in this.

SteelAttack said:

Not on my Netflix. Boo.

I saw it on Cartoon Network.

SteelAttack said:

The PS4 is only a few months into its lifecycle. It'll struggle a bit before it hits its stride. Of course incremental costs of development also play a part in this.

Normally this is what I thought, but according to Epic there are 3x less AAA games in development for PS4/XB1 compared to 360/PS3. I'm curious to see if it's nothing but indie or AAA with nothing in between.

My Favorite SuperSlutz from Comic Con

Robio is this your gallery?

SteelAttack said:

The continued use of the AAA label confuses me. If I go with the definition that a AAA game is one that has a 9.0 MC average, how do people know that when they're still in development? If budget is accounted for when considering a game in development as AAA, where do you draw the line? I mean at which amount of money?

$15 million? I don't know, do you include marketing budget because Destiny is at $500 million.

What if it flops? Does it stop being AAA?