Activision executives announced a first-of-its-kind insurance program to protect gamers against the loss of their downloadable content for Modern Warfare 2. The program, called Digital Insurance for Console Key Security debuts next month and covers all manner of loss of digital rights to Modern Warfare 2’s latest map pack.
“We wanted to test this viability of this program on an extremely expensive downloadable property,” said Carl Federico of Activision’s Digital Division. “Once we realized how much these suckers.. er… I mean gamers were willing to spend on a Modern Warfare 2 map pack, we knew the time had come for D.I.C.K.S.”
“I was really nervous about spending so much money on this map pack,” said Eric Pestaviyo. “But now I have the peace of mind that these D.I.C.K.S. have my back.”
If successful, Activision plans to roll out the protection for a wider variety of products, including Guitar Hero DLC.
“We’re growing this thing as long as gamers will pay for it,” said Federico. “By this time next year, I think you’ll see us as much bigger D.I.C.K.S.”
Experts throughout the industry seem to agree that the D.I.C.K.S. at Activision will only get bigger and bigger as gamers swallow more and more expensive digital content.
Hot off of Shack News’ unveiling of the expanded Social Media features in Bungie’s upcoming Opus, Halo Reach, all new details are streaming from Mt. Bungie! Their latest trickle of news is the unveiling of the “Reach Around” initiative, aimed at further integrating players with other players.
Todd Assleman, Bungie’s Director of PR explained some of the new features to be found in the Reach Around area of Halo Reach:
“The Reach Around is an area that players can either participate in or not. I forsee that some players here will be givers, while others will be more takers, picking and choosing when to use the Reach Around as it suits them.”
Some of the new Reach Around features include:
Tea bag videos: upload your favorite videos of tea bagging people or being tea bagged and at the end of every week, the Reach Around will award the “Best Teabag of the Week”.
What preschooler pwned you? Another great feature will be stories of pwnage by kids 13 and younger. Assleman explained, “With all of the kids on Halo 2 and 3, we felt that a dedicated section to these rug rats was well overdue.”
Reach Around Buddy playlists: Gamers will be able to get into the Reach Around matchmaking areas where they can play with others and get the full Reach Around experience.
Halo Reach’s Beta will begin in May of 2010, but Bungie hopes to have Reach Around available before the climax of the beta experience.
Dave, known by his family as David, broke wind just after lunch yesterday in a Subway Restaurant in Houston.
“I seriously didn’t see it coming,” said Dave. “I remember I asked this lady for a BMT and no olives and all the sudden it just happened.”
If confirmed, this would not be the first time Dave had cleared a public place.
“I still remember PAX 2008,” said fellow Red Show podcaster, Doc. “We were on a full flight to Seattle, seated in the very back, with nowhere to go, and Dave starts letting loose with the ass vapors. Before we knew it, an Air Marshall was warning us that what Dave was doing could be considered a threat to Homeland Security. I can only imagine the fate of those poor Subway workers after that Low Rider that Dave rode into town yesterday.” Yes, we got the irony of being reprimanded by an “Air” Marshall.
It isn’t immediately clear whether Dave will apologize to the staff of Subway, who had to spend most of the rest of the day with the door open in sub-60 degree weather.
“I’m weighing my options,” said Dave. “I wouldn’t mind taking action to prevent this in the future, but I would be less likely to blow a nasty near the chip rack if someone threw some free sh** my way… I’m just sayin. I know they don’t sell ALL of those cookies.
Bethesda announced that its next edition of the Fallout franchise will debut on Xbox 360 approximately 6 weeks before it is available on the PlayStation 3.
“This is our biggest, most ambitious video game to date,” said Jergin Yurchayn of Bethesda. “The world itself will be roughly nine times larger than Fallout 3 and gamers can look forward to at least a 60-hour single-player experience.”
The news sent aftershocks through the ranks of fanboys on both sides of the aisle.
“We all know that they’re doing it because the PS3 is the suxxxors and Xbox is the best game console ever,” said a gamer known as IblEedgREEn on Xbox Live.
“Nobody even PLAYS those stupid Bethesda games ANYWAY,” said an avid PS3 gamer wishing to be called simply J.R.
In an effort to manage audience misconceptions, Bethesda amended its statement to better explain the timed exclusivity of Fallout 4.
“With a game of this size, we thought it only fair that we give Xbox 360 gamers a head start,” explained Yurchayn. “This way Xbox owners have plenty of time to save up for larger hard-drives and copy all 32- discs to their drive. It was the fair thing to do.”
“My life is pretty straight forward… literally,” said Lightning, a level 2 Commando/Ravager who moonlights occasionally as a medic when things get really dire. “I feel like all I ever do lately is run straight ahead and fight things.”
In a rare interview opportunity, Sarcastic Gamer caught up with the Pulse L’Cie on an exquisitely prerendered cliff overlooking a massive expanse of world that she would never be allowed to explore.
“It’s not like I’m asking for much, you know?” said Lightning. “But would it be too much to ask, as I enter what I feel is roughly the fourth or fifth Chapter of my life, to come upon a fork in the road? A road less traveled? Hell a wide field I could walk on one side of?”
Since departing her home of Cocoon, Lightning and her comrades have traveled more than 200 real-world miles in the straight forward direction, fighting the same creatures approximately every 326 feet.
Her battle mates are very concerned about the heroine.
“She’s not eating enough and is getting way to thin,” said Hope, a nearly useless member of the team who needs to admit he’s really a girl. “Ever since that Fal’Cie turned her sister into an ashtray, she’s been really short with everyone. It’s like… there’s something bothering her, but I can’t figure it out.”
“We play a game to keep our sanity,” said Sazh, a fashion-challenged middle-aged black man who enjoys hanging around with young white girls (and Hope) and hosts a chicken in his uncharacteristically flimsy Afro. “Once we finish a fight, we like to strike a pose like this… uh!… and then we run on ahead of her, straight in front of enemies that don’t even attack us. Haha! It’s a gas to see her get so mad!”
“It really pisses me off,” said Lightning. “I saw Sazh run right up to 3 Cockatrice who just stood there! If I come within 20 feet of one they perk up and charge! I can’t help but feel I’m being punk’d. I swear to God if we finish this quest and I found out my Focus is cleaning out a Gigantoad cage, I’m going to cast Fira right up Ashton Kutcher’s ass!”
The team, while originally optimistic, are now beginning to hope that initial estimates of a 30-hour quest were exaggerated.
“If we don’t get to make a choice soon, I’m quittin this bitch, straight up,” said Sazh.
Welcome to the Sarcastic Gamer tradition of Fiction Friday where we make up headlines and exaggerate things more than we do normally. It’s become a hallmark of our existence. Also, my thumb hurts a lot today.
I don’t know exactly what happened to my thumb, I know I didn’t smash it and absolutely ZERO cars rolled over it. I didn’t try walking on my thumbs across hot coals or thumb-wrestling Dog the Bounty Hunter (I swore never again.) I don’t know why my thumb hurts but God the FATHER it’s killing me right now.
So all day today we’re going to be trying to trick you and bait other websites into reporting things that never actually happened and we encourage you to submit tips to sites you feel are extra gullible or just use our posts to try and trick your friends.
Personally, I need to find some ice for my thumb. It’s like its bloody sprained or something, but I haven’t done a damned thing with it. No hitch-hiking or Fonz impressions…. NOTHING I swear to God but OH MY JELLY this is killing me!
If you ever think of a Fiction Friday topic, or even just an idea, you should hit the staff page and email a random staff member your idea so that they can steal it and claim to have never heard of you, whilst our tech team removes all traces of your existence from the website.
I think I may have just remembered what I did to my thumb. It’s a long shot but it might be sore from pressing forward on the left analog stick on my PS3 controller for roughly 6 hours straight today. (You see forward is basically the only direction they let you go in Final Fantasy XIII.)
So enjoy Fiction Friday friends… (and the happenstance of unintended alliteration.)
At 8:05am (CDT) this morning a very wealthy oriental gentleman walked into the offices of Sarcastic Gamer with a check for a ridiculous sum of money. At 8:06am we agreed to the sale of Sarcastic Gamer to The Yamasha Group of Tokyo, Japan.
Congratulations SGC… You’re officially Japanese.
Though no immediate changes are planned, I am personally excited by the possibilities presented by this turn of events. Not for you… heavens no. This place is going to die a slow death. No I meant for me. I’m going to buy a bunch of stuff I don’t need and probably develop a nasty addiction to an illicit substance. Probably go out in a blaze of glory off a seaside cliff in my Porsche. But I won’t miss this place one single bit. You guys can all kiss my ass. I’m done fielding complaints about how the FREE podcast you listen to didn’t talk long enough about Uncharted 2 or how Halo 3 really IS an amazing game and I’m just a hater. Buh Bye! Adios Amigos!
PacManPolarBear is already commissioning a 90-ft statue of himself for the top of a building in downtown Ottowa (Lono is planning a 91ft statue of his likeness on the next building over). Dave and his parents are all getting matching garden homes and Harlequin is launching her own cooking network. Shanghai Six just called from a secret bunker somewhere under Virginia where he says nobody will ever get him or his money, “Ever. Muahahahaha.”
We’re RICH BITCHES! BYE!
UPDATE: After a cursory review of SG’s records, specifically our check register, The Yamasha Group has formally withdrawn its offer… So… yeah. I guess this weekend’s Gamer Night is back on. Join (HOST) on (XBL/PSN) for (GAME) at (time)… Gamertag:
This week at the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC), Sony officially unveiled the “Playstation Move” which is a carbon copy of Nintendo’s Wii control set up for motion control in video games. While some gamers were skeptical, others think the new Playstation Move is a great idea.
The Virtual Masturbation Society of America or VMSA, a Hoboken, New Jersey based non-for-profit organization thinks the new Playstation Move is a great idea. The VMSA is famous for producing the 2007 report regarding “virtual masturbation and it’s correlation with real life masturbation.”
Founding member, Richard Wankem released their statement this morning:
“The VMSA is on record with our concerns of how underrepresented virtual masturbation is in the marketplace. With the release of the Playstation Move, Sony has ushered in the era of HD virtual masturbation or as we call it in the VMSA, V-eming. Personally we couldn’t be more pleased with the prospect of not only having another console to V-em with, but to do it with others in HD is just a dream come true.”
While Sony has attempted to downplay “wank practice” as an actual feature of the Playstation Move, their initial gaming offerings aren’t really helping their image. Here are the first five releases for the “Move”, coming out this Fall:
1. Wank fest 2009 (October 2010)
2. Jerk ‘em (October 2010)
3. God of War Mini-Game collection (October 2010)
4. Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball 2010 (November 2010)
5. Gladiator (November 2010)
No word yet on when Microsoft’s full body sex simulator, Project Natal, will hit the market, but we’ll keep you up to date at your one stop shop for everything “virtual” and “wank enducing” here at Sarcasticgamer.com!
Admit it. When you heard about the recent week-long PSN outage (that’s how long it lasted, right?), you reflected on the ridiculously high rate at which Xbox 360s spontaneously stop working and read about the inane, childish bickering at Infinity Ward, you had one thought and one thought only: GET ME A WII NOW!
Though the Wii has long been derided as the black sheep of this generation of consoles, it is becoming clearer with each passing year that Nintendo is the only company that actually cares if its customers enjoy the time they spend playing video games. Microsoft just wants you to enter your credit card number one more time, and Sony is out to forcibly sodomize all of your pets.
How many stories have you read about the Wii’s dreaded “Pink light of failure”? The answer is none, because they’re no such thing as the dreaded “Pink light of failure.” I just made it up. See how easy that was?
Also, the Wii doesn’t break. That’s why there’s no cute name for its failure. It doesn’t fail. It is built with such love and care by the good folks at Nintendo that it is literally unbreakable, like Bruce Willis in that movie “Unbreakable.” When you put Super Mario Galaxy into your Wii, you don’t have to perform a series of strange rituals to the unseen god of video games in the hope that you will actually get to play the game. You just play it.
Another impressive, yet often ignored, aspect of the Wii is the way in which Nintendo’s system immerses you in their games. What is more immersive than motion control gaming? You are literally performing actions that are perfectly mimicked by the characters on screen. You aren’t going to see that on any other system.
You know what else is supposed to immerse you in video games? Cut scenes. Cut scenes, however, are a terrible plague upon the gaming industry. You sit and watch a pre-rendered clip. Occasionally they throw you a quick-time-event-bone, but it’s always disgusting and you get the feeling that another dog has already chewed on it before you. How is that immersive?
If I wanted to watch pre-rendered CGI clips, I’d go see Avatar or get a Pixar film off of Netflix. That way, the voice acting, writing, and graphics would actually be good, and not just an unnecessary interruption of an interactive medium. You can’t possibly tell me that the endless cut scenes in MGS4 made you feel more a part of the game than when you bowled a strike on Wii sports. I guess you can tell me that, but you’re lying to me and making baby Jesus angry.
If none of this has convinced you (how you could remain unconvinced at this point is a mystery), remember that resisting the Wii is a fruitless and futile action. Last year, the Wii sold 9.6 million units in America, which was more than the combined sales of the Xbox 360 and the PS3. That’s ridiculous.
Every year is supposedly “The Year of the PS3,” yet it never happens, just like all of those end-of-the-world prophecies. How many times have those been right? Zero times, that’s how many times.
You may attempt (pointlessly) to argue that the Wii is slowing down, and that’s it’s just a passing fad. The Wii sold 3.8 million units in December in the U.S., which set a new record for single-month sales. That’s slowing down? Interestingly this was also the first month EVER that the PS3 sold more than 1 million units. Isn’t that adorable?
Many of us grew up with Nintendo as the leader of gaming excellence. And guess what? That time has returned. They still consistently deliver fun games, and their console actually works when it’s supposed to! Think about this while you wander the lonely corridors of Sony’s “Home,” or wait for your Xbox 360 to return from Microsoft’s repair center – yet again.
Author’s Note: In the spirit of full-disclosure, I should mention that I gave my Nintendo Wii to my sister because I never, ever used it.
