Games Industry Things We Should Leave Behind in '07

MTV's Multiplayer blog has a list of nine videogame concepts we should be 'leaving behind', left to rot in the now-passed year of 2007. From the countdown clocks to Halo 3, their snarky list leaves no stone unturned: "The Phrase 'Next-Gen' - Ladies and gentlemen, 'next-gen' is now. Everyone from PR firms to development studios are still using this phrase. Please, I beg of you, stop using "next-gen" until the PS4, Xbox 4000, and the Nintendo Super Wii are slated for release. Those consoles will officially be 'next-gen.' The PS3, Wii, and 360 are the current generation of games. Now is the time to accept it."

Comments

The Much Needed 2007 Gaming Trash Heap

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Waggle - Ok, it was amusing for a little while a year ago around the holidays. But it is time to move on. Disco and Pet Rocks and now Waggle.

2. HD-DVD - A format whose only reason for existence was Microsoft's hope of destroying any next gen movie format and thus leading movie buying/renting consumers to use their own movie download services

3. Xbox 360 - Underpowered graphics 640p last gen looking Halo 3 etc, gimped disc storage of only 7 gigs or so(small than last gen), noisy as a jet airplane from the fans and old 12x DVD drive, disc scratching and destroying drives, forced online fees, no standard harddrive, worst defect rate of any console in history. Already dead in Japan and pretty much all of Europe but kept alive by the rabid US based Halo fans.

Re:How about poor supply chain management?

[immcintosh]

I always figured the Wii supply shortage was intentionally manufactured in order to create buzz. At first I could see them maybe not having anticipated the demand, but after a couple months passed and they were still rarer than hens' teeth (hell, they still are to this day at least in my area), I've come to the conclusion that Nintendo is milking what's started for the social benefits. To many it makes their console much more "exclusive" seeming than the competitors, and to that end it seems to be working wonders.

Re:The 9 things

[iocat]

Next-gen is a perfectly legitimate term to describe the PS3 and 360; it distinguishes them from the Wii and PS2, which are consoles that are still viable development platforms, but are not in the same league as the 360/PS3 in terms of graphical power.

When discussing development with publishers or other developers, there are basically three tiers: PS3/360, Wii/PS2/PSP, and DS. The first tier is usually refered to as "next gen" and that's unlikely to change for a while. Sorry if it's not semantically correct, but them's the breaks. Also, PS2 is still selling tons of software. You can hate on it all you want, but no one is going to stop making PS2 games for a while.

(There is also a fourth tier, which is demographically defined verus being capability defined, which is Wii/DS.)