Posts tagged: videogames
Ok, this is just absurd! Aside from all the penis creatures, one also has wonder about the whole notion of a “nudity violation” for game in which creatures have no clothes (at least until they figure out how to make them).
Reading Gamasutra this morning, and this put a nice big smile on my face! I wanted to get this awhile back in it’s original form (known as R-Type Tactics), alas nobody seemed to have in stock at the time. Since then I’d forgotten about it, but this was a total wake up call. Talk about a happy reminder!
Sure wish I could’ve been at DICE last week considering who’s speaking at it. For those who don’t know (which probably means all of you), I’m a huge fan of both Tetsuya Mizuguchi and Masaya Matsuura (my other two favs being Fumito Ueda and Suda51). But Matsuura, who used his own original compositions for PaRappa, expressed concern about the Guitar Hero model, in which music gamemakers license hit songs, then build their games around them. I think this is already much better than it currently is with most non-music games where the music is largely tacked on at the end. Also I think this model, while perhaps not ideal for innovation in the musical game genre; provides like well needed stimulus to the music industry in general (although the health of the “music industry” is a topic for another discussion entirely)… This comment however: Matsuura suggested that Harmonix allow players to “make their own game course with their own track, and share it with each other, or sell it to each other.” I found a wee bit on the odd side since Harmonix’ earlier titles like Frequency and Amplitude did a far better job of that. Granted both used licensed music, they both still offered modes where you could still generate your own music from gameplay as well. I also found Mizuguchi’s take on this intersting as well: Mizuguchi, creator of acclaimed music games Rez and Lumines, said that there are pros and cons to using licensed music. By writing original music for a game, he said, “we can make the sound and music fit the game design. But nobody knows this original music.” With Lumines 2, Mizuguchi licensed tracks from groups like the Black Eyed Peas and Fatboy Slim, which helped draw in gamers who wanted to play his game with familiar musical tracks. Personally while Lumines II I think was the better game in terms of mechanics and gameplay options, I found the music of the original far more interesting, unique and memorable. In fact with some of the levels basically being like a live music video in the backround, I found it rather distracting compared to the more subtle graphics of the original.
So there’s this article on Game Daily about an analyst speculating that the 80GB PS3 SKU is being retired because of poor sales, Game Daily and NPD seem to claim “NO YUO!” Where do I start? First of all the analystis indeed probably wrong. Sales performance of the 80GB SKU, good or bad aren’t going to be the factor in it’s retirement (although yes a potential factor). To step back a bit further, one has to ask why is this even a big deal at all? What it boils down to is that the 80GB SKU (the initial 60GB PAL model for EU folks) is the only current model with some form of PS2 backwards compatibility. It seems to still be quite a big deal to some people due to the 40GB SKU’s lack of PS2 backwards compatibility. I could go one about that one for a while, but I’ll save that for another time perhaps. Back to Game Daily and the Mr. Hickey of Janco Partners (the aforementioned analyst). Earlier I mentioned that regardless of sales the 80GB SKU would be retired soon anyways. That’s pretty obvious actually. It’s an older, more expensive design, therefor it’s in Sony’s best interest to retire it as soon as possible and push the 40GB SKU in it’s place. The 40GB SKU is simply a more cost effective design to manufacture; I’d imagine there’s a few others such as a simpler optical drive (perhaps explaining the lack of SACD support (don’t quote me on that though)). The point still remains, the 80GB SKU was simply one phase of many that will consist of cost reduction redesigns with the 40GB SKU being the next (or current if you prefer) phase. I could go on about the lack of PS2 backwards compatibility and such, but that’s a topic that don’t feel like discussing right now and I’ve already digressed way off topic. So essentially Mr. Hickey claimed that the 80GB SKU was being retired (all starting from the Best Buy rumors BTW) because of poor sales vs. Sony’s internal projections, and that in what seems like a potential recession environment likely not to perform well vs. it’s 40GB brethren (and that the 40GB seems to be enjoying a faster uptake than the 80GB did). Apparently Game Daily (the original source article) heard from NPD that the 80GB SKU outsold the 40GB model in the 4th quarter. So some are taking this as a “NO YUO!” silly analyst boy! sorta response from NPD. First of all, the 40GB SKU hit retail on November 2nd (in the US). So it doesn’t have a full quarter of sales vs. the 80GB SKU so NPD’s response is sorta odd in that regard. Unless they normalized both SKU’s out, but that data doesn’t seemed to be disclosed. The other aspect that leaves me scratching my head is that NPD mainly tracks North American sales. Last time I checked, Sony sells PS3s in more regions than just North America. The 40GB launched in the EU on October 10th, and in Japan on November 11th so it also be interesting to factor in those regions as well. Ultimately though, Mr. Hickey never even claimed that the 40GB SKU outsold the 80GB SKU, just that the 80GB one didn’t meet Sony’s expectations and that based on the 40GB holiday sales that the 80GB model wouldn’t likely hold up in the future.
Yeah, looks like a slow news day at Ars if you’re bitching about game names and minigames. As for game names, I could care less, and yes I’ll admit that I sometimes even find them amusing. The only gripe as far as the names go is the silly “®” or “©” symbols in the name (e.g. PLAYSTATION®3). Minigames to me only become a problem if they become critical for completing the game, and even then when their well done I find them more of a benefit than detriment to the game.
This is amusing… It appears as though North American studios are really starting to pick up some Japanese habits when it comes to “Special Edition” versions of titles. I’m surprised they haven’t done this more in the past, especially with rising game costs; It makes for a nice additional source of revenue while giving the fans more stuff to chew on.
I’d been meaning to comment on this lately, but have been a bit too busy at work to get around to it. In case you haven’t been following, Ars has been a bit bearish on the PS3 as of late. Actually you could say anybody with an online presence in general has been fairly harsh (at least until GDC!). Of all the recent articles however, this one takes the cake.
To start off with, there’s this gem:
I suggested that Sony should have abandoned Blu-ray or, at most, should have made it an add-on, such as the HD-DVD drive for the Xbox 360. The reason is simple: by pushing the console’s price into sky-high territory, Sony was stretching themselves dangerously thin.
Almost a year later, it’s completely obvious that Sony has stretched itself too thin.
Sony, stretched thin? Seriously, we’re talking about corporation that’s been consistently generating over $60-$70 billion dollars of revenue each year, and yet still remain profitable (albeit tight at times). SCE? Yeah you could say they’ve bitten off a sizeable chunck that may be hard to swallow; but Sony as a whole? C’mon… Is this fundamentally any different than the original Playstation or the PS2?
To the typical armchair analyst/CEO/blogger, you might think hell yes! In reality it’s not. From a technical standpoint there are some differences, however as far as impact and/or scale of what they were trying to accomplish? Not really.
Yeah, Blu-Ray is the neat new format, but is it really that big of a deal with regard to the PS3. Personally I don’t think so. The PSP debuted with a new optical disc format (UMD), yet we didn’t see as much fuss over that (other that the typical grumbling over another format (strangely nobody grumbles when it comes to proprietary carts though…)). But really, how about building semiconductor fabs (PS2)? How about creating a whole new division and entering new, competitive market (Playstation)? With a bit of perspective, this whole ruckuss over Blu-Ray seems like a pile of nonsense.
However, this part seems the part where I take issue:
As we learned this morning, Sony is now bifurcating their product line even further, delivering a lesser product to the European market in order to save a few bucks. Dumping some of the dedicated hardware for backwards compatibility should save Sony a few greenbacks (or yen, as the case may be), but it screws gamers. And for what? How much cost is Sony saving by scratching this hardware?
Ken seems really upset! Don’t know why though. It’s not like you couldn’t see it coming! And even before this there was speculation and debate on how backwards compatiblity was going to be achieved. So why all the fuss? Iteratively trimming complexity in the system has been going on since the original Playstation. Japan got one with a nice little S-Video port on the back while the US didn’t (although I guess it was of minor consolation that S-Video/AV cable was made avaialble 4 months later). Later on, the composite jacks got tossed, then the parallel port, and finally by the PSOne, the serial port.
The along came the PS2… And when it came to the US, away went the PCMCIA port (although only used for an external HDD in which the US and EU models relied on an internal bay for). Then away went the firewire port (but along came IR!). The came the slim 7xxxx series with no HDD support whatsoever (ah but it did have an ethernet port in the back). However Sony had a little surprise for everybody in 75xxx. Out went the original IOP, to be replaced with a different one, and can you guess what that affected?
Another thing. I think Ken is underplaying the significance of shaving components off of a system. Removing the EE+GS saves you not only the cost of the chip itself, but also ancilliary costs such as the DRDRAM modules for the EE, board real estate and routing. It reduces part count which decreases complexity, which in turn reduces assembly costs. You might say it’s a bit of a trickle down effect.
With the PS3, Sony has let its video entertainment aspirations dictate the design of a gaming console, and the results are now plain for us to see: when the going gets rough, the gaming functionality gets going (going, gone!) out of the box. Buh-bye. Sure, now Sony will use software to provide some backwards compatibility, but not full compatibility. They’ve got a stop-gap measure in place, and we’re hoping that it works really well because who wants to keep an old PS2 sitting around once you have a PS3?
Really now… We need to lay off the Kool-Aid. Yes Blu-Ray is a critical component of the PS3. Dictate the design of the console? Please… Does the 360’s DVD-ROM drive dictate it’s design? In the end, it’s just a denser optical disc. As for the full compatibility? Here’s a news flash, the PS2 never attained “full compatibility†with the Playstation (in fact it PS2 games started breaking on later PS2 models!), and when it comes to the current PS3 with regards to PS2 compatiblity? Guess what? It isn’t “fully compatible†either. I hate to break it to you, but leveraging an emulator for backwards compatiblity has always been the target goal. Utilizing hardware has generally been a plan B that so far has worked out OK.
Really, the article is just plain poor… I don’t know what else to say…
This is funny until you realize that Live and the Wii online experience is pretty much the same thing. At least it uses real cash values instead of insipid points. But in all honesty, all the online services need to spend time using Amazon for a while or the iTMS…
