2 Weeks of Chaos (Gaming thread)

This week and next will have every orifice crammed with gaming stuff that hits about every sector in the industry.

These next two weeks are going to be busy busy.

ChinaJoy 2015

Asia's preminate videogame convention kicks off as ChinaJoy opens up on Thursday. Last year it pulled in 250K people to oogle singing female cosplayers while they take in the lights and sounds of PC and mobile games. This is the big convention for League of Legends and Korean gaming in general. Sony and Microsoft are having press conferences. With Sony's plans to foster relationships with Chinese devs, I'm expecting them to have a big blowout on signing them up to make console games for the PS4. Console wise, Microsoft doesn't care so outside of giving lipservice, it's going to be a bust. Since they gave the finger to TGS, I's personally would like to see some stuff on Raiden VI and Natsuki Chronicals but I know that's a pipedream. Now Windows 10 on the other hand, I'm expecting some partnerships with people like Tencent in bringing their games to the built in app store. If you want the gaming section of the store to become big, that's a good inroad to get people to use their ecosystem.
I'll be curious in how many Asian devs announce new MOBAs for mobile as Vain & Glory has shown, there is a market for it.

Summer Games Done Quick 2015

Today kicked off the start of the biannual fundraising drive by Speed Demos Archives which will run till August 3rd. Like the last two years for the summer drive, SDA is raising money again for Doctors Without Borders. Last year they raised just over $700k. Though the Winter one is bigger, all of the drives are fun to watch on Twitch. I'm personally waiting to see some people pull out crazy ass glitches to beat games. Look at the schedule and pick out some stuff you want to watch (also, the streams are awesome for background noise)

The International 5

Today also kicked off the start of The International with it's wild card round (actual tournament starts August 3rd) It's not the biggest eSport tournament in the world but it does have the biggest prize pool with it currently sitting just under $17.5m+ to be won by the 16 of 18 professional DOTA 2 teams. On one hand, it's smart business of getting people to fund the prize pool (while Valve pockets 75% of the money) which leads to stuff like this year where $17.5m+ is going to be doled out. You also get some good press about the prize pool while squeezing your consumers for all their worth. But on the other hand, it's killed the competative scene for the game with no one really caring about the game outside of this tournament which is really sad as it was THE game and has just let League of Legends to eat their lunch with everyone watching their tournaments every week as they matter. I dunno, it's the clash of Western style eSports (DOTA) vs Eastern style eSports (LoL). Either way, The International has always been an awesome tournament to watch with tons of great matchups with very cool strats being played out. The money really does bring out the best in the teams. I'm kinda curious if ESPN will show the finals again like they did last year. And if they do, I hope the Mouse does their own thing if they do a "documentary" on hyping it up as the thing Valve did last year was real bad. And this year, Fathom Events is showing the final day's games in movie theaters all over the country (if it wouldn't be 10 hours of BO and ass funk, I'd go). It's kinda worth it just to see Kaci Aitchison blown up on the big screen.

Gamescon

As soon as Asia's biggest game show ends, Euro's biggest game show begins on the 5th. Console wise, everyone but Sony is going to be there (they're doing the Paris show in October) and doing press conferences. Microsoft is treating this year's Gamescon as part 2 of E3 with Quantum Break, Scalebound and Crackdown 3 as the jewels of the show. Hopefully they show off that RTS for the PC they've been working on last few years. Square's presser is supposed to mainly be about Final Fantasy XIV. Frankly outside of the MS presser, I'm mainly interested in news and photos of the new Fanatec steering wheels and hoping for Logitech to show off their G29 wheel. Also will be nice to see more news on the upcoming Master of Orion game from Wargaming.net.

Well, the first episode of the new King's Quest game is coming out this week. That's about it though

King's Quest (PC, PS3, PS4, 360, XBO) - I like that the series is coming back and visually it looks pretty good but it being made by The Odd Gentlemen makes me skeptical due to their history of mediocre at best games. It is an episodic game so if you can wait till Christmas or so, you should be able to pick it up at half price when the second episode comes out.

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posted by Gang of Gaming Morons! at 03:06 PM

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