Sony PSP
The End of Video Game Manuals
Gasp*. I know right? How could Game Manuals be coming to an end? Well if you’d like a few hints, look at games such as Modern Warfare 2, with 5 whole pages in it’s manual. I can’t tell you how excited I was to finally get Modern Warfare 2 and open the game and read the manual, to delve the depths of the story and the game itself. I was extremely disappointed. I found very little information. I found what the buttons do and a quickie on xbox live. That was about it.
Now games of the past have been quite different. One of my favorite games of all time, Warcract III, had the most amazing manual. It included pictures of important characters, their bios, maps, lists of units and their bios, etc. It was excellent, and I must have read it over 100 times completely.
Visiting IGN, I found an article about the Ending of Game Manuals. Apparently, Ubisoft is going to completely stop game manuals in their future games. IGN had 4 editors give their opinions on the situation. My opinion is that there should always be a decent manual in a game. A game manual increases the worth of the game. I just truly enjoy opening the game and reading the manual first before I ever play the game. That’s how I am, I like to read all about it and know what is going on before I step foot into the game itself. It’s the experience that’s being cut. I don’t like it.
After reading my short opinion and the editors at IGN, what are your opinions? What do you think about game manuals and their importance to the game? Do they enhance the experience, or do you cast them aside and never touch them? What do you think of the financial savings vs. end user desires?
I’m anticipating some great responses!
PSP 4000 Announced
In a string of price cuts by Sony, they end them with the recent announcement of the 4th installment of the Playstation Portable, the PSP 4000.
This new platform expects to reach nearly the graphics capabilities near the Playstation 2, or equivalent to the Nintendo Wii. It will also be able to process the Extended Universally Altered Media Disks [EUAMDs] 4x faster than the PSP 3000 could. This means faster loading times, especially when running the game off of the disk.
Sony also plans to extend their PSN [Playstation Network] for the new handheld console, making nearly 80% of released games downloadable for half of the price- a true deal.
Priced at only $300? Amazing.
The price is set to only be about $300, phenomenal for what you are getting.
The areas where the directional pad and triangle, circle, square, and x buttons are, along with the analogs, slide in, creating the perfect media experience that no other handheld has ever been able to provide before.
The 4000 is scheduled to release in Late ’09 to Early ’10.
