Tiga Responds to Lord Mandelson’s Higher Education Speech

28 July 2009

TIGA, the trade association representing the UK games industry, today warned that any increase in tuition fees for undergraduates after the next general election should not be used as an excuse by government to reduce public sector expenditure on higher education.

The video games industry and the wider UK economy need a greater supply of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) graduates. Any increase in student tuition fees after 2010 must serve to achieve this strategic objective. TIGA made the comments in response to Lord Mandelson’s speech on student tuition fees at Birbeck University in Central London.

Last.FM How have I only figured it out now!

Well thanks to a friend from IGN I have now got my own Last.FM profile! This service voids the need for music on any internet connected computer. Now all I have to worry about is having my music to bring with me on my iPod Nano and then stick on Last.FM when I get home. Ohh life is soo much easier now!

Im adding my profile link to the side here, but also a link is here for you!

Get Well Soon Felipe Massa!

After a near fatal injury Felipe Massa is in an induced coma and said to be in a stable condition, after having an operation on his fractured skull.
I’m sure we all wish him a speedy and full recovery!

The Next Generation – Nintendo’s Hardware Attitudes

As I was discussing with a friend on Live Messenger today, the consumer or hardcore consumer knew much more about the Wii before anything was known about the system. All we had to do was to look at the attitudes being adopted and implemented in the new at the time Nintendo DS. Nintendo did not push the graphical power of the DS as it implemented a 3d chip that was as powerful as the 64bit era and it also included the chip that made the Gameboy 2d graphics as a security measure, they were using tried, tested and reliable hardware and architecture. They brought about innovation through their “New Play Control”, and they tip toed onto the online gaming scene with an overly cautious system. Now with hindsight, are all these sounding familiar. Wii hardware is related to an overclocked and slightly enhanced for security Gamecube system, we have innovation through a “New Way To Play” and they slightly enhanced but not as much as touted their baby steps into the online gaming scene retaining their overly cautious system.

Bioware “MAY” not be making the game on Wii I want! [face_sad]

So in an Interview that surfaced a while back at CVG with Greg Zeschuk, co-founder of BioWare, VP at EA and group creative officer of the MMO RPG group he let drop what Bioware’s train of though for the Wii is or will be for future games.

There’s always talk of you guys being interested in the Wii. Why hasn’t a Wii game from BioWare come into fruition yet considering the Wii’s been massively successful for a fair while now?
Zeschuk: I think… we’re a little slow. No, I mean, the challenge for us has been figuring out what would be the best possible BioWare experience to deliver on the platform. We’ve done a lot of platform exploration – we’ve done our first iPhone game and we’ve done DS, so we’re always looking at platforms. But what’s been hard for us and the Wii is figuring out how to best match the kind of games that we make with the Wii experience.
The optimum Wii experience is a game where four people sit together on a couch and play.We’ve done multiplayer stuff in the past, but our optimal product always engages a player on an emotional level. I’m sure there’s ways to do that on the Wii, but we just haven’t figured that out yet. Once we do that we could very well do something on it.

Oxegen 2009

For those who weren’t following my twitter feed while I was away last weekend, here is a link to my Flickr photos uploaded for Twitter.

Have fun perusing my images, I’m sorry I didn’t get more, I will be uploading my videos to Youtube soon enough and maybe sometime soon I will reflect on my time and write a short blog about how great the experience was!

Nintendo’s Online Friends System

NOTE: Hey I’m back, Oxegen was everything I expected and then some. Met some great people, an amazing girl, and had the time of my life. I look forward until next year, if I can go as it is an overly expensive trip. I think I’ve fully recovered, I have completed the story mode of ‘The Conduit’ and I will do a new post soon enough with my friend code for those who want it. Now onto the blog

So many of us if not all of us could point out what’s wrong with Nintendo’s online friends system, and yet remain quite pushed hard to find what’s right about it. The biggest problem is the friend code system, where we were promised before the launch of the system that the codes that plagued the DS’s online would be less of a burden with the Wii. We were promised that once systems are linked using the consoles friend code all subsequent games will be able to link without further codes, yet almost 3 years into the consoles life cycle you can use one hand to count the games that allow this, The Conduit and Mario Kart being the 2 that I have personal experience of.

A Pre-emptive Strike

Guys if you read my blog THANKS A MILLION, love the lot of ya, just wish I could discuss your opinions on what I babble on about within the comments! So get to it :p

But I’m firing a warning shot now, this coming Thursday at 6a.m BST I will be heading off to the green pastures of a field somewhere down near Punchestown Co. Kildare Ireland. Im going down south :p
Oxegen 09 music festival is a GO!

So I will be gone from then and will return Monday morning to recover!
What will I be doing while at the festival? Well I’ll leave that to your imagination but what I can tell you is that I have figured out a way to update my Twitter feed from my mobile phone with photos along with normal posting.

So keep your eyes peeled at http://twitter.com/weeman_com for my updates in the future. There should be some hilarious pictures and many drunken antics to be shared with all over the wonders of the internet.