This week on Hit or Miss: The industry goes flippin' nuts. Seriously, you know it was an interesting week when the word "apocalypse" was bandied and it was only slightly an exaggeration. Add to the Great Global PS3 Fail the insanity that went down at Infinity Ward, and it was as though the Great Reckoning of Our Time was finally upon us. Luckily for me, I love reckonings.

Oh, also this week: Portal 2 was announced and people were allowed to be gay on Xbox Live.

 

PS3s Worldwide Locked Up for a Little While 

OK, so in the calm hindsight that a full week of resumed normalcy allows, that headline really doesn't sound like such a big deal. But when this was first going down, and no one had any idea why their PlayStation 3s were dying or how widespread it was or when it would ever clear up, the mood was something like, "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! *dramatic faint*"

But now that we know it was just a stupid internal clock problem and everything's fine, allow me to propose a thought: In a crazy kind of way, wasn't this temporary PS3 meltdown actually pretty cool? Think about it. In a sense, it allowed us to see a small glimpse at just how horrible Y2K could have been. It's like one of those stupid Saw traps that makes the victim appreciate life after having to eat their own arm to free themselves from a tank filled with sharks or some dumb shit, but applied to technology.

Scratch that, better analogy: It's as if in 2013, we find out Saddam Hussein was hiding weapon stockpiles from U.N. inspectors, but they were just ridiculous experimental cannons that shot sharks at people.


It only does everything…except know what frickin' year it is.

Portal 2 Announced, Coming this Christmas

Hell. Yes. Half-Life 2 is great, and Team Fortress 2 was fantastic, but everybody knows Portal was what made The Orange Box. To this day it's a game unlike any other out there, and damn it, I want more. I want it in my veins.

What's especially exciting about Portal 2 is the revelation that it'll have a co-op mode. Just the thought of having to work through Portal's mind-bending puzzles in cooperation with another human being with their own portal gun is enough to make my brain want to die, but in a good way.

Now, imagine the people who have the unenviable task of designing the puzzles for two people to tackle simultaneously. I believe the only consciousness capable of such a feat is Braniac, Deep Blue, or — paradoxically — GlaDOS herself.

Or maybe Tracy Morgan on stupid-crazy amounts of coke….

Xbox Live Members Can Now Have Gay Gamertags

In a world where the gay and lesbian community is still struggling to achieve equal rights in marriage and the military, gay Xbox Live Gamertags probably has to rank fairly low on the list of "things that would be nice to be equal with the rest of the world in." Still, I suppose every little step helps. First gay Gamertags, then a couple of gay dudes making out in front of football fans? Know hope, brothers and sisters.

It should be said, though, that it's still silly this was ever an issue. I never quite bought Microsoft's argument that they couldn't allow gay Gamertags because people might use the word "gay" in a derogative way (I dunno, a Gamertag like "Doesn'tLikeGayPeople" or "I'mGayButLikeHappyNotTheBadKind" or something). I'm not sure if the people in charge of this stuff ever played a game over Xbox Live, but judging by the unfortunate frequency with which you run into unbelievably dickish homophobes, I suspect there must be a small clause in the XBL Terms of Use mandating one be present in every match just to ruin it for everyone.

Dicks are going to be dicks. If we made a rule that people can't express themselves in certain ways because dicks might be dicks about it, I'm pretty sure we'd be living in Franco's Spain. And you don't want that, do you, Microsoft?

Infinity Ward Heads Fired, Then Sue Activision

During a keynote speech at the DICE summit last month, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick pondered how it was he became known as a Darth Vader-like leader of an Evil Empire. "I don't know how this happened, but all my life I was the rebel flying the Millennium Falcon or the X-Wing fighter. And suddenly I wake up and I'm on board the Death Star."

Well let me explain it in simple terms for you, Kotick: It's because you Force-choke people.

Early this week, the Internet went ablaze with reports and chatter that bouncers (yes, bouncers) had shown up at Infinity Ward HQ just as studio heads Jason West and Vince Zampella mysteriously went missing. Turns out they were terminated (supposedly for "breach of contract"), and yes, there really were Activision bouncers at Infinity Ward. Bouncers!

Not to belabor the point or anything, Kotick, but dude, you literally sent storm troopers to their offices. The only possible way you could have acted more Darth Vader is if you buzzed the building in a Tie Fighter.


His other ride is a planet-destroying moon-vessel.

But let me change focus to something else Kotick said at that DICE summit last month — about how Activision is such a friendly Monolithic Conglomerate for independent studios to be absorbed by, and how they're "respectful of the independent cultures" of the studios they own.

A quick recap: In the last few weeks, Activision Publishing CEO Mike Griffith said this year's Call of Duty won't possibly match the success of Modern Warfare 2, surely making Treyarch feel appreciated; Kotick said (in that same DICE speech) that he regretted not absorbing Harmonix and letting them continue to make Guitar Hero games, which surely made Neversoft feel super appreciated; and then they fired the heads of the studio that just made the most successful game ever, which made them feel so appreciated they took legal action.

So that's right, folks — come work for Activision! I believe their corporate slogan is, "Makes Us an Obscene Amount of Money, and Then We'll Publicly Shit All Over You."

Above: Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello really, really
wishes he had a personal army of storm troopers.