Demon's Souls Revisted

Demon's Souls is a very unforgiving RPG released on the PS3 back on 2009. It is extremely hardcore and has developed a small but rabid cult following, due mainly to the difficulty and the unique gameplay mechanics. Demon's Souls was created by Japan's FROM Software, the same company that makes the Armored Core giant robot combat games with a heavy RPG emphasis. Come to think of it, those games also have a difficult learning curve as well.

The reason I'm revisiting Demon's Souls is because of the recent interest generated by the announcement of a followup game, Dark Souls, which was shown at this year's E3. This was a surprise to many as the sales of Demon's Souls didn't break any records. It was a sleeper hit. However, this new IP developed a hardcore RPG fanbase, something which Sony needs to differentiate itself from Microsoft's Xbox 360.

The vast majority of people who played Demon's Souls back during its release found the difficulty so high that many just gave up from frustration. You die. A LOT. However, unlike other games, being dead doesn't mean you can't continue playing - you just play under different rules. Getting past the first few hours is really critical to surviving in the game and developing your character.

In fact, you die immediately after meeting your first boss following the short in-game tutorial. This is SUPPOSED to happen, because it brings you to the Nexus, which is sort of your hub for leveling your character, getting your weapons and armor fixed and/or upgraded and also buying necessary supplies.

The in game currency is souls, which is amassed from the enemies you kill. Souls are needed to purchase supplies from the various vendors you find in game. Learning magic spells and miracles will also cost you a lot of souls. However, unlike standard RPGs, you don't gain experience or level up right away during combat. Souls are also used to purchase stat increases and levels from a special NPC character in the Nexus. This makes souls a valuable commodity as you must choose how to use this very limited resource.

The first key to the game is learning how to fight. Frantic button mashing won't help you kill enemies; in fact it will do the exact opposite and get you killed. Unlike most modern day RPGs, Demon's Souls tracks stamina. Every action you take be it running, dodging, attacking or defending uses stamina. If your stamina is used up, even fairly weak monsters can kill you because you can't even lift your shield to defend or move out of the way by dodging.

Managing your stamina is very important, and it regenerates fairly quickly during short periods of inactivity. However, the same rules also apply to your enemies - meaning that after they go through their attacks, they also have short periods of vulnerability due to lowered stamina. Enemies have predictable attack patterns, so after a while you'll learn when to block, when to dodge and when to press the attack.

The other key is learning to block and dodge. Effectively targeting enemies and switching targets is key to blocking and eventually attacking. Also don't be afraid to dodge an attack as some especially strong enemies can drain your stamina from blocking just a few hits. This combat mechanic is quite realistic and provides for a more tactical combat experience. You really have to plan your attacks in order to succeed.

As mentioned before, dying in game doesn't mean you've lost. When you lose your body from death, you revert to soul form. Your hitpoints becomes half of what it is when in body form, but your attacks become a bit more powerful in soul form so you do a bit more damage. Dying in game also causes you to lose all the souls you've collected up to that point and creates a bloodstain. You restart the level you're on from the beginning and if you're able to get back to that bloodstain, you can reclaim the souls. If you die again, a new bloodstain is created and the souls trapped in the previous bloodstain are gone forever.

After entering the Nexus the first time in soul form, you only have one area you can access. You end up fighting in this area in soul form up to your encouter with the first boss in this area. You must defeat this boss in order to unlock a special NPC called The Maiden in Black. She is the one that you can purchase your levels and stat increases by trading in souls that you've collected.



Unlike other RPGs where NPCs critical to the continuation of the game are invulnerable, NPCs in Demon's Souls can be killed. If you kill a merchant or vendor, they will no longer be available to sell you goods. If you kill The Maiden in Black, you won't be able to level up your character. The game may seem rather harsh, but it basically imposes no artificial boundaries. You are free to do whatever you want, but you face the consequences of your actions or decisions, just like in the real world.

To regain your body, you must kill another boss, or have a magic item called Stone of Ephemeral Eyes. The stone can be found in various places in the levels and may be purchased from some vendors. Killing a boss demon will shift the world tendency to white. This makes all the enemies weaker and easier to kill but will provide fewer souls. However, dying in body form in the game will shift the world tendency to black which makes the enemies stronger and provides more souls when killed. Shifting the World Tendency to pure white or pure black will cause special events and NPCs to appear. In offline mode, only your actions will affect the world tendency.

Besides world tendency, there is also character tendency which affects difficulty and also provides extra content in pure white or pure black world tendency. Character tendency can be thought of as alignment or "karma." If you kill friendly NPCs you will move towards black. If you kill black phantoms that appear in the game, you will move towards white. Again special content or abilities are granted at pure white or pure black tendencies.

Character development in Demon's Souls is not limited in any way. You can build a character however you want, with whatever abilities suits your own combat preferences. For example, you could build a barbarian-mage, that has huge strength and stamina for close quarters fighting, but can also hit enemies with ranged magic attacks. If you prefer purely ranged combat, you could build a rogue-mage that can use bows and magic only.

With each level you gain, you are granted one point that you can assign to any of your stats. Each following level requires ever more souls to reach, so you have to choose how to increase your stats wisely to maximize the benefits of your fighting style. Each stat can be increased up to 99 points and you would need to be at level 712 to max out your stats.

You probably won't max out your stats during the first playthrough, so Demon's Souls has a feature called New Game + or NG+ for short. It allows you to use your current character with current stats, tendencies and equipment to play the game over again. However, enemy strength and difficulty scale with your character. NG+ allows you to play through and try different things, such as drastically changing your character and world tendencies, or killing certain NPCs for loot which you didn't do the first time around.

The online component of Demon's Souls is also quite unique and can be fraught with danger. As you connect to the world server, you find that you cannot explicitly alter world tendency. The world tendency in various areas of the game are calculated daily based on the aggregate tendencies of all player worlds online at that time. It is very difficult to have pure white or pure black world tendencies in an online game, so special events and content available in pure white and pure black world tendencies usually won't be available to you. If you want to experience pure black or white tendency worlds, you're best off playing offline by yourself.

As you play the game online you'll notice ghosts of other players in your game. You can't interact with these ghosts but you can observe what they are doing. These ghosts represent other players that are questing in the same area as you in their own instance of the game. You'll also see bloodstains from other players in your game.

Activating a bloodstain left by other players will create a playback event of the last 10 seconds or so of that player's actions prior to their death. Viewing these actions can give you clues or hints at what may be lying in wait for you just around the corner. Areas with lots of bloodstains would indicate an especially tough enemy or boss and could serve as a heads up for you.

You can also read and leave messages for other players in an online game. When you read a comment and you find it helpful, you can recommend it. Recommending a comment will give the player that left it a health boost every time a recommendation is left. Conversely, you can also leave your own message for others, which may lead to health boosts for you while you game.

In online mode, you can invite blue phantoms which are players that have placed a blue stone in different areas of a level. Activating these blue stones will transport that character into your game as a blue phantom. While it is possible to arrange to specifically game with a friend, it isn't easy to do. Usually, you must arrange beforehand where one of you will leave your blue stone. You will want to place it in an out of the way area otherwise you may find it impossible to find your friend. Even then, that doesn't guarantee success. Blue phantoms gain souls while playing with you in co-op mode, which they take back to their own world when they leave or when you dismiss them.

Also, other players can invade your game as a black phantom, and kill you in PvP fashion to gain lots of souls. While you can control to some extent whether you want someone to co-op with you, you can't stop others from invading your world as a black phantom. Phantoms, when they invade, will be chosen from people with a similar level rating as yours. However, given the fact that you may freely develop your character as you see fit, the abilities of these phantoms can and probably will differ quite a bit from your own character.

Invading black phantoms will usually be well balanced fighter magic user classed characters. They can wear out enemies with ranged magic attacks and then move in for the kill using close quarters combat. So while you are free to develop your character any way you like, be aware that unless you have a good defense against this type of character, you will be killed more often than not by invading black phantoms.

You may find that you might want to experiment and play with different online and offline characters to address this issue. As you develop your character you too can use blue and black stones to offer your services to other players or to also invade another players' games to kill them in PvP combat.

Demon's Souls is an incredibly difficult game, especially at the outset. The in game tutorial doesn't do much beyond providing you with the very basics of gameplay before pressing you headlong into an unforgiving environment. The instruction manual is useless for the most part. You are better off finding online resources such as the Demon's Souls Wiki or have a read through an online guide, such as this: 1up Demon's Souls Strategy Guide and Walkthrough.

Having said that, if you gave up in frustration before - have a second look. If you've never played the game before, go and pick it up as you should be able to find it cheap. The game offers at least 100-200 hours of gameplay and increases replayability with NG+ mode. Unique offline and online modes round out the interesting mechanics. Demon's Souls can be an incredibly gratifying game as you feel a very real sense of achievement as you slowly progress through the game. With a bit of persistence and perseverence, this may become one of your all time favorite modern RPGs.

The iPhone Autocorrect Fail - and How You can Fix it

This is the first in a series of blogposts in which I will cover neat hacks and tweaks to fix annoying things on the iPhone and in iOS. I won't get into how to jailbreak your iPhone as that wheel has been invented and re-invented all over the web. If you wish to find out more you can use Google and do a search for iPhone jailbreak. Other good resources on the web include Redmond Pie and Official Redsn0w site.

As you've probably surmised, iPhone jailbreaking is a subject very near and dear to my heart. I'm of the opinion that when I buy something, I own it outright, and if I want to make modifications to it - and possibly break it, then it's my right to do so. But from a more practical standpoint, we make modifications to our things in order to improve them or make them work how we like. While I think that Apple does a good job with the iPhone and iOS in general, there are still a lot of niggling little things that I don't think they got right. By jailbreaking the iPhone, you gain the ability to make changes and fix those major and minor annoyances.

The first major annoyance on the iPhone is probably the autocorrect function. When it works, it's wonderful, but when it doesn't it can lead to massive fails of biblical proportions. I'm not the only one who thinks so. In fact, there is a whole website dedicated to this phenomenon located right here: Damn You Auto Correct!. Or you can check out a YouTube video that shows some real LOL moments.

Hysterically Funny Autocorrect Fails - Unless it happened to you

Ok, seriously now, the problem with the iPhone's autocorrect function is that it is literally too smart or too stupid for it's own good, depending on how you look at it. By default, iOS happily makes edits and inserts corrections as you type. In the first instance, when you mistype a word, iOS will suggest what it guesses to be the correct word. Keep in mind words that you previously used that were not in the dictionary by default will get added to the dictionary. Lesson learned - what goes in will eventually come back out; which explains some of the laugh out loud substitutions shown in the video above.

Hitting the spacebar inserts the word iOS assumes is correct, which makes it entirely all too easy to get words you didn't type substituted in for you (see the point about lesson learned in the previous paragraph). To override this behavior, you have to manually press the "x" on the balloon popup. Given the small size of the onscreen keyboard, you find yourself either constantly struggling to delete incorrect subtitutions or pressing that tiny, little "x". And you really do have to press the "x" because if you accidentally press the suggested word, it replaces your original. It's really very, very annoying.

In the second instance, even if you correctly typed something, iOS will still make a suggestion from words already in the dictionary. A good example of this is the word "ill". iOS will very happily suggest "I'll" in its place. Try typing "He fell ill" and then hit the spacebar on your iPhone and see what you get. Of course, the alternative would be to turn off the autocorrect feature altogether. Enter ManualCorrect Pro.

ManualCorrect Pro is a Cydia Tweak that you can install to alter the default autocorrect behavior on your iPhone. This tweak is not available on the iTunes Appstore, so you must jailbreak your iPhone to use it.

In essence, the tweak reverses the behavior of the iPhone's autocorrect function. Instead of automatically inserting words for you when you hit the spacebar, autocorrect will now suggest a replacment  - but you must manually tap the suggested word in order for the autocorrection replacement to be made. If you hit the spacebar and ignore the suggestion, the word will just go away. This solves the first issue with iOS autocorrection.

The tweak also allows you to build up your own list of manual corrections, in effect adding new corrections into the built-in dictionary. One useful way of using this fuction would be to build up a list of shortcuts for longer words you might often use. In the Manual Corrections section, you enter a word pair. The first word is the trigger and the second is the substitution. Typing the trigger would force the normal autocorrect function with the substitution you previously entered - and by pressing the spacebar, the full word is substituted for you saving you lots of time typing.

Conversely, you are also able to supress built-in dictionary behaviors. The Ignore Corrections section can be used along with case checking to fix the second problem mentioned above. By entering "ill" in the Ignore Corrections section and setting it to be case sensitive, when you use the lowercase "ill" the built-in autocorrection will be supressed. But if you type "Ill" using a capital "I" then the built-in autocorrection will take over and suggest the contracted form of "I'll".

ManualCorrect Pro is a powerful tweak that not only corrects the horrible way in which iOS handles autocorrection, but also allows you to add some intelligence back into how corrections are handled on your iPhone while you type. As long as you're willing to put a little work into adding in the right Manual Correction and Ignore Correction rules, you will get a faster, more enjoyable - and most importantly -  more accurate typing experience on your iPhone.

DUST514: EVE MMO grows a shooter component

DUST514: Coming to a PS3 in your galaxy very very soon

DUST514 is a shooter title that seems to show up around E3 every year for the past few years, but otherwise keeps a fairly low profile. The game has commonality with other better known shooters such as the Battlefield, Modern Warfare or Mass Effect series, but it has a few fairly unique twists and surprises all its own. The game is being developed by CCP, the same people who develop and run the MMO EVE Online. The fact that DUST514 gets so little coverage is a shame, because the game is completely unscripted and totally unique - the engine that runs the game is the same backend that runs the EVE Online persistent universe. Missions and some interactive gameplay mechanics within DUST514 are completely generated by the EVE Online player community.

EVE Online is a game of territorial conquest out in space. Players can form or join corporations with the objective to conquer sectors of space and the resources within that sector. The game is open-ended in that the player can choose to do whatever he or she would like. They can be a trader or a pirate. They can play as fighter pilots for established corporations or they can be a mercenary selling their services out to the highest bidder. If flying spacecraft isn't your thing, you can play as a military commander or even run a corporation.

The game has a vibrant economy run on in-game currency called ISK. You earn ISK by establishing trade routes, and building up the economy of the sectors of space under your command. You spend ISK for many things including building up your military might. Space vehicles in the game range from small one man fighters all the way up to huge naval carriers. All the spacecraft can be customized with offensive and defensive upgrades you can buy when you earn ISK.

Up till now, all conquest happened in space. Massive battles were won and lost and control of planets and other resources ebbed and flowed based on the fortunes of war. Now with the announcement of DUST514, planetary conquest becomes a game in and of itself. The concept of creating a massively multiplayer shooter to resolve planetry battles as part of a larger MMO is already unique.. The really interesting part is that CCP plans to release DUST514 next summer on Sony's PS3. That's right, you console players can now get in on the fun and play with people running EVE Online on their PCs.

DUST 514 E3 2011 Trailer

What makes this bit of wizardry possible is the fact that both games can connect to CCPs servers. Despite the different gameplay focus, both games are driven off the same backend. This tight integration between DUST514 and EVE Online means that in-game currency and resources flow between both games in real time. Players can assult planetary positions as part of a mercenary contract, while massive space battles take place overhead in orbit. During battles, you can call down orbital bombardments performed by EVE Online players fighting in space overhead. And it seems it may be possible for ground-based defenses to strike at fleets in orbit as well. You can even form your own in-game corporation and have your own operations going on in addition to whatever other factions you are fighting for in EVE Online.

The financial model for the game is also quite interesting. DUST514 is a game that you pay for once when you download it and it is free to play forever. If you have the time and ambition, you can grind your way through the game earning ISK. You can then spend that ISK in any way you choose to upgrade and improve your character. For people who wish to get to the good stuff and don't mind spending some real cash, the option exists for you to buy ISK using microtransactions.

This is a smart move by CCP to keep DUST514 free. The reason is that CCPs real cash cow is still EVE Online, which requires a monthly subscription to play. They are using DUST514 as a kind of Trojan horse. CCP is hoping that people who have never played EVE Online before will become interested after playing DUST514. Further, the interactivity between DUST514 and EVE Online provides another level of strategic depth that would thrill existing EVE Online players.

DUST514 launches summer of 2012 as a PS3 exclusive. It's a shame that it won't appear on the Xbox 360, at least for the time being. It's entirely possible that Microsoft's rules for LIVE integration may have been too restrictive for CCP. We may never see the title on the Xbox 360 and that would be a shame, because I can definitely see 360 based clans and PS3 based clans forming and battling it out online. Oh well, one can always hope.

Duke Nukem Forever: Press Censorship and the View from Above

Duke Nukem Forever: Probably the last outing for this iconic gaming franchise. RIP 2011.

For the past few days since the release of Duke Nukem Forever, the tweetosphere and blogosphere has literally been ablaze with postings from 2K Games/Redner Group/Gearbox Software and independent gaming media outlets; with both sides crying foul. In the process, what has been revealed of the dark underbelly of the gaming industry has given me pause to wonder exactly how much we can really trust the published reviews we use to make our purchasing decisions.

Caught in the Act: The post that started the whole ball rolling, courtesy of Ars Technica.

At issue are the poor media reviews for Duke Nukem Forever. DNF is certainly not the first game to ever get a poor review. This spot is also usually reserved for most movie tie-in games. However the level of vitriol leveled at Duke Nukem is rarely seen from the gaming press, more so that it has been unanimous across the board. In fact, the level of "venom," as The Redner Group puts it, was so great, they took the unusual step of publicly threatening to blacklist offending media outlets.

Admittedly, the level of hate for this game was pretty high. Just going by current Metacritic scores for DNF doesn't give the full picture of the reaction by gaming media. You'd have to read a few reviews to fully appreciate this. I'll get to the whys in a bit, but if I were to sum it up, I would say that everyone probably really wanted DNF to be good. While I believe expectations were kept realistically in check, everyone was pulling for the Duke and hoped he'd come through in classic underdog style. Unfortunately, DNF did surprise everyone and turned out far worse than anyone could have imagined.

To the dismay of the Duke Nukem fanbase, the classic mechanics of exploration and item collection along with rapidfire acton featured in past games were gone. Also, the humor in past Duke Nukem games were juvenile and irreverent, but never bigoted or offensive. Unfortunately, Duke Nukem Forever became an on-the-rails, corridor shooter  sandwiched between tasteless, in-game cinematic sequences. The game was dumbed down and the humor reached for the lowest common denominator. Many frankly found the game to be offensive and politically incorrect in all the wrong ways. This critical miscalculation on the part of Gearbox in terms of the tone of the game and the lowbrow humor was the final nail in the coffin.

A decade ago, these same reviewers might possibly have just laughed all of this off. But now among the target demographic, most are pushing their 40s, married with kids and are more politically correct. It's often said, "Timing is everything," and Duke Nukem Forever missed that boat 10 years ago. The lesson to be learned from this is that people's memories are sacred. Duke Nukem Forever is nothing like the classic games from the beloved franchise. Instead of reminding everyone again why they loved Duke Nukem, DNF instead reminded them of everything that the game was not.

Keep in mind DNF was a game that spent most of its 13 year development cycle in intensive care. Over the years, it got ported through several engines and eventually burned through nearly a half-dozen development teams in the process. The game was scrapped and restarted so many times the design document - if it exists - probably looked like Humpty Dumpty on a bad egg day. On the face of it, chances were pretty good the game had already lost its way long ago, certainly well before 2K Games and Gearbox got involved.

2K Games and Gearbox were probably not well prepared for the reception that DNF got. Granted, a lot of money got burned up in the development and marketing for this game but that sort of risk goes hand in hand with the potential rewards of a runaway hit for any game. Instead of taking the criticisms to heart and maybe learning something about themselves and their gaming audience, 2K Games and The Redner Group went on the offensive to defend the undefendable. In so doing, they very publicly threatened the use of blacklists against reviewers and review sites for future titles.

Publishers have historically taken a carrot and stick approach to gaming media. They reward journalists by using money to pay for them to travel, stay in nice hotels and get some nice meals as part of the process of reviewing games. Publishers also provide lots of nice free gifts. On the flip side of the coin, they use blacklists to let journalists know when they aren't happy with a review. This stuff goes on all the time, but nobody talks about it publicly. Let's just call this what it is - it is bribery and censorship plain and simple.

I'd like to think that most journalists and gaming sites have the integrity not to be swayed by these machinations.  But just as there are always those that value integrity above all else, there are also those that value the perks associated with being in the good graces of the publishers. As consumers, we have to make sure that the sites we follow are really on the up and up. Metacritic (www.metacritic.com) is a great aggregator of review information and is a good measuring stick to help us in that regard.

As gamers, we spend good money to indulge in our favorite pastime. We want to know what games are good and worth buying; and we need reliable and impartial reviews to make our purchasing decisions. Conversely, developers and publishers that make good games deserve to make money from their efforts, and those that create crap should face the consequences when consumers vote with their wallets.

Publishers and the media alike should think long and hard about the long term ramifications of the carrot and stick approach to business as usual.  Honest and impartial media helps everyone and will help the industry grow. It is the mechanism by which the wheat is separated from the chaff and helps to inspire consumer confidence. And in the long term, it will create a more healthy and vibrant gaming industry. That's a win-win in my book.

Sorry, Wii only allows U one controller

Recently, it seems the more that gets revealed about the Wii U, the less appealing it looks to me as a hardcore gamer. First, despite Nintendo's claims that this is a fully realized next-gen HD console, we see that the Wii U seems to lack an internal harddisk. Of course, the next ringer is that Nintendo says the Wii U won't play Blu-ray or DVD discs, because they don't feel the need to pay for the licenses required to do so - http://engt.co/jhOX3h; and since the Wii U doesn't play back media files, you didn't really need that harddisk anyway. How convenient.

Now, we get further information that the Wii U will only support one Wii U controller - http://bit.ly/iRhLbF. Hello. According to Nintendo CEO Iwata, while it is technically feasible to support multiple Wii U controllers, cost is the main issue. Of course, cost seems to be the main issue with everything related to Nintendo's decisions lately. I find this a bit disingenuous to say the least, because Nintendo is also the only console player to make big profits on their hardware. So who is all this cost cutting for... the consumers or Nintendo's bottom line?

Now this probably wouldn't have raised my hackles if Nintendo's online gaming capabilities were more in line with what Microsoft or Sony provide. But I sometimes have problems remembering friends' phone numbers, much less their friend codes. For better or worse, the Wii was a social gaming machine that you played together with people in the same room. Due as much for the lack of online multiplayer as for the casual party games that made up a large percentage of its content.

Now it is true that the Wii U will also work with Wii-motes. But that means most social gaming on the Wii U will be done from the standpoint of dissimilar competition. One person will have the Wii U controller, and their goals will be different from everyone else who is playing against him or her with Wii-motes. As casual party games go, this is ok. But do you see a problem with this picture?

Ostensibly, the Wii U is aimed at a more hardcore market and shooters are standard fare. How do you play split screen co-op or multiplayer with dissimilar controls? The answer is, you don't. And in the case of shooters, you really need two analog sticks which Wii-motes most certainly lack. So unless Nintendo allows more than one Wii U controller to be connected or gives the Wii U a total networking overhaul, you're not going to be playing co-op multiplayer with any of your friends, either together in the same room or online. What a friggin' mess!

Maybe it's because Nintendo has spent too much time making casual party games and not enough time with real hardcore, multiplayer titles; but I get the distinct feeling that none of this has been particularly well thought out. And all the stuff that's been coming out of Mr. Iwata's mouth lately is doing nothing to convince the hardcore gaming audience of the Wii U's credibility to go up against Microsoft's Xbox or Sony's PS3 anytime soon.

ARMs race makes smartphones beefier, will easily outperform a Wii

And the craziness in the smartphone sector just never stops. Apple's A5 processor which currently powers the iPad 2 is a dual-core 1GHz beast with new SGX graphics that is said to be 9x faster than the A4 chip currently powering the iPhone 4 and original iPad. Not to be outdone, Google's next Nexus 4G smartphone will play host to a dual-core 1.5GHz CPU and have 720p output. My Wii doesn't do 720p output. Samsung, which fabs its own ARM cores for their smartphones say they will have a dual-core 2GHz chip by the end of 2011.

At this rate, most high-end smartphones coming out by the end of this year will easily outperform Nintendo's Wii console, any version of the DS, and Sony's first generation PSP. Which begs the question of when we will start to see more serious games come out for these platforms. Someone needs to come up with a bluetooth gaming controller first though.

New Xbox due in 2012?

Stories are hitting the web today commenting on the possibility of the Xbox 720 coming out by next year's E3. John Carmack of iD fame, talks about next-gen consoles having 10x the compute power of current generation Xbox 360s and PS3s http://bit.ly/lAJJvb. The original news was broken by Website Videogamers.com when Crytek revealed that the CryEngine 3 was being used on TimeSplitters 4 and that the engine would also debut on the Xbox 720 during E3 2012. Crytek knows a thing or two about this new console as they are already working with a Microsoft development platform http://bit.ly/katn50.

If Microsoft really follows through, this could just be the single worst thing that could happen to both Sony and Nintendo. Sony's next console, the PS4, is nowhere to be seen as they continue to talk about their 10 year PS3 life-cycle. Nintendo looks to be ready to launch their Wii U during the next E3 show, but with Microsoft eclipsing them in the hardcore gamer segment, it's already old news before it comes out.

If what Carmack says about the processing power of next-gen consoles holds true, the Wii U is already looking like dated technology before it's even released. Given the vastly different requirements to develop for the next generation of consoles, both Sony and Nintendo could be in trouble as Microsoft takes an early lead with the hearts and minds of gamers and developers alike.