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Current Console Transition Far Worse Than Previous
A report released yesterday indicates that this console transition is far worse than previous hardware iterations. From the Gamasutra article: "This console transition, he said, is 'far worse' than that seen from the years 1999 through 2001. Additionally, Lowell points fingers at the increased popularity of online games, a general lack of creativity in game development, and 'no Halo or Grand Theft Auto-type blowout titles launched in 2005,' echoing the sentiments of many other analysts." Next Generation has an analysis of what makes this transition so bad. (this last piece is satire)
This article is a joke.
It blames the Germans.
It blames companies (Nintendo) and consoles (the PSP).
It lists developers at number five.
Can't we just admit that there's been a severe lack of imagination in video game design recently? We have no one to blame but the people who envision the games--and even then, we can't really blame them for not coming up with the latest and greatest concept.
Maybe we should be encouraging developers to think outside the box and have them attend liberal arts colleges instead of 2 year technical colleges where they only learn how to make clones out of already existing games?
My work here is dung.
It has been said probably a thousand times around why the transition isn't going well, and lack of a must-have title is just part of it. Over the years i've owned probably half a dozen consoles, From the NES to a PS2 and a bunch of stuff in the middle. In that time i've played dozens if not hundreds of games. And while Marios, Final Fantasies, and all the rest of the bunch are fun, how many times can i buy something with the same basic formula doing the same basic things. Its been 20 years, give me something new already, because i'm not paying $400 for a new XBox360 to play the same tired genres. I've shot enough people and jumped over enough stuff, that i want something new, and the developers are refusing to give it to me. So i won't give them my money. End of story. There is a reason the video game industry took a dive once before. Too much crap that no one wanted. Looks like some people never learn.
Does it really take an analyst to realize that "impending" means that the next generation of consoles isn't out yet. Of course there won't be a base of users installed with the next generation of gear...
Maybe these analysts should wait for the PS3 and the Revolution to come out before they make these reports.
For Nintendo.
I see a lot of interest in the DS and DS Lite. I see record sales in Japan (SOLD OUT- something that almost never happens) and increasing sales in the USA and Europe.
It's a handheld? So what?
When a market is really changing, the old models don't work so well any more. Sony and Microsoft are utterly convinced that convergence will happen in your living room. That's because they sell things that go in a living room- Televisions, Stereos, Home Computer OSes, etc. Sony's fantasy is that you will pay them an enormous sum of money and subscription fees to install very complicated equipment so you can spend a lot of time at home. Microsoft thinks you are willing to spend $400+ on a console to play the $5 Geometry Wars (perfectly playable on Game Boy) or Paperboy.
Apple and Nintendo both understand that convergence is happening IN YOUR POCKET.
iPod, Cellphone Television, Handheld consoles. What do these all have in common?
A home theater experience is very nice, but a device that shows movies, plays music and games, and allows phone calls is totally convergent, and cheap by comparison, which allows a much larger market. Simpler games also allow market expansion by appealing to nontraditional gamers (Women and Seniors, mostly).
Sony has delays on PS3 because they are feverishly working to make it the all-in-one living room box. Does anyone actually WANT an all-in-one? Also notice that the PSP section of your local store has 2x the movies as games. PSP is a very expensive portable DVD player that plays some games.
I would love to know what the U.S. XBox360 sales would look like if they could actually produce some of the things. "Sold Out" is meaningless when you can only allocate a dozen units per store. For months at a time. It's March, where the hell are the things already?
In Japan, where XBox360 stock is plentiful, games are important, and home theater convergence is desired to to lack of space, no one is buying them. But there are lines around the block for the DS.
If your model of transition is upgrading consumers from FooBox 2 to FooBox 3 (with slightly better graphics and a modem at double the price), the transition has been a failure.
If your model of transition is selling more units to more customers no matter what new product you offer (from FooBox to PortaFoo), this is one of the best transitions ever...for Nintendo.
Can we please stop bickering about the lack of originality like it's something new? Who remembers the arcade space shooter? Who remembers the coutless Double Dragon clones? What about the 2D platformer? Who remembers 1-on-1 fighting games flooding the market? There are several genres of gaming right now that are getting spread thin. They will die out when consumer support for them fades. Then we'll finally get to a bunch of new types of games come in and try to win the honor of being cloned to death. We are in a phase of utter lack of originality but it will pass and we will get a brief span of original games coming out. Just make sure to enjoy the next wave of originals while it lasts.
The PS2 came out in the US in October 2000. GTA3 did not come out until the October after the PS2 launched, in 2001. Of course, neither did Halo, which came out with the Xbox November of 2001. But for nearly an entire the year, the bright shining stars of the lot were Onimusha (oooo!) and Madden (yawn). The PS2 was plagued with hardware shortages, then memory card shortages, and then people realized that setting the PS2 on its side and leaving the disc in scratched the disc to hell.
This is March, a mere 5 months after the so-called transition to the next generation, and they're calling it?
Business people turn everything into shit. We've got people who don't understand a thing about what they're selling making all the decisions. They're not engineers or designer who rose through the ranks, having intimate knowledge of what the company does. They're a bunch of suits with MBA degrees hired specifically to run the company. They're driven by one thing and its not producing a quality product, nor is it changing the market, nor is it innovation; they're driven by money.
And if they don't show healthy growth within the next few months the stock market reacts negatively. All these jerks want money in their pockets right now, instead of looking at the long-term health of a company.
Certainly the reality is a lot more complicated than that, but I think this is one of the core problems. It's why we see garbage coming from the game industry, and this problem is reflected in other industries.
Improvement in graphics will be relatively minor.
...which is pretty much the same as (or cheaper than) the price of the old consoles, when you adjust for inflation? Right. Big problem there, clearly.
People have been saying that for as long as I can remember. There was a time when it was possible to describe Doom as "realistic" with a straight face. But even last year's games look artificial. Even Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 are starting to look dated. Trust me... there's plenty of scope for improvement.
Games cost a lot to produce now so no one will want to risk anything too off the wall.
A-list games have cost a lot to produce ever since people found out that spending a lot on a game boosted your profits. And we're still getting off-the-wall titles. Katamari Damacy. Nintendogs. Lumines. None of them sequels, none of them based on expensive licenses, all of them original and addictive. I fail to see the problem.
And hard core gamers are pushing for games that are too complex.
You seriously think games are getting MORE complex? You should go back and replay some of the stuff from the 80s and 90s. Try something like Falcon 4.0, where you literally had to read a brick-like manual just to figure out how to get your plane to take off. Or the Police Quest series, where you had to follow real-life police procedures down to the last form. Or classic text adventures, where you had to wrestle with defective natural-language parsers and draw up your own multi-page maps of worlds that only existed as words.
But there was always Space Invaders too. In other words, there have always been simple games that you can pick up and play, and there have always been complex games that take roughly the same amount of commitment as a full-time degree course to master. Nothing new here. Nothing's changed.
Combine that with the cost of the new consoles...
Sorry, but I don't see a single valid complaint in anything you've said. It's all always been that way. Nothing's changed. Nothing will change. Just carry on choosing the games you like from the vast range available, sit back, and enjoy yourself. Because gaming's always been good, and it's going to stay that way.
Personally, I've gotten used to the GC controller and like the fact that I'm going to be able to use it with my Revolution.
The GameCube controller only works for GameCube games. You have to use the new controller for Revolution games. Some of the new games will use a WaveBird-like shell over the new controller, but for the most part you must use the remote control controller.
Yeah, and this would be insightful if that's what the article actually said.
What the article does say is that there's due to be a year and a half slump to the tune of almost 20%. The previous console slump was about 7%. So, it's prospectively gone up by triple. That is far worse than the previous one. Nobody said worst ever. Just worse than last time.
StoneCypher is Full of BS