• 7Apr 13

  State of Gaming in my Country: Bangladesh

  

  I am from Bangladesh, for those who don't know it is a small country east of india and relatively one of the poorest developing countries of the world. Many laws and infrastructures are outdated, such that there is no law for piracy. Not only that, the shops over here sell far more pirated software than few legitimate ones.

  Gaming population have increased over the years and keeps on increasing steadily. As you can imagine, the majority of the gamers are PC gamers with the platform very much easy to pirate. Although, there is a recent trend which sees console gaming increasing more and more thanks to Xbox 360's failure to stop piracy and became the go-to game system for pirates...in other words...for pretty much everyone over here. Because of such demand, xbox 360 actually costs much more than the PS3 because only legitimate gamers play the PS3. Where the 360 costs about 550$ for a high end SKU, the PS3 320GB costs 320$ or so.

  One very important thing to note: We don't have official support from any of the console manufacturers. Meaning, not only the consoles aren't officially launched here, but we don't get any warranty or any kind of support. So because of this, there is no control in place and retailers are free to choose from whichever region they want to bring the games and consoles. So, we end up getting games from North America, Europe and Hong Kong. Now...if you're a 360 owner you know there is a big problem here; the console is region locked so it becomes a game of chance whether the right region of a particular game ended up in the store shelf...if not then you can't buy it. This played a huge role in pushing Microsoft's console away from legitimate purposes while solidifying the PS3's foundation to stick around for legit games. So only a few years after launch, genuine xbox 360 retail games stopped coming while shipment of PS3 retail games increased.

  There are still problems posed by region lock, basically involving around the PSN store. Even though the games are region free, the DLCs aren't and basically tied to the region of your account. For my case, I have a US PSN account and got the European edition of Arkham City, however I am locked out of playing the dlc for the game because my US account will only allow me to download the US edition of the DLC which is not compatible with my European game. Of course you can create a UK account and drop some money in it, but that is too much of a hassle.

  So as you can see how important a region free console is in places where we live. Here is hoping the PS4 and the next Xbox are not only region free, but so are their online stores.

  So, where do I fall in, well...I'm a mostly a legitimate gamer. Yes...mostly, whether its something to be proud of considering how piracy is welcome in open arms...or something to be ashamed of, knowing how much work and money go into the games for which I'm basically stealing. I game on the PS3 and sometimes on the PC. I enjoy playing legitimately on my PS3 system than pirating over at my Desktop. Reality is, as much as I want to stay 100% legit, I simply can't. As I stated earlier, I live in a very poor country and it is hard for us to pay 60$ a game all the time, also note games don't drop below 50$ no matter how old they are. So what I do, for games I am not sure whether I will like it or not, I pirate it on the PC. If I like it, I usually end up getting it on the PS3 at some point.

   

  Thanks for reading, please do share the state of gaming in your country as well

  • Posted Apr 7, 2013 7:49 am GMT
  • Category: Editorial
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• 6Mar 13

  Gaming Flashback: Prince of Persia 2008

  Welcome to the first edition of my Gaming Flashback. It is basically a series where I briefly talk about some of the most amazing moments in my gaming life. Some of these games may have been long forgotten by the world, but they are forever imprinted in my memory. 

  

  PS2 era gave birth to a lot of memorable action adventure games, one of the series of games was the legendary franchise, Prince of Persia. When we came to this gen and with another reboot looming ahead; with drastic changes planned like less combat and cellshaded color...I was skeptical. After playing the game, I fell in love with it: The visuals looked like a painting came to life and the heavy contrast that occurs when you usher life into the dead dark barren lands is striking, the cellshaded art was stroke of genius in my opinion and worked perfectly to convey this contrast.

  Finally, the main reason why the game had won a special place in my heart is because of the Elika, the AI character that accompanied the nameless Prince. She was not only very capable when it came to helping out the Prince during combat, but she was also charming, beautiful, adorable one of my favorite moments were when these two of completely different backgrounds and ideologies, would converse and slowly, fall in love with each other...like real people. To sum it up, Elika is easily one of the best AI companions I had the pleasure to play with, why? Because she didn't feel like one.

  • Posted Mar 6, 2013 5:54 am GMT
  • Category: Editorial
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• 29Sep 11

  I hereby declare this month, September +

  Also posted in my blogsite

  

  This month has been utterly amazing ride for PlayStation fans. I am one of the early adopters of PlayStation Plus. I subscribed the service for a year and 3 months for only 50$. Being an early adopter of the service, I was not sure whether I will get my money's worth of content by the end of the subscription, well I got my answer by the end of the 1st month. The first month alone I got 30$ out of my 50$ deposited for Plus, and I had like 14 more months worth of content left to go! You don't need to complete any complicated equation to find out the value. So basically I can be confident of PlayStation Plus to offer a steady stream of content delivered straight to my PS3 each month. It doesn't even stop there, what is even more awesome? Well, I noticed the quality of the content and amount of free stuff steadily increased over the months since it's initial introduction. Plus had some really stellar months, but I think its a safe bet to say the month of September was the best yet for the service. Just look at the amount of stuff I got from this month:

  • Resident Evil 1+2+3+4 HD for only 10$! (Along with tons of free avatars and theme)
  • Plants vs Zombies for free!
  • Uncharted 2 - All DLCs! (Along with tons of free avatars and theme)

  And lots more! These are just tip of the iceberg this month. Really whichever way you see it, 50$ a year for content like this every now then is a steal in my book. I doubt Sony can make much profit out of this service, it is more of their way of giving back to us loyal fans that have been supporting them in all the good times, as well as the bad times.

  

  It doesn't even end there, early this month PlayStation held a contest, that they were "looking for a few good gamers to help us with a special assignment related to our new Long Live Play campaign". The contest required you to post a decent quality picture of yourself in your gaming room and submit it along with a write up on why they should choose you, in 30 words or less.

  After 2 days I got back an email from them and told me I was in! They sent me some legal papers which gives them the right to use my photograph in their commercial. I printed the papers, signed and scanned them before sending them back. A day after that I got the reply that confirms me to be part of this marketing campaign. The details of the campaign were vague, but it did mention the commercial was called 'Michael', yeah...still very vague!

  So all in all, a great month. Even though, same couldn't be said in my personal life as my best friend *foreva* left me to study in UK, best of luck to Miss Nova and love you lots!

  • Posted Sep 29, 2011 11:41 am GMT
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