Isn’t this a nice little tidbit of news. Usually when we hear about the effects of gaming on people, it’s always focused on the negative outcome of gaming. It’s rare when we hear about games that help give aspiring surgeons an edge, or offer fighter pilots what would seem like natural skill. Well, here’s another article suggesting that gaming isn’t entirely bad for you.
According to [url=http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/070315_video_vision.html]Livescience.com[/url], first person shooters such as Halo can actually help train your brain so you can see better. Sounds unbelievable, huh?
[quote]Most aspects of vision have to do with the size of one’s eye and the thickness and shape of the cornea and lens. But some visual defects are neural in nature…
…First-person action games helped study subjects improve their spatial resolution, meaning their ability to clearly see small, closely packed together objects, such as letters, she said. Game-playing actually changes the way our brains process visual information.
“These games push the human visual system to the limits and the brain adapts to it…
…That learning carries over into other activities and possibly everyday life.[/quote]
That’s quite interesting, and it may be why I find it rather easy to see deer in the road at night from long distances. Or it could just be that being in Maine, I’m accustomed to watching out for deer. Either way, it’s nice to see a study about games that isn’t all bad. Now to just get parents to pay more attention to what games their kids play, and the rest of the game-related problems should be solved.
As I’m sure many of you know, today marked the official release of World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade. With seven million subscribers (yes, seven!) I expected that a good quarter of the current subscribers would have bought their copies. Perhaps all the fans are just not in my area. I went into my local Target (had a gift card) after work today, waltzed up to the PC gaming section praying that they still had some copies (my local Target is notorious for running out of stuff) and there rests a mountain of WoW. I’m not kidding here. There had to be a good four to five dozen of this game. I was surprised.
I know it’s not a new console or anything, and it’s just an expansion pack, and arguably, not that special (I bought it, but I’m not even sure why). Even so, with how everyone online was talking last night, I thought for sure I’d have trouble finding a copy. Either Blizzard pumped out too many, or not that many people really care enough to get it.
Did any of you get a copy? Was your local store in plentiful supply of the game? Perhaps my area was unique… or is that just how it was all over?
Wow… Sony must really hate Europe. They claim that due to a shortage of a specific part needed to make the Blu-Ray drive operable, Sony must cut back on production. They’ve decided what is most important to them.
[quote]We decided to focus on the Japanese and U.S. markets,[/quote]
Isn’t that special. This doesn’t affect me in any way because I’m not interested in getting the Playstation 3, nor am I living in Europe, but I could see how some of our european Snackbar members might be a bit miffed about this.
I wonder how many times Europe can get abused by gaming companies before they completely give up. Only time will tell.
Source: [url=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14694813/]MSNBC.com[/url]
I know I’ve been gone for some time, and I typically don’t have the time for news reporting anymore, but I couldn’t pass this one up. I’m a big fan of both AMD and ATI, so I’m quite happy to hear that AMD will be buying out ATI. My PC has an AMD chip as well as an ATI video card in it, and I’ve been very pleased.
I know we all have out favorites, and some of you prefer Intel and/or Nvidia, but for gaming, I think that AMD and ATI are a nice combination. I’m sure with the likely plans of them being designed to really work well together, we’ll be seeing some excellent performance down the road.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it’ll be a good year before we see any active changes because of this though. Even so… hooray!
Source: [url=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14008460/]MSNBC[/url]
According to industry analysts, the Playstation 3 will have a slow start because of price, but as the price goes down, it will pick up speed and in the end become the best selling system of the next generation. Now, this is assuming the price drops. Sony did say that it never will, but as I’ve mentioned in the past, I just think that’s a BS way of tricking consumers to buy it at launch. After all, if it really was going to be $600 whether it be at launch or two years after, when would you buy it? Clever strategy, but they can’t fool me.
The good news for Sony haters is that these same analysts predict that the Playstation 3 won’t have quite as large a lead on the competition as it did in the last generation. Either way, this should be interesting.
Source: [url=http://www.us.playstation.com/News/Stories/4429]Official Playstation Website[/url]
