Anyone who has spent time playing games online will tell you the experience can be bliss.  It basically recreates the experience of being in an arcade, with nearly unlimited opponents willing and waiting.  However, it can also be Hell with terrible brats and general idiots ruining the experience.

Unsurprisingly, those making the games are aware of this.  Bill Fulton, who formerly worked for Microsoft on Xbox Live, has written a piece discussing this very issue.  He doesn’t seem pleased with the current state of the online environment, either.  He rages, saying

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First some Wiis can’t read the discs and now this? What else can Brawl fans hope for?

According to some, it’s impossible to get online and play a match during the evening. It seems people are getting disconnected and are receiving endless error messages. Well hopefully Nintendo remedies this problem soon. Maybe next time they’ll take the time to fully test a product. If nothing else, just keep trying to get online.

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Want to play Super Smash Bros. Brawl online, but have no friends? Not really the sociable type to go out and make friends? Well, the Internet has a solution for your anti-social behavior, again!

MapWii is a neat little Google Maps mashup site that plots Wii owners around the world. The neat part is that you can sort by games they own and players can enter their Wii friend codes. Sure, it isn’t quite as elegant as Xbox Live, but it’s better than nothing. (more…)

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Electronic Arts’ Skate was one of the big surprises of 2007. Many had challenged Tony Hawk’s dominance of the extreme sports genre, but Skate was the first to really deliver a knockdown punch with its innovative controls. Now, in the face of being outsold two to one, Activision has plans to innovate with the Tony Hawk franchise.

Speaking with USA Today, Activision Senior Vice President Will Kassoy referenced the “Tony Hawk Innovation Plan,” but refused to elaborate. What could this plan be? The easy speculation is a move toward a new control scheme akin to Skate’s. However, with Activision’s success with the Guitar Hero franchise and now Call of Duty 4 online, one should not rule out the move to a more multiplayer friendly setup. And yes, Tony Hawk Wii featuring the Balance Board seems inevitable. (more…)

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Bobby Kotick is a happy guy right now. With the upcoming Vivendi merger, which will bring Blizzard and World of Warcraft under the Activision umbrella, the sky is the limit for what Kotick’s company can do.

At the recent Morgan Stanley Technology Conference in California, the CEO of Activision discussed how they would use Blizzard’s expertise in the world of online gameplay to help open a new door for some of the company’s best selling titles. Starting with the Guitar Hero franchise, Kotick proposed using Blizzard’s “institutional expertise” to bring PC editions of Guitar Hero to the “roughly 300,000 game rooms between China and Korea.” This would be a feat definitely not insurmountable considering the popularity of the title and the fanatical gaming community in Korea. (more…)

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Phil Harrison is no Peter Moore. He’s the quiet type who prefers to stay behind the scenes rather than show off his GTA 4 tattoo to thousands of attendees at gaming expos. Although, lately he’s been at the top of gaming news as the man who left Sony for the sinking ship known as Atari and left behind the platform he helped to succeed.

Though no specific reasons behind his departure have been indicated Harrison was very vocal at GDC recently publicly criticizing Sony Japan for not taking advantage of the booming casual games market. “It’s a very interesting and frustrating thing for me to experience because I have been banging the drum about social gaming for a long time, with SingStar, EyeToy and Buzz,” stated Harrison. “And our Japanese colleagues said that there is no such thing as social gaming in Japan — people do not play games on the same sofa together in each other’s homes. It will never happen. And then out comes the Wii.” (more…)

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Sony’s Home is that rarest of beasts. Somewhat equivalent to the Loch Ness Monster, one worries that they’re either on the cusp of a great discovery, or just a log in the water. Sony is starting to show some real meat to their service, though, as they’ve announced exclusive Content through Home for three of their biggest titles.

Warhawk will allow players to meet in a war room inside of Home before playing it. There, they will be able to use a sand table map of each level to plot strategies. Once ready, players will be able to jump straight into the game. And yes, this is a feature through Home, not simply a new one through Warhawk. So, you could always go bowling at the last minute, too. (more…)

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The Mario Kart Wii news has been spewing like a geyser as of late. First, was the news of the game’s imminent release. Then, news of Miis and online play. Now, comes news of what many had pondered; exactly how many players can battle against each other at once? The short answer? Eight.

The longer answer comes from Jeux France who posted an image (posted above) of the game’s battle mode featuring eight characters listed on the game’s mini-map. So, what does this mean for the game’s addictive multiplayer? Not much, actually. Eight players will be plenty to enjoy the battle mode with, and it certainly could have been worse. Recall Excite Truck and how it only allowed two player races? (more…)

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While Home for the PS3 is still on the horizon, the PlayStation Network might be getting what some would say is a very necessary update. The PlayStation website briefly touted that a friends list and in-game messaging would be coming in the near future before quickly being removed. The option to communicate in game with both video and voice chat through the cross media bar (XMB) has been a desire of many PS3 owners since it’s debut but Sony has yet to fulfill the wishes of gamers yet.

It was promised recently at CES 2008 that the in-game XMB would be coming before the end of the year but so far no updates have been reported. Despite this missing feature, which has been available on Xbox Live for some time, the no cost online service is still a major bonus without the option of in-game chat.

Sony is expected to announce more information about the rumored feature at the upcoming Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco on February 18th.

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In reality, no one should ever complain about more game choices. With that in mind, Grand Theft Auto I & II as well as Street Fighter Alpha are rumored to be coming to the PS3’s PSN sometime soon. This is all according to England’s Official PlayStation Magazine. Of course, that is England’s version of the magazine, and not the official PlayStation magazine of England.

No one should ever complain about more game choices, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anyone will care. In fairness to GTA I & II, they are both excellent games that laid the groundwork for the future blockbuster franchise. They are hardly the games most people know and love, though. Prepare for massive disappointment if you go into these games with little background knowledge. (more…)

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