Will Facebook Compete With PS4 And Xbox1 ?

 Now that social media titan Facebook has acquired Oculus Rift virtual reality for 2 billion dollars a discussion needs to be had about what they plan on doing with this technology. 2 billion dollars is a vast amount of money and therefore a giant corporation such as Facebook must have surly had plans before the purchase of Oculus.
 Sure, we can all imagine millions of people sitting around their houses meeting people and talking to their friends as if they were standing right there in full HD virtual reality. The implications of such can go far beyond that of friends meeting over the Facebook Oculus. We are talking about full blown business meetings, house shopping, looking at a potential cars to buy, going on a vacation to the Bahamas just to name a few of the seemingly endless possibilities.
 Beyond the obvious such as those stated above imagine next Facebook going head to head with gaming consoles and verily P.C's. We all know that Facebook has had video games that you can play with your friends but just imagine if Facebook rolled out a whole new type of gaming business. After all they did dish out 2 billion dollars and I'm sure they want to bleed every red cent out of the Oculus. The move in my opinion was genius..... imagine if Facebook had not purchased Oculus. Without Oculus Facebook itself would have become obsolete within a year or two at most. Friends hanging out on Oculus in video game worlds and/or chat rooms would have put a swift end to the golden era of Facebook social media in a single swipe.
 Facebook did not "want" to buy Oculus they had no choice but to purchase Oculus to secure their own future and with a device like that 2 billion I am sure can be doubled rather fast. The future of social media is ever changing and this landmark deal proves as much. There are changes coming to the way people interact online whether on social networks, at work or gaming and I think Facebook just won the grand chess game of social media.

PS4 Already Profitable for Sony

 Traditionally video game console divisions have always lost money ..... sometimes vast amounts of money. They try to turn a profit by sale of software, monthly or yearly paid subscriptions, digital content and accessories to name just a few. Microsoft and Sony have for years sold most of their gaming hardware at a loss just to get these consoles into peoples living rooms where they can then work on turning profits through sales as mentioned above.
 The fact that Sony has announced and verily proven that their PS4 division is already profitable is simply amazing and news I'm sure they and their stock/bond holders are very exited about. Nobody can deny that the launch of the Playstation 4 was a sweeping success. While Sony it seemed was making all the right moves and focusing on core gamers the competition Microsoft was busy playing defense over their policies that the gaming community simply hated even long time Xbox fans like myself.
 Microsoft just recently announced and began selling Xbox1 consoles without the connect included (which was mandatory before) and sales began to pick up. Sony has proven that they learned their lesson last generation when the PS3 launch was a complete failure for some time because of the heavy price tag and other bad decisions on Sony's part. Sony launched the PS4 for $100 less than the Xbox1 and the connect was optional as it rightly should be. Consumers just do not like products they don't want nor need pushed upon them because the corporation feels its the right thing to do (for their pockets) and Sony has obviously picked up on these basic consumer rules.
 The end result of Sony playing the better hand this generation is clear as ice at this point as Playstation 4 moves 8 million consoles and turns a profit on hardware faster than any gaming generation before this one. This can only mean huge things for Sony and mostly their consumers who have PS4's in their homes because Sony will be more motivated than ever to deliver the best gaming experience focusing more on the gamer themselves than trivial market numbers. There are allot of great things in store for Playstaion 4 owners and we can only hope now that other hardware developers in the future play their cards as well as Sony this Gen because these things benefit everyone and that's the most important thing of all.

Call Of Duty The End Of A Era.

 When the first online multiplayer Call Of Duty 4 Modern Warfare was released on November 5, 2007(North America) gaming was changed at that very instant. Who can forget the feeling of overwhelming fun while playing with your friends online to see who could get the most kills or simply win against your opponents? The solid gameplay, great maps and mesmerizing background music (MW still has the best music) sucked gamers in from all over the world and created something of a digital subculture.
 By the time Call Of Duty World At War was released on November 11, 2008(North America)millions of gamers were flocking to stores trying to get their hands on a copy at midnight or even trying to get a copy before the official release date for an advantage over others. A new Era had begun .... one which would dominate first person shooters for the next 6 years.  Those who played the game well and placed high on the old traditional leaderboards were met with fame from the Call Of Duty community and some even became rather wealthy. It was the all American youthful dream..... to become a pro or semi pro COD player and make money doing what you loved to do.
  Around this time (2008-2009) Youtube began to explode with countless channels filled with fresh and original Call Of Duty gameplays and/or commentaries, which in turn , led to many Youtube partnerships, money and online fame. This success went on for years with Call Of Duty video's getting countless views  and copies of the games flying out of the stores faster than they could keep them stocked. These were in fact the "golden years" for Call Of Duty and verily the gamers who played them. Like all "golden years" in history they always come to an end sooner or later and COD is no different.
 The Call Of Duty franchise began to make drastic changes to their successful formula starting in 2011 with the release of Call Of Duty Black Ops on November 9th of that same year. COD Black Ops was a huge success selling millions of copies world wide and shooting Call Of Duty into superstar status. However, something strange began to happen after the release of COD Black Ops 2 on November 13, 2012. Gamers began to slowly realize that the COD brand was somehow becoming stale and repetitive. Youtube began to fill up with so many channels dedicated to Call Of Duty gameplays and/or commentaries that the system was flooded with content making it impossible to compete because to compete with millions of other channels uploading the same material is like a needle being found in a haystack.
 Then on November 5, 2013 the death blow came about with the release of Call Of Duty Ghosts. Ghosts was not received well at all outside the hardest of core COD fans and received bad reviews from all angles. Old Call Of Duty players who have been stomping on COD since COD4 or WAW found themselves trading in their copies of Ghosts for other games or simply quitting gaming altogether ( Most hardcore COD fans only play COD). Youtube gaming channels began to sit there dormant and inactive. There is no denying the facts and even the developers admit that the series has become rather stale with yearly new releases and few new upgrades to boot. The developers began to complain that a single year was hardly enough time to create a top tier COD game and it was beginning to show in Ghosts.
 Now its 2014 and there is already talk and video previews of the next Call Of Duty "Advanced Warfare" ( sounds familiar doesn't it? MW3 anybody?) and they are obviously trying to spice things up a little bit. Apparently, Sledgehammer Games who have been working on this next installment seem to think that making COD even more futuristic is the answer when this is what the problem has been with the franchise since Ghosts. In one last desperate attempt to regain their dominance in the field of online multiplayer first person shooters they have created what looks like from the previews a rather far flung futuristic Titanfall concept. We can notice, if we look close enough, soldiers scaling walls like spiderman and deploying gadgets from the Halo series. It was bad enough that COD Ghosts had included a shootout in outer space and now they want to incorporate Mass Effect and Halo into the next COD. I'm sorry, but I must say now that this approach just is not going to change the current downhill path of Call Of Duty, rather, it will lead to its decline even faster.

                                                                                                        J30-06K

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Why You Should Keep Your Ps3 Console

 Even in the wake of a great and well deserved (after 8 years) launch of next generation consoles you will not find me at Gamestop trading in my Playstation 3 any time soon. Sure, its wonderful having the new shiny consoles to play on and experiment with, however, there are a few things in which these next generation gaming machines cannot offer us (me) at this time. What can that possibly be you ask? The answer to that question is rather simple....... All my games in which I have acquired over the many long years of the generation past. Not just games really but really good games. Games that are hard to come by and still expensive like all my top tier Playstation one classics like Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, resident evil and Harvest Moon just to name a few. Then there are the Ps2 classics like Persona and countless others. Thousands of hours invested into some of the best games ever created some of which to this day remain unfinished. Countless newer games of all different kinds of genres still begging to be played or some elusive trophy earned.
 Bottom line is .... even though I shall enjoy next gen as much as the next person , I will keep intact my vast collection of digital and/or hard copies of timeless masterpieces (and some crap of course) all massed together on one working console. No matter how many next gen pixels pound upon my retina's or advanced AI destroyes my avatar ....... I will always find myself crawling back to those great games that I and many others love. The moral of the story then is the one important question ...... Is it really true next gen hardware if its not backward compatible? I mean come on Sony and Microsoft its 2014 make your consoles to fit the needs of us gamers instead of your pockets.

Playstation4 Sells 7 Million Units While Microsoft Remains Silent.

 Sony has announced that the new Playstation4 console has sold over 7 million units. Keep in mind these figures do not include "shipped" units, only those which have already been sold. Meanwhile, Microsoft has remained silent and has failed to release even a peep of sales figures which points to the fact that they are hiding the numbers. Even with the release of the highly anticipated next-gen title Titanfall, XboxOne sales seem to be in a slump.
 Microsoft has already been warned by their heavy and influential investors that the company has been making mistakes, too many in fact, that these same investors and/or stockholders feel rather uncomfortable, or better yet, damn worried about their investments in Microsoft considering Windows8 was a complete flop and the Microsoft gaming division has yet to turn a profit. These same investors and stockholders are holding very serious negotiations to have the Microsoft gaming division sold off so that Microsoft can focus more on what they were supposed to do to begin with..... make solid working software. Even this software business in now in danger with the advent of tablets and super sized smartphones which are rather rapidly making laptops and tabletops P.C's obsolete.
 Even though Sony themselves have enough problems of their own it now seems that they are the clear winner of the next generation gaming console wars which puts them in a rather pleasant situation with their smiling investors. Which way will all this go? Please leave your comments below and let us know your take on these developments.

                                                               Written By J30-06K