Daily News Spin — March 7, 2001 (Wednesday)

I am Trevor, Angel of Death

Tom has posted a new Shoot Club. The column will continue to run on Quarter to Three, although not necessarily weekly, unless and until it finds a new home elsewhere. In this installment, Shoot Club explores how SWAT 3 makes Rogue Spear look The Mary Kate and Ashley Teen Makeover Studio.

Not that we've played Makeover Studio. For any appreciable length of time.

Elite 4 announced

PC Strategy Games posted a story about a new Elite game in the works.

Frontier Games, headed by David Braben, one half of the magical pairing that gave us the original game, has announced that its working on Elite 4. Details are very sketchy at this point and Frontier Games is, understandably, playing its cards close to its chest. Initial reports suggest that the game will not stray too far from the original premise and will feature accurate - but simplified - physics and flight models. Indeed, the developer is attempting to re-create the type of flight system utilised in the original. As in Frontier, the universe will be based on realistic stellar systems and it will be possible to land on individual planets.

Elite, hallowed be thy name.

Microsoft will lose $2 billion on Xbox

Reuters has a story (reposted on Yahoo) estimating that Microsoft will lose $2 billion on the Xbox and not see a profit for the first five years, after which they may make as much as $1 billion a year on the system.

Although Microsoft is expected to try to make up for its later entry by highlighting the quality of its games and ease of use for game makers, it will have a tough time dislodging Sony from its perch atop the industry, because the PlayStation 2 will have had a year head start, Blodget wrote.

``Even if the Xbox experience is truly 'better' for developers and gamers, however, we believe that overcoming Sony's installed-base advantage will be challenging,'' Blodget wrote.

Why can't we ever have a job where we're allowed to lose millions or billions? We're jealous!

Out of the ashes it arises — GameSpin!

GameSpin is back. Mark's old Gamecenter column, loved by at least seven people, is resurfacing at GameSpy.

I've not gotten too far into it, but Undying really scores a lot of points on atmosphere. It really has a nice horror movie feel about it. I had that tension in the pit of my stomach that's either fear or a Del Taco macho burrito settling in. My nine-year-old twin boys were also frightened by it, and in fact fled the room after awhile because they couldn't bear to watch it. It really creeped them out, and that was before I told them that Clive Barker wanted to sleep with the male hero of the game. We're all terrified now, even when we're not playing the game.

You can read it all here. It's the column that wouldn't die!

Looping links

It's like that dream that Friedrich August Kekule von Stradonitz had when he was struggling to understand the chemical structure of benzene. He was about to just say, "Screw it, this is too freaking hard to comprehend" when he fell asleep and dreamed that its chemical structure was like a snake biting its tail. And he was right.

So, we want to link to a funny piece at Old Man Murray. This piece also links back to us, so as soon as we link to OMM it's like we've become a snake biting its own tail and then screaming in pain with a voice that sounds like Jerry Lewis. Or something.

Bethesda cancels Dreamland

According to a Daily Radar story, Bethesda has cancelled Dreamland. This should put to rest the conspiracy theories being bandied about that had Bethesda and Virgin conspiring to put Mythos out of business so they could grab the rights to the game.

A sign of the Apocolapyse

Yea, Verily, the End is Nigh, or Nigel — we always get those two mixed up. What portends the end of all we know? It seems that Derek Smart actually posted an interesting article on his website that isn't all about how he's the world's greatest game designer. This article Derek wrote is far too long, rambles, is tinged with Derek's unfortunate excessive self-promotion, is full of grammatical errors, and yet against all odds is still fascinating. It's all about the game publishing biz:

...there isn't a single publisher who will tell a developer that their game is going to sell well. None. What they do is, give you the worst case scenario imagineable. Why? Because doing that pretty much kills whatever leverage you (the developer) has in the negotiations. And if you have a niche title, rather than a mass market one, God help you. Lets not even begin to talk about how the climate has changed, with regards to projects that are in development. If a game is in development by a third party and its not close to Beta or at the minimum, 80% finished and not based on an established formula (read: "me too" clone) its never getting signed. Period. And if it gets signed, it stands an 80/20 chance of getting canned or used as shovelware to get distributors to take it at a lower price, while getting them to take another product at the regular price.

You can read the rest of it here. Hurry, as we said earlier, the end is Nigel!

Website crapola

We're sure you're tired of the bad news, but we feel obligated to mention it. Shacknews is asking for donations now. Evil Avatar is also accepting them. Blue's News mentioned that they haven't been paid for quite some time. It looks like all UGO affliates may not have been paid for any ads served past last November.

On the lighter side of things we have it on good authority that a Boy Scout was able to use the web to do the research he needed to get is Wolf badge. Then, with all the time he saved he was able to find some really smokin' pr0n!

God bless the World Wide Web.

New yesterday at Quarter to Three

More Astonishing Letters. This week, the designer of Shadow Watch offers a gracious response to Bruce Geryk's anti-Shadow Watch polemic.

Brad Wardell returns with a new column looking at how success spoils the fun for multiplayer games.

3am

A Creationist is stomping through the jungles of Cameroon, looking for the elusive, fabled li'kela-bembe, a dinosaur that natives say they've seen.

Woetzel jumped at the chance to build new credence into his cause. "Everybody knows dinosaurs are supposed to be extinct. It's a huge credibility problem for evolutionists," he said.

Will they find Dino the Dinosaur? You can read more about their search at the Concord Monitor.

Click here to read yesterday's news