Gamer’s Breed

Lately it seems that Microsoft has taken some heat because their exclusives for 2009 seem elusive at best, compared to the seemingly strong exclusive line up that Sony is preparing. However this could not be further from the truth; we have searched the net and, leaving aside many rumored titles, there is a decent number of exclusives coming to the Xbox 360 this year. The old bill does have some aces under his sleeve and this is what I found out about them.

A couple of years ago, no one would have understood that title; not because the consoles didn't exist, but because DLC was anything but "Downloadable Content". We PC gamers are old time users of the "DLC", after all we've always had mods, map packs, expansions, patches and the sort; however the console crowd is relatively new to this and how could they not be since up until this generation no console had a proper hard drive to speak of. So both theXbox 360 and the PS3's gamers enjoy DLC in some form, however as of late(okay maybe since last year) Microsoft has been securing DLC forXbox 360 multi platform games with large sums of money in order to gain the competitive edge. Sony's response? Basically "hey it's your game, if you want to sell less in one platform; it's your problem". As bad as that sounds, should console manufactures have to really pay for DLC? Do we want that market to exist? Is any party thinking on us, the gamers? Should we pay for it?

We all have read one, haven't we? One of those articles that come up in whatever site you are browsing, which have a controversial title and deal with current events/products. Let's take the recent Killzone 2 debacle as example. I really don't care about the articles written before the game came out, as they are bound to be highly speculative, but even after it actually came out(2 weeks after the demo and months after the beta) it was still receiving hate articles when i think every decent gamer, regardless of any feelings of personal taste or brand loyalty, can say that IT IS A GOOD GAME. And it's not only Killzone 2, it happened to all major releases last year as well(granted, probably not nearly as much); such as Gears of War 2, Resistance 2, Little Big Planet and so on. Notice anything in that list? Yeah, they are all exclusives!

One can't help but really chuckle everytime one of these top dogs releases some numbers, may it be console numbers, sales, online service clients, whatever; only to be met by another such announcement from whoever wasn't first. I guess they both need to reasure their clients that they "are not losing". But there's is something fishy about some numbers released and I intend to get to the bottom of it.