Weekend Reading - September 1st

This past week was pretty eventful, with the release of Guild Wars 2 and CounterStrike: Global Offensive. PAX Prime is also this weekend, so we should hear a decent amount of gaming news and if we're lucky we'll see a few deals and promo codes pop up. On to the links.

Games

• Various: Guild Wars 2 Launch
  
  • Ars Technica: Review: Guild Wars 2 is an MMORPG that actually respects your time
  • PA Report: Everything you know about MMOs is wrong: how Guild Wars 2 subverts expectations
  • Joystiq: Guild Wars 2 hits 400k concurrent users before launch


• Joystiq: Counter-Strike Global Offensive review: Come at the king, you best not miss
  CS:GO isn't too radically different from Source and 1.6, but it's still a modern game.


• Forbes: How To Beat Tiger Woods
  An interesting look at the guy who created the WorldGolfTour (WGT) browser game.


• TeamLiquid: Apples and Oranges
  A look back at the first season of the GSL, a Starcraft II league held in South Korea. I remember staying up until 6 or 7am to watch FruitDealer win the finals.


• Tom's Hardware: 40 Titles Revealed in First Wave of Xbox Games for Windows 8
  Looks like we'll be getting a ton of XBLA games for Windows 8 - hopefully there won't be too much crapware.


• Verge/Polygon: Eight years deep, the Black Mesa project perseveres
  I remember hearing about Black Mesa Source some time in 2005 or 2006 and being immediately interested. Sounds like they're still plugging along; hopefully the game doesn't look straight out of 2004 when it's released.


• PA Report: The True Cost of Free: what the rise of Free to Play might mean for single-player games
  I'm still not a huge fan of F2P games, though it looks like we're moving in that direction. This article looks at single-player games and how F2P might have an impact on them.

More links after the jump.

Hardware and Peripherals

• AnandTech: Fall Budget System Buyer's Guide
  Two productivity-oriented and two gaming-oriented builds for around 400 bucks each.


• Forbes: Meteor Entertainment Exec Mark Long Explains The Virtual Reality Of Oculus Rift And HAWKEN
  The Oculus Rift VR headgear looks interesting, though I'm not sure if it'll catch on. Playing a first-person Mech game while wearing VR gear would be pretty legit though.


• Tom's Hardware: Wood Grained Keyboard Offers Ultimate Tactile Satisfaction
  Wood grain keyboard keys? Kinda weird.


• Tom's Hardware: DRAM Prices Continue to Decline
  Good news for us - RAM is super cheap and it looks like that trend will continue.


• AnandTech: AMD's Steamroller Detailed: 3rd Generation Bulldozer Core
  AMD dug itself a hole with Bulldozer; they definitely have some catching up to do if they want to compete with Intel outside of the sub-$200 sector.


• Tom's Hardware: AMD ''Vishera'' FX-Series CPU Specifications Confirmed
  These Piledriver chips will be AMD's first attempt at clawing back.

Everything Else

• Verge/Polygon: Gamescom 2012 in under two minutes
  "This is Gamescom," a review of the event from a couple of weeks ago.


• Verge/Polygon: Chinese gamer returns spacebars stolen from internet cafe
  This is just weird.


• Hands in the Air Tumblr: Nintendo Power Staffers Remember
  From the page: "We’ve been seeing tributes around the internet, and decided to throw our two gold coins in. Then we thought, hey, we know a lot of the former staffers (spanning the heydays of the SNES to the Wii). Let’s ask them for their favorite memories, too!"


• Forbes: An Inside Look At How GameStop Refurbishes Used Video Games
  We obviously don't deal with used games on the PC, but I thought this was interesting.


• Joystiq: The NES before it was the NES (and the knitting machine that almost was)
  Nintendo definitely likes to mix things up a bit.

Have an interesting link? Share it in the comments.