There was an article in Game Informer this month about how Sony and Nintendo need to add an Achievement like system to their consoles, because it’s an extremely addictive tool to keep people coming back to the console, to brag to your friends, etc. They have a point about the power of being able to show of your accomplishments to the world, but a raw scale of achievement points may not be the best way to show this off.

Found an interesting gaming discussion site on the net today. http://www.gamesey.com/why-we-re-different.htm (Link Dead, moved to www.gameslurp.com)It’s nice to find a place where I can talk about games and consoles without being constantly berated for my choice in console. Even going onto the official playstation forums there would be tons of people trying to attack whatever console I’m discussing and touting theirs as superior. This site doesn’t seem to have any of that yet.

Small political rant about the news media here.Pelosi wants a military jet to take her places. That’s perfectly fine and within the scope of the speaker of the house job. There’s lots of noise being made from both sides about this though. She wants a jumbo jet capable of carrying over a hundred people for just her and a few staff. The military has a number of planes available that are more reasonably sized for the people she wants to bring.

Hearing aids are getting more acceptable because of the proliferation of bluetooth headsets. (Link Dead) It also mentions how they have hearing aid therapies for hereditary tinnitus, something I’ve suffered from for ages. I usually am able to filter it out, but anytime something calls attention to it, I start to hear it again. (like a hearing aid commercial on the radio, or reading this article.) That’s why I usually listen to something.

Mooninite sign found by an ebayer (Link Dead) who promptly decided to sell it for massive profits. $1000 already, the lucky dog…I wonder how many other people have found these signs and hidden them away… Interesting novelty, to say the least.

For quite awhile, I’ve been using anime and game characters for most of my systems. Precis from Star Ocean 2, Ein from Cowboy Bebop, Ruri from Nadesico, Lain from Serial Experiments Lain, Bebedora from Arc the Lad 4. My game systems usually have Final Fantasy related names. Rikku the PS2, Penelo the PS3…When thinking about Bebedora and the reasons for naming it that, I came up with a new naming scheme.

The Very Quick Play-Count MemeHoward posted this, so I figured it was of high enough quality for my dreky lj here.For this little three-question game you’ll need some sort of play-count record on your mp3 library. No guessing!1) What’s the most-played track in your mp3 collection, and how many times has it been played?Interpol - PDA: 152) Divide that play count in half and round up. What’s the nearest song?There are 15 songs on my list that have 8 plays.

Someone did a pseudoscience test of noise levels of various consoles. The problem is, they have several tiny biases in the results.Here’s the guide (Link Dead)I found it through engadget, but I doubt most of the people who read the engadget story went in to look at the pictures and realize the biases present in the way it was measured.First one… Look at the laptop cooler that the Xbox360 is sitting on.

This gamepro magazine here repeats what I consider to be a completely useless sales metric…http://www.gamepro.com/news.cfm?article_id=93388 (Link Dead)The PS2 is outselling the Xbox360. It’s useless, because it is comparing a previous generation, now casual game system to a modern game system for more hardcore gamers. It’s also comparing a system that costs nearly half what the other one costs. Of course the casual, 3rd-gen game system which costs $129 will sell more units than a 1st to early 2nd generation game system that costs $299-399.

They’ve finally revived the Sam and Max franchise, in episodic form. One of the people in the gametap company has done an article in Gamasutra about episodic content. It’s been a long time and I’m sure all the Sam and Max fans are happy with the revival of their favorite series.http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20070103/sanchez_01.shtmlTo me, one of the most interesting parts was at the end.For two years we have been listening to Nintendo talk about broadening the games market.