Whether the conditions are virtual or real, going from a love tap to a slap in the face would get a reaction out of anyone.
News Blips:
A new scientific study indicates that male participants react more strongly to virtual-reality events from a first-person viewpoint. After putting on special video goggles, subjects exhibited "rapid deceleration of their heart rates" when their digital avatar was slapped across the face three times, a sign of increased immersion into a virtual body when exposed to a first-person angle. Predictably, the male subjects reacted less to the same events when depicted through a third-person view. In reality, this study serves as a secret testing platform for a new Wii game — "Slap-A-Dude." [LiveScience]
Splinter Cell: Conviction topped sales charts for April amid a midspring slump. As Conviction was the only new release to appear on the chart (with 486,000 units sold), April represented the worst decline in software sales since July of last year, with a 22 percent drop to $398.5 million. Hardware sales shared the same fate, plummeting 37 percent at $249.3 million. The total industry value hovered at $4.73 billion, an 11 percent decrease from last year. I could make a complex jibe about supply-side economics here, but I don't think it will carry over well. [Edge-Online]
Don't be quick to hang up those controllers — console gaming isn't going extinct anytime soon, according to Nintendo President Satoru Iwata. Faced with the advent of increasingly prevalent digital distribution networks, such as Steam and Impulse, Iwata staunchly defended the viability of traditional home entertainment setups, with the possibility of gaming hardware disappearing entirely being "unthinkable." Iwata also conceded that software-based gaming won't last forever and that something else will replace it. If the future entails downloading virtual-reality slapping games, I'm freezing myself. [Gamasutra]
Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter thinks that Insomniac Games (Ratchet & Clank, Resistance) is "nuts" for not going multiplatform. Attributing the success of the Burbank, California-based studio to the creation of multiple successful franchises, Pachter believes that the same success could be achieved on other consoles besides the PlayStation 3, Insomniac's mainstay for the past five years. "They don’t own the Ratchet & Clank IP or the Resistance IP, but they’re such good developers," said Pachter during an interview with Eurogamer. "I’m like, ‘Why aren’t you guys doing multiplatform? Your games would sell.' The Insomniac guys are nuts not to do multiplatform. But they like their deal with Sony, so they’ll keep doing exclusives." I guess these rumors of Insomniac exploring multiplatform releases fell on Pachter-shaped deaf ears.
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