Remember my last post on the extortionate price of Rock Band in Europe?

Well, I was far from the only one, and it was so much of a stinker that a member of Harmonix’s Rock Band development team decided to come on board and address the issue. By telling us effectively, that our opinions don’t matter, and we can stick them where the sun don’t shine, stating and I quote - “…You may conclude that Rock Band isn’t worth the price charged, and that is your prerogative. But it’s not magically going to get cheaper because you wish it to be so…”

I don’t care if more man hours than Mass Effect and StarCraft 2 combined have been put into this game. I don’t give a shit if it contains the meaning of life; I am not going to pay £233.99 (approx. Amazon and such are advertising it as cheaper. They’re turning a profit out of the matter.) for a game and some fancy peripherals, just so I can make believe that I am in a band.

Let me put it simply, in a single statement that makes things not a sense of genuine hardship (as the developer puts it), and sheer cashing in on the situation:

Developers have the option to region-lock their games on the 360. They do not have the same option on the PS3. The 360 version is indeed region-locked. As uncertain as it is for the NTSC-J version, the PAL consoles (aka Europe) will NOT be compatible with Rock Band US, which is indiscriminately cheaper.

Fuck you Harmonix. Fuck you EA. Fuck you Rock Band. I hope you come to your senses soon, but this has done infinite damage to the game, the developer and the publisher.

Also, Sarcastic Gamer: PLEASE start a boycott motion. It got their attention last time.

Tags: harmonix, electronic arts, rock band, 360, ps3, this is bullshit

Sony today confirmed that their game releasing alongside Metal Gear Solid 4, Metal Gear Online, will have it’s beta released to the wanting masses on the 17th of April.

So if you want to be included in this beta, I recommend you get online at one minute past midnight, and check on the hour, every hour until it appears, because as soon as it breaks into the store, people will download in their droves.

This is just after the new design takes hold. What a great content to start off the new store with, yes?

From Kotaku.

Tags: metalgear online, metal gear solid, sony, ps3, hideo kojima, solid snake, old snake

Since I’m probably going to get asked this question eventually, I’m going to explain how I run my site, and how I’ve gotten to deal without having a laptop everywhere I go. It’s basically all down to this, and what I have installed on it.

It’s like every other portable HDD, but it’s fitted with applications from PortableApps, a suite of programs that you can tailor yourself, or use right out of the box. They run entirely on a flash-drive or other removable storage, without leaving any trace behind (apart from Firefox, which leaves your cache in the appropriate folder in the logged on username, unless you set it to be automatically cleared). You can run other programs from it as well, if you snoop around the net and figure out how to do it. I have Last.FM, StarCraft and Quake 3 Arena on mine, as an example.

However, running my blog(s) is all down to one program: Flock, and it’s portable brother, PocketFlock. Flock is Firefox, but with a lot more added onto it. Firefox was just the framework for Flock to be fleshed out on, providing links to Social networks, Media, Email, Favourites, RSS feeds and Blogs. With my current set up, I have RSS feeds from 9 different gaming sites (Some news sites, some blogs) which refresh whenever they have a new article up. I read the article, and if it’s good (and relevant), with another click I open up my Blog Post Editor, bang a small article together, put a link in, and click post. It really is that simple, because it’s all configured beforehand in a simple and easy process.

Put it this way: I wouldn’t have even heard of Twitter if I hadn’t used Flock, and I would’ve stopped using Facebook, Youtube (for posting content), del.icio.us and Flickr a long time ago. It makes the entire job much easier, and is also a fully fledged browser, compatible with 90% of Firefox’s add-ons. Flock is now an integral part of my Web experience, and is the only real secret to getting posts out quickly, before other, more popular sites (such as Kotaku, one of my sources too) get it out, despite having worldwide editors/posters.

There is no real tried-and-true way of running a blog or a site. It’s what you’re comfortable with, and this is what I am comfortable with. The only real tried-and-true way of successful blogging is be relevant, be consistent, and above all, update regularly.