What is TheSixthAxis? A gaming website? A community? An outlet for our often sadly vapid, rumbling trains of thought? We don’t really know – we never really have. Nobody put us here to change the world, nobody ever told us what was right and what was wrong, and nobody helped steer our path. We just did what we thought was right, talked about what we wanted to and got excited every time somebody dropped us a comment.
That notion, that sometimes misplaced will, has spurred us on now for over six years. For me personally, getting feedback of all kinds was a pointer that we were doing something right, and that, as a diversion, a hobby, a part-time evening job you couldn’t ever get out of, the website offered a channel for creativity and a way of communicating – or at least trying to communicate – what I (and we) thought about games.
And so, 2013 brings change to the site. There’s a new design, there’s a renewed focus on PlayStation, there’re shifts and switches in terms of those that bring you the content. Blair will be taking over editorial duties on the site, for example, and later this week Alex is disappearing to paint pretty pixels for Just Add Water. There’ll be new faces too, whom we’ll introduce gradually so as not to scare the ducks.
TheSixthAxis might be a gaming website. It might be a community. It might be an outlet for its writers. But it’s also a collection of like-minded friends, and that will continue to be the case going forward. Exciting times are ahead, and with the next generation of consoles around the corner we wanted to ensure we’re placed to continue to cover them in the way we’ve always done, but with more emphasis on videos and that all-important opinion.
So, what’s new? The video above hopefully explains what we’ve been doing for the last few weeks. We hope you enjoy it, and here’s to the next six years.
tsa.
Germanos
I like the new concept and style, looks nice. Would be perfect is not for some issues. The transparent bar, which follows me when scrolling down the site is awful :( and looks like my laptop is not fast enough to browse the site, as I’m getting glitches while scrolling etc.
Also, a great applause from me for focusing on PLAYSTATION mainly. Big applause !
joeybamboo
i dont like change :(
pantherjag
No likey
Crazy_Del
I will have to wait and see if I like it or not, I am going to click on some things and see the whole outlook. Only been on this for 5mins xD
Keep up the great work TSA and I shall report back in 30mins.
Pemberton_
Looks good to me.
Couple of things I’m not a fan of though. The bar at the top, the font on ‘tsa’ I don’t think matches the hard corners/points on the logo and the social media plugins on the banner images.
But other than those gripes, looks great.
sanmartinez
I must admit that I feared a bit for the redesign, as the last one wasn’t my cup of tea but this is looking lovely!
Great job guys!
ron_mcphatty
Great job! It’s looks good and works perfectly on my 3GS, it takes longer to load now but that’s fine. I really like how the articles appear below comments on the mobile site too, its a very clever and efficient little addition.
Alex, good luck at Just Add Water!
Andy Torr
The only thing bothering me, from one designer to another, is the spacing between the text and the logo. As with any logo design, if you’re going to have the hexagon to the right side of the A, the spacing needs to stay the same as it is between the T and S. Kerning is my number one problem with a lot of designers these days. Other than that, it looks great!
yd
You can improve things a bit if you remove the bar that appears at the top. Takes about 3 seconds to remove it with the AdBlock extension on Chrome (other browsers with similar functions are available).
Now, if only that button for the “vertical” layout wasn’t just a link to a page that does things differently. If only there was a way it would remember which version you wanted. As soon as you click back to the front page, you’re back to the other layout.
Blair Inglis
We’ve removed the bar completely, so you don’t have to AdBlock it :)
yd
Given that I can’t work out how to unblock it, I’ll just leave it blocked along with the hundreds of other things I’ve blocked that probably don’t exist either. Things that used to exist. I’m not in the habit of going around blocking things that don’t and never have existed. Otherwise my block list would consist mostly of “spiders with lasers”, and, well, actually mostly just “spiders with/without anything else”.
gaffers101
I like the new logo and the change of branding to TSA. I’ll mainly use the blog view at work and see what the new version looks like on my iPad when I get home.