Not content canceling games that people wanted like Mega Man Legends 3, Capcom kills its iconic series with iOS social game Mega Man Xover.

Capcom is celebrating some big birthdays this year. Street Fighter turned 25 and the pub’s throwing an appropriate birthday party. The Street Fighter 25^th Anniversary Collection is bananas. It has  Street Fighter X Tekken, Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition, Street Fighter II HD Remix, Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition, all the DLC, documentaries, animated movies, a statue of Ryu, soundtracks, a cool box—The only thing it doesn’t come with is a Chinese lady with big thighs who will beat the crap out of you.

Mega Man, Capcom’s only other series as iconic as Street Fighter, also turns 25 this year. So what’s the plan? A massive box compiling the Blue Bomber’s zany cartoon adventures? Maybe include of his more existential outings from the Mega Man X series?

Nope. Just a “social RPG” for iOS called Mega Man Xover.

That’s what we call in the industry a “swift kick to the fans’ junk.”

Series villains like Dr. Wily have teamed up in “Xover World” and locked up all the Mega Men—the original, X, Zero, and the rest—and are finally getting on with this world domination business. The player gets to design their own Mega Man and team up with their friends to win the day. For anyone with a keen understanding of Japanese, you can read up on the game at the game’s official website . It’ll be out in Japan this fall and in the US soon.

It has an “AutoPlay” button. One of video game’s foundational action games, with nerve-destroying platforming challenges and patterned boss fights, has an AutoPlay button. In a social mobile game. Made for the series 25^th anniversary.

That is just about the most depressing thing to happen in video games this year, and I’m counting all the horrific violence at E3 and the rampant sexism in Tomb Raider and Hitman: Absolution.

Mega Man Xover could be good, but it seems first and foremost like Capcom’s final insult to its former head of R&D, Keiji Inafune. Inafune created Mega Man in 1987 and was still intimately involved in the series until he suddenly resigned in 2010. After his departure, Capcom systematically axed every major Mega Man project in production, including Nintendo 3DS action RPG Mega Man Legends 3 and the MMO Mega Man Universe. Universe was actually similar in subject matter to Xover, but far more ambitious. It was a platformer like the old games, but it let players create and share their own Mega Men and levels. There was no AutoPlay button.

Mega Man Xover is the very definition of a quarter-life crisis. For shame, Capcom.

Instagram gets geo-friendly with a new map-plotting photo feature, creating new discovery options.

Facebook acquisition or no, Instagram keeps building. Today, everyone’s favorite photo-sharing app pushed a significant update, the most notable feature being Photo Maps.  “We’ve introduced a new and unique way to browse your photos and others’ photos on a map, which means you’re no longer constrained to browsing through page after page of photos,” the company announced via its blog, saying browsing was a focus for this latest update.

There have been a handful of popular Web alternatives for this function, like Gramfeed and Mapstagram, which create a feed you can view by location. But including it in the native mobile apps for Android and iOS is a big change that gives Instagram some much-needed variety to its photo discovery experience.

Now when you view a user’s profile, there’s an option to browse photos via a Photo Map, which plots thumbnails along Google Maps. In order to use Photo Map, you have to give Instagram permission to go through your geo-plotted images and you select those that you’re okay sharing with via the function. Those that you don’t select will lose their location information permanently. The understanding is that, from now on, when you geo-tag a photo and upload it to Instagram, it will be sent to Photo Map, but the app is giving you the choice to go back and strip this data from pictures you don’t want plotted.

Pro tip: Knowledge is power, people, so don’t include those photos taken inside your apartment.

The update also includes some UI changes, many of which relate back to Photo Map. Now when you post a photo, there’s an on/off toggle to include the image on your Photo Map, and the option to share to outside social networks appears on this page as well. User profiles will also get a makeover, with different viewing options – by tiles or the traditional full-screen scroll – as well as the new geo-focused display.

A few other comparably minor tweaks include the addition of infinite scrolling, speed improvements, and the ability to report individual comments as abuse or spam.

Instagram has become a go-to for location-specific events (I’d like to once again take this opportunity to point out Kevin Love’s account and his unparalleled documentation of the U.S. Olympic basketball team; pure gold… pun intended), and aiding that sort of discovery will only keep up this momentum. Not to mention the fact that this gives us a whole new way to approach discovery other than the endless scrolling we’ve become all too familiar with.

The update puts Instagram in a very good position to lay claims on social photo mapping — something that many, many apps have tried in vain to do. Pairing photos and location is tricky stuff, but if any platform is primed to do it, it’s Instagram. 

Sony Worldwide Studios boss says engineers are working are to bring down costs but it's still too early for a PS Vita price drop.

Sony ain’t messing around at Gamescom 2012. You want games for PlayStation Vita? Sony’s got new games from Little Big Planet studio Media Molecule, it’s got new Killzone, it’s got PSone Classics—Who cares if Call of Duty Black Ops: Declassified looks shoddy? There are originals on there. Need more? All those PlayStation 3 games like PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale and Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time come free for Vita through Cross Buy.

Great. Good for you, Sony. People like games, so games will convince them to buy your shiny machine. There’s a problem though: It’s expensive. Way too expensive for something that only plays video games. If people are going to buy that fingerprint magnet, you’re going to have to bring the price down. How about a Christmas price drop?

“No,” Sony Worldwide Studios chief Shuhei Yoshida told Eurogamer, “It’s too early.”

“People like cheap or free,” the executive explained in an interview at Gamescom, “Of course, cost reduction is one area our engineering team is working on. But we just launched the platform earlier this year. It takes time to do so. At a certain point in the future we would like to address the pricing issue for some of the people who are waiting. But this year we are trying to add value by creating different types of bundles. We announced we will provide Little Big Planet PS Vita bundle pack. That’s affordable for people who are looking for a good deal.”

Vita’s got even more attractive bundles coming. Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation will come packed in with a new white PS Vita in October. It won’t be enough to turn around Vita’s anemic sales though. Bundles are a good incentive it’s true. Many credit the Wii’s runaway success to its being bundled with Wii Sports. Nintendo learned the hard way in 2011 though that price is king in the modern age. The Nintendo 3DS only turned itself around once there were some decent games available and it cost significantly less than the Vita’s entry price of $250.

“The reaction to the hardware platform itself has been very strong,” said Yoshida, “But the actual sales of PS Vita, obviously we would like to see more uptake. We lots of feedback from consumers saying they would like to see more content, they would like to see their favorite franchises coming to the PS Vita.”

“So that’s our biggest focus now. The best way to realize the potential of the PS Vita platform is to provide the content. That’s absolutely number one.”

Games are priority number one, Mr. Yoshida. The best games in the world aren’t going to get people buying your machine though. Just look at the 2009 PS3 redesign and price drop announced at Gamescom for all the evidence you need.