Number one, anonymous reports from the French say that Half-Life 3 will be out at the end of next year, or the beginning of the year after. As with all Valve release dates, the proof will be in the pudding (which will be delicious). More intriguingly, though, SlashGear (the website from which I got the report) says that the game, inspired by Skyrim and others, will be an open-world affair. I'm half-excited about--and half-wary of--this rumored change to the established gameplay style of the Half-Life universe. On one hand, the expansion of the world would allow Valve to tell more intricate and complete stories, which is a very enticing prospect (especially when you have Jay Pinkerton on your writing staff). On the other hand, Half-Life games have always taken place in very hectic, tense situations, and the world is always portrayed as dilapidated. I'm not sure that it's a world that I want to explore, nor that the leisurely pace of a The Elder Scrolls game, where you can rack up 100 hours of playtime without ever once touching the main quest, is suitable for the Half-Life experience. What tilts me toward the positive end of the spectrum, however, is Valve's track record, and the fact that, if they're taking this long to produce the game, it's going to be something special.
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The other thing that popped into my mind over the last few days has to do with the Nintendo Wii U. Looking at the screen of this thing on the recently-released trailers (especially the one for TVii), made me realize what the console should really be used for--karaoke. The Nintendo Wii featured a Joysound Karaoke game that was released only in Japan (although, I just found out this evening that a US version should be coming out this year), but I'm talking about the real karaoke experience here. Apparently, the Wii Joysound game only featured access to 1,000 songs through a rental package (~30 were included with the game, which will also be the case when the game is released here).
If Netflix and Hulu can stream through your Wii U, why can't Nintendo offer a Karaoke Channel? Team up with ClubDAM--or even Joysound again (although I personally prefer DAM)--and offer a two-tiered pricing approach. For those who want the full karaoke box experience, ClubDAM can offer a monthly or yearly subscription package that nets access to their entire library of songs (stream the ones you want to sing and temporarily store a queue in the Wii U's hard drive). For more casual enthusiasts, offer a Rock Band style option where users can purchase only the songs that they want in their library for karaoke purposes. And what really makes this perfect is that Wii U gamepad controller, which can be used just like the song-selection screen at a karaoke box. Just tap in your selection and it will be downloaded to the temporary memory in your Wii U. Once it is sung, it gets erased. North American customers get access to a high-quality karaoke experience (for the first time, in some areas), Nintendo gets to stake another claim to living room dominance, and ClubDAM gets an entirely new revenue stream. There's really no excuse if Nintendo does not explore this avenue, as it's something that Sony and Microsoft have never even considered (outside of woeful Konami PS2 game Karaoke Revolution), and it could make Nintendo's new console stand out among less 'hardcore' gaming consumers.
Second image was retrieved from Engadget. Press photo from Nintendo, all rights reserved.
