Factions fuck-ups, revisited

I didn't think Arenanet could possibly piss me off more than they did last time.
However, it seems they have achieved that impossible goal. In the form of?

That's right, delayed. Arenanet and NCSoft have actually apologised on their website, acknowledging "We don't really care much about Australia, so we didn't do enough market research to determine that we need to package more Collector's editions".
On the Guild Wars website they proclaimed that they didn't anticipate the popularity of the Collector's edition, so they didn't make enough.

Pure bullshit. Everybody knows it, but only a few dare to say it. There is no place in the gaming industry for Australia. The Australian gaming industry is so small that most studios consider it insignificant. In fact recently, a US game developing firm decided that they'd quash Australian competition. Ratbag games of Adelaide was bought by Midway earlier this year, ending our most successful game-development studio.

Part of the problem is that all the programmers and 3d animators etc are going over to work for the American firms, instead of helping promote home-grown games.


Ah, anyway.
E3 next week. I wish I could go, I'm sure it'd be real fun. Bungie are going to show a two minute movie of Halo 3. And of course the Nintendo Wii (Which Wii love to hate) will be on display, as well as a short presentation on the PS3 (however, it won't be playable). As Alex Albrecht so succinctly put it "We'll get to see it, and they'll be like 'That's kinda sorta what it's gonna look like' and we'll be like 'Yay'". That's the unfortunate truth.


Remember to checkout digg at www.digg.com
You won't regret it.

I'm planning on writing up an article about Open Source alternatives to popular market products, so I'll inform you of when I'm done.