Warp Zoned Presents
Most Recent: Insert Quarter
Insert Quarter: Why Bethesda’s E3 Showcase Means More Than a Fallout 4 Announcement
Insert Quarter is our showcase for some of the best and most interesting writing about video games on the Internet.
Bethesda will present a Press Conference during this year’s E3 Expo for the first time in the company’s history. This is a momentous occasion for many reasons, but first and foremost, because Bethesda will surely use the event to announce Fallout 4. But Bethesda’s E3 Press Conference is also much bigger than that… and not just because it’ll probably also include more substantive reveals of Doom 4, BattleCry, and possibly even Dishonored 2. Bethesda’s E3 Press Conference also signals the publisher’s entry into the upper echelon of third-party publishers.
VG247’s Matt Martin recently delved into exactly what this means for Bethesda and the wider gaming industry:
Elder Scrolls publisher Bethesda announced it would be hosting its own event at E3 this year. For a brief second everyone paused… and then immediately lost their minds over a Fallout 4 announcement.
While that’s likely, there’s a lot more to Bethesda going big at E3 than a new take on 50s sci-fi. It’s worth looking at what this says about the publisher, the two main consoles and E3 itself, as much as the games we can expect to be on show.
The full article is available for your perusal at VG247.
Posted in Insert Quarter, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged BattleCry, Dishonored 2, Doom (2016), Fallout 4
Insert Quarter: Remembering the Wacky Games Released in a Console’s Twilight
Insert Quarter is our showcase for some of the best and most interesting writing about video games on the Internet.
Now that the PS4 and Xbox One have completed their first full year on the market, it’s clear that the PS3 and Xbox 360 are slowly sliding into their golden years. The two consoles have lived exceptionally long lives, but now it’s time to say goodbye. However, that also means it’s time to say hello to some of the weird and wacky games that always appear during a console’s last days.
In light of the pending release of Yakuza 5, The A.V. Club’s Anthony John Agnello took a look back at some of these titles and reminisced about such strange offerings as Mega Man & Bass for the Super NES, Under Defeat for the Dreamcast, and Persona 4 for the PS2. Because even though those shiny new consoles look like fun, the party you’re currently at can get very interesting at the end:
Fashionably late: The same rules for when to arrive and leave a party hold true for video game consoles as well. Never show up too early. Is it exciting to get there before everyone else, maybe wait in line for a midnight release, sharing some weird, high-end booze you brought? Sure, but you’ll just end up buzzed before everyone else and playing lame games like Knack. It’s far more important to leave late, though. You never want to leave before things get weird. Parties and game consoles don’t necessarily peak when the guests do.
The full article is available for your perusal at The A.V. Club.
Posted in Insert Quarter, PS2, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged Yakuza 5
Insert Quarter: An Incredibly Detailed Look at the Invention of the Game Cartridge
Insert Quarter is our showcase for some of the best and most interesting writing about video games on the Internet.
Have you ever wondered exactly how the game cartridge came to be invented? Benj Edwards, a freelancer for Fast Company, has produced what is quite possibly the most in-depth exploration of the creation of the technology you could ask for. It starts with the revelation that American Machine and Foundry (or AMF, one of the largest manufacturers of bowling alley equipment in the country) had a hand in creating the game cartridge and it just gets crazier from there:
Consider the humble video game cartridge. It’s a small, durable plastic box that imparts the most immediate, user-friendly software experience ever created. Just plug it in, and you’re playing a game in seconds.
If you’ve ever used one, you have two men to thank: Wallace Kirschner and Lawrence Haskel, who invented the game cartridge 40 years ago while working at an obscure company and rebounding from a business failure. Once the pair’s programmable system had been streamlined and turned into a commercial product—the Channel F console—by a team at pioneering electronics company Fairchild, it changed the fundamental business model of home video games forever. By injecting flexibility into a new technology, it paved the way for massive industry growth and the birth of a new creative medium.
The full article is available for your perusal at Fast Company.
Posted in Insert Quarter
Insert Quarter: Why Is the PS4 Selling So Well?
Insert Quarter is our showcase for some of the best and most interesting writing about video games on the Internet.
Sony recently announced that they’ve sold more 18.5 million PlayStation 4 consoles since the system debuted more than a year ago. It’s an astonishing number, and well ahead of the Wii U (almost eight million, per Nintendo) and Xbox One (around nine million is our guess). But exactly why is the PS4 selling so well? Paul Tassi of Forbes attempted to get to the bottom of it, but the answer may be, “Who knows?”:
The picture is clear, and it’s not even close. Fanboy camps aside, Sony is absolutely crushing its competition this console generation in terms of sales, and its strong start didn’t just last through the release window, as it’s now over a year since launch. The PS4 is approaching a quarter of the total sales of the PS3 in just the first year, dramatically outpacing the last-generation console’s launch. It hasn’t quite reached Wii levels of sales insanity, but that was a console sold to everyone from toddlers to grandparents, and the PS4 has no such “fad appeal” to non-gamers.
The full article is available for your perusal at Forbes.
Posted in Insert Quarter, PS4
Insert Quarterly: The Best Game Writing of Fall 2014
Have you been following along with our first batch of Insert Quarter selections? Insert Quarter is our showcase for some of the best and most interesting writing about video games on the Internet. Whether its an in-depth analysis of a major issue facing the video game industry or just a fun read that’s perfect for a coffee break, you’ll find it in Insert Quarter.
Here’s some of the game writing that we loved the most over the last three months. (more…)
Posted in Features, Insert Quarter, Top Story
Insert Quarter: A History of Fan-Made Mario Games
Insert Quarter is our showcase for some of the best and most interesting writing about video games on the Internet.
There’s no reason to hide it, Mario Maker is one of my most anticipated games for 2015. The ability to create my own Mario courses (and play courses created by others) has got me giddy with excitement. Writing for Joystiq, Lawrence Bonk has revealed that he’s just as giddy as I am. He is so giddy that he dove into the shadowy world of unauthorized ROM hacks of Super Mario Bros. and other games in the series. These fan-made creations are sometimes scary, but they’re always interesting:
Of course, long before there were dedicated toolsets, there was the humble game ROM. In addition to allowing people to finally brag about beating Ghosts N’ Goblins, NES game ROMs had/have the added bonus of being fairly easy to manipulate. What better title to screw around with than the original Super Mario Bros.? It didn’t have too many sprites and, oh yeah, there’s that whole “pretty much defined video games for an entire generation” thing.
The full article is available for your perusal at Joystiq.
Posted in Insert Quarter, Retro, Wii U
Tagged Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Maker
Insert Quarter: Publishers Need to be More Upfront About DLC
Insert Quarter is our showcase for some of the best and most interesting writing about video games on the Internet.
Downloadable Content. If you didn’t consider it the scourge of the gaming industry before, you probably do now. With games like Assassin’s Creed: Unity and DriveClub shipping to stores in a less-than-playable state, the downloadable content that publishers have planned begins to lose its luster. But that hasn’t stopped these publishers from asking for your money in the form of season passes. Sometimes, like in the case of 2K’s Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, without detailing exactly what content these passes will include.
Game Informer’s Mike Futter believes that it is time for publishers to be more upfront with their DLC plans in an effort to rebuild a level of trust with the gamers of the world. Even though DLC has become a very important part of the business side of the industry:
I am guilty. I have pre-ordered games. I have purchased season passes without full details of the contents. I have done these things based on my enthusiasm for the medium and faith in the publishers. That time has passed.
The full article is available for your perusal at Game Informer.
Posted in Insert Quarter, PC, PS3, PS4, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel
Insert Quarter: Broken Games Are Still Broken
Insert Quarter is our showcase for some of the best and most interesting writing about video games on the Internet.
Yes, we’re still talking about games that were shipped to stores broken and still haven’t been fixed after nearly half-a-dozen patches apiece. In light of all the problems that Assassin’s Creed: Unity and Halo: The Master Chief Collection has caused for Ubisoft and Microsoft, respectively, Joystiq’s Richard Mitchell looked at what companies are trying to do to prevent this from happening in the future. And the answer seems to be… “not much.”
Sony will gladly take your $60 to pre-purchase Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End through the PlayStation Store, and that’s because they’ve added a disclaimer stating they don’t have to refund your money if it gets canceled. But on the other hand, CD Projekt delayed The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt when it became obvious that they wouldn’t be able to ship the game in February as originally planned. Even though the average gamer now expects the games they purchase to be patched many times over:
What’s really alarming, however, is that this process is standard practice now. Not only do we expect games to have problems at launch, but we tolerate it. We shrug our shoulders, saying “that’s just the way it is,” while developers and publishers take advantage of one of the most passionate audiences in existence.
That’s unacceptable.
The full article is available for your perusal at Joystiq.