Over the last few months, our Podcasts have featured a lot of talk about the upcoming release of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. We haven’t had a new generation of consoles for a great many years, and while the WiiU kicked it off, it’s going to be the XBONE and PS4 that really give us a solid idea about what the new era of gaming will look like. It’s a big deal, so we naturally have talked about it at great length. Throughout this process we have been just ripping Microsoft apart, blasting the company for an absolutely terrible marketing campaign and just not having a unifed message on what the XBONE will do.
If you think we are going to stop now, after Don Mattrick flees Microsoft for the “greener pastures” of Zynga … well you got another thing coming.
When not wildly speculating about Microsoft, we do find some time to talk about Pacific Rim, our review now up on the site, and the general state of the movie industry. Suffice to say, it doesn’t look super healthy right now and kind of reminds us of what the video game industry is going through right now.
The only things being made are either big budget blockbusters, or smaller / cheaper films. The 70s and part of the 80s were well defined with movies on a modest budget, somewhere between 20-45 million dollars. Now, most movies are being made on a robust 250+ million budget, and hoping that the International audience can prop up box office sales. Sometimes, in the case of The Avengers, that plan works. Other times, like what is currently happening to The Lone Ranger, it goes poorly.
Where does Pacific Rim fit into all of this? It’s a blockbuster style movie, but has a lot of heart and character. It’s not a soulless, by the numbers film that is just trying to make money off of dolts. You should go see the movie and support it, otherwise we may not get a smart movie like it for a very long time.
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