Geek Swagger.
Nintendo
Digital distribution hits it big
Jul 31st
This may be a topic I've already discussed, but since I can't think of anything else to do a post about barring some sort of iMac/iPod Touch discussion (I'm trying to limit that to 1 post a week) I figured I'd comment on some of the latest developments. I've been thinking about it a lot lately, and pushed me over the edge. Personally I think digital delivery of video games (, ,) and media (iTunes, , ) is awesome. I'm not the kind of person who is too concerned about having a physical copy of my media because, in general, I interact with the bulk of it through digital devices anyway. As a result what it really boils down to is the convenience factor of being able to get games and media over the internet instead of from a store.
About a week ago on the 24th of July a brand new full-length game was released on PSN that I've been eagerly anticipating. A follow-up to for the PS2 that never really hit it big in the US, is the survival horror game . Because it didn't sell very well in the US, Sony has opted to offer it online only instead of putting out a physical copy. I know at least one person who was also looking forward to Siren but was turned off because of that. He's a bigger collector than I am, so for him to get a game but not be able to add it to his physical collection was a letdown. It bugged him so much that he nearly from Japan but after calculating the cost found out it would be too expensive.
That's one way to view it, but on the other hand what if Sony just decided to not release the game to the United States at all? Before digital distribution came along that might have been the outcome. That's one great advantage, it allows games that might not have the popularity or funding to get a full physical release to make it to fans everywhere. Not only that but the digital versions are generally cheaper - in Siren: Blood Curse's case the full 12-episode game is available on PSN for $40 (you can also purchase 3-episode chunks of the game for cheaper). The blu-ray version, as is the standard, costs $60. Not bad if you're like me and never look at game manuals and usually just put a game into storage only to resurface every few months when you get the urge to play.
Sony had kind of a lackluster conference at E3 this year but one thing that impressed most of their fans was they showed that they're making a serious push to bring original content to PSN. Not only full-length games like Siren, but smaller arcade games like P, , and . All are original IPs that haven't seen the light of day on consoles until now, and all are hotly anticipated after being demoed at E3. So as gamers we get new, unique content while the publishers have an additional income stream which is becoming pretty successful based on the article I linked in the first paragraph. If you don't have time to read it I'll give you the cliffsnotes: EA was able to make $90 million in the first quarter through digital distribution of their games. Not bad, eh?
Steam has been working under the same model for years now, so the medium is proven. Now with Netflix offering a for their movies, Apple rolling out the to delivers games and applications directly to their mobile devices, and all of the major consoles offering some sort of digital distribution for games, it seems this is the wave of the future. I approve, how about you? Leave a comment and let me know!
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Sony’s E3 press conference
Jul 17th
This is post number 2 of 2 concerning E3. Earlier this week you heard what I had to say about Microsoft's offering, and now I'm going to comment on Sony's. Unfortunately I missed the Nintendo conference...my most sincere apologies. When last we met our beloved hero Sony had been delivered a death blow, and I was very curious to see how they would counter-attack. Heading into E3 I was the most excited for Sony's conference, but now that I've seen both the Microsoft and Sony conference I have to say that the MS conference was the better of the two.
My biggest area of interest was an apparently fraudulent screenshot I posted in my E3 preview which showed a PS2 game store in PSN. That wasn't announced unfortunately, but as much as I was looking forward to it I didn't really expect it. After all, the (which is now live) leaked well before their conference. I'm assuming that if the PS2 game store was real we would have seen more concrete details about it. As I said Sony released their video store though, which is good. Unlike Microsoft whose conference was mostly based on new content coming down the road, this is one area where Sony was able to offer a deliverable on the day of their conference. The store went up Tuesday night so I promptly checked it out.
The Playstation Store is now split into two categories - games and video. The game store is exactly how the Playstation Store was before videos were added, with the addition of a button to flip to the video store. The video store has a great interface with lighter color palettes so it's easy to differentiate between the games store and the video store. I took a brief look at some of the content they're offering and, for day 1, there's a nice selection. The movies come in standard or high definition formats and range in price from $4 for rentals to $15 for purchases. There's also some TV shows, $1.99 per episode purchase. They have a lot of older movies to sift through but there's also some newer ones as well - one movie in particular that caught my eye was Rambo. I've been told I should see it and so that'll be my first PSN video store rental. It should be noted that I'm much more inclined to purchase videos from PSN just because my PS3 has hdmi outputs while my 360 is stuck with component. The only unfortunate part about this new video store is that it was launched the day after Microsoft previewed their new relationship As is usually the case, just as Sony and the PS3 are catching up with online functionality someone else comes and pushes the envelope just out of their reach.
The next area that I was eager to hear some news about was . Home has been in the works for it seems like forever, and especially with Microsoft announcing the avatar platform the day before it seemed more important than ever that Sony gives us some concrete information about their service. In the end all we really saw was a trailer for Home, showing some of the themed spaces of the game. They had already announced that games like would have their own dedicated infrastructure in Home and we finally saw a video of how that will work. From what I saw it just seemed like a building in Home that was dedicated to Uncharted. The building was decked out with furnishings with the same theme as the game and so on. That's all well and good but I really expected them to announce a launch date or at least do a thorough walkthrough of the service and say that they were going to start an open beta or something. If Sony is unable to publish Home by the time Microsoft deploys their avatar system via the Fall software update it's going to be a bit of a failure. We've heard about it for so long that, at this point anyways, it seems like it's never coming.
As far as games go there was a lot of attention paid to the games that I already mentioned in the preview. was featured with a single player demo, and it was really impressive. Little Big Planet was turned into a of sorts showing off the flexibility behind its gameplay based on user-created content. Killzone 2 was shown in a cinematic trailer. Aside from those three there was quite a bit of attention paid to upcoming PSN titles which was cool. I'm really glad that Sony's taking downloadable games seriously and not just putting out classic arcade games every week. Games like and Fat Princess confirmed that they have a dedication to putting out original content on a consistent basis. They didn't just stop at bite-sized games though, they also talked about full games that would be released on PSN for download. First they showed that looks to be a downloadable expansion pack of sorts for , a game that I finished not too long ago. Quest for Booty (it's fun to type, I must admit) will expand on the story found in Tools of Destruction and will only cost $15. The other game is . Blood Curse is another PS3 exclusive that's actually a follow-up to a cult classic from the PS2 days. It'll be delivered in episodes one at a time which integrates into the structure of the original game quite well. After playing the demo I'm pretty confident that I'll be picking up both Quest for Booty and Siren when they drop.
Other news related to Playstation games includes the introduction of Greatest Hits pricing for some games in North America, as well as a very solid PSP offering. Greatest Hits are basically legacy PS3 games (launch titles) that have seen a 50% price-cut and are re-packaged as a Greatest Hit. You can find a list of all of the Greatest Hits games but the ones I'm most interested in are and . I've been wanting to play Resistance but grabbing a launch title for $60 is a hard pill to swallow. Being able to pick up two launch titles for the price of an ordinary game is a pretty good value instead. Hopefully they'll add more games to the Greatest Hits lineup soon. As far as the PSP goes, there were a few games that interested me. There's going to be a Resistance spin-off built exclusively for the PSP called as well as a sequel , one of the most unique games I've ever seen on any platform. Also mentioned was a of my favorite PSN game . Those three games alone are enough to make me consider purchasing a PSP, but that's not all. All of the videos on the PSN video store can be converted to a PSP format, meaning you can take them with you wherever you go. That's pretty enticing.
The only whizzbang game announcement was a brand new franchise called . Although details are sketchy, the biggest seller of this title is the 256-player online mode. It's a shooter much in the same vein as a Battlefield game, just on a much more massive scale. All that was shown during the conference was a trailer, and you can tell that the game is still sort of a concept at this point, but it's something to get excited about. MAG was branded as the type of game that only the PS3's complex hardware could manage but it makes me wonder what sort of lag I'll see with 255 other players running around.
To sum it all up this year's conference was heavy into stressing Playstation 3 as a long-term platform. The first 15 minutes of the conference was all about showing the longevity of the prior Playstation systems, and it seems like Sony is trying to establish the PS3 for as long as 10 years. The overall theme of the conference was "If you think this is good, just wait until next year!" That's all well and good but I don't know how many people are going to go out and purchase a PS3 based on promises of a better tomorrow. I said that Microsoft had a solid showing and in comparison Sony had a weak one. To take as hard of a hit as losing Final Fantasy XIII exclusivity was and not have much to fight back with is...well, bad news.
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Shane MacGowan - Roddy McCorley
Microsoft’s E3 press conference
Jul 15th
Microsoft's press conference this year was very interesting and it hinted at a lot of change in their strategy moving forward. It started out as you would normally expect - some of the most highly anticipated 360 games were shown off. These ranged from and to the star of the show, . All were given their chance to shine with a singleplayer demo, and they all looked pretty damn great. After that, when the "hardcore" crowd was satisfied, the conference took a drastic turn.
With the success of the Nintendo Wii it has become more and more enticing for companies like Microsoft and Sony to try their best to appeal to the the family market of gamers. What this means is more and more games that are familiar and easy for non-gamers to play become popular. Whether this is good or bad for the gaming industry can be debated in a myriad of different ways, but it's important to note that it seems like Microsoft is headed in that direction. They started out by announcing something that I had hoped for, an overhaul of the Xbox Live user interface. Despite having less efficient use of screen real estate the new UI is pretty slick looking. Gone are the fisher-price colored blades, and now everything is integrated much more pictorially. My biggest complaint about Live's interface right now is that everything seems to be text. Obviously Microsoft saw that this was a problem and so they've made the interface much more visually stimulating this time around. Unfortunately it's hard to explain a user interface without images, so I'll go ahead and provide one of those now.
Okay so the image is a little small, my bad. If you'd like to see a bigger version there's a nice that you should check out. You'll notice that the first icon in the front (blue) shows a cartoony image of a user. This is what I was talking about when I was speaking of Microsoft's efforts to reach more casual players much like the Wii. This new digital representation of the gamer is called an avatar, and it's basically a mix of characters and . You can create and customize your avatar with different clothes and hairstyles which will undoubtedly cost you some MS points from Live. Your friends list will now be a compilation of your different friends' avatars instead of just a list of their gamertags. Your avatar will also take the spot of your gamerpic as identification in games. I can't really decide how to feel about the whole avatar thing because I obviously haven't used it for myself. It could be cool, it could be a gimmick. That being said I'm happy to get the user interface refresh, I think the new UI looks pretty slick and it adds some interesting functionality.
The next major announcement after the new interface/avatar functionality was that, at long last, Microsoft has partnered with Netflix. This is huge! I never expected them to do this because it seems sort of like a cannibalization of the , but along with the Fall update Xbox Live subscribers (gold members only) will be able to watch movies from their Netflix instant streaming queue right from the 360. It'll be free aside from the usual $50 a year Live subscription, and they've even announced that you'll be able to party up with your friends' avatars to watch Netflix movies together as a group. This sounds pretty interesting but I don't know if I'll want to be talking to people while trying to watch a movie. Alternatively it could be that everyone would just get together and be silent because they're paying attention to the movie, so I'm still trying to figure out if this is a feature I'll use. The important thing about the group watch feature is that it also works when you're not watching a movie. What that means is that group voice chat is finally coming to the 360.
After the Netflix announcement they spent a lot of time demonstrating several casual games slated for this holiday season. Much like the avatars this is another attempt to by enticing the casual crowd to pick up an Xbox 360. They showed off a sequel to the trivia game "Scene It?" which uses the big-button controller. From there they moved on to which invites players to get in front of their Xbox Live vision cam and goof off doing a bunch of different stunts which are animated with a backdrop on-screen (kind of like a green screen). Based off of the different participants performance rating a movie is compiled using their animations at the end. Finally "Lips," a karaoke game from the makers of , rocked the crowd with a special performance. The game comes with a plastic microphone peripheral and works with any .MP3 you provide. I have to say, during this whole section of the conference I kind of dozed off. These kind of games don't really interest me much because in general they set you up to look like an idiot in front of your friends and family.
Towards the end of the conference a representative from Square-Enix took the stage. If you aren't familiar with Square-Enix, they're responsible for some of the most popular Japanese RPG's including the Final Fantasy series. I was impressed at first because they announced 3 separate original games for the 360. It's obvious that Microsoft was really trying to reel in some of the Japanese market. Then, at the end of the conference, a megaton announcement was made: . Me personally, I'm not a huge fan of this sort of game, but FFXIII was one of the last fully exclusive traditional franchise games that Sony had in their possession. Obviously by securing it on the 360 as well Microsoft has dealt the PS3 a huge blow.
Alright then, what's missing? First, Microsoft didn't announce the rumored motion-sensitive controller. I think that's awesome. As I mentioned in my E3 preview I really hoped that the whole thing was just a rumor and that seems to be the case. Another huge area that was completely devoid of coverage was Microsoft's initiative. In past years they've at least previewed some titles for it, but not this year. All-in-all Microsoft had a lot of interesting announcements this year, I think they had a really solid showing. I'm looking forward to Sony's conference today (7/15) because they have some ground to make up.
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E3 Anticipation
Jul 12th
Remember back when the real E3 was in May? Back when we'd have all of this news by now? That's why it seems really weird that E3 is finally coming around this week. Before it shows up I wanted to make a post talking a little bit about what I'm looking forward to seeing or, more realistically, not seeing depending on how things go. It's actually a surprisingly short list (and yet this post ended up being crazy long), but let's delve right in!
First off, I want to see that is on target. I've seen some videos of this game lately and the DirectX 10 visual effects are just amazing. That coupled with the story and the atmosphere which made me fall in love with the first game and I think this will be a big hit. I'm just hoping it's not a sleeper like the first was because this is a franchise that could really get PC gamers excited again. It hits me in a sweet spot, both because the game's subject matter (the deserted areas around Chernobyl during/after the time of the disaster) and its unique gameplay. I've already talked a lot about this game in previous posts though so I'll just throw up the latest trailer and move on:
Next up my interest moves to the consoles I own. I have to say I'm not really that interested in much from Microsoft this time around. It seems that the biggest news (these things always leak early, right?) is that there will be a for the 20GB version of the console. That's cool for people who are new to the 360 but it obviously doesn't interest me that much. There's also rumors of a new of the console which would take the current Premium 20GB version's place. How that would work with the price drop I'm not sure, unless the price drop is just to clear inventory. None of this is confirmed of course so it all might be false, we'll see.
I have to say that I really hope this whole thing blows over. The reason I like the 360 is because it's a place I can go and still get some classic quality controller games, if I wanted motion controls I would have picked up a Wii! It seems like another way to segment the audience (the first way being releasing a version of the console without a hard drive) and it just doesn't seem like that great of an idea. How can Microsoft expect to topple the Wii at this point? I'm sure they're looking at it the same way they looked at the iPod when they launched their Zune, i.e. if they can take just a small share of the market then they'll be happy.
I will say that I'm hoping they maybe give us a sneak peak at what will hopefully be a huge Fall update for the dashboard. I'd like to see a lot of reworked and some functionality added since paying $50 a year is beginning to see a little overkill for what I'm getting. PSN is starting to catch up in a lot of areas and it's free so I think Microsoft has to keep finding ways to keep Xbox Live subscribers interested. Hopefully that means a UI refresh. There's also a rumor that they're introducing a new feature called which will be very similar to the Nintendo Wii's "Mii" functionality.
Finally is Sony. Sony's press conference is the one I'm most looking forward to from a few different perspectives. First, it seems like they're making the most moves by introducing different services to expand their online offering. From the recent 2.41 update which I blogged about to the confirmation of a , Sony is bringing out a lot of new stuff. There's also the constantly delayed which will hopefully go into beta sometime soon...basically there's a lot of potential for new software to enhance the overall experience. I always keep in mind that Sony is pretty new to the whole online gaming scene and tends to be a little behind/slow to market...what that means is I'm not exactly expecting miracles. I'm just glad that they're working on it.
I'm also interested in Sony games though. If there's one complaint I have about my PS3 is that there aren't enough exclusive titles for it. After playing I've realized that the PS3 has so much potential that a 1st-party developer could capitalize on. The good news is that there are some exclusive titles coming later this year. The most notable among these are , a puzzle-platformer based heavily on user-generated content, , and Killzone 2. Resistance 2 is a follow-up to the PS3 launch title which I still haven't played (I'm waiting for the version). Resistance, much like S.T.A.L.K.E.R., has a very intriguing story so for that alone I'm looking forward to playing both games. They've also boasted an impressive online offering of cohesive 60-player multiplayer plus a separate co-op campaign that focuses on the story. Sounds good!
There's also Killzone 2 which has had a pretty sordid past. I remember seeing the original CG trailer for the game and calling , but the game is really shaping up. It doesn't look as good as that trailer did lo those many E3's ago but it's still the prettiest shooter I've seen. I'm a sucker for epic large-scale battles and that's exactly what the latest (real) trailer shows:
These games are more examples of how amazing Sony exclusives can be so I'd love to see some new ones announced. The last thing I'm truly excited for is a rumored Playstation 2 store on PSN. There was released on a forum not too long ago showing PS2 downloadable games on PSN. The most notable game that was shown was , but what I really want is since I never got to play that. As I've lamented many times before I never owned a Playstation 2 so there are many other games that I'd like to play and, since I have the 40GB version of the PS3, I don't have access to backwards compatibility so game downloads are the only way that'll happen.
To be fair I suppose I should comment on Nintendo too, but since I only own a Nintendo DS that's kind of hard to do. There are rumors that Nintendo will show a new revision of their DS console which sounds reasonable at this point. There's also the fact that they really need to address the issue of storage on the Wii because many gamers are complaining about running out of space for their games. Hopefully they'll sort that out and hell, maybe they'll show a new version of the Wii? Expect a post sometime next week on what actually happened at E3 instead of all of this speculation!
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World at War
Jun 26th
The Call of Duty franchise is easily one of my favorites in the video game industry, going as far back as the original which was a PC-exclusive that revolutionized World War 2 shooters on the platform. Though traditionally a World War 2 franchise the game's developer, , decided to branch out into the 21st century with the latest game in the series titled . CoD4 was hugely successful in part because of its move to the modern-day Middle East, but also because of the ridiculous amount of polish applied to the gameplay, graphics, and sound for both the single player campaign and the multiplayer portion of the game.
For all those reasons and more I have been eagerly anticipating the announcement of the fifth game in the series, and in the past couple weeks I'm pleased to announced that we finally saw the trailer for . The franchise is moving back to the classic World War 2 setting. A lot of people are bent out of shape about that but honestly I love everything about WW2 so I think it's great. It seems like the most common complaint about World War 2 games is that there have already been a million of them, but haven't there already been a million modern warfare games as well? What makes World at War a genuinely unique experience is that this time the game will play out in the Pacific theater of the war. There has yet to be, to my mind anyways, a truly great game based on the Pacific theater so I'm very excited about this, and if anyone can get it right it's the guys that have been working with the franchise for years.
Who are those guys, you ask? Not Infinity Ward, makers of Call of Duty 1, , and Call of Duty 4. Instead the honor gets passed to a different developer - . Treyarch put out the sequel to the original Call of Duty game called which, to my mind, is still one of the best CoD games ever. They were also behind the less heralded Call of Duty 3 as well as some console off-shoots of the series (, for example). There's been a lot of fuss made over the fact that Treyarch will be working on Call of Duty 5 and not Infinity Ward, but I think that's very unwarranted. First off, they know Call of Duty. Secondly they know World War 2 games. Thirdly they always capitalize on the multiplayer portion of the game ( multiplayer trumped 2's easily, and World At War is set to bring co-op action to the series for the first time). I kind of look at Treyarch like the little engine that could, people get down on them a lot and tend to sleep on their games which invariably end up great. Besides, this also allows Infinity Ward to start prepping for Call of Duty 6, and the more time they put into that game the better it'll be. I don't think there was ever a game developer who said "we just had too much time to put this game together."
After viewing the Call of Duty: World at War reveal trailer my anticipation grew immensely. The action this time seems much more gritty, and portrays the darker side of the war better from what I can tell. There also seems to be a bit of a play to both sides of the war, not just the Allied Forces. During the beginning of the trailer you hear a Japanese soldier speaking (as well as an American) about the horrors of war and it's very chilling. If you have seen the movie and especially its counterpart you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. A reader was gracious enough to provide an embed of the worldwide reveal trailer, so please take a look for yourself:
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Have we hit saturation of plastic instruments?
May 31st
If you've been watching any gaming news lately you know that the of the Guitar Hero franchise will include drum kit and microphone peripherals alongside the standard guitar. This is an obvious attempt to stay current with stealing the show in the music game category as of late. My question is this - how many plastic instruments do we need?
I never bought Rock Band. In part, it was hard for me to justify paying $170 for a game, plus even at that point I didn't want to mess with setting up and dismantling the drums. Not only that but the guitar wasn't exactly well-received, a lot of people said it didn't compare to the Guitar Hero guitars, and so I said forget it. I realize the game is very popular and it has to be good to have garnered such a following, but I just wanted to say first that I skipped it for those reasons. Maybe that's why I'm writing this post.
I'm already kind of tired of managing the 2 massive boxes (and their associated guitars) I have from and so, for me, the concept of adding an entire band's setup into the mix is kind of annoying. I remember contemplating buying the guitar with Guitar Hero 3 (and not just the game) and my justification at the time was "Sure it costs a little more but it's wireless, longer, more comfortable to use, and it is cool looking. What more could they add to it in the future? This one should last me for all future Guitar Hero games!" Well it turns out that both and can keep coming up with ways to sell us new guitars, either because they have 5 extra fret buttons at the bottom for solos or because they're packaged with two other instruments you need to purchase to get the most out of the game.
The sad part is that another reason I skipped Rock Band was because I like the Guitar Hero franchise more, plus I think their song selection is generally better. I was pretty excited to see what GH4 had in store for us. It does have some cool features, my favorite of which is the "create-a-song" element which finally lets users make their own songs to play. That's a feature I've been wanting since I started messing around with for the PC - the nice thing about FoF is that you could find virtually any song you might ever want since they provided tools to create songs. Then I heard about Guitar Hero World Tour, find out that they're going after Rock Band with the whole band setup and I wasn't really surprised. It makes sense, they're just trying to stay competitive. I wasn't really happy with the switch, but it wasn't a shocker.
The final nail in the coffin came when for Guitar Hero World Tour. One-hundred eighty nine dollars (US). That's a $20 premium over Rock Band for (as far as I can tell) no reason. I honestly don't really have anything else to say now that I think about it. I was just kind of disappointed with the whole situation. The only way I'll be purchasing either Rock Band or Guitar Hero World Tour is if they promise that from here on in the current set of peripherals will be completely supported in their follow-up games. What I mean by that is they won't be adding anymore fret buttons, and extra toggles or switches, a second whammy bar, or new instruments for the Jazz Band sequel they're thinking of doing. Will it happen? Not as long as money is valuable. Will I end up caving and purchasing either RB or GH in the future? Probably, but at least I can look back at this post and think I had the right intentions once!
Also if they make a Folk Hero game with all songs from , , , and I'll totally buy 10 copies even if there was 20 peripherals. I mean come on, Bagpipe Hero? Fiddle Hero? Tin Whistle Hero? You know you can't stop that!
In-game advertisements
May 29th
So I was reading earlier today about how in-game advertising is apparently ineffective, and it made me recall a discussion I had not too long ago regarding my feelings towards in-game ads. It seems like a pretty good topic for a post so I figured what the heck, I'll go ahead and throw my thoughts out there. Let me start off by saying that, in most cases, I'm cool with seeing an advertisement when I'm playing a game. The reason for that is most developers have become wise enough that they blend the ads into the game world to make it look more authentic.
For example, I was playing when this conversation went down, and I think I said something to the effect that I don't mind them in a racing game because if you're driving around a city in real life you expect to see ads, that's just how the world works. So really, the ads can be viewed as enhancing the authenticity in a game like PGR where there's some value to knowing you're driving around an authentic city. At the same time I can sort of understand why this would lead to the in-game advertisements failing (like says) because I don't know about you but I tend to block out advertising in my surroundings. Sure, I might notice a new billboard once but after that I kind of forget about it. I think the issue might be that the ads are so well placed that they just blend in with the rest of the game environment and no one pays them much attention.
The alternative to that is advertisements that completely take you out of the game. I recently started up a trial subscription to one of my favorite MMO's from back in the day - . One of my friends has been trying to coax me back into the game (a few years ago when it first came out I played it to death) and so he hooked me up with the 2-week trial. I was running down a street completing a mission (as one does in these games) when from out of nowhere I hear voice yelling at me to get some Old Spice deodorant because, and I quote, "sweating is when hundreds of sweat glands drop a deuce." It startled me at first, so much so that I thought I might have left Firefox open in the background and got hit by a pop-up, so I alt+tabbed out of the game but Firefox was closed. Finally I found the culprit - the developers of The Matrix Online have rented in-game billboards to advertisers. So what I saw was a billboard playing an extremely low-quality video of Will Ferrell as Jackie Moon from his latest movie Semi-Pro. Unfortunately, to finish that part of the game I had to complete some objectives in a nearby building, and the whole time this message from Jackie Moon was looping over and over again. Now I like Will Ferrell, but that was pretty freaking annoying.
The article mentions that the smartest model for game advertising seems to be the "play for free" one. Basically, a gamer can choose to either purchase a game or let ads pay for their time, and as the game is loading they'll see a 30-second or so advertisement for Coke but they get to play for free. This is a pretty common theme on the internet, especially with video sites like YouTube. Sure, a lot of people complained at first when YouTube said they were going to start placing ads in some videos, but their ads don't take up a whole lot of space and it keeps YouTube free so what can people complain about really? I think that's the key to advertising. As long as the ads aren't too obtrusive and they also save me from having to pay extra for something, I'm happy.
What about games though? The cost of games hasn't gone down anytime lately, and now they're working in ads too? How can that be fair? Well, a lot has changed since advertising in games became popular. First off, it to produce a game. So much so that most games approach the cost of major motion pictures just for development, and the costs keep rising as the industry gains more popularity and the pressure to put out a good product increases. Second, look at what has happened with services like Xbox Live and the Playstation Network. These services have brought a phenomenon to console games that has been available for PC games for a while - downloadable content. Downloadable content is generally developed in most part after the game is released, so you could say the advertising would help pay for the extra content that gives your games a few extra hours of playtime. Sure, not all DLC is free, but there's still a lot out there that is.
So really I just wanted to make a post (it almost seems like I have done this post before since I've mentioned it in passing previously) about how in-game advertising, for the most part, isn't an evil scheme by game developers to rake in more cash. I'm cool with it, like I said, as long as it isn't yelling at me from a billboard across the street. =P
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Sequelitis?
May 22nd
Last week there was a blow out of gaming news due to the ramp up. Usually around this time we're hearing about the blockbusters or new titles our favorite developers are working on - basically games that we (hopefully) will be seeing around this time next year at the earliest. It's one of the best times of the year to be a gamer, and I know I for one am eager to hear what's new. The only problem is that, this year anyways, there doesn't seem to be much in the "new" category.
Whenever a business or industry begins to be successful there's always much less pressure to innovate. The heads of software publishing firms at or (just two examples, I realize ) generally look at market trends, see that they can rake in tons of cash by putting out a sequel to an established franchise that is proven to sell, and are more likely to disregard new games in the space as a result. For example, why make a game that seems sort of interesting but is relatively unproven when you can instead focus your efforts on - a game that will sell even if it's not that great based on its reputation alone. Gears 2 was previewed last week and I'm not saying that it doesn't look good, it does, I'm just pointing out the fact that I think the gaming industry has reached a point of stagnation. Of course there are always caveats, for example Nintendo's Wii which is basically a console designed to promote innovation (and yet it seems like you're wagging your wiimote to and fro in every game for some reason...). Still from the major developers, for the most part, it would seem that this year's E3 will be more of the same. , , , , , stop me if any of this starts sounding familiar...
Where as usually I would come out of E3 week (in the past it was held in the beginning of May, so last week's media blitz kind of makes sense) with a slew of new titles to look forward to, this time around it seems like there isn't much besides the standbys. No surprise announcements really so far, no old series being brought back or updated (at least none that gamers actually want, anyone?). Still to kill some of the negativity in this post I do want to point on what's on the horizon that I'm looking forward to. This list will, for brevity's sake consist of three games (I could probably round it out to 4 or 5 if I wanted to make a longer post) - all three are from traditionally PC-exclusive developers who have made transitions to the console market for various reasons.
I'll start with the two I'm most familiar with first. has been working on a game called for a while now, and last week after some game reviewers got their hands on it my interest was completely renewed. I'm a bit of a Valve fanboy anyways (the Half-Life franchise remains my favorite in gaming) so I guess they could say they're working on a Barbie game and I'd be at least moderately interested. The game's premise is one that's familiar to a lot of people out there - zombie breakout. Okay, so maybe not familiar in the literal sense but chances are you've seen at least one zombie movie in your lifetime, be it a classic movie or the more recent /. Left 4 Dead is a 4-player multiplayer game (cooperative, of course) in which a rag-tag group of people try to make it through the zombie apocalypse intact. They're outfitted with a significant arsenal of weaponry and they're trying to make their way from spot to spot in a city in the hope of escaping. Cooperative play is definitely stressed - if one person wanders off chances are they're a goner which leaves the rest of the squad weak and overall kills your chances of survival. A cool feature is that once one member of the squad goes down they can come back as a zombie and terrorize their still-living mates. Not only that but the threat level is random - depending on how you play a level (how well, I should say) the game will dynamically change up the quantity of enemies. I'm totally hyped for this, please check out some trailers of it to get a much better understanding then I can provide.
Next up is a game that's actually a prequel to one of my favorite games of last year, . In you play as a stalker prior to and during the Chernobyl accident, so as you can expect there's a whole lot of potential for cool things to happen there. From the gameplay videos I've watched it seems like this time around they're stressing the squad-based combat a lot more which should be fun. One of the best parts of Shadows of Chernobyl was the interactions between the different factions in-game (go Freedom!) so hopefully they integrate that into the story and show how each faction came to be. It looks beautiful too and the environments have really been spread out. If they bring it with more of the same for the most part (plus an addition to the story, of course) I'll be right as rain.
The last game is one that I'm pretty unfamiliar with, aside from the developer's promises and a proof-of-concept tech demo video that was released not too long ago. The game is called Mirror's Edge, and it is being put together by DICE software. I just mentioned DICE not too long ago when I was talking about Battlefield: Heroes, so let me just go over their track record quickly by saying they are behind all of the Battlefield games that are so near and dear to my heart. I heard about Mirror's Edge several months back before everyone was buzzing about it, and at that time the promise was that DICE was working on a new game that would revolutionize character movement and physics in a game. My first reaction was "Okay, you'd think by now you guys would have movement down pretty well..." but now that I've seen the video I see what they mean. In the preview video we see an in-game character from the first person perspective making their way across rooftops like something straight out of The Matrix. They're performing all different kinds of Parkour (free running) moves as they maneuver their way through the beautiful environment and you can see that there's actually some weight to the character. You can't just be standing still and jump across a gap, you have to get a significant amount of momentum while running to be able to make it across. Honestly you just for yourself to understand, but I'm interested. At the same time I realize that this is just a tech preview so by the time the game comes out it could be totally different - still the main concept is solid and did I mention was developing it? =P
So those are the three games I'm excited about. There were some other announcements that kind of got me buzzing, especially the confirmation of a Doom 4, but I realize that for the most part those are a long ways off. We'll see more from them at next year's E3, no reason to get too excited now. Maybe I'm becoming a grumpy gamer?
E3! I almost said “E3 News,” but it’s not really new, is it?
Jul 28th
I'm going to talk about what each of the big three put out during this year's mini-E3 and what excites me most!
Microsoft.
I really liked the way Microsoft handled their press conference. Their angle was to show everyone all of the games that will be out by the end of the year. This was them basically giving gamers a real reason to buy a 360 this holiday season by not showing what will be out next year or the year after that, everything they showed (including Xbox Live Arcade titles) will be out before this year's end. Microsoft did a real put-up or shut up show. Some people were disappointed because there were no huge surprise announcements but I came away from the presentation hyped for a ton of games that I'll be able to play by Christmas.
There were a few hardware announcements, including the much-awaited which attaches a full QWERTY keyboard to your controller for in-game chat. This won't be a big deal to me since most of the games I play revolve around voice communication, but anyone who's playing Phantasy Star should be excited. They also showed new . Again, not a very exciting announcement but they'll be nice to have I suppose. And finally! Their show stopper as far as hardware announcements go - a new . It's green with orange trim and has some of the Halo 3 forerunner designs on it. I personally think the thing is ugly as hell and the colors really clash but hey, Halo fans might want to pick it up.
The real highlight was the huge catalog of impressive games they showed off, including , , , , , , and . This only puts a small dent into the list of awesome games coming down the pipe, and as I've said they'll all be out before the year's end. A lot of people are saying that this might be the , and my wallet agrees.
Sony.
Sony had the most surprise announcements of the bunch. For that reason they had a lot of the attention and therefore stole the show this year. Their major announcements included a (temporary?) price cut for the 60 gig model of the PS3 as well as Killzone 2 and Metal Gear Solid 4 previews. Killzone and MGS4 are the two games that might be able to get a lot of people to jump on board to buy a PS3 and the price cut helps consumers make that decision even more easily.
The had been leaked a little while before E3 went down so I don't know how much of a surprise it really was, but to have it confirmed by someone a little more in-the-know than was nice. I have to admit that I'm still considering getting one, mostly because of the price cut, but the anemic library of games is still the greatest deterrent. That's where and Killzone 2 come in, however, and are starting to change a lot of people's minds. Metal Gear is the type of franchise that causes people to purchase a console (if only for the one game) and . Arguably the best looking console game out there...maybe even a little better-looking than Crysis (though it pains me to admit it).
I came away from E3 with the opinion that Sony is starting to right their ship. They finally have some purchase-worthy games coming and the $100 price drop is much-needed. My only problem is that I've also heard that they have a new 80 gig model that they'll release soon at the original $599 price, while at the same time getting rid of the 60 gig model. So basically it seems that the price cut may only be temporary which is pretty lame. The only alternative would be to release the 80 gig model at the price cut price ($499) which might piss a lot of people off who are running out to get the 60 gig model right now at the same price. My official verdict on Sony for the time being is to wait and see.
Nintendo.
I'm concerned that my Nintendo discussion might be sort of brief, but I'll give it my best shot. Nintendo came out and had some new footage of some old games that we've known about for a while like and Super Smash Bros Brawl, as well as the sequel to the Metroid franchise - - which looked pretty cool. Their other "major" announcement put some doubt in gamers' minds however, and was decidedly less cool.
Nintendo showed off , a new game from the guys that made . It comes with a white pad that the player uses to perform various exercises which are then tracked over time to show the user's progress. I think this is a cool little app, but I'm not sure if gamers are going to be very thrilled about it. This seems to be another move by Nintendo to make the Wii mainstream and pull in new non-traditional gamers. That may work but it didn't exactly leave Nintendo fans breathless. After all, , right?
I came away from Nintendo's conference with a good view of some solid titles but much like Sony, from a gamer's standpoint, I'm still not sold. I really want to buy a second console (I'm an Xbox 360 owner) but I can't decide between the PS3 or Wii.
So that's it. My wrap-up of E3 '07. I'm most excited for Call of Duty 4 out of the whole lot...I'm a huge and they really seem to be knocking this one out of the park. It's not even out yet but I'll go out on a limb and say it'll be the Game of the Year.
Until next time...
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