Gerstmanngate Comes Full Circle

It was a cold day in Philadelphia when the news hit that Jeff Gerstmann had gotten the sack. I was a younger man then, turning the rambunctious age of 23, and things were simpler. There were hundreds of AAA games being released simultaneously and all the little gamers were abuzz about Mountain Dew Game Fuel. (you'll find it under the 'variants' subheading -- how tasty sounding.) Alright, it was only five months ago or so, but it did happen on my birthday (coincidentally also the best day of the whole year, ever.)

Well today, we're receiving news that the man potentially responsible for Senor Gerstmann's sacking has been sacked. Vice President of Games at CNet, GameSpot's parent company, Josh Larson will be leaving/is being forced out under these terms, "[a] new management structure means that Josh Larson's position as VP, Games is being eliminated and Josh will be leaving the company."

According to a posting at Gawker Media outlet Valleywag (parent and sister site to Kotaku, respectively) by an unspecified alleged GameSpot employee (posting under the dubious name 'gamespot'), "Our last executive editor, Greg Kasavin, left to go to EA, and he was replaced by a suit, Josh Larson, who had no editorial experience and was only involved on the business side of things. Over the last year there has been an increasing amount of pressure to allow the advertising teams to have more of a say in the editorial process; we've started having to give our sales team heads-ups when a game is getting a low score, for instance, so that they can let the advertisers know that before a review goes up."

And it just gets worse from there. Here's hoping that if Larson was the man responsible for the firing of our favorite HotSpot member, he's at least getting kicked in the crotch once or twice. Oh, and just in case you forgot, here's what Gerstmann (among other ex-GameSpotters) are doing with their time now.

This Dude Has More Nintendo Stuff Than You

Clearly. And this is just the beginning. We'll spare you the rest of the photo layout -- it's kind of terrifying. Seriously though, we like Nintendo quite a bit (we've owned every Nintendo console evaaarrrrr!), but this is more than a bit much. And here I am, thinking it was weird that I still own a wind-up koopa troopa from a McDonald's Happy Meal...

At any rate, I suppose we applaud(?) the owner of this veritable menagerie of Nintendo-themed items and wish them the most of luck in their day to day social interactions with other humans. No no, take off the human skin mask first, then go out into public! Good!

(via Kotaku)

Psychic Controller released this year, Judgement Day that much closer

Kotaku is reporting from GDC08 on a swanky "psychic controller" from Emotiv that will pop up on shelves in "select" retail shops sometime this year for the pretty price of $300. According to the company's Tan Le:

"The wireless device slips onto a gamers head, its 14 or so slender metal branches sliding through hair to rest against the scalp. The metal arms, which are coated with a proprietary material, detect the electrical current conducted by the brain and transmits the data to an in-board chip that deciphers the information and translates it into data that can be used by the program to control games."

Neat! We are now officially in science fiction territory -- something that is quite scary for my feeble little brain that grew up in the 80's and 90's. Maybe I've just been watching too many Terminator and Matrix movies.

Kotaku's Brian Crecente got some hands-on (er...hands-off?) time with it at GDC, and posted his thoughts this morning along with a video. Now people can look even sillier when they play games!

(Image courtesy of Kotaku, natch.)

Lifestyles of the Gifted and Geeky

I'll admit it, I've watched Cribs. I didn't want to do it, but clearly I had to know what the inside of Robbie Williams' flat in London looked like. But those days had passed....at least I thought. Now I understand how all those people can get sucked into reality television on VH1 and MTV. It all makes so much sense, after being horribly sucked into this. Damn you, Kotaku!

The folks over there managed to get shots of just about everyone's desk in the gaming industry worth noting -- from David Jaffe to Tetsuya Mizuguchi. Now I know, I know, this isn't quite news. It is, however, quite interesting. For instance, why does my man Ted Price of Insomniac Games have a 360 on his work desk, Mr. PS3 Exclusivity Deal?! Let the speculation.....BEGIN!