30°

The Throwdown #87

Emilio Lopez, Brett & Rachael Murdock, Brian Munjoma, and Chris Sealy discuss what’s happened in the world of video games, technology, and movies.

On this week’s Throwdown we discuss Sony Playroom, a pretty new game called ‘Gigantic’, what ‘Early Access’ means to PS4, Naughty Dog and fwamewates, Doom 4 and the closing of Xbox Entertainment Studios. For tech news, we discuss Microsoft layoffs, Google+ no longer requiring your real name,
A hoodie made from speaker fabric, and DVR and Twitch streaming for the AMD Gaming Evolved client. Pop culture has us covering female Thor and black Captain America, Guillermo del Toro’s “kinky” new horror film ‘Crimson Peak’, Snowpiercer, and the trailer for The Tale of Princess Kaguya.

Listen to find out how you can win the Bioshock trilogy for PC! We are still also accepting submissions for the art contest.

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stfuandplay.com
40°

Blizzard Sends Legal Notice to bbno$ Over Diablo-Themed Website

bbno$ has temporarily shut down his website after receiving a legal notice from Blizzard Entertainment related to Diablo-themed content.

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cgmagonline.com
Mulletino4d ago

More and more it seems like these gaming companies are at war with their fans.

60°

Sony has patented a touchscreen controller that lets players choose where to put the buttons

Standard controllers aren’t comfortable for everyone…

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videogameschronicle.com
Flawlessmic21d ago

As an accessibility option for those that need it im all for it. As the standard control for ps6 helllll noo, touch controller would be the absolute worst.

Eonjay21d ago

Reading the patent itself this does seem to be intended with accessibility in mind as it attempts to solve comfort issues that some users have with overall size and placement. Im completely fine with the current layout but its nice to know this option is there. It is intended to allow customers the ability to resize the controller to there liking even those the company may not manufacture that size. So, its cool to see they are thinking like this even though this product may not be for me. I would still love to see it release and see the potential use cases.

Goodguy0121d ago

Digital will always be worse than physical buttons for 99% of gaming lol.

DivineHand12521d ago

This is interesting not only for accessibility reasons, but as a way to give players more control over their in game characters for core gamers.

I remember seeing the Tactus pop up buttons at CES 13 years ago and I was excited for the technology but I am not aware of any devices that used it.

The way gaming controllers are presented today is great, but I will always advocate for innovation in giving players more control and increased immersion.

MetalNCarnet21d ago

Terrible idea. For most games, you need to feel the physical buttons because you're not looking at the controller. I hope they aren't serious.

fr0sty21d ago

Unless they've worked out a way for tactile feedback so you can feel them. Perhaps little air bladders that could inflate when a button is placed in that position, placed under a flexible screen? Maybe it wouldn't be the best controller for all of us, but I know people who have medical conditions that make holding traditional controllers very uncomfortable with their default button layouts, this could help them.

Duke1921d ago (Edited 21d ago )

More accessibility options is never a bad thing, but man I hate that all electronics seem to be pushing touchscreen controls on everything.

They are just garbage

badz14920d ago

We are at the point in time when touch screen controls are cheaper to make than physical buttons. Just look at modern cars. More and more system controls are moved to the central screen now that all new cars come with screens. It's downright ironic too, considering just not that many years ago, people were warn to not use their phone while driving. Now all controls are moved to the central screen that you can't help but looking at screens while driving.

fr0sty20d ago

EXCEPT trying to connect your phone, lol. They make you stop to do that. But the big screen that is every bit as distracting as a phone, it's cool.

40°

Video Game Stocks Plunge on Fears Google's Genie 3 Will Replace Game Engines

When Google unveiled Genie 3, an AI that generates explorable 3D worlds from simple text prompts, investors responded by dumping video game stocks en masse—wiping out billions in market value in mere hours. But in their rush to flee, Wall Street confused "playable environments" with actual video games, ignoring the technology's hard limits while threatening the human creativity that makes games worth playing. As the industry faces a future of automated mediocrity driven by shareholder demands, the panic reveals a deeper truth: investors aren't betting on better games, just cheaper ones.

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rushdownradio.net
peppeaccardo21d ago

same level of fear that gen ai will replace art ... it is a tool that will help to prototipize open world games, but to completelly substitute game engines ... we are still a long way from it

z2g21d ago

Duplicate story. Or does Christopher just remove xbox stories that are similar?

Commentby21d ago

Humans have been developing things to simplify jobs since the beginning.
AI is going to remove the human factor from the job, but it can never replace all jobs that need a human factor.
I wish I could see the end of the story. What is the end, end goal, final piece, etc.
Is it a world run by machines, do humans live in a free world, does a dictator finally have an robot army, do humans finally free of working forever, does ChatGPT create an army to defeat Gemini., so many possibilities …