Unless you actually, you know, like MMOs. Which are pretty much known for needing an online server to function. This isn't like refusing to buy games that have DRM requiring online authentication; this is a genre that functions only on the basis of large, centralised servers.
I've been "clean" for over a year now, but prior to that, I spent almost 7 years playing first Final Fantasy XI and then World of Warcraft. And I don't particularly regret it. I had some good times, met a few friends and then moved on when I got tired of it. For the average MMO-gamer, their initial purchase and monthly subs represent spectacularly efficient spending on an hours per dollar basis compared to pretty much any other form of entertainment purchase.
Having a moral objection to offline games that require online authentication for copy-protection is one thing. Objecting to a game that is fully online by its very nature for requiring players to be online just makes you look silly.
If it's the co-op you're feeling that you're missing out on, then it is worth hanging on for. I finally got around to doing the co-op mode (PC version) the other day and it really is incredible. Like nothing I've ever played online before. Just make sure you have a co-op partner lined up who you know well and who hasn't played it through before. If you don't have such a partner, it probably won't be anything like as good. Some of the puzzles require a hell of a lot of trust and co-ordination between the players, and I couldn't imagine anything worse than playing it with somebody who already knew the solutions to the puzzles.
Besides, I would imagine that Portal 2's resale value would plummet pretty fast. The game is great and worth the purchase price, but it has next to no replay value, unless you really want to experience the story again.
Yes, I think this is broadly right. Personally, I probably won't stop buying from the PSN altogether, but I certainly will move to using pre-paid points cards rather than letting them have the details of my (new, just replaced - thanks Sony) credit card. That adds a potential layer of inconvenience to purchases which will certainly make me less inclined towards impulse buys.
Plus, as an owner of both a PS3 and a 360, it's yet another reason to favour the latte when making decisions on which platform to buy multi-platform games for. Unless there were glaring technical differences in the PS3 version's favour (a la FF13), I was already inclined towards the 360 on the basis that I prefer the controller and have more friends who also own 360s than PS3s (and hence a larger Xbox Live friends list). After seeing the PSN's dire resilience demonstrated, these decisions are going to become pretty much no-brainers in future. So I'm only likely to buy single-platform exclusives for the PS3 from now on.
Meanwhile, developers inclined towards giving Sony those exclusives are going to be thinking their decisions through very carefully. After all, the PSN has been painful to a lot of game developers - not just those who have seen PSN launches postponed or games launch with multiplayer not functioning, but also those who have DLC as part of their business model (which, like it or not, is most of them these days). Bioware haven't been shifting any Dragon Age or Mass Effect 2 DLC on the PS3 since the PSN went down. Gust haven't been selling any Ar Tonelico Qoga DLC. Black Ops: Escalation? Forget it. Now in some cases, customers will just postpone their purchases until the PSN store comes back up (which is likely to be the final component to do so), but in other cases, they'll have "moved on" from the game in question and the sale will be lost forever.
There's been a lot of hyperbole about the impacts of the PSN outage and data leak. I find it very hard to imagine large numbers of people rushing to trade in their PS3s. In fact, largely due to a lack of new releases that have interested me since Portal 2, I've spent the last few weeks using my PS3 way more than I normally would as I work through my backlog of games I've been meaning to finish. I played Killzone 3's campaign through (and was very impressed by how well the PS Move controls work). I sank 40 hours into Ar Tonelico Qoga (one of the few Japanese RPGs of this console generation to be actually good). And I finally got around to finishing the first Uncharted game. The PS3 has a large installed base now and, after a slow start, a decent library of games. In the immediate future, it isn't going anywhere.
The damage for Sony will, I suspect, be more subtle and long-term. There will be changes to how customers spend their money in the PSN store that could prove painful over time. And there will be damage to Sony's commercial relationships with the wider industry that could take years to repair. Compare how Nintendo managed to annoy a huge chunk of the industry (including, critically, Squaresoft) through sheer arrogance during the transition from the SNES to the N64, with the result that despite the SNES's dominance, the N64 and Gamecube died a slow death due to lack of third party developer interest (a problem which still afflicts the Wii to some extent). Sony are running a high risk of finding themselves in a similar situation now - you mess with your partners' bottom lines at your peril.
What Kinect does that other webcam setups don't is allow you to control the software using voice and gestures. For a certain audience, saying "Kinect, end call" or making a gesture is going to be a lot less off-putting that navigating a menu using a remote control or console controller.
It's odd, really. MS have put out a really neat piece of hardware in the Kinect. Yes, I know a lot of it has been done before it labs, but they've actually managed to get it out for a reasonable price, in a configuration that will work to at least some extent in most homes.
And yet what they've actually done with it so far is horribly limited. The games are - aside from some useful (but not "fun") fitness software - complete garbage. The homebrew scene (which they have, to their credit, done nothing to discourage) is well ahead of them on actually finding proper uses for the Kinect. It will be interesting to see how MS tries to catch up - and how they try to make money out of it (beyond the very large profits they made on the initial unit sales, judging by their published results).
The "like Duke Nukem Forever" label gets bandied around a lot. However, the launch of DNF pre-orders on Steam yesterday triggered a conversation between myself and a few friends about what else has happened in gaming terms since DNF went into development in April 1997.
- The first Gran Turismo game was still a few months from release. Gran Turismo 5's development was often compared to DNF's, but it was the 5th main installment in the series to be released since work started on DNF.
- Final Fantasy VII had just been released, triggering the start of whole JRPG boom in the West. The 11th and 12th installments had pretty epic development cycles, but the series still went from 7 to 14 (with many, many spin-offs) in the time it took to develop DNF.
- Following the release of Final Fantasy VII and a few other high-profile titles, people were just starting to realise that Sony's Playstation might actually have some staying power, rather than being the next 3DO.
- Nobody had heard of Bioware. The original Baldur's Gate was still 18 months or so from release. The Western RPG felt like a dying genre at the time, with many of the old 80s and 90s franchises on the rocks. Since then, just from Bioware and Black Isle, we've had the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale games, Planescape Torment, the Neverwinter Nights games, the KOTOR games, Jade Empire, the Mass Effect games and the Dragon Age games. And probably a few more I'm forgetting.
- MMORPGs basically didn't exist in the wild. Ultima Online was still a few months from its official release, with Everquest still about 2 years into the future.
- People were only really beginning to take an interest in 3d acceleration. Quake 2 wouldn't appear until the end of the year. People with 3dfx cards and the like were still very much a lucky minority.
- Blizzard had only recently put out the original Diablo. Its sequel was still to come, the original Starcraft was still over a year away and World of Warcraft wasn't even a pipe-dream at this point.
So really, comparisons to Duke Nukem Forever don't actually hold up for any other titles currently under development. Prey was perhaps running close for a while, but even that came out a good few years ago now (and was comprehensively underwhelming). Diablo 3 was announced in 2008, so if it does go the way of DNF, we would expect to see a release in 2022. I can't really imagine it will be that bad.
Yeah, the savegame issue was a killer for me. I was enjoying the game, but after accidentally losing half an hour of progress due to quitting the game a few seconds earlier than I was supposed to, I gave up on it. I'm sorry, but there really is no excuse not to have a proper quicksave feature - particularly in a PC-exclusive game. I know there are people who try to defend games that try to screw around with their save systems "oooh, it adds tension because there's a penalty for failure" or some rubbish. The problem is that stupid, restrictive save systems make it much, much harder to dip into a game for a quick blast. If I have half an hour to kill before I need to go out, I need to know that I can just press a button and save my progress wherever I am at the end of those 30 minutes. Ok, there will always be the odd area where allowing saves isn't technically feasible or doesn't make sense (eg. mid-cutscene, or perhaps mid-boss-fight), but I do expect developers to at least make an effort.
Magicka is by no means the only offender here. The Halo series not only has a badly broken checkpoint system (with checkpoints often triggering at really random times, and often very large gaps between them - infuriating in a series that loves 1-hit deaths), but it's also done some odd stuff with how you actually save properly in some of its installments. ODST was perhaps the worst - your checkpoint saves are not permanent unless you pause the game and choose "save and quit" before turning off or rebooting the console. This is not the norm on consoles (where you generally just turn the machine off when you're done) and also cost me a large amount of progress.
Seriously, developers, if somebody on your team suggests trying to do something with saving that isn't "save wherever you want", sack them. If you feel the need to do something for those weirdos who actually like being subjected to screwed up save systems, maybe include a free screwdriver in the box, so that they can stab themselves in the hand, or maybe a leg, with it while they play, since they like pain so much.
Sadly, yes. The Resident Evil series has been an absolute cash-cow (though I suspect it's a bit milked-out now) - they may be dreadful movies, but they've been effectively pitched and marketed.
The Silent Hill movie also did ok, grossing $97m worldwide on a $50m budget (according to wikipedia). That said, Silent Hill was, while by no means great, at the better end of the scale for a video game adaptation - and here in the UK, it was marketed more as a "normal" horror film than as a video game adaptation. I certainly know people who went to see it at the cinema or bought the DVD without actually knowing it was based on a game.
The PSP has some PSN functionality, but it's nothing like as core to the system as it is on the PS3. Remember that the PSP, including its multiplayer functions, predate the PSN by several years. The PSN screw-up has been monumental and may hurt the PS3, but the PSP's success, particularly in Japan, is driven by other things. People are still playing Monster Hunter multiplayer while the PSN is down and that, at the end of the day, is what matters.
To say nothing of the fact that you've been able to do all of this with the camera accessory for the PSP for a couple of years now. And that was hardly the most widely adopted piece of hardware ever.
No, I suppose it isn't. I was trying to reflect the extent to which the level of graphics we've seen from the PSP have advanced over the years; if you compare Untold Legends or one of the other early PSP titles to the likes of Dissidia 012, there is a colossal gap. However, as you say, you can't get away from the fact that it is not terribly impressive for a new platform's titles to be outclassed by those of such an old competitor.
To make matters worse, while the 3DS's graphics may improve over time, they are always going to be limited by the fairly poor size and resolution of the screen. I still have a gut feeling that the NGP (like the 3DS and the new Nintendo home-console) is going to be the wrong product at the wrong time - but it does at least offer both hardware and a screen that is a significant advance on the PSP.
I picked my 3DS up on the morning of the UK launch day, which was a Friday. This meant that I had the thing sat on my desk at work during the day. Quite a few of my colleagues came along and had a play around with it (to the extent that by the time I got home and finally got to use it myself, the battery was drained).
Now, this isn't a scientific test by any measure, but I would estimate that about 15-20 people had a play around with the 3DS during that day. Of those, there were two who said that they absolutely could not see the 3D effect. There were another 3 who said that they could see it but were disappointed. The remainder were impressed by the effect, though a couple reported headaches after just a couple of minutes. We've got a good age range in my office and I noticed that there was an inverse correlation between age and ability to see the 3D effect.
So my experience suggests that not everybody is immediately bowled over by the effect. A majority of people probably are - in the short term - but there is a definite headache-cost to it for at least some of those.
It's funny, isn't it. There do seem to be studies - and proper ones - not ones paid for by Nintendo - which basically say "yeah, the 3DS is almost certainly not going to do bad things to your eyes". As a rational person, I trust these studies.
However, actually playing the thing in 3D is a strangely unnerving experience. You have to consciously allow your eyes to go out of focus - and then keep them like that - losing your focus again every time you look away from the screen. It may not be doing any harm, but on an instictive, gut level it feels like it is. So as an irrational person, I turned the 3D slider off after the first couple of days and, other than a quick test to see how it worked on a train, I haven't moved it since.
That depends on how much of the 3DS's power is actually going on the 3D effect. I've heard varying reports here, ranging from "half of it" to "very little indeed". The longer term problem is the size and resolution of the screen, which is always going to hold the 3DS back from matching the PSP (let alone the NGP) in a straight graphical battle. To be honest, I'd have thought that Nintendo would have been better focussing on screen size and quality for their DS successor (the DS always being pretty bad in this respect) rather thank taking what now looks like a slightly unwise risk on 3D.
I've had a 3DS since launch-day (more detailed thoughts in my journal) and I think I could summarise my opinion of it as follows:
- It looks and feels like a nice piece of hardware; much less like a plastic toy than previous Nintendo handhelds.
- It's also a step up on the DS from an ergonomic point of view. The analogue stick is good - better than the PSP's - but there's only one of them. This means that a lot of the same control issues that plagued certain genres on the PSP are already re-emerging on the 3DS.
- The 3D effect is jaw-dropping at first, but headache inducing (for me) even after relatively short play sessions and a distraction in the longer term. It's worth seeing, but not a reason to buy the machine in itself. Also, the 3D effect is massively hard to sustain if you are not in a "stable" environment. If you're trying to use it on a train or plane, you may have problems.
- Take the 3D effect away and the graphics are... ok. Roughly speaking, the launch titles look slightly worse than current PSP titles (not helped by the lower screen resolution). However, it's unfair to compare launch titles to titles for an older system that developers know well by now.
- The battery life is bad. Depending on 3D and sound settings, I get between 3 and 4 and a half hours from the thing. This compares to 4-6 hours from the PSP and 12+ hours from the old DS.
- Load times are also more noticable than on the DS. None of the launch titles have loading times as bad as something like Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep or Dissidia 012 on the PSP, but they can still be irritating. Plus those PSP titles are far more ambitious than any of the 3DS launch titles.
- The launch titles are not fantastic. I got Pilotwings Resort and Ridge Racer with my console; they're both fun for short periods, but also very shallow and they get boring really fast. I've tried a few of the other launch titles for varying periods of time. Most of them range from "mediocre" to "outright bad". Street Fighter 4 is pretty good, but is always going to feel second best to the home console versions.
- And there's not much else in the pipeline. Yes, there's a Zelda remake coming, but I've bought that game once already and can't get too excited about buying it again. Beyond that... who knows?
The biggest problem the 3DS has is distinguishing itself from the (now much cheaper) PSP. The 3DS has the 3D effect, which is undoubtedly clever at first, but which starts to feel like a gimmick fairly quickly. Beyond that, the PSP has a better screen, better battery life and graphics that are more or less on a par with the 3DS's (if not slightly better on the basis of current titles). It also has the advantage of having a huge number of decent games already out there. Which, as I've posted on earlier threads, does make me wonder why on earth Sony now want to retire the PSP for a (risky, expensive) successor, when now would be the perfect time for them to just push cheap PSPs and major releases and kill the 3DS stillborn. The PSP is handily outselling the 3DS week on week in Japan and is holding up remarkably well in other markets. That's no small achievement for a console that was written off as a "failure" within months of launching.
Don't get me wrong - the 3DS is in no way bad. Turn the 3D off (as most people will after a day or two) and you are still left with a pleasant to use handheld with some nifty features. But are those features enough to justify the price for most gamers, against the backdrop of very little currently worth playing on the thing? Probably not...
One thing's for sure - complaining that customers "don't understand" your product is not the way forward. It's the kind of talk I always associate from companies who know that they're losing. A bit like when a game developer responds to bad review scores by saying "our game isn't intended for critics".
Ok, that's a fair clarification. I'd just never personally come across a game on one of the current Nintendo platforms that didn't insist on friend codes for online functionality.
Yeah, Monster Hunter is a huge part of the PSP's late-life success. Though curiously, the Wii version doesn't seem to have anything like the same degree of traction. Actually, I suspect that's why the 3DS wouldn't, in reality, benefit from a Monster Hunter game as much as you might think.
My understanding is that the big appeal of the PSP Monster Hunter in Japan is its online play. Online play across Nintendo platforms - be they normal consoles or handhelds - is a bad joke. The 3DS really is no better in this respect. So would a 3DS Monster Hunter have the same kind of appeal, in a world where everybody is locked into a friend-codes system? Probably not...
The DS did for a while, but the number of games coming out for it took a nose-dive as the 3DS approached. The PSP is now pretty much uncontested in this space - and the only real reason why it wouldn't remain so is the fact that Sony intend to replace it - with a console that will be more expensive to develop for.
How is the original PSP not portable? Mine went with me on any number of transatlantic flights, Eurostar trips between London and Brussels and domestic UK rail trips. The battery life was only enough for about 70% or so of a translatlantic flight, but you could always carry a spare battery if you wanted to. Its weight wasn't really a problem either - compared to the likes of the Game Gear (and even the original Game Boy) it was positively svelte. If anything, I found the DS harder to use on the move, because the stylus controls could be a bit of a pain if you were in a slightly unstable environment (such as a plane or train). I've not taken my 3DS on a plane yet, but I tried it on a train journey and found it very hard to keep the 3d in focus in a moving carriage (though of course, I haven't used the 3d mode for weeks now).
Good riddance. I could never see the rationale behind the PSP Go; why pay extra for a version of a handheld console that actually offered less functionality than the original? The online Playstation Store still has issues with the range of titles available (though this is improving), pricing structures (likewise improving, but only slowly) and user interface (where it is a long way behind Xbox Live and the App Store).
The weird thing is, however, that despite facing ridicule in its early years, the base PSP has gone on to be a curious kind of success story. With almost 70 million units sold worldwide and some impressive games sales figures, it's basically the first non-Nintendo handheld to achieve any real degree of success (even if it does lag a long way behind the DS). For comparison, Sega's Game Gear managed around 11 million units and the Atari Lynx a paltry 5 million - and the poor old Nokia N-Gage apparently only managed to attract around 3-4 million side-talkers. Weirdly, the PSP is now acting as the main competition to the 3DS, which it is now outselling on a week by week basis in some markets (with the PSP's lower price tag undoubtedly helping). It certainly helps - particularly in Japan - that the PSP has become the successor to the PS2 as the title that picks up the quirky and interesting low-budget games, particularly RPGs.
The irony is that having seen the PSP turn into a late-cycle success, Sony look set to kill it off with a successor at exactly the wrong moment. Latest sales figures indicate that had Sony left the PSP alone (while killing off the PSP Go like the irrelevance it is), it could have seriously hurt the 3DS's prospects in Japan - which is only one market, but nevertheless an important one. The 3DS is vulnerable right now - its launch games lineup is weak and its 3d effect is is impressive at first glance but everybody I know has turned it off after a day or two at most due either because they get headaches or because it's just plain distracting when trying to play games - it's still worth seeing, but you might as well just see it on a friend's console for half an hour rather than fork out for your own.
Keeping the games flowing onto the PSP for the next 18 months or so (capitalising on the weak 3DS lineup for the next 6 months) and keeping the spotlight within Japan on it could have denied the 3DS a convincing foothold and increased developer nervousness about jumping to a new platform. However, by putting out a new platform of their own so soon after the 3DS - and one which, judging by its specs, will likely cost even more than the 3DS (ouch), Sony are exposing themselves to exactly the same risks. A $350 NGP (number entirely hypothetical, but within the bounds of possibility given the spec) with another Lumines + Wipeout-style launch lineup (not to disparge Lumines, which was great) would really struggle in the present economic climate. It does make me wonder whether they learned anything at all from the harm that the high initial price of the PS3 did them. I wonder if it's their piracy-paranoia driving the switch - the PSP has been "unlocked" for a long time (as has the DS).
Hundreds of millions of dollars in a quarter is not a slim profit - and they've been raking in those figures for a while now. You make back billions pretty quickly at that pace. I think you're just clinging to the comforting (if you don't like MS/Sony whatever) illusions that come about as a result of the economics of the first year or two of a console cycle.
I bet you think they still make a loss on every unit sold - that's the other old chestnut that does the rounds. They were still saying that about the PS2 at the end of its cycle - by which point it hadn't been true for about 4 years (or more, depending on when you define the end of the PS2's cycle).
And you are linking to old annual reports. The latest linked on that page is 2008. At which point Nintendo absolutely were surging ahead. Nintendo's profits for 2010-11 are... ok... but they are below expectations and trending downwards (though the impact of the 3DS remains to be seen. At the same time, the latest MS quarterly results show a healthy profit from Entertainment and Devices division, which you will also find (albeit to a slightly lesser degree without the Kinnect bubble) in previous statements.
The "Nintendo are the only ones who made a profit this time" line is a bit of a myth, based on old data and checking a few annual reports can dispel this pretty quickly.
The Wii did incredibly well during its first 2-3 years on shelves. Since then, it has had a rapid decline. Nintendo's profits have been falling for a while and this year have been badly under expectations. That's partly due to the strong yen, but by Nintendo's own acknowledgement, it's also due to poor console and worse game sales. The Wii gets the occasional game that shoots to the top of the sales chart and stays there a while - mostly casual stuff like Wii Sports Resort and Wii Fit - but most weeks, if you leave the handhelds aside, the mid and upper ranks of the sales charts are dominated by the PS3, 360 and increasingly over the last year, the PC. Plus those Wii games that do succeed have been getting rarer and rarer - and almost none of them are third party (third party games being pure profit for the console manufacturer, since they cream off their cut despite putting in only a tiny investment into the development via the certification process - often just a few days of man-time).
The 360 took a while to reach the break even point - probably a year longer than it should have done due to the RROD fiasco that dogged the console for the first 12-18 months. However, it passed the break even point a couple of years ago and has actually improved its financial performance since then. Kinnect has been a huge boost for MS - they make an obscene profit on each unit sold and if you look at their latest annual results, MS's gaming division actually significantly ahead of most of the rest of the company as a result of it. If you extrapolate forward from current sales trends, the 360 would pass the Wii's total installed base in probably less than 2 years - while maintaining a much higher attach rate.
The PS3 has been the tricky one. It had a very poor start to the cycle even without an RROD fiasco of its own. It seems clear in hindsight that Sony put out a machine that was just too expensive and which couldn't justify that extra cost over the 360 in terms of what it actually gave to the customer. It also took a long time to build up a really tempting games library - I remember pretty much every year since 2008 being forecast as being "the year of the PS3", while in reality I don't think anything even remotely resembling that has happened until 2011 (when the PS3 does get the biggest and best lineup of platform exclusive releases of any of the consoles). However, the machine is now performing strongly and is the fastest selling home console in some markets. It would also probably be on course to overtake the Wii's installed base if current trends were to carry forwards.
So what's happened this generation isn't that Nintendo have massively outperformed the competition; they haven't. They put out a cheap console which got a lot of good publicity and got a very front-loaded sales curve giving Nintendo a lot of cream early on. However, the thing then went into decline and for the last 6-9 months has basically flatlined. So if you like, Nintendo have been the hare this time around. MS and Sony have (probably unintentionally in the case of Sony), followed a tortoise strategy and are seeing the benefits now after a few rough years at launch. This is why Nintendo needs a new console - as was probably always part of their strategy. The problem is that jumping to a new platform before your competition have theirs even close to the market is a risky strategy - as Sega showed with the Dreamcast.
The PS3 has had cheaters galore ever since Geohot did his thing with it. I'd just been starting to dip my toe into online multiplayer on the platform, since PS Move support actually made Killzone 3 feel... almost PC once you got used to it. Unfortunately, the wave of cheating that followed the system's protection being broken pretty much killed my interest dead.
Which is yet another reason why I can't blame Sony for trying to flay the little fucker alive...
Yes, quite possibly. The stupid management decision in this case being to put out a Wii1 that was utterly obsolete even at the point of release - which allowed for loads of cheap sales in the first few years, followed by utter paralysis and the need to release a successor before the developer market was ready for one.
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Unless you actually, you know, like MMOs. Which are pretty much known for needing an online server to function. This isn't like refusing to buy games that have DRM requiring online authentication; this is a genre that functions only on the basis of large, centralised servers.
I've been "clean" for over a year now, but prior to that, I spent almost 7 years playing first Final Fantasy XI and then World of Warcraft. And I don't particularly regret it. I had some good times, met a few friends and then moved on when I got tired of it. For the average MMO-gamer, their initial purchase and monthly subs represent spectacularly efficient spending on an hours per dollar basis compared to pretty much any other form of entertainment purchase.
Having a moral objection to offline games that require online authentication for copy-protection is one thing. Objecting to a game that is fully online by its very nature for requiring players to be online just makes you look silly.
If it's the co-op you're feeling that you're missing out on, then it is worth hanging on for. I finally got around to doing the co-op mode (PC version) the other day and it really is incredible. Like nothing I've ever played online before. Just make sure you have a co-op partner lined up who you know well and who hasn't played it through before. If you don't have such a partner, it probably won't be anything like as good. Some of the puzzles require a hell of a lot of trust and co-ordination between the players, and I couldn't imagine anything worse than playing it with somebody who already knew the solutions to the puzzles.
Besides, I would imagine that Portal 2's resale value would plummet pretty fast. The game is great and worth the purchase price, but it has next to no replay value, unless you really want to experience the story again.
Yes, I think this is broadly right. Personally, I probably won't stop buying from the PSN altogether, but I certainly will move to using pre-paid points cards rather than letting them have the details of my (new, just replaced - thanks Sony) credit card. That adds a potential layer of inconvenience to purchases which will certainly make me less inclined towards impulse buys.
Plus, as an owner of both a PS3 and a 360, it's yet another reason to favour the latte when making decisions on which platform to buy multi-platform games for. Unless there were glaring technical differences in the PS3 version's favour (a la FF13), I was already inclined towards the 360 on the basis that I prefer the controller and have more friends who also own 360s than PS3s (and hence a larger Xbox Live friends list). After seeing the PSN's dire resilience demonstrated, these decisions are going to become pretty much no-brainers in future. So I'm only likely to buy single-platform exclusives for the PS3 from now on.
Meanwhile, developers inclined towards giving Sony those exclusives are going to be thinking their decisions through very carefully. After all, the PSN has been painful to a lot of game developers - not just those who have seen PSN launches postponed or games launch with multiplayer not functioning, but also those who have DLC as part of their business model (which, like it or not, is most of them these days). Bioware haven't been shifting any Dragon Age or Mass Effect 2 DLC on the PS3 since the PSN went down. Gust haven't been selling any Ar Tonelico Qoga DLC. Black Ops: Escalation? Forget it. Now in some cases, customers will just postpone their purchases until the PSN store comes back up (which is likely to be the final component to do so), but in other cases, they'll have "moved on" from the game in question and the sale will be lost forever.
There's been a lot of hyperbole about the impacts of the PSN outage and data leak. I find it very hard to imagine large numbers of people rushing to trade in their PS3s. In fact, largely due to a lack of new releases that have interested me since Portal 2, I've spent the last few weeks using my PS3 way more than I normally would as I work through my backlog of games I've been meaning to finish. I played Killzone 3's campaign through (and was very impressed by how well the PS Move controls work). I sank 40 hours into Ar Tonelico Qoga (one of the few Japanese RPGs of this console generation to be actually good). And I finally got around to finishing the first Uncharted game. The PS3 has a large installed base now and, after a slow start, a decent library of games. In the immediate future, it isn't going anywhere.
The damage for Sony will, I suspect, be more subtle and long-term. There will be changes to how customers spend their money in the PSN store that could prove painful over time. And there will be damage to Sony's commercial relationships with the wider industry that could take years to repair. Compare how Nintendo managed to annoy a huge chunk of the industry (including, critically, Squaresoft) through sheer arrogance during the transition from the SNES to the N64, with the result that despite the SNES's dominance, the N64 and Gamecube died a slow death due to lack of third party developer interest (a problem which still afflicts the Wii to some extent). Sony are running a high risk of finding themselves in a similar situation now - you mess with your partners' bottom lines at your peril.
What Kinect does that other webcam setups don't is allow you to control the software using voice and gestures. For a certain audience, saying "Kinect, end call" or making a gesture is going to be a lot less off-putting that navigating a menu using a remote control or console controller.
It's odd, really. MS have put out a really neat piece of hardware in the Kinect. Yes, I know a lot of it has been done before it labs, but they've actually managed to get it out for a reasonable price, in a configuration that will work to at least some extent in most homes.
And yet what they've actually done with it so far is horribly limited. The games are - aside from some useful (but not "fun") fitness software - complete garbage. The homebrew scene (which they have, to their credit, done nothing to discourage) is well ahead of them on actually finding proper uses for the Kinect. It will be interesting to see how MS tries to catch up - and how they try to make money out of it (beyond the very large profits they made on the initial unit sales, judging by their published results).
The "like Duke Nukem Forever" label gets bandied around a lot. However, the launch of DNF pre-orders on Steam yesterday triggered a conversation between myself and a few friends about what else has happened in gaming terms since DNF went into development in April 1997.
- The first Gran Turismo game was still a few months from release. Gran Turismo 5's development was often compared to DNF's, but it was the 5th main installment in the series to be released since work started on DNF.
- Final Fantasy VII had just been released, triggering the start of whole JRPG boom in the West. The 11th and 12th installments had pretty epic development cycles, but the series still went from 7 to 14 (with many, many spin-offs) in the time it took to develop DNF.
- Following the release of Final Fantasy VII and a few other high-profile titles, people were just starting to realise that Sony's Playstation might actually have some staying power, rather than being the next 3DO.
- Nobody had heard of Bioware. The original Baldur's Gate was still 18 months or so from release. The Western RPG felt like a dying genre at the time, with many of the old 80s and 90s franchises on the rocks. Since then, just from Bioware and Black Isle, we've had the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale games, Planescape Torment, the Neverwinter Nights games, the KOTOR games, Jade Empire, the Mass Effect games and the Dragon Age games. And probably a few more I'm forgetting.
- MMORPGs basically didn't exist in the wild. Ultima Online was still a few months from its official release, with Everquest still about 2 years into the future.
- People were only really beginning to take an interest in 3d acceleration. Quake 2 wouldn't appear until the end of the year. People with 3dfx cards and the like were still very much a lucky minority.
- Blizzard had only recently put out the original Diablo. Its sequel was still to come, the original Starcraft was still over a year away and World of Warcraft wasn't even a pipe-dream at this point.
So really, comparisons to Duke Nukem Forever don't actually hold up for any other titles currently under development. Prey was perhaps running close for a while, but even that came out a good few years ago now (and was comprehensively underwhelming). Diablo 3 was announced in 2008, so if it does go the way of DNF, we would expect to see a release in 2022. I can't really imagine it will be that bad.
Yeah, the savegame issue was a killer for me. I was enjoying the game, but after accidentally losing half an hour of progress due to quitting the game a few seconds earlier than I was supposed to, I gave up on it. I'm sorry, but there really is no excuse not to have a proper quicksave feature - particularly in a PC-exclusive game. I know there are people who try to defend games that try to screw around with their save systems "oooh, it adds tension because there's a penalty for failure" or some rubbish. The problem is that stupid, restrictive save systems make it much, much harder to dip into a game for a quick blast. If I have half an hour to kill before I need to go out, I need to know that I can just press a button and save my progress wherever I am at the end of those 30 minutes. Ok, there will always be the odd area where allowing saves isn't technically feasible or doesn't make sense (eg. mid-cutscene, or perhaps mid-boss-fight), but I do expect developers to at least make an effort.
Magicka is by no means the only offender here. The Halo series not only has a badly broken checkpoint system (with checkpoints often triggering at really random times, and often very large gaps between them - infuriating in a series that loves 1-hit deaths), but it's also done some odd stuff with how you actually save properly in some of its installments. ODST was perhaps the worst - your checkpoint saves are not permanent unless you pause the game and choose "save and quit" before turning off or rebooting the console. This is not the norm on consoles (where you generally just turn the machine off when you're done) and also cost me a large amount of progress.
Seriously, developers, if somebody on your team suggests trying to do something with saving that isn't "save wherever you want", sack them. If you feel the need to do something for those weirdos who actually like being subjected to screwed up save systems, maybe include a free screwdriver in the box, so that they can stab themselves in the hand, or maybe a leg, with it while they play, since they like pain so much.
Sadly, yes. The Resident Evil series has been an absolute cash-cow (though I suspect it's a bit milked-out now) - they may be dreadful movies, but they've been effectively pitched and marketed.
The Silent Hill movie also did ok, grossing $97m worldwide on a $50m budget (according to wikipedia). That said, Silent Hill was, while by no means great, at the better end of the scale for a video game adaptation - and here in the UK, it was marketed more as a "normal" horror film than as a video game adaptation. I certainly know people who went to see it at the cinema or bought the DVD without actually knowing it was based on a game.
The PSP has some PSN functionality, but it's nothing like as core to the system as it is on the PS3. Remember that the PSP, including its multiplayer functions, predate the PSN by several years. The PSN screw-up has been monumental and may hurt the PS3, but the PSP's success, particularly in Japan, is driven by other things. People are still playing Monster Hunter multiplayer while the PSN is down and that, at the end of the day, is what matters.
To say nothing of the fact that you've been able to do all of this with the camera accessory for the PSP for a couple of years now. And that was hardly the most widely adopted piece of hardware ever.
No, I suppose it isn't. I was trying to reflect the extent to which the level of graphics we've seen from the PSP have advanced over the years; if you compare Untold Legends or one of the other early PSP titles to the likes of Dissidia 012, there is a colossal gap. However, as you say, you can't get away from the fact that it is not terribly impressive for a new platform's titles to be outclassed by those of such an old competitor.
To make matters worse, while the 3DS's graphics may improve over time, they are always going to be limited by the fairly poor size and resolution of the screen. I still have a gut feeling that the NGP (like the 3DS and the new Nintendo home-console) is going to be the wrong product at the wrong time - but it does at least offer both hardware and a screen that is a significant advance on the PSP.
I picked my 3DS up on the morning of the UK launch day, which was a Friday. This meant that I had the thing sat on my desk at work during the day. Quite a few of my colleagues came along and had a play around with it (to the extent that by the time I got home and finally got to use it myself, the battery was drained). Now, this isn't a scientific test by any measure, but I would estimate that about 15-20 people had a play around with the 3DS during that day. Of those, there were two who said that they absolutely could not see the 3D effect. There were another 3 who said that they could see it but were disappointed. The remainder were impressed by the effect, though a couple reported headaches after just a couple of minutes. We've got a good age range in my office and I noticed that there was an inverse correlation between age and ability to see the 3D effect. So my experience suggests that not everybody is immediately bowled over by the effect. A majority of people probably are - in the short term - but there is a definite headache-cost to it for at least some of those.
It's funny, isn't it. There do seem to be studies - and proper ones - not ones paid for by Nintendo - which basically say "yeah, the 3DS is almost certainly not going to do bad things to your eyes". As a rational person, I trust these studies.
However, actually playing the thing in 3D is a strangely unnerving experience. You have to consciously allow your eyes to go out of focus - and then keep them like that - losing your focus again every time you look away from the screen. It may not be doing any harm, but on an instictive, gut level it feels like it is. So as an irrational person, I turned the 3D slider off after the first couple of days and, other than a quick test to see how it worked on a train, I haven't moved it since.
That depends on how much of the 3DS's power is actually going on the 3D effect. I've heard varying reports here, ranging from "half of it" to "very little indeed". The longer term problem is the size and resolution of the screen, which is always going to hold the 3DS back from matching the PSP (let alone the NGP) in a straight graphical battle. To be honest, I'd have thought that Nintendo would have been better focussing on screen size and quality for their DS successor (the DS always being pretty bad in this respect) rather thank taking what now looks like a slightly unwise risk on 3D.
I've had a 3DS since launch-day (more detailed thoughts in my journal) and I think I could summarise my opinion of it as follows:
- It looks and feels like a nice piece of hardware; much less like a plastic toy than previous Nintendo handhelds.
- It's also a step up on the DS from an ergonomic point of view. The analogue stick is good - better than the PSP's - but there's only one of them. This means that a lot of the same control issues that plagued certain genres on the PSP are already re-emerging on the 3DS.
- The 3D effect is jaw-dropping at first, but headache inducing (for me) even after relatively short play sessions and a distraction in the longer term. It's worth seeing, but not a reason to buy the machine in itself. Also, the 3D effect is massively hard to sustain if you are not in a "stable" environment. If you're trying to use it on a train or plane, you may have problems.
- Take the 3D effect away and the graphics are... ok. Roughly speaking, the launch titles look slightly worse than current PSP titles (not helped by the lower screen resolution). However, it's unfair to compare launch titles to titles for an older system that developers know well by now.
- The battery life is bad. Depending on 3D and sound settings, I get between 3 and 4 and a half hours from the thing. This compares to 4-6 hours from the PSP and 12+ hours from the old DS.
- Load times are also more noticable than on the DS. None of the launch titles have loading times as bad as something like Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep or Dissidia 012 on the PSP, but they can still be irritating. Plus those PSP titles are far more ambitious than any of the 3DS launch titles.
- The launch titles are not fantastic. I got Pilotwings Resort and Ridge Racer with my console; they're both fun for short periods, but also very shallow and they get boring really fast. I've tried a few of the other launch titles for varying periods of time. Most of them range from "mediocre" to "outright bad". Street Fighter 4 is pretty good, but is always going to feel second best to the home console versions.
- And there's not much else in the pipeline. Yes, there's a Zelda remake coming, but I've bought that game once already and can't get too excited about buying it again. Beyond that... who knows?
The biggest problem the 3DS has is distinguishing itself from the (now much cheaper) PSP. The 3DS has the 3D effect, which is undoubtedly clever at first, but which starts to feel like a gimmick fairly quickly. Beyond that, the PSP has a better screen, better battery life and graphics that are more or less on a par with the 3DS's (if not slightly better on the basis of current titles). It also has the advantage of having a huge number of decent games already out there. Which, as I've posted on earlier threads, does make me wonder why on earth Sony now want to retire the PSP for a (risky, expensive) successor, when now would be the perfect time for them to just push cheap PSPs and major releases and kill the 3DS stillborn. The PSP is handily outselling the 3DS week on week in Japan and is holding up remarkably well in other markets. That's no small achievement for a console that was written off as a "failure" within months of launching.
Don't get me wrong - the 3DS is in no way bad. Turn the 3D off (as most people will after a day or two) and you are still left with a pleasant to use handheld with some nifty features. But are those features enough to justify the price for most gamers, against the backdrop of very little currently worth playing on the thing? Probably not...
One thing's for sure - complaining that customers "don't understand" your product is not the way forward. It's the kind of talk I always associate from companies who know that they're losing. A bit like when a game developer responds to bad review scores by saying "our game isn't intended for critics".
I find a pleasing symmetry between your user-name and the sane, calm, utterly harmless tone of your post.
Keep up the good work!
Ok, that's a fair clarification. I'd just never personally come across a game on one of the current Nintendo platforms that didn't insist on friend codes for online functionality.
Yeah, Monster Hunter is a huge part of the PSP's late-life success. Though curiously, the Wii version doesn't seem to have anything like the same degree of traction. Actually, I suspect that's why the 3DS wouldn't, in reality, benefit from a Monster Hunter game as much as you might think.
My understanding is that the big appeal of the PSP Monster Hunter in Japan is its online play. Online play across Nintendo platforms - be they normal consoles or handhelds - is a bad joke. The 3DS really is no better in this respect. So would a 3DS Monster Hunter have the same kind of appeal, in a world where everybody is locked into a friend-codes system? Probably not...
The DS did for a while, but the number of games coming out for it took a nose-dive as the 3DS approached. The PSP is now pretty much uncontested in this space - and the only real reason why it wouldn't remain so is the fact that Sony intend to replace it - with a console that will be more expensive to develop for.
How is the original PSP not portable? Mine went with me on any number of transatlantic flights, Eurostar trips between London and Brussels and domestic UK rail trips. The battery life was only enough for about 70% or so of a translatlantic flight, but you could always carry a spare battery if you wanted to. Its weight wasn't really a problem either - compared to the likes of the Game Gear (and even the original Game Boy) it was positively svelte. If anything, I found the DS harder to use on the move, because the stylus controls could be a bit of a pain if you were in a slightly unstable environment (such as a plane or train). I've not taken my 3DS on a plane yet, but I tried it on a train journey and found it very hard to keep the 3d in focus in a moving carriage (though of course, I haven't used the 3d mode for weeks now).
Good riddance. I could never see the rationale behind the PSP Go; why pay extra for a version of a handheld console that actually offered less functionality than the original? The online Playstation Store still has issues with the range of titles available (though this is improving), pricing structures (likewise improving, but only slowly) and user interface (where it is a long way behind Xbox Live and the App Store).
The weird thing is, however, that despite facing ridicule in its early years, the base PSP has gone on to be a curious kind of success story. With almost 70 million units sold worldwide and some impressive games sales figures, it's basically the first non-Nintendo handheld to achieve any real degree of success (even if it does lag a long way behind the DS). For comparison, Sega's Game Gear managed around 11 million units and the Atari Lynx a paltry 5 million - and the poor old Nokia N-Gage apparently only managed to attract around 3-4 million side-talkers. Weirdly, the PSP is now acting as the main competition to the 3DS, which it is now outselling on a week by week basis in some markets (with the PSP's lower price tag undoubtedly helping). It certainly helps - particularly in Japan - that the PSP has become the successor to the PS2 as the title that picks up the quirky and interesting low-budget games, particularly RPGs.
The irony is that having seen the PSP turn into a late-cycle success, Sony look set to kill it off with a successor at exactly the wrong moment. Latest sales figures indicate that had Sony left the PSP alone (while killing off the PSP Go like the irrelevance it is), it could have seriously hurt the 3DS's prospects in Japan - which is only one market, but nevertheless an important one. The 3DS is vulnerable right now - its launch games lineup is weak and its 3d effect is is impressive at first glance but everybody I know has turned it off after a day or two at most due either because they get headaches or because it's just plain distracting when trying to play games - it's still worth seeing, but you might as well just see it on a friend's console for half an hour rather than fork out for your own.
Keeping the games flowing onto the PSP for the next 18 months or so (capitalising on the weak 3DS lineup for the next 6 months) and keeping the spotlight within Japan on it could have denied the 3DS a convincing foothold and increased developer nervousness about jumping to a new platform. However, by putting out a new platform of their own so soon after the 3DS - and one which, judging by its specs, will likely cost even more than the 3DS (ouch), Sony are exposing themselves to exactly the same risks. A $350 NGP (number entirely hypothetical, but within the bounds of possibility given the spec) with another Lumines + Wipeout-style launch lineup (not to disparge Lumines, which was great) would really struggle in the present economic climate. It does make me wonder whether they learned anything at all from the harm that the high initial price of the PS3 did them. I wonder if it's their piracy-paranoia driving the switch - the PSP has been "unlocked" for a long time (as has the DS).
Hundreds of millions of dollars in a quarter is not a slim profit - and they've been raking in those figures for a while now. You make back billions pretty quickly at that pace. I think you're just clinging to the comforting (if you don't like MS/Sony whatever) illusions that come about as a result of the economics of the first year or two of a console cycle.
I bet you think they still make a loss on every unit sold - that's the other old chestnut that does the rounds. They were still saying that about the PS2 at the end of its cycle - by which point it hadn't been true for about 4 years (or more, depending on when you define the end of the PS2's cycle).
And you are linking to old annual reports. The latest linked on that page is 2008. At which point Nintendo absolutely were surging ahead. Nintendo's profits for 2010-11 are... ok... but they are below expectations and trending downwards (though the impact of the 3DS remains to be seen. At the same time, the latest MS quarterly results show a healthy profit from Entertainment and Devices division, which you will also find (albeit to a slightly lesser degree without the Kinnect bubble) in previous statements.
The "Nintendo are the only ones who made a profit this time" line is a bit of a myth, based on old data and checking a few annual reports can dispel this pretty quickly.
The Wii did incredibly well during its first 2-3 years on shelves. Since then, it has had a rapid decline. Nintendo's profits have been falling for a while and this year have been badly under expectations. That's partly due to the strong yen, but by Nintendo's own acknowledgement, it's also due to poor console and worse game sales. The Wii gets the occasional game that shoots to the top of the sales chart and stays there a while - mostly casual stuff like Wii Sports Resort and Wii Fit - but most weeks, if you leave the handhelds aside, the mid and upper ranks of the sales charts are dominated by the PS3, 360 and increasingly over the last year, the PC. Plus those Wii games that do succeed have been getting rarer and rarer - and almost none of them are third party (third party games being pure profit for the console manufacturer, since they cream off their cut despite putting in only a tiny investment into the development via the certification process - often just a few days of man-time).
The 360 took a while to reach the break even point - probably a year longer than it should have done due to the RROD fiasco that dogged the console for the first 12-18 months. However, it passed the break even point a couple of years ago and has actually improved its financial performance since then. Kinnect has been a huge boost for MS - they make an obscene profit on each unit sold and if you look at their latest annual results, MS's gaming division actually significantly ahead of most of the rest of the company as a result of it. If you extrapolate forward from current sales trends, the 360 would pass the Wii's total installed base in probably less than 2 years - while maintaining a much higher attach rate.
The PS3 has been the tricky one. It had a very poor start to the cycle even without an RROD fiasco of its own. It seems clear in hindsight that Sony put out a machine that was just too expensive and which couldn't justify that extra cost over the 360 in terms of what it actually gave to the customer. It also took a long time to build up a really tempting games library - I remember pretty much every year since 2008 being forecast as being "the year of the PS3", while in reality I don't think anything even remotely resembling that has happened until 2011 (when the PS3 does get the biggest and best lineup of platform exclusive releases of any of the consoles). However, the machine is now performing strongly and is the fastest selling home console in some markets. It would also probably be on course to overtake the Wii's installed base if current trends were to carry forwards.
So what's happened this generation isn't that Nintendo have massively outperformed the competition; they haven't. They put out a cheap console which got a lot of good publicity and got a very front-loaded sales curve giving Nintendo a lot of cream early on. However, the thing then went into decline and for the last 6-9 months has basically flatlined. So if you like, Nintendo have been the hare this time around. MS and Sony have (probably unintentionally in the case of Sony), followed a tortoise strategy and are seeing the benefits now after a few rough years at launch. This is why Nintendo needs a new console - as was probably always part of their strategy. The problem is that jumping to a new platform before your competition have theirs even close to the market is a risky strategy - as Sega showed with the Dreamcast.
The PS3 has had cheaters galore ever since Geohot did his thing with it. I'd just been starting to dip my toe into online multiplayer on the platform, since PS Move support actually made Killzone 3 feel... almost PC once you got used to it. Unfortunately, the wave of cheating that followed the system's protection being broken pretty much killed my interest dead.
Which is yet another reason why I can't blame Sony for trying to flay the little fucker alive...
Yes, quite possibly. The stupid management decision in this case being to put out a Wii1 that was utterly obsolete even at the point of release - which allowed for loads of cheap sales in the first few years, followed by utter paralysis and the need to release a successor before the developer market was ready for one.