Wii Punch-Out!

Nintendo has announced the continuation in a series that started in 1984 known as Punch-Out!! for the Wii. Once upon a time we all got to pop coins into Punch-Out!!, later we were able to power on our NES and play Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! or, if you’re younger, the version of Punch-Out!! with Mr. Dream (since Tyson’s contract expired with Nintendo and he wasn’t the champion anymore).

At Nintendo’s press conference today they announced Punch-Out, Another Code, Dynasty Warriors and Sins & Punishment 2. Although Dynasty Warriors sounds like it might simply rock on the Wii, Punch-Out really digs down into the history of Nintendo and brings back one of the older franchises.

Perhaps Nintendo is hoping Punch-Out will provide proof they’re serious about the franchise titles on the Wii console. Gamers have been skeptical considering they’re getting one (real) Mario and one Zelda game every few years. Many of us buy Nintendo for their popular mascots and to relive some of the nostalgia of being a kid. Punch-Out may definitely bring back some Nostalgia.

Hopefully, Punch-Out stays true to the original series and is designed to utilize the Wii controller better than Wii Sports Boxing.

(Thanks, Kotaku)

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Xbox 360 Price Cut Leads To 100-Percent Sales IncreaseXbox 360 Price Cut Leads To 100-Percent Sales Increase

Why release a single block buster game with a two week pop when you can simply lower the price of your console and boost sales by 100%? That’s a question Sony may be asking themselves right now, as Metal Gear Solid 4‘s hype may have lasted years but the sales and console unit sale boots lasted a month.

Gamers show how they feel about costly consoles with their wallet. With 100% increases in sales, it’s clear that many gamers have been holding out from the “next-generation” of consoles because the price was too high. Now, Microsoft can report huge sales numbers this quarter with a special thanks to their price cut. Imagine the sales boost the PlayStation 3 would have if it was competitive in price?

Microsoft could have kept the savings of manufacturing costs to themselves but they chose to pass savings onto the consumers. The increase in unit sales means more households own the product and newly released games will probably see larger spikes now that people have invested in the 360 console.

End result, developers will want to produce games for the Xbox 360 because they’ve got a larger audience and publishers will be less likely to pick Sony as an exclusive because the 360‘s got sway in the market. It might not be a Wii in total sales records but it’s not half bad!

(Thanks, gamasutra)

Fanboy Turf Wars and Metacritic’s The TurfFanboy Turf Wars and Metacritic’s The Turf

Gamers are passionate about gaming, love their games, follow the industry all while living and breathing all things game. This is the green pastures upon which fanboys are born. As we’ve seen at gamingpodcast.net, where we were hit hard by fanboy rage a few days ago the blood boils with hate and rage.

Although our site only received 30+ comments, other sites whom picked up the article have 100+ comments on the article about Blu-ray and my opinions of it. PS3 fanboys ran wild telling me how my name has been “dragged through the mud” followed (and preceded) by many curse words and name calling, many of which I simply refused to post because of the vulgar content.

They have moved on to larger more popular platforms to voice their opinion, by dinging Gears of War 2 prior to the games release on metacritic.com dolling out a 3.5 user submitted review (which has since gone up upon the release). Why did they target GoW2? Because the 360 fanboys nailed LittleBigPlanet with crappy reviews, says smashpad.com.

The response was to hit Resistance 2 for another bad user review score all while forcing metacritic to change their user review process to only allow users to post reviews after a game has hit store shelves. Metacritic isn’t to blame here, although it is sensible to only allow reviews prior to a games release, the fanboys have found a way to hold their turf wars.

Who’s next? Amazon.com allows reviews as well and, as we saw from Spore, it can get pretty dirty there too. Now that Metacritic is altering their review process will gamers wait until they’re allowed to spam with bad reviews to do so, or will they hunt for new social networking proving grounds to give games a bad name?

Perhaps they’ll compete for google keywords to rank #1 for a fraud review of a title to beat out other sites or they’ll find another popular user-generated review site to scar the name of a to-be released title.

There is a gang war on the Net and it involves fanboys finding social media outlets to spread their hate and deception on the opposing consoles. For us, we’ll stick with gaming and leave the rage to someone else.

Users Pwn MetaCritic Review SubmissionsUsers Pwn MetaCritic Review Submissions

Although we’ve found Metacritic a userful resource for game reviews, many folks have gone on a user submission rampage to discredit games that haven’t even launched yet. Their first attack was on LittleBigPlanet followed by Resistance 2, now their hitting Gears of War 2.

While Gears of War 2 has a Metacritic score of 94/100 the user’s have reviewed it to be a 3.5 out of 10, with a bright red box around the user review due to its low nature we’re sure. Although users are free to give their own honest representation of the game from their perspective, Gears of War 2, as of the review dates, hasn’t been released yet – these reviews are bogus.

This style of attack was popularized in Spore, when Amazon got nailed with poor reviews of the game because Spore’s “Draconic” DRM made people angry. However, it’s more reasonable for people to voice their opinion on a known issue with a game; Gears of War 2 review spamming is just mean.

We use Metacritic as guidance when we do our gaming podcast to understand what games are rated in the industry, but we don’t use user reviews as our main guide. There are plenty of folks out there that may utilize these reviews in more seriousness because they may feel journalists reviews are tainted by advertisers or “the man” and want the common gamers opinion.

The common gamer cannot possibility be reviewing Gears of War 2 before the title has arrived. This is bogus. Metacritic has this to say:

“My advice for our faithful users is to focus your attention on the Metascore for this game and not the thousands of user votes, most of which have been submitted before said users have played the game. This is a gaming community, and if people want to stuff the ballot box, there’s not much I can do at this point. When we upgrade the registration requirements for participation on the site in the near future, this type of thing won’t happen. We’ll post the full legitimate user reviews upon the game’s release. As always, thanks for using the site.” (1up)

So, to those looking for holiday gaming gifts, keep this in mind while you start hunting down games you’ll want to buy.