• Posted January 14th, 2013 at 08:13 EDT by Dane Smith
• 0 Comments

(continued from previous page) ...up small expos for their new products in Grand Central Station, which is cool. For example, I was able to try the Nintendo 3DS before it was released.

Lasombra: Have you ever been burnt out from a gaming session?

Ixion: I generally can’t play video games for more than a couple hours. There have been a few cases where I was obsessed with a game and would play it all day for a week or two straight, such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and Fable 2. I was insanely addicted to those three games, and since I played them so much, I got sick of them to a degree.

Lasombra: As someone who works as staff for the site, what are your day-to-day duties? Can you give the fans an idea of a day in the life of Ixion?

Ixion: After logging on, I’ll tend to any private message requests I’ve received. Then I will check out the reports forum and the general staff forum to see if there’s anything that needs taking care of. Third, I’ll see if there are any new threads in the feedback forum that need a response. Fortunately we have a very active and driven forum staff right now, so everything gets handled rather quickly. I also try to chat up our community manager, Cuguy, when I get a chance. That’s where we strategize how to improve the forum to the best of our abilities.

Lasombra: It has been over a decade of a big 3 but do you think any company will become the next Sega and bow out of the console market, and either solely focus on games or just leave the business entirely?

Ixion: All three companies are having success, so I think they’ll all be around for the next generation. Microsoft would be the last to drop out and focus on games, since their first-party line-up is rather small. Sony and Nintendo have a good collection of notable first-party franchises, so that decision could work for them, but neither will need to drop out anytime soon.

Lasombra: Where did you get the concept behind your name?

Ixion: Ixion was a summon-able character in Final Fantasy X. I always thought it sounded cool, so I chose it as my username.

Lasombra: Being staff for a gaming site's forums, do you have any aspirations to try and find a way to work in the gaming business?

Ixion: My primary job is not very interesting, so I do have aspirations to find something more to my interests. Gaming would definitely be one of the options, as would music. Working for PSU doesn’t even feel like work, since I have a passion for it. I’d like to find something similar for my full-time job.

Lasombra: What are your favourite kind of games to play and why? What is it that draws you to them?

Ixion: RPGs, simply because they provide a deeper and more engrossing experience than other genres. An RPG with an interesting world and story will draw you into the experience and develop an emotional attachment generally not seen with other genres, while the classic RPG gameplay components, such as leveling, customization, side-quests, exploration, etc., provide an addictive factor that keeps you playing. Also, these games are usually very replay-able, since most RPGs allow the player to develop the characters in different ways. All in all, there's nothing like sinking your teeth into a good RPG and getting lost in its world.

Lasombra: Constantly we keep hearing about how the Vita is under-performing. Being someone who works in sales, if you had complete control of the Vita, what would you prioritize getting done in order for the system to be able to compete better in the market?

Ixion: With smartphones taking over the mobile gaming world, these game-specific handhelds need to communicate how they deliver experiences that cannot be done on a smartphone. The 3DS communicates its advantage in the name itself. The Vita’s overall package cannot be experienced with smartphones either, but since the iPhone 5 is nearly as powerful as the Vita, consumers probably don’t see why they need a Vita, since that is its main strength. The PS3 had the same issue, since no feature seemed clearly unique to consumers besides its Blu-ray player, but it went on to succeed simply due to a ... (continued on next page)