JoeG_LTE Gaming

This weekend I found myself playing the "Splatfest" demo of Splatoon 2.  For those of you that dont know, "Splatfest" is the name of the in-game celebration of the Splatoon series where you pick a side and face off against the enemy team.  Sometimes they can last for a full day, whereas this one was considerably smaller than that at 4 hours.  In that short amount of time, it became strikingly clear the change of tone that Nintendo was trying to strike in this game.  They really want it to be an eSport, and I think they might just have a hit on their hands. Competitive play has been around for decades in video games.  While not widely publicized like they are today, tournaments for competitive games have been a cornerstone of gaming.  Within the past 5 years or so, the phrase "eSport" has been thrown around.  While it is very possible that the name was made as a catchy marketing buzz word, I think that it took on a meaning of its own. I...

This debate is one that began with the Switch announcement video in October.  Does the Switch being a better all around handheld spell the end of the 3DS line?  Will the entire dedicated handheld line at Nintendo slowly mesh with the home console line?  I think there were quite a bit of people on either side of the fence.  I was so close to making a final prediction before, but today, the answer became more clear than ever. Nintendo is phasing out their New 3DS from production in Japan.  To clarify, the New 3DS XL and the New 2DS XL are both still going to be produced, but the smaller form factor version is getting phased out.  This is a signal that the Switch is their new handheld in a couple of ways. First off, let's get the obvious one out of the way right now.  Discontinuing any product in a platform is a sign of a shift in focus within that platform’s ecosystem. It signals a shift in focus by the manufacturer.  They are using the reso...

NBA Playgrounds released to all current-gen platforms on May 9th, 2017.  The game includes a pretty bare-bones single player mode and an online ranked mode that was typically regarded as the main selling point.  Switch owners had to wait 62 days until they got to play the online mode like all the other platforms did.  The publisher is offering a free Switch game (Shaq-Fu, coming later this year) to all Switch owners that bought the game during that 62 day period, but having a half-finished game for that long was a real downer.  I wanted to say the game was fun, but it lacked content and what was there felt mailed in with little creative spirit or passion.  I later found out that the developers were behind the scenes trying their hardest to get features and bug fixes to my console, but were severely delayed by Nintendo. You have probably read this elsewhere by now, but the devs didn't sit on their hands doing nothing.  They were trying their harde...

The following issue is something that I have seen in a number of different communities.  It seems that tech and gaming communities are the easiest to exploit though.  The problem that I am speaking of is promotional content.  Sponsored videos or articles in exchange for free products, prerelease coverage, promotion, and exposure.  No matter how much people can say that free product won’t affect their review, most of the time it does.   This issue really came to a breaking point for me whenever I was watching YouTube and an ad played.  This ad was for the Samsung Galaxy S8 but it was different than others that I have seen before.  The video ad was a compilation of YouTube videos of people giving glowing reviews of the Galaxy S8 phone.  It was a cherry-picked compilation from content creators that were undoubtedly sent the phone early and for free in exchange for a review.  They also might have been made aware that if they reviewed the phon...

After this latest E3, I think that we are all starting to realize that the Switch isn't getting broad "Triple A" third party support like we were all hoping for.  It seems to be getting individualized ports of games that are made specifically for the system or not getting "multi-plats" at all.  Huge system sellers like Call of Duty or Battlefront aren't getting Switch ports at all and even some smaller games like "South Park: The Fractured But Whole" aren't making an appearance on the system.  Nintendo can say that they can't anticipate what third party developers are going to do, but when they are given a system with a tablet SoC (system on a chip) to run home console quality games, they are going to be very constrained.  After all, they are trying to turn a profit and if they have to burn a ton of man hours to make a special port for the system, they will probably not take the risk.  So the system isn't getting broad Triple A su...

With Splatoon 2 right around the corner and basic leaks (things like working title and logo for the companion smartphone app) reaching the public last month, the Switch SHOULD be getting basic social functionality sometime this month.  Apparently, the app will be a cornerstone during matchmaking in Splatoon 2.  Since this is their big eSports game, I doubt they want to botch this launch.   I'm excited but mostly terrified of what Nintendo is going to show us.  Why?  The 3rd party accessory brand, Hori, announced and revealed their chat solution for the Switch a little over a month ago and it made everyone cringe harder than previously thought humanly possible.  In order to get game audio and chat audio at the same time, you have to use a dongle that runs a cable to your phone, a cable to your switch, and then a cable to the headset.  It is a MESS.  If someone trips on the cable stretched all the way to your TV, the Switch comes flying of...