@MrGeezer: "Sure it is. That's called looking at content with a critical eye. Companies get to make the content, but now it's somehow unfair for audiences to judge that content?"

You're certainly welcome to judge it, but if you are going to act like a cheerleader when it is getting banned or censored, you are going to get called out on it. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean people who want it shouldn't be able to buy it on steam.

"To be fair, I could make a movie that's nothing but a giant rape fantasy for potential pedophiles, and as long as it doesn't actually include any child porn then it's still "okay" for me to make it. However, that doesn't make the movie "important". Making something offensive solely because you can is actually pretty infantile. That's just shock art. There's no rule that art shouldn't be shocking, but shocking just for the sake of shocking is a quick path to irrelevance. The shocking work that's important and which remains relevant over time is the work that actually has some underlying thematic importance beyond "woo hoo, look what I can get away with.""

Child pornography is illegal. We already have obscenity laws regarding the sexualization of children, so I don't know why you think that this is in any way relevant to a violent video game. There is in fact rape-themed pornography though, and it is legal to sell at the places where hardcore pornography is sold. What is the appropriate venue for a game like Hatred to be sold, if not Steam? Steam has never censored or banned a game for violence before, and the only reason people can justify banning Hatred is "I don't approve of the game's premise, since you play as a bad person and that makes me offended."

"No one said the game shouldn't be allowed to be sold."

Sure, just because you don't want it on Steam, that is totally different! Just like the SJWs in Australia only wanted GTAV banned from Target, and totally didn't go after Kmart next!

@MrGeezer: Maybe you should look in a dictionary, because you clearly don't know what censorship actually means. If you tell someone they can't display a piece of art in your gallery because you find it offensive, you have censored them. It doesn't matter whether you are the only gallery or one of dozens. Sometimes censorship is necessary (for example, if you own an art gallery that is meant to be "family safe"), but the same standards must apply to everything on display. Valve does not make a point to censor violent games, and in the case of Hatred, it was very clearly targeted because of its controversial "anti-political correctness" theme (the letter from the Valve staffer who initially banned the game seemed to imply as much).

Valve is not a mom and pop toy shop. They are a service that sells games for adults to adults. Banning Hatred was inconsistent with their policies towards violence and political themes. As Valve's customers we most certainly have a right to complain and lobby them if a game was banned to the rules being applied in a way that is unfair and blatantly inconsistent, given that the Postal games are on Steam.

@Metamania: It's not your place to tell someone else if the game they want to play has a valid enough excuse for it's violent content. The reason Hatred is an important game is because it's making a statement in no uncertain terms that it is OK for a game to be violent for violence's sake. Your type would rather say "this game should not be allowed to be sold until they change the NPCs to zombies or tell me at the start of the game that they are all child molesters."

No game owes you an excuse for why it is violent, and the fact that you think you are entitled to an excuse for why the games you like are violent proves why this game needs to exist and should not be censored. Hatred is violent gaming boiled down to it's core with no plot excuse, no flimsy "satire" or letting you pretend you're a good guy as justification.

I really wasn't impressed with Zelda U. It looks like any other "me too" sandbox game from 5 years ago, and I don't know what Nintendo was thinking showing it off with such little content. All that I really gathered from that presentation is that it will be a Zelda game where it takes longer to travel everywhere. The world looks even more lifeless than the one in Twilight Princess, and if Nintendo is hoping to fix that before release then they shouldn't be showing the game this early. Uncharted 4 looks like it's still Uncharted, but it is definitely very pretty to look at and I'd say between the two games, Uncharted 2 looks like it will actually be finished next year.

It's not optional because you are still forced to buy it with the system. If Nintendo wanted to save the Wii U, the time to do it would have been a year ago, when they could have pulled out the tablet controller and sold the system for $200 with just a pro controller and a game included. They could have bounced back if they did that, like Microsoft is doing now that they've dropped the Kinect, but Nintendo decided to stick it out in hopes that things would somehow change without them doing anything differently, and it hasn't worked. Third parties see the Wii U as already dead in the water and they've stopped making games for it, and aside from Zelda (and maybe Star Fox, but it sounds like it's not exactly going to be a top-shelf title), Nintendo doesn't have anything big planned for the future. Nintendo's big games typically come out about 2 years after they're announced, so 2016 might not even have a big AAA game from Nintendo. 2015 is pretty much going to be the last year for real high-profile game releases for the Wii U before Nintendo moves all their focus to their next console and leaves the Wii U out to dry.

@farrell2k: Neither Sony or Nintendo is going anywhere any time soon. The important question is what is going to happen to the Wii U.

Honestly, I think it's too late to save the Wii U. The time to do it would have been a year ago, when it first became apparent that they had a problem. They knew the system was getting creamed by the competition, and they were faced with a decision: hold the line, or take drastic measures. They chose to hold the line and it ended up not working out. What they should have done is slash the price of the Wii U down to $200, remove the tablet controller and offer it as a separate accessory for $80, and include a Pro Controller and a game. If they had done that last year, I think that the Wii U might have had a shot-- it would have still probably not done great, and Nintendo would have had to live with the shame of having abandoned their newest gimmick, but it would have been better than what they have now. The Wii U could have been a nice cheap $200 alternative to the other consoles, but now everyone just thinks of the silly tablet and they don't want the system.

Microsoft went through the same thing with Xbox One, and Sony went through the same thing with PS3. Microsoft had to drop the Kinect because it made the system look overpriced and no-one wanted that feature. Sony had to drop backward compatibility, two USB ports and a suite of memory card slots on the PS3 because they were making the system too expensive. Those were hard choices to make, but in the end they probably ended up saving their respective systems from Wii U-like failure. Nintendo was not willing to compromise their vision at all, and as a result it's selling poorly and third parties are abandoning it. The Wii U isn't even getting inter-gen multiplatform games like Destiny and GTAV, because in the eyes of the publishers the system is not worth bothering with.

I think Nintendo's plan is to just ride it out until the absolute earliest that they can release a new console-- my bet would be that it's going to be announced in 2016, and either released in 2016 or 2017 at the latest. 2016 makes more sense because I think Nintendo wants to be able to release their next system as a "true" Gen 8 console, and have several years to set up shop before Sony and Microsoft start planning their Gen 9 consoles (assuming both of them will be back, and I'm not going to assume they won't be). It will probably have specs similar to the PS4 and Xbone, and possibly backwards compatibility with Wii U games (really though, I think Nintendo will skip that feature like Sega did with Saturn backward compatibility on Dreamcast, and just release a few remasters of Wii U games since no-one bought Wii U anyway). I think Nintendo is just going to let the public forget about Wii U and then postulate the new console as the "true" Gen 8 Nintendo console. Basically, a stop gap between gen 8 and 9, with Nintendo's Gen 9 console coming sometime after Sony and Microsoft's. Skipping b/c would also free Nintendo from that horrific Power PC architecture and let them switch to X86 like everyone else, which means more multiplatform support.

I want the game to be good but I know it will be bad. Every time they've shown the game it's just cutscenes with little bits of gameplay throughout and QTEs. This is one of those games where they were clearly more interested in making a movie than they were in making a game, because they never seem to want to give the player actual control of it. When the attitude of the developer is that gameplay is just this pesky little thing in between the cutscenes, it means the gameplay is probably pretty bad.

I want to see SMS tackle Norse mythology and do God of Thunder, but I know they won't because of Marvel's version of Thor.

You'd think that by now they'd have finally found one that works. At any rate, that is not the kind of risk people want. Mouse and keyboard has stayed the same on PC for 20 years and has only undergone minor changes. Where people want risks is in the games, and Nintendo is very risk-averse. It's the same games every generation with different controllers, where on the other system it's the same controllers with different games.