I’ve had a Steam Controller for about six months. As a gaming device it’s excellent, especially if you’re not already an expert with another gamepad. What hadn’t occurred to me until this week is that its unusual design makes it perfectly suited to serving as a jog/shuttle device for video Read more…
Every negative article on the Steam Controller has been from experienced gaming journos, all of whom tend to profess to having used traditional controllers for over a decade. These are people who love Xbox or Playstation controllers and have a ton of muscle memory invested in them. It’s not surprising that they’re finding it difficult to adapt to something very different. Crucially, I think they’ve forgotten the initial learning curve they had with the Playstation and Xbox controllers, because it was decades ago. (more…)
I wrote a post a few months back theorising a little about SteamOS and how it’s bad news for Microsoft – if Valve get a number of plates all spinning in unison. A big part of SteamOS’ initial appeal will come from Steam’s new streaming ability, which is now in beta and works across Mac, Windows, Linux and SteamOS itself. I’ve been fiddling with it on a couple of Windows machines and it’s quite the remarkable thing. (more…)
For a while now I’ve been tempted to write a fictional blog post purporting to have been written in 2050-or-thereabouts, essentially along the lines of “Hey, anybody remember Microsoft?” The company that for most of my lifetime has just been there has, in the last 5 years, suddenly become rather wobbly – despite still seeming quite healthy in financial terms.
The announcement of Valve’s SteamOS and associated gubbins added a whole new element to Microsoft’s woes. Now, a lot of this is working on the assumption that SteamOS, the Steam Controller and Steam Machines will be actually good. If they’re not, then the debate is a bit moot.
Let’s take a quick look at some of the key market areas where Microsoft have historically ruled.
On Sunday 19th September something very strange happened to the Good Old Games website. Was it marketing genius or commercial suicide? (more…)
Just Cause 2 is out at the end of this month. I’ve put together a video preview based on the amusingly ridiculous demo. (more…)
LucasArts have re-released some of their classic adventures on Steam, The Secret of Monkey Island is making its way to the Xbox and Telltale are making new Monkey Island episodes. (more…)
Three years ago any article about Introversion and its games would have been prefaced with something along the lines of “you might not have heard of them, but…” (more…)
Continuing our Introversion features this week, here’s an interview with Darwinia‘s lead developer Chris Delay. (more…)
Note: This is an old review of Darwinia that I wrote for SFFworld.com back in 2006. As this week is more-or-less Introversion week, I thought it timely to reprint it here… (more…)
