Welcome once again to Hit or Miss, where the best and worst in the week in news gets meticulously categorized and filed accordingly.
This week: Microsoft drops the Xbox 360’s price (and an entire 360 model); Batman: Arkham Asylum “earns” a Guinness World Record; Kurt Cobain’s virtual Guitar Hero 5 resurrection raises deep moral questions about the use of deceased musicians in video games (which will go completely ignored here in favor of insensitive jokes); and Square Enix milks Cloud Strife for all the poor bastard’s worth.
Xbox 360 Elite Price Dropped to $299
Following Sony’s PlayStation 3 price drop last week, Microsoft confirmed this week that the Xbox 360 Elite would drop to $299, with the Pro dropping to $250 until it’s phased out completely. This is great news for gamers still looking to upgrade to the HD Remix Chillin’ Generation 5000 EraTM. But with both the 360 and PS3 now only fifty bucks more than a Wii, how much longer can Nintendo go without a price adjustment of their own?
Well Nintendo, here’s my suggestion: Remember that episode of Seinfeld where George decides to do everything against his gut instincts, and incredulously makes every choice exactly right from then on? So far, you’ve decided to deliberately release a graphically underpowered console, make your killer app not an exciting first-person shooter but a compilation of sports activities, and endeavored to convince gamers that exercise is a video game.
Since this madness has made you one shit-ton-illion dollars, I say raise the Wii’s price to $350, and watch holiday shoppers riot as they find themselves inexplicably drawn to it like Icarus to the burning Sun (probably while insisting to demand a new Kid Icarus game).
Batman:Arkham Asylum Receives Guinness World Record
It used to be that to get into the Guinness Book of World Records, you had to earn it — either through inhuman physicality, freakish willpower and determination, or heroic body hair growth. Now all it takes is a narrow enough definition.
See: Batman: Arkham Asylum supposedly earning a Guinness World Record for being the “Most Critically Acclaimed Superhero Game Ever.” You can find this record on the same page as House of the Dead: Overkill’s record for “Most Swearing in a Video Game,” in the section titled, “Video Game World Records, But Not Really Because We Did the ‘Air Quotes’ Thing When We Awarded Them.”
You want to know how easy it is to get a world record this way? Watch: Boom, I just earned a world record. It’s in the category of “longest sentence written on my laptop in the last 10 seconds.” Hell, I earned another world record just earlier today: Most Kraft Macaroni & Cheese ingested between 2:30PM and 3:00PM in my house.
This is bullshit. Batman: Arkham Asylum, you are indeed an awesome game, but unless we find out you were made by developers who stood on their hands the whole time, or were Sasquatches, then I’ll be damned if I consider you a world record holder.
Kurt Cobain Virtually Appearing in Guitar Hero 5
With two deceased Beatles appearing in The Beatles: Rock Band, the deceased Johnny Cash appearing in Guitar Hero 5, and now the also very deceased Kurt Cobain appearing in GH5 as well, it raises an important question: At what point does this cease being admiration for legendary musicians, and cross over into crass exploitation? With so many dead bodies in music games this year, you’d think you were playing Left 4 Dead 2 (ding: crass!).
With The Beatles: Rock Band, though, at least you get the sense it’s a product made purely for Beatles fans, with the blessings of Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr along with the families of John Lennon and George Harrison. But there’s something about the almost throwaway nature of Cobain’s inclusion in GH5 that gives me an off feeling about it.
Maybe there’s a distinct difference in the fact that his death was a suicide. Maybe it’s simply because it occurred more recently. Or maybe it’s the really crass inclusion of a secret Cobain-inspired Achievement you can unlock after five-starring “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Lithium” while playing as him on Expert:
Square Enix has No Plans to Remake Final Fantasy VII… Yet
Reader, there are three certainties in life: 1) You will die. 2) Unless you cryogenically preserve your brain in a futuristic and terribly painful procedure. And 3) Square Enix will remake Final Fantasy VII. I am so certain of this, I”ll bet my cryogenically preserved life on it.
How can I be so sure? I give you Exhibit A: the existence of money, and Exhibit B: Square Enix wants some. In fact, the paradoxical thing about this story is that Square Enix’s desire for money is also the reason they haven’t made a Final Fantasy VII remake yet. Why play their ace in the hole once when they can keep dangling it in front of psychotic fans for years?
Look at it this way: They could go ahead and remake FFVII right now, release it next year, and make a lot of money. Or, they can follow these four simple steps to perpetual wealth:
1) Continue using the very invocation of a remake to draw attention to teaser sites that have nothing to do with a Final Fantasy VII remake.
2) After following this plan for about five more years, then remake Final Fantasy VII on the PlayStation 3.
3) Except by then, the PlayStation 4 will have been released. Desires for a Final Fantasy VII remake on Sony’s latest console will immediately spring up.
4) Go back to step one, and repeat until your guilty conscious destroys you from within.
