LIVESTREAM UPDATE:

Heya!  The next livestream will be this Friday, May 24th at 10pm est!  As always, I’ll be doodling what you guys shout out in the comments, and there will be games and what-have-you afterwards!  Neat-o!

The stream can be viewed either here or here.

See you then!

END LIVESTREAM UPDATE!

For the record, what happens in the strip above is totally normal when breeding chocobos.  To make a blue or green one, you need to mate a “good” chocobo with a “great” chocobo and feed them a carob nut.

Once you’ve got a blue and a green, mate them together (again with a carob nut) and you get the totally versatile black chocobo, which can travel over rivers and mountains.

Last night I was working towards breeding a golden chocobo, but it was taking way longer than I had anticipated.  I got both a male and female “great” chocobo on my first and second attempt, and a “good” female on the first attempt.

Getting a “good” male, on the other hand, took over two hours.  Must not have been my lucky day.

I’m still working for a gold one, but as far as the comic is concerned, I’d like to think there’s some Maury equivalent in the world of FF7 to solve their problems.

Speaking of problems (awful segue), on Tuesday Microsoft revealed their next-gen gaming console, the Xbox One.

Totally stupid naming convention aside, MS spent most of their press event detailing the XB1’s TV capabilities, Kinect functionality, and even announcing a Halo TV series being produced with the help of Steven Spielberg.

I’m fully aware that there are people who might be excited by those things, but I am not one of them.  As far as I’m concerned, a gaming console should be all about games.  Stuff like TV integration is nice, but those features should be window dressing, not the focus of the hardware, and certainly not extensively discussed at the unveiling ceremony.

While finishing up Skyward Sword with Rich on Monday, I voiced my concern that the Wii-U might be Nintendo’s last non-portable gaming system.  I reasoned that the Wii-U has strayed too far from what the average video game player wants in a console, and with it’s already dwindling third party support, the Wii-U might knock Nintendo out of home consoles altogether.

I think Microsoft took a step in that direction with the Xbox One.  It has kinect nonsense built in, which alienates the vast majority of people who just want to sit down with a gamepad and play traditionally, as well as game developers who might be forced to add totally useless and sometimes intrusive kinect features to their games.

And then there’s there issue with previously played games.  There seem to be a lot of stories flying around about used games on the XB1, but the general theme appears to be this:

When playing a new game, the XB1 installs it to the HDD and ties it to your Live account.  Should you want to play the game on a friend’s console, you have the ability to log into your account and play it, but if your friend wants to borrow the disc and play on his own, he has to pay a fee.

I really hope that isn’t true.  I can’t count how many times I’ve lent a game to a friend or vice versa; playing used games is a major part of playing games.

This isn’t even a case of restricting digital downloads, this is restricting what you can and can’t do with a physical disc.  If I own a piece of physical media, I should be able to do whatever I want with it, period.  That includes (but is not limited to), lending it to a friend, playing it on another console, reselling it, or smashing it with a hammer.

I’m very interested to see if the XB1 used games story is accurate, hopefully things will become clearer at E3.  Equally interesting is how Sony’s PS4 will handle used games; as far as I’ve seen they haven’t released a concrete statement on the matter.

If both consoles decide to restrict the secondary games market, I could totally see myself not buying either of them.

You know, assuming I was financially able… hopefully they don’t pull a $600 price tag like the PS3 attempted last time around.