The Guardian has part three of an interview with former head of of Sega of America and Xbox, and the current head of EA Sports, Peter Moore.

In this segment, Moore talks about behind the scenes at Microsoft, the software versus hardware debate, oh, and becoming unseemingly wealthy without any formal business training:

Was there any point in this process where you felt out of your depth?
“Not really – a lad from Liverpool who was a soccer player?! Why would I feel out of my depth at a strategic multi-million dollar marketing meeting?! No, because we’d all been there from the get-go, as regards to understanding what we needed to do… I had no business education, I’m not an MBA… unlike a lot of other people I’ve worked with who are incredibly smart people, MBA students that have worked their way through the ranks – that’s just not me.”

Good work if you can get it.

At the bottom of the interview, Moore very politely rips into Microsoft acquisition, Rare:

“…we’d had a tough time getting Rare back – Perfect Dark Zero was a launch title and didn’t do as well as Perfect Dark… but we were trying all kinds of classic Rare stuff and unfortunately I think the industry had past Rare by – it’s a strong statement but what they were good at, new consumers didn’t care about anymore, and it was tough because they were trying very hard…”

Granted, he does recognize them as tryers, but words still hurt, Pete.  I don’t know how they do things in the UK, but where I come from, them’s fighting words. 

Read part three here.  Part one.  Part two.

One of the biggest complaints leveled against not only games, but television, movies, and comics, is “where’re the original titles?  Why are there endless sequels and retreads of the same idea?”Which is a fair question; one I’ve asked a couple of times my own self, but there are a couple of titles that well and truly deserve follow-ups, and I guess these supposedly innovation-starved gamers not flocking to the original title didn’t help.

Psychonauts – Tim Schafer is a genius, and I will brook no arguments on this point.  The man has a strong track record of hilarious and smart games with The Secret of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, and Grim Fandango.  Not only that, he has the amazing ability to make you love the character.  A lot of games tend to make you hate the bad guy so much you want to finish the game just to kill all those nameless bastards, but Schafer games tend to make you want to find out where the character’s journey’s going.  I’ll be the first to admit to that certain game play elements and mechanics are tragically wonky in Schafer games, but considering Full Throttle is a motorcycle- racing game/death match, wherein the vehicular combat is borderline horrendous, the fact that most people don’t seem to care is not only staggering, but telling of the care and quality inherent throughout his games.

Psychonauts is a platformer following the induction and adventures of a young boy, Raz, who runs away from the circus to go join a summer camp that turns young psychics into secret agents. By learning how to use and harness his psychic powers Raz gets the opportunity to invade their minds, each level being based on the personality of the subject.  One man’s head is Apocalypse Now by way of World War II, another looks like a disco exploded, or one can always explore the mind of a paranoid conspiracy theorist that looks like a Leave it to Beaver-esque neighborhood filled with hidden cameras, and suspicious men in trench coats shadowing your every move.I want more.  I want new psychic powers, telepathy, telekinesis, pyrokinesis, force bolts and the like are the gimmies of the mind powers world, and I’d love to see what else the crew at Double Find Studios could come up with.  Not to mention the limitless potential of invading different people’s minds. 

The characters could only grow and become richer while the variety would not be stifled. Anyone complaining about innovation in gaming that didn’t give this title a chance will be promptly put in the corner to think about what they’ve done.  The game is officially “out of print,” but it is available for download on Xbox’s Marketplace. 

Take a chance, try something new, and see if you have what it takes to join the elite ranks of the Psychonauts.

Jade Empire – I’m not an RPG guy.  I think the first and last for close to eight years that I ever beat was Star Ocean 2 for the original Playstation, and that was just because it was one of the last games to be made with an emphasis on 2D hand-drawn animation.

You see, kids, a quick and easy way to fool people into thinking that you’re quirky, deep, or intelligent is to give a shit about something dying out or becoming unpopular.  I’ve already got dibs on 2D games, but there’s still: making mix tapes, taking pictures with a Polaroid camera, mailing an actual letter, or being that guy in your group of friends who insists on not owning a cell phone. 

The reasons for my dearth of RPG merit badges are few but significant.  First is the art style.  I do not look like, nor do I want to look like a fifteen year old white girl.  I have never flirted with androgyny for both practical purposes as well as a complete lack of desire.  I realize that if more than four people ever read this blog, I could very well be kicking over a hornets’ nest, but the art style of most Japanese developed RPGs do not appeal to my Western sensibilities, nor do I want to wear eyeliner when I fight evil or angels or dreams or whatever.   

Second, the way the games usually start out.  You know how Halo starts?  On an exploding battleship that you have to fight your way off of before crash landing on a strange new world.  How does God of War begin, again? Oh, yeah, on a fleet of ships being attacked by a hydra in the middle of a hurricane.

I have the attention span of a seven year old and the emotional maturity of a five year old, thus I need to be dropped directly into the action.  With the slow burn of most RPGs, I just stop caring before I even leave my simple farming village/ fishing village/steampunk train station/cyberpunk hacker enclave.

Jade Empire found a way around my child-like interaction with the world by combining RPG tropes with kung-fu clichés to make something new enough to keep me interested, but familiar enough to help keep me grounded.  Suddenly, I wasn’t learning magic spells or summoning fell beasts; I was learning new kung-fu styles.  I wasn’t going to stand in a line with my party and take turns shooting non-descript thunderbolts at enemies; I would get to run up and punch them in the neck. 

The storyline in and of itself is never ground-breaking, but the characters are superb.  While each one is derived from the classic chop-sockey archetypes, the length of the game allows for a more thorough delving into the character than the time afforded by a seventy minute movie.  That’s not the movies’ fault, though.  The correct ratio should be roughly three minutes of fighting for every one minute of dialogue.  Fact.Look it up.The perfect sequel would give us more styles to learn, and expand on the world in which Jade Empire exists.  During the loading screens the game kept hinting at brutal warriors riding horses (Mongolia) or the heavily armored warriors to the East (Japan), and I anticipated going to these lands, fighting these enemies and getting a look at what the art department at Bioware could cook up for a stylized Mongolia and Japan.  Imagine my surprise to beat the game when I thought it was maybe halfway over, saw three seconds of video and got to read a text ending.

Text ending?  In a modern game?  Did we lose a war?  Did they take everything that wasn’t a Super Nintendo? 

Finally, it’s a successful RPG, right?  Doesn’t nature demand that even semi-successful RPG have nine thousand sequels?  If we don’t honor that contract, volcanoes erupt, covering the world in toxic ash and unleashing 40 story tidal waves.  I’m clearly the only one thinking about the children.My mind is clear; my kung-fu is deep.  I am ready for Jade Empire 2.

Hey everybody-

I’m Mike and I’ll be your newest and sure to be fifth favorite blogger on this site. I’m not here to lie to you—I’m not a big gamer. I’m thankful to my parents for the weak genetics they have given me: I lack the size and speed to an athlete, nor do I possess even the most rudimentary forms of hand-eye coordination to succeed in today’s Madden Nation. If you want the proof in the pudding I could never get past the third level in Sonic. Since then, it’s been downhill battle.

But I’m not ashamed. I won’t be made to feel guilty for the thumb strength of a baby sloth. I wasn’t supposed to still be using my fingers a this point. I was promised a virtual reality and the US dumb-erment never fulfilled… until now.

I remember promises of VR helmets transporting our bodies and spirits to far off lands, while special chairs vibrated and moved to simulate realistic Martian landings. Why bother with cultivating my social skills when I could go into my reality pod and wash away the stench of jock beatdowns and female turndowns? I would be Commander Mike taking on space communists and restoring order to the world while wearing a super sweet helmet and firing laser beams from the hip.

It never happened for my generation—I had to make small talk at parties, go out into public, meet people for god’s sake! Well, at least my children won’t need to bother talking to the unwashed and more muscular masses.

This week, CNN announced that computer designers are working on a VR cocoon, a 360 degree screened pod that will capture all your movements, and I pray, your bodily fluids too. (Here’s the link: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/09/11/immersive.cocoon/index.html) This thing is the future of education, gaming and everything else. With it’s sleek egg-shaped design and it’s ability to feel dark and cozy like your mother’s basement, there will be no reason to ever cross the street again. Your prayers have been answered America. Get ready for the new world order: Virtual Reality. It’s come.

I am Jeff, your newest video game blogger, even though I play as many video games as your great-grandmother Enid. I do, however, follow the technical side and updates of games and systems. And since I’m still stuck back in the N64 age, it’s only natural to address the future of gaming.

The iPhone.

That’s right, with the recent update of the iPod Touch and the iPhone, mobile gaming will soon be easier and more popular then ever. The first major game exclusively for this platform, called Spore Origins, was recently launched as a companion to the new Spore game for PC/Mac. Created by Will Wright of SimCity and The Sims fame, and only costing $9.99, it will steer fans of gaming towards this new platform.

I think this mobile platform will surpass the PSP and the Nintendo DS as the premier way for game play. It uses a motion-sensing accelerometer (similar to a Wii) so it is top of the line. Media convergence is the biggest thing since Pong, and if you can have a device with your mobile gaming system, your phone, music and movie player, internet, etc… why carry around a PSP?

My bet is in the not-so-distant future our games will be played on the iPhone (and other similar devices) and hopefully one day it will not come to life and kill us all.

GameZombie.tv interviews video game music composer Tommy Tallarico. Enjoy!

While I write for this videogame blog, I do geek out for a variety of different mediums.  I live as a multi-faceted nerd.  I am, in the parlance of our times, a complicated dude.  I both play videogames AND read comics.  I am a rare and beautiful creature, ladies. 

I’m like a unicorn of useless knowledge and slightly enhanced hand-eye coordination skills.  Line forms to the left to buy me dinner.

*Ahem*

We are currently living in a pop cultural crossroads.

Comic books are teetering on a precipice.  The top selling books routinely flirt with selling copies in the hundreds of thousands, but those books are few and far between.  However, look at the top earners at the box office, and superheroes rule.  Other movies that do as well also tap into the same audience of literate turbo-nerd, for example Lord of the Rings, Transformers, and Pirates of the Caribbean.  All those movies struck a chord with mainstream audiences, but their base is the geek.  Not only do they bring in the money, but look at the critical reception of Iron Man and the Dark Knight which were very well received.

Conversely videogames are skyrocketing in popularity.  Mainstream breakthroughs like Halo and Madden took the image of playing videogames exclusively from darkened basements and into dorm rooms, frat houses, and in front of expensive entertainment systems.

(I mean, have you see GTA IV or Gears of War in HD on a giant TV?  It’s like God coming down and giving you new eyes to see with.  I wept.  There.  I said it.  Now it’s out there and we all have to deal with it.)

However, as games have ascended into the billion dollar neighborhood the movies based on them have been increasingly lackluster.  Some, like the Resident Evil franchise, have done well enough to keep going, but these movies are neither box office giants nor critical darlings. 

A lot of this has to do with the people behind it.  Let’s look at Resident Evil: how in the screaming blue hell do you screw up that story?  Start with an elite squad in over there heads; humanity’s best fighting back against the horrors of the darkness inside our own hearts made real by science without morality.  The STARS teams could probably have gotten through the house if they knew what was inside and brought the right equipment, but they had to improvise at which point things went horribly awry.

So naturally the movie had to be about a supermodel that kicks the zombie dogs in the face.

Then of course there’s Uwe Boll.  Jon Favreau and Christopher Nolan both had a passion for their respective characters that let them delve into their essence and impart a real humanity to superheroes and an authenticity to their worlds.

Now, Uwe Boll has passion.  It just so happens that his passion looks a lot like vendetta.  He creates movies based on videogame properties that forces one to ponder if his family was wiped out by a rogue Sega Master System, or if he had been attacked by a rabid Space Invaders machine as a German youth.  The two men at the peak of the videogame pile are Uwe Boll and Paul W.S. Anderson.  That’s just goddamn depressing. 

However, there’s hope.  That hope is a man named Gore Verbinski, and he’s been tapped to direct an adaptation of Bioshock.  Gore Verbinski is awesome for two main reasons; first, his name is Gore which is cool because it’s something a bull can do to you, and second he directed the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise which, like many plotlines in videogames, is pretty damn weird.  It’s not the weirdest thing, ever, but, and this is the important part, it is the weirdest thing to gross 2,681,440,232 worldwide. 

Now, over two billion dollars doesn’t make sense to most of us.  It’s more money than any of us will ever see, let alone comprehend.  It’s like an imaginary number.  I may have as well said eleventy-twentyteen-kajillion. 

So, to put that number into perspective, imagine an empty swimming pool.  The pool’s depth runs from three foot at the shallow end to ten feet at its deepest.  The pool is one hundred feet long, and twenty-five feet wide.  Now fill that pool with one hundred dollar bills. 

Got it?

Good.

Now picture the pool being located on an island you bought with all the left over cash, because you have over two billion dollars, and that’s what you buy when you have what is known in some circles as “fuck you” money.

I realize that neither money nor popularity is an indicator of worth.  I mean, So You Think You Can Dance does great in ratings, but will anyone defend it as anything more than fluff?  However, the money does mean that Verbinski is a proven earner, and that means the studios and producers will stay out of his way.  No notes on adding a wise-cracking ethnic stereotype sidekick or insisting on a rap metal soundtrack. 

More than that, he managed to make a movie based on a theme park ride successful.  The first movie was exciting, skirted the edge of dark, and was incredibly watchable.  Now free of Disney’s iron grip, Verbinski can embrace the weird, and we the audience can, perhaps, get a glimpse at some of the truly strange stuff floating around as concept art for the Pirates movies.

With any luck, videogames can grow up.  As narrative in videogames become deeper and more complex, they can sync up with movies better and perhaps have videogames recognized as another viable form of expression.

At the very least, Bioshock can be a huge success and I can get my goddamn Halo movie.

Here is a new interview with Cliff Bleszinski, lead designer of Gears of War 2. Cliff discusses horror movies, feeding baby tigers, and the possibility of a Gears of War movie. Courtesy of our friends at GameZombie.tv.

I downloaded The Force Unleashed on to my Xbox360, and while it’s not quite the level of badass as the Mace Windu Episode on Clone Wars (the Tartakovsky series, damn it), it’s awful close.  If you’ve never used the Force to lift a stormtrooper fifteen feet in the air, throw your lightsaber into his chest, and watch him squirm… well you may have never really lived.

As a Sith Apprentice, Vader tasks you to be his right hand.  You and your, admittedly, overpowered Force…erm, powers go out to stalk and kill the last vestiges of the Jedi Order.  In the demo’ s opening cinema, Lord Vader tells you to go someplace, kill some guy, and leave no witnesses, including the Jedi’s forces and stormtroopers.

As much Imperial Stormtrooper genocide gives me the warm fuzzies, this does raise an interesting nerd quandary.  Maybe, just maybe, the second Death Star would not have been destroyed if the shield generator on Endor didn’t have to be staffed by the Imperial Military’s JV squad.

See, I’ve been into Star Wars since about I was about eight, and as such my fandom has grown with me, so I tend to overanalyze the simple things that brought me joy as a child.

Ewoks.

The Jar Jar of the Original Trilogy.

As a small boy, still in single digits, I loved the Ewoks.  At about fourteen, I started to think to my self, “self, this is the same army that wiped out the Jedi and subjugated innumerable worlds under their white plastic heel.  How in the hell were the Jedi, magic ninjas with laser beam swords, wiped out by soldiers getting pantsed by a species of dancing three-foot tall teddy bears?”

How did the Ewoks move logs and rocks into place, silently, to take out the stormptroopers?

How did this happen?

At long last, I finally know the answer.  The stormtroopers had to field their chess team because some asshole Sith was gleefully throwing around TIE fighters and murdering stormtroopers by bludgeoning them with the corpses of their former best friends.

Maybe it was Vader’s plan all along.  Maybe he wanted to weaken the Empire.  Maybe he would replace his master as Sith Lord and continue the cycle of betrayal.  Maybe he looked at a security TV feed on Death Star II, saw troops in body armor feebly defending themselves from bears wearing shirts, but not pants, that were gently tapping them with sticks and decided to switch sides.

Star Wars: the Force Unleashed hits stores September 16^th on all platforms.

Hello there, my name is Debbie, and I spend countless hours on message boards and such looking at random awesome and crappy unknown games so the rest of you people with “lives” don’t have to.  Today I start off with the Hardest and Easiest bosses.  The first game I’m starting with is called Mushihimesama, and I guarantee you will hate the color purple after it, if you didn’t already.

The next video is the boss Evil Eye Sigma from a Japanese only game called  Story of Eastern Wonderland which I think was for a PC home system.

Finally we have the Incredible Hulk for genny, which made me giggle.

Enjoyz!!

All right, my name is Dan and I will be your new favorite video game blogger. As opposed to blogs just about the newest PS3 and Xbox 360 games, I am going to be not the nerdiest, but dorkiest (because nerds are smart) blogger up here. I will have random posts about older systems such as NES about mods or games you probably have never heard of, or know and just hate because it’s too damn hard and annoying. Every week I will have something new to read about so watch out for my first real post unlike this introduction!