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It's February 2014 and that means we have lasted into another month of this year. Let's look back and see what January did for the world of comics and other fun things.
I'm Done
I had planned to go to San Diego Comic Con this year, but with their new way of selling admission tickets I'm out. I learned through Mark Evanier's Blog and was confirmed by the web site Comic Book Resources (CBR) that the people who are running San Diego Comic Con this year are only selling individual day tickets instead of buying one that could get you in for all four days. Looking at the price structure on the CBR web site, if you wanted to attend every day including preview night then it would run you $200 for one person. Holy Crap! That cost does not include food, travel and hotel while you are there. Depending on how you get there and where you are coming from then the cost for attending SDCC from out of the state will be something on the order of $1000 or more.
I always read on-line and hear from my editor on this fine web site that San Diego is always a blast every year. I figured that since I have my head right with ball and find my life on the right track I would take a few days in July and go to the biggest comic related convention west of the Mississippi to relax and enjoy myself and maybe get a con report done. If I have to drop a chunk of change of at least $1000 then I can think of any number of things I could do with that money.
X-Box One Bricking
Because I don't care about the next generation of video game consoles I thought that this article was rather funny. It turns out that a few weeks after the X-Box One was released, there were people with no scruples and no cares who came up with an idea to get people to turn their brand new $500 console into a doorstop and or paperweight.
One of the biggest complaints by gamers of this new generation of consoles is that they are not backwards compatible with the games from the X-Box 360 or Playstation 3. The first release of both the 360 and PS3 way back when the consoles had backwards compatibility with the X-Box and PS2 and that was all well and good. People thought that the X-Box One would have some sort of backwards compatibility when it was announced, but when it was actually released that was not the case. That's when the people with no scruples mentioned above found a way to go into the consoles settings and essentially make it so that if you adjusted the right things you would not make your console play previous generations games, but instead send it into a never ending rebooting cycle with no way to turn it off.
Where did the people who read the information about "adjusting" their X-Box One to be "backwards compatible" find it, 4chan. People were having hissy fits because the instructions they were given on 4chan didn't work and were demanding that Microsoft fix their consoles. I'm sorry, I have zero sympathy for you if you decided to follow the instructions given on what is essentially the shady underbelly of the internet without independent confirmation of it working then you deserve to get what is coming to you. If that is making your brand new $500 console a brick then so be it. Microsoft should not have to pay to repair your mistake, and I'm kind of shocked that they did not take that stance in this situation.
Games Workshop Loss
It seems that in the miniatures gaming world, the biggest dog in the yard is starting to show its age. Games Workshop, the company that essentially made miniatures gaming cool back in the early 1980's which up until that time were just games that were reenactments of battles from various conflicts from the Napoleonic Wars to the American Civil War. GW took miniatures gaming and gave it a Science Fiction or Fantasy twist with their Warhammer 40K and Warhammer games.
Since that time in the 1980's Games Workshop has grown to be the biggest name in miniatures gaming and has done things to annoy gamers. For example, it seems that the company is putting out new rule books for their games every four years or so. While this is all well and good for hardcore players, what about the gamer like me, the casual player that wants a hobby to get away from the stresses of life for a few hours and hang out with like minded people and enjoy a game. It was not that long ago that you could walk into a game store and buy a box of models for your favorite army and have something to play within a few days. That all kind of died when the internet came along. Dealers that sold online were made to sign contracts that their businesses could not put pictures of the Warhammer/40K items that they had for sale on the internet, and made those same businesses not able to sell Games Workshop model kits via an online shopping cart. That severely hamstrung a lot of dealers and they stopped selling the stuff online. Those dealers that decided to continue selling had to come up with a way to sell to people online within the Games Workshop rules. This meant that they had to make a call in line for their businesses that would only take orders from people that wanted to order GW stuff. There was also the Excel spreadsheet way that a business had to e-mail you an Excel file of the things they had for sale if you e-mailed them and asked for it. You then filled it out and e-mailed it back. I only did this once or twice because it was a giant pain in the ass to do. When they decided to become so protective of their intellectual property that they started sending Cease and Desist letters to owners of web sites that were posting pictures of scans of new models that were in Games Workshop's White Dwarf magazine that was released to the public a week before; people knew they had gone bonkers.
I came across a story late last month that said rumor had it that Games Workshop posted a 24% loss in earnings and were going to have to start making cuts in staff and closing various distribution sites, and possibly their own Games Workshop stores in other countries and consolidate it all to the UK. It looks like all the nonsense that Games Workshop has been putting out there on its players and the dealers who sell their products has finally come back to bite them. For me, I wanted to play the game, but it was just so expensive that I could not afford to get into the game with the army sizes that they had games for at their store in Grapevine.
They Exist
As the holidays have wound down and life has gotten back to somewhat normal, it means that the delivery pipeline of various chain stores has been getting back into action. Last month I walked into my local Target store to get some medication and other stuff and I wandered to the electronics. I like to go there and look at how many X-Box One consoles they have versus the PlayStation 4. From the time the X-Box one hit they have had them in stock and ready to go. Meanwhile for the longest time they have not had any PS4's and only one PS3 on the sales floor. I went there that day and looked in the case and there were two PS4's for sale. I was tempted to buy one, but I had already dropped a chunk of change on a Spanish class and textbooks so I have to pay that off before I do anything rash. Another thing holding me back from getting one was that generally the first set of consoles in a new generation is usually still a little buggy and I'll probably want to wait until the second wave comes out before I get one.
Don't let anyone tell you that there are no PlayStation 4's out there because they are; you just have to look and get the timing right when you go into the store. That is how we did that sort of thing in the olden days and sometimes the old ways are the best.
That about wraps it up for this month. I feel that this article was the first one since about this time last year that I did not rush through. I hope you all liked it and come back next month.
E-mail: mlbcollectortimes@gmail.com
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