Another week, another blog. I feel I should start to plan these out a little ahead of time, instead of flying by the seat of my pants and just writing it an hour before I’m meant to put it up. That would probably stop me reporting on news that have happened in the last day or two, as well.

That being said, my first little piece is on something non-gaming related. Bleach is something that fellow nerds may be familiar with.  It’s a very popular manga/anime series in Japan, and it’s been going for years and years. It’s one of those seemingly perpetually released series that they have in Japan, along with the likes of Pokemon and Naruto. Well, that is no more. It’s been announced that Bleach will finish after the current arc has completed. Whilst I am glad that the writer, Tite Kubo, intends to give the series a proper finish, I can’t help but feel a little sad.

Don’t get me wrong: I know that Bleach is a little lame, and probably intended for a slightly younger audience than me, but I still like it. It’s pulpy and doesn’t require much deep thinking, and sometimes that’s just fine. Anyway, so the manga is going to finish. At some point. Thing is, I don’t know how they categorise the arcs. In broad strokes you could say there have only really been 2, possibly 3 different arcs since Bleach began, 2 of which are about 180 chapters long. At that rate there could be another 3 and a bit years of Bleach.  I guess 3 and a bit years is a long time, and after that maybe I will be wanting the series to finish.

So that’s my bit not on gaming. Secondly I want to address a mistake I made last time. Sony didn’t make those $2 billion losses in the quarter, that was for the whole year.  So it isn’t quite as bad as I made out, still not great though.

You might have heard of Notch, the creator of Minecraft. Love him or hate him, it’s pretty hard to deny that Minecraft is a global phenomenon. His small indie game has made him millions of dollars, to the point he no longer considers himself an indie dev. So much money, in fact, that he is seriously offering to help fund and publish an AAA rated game. A game that apparently no other publisher will touch.

The game in question is Psychonauts 2. I never played the first, made by legendary developer Tim Schafer, but it has a fan base who love the game a whole lot, and it was apparently one of the best games of the PS2 era. Tim Schafer must have a lot of pull in the industry, so it seems strange that the only person to offer to publish a sequel to the game is Mojang. To me it suggests that despite all his success, Notch just doesn’t have that keen a business sense. Maybe I am wrong, but it seems like, if this does happen (which is no where near certain), he will just be throwing a lot of money at a wall.  

So that’s my thoughts for the week, I’ll be back next Thursday.