With the 300th issue of News Snatch last week, I thought it would be fun to trawl back through eight years (!) worth of juicy Snatch and revisit some of the stories I have covered. What if history was different? In another universe, all these stories are true….
The current President of the United States and Imperial Ruler of Activision, Bob Kotick, has implemented one of his election pledges that dates back to 2004 when he stated he was to “Take the fun out of making video games.”
His latest presidential order is to build a huge wall around Activision HQ and he is currently expelling all staff who were not born in the USA. He has described the state of the video games market as “Bad, so bad,” and aims to “Make video games great again,” with the help of Russian publishers Gaijin Entertainment.
As predicted by Michael Pachter, the price of Xbox Live is to rise again and will now cost you just £149.99 a year.
“You really want to hook every gamer who has a 360, you want them to buy all their games on 360, play everything multiplayer, pay you 50 bucks a year so that, in a couple years, it’s a 100 bucks a year,” Pachter said in 2009. “And that’s going up, we all know that – it’s a profit deal.”
Michael Pachter has risen from his humble beginnings to the become the Official Soothsayer for video games. This is due to his many accurate predictions such as Xbox Live getting a ‘platinum’ level subscription, the PS4 rendering games at 240fps, that Xbox One would win the next gen, Activision charging to play Call of Duty online, that third party publishers would not support the PS4, Apple releasing a console, and his most famous and accurate prediction, that PC gaming is on the way out.
PlayStation Home is to be updated to version 334.56, which includes a new virtual Starbucks, a new emote – “Cash Me Ousside, Howbow Dah” – and a brand spanking new walkway in Home Square which will be used for the latest series of RuPaul’s Virtual Drag Race.
Insomniac’s hugely successful franchise Fuse is to get yet another sequel, Fuse 6: MotherFusers, a prequel in which the parents of the original cast go on a daring mission with the highest of stakes!
Wonderbook goes from strength to strength with the expanded library including classics from Charles Dicken, Emily Bronte, and Gary Lineker. Today Sony have released a teaser trailer to announce the next literary title to adapted for the format: Fifty Shades of Grey.
The latest celebrity to be digitally inserted inside the ridiculously popular Curiosity: What’s Inside The Cube is the publicity averse Kim Kardashian. The stay at home wife of popular rapper Kanye West has agreed to step out of her comfort zone to become one of the playable characters in the Cube.
Peter Molyneux’s Curiosity has been a great success since launch and has made Bryan Henderson, the chap who completed the first cube, a multi-millionaire. Bryan now heads up a think tank which advises which celebrities should be included in the game, recent additions include Harry Styles, Mel from Mel and Sue, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, as well as one of Mary Berry’s famous Victoria sponges.
Until Dawn , the PlayStation Move title which will be released exclusively through the PlayStation Now streaming service, is looking good in this new trailer.
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has celebrated their 8th year of partnership with Microsoft. “Ubisoft sees enormous opportunities with Project Natal. With the 3D camera, your body can become the interface,” he predicted back in 2009. “Any barrier related to the use of pad controllers that may have existed for potential gamers is now abolished.”
The resounding success of Kinect, as Natal was eventually called, has been largely due to Milo, the virtual boy who launched with the controller. Milo was created with advanced algorithms which meant he acted like a real boy, growing and learning as time passed. Years on, Milo is now a strapping 18 year old, much to the delight of the many, many middle-aged women who purchased Xbox 360 so they can ‘interact’ with the handsome young fellow.
Guillermo del Toro’s InSane has a release date, and it’s July 2017. Hurrah!
Cast you mind back to 2013 when we featured “RelBBoy360” in News Snatch, a “cheevo” hunter who confidently predicted ““I pick up a lot of chicks at clubs showing my Gamerscore on my phone. Right now, I’m getting more cred and respect from my cheevos, but later I will probably make a lot of money from it.”
Well we’ve checked up on BBoy and it’s true, he’s made shed loads of money and is currently dating Mila Kunis and Scarlet Johanson, and get this, he has over 55,000 MySpace fans!! He’s also dishing out dating advice, here are his words of wisdom
Brewer’ asks ‘What happens if you’re cheevo talking at a bar, club or party and someone says they have more cheevos that you?’
Well, hopefully they are just hating and are lying. First look up their score with your cellphone, make sure you have a page bookmarked where you can check. If you catch them in a lie, you look even better.
If they are telling the truth and have more cheevos than you, leave. Nothing else you can do. Buy the person a drink and leave, unless you’re willing to look 2nd best. If you brought a date, odds are she’s going to be impressed with the higher gamer score and ditch you. Get out as soon as you can and go to some other party.
I’ve heard many females that have over 100k complain that they have a limited dating pool because they don’t want to date down. This could get very complicated. You might want to have a one night stand with someone of Bboy360’s looks, but it’s another thing to show up at E3 holding hands with someone that only has 20k cheevos. I’d try to find something that will make up for the lack of cheevos like being a reality star or something.
I’ve made a equation I’m still working on to help with dating on your level:
Points = (Cheevos * 2) + youtube views + social media fans(myspace, facebook) + (breakdance skill leve(1-10) * 50,000)
Following his rousing 2013 discussion with Bloomberg in which he correctly predicted the death of consoles, former EA exec Ben Cousins has been pictured swimming around in huge tub of money he earned from his mobile only first person shooter.
Fox News also predicted the death of consoles around the same time, and we all know what a trusted source of news they are.
Ken Levine have revealed a second round of DLC for Bioshock PS Vita. It includes a side mission in which you must use the rear touch pad to solve an existential crisis, plus a fun mini game in which you can make a virtual Big Daddy dance on your coffee table using AR cards.
And finally, Anita Sarkeesian is to star in the latest Dead of Alive game.
ron_mcphatty
Nice! You either have an astonishing memory or a helluva MS Excel database of news stories and the stinking liars who have made them up. And boobs of course.
Well done on all the Snatch you’ve pumped out, each one has been tight and well groomed. Here’s to at least another 700!
gazzagb
With all the stuff Michael Pachter has got wrong, how is he still in a job?!
The Lone Steven
He sacrificed Half Life 3 to the devil in return for having a job.