Gaming Thread 7/20/2014

So, a month ago they had a big media blowout on what they were working on, 8 months after the Xbox One was released. What I'm talking about is the original TV programming from Xbox Entertainment Studio. Yeah,, well, last week they decided to kill the whole program outside of the Atari-videogame crash (which they dug up all those ET carts for part of it), the Halo Nightfall digital series and the Halo TV show. So yeah, after 9 month of being on the market, Microsoft killed the last remaining thing that was "unique" about the initial promises of the XBox One. They've decidedly have gone all in on the shrinking market for hardcore console gamers with an under-powered and over-priced console which plays multiplats (the bulk of console gaming) with noticeably lesser graphics than the PS4. All the while Satya Nadella and Phil Spencer saying once again that it's a "Cloud and mobile first world" with a product that is noticeably un-mobile. I always figured Sony would die from blood loss caused from atrophy but Microsoft has decided that they could beat them to running off the cliff.

Considering Phil Spencer only knows or cares about gaming (a shrinking market when it comes to consoles in a company that is ill equipped for mobile gaming), how long till they kill off Xbox Video and Xbox Music? Xbox Music was Marc Whitten's thing and XBox Video was Ballmer's, two people who are no longer there.

For me at least, it's current state isn't what I bought or wanted (if I wanted a mainly gaming focus, I would have built a second PC).

Someone mentioned that Microsoft is starting to smell like IBM of the 90's (and late 70's) and I have to agree. Sure, they will compete in the cloud market but I can't see them pull enough market to really hang their hat on it in Microsoft's past and near future size. And they're way to late in the game to compete with Apple, Google and Samsung when it comes to mobile.

To bring it back to XBox, once again you have to laugh at the coincidence of Microsoft looking to kill off something created by J Allard and Robbie Bach while having their long term future as a company be killed by J Allard and Robbie Bach's Windows Kin/Windows Phone.

IT'S TIME! Loser bracket are playing today while NewBee sits in the Grand Finals (who saw that coming?) waiting for their opponent to make it through the grueling loser's bracket.

You can watch it here, you can watch it through the actual DOTA client through Steam or as an extra bonus, you can watch it on ESPN OchoCinco

To be honest, I've had such a busy week and weekend that I honestly haven't been watching it too much. And I miss my Kaci-Chan waifu. What I have seen has been pretty good, topped by yesterday's last real game between LGD and DK where DK waited to long while pub stomping LGD. They took the rax from two lanes but at a crucial time, they got rolled in a team fight and LGD just walked down the middle to steal the game.

Today's games is:
Cloud9-ViCi (ViCi is up a game in the best of 3)
LGD-DK (LGD up by a game)
Winners of those matches plays Evil Geniuses which lost to NewBee in the winners finals

Winner of that match play Evil Geniuses who got denied in getting their Grand Finals ticket punched (and guaranteed minimum $1.5 million) by NewBee which starts on Monday at about 1PM/11AM (after the hour of talking heads and Kaci Aitchison).

If NewBee wins it all, I'm totally claiming credit for willing it to happen a few weeks ago.

KeSPA announced where the SC2 ProLeague finals will take place. It's at Some Sevit which are artificial islands designed after StarCraft map, Korhal Floating Island.

Last night, TaeJa and Solar met in the Intel Extreme Masters Shenzhen Grand Finals with Taeja pulling out the win 4-3.

Mount Your Friends (PC, XBLIG) - This week marks the PC release of the Xbox Live Indie Game, Mount Your Friends. Umm......yeah

Hearthstone: Curse of Naxxramas (PC & Mobile) First expansion pack to Hearthstone which is a smattering of single player content and a confusing price. Play it in the first week and you get one part for free which makes the expansion $20, after that it's $26 in total but you can also buy them one by one for $7 I believe. If anyone knows whats up, please explain it down below because I'm not that smart to get it.

Abe's Odyssey: New & Tasty (PS3, PS4 and Vita [lol]) - It's Abe's Odyssey remade in 3D instead of 2D. Considering the way the puzzles were built for a single screen, it should be interesting in how they change it with the new following camera. Considering Just Add Water still hasn't fixed The Odd Box after 4 years, I'm curious on if this is gonna be buggy as shit as well.

posted by Gang of Gaming Morons! at 03:13 PM

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