I don't honestly think Sony's presentation was that bad. In some respects it was messy - it wasn't as slick as we've come to expect from the big three, with a slight air of farce in places. The "stripped down" version of the console is undoubted crap and I seriously hope they don't make this represent too large a proportion of the initial batch, or there are going to be a lot of seriously disappointed people come Christmas.
However, in other respects, I thought this was fairly promising for Sony. They clearly know the power of their own brand and how to exploit it, which could, I think, be important given the high price-point. I know it's easy to say that people won't pay over the odds for a console on the strength of the brand, but just look at what the average consumer is willing to pay over the odds on a pair of trainers to get a fancy logo on them. As for the controller features...
Well, if I was Nintendo, I would be alternating between two activities right now. Gibbering in panic and frantic consultation with lawyers. This episode starkly highlights one of the biggest flaws with Nintendo's concept for the Wii (even bigger than the name), namely that if you base your console heavily on the controller, you're screwed if reasonable equivalents of said controller turns out to be available for your competitors' machines. The competition doesn't have to be as good as the Wii's controller, it just has to be enough to remove the scent of exclusivity. The nightmare scenario for Nintendo has got to be launching against a PS3 which has a controller with most or all of the functionality of their own, along with the much better brand recognition and infinitely vaster range of games that Sony bring with them. You can bet your bottom dollar that this is the scenario that Sony are looking to achieve. If Nintendo have been playing their cards right, they will be able to slap Sony with some nice big patents at this point; it certainly wouldn't be out of character for them. However, there's something about the confidence and lack of subtlety of Sony's announcement that makes me suspect that they haven't.
As for Microsoft... I don't think that this demonstration was really a big gain or loss for them. They've known what the situation would be ever since they decided on an early 360 launch, trading early market-penetration off against a technological disadvantage. They've managed to get decent sales in most of the world, although not in Japan (although with the Japanese economy's continuing woes, you could probably make a case for the declining importance of the Japanese consumer), and Sony's technological advantage does not, on the face of what we've seen so far, look as though it's going to be vast. I suspect we won't know for another 18 months whether Microsoft's gamble worked.
Maybe it doesn't make me think of video-games. But it does make me think of urine. That's not good, and no amount of "cute" or "friendly" is ever going to overcome that in an English-language market. Worse still, a name like this is going to go a long way towards diminishing any playground cred that the machine has, which is going to be particularly devastating in the 8-14 market. Spend any amount of time in a school and you'll soon be reminded of the depth of the pleasure that kids can take in comparing each other to the products of assorted bodily functions.
Believe me, the immature jokes on slashdot are going to be Oscar-fucking-Wilde compared to what Nintendo's traditional core audience is going to do to this name,
Multi-lingual? As in "equally nonsensical and daft-sounding in multiple languages"? In that case, let me try a few suggestions of my own:
The Nintendo Plurk The Nintendo Wakkiwakkinong The Nintendo Xlurtlflurx
Not only are all of those perfectly multi-lingual by that definition, but they all have the decided benefit of not sounding like a well known euphemism for piss.
It's not an April 1st. Right now, the only explanation I can think of which casts Nintendo as anything other than a bunch of utter muppets is that this is the first half of some multi-staga announcement, in which it's revealed, once the initial furore has died down, that "Wii" is either an acronym for something less stupid, or the start of a longer name. For this reason, I'm holding back right now, for fear of being made to look stupid later.
However, I've commented on Nintendo's decade-old talent for self-destruction before, so it's entirely plausible that this is, in fact, nothing more than a really good example of them shooting themselves square in the foot again.
Will I be able to load in the stats from the latest Frungy season? All the latest players, their colouring patterns, tentacle length and favorite flavour of delicious lichen? Will I be able to customise team-lineup, including the infamous 1-9-18-2 formation? What about personalised limpets? Man, I was so steamed when I found out that we... ah... I mean those funny, yet unutterably powerful, fearsome yet compassionate and all-around great guys the Zoq-Fot-Pik had been cut from the atrocity that was Starcon 3.
All I can say is, you better get it right this time!
I think this is maybe missing the point of publications such as National Review (and its equivalents from across the political spectrum) a bit. Before I go any further, I should probably put my own cards on the table. I'm a conservative and a subscriber to National Review's digital edition, so I can't claim to be free from bias.
Assuming we accept that the publication's role is, effectively, a Republican think-tank (which is disputable, but perhaps not worth disputing here), you have to bear in mind what a think tank does. The most successful think tanks aren't the ones that try to shape policy in the present, on a scale of weeks and months, but rather the ones that try shape political movements over a matter of years. If you want an example from the other end of the political spectrum, look at the UK's Labour Party in the late 80s and early 90s, where a few think tanks, with Tony Blair as their figurehead (although decidedly not the leading intellectual light), formulated what was to become New Labour. This took place at time when most of the party was still wedded to programmes of nationalisation, punitive taxes for high earners and a ban on private schools. Although much of what the think tanks were saying was heresy to much of the party at the time, it formed the basis for a successful political movement that has already dominated the UK for over a decade.
If you look at the history of National Review, a similar pattern can be seen. It played a central role in the formation of the modern conservative movement back in the 50s and 60s, when the conventional wisdom was that conservatism was dead. It identified Reagan as somebody to watch and support in the days when the idea of him as President would still have provoked gales of laughter from across the political spectrum. More recently, it predicted much of the present brand of conservatism, with a strong emphasis on moral values, that we see under Bush, back in the days when Clinton was in office. Rather than criticising the divide between what the think tanks are saying and the party is doing, it's more useful to look to the think tanks to discern the possible future directions the Republican party can take. It's interesting to note that there's a near-uniform consensus in such think-tanks now that while they are glad Bush won the last 2 elections, US conservatives would not tolerate another big-spender of the same ilk.
The exercise is made a bit more difficult by the very nature of a think tank. There is no one consistent strand to its thinking. Indeed, if you read the articles and the associated blogs regularly, you can see some persistent and often heated areas of dispute. "Intelligent" Design is one area that keeps coming back up, although fortunately the editorial view seems to have shifted largely against it. However, you'll also find disputes on social and education policy, immigration and relations with the Islamic world. We've seen both sides of the videogame debate put forward on NR, although I think the more libertarian line seems to be winning out. Does this indicate the future direction the Republicans will take post Bush? Not necessarily, but don't rule it out.
As a closing note, don't underestimate the power of these publications, which is growing all the time. A decade ago, they were read only by the more academic of the party-faithful. Today, they've got a much wider reach. National Review in particular has been extremely successful in establishing a widely-read online presence and its blogs in particular have become extremely well known. As these publications gain a wider base, their power to influence the base as well as the elites starts to grow.
Just plain wrong on the player-base and level of success. It's steady at around the 550k mark, split about 40/40/20 Japan/US/EU (it was harmed in the EU by an extremely late release and almost no marketing). Player base hasn't grown for a while, but nor has it shrunk. It was the first Western MMORPG to be bigger than Everquest and was the biggest MMORPG around until WoW came out. World of Warcraft is undeniably bigger by an order of magnitude (6 million or something last time I heard). Lineage and the Korean RPGs are always controversial... their player accounts traditionally include a lot of time-limited subscriptions given away free with magazines and other promotions, which are never actually activated. Real player numbers are nigh on impossible to come by, probably a good bit lower than what you hear quoted.
On the one hand, Bioware have made some of my favorite RPGs ever: The Baldur's Gate games, the first Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire.
On the other hand, they've always specialised in story-intensive stuff. A MMORPG is a pretty big departure.
But then again... Square-Enix came from the same place when they made FFXI, and that went on to be a major success by the standards of most MMORPGs (leaving aside WoW). Plus Bioware are arguably one step ahead already, as Neverwinter Nights was online focussed, even if it was a long way from being a MMORPG.
But then... bigger development houses than Bioware have struggled and buckled under the insane workload required to produce and maintain a MMORPG.
It'll be interesting to see what license, if any, they're using. I was kinda surprised they didn't get drawn into doing D&D Online, given they've basically made the only D&D games in recent memory that don't suck. If they had, maybe that game wouldn't be getting such dire launch publicity.
It'll also be interesting to see if they follow up on the work they did with NWN by trying to make a MMORPG that allows for at least some player storytelling capacity (perhaps via a limited player Dungeon Master facility). That would certainly be a new direction for a mainstream MMORPG.
FFXI not being successful outside of Japan is rubbish. Just one of those typical FUDs that seems to fly around on slashdot sometimes. The game has a player-base in the 500-600k range, split roughly 40/40/20 between Japan, the US and Europe. Sure, that's not on the WoW level of success, but most other MMORPGs, including Star Wars Galaxies, both Everquests, Eve Online etc would kill for that kind of player base.
OK, this is a tricky one. On the one hand, new MMORPGs are only generally going to succeed if they can draw in an audience from outside of the existing MMORPG player pace. With the amount of investment needed to get anywhere in a MMORPG, most players tend to stay loyal to a single game for a long time and getting them to switch is hard. Franchises are a great way of doing this.
On the other hand, a rigid franchise doesn't always sit well in an open ended context. Galaxies, in particular, suffered from being squashed into a particular spot in a particular, well developed time-line. Basic changes that were needed to make the gameplay work clashed with the requirements of the franchise.
Personally, I think the best balance occurs when you get a reasonably open-ended franchise, which sets the scene and brings a fan-base with it, but has no particular plot committments. Final Fantasy XI and World of Warcraft are probably the best examples and are, of course, among the most successful MMORPGs around.
£20 deposit taken, from Dixons in my case, back in August. Phone call from them at lunch time to tell me to forget it. If I'm lucky, I *might* have it by Christmas. But don't get your hopes up. I go into the store and the arsehole manager basically laughs in my face.
The only thing keeping me from saying I'll never darken the door of another Dixons again as long as I live is the knowledge that all high street chains have some stores which are worse than others. Back when I lived in Durham, the local Dixons was great - helpful staff, clean store, good product range. However, Dixons the one on Victoria Street, Westminster is an absolute joke. I've been *this* close to reporting them to trading standards before over their little "habit" of leaving the signs for expired special offers up (with no indication they've expired) and then refusing to honour them when you get to the till. I'm not sure whether it's incompetence or malice, but it's unacceptable. Had this 3 times there now, usually on blank CDs/DVDs. Guess I should have known what I was getting into when I pre-ordered from them. The ASDA on the Isle of Dogs isn't a million miles from where I live. I'd go there now, except the chances of getting there and back with my life and wallet intact after dark are near zero, especially if I actually managed to procure the eminently desirable piece of kit in question.
Here in the UK... with the official launch in about 10 hours, I'd say an emphatic yes.
I found out today that the UK's most incompetent high-street retailer, Dixons, won't be honouring my pre-order, which I made in August. After work, I trawled around central London, trying to find shops that had reserved some stock and *weren't* doing a midnight opening, from which I might be able to grab one first thing in the morning. Pretty much nowhere had any full systems. However, most places assured me they had more than enough Core systems, if I wanted one (which I don't). I'd say there was a hint of desperation in some cases.
I love my X-Box and I can't wait to get my 360, but this launch has been the biggest self-inflicted cock-up ever. Had MS concentrated entirely on the full system, they could have sold of these just as quickly and wouldn't have had surplus stock of the Core looking like it could be sat on the shelves until Christmas.
And, in case I didn't already mention, Dixons, all their staff and all their stakeholders, utterly, utterly suck.
The difficulty in creating a Star Trek MMO is that you're dealing with a much less combat-intensive universe than is normal for a franchised MMO. With Final Fantasy, Star Wars, the Matrix etc, combat has always been the most notable aspect of the universe, so having a game based heavily upon it is understandable. Of course, this also means that you end up with the Galaxies situation of having to spend weeks running around hitting wamp rats with a stick before you can do anything interesting.
The challenge for Star Trek Online, or whatever they call it, is to break out of the traditional MMORPG mode by balancing combat more evenly against other game elements and offering new modes of progression. My own suggestion would go something like this:
Players start out by picking an affiliation to one of the game's factions. Probably Federation, Romulan, Klingon and a couple of other races if the devs have time. I'm not really sure Borg would work. Players start out with a 1 man shuttlecraft, the bare minimum of skill to find it and a couple of whatever resource unit the game decides to use as currency (which is a major issue in itself). From here, players can choose to develop their character (who would start as a blank template - no class selection) through their actions. Participating in exploration, combat, trading etc would all increase the player's stats in that field. So far, so Galaxies. You've got people running around on planets exploring, encountering monsters, trading with eachother and so on.
However, where the Star Trek franchise really has the potential to turn into a great MMO is in the social and interstellar sections of the game. What I'd really like to see, and what would make me vastly more likely to buy the game, would be some kind of co-operative ship-control system. Make it so the smallest ships, shuttles and whatnot, can be flown by a single player, but also make it so that they're fairly useless except as runabouts.
However, make it so that controlling a starship requires a team of players, each with their own specialisations. So, for example, a specialist helmsman would be able to turn a starship more efficiently and execute more complicated manoeuveurs. Make it so that master engineers could coax more speed from a ship's engine and repair shields faster. For the stuff that doesn't directly involve turning or shooting a ship, use minigames whose difficulty scales depending on the player's skill level. Remember Paradroid for the C64? The minigame you played to take over an enemy droid? Have stuff like that for engineering, sensors and whatnot, with the difficulty scaling depending on both the player and the size/type of the ship. Imagine fighting a battle between two capital ships where not only do you have 1 player turning and one shooting, but you've got other players in the background doing their own thing to keep the ship functioning effectively.
Now extend it so that you can do more than just fight each other ships. Add appropriate minigames etc to incentivise research, exploration, negotiation etc and, most importantly, MAKE IT FUN.
Now add in an optional military command system (I'd have players start as Civilians with the option of joining their faction's military) and you've got a game I might consider playing.
I've got a 360 on pre-order, which I'll be picking up the day it comes out. I've been a vocal defender of the X-Box and the 360 for some time. Even I have to admit that this list is not good enough. The impact of this on my own games is:
Not working (*s indicate games whose inclusion here frankly defies belief, as they've been major titles)
Area 51, *Burnout 3*, *Burnout Revenge*, *Chronicles of Riddick*, Colin McRae 04, *Full Spectrum Warrior*, Mechassault, *Mechassault 2*, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Secret Weapons over Normandy, *SW: Republic Commando*, Wallace & Grommit.
The titles I've starred there are some of the biggest games on the X-Box. A good number of them are relatively recent releases. As far as I'm concerned, there's no excuse whatsoever for them not being included. All I can say is that this will need to change by the launch date.
Nope. No servers have been merged. Ever. Nor has it ever been rumoured that any would be. This is just FUD.
My statement that player numbers have increased is based purely on my experiences with how many players are on at the same time as I am. Hardly a truly objective assessment, I admit, but better than your baseless assertions and FUD.
Wow... somebody's bitter that he couldn't beat the Promyvions.
I'll agree with the grand-parent. There are more players online than ever and I think the Euros are getting more common now, particularly at the higher levels. It'd be nice if Square-Enix would extend the auto-translate to cover French and German, but I guess we'll cope.
I'll also echo the grandparents' points about Chains of Promathia. Its value wasn't apparent right away, but in the long term, it's emerged as one of the best aspects of the game, and also one of the closest to the traditional Final Fantasy experience. Reviews written in the first few weeks after its release would have no way to reflect this.
Could be any number of reasons here. I suspect the most likely issue are concerns about the expense of getting it to work on a decent spread of PC hardware. With console development, you know the exact hardware yur customers are going to use. For PC games, you've got to make sure your game will run on umpteen billion different combinations of hardware. Even after extensive testing, most developers don't actually maange this, which usually results in bad publicity and noisy forums.
It's not surprising that, with PC sales being relatively small next to PS2 and X-Box sales, Blizzard would decide not to bother in this case.
And how many games make use of it? How many consumers are likely to own one? How does the market penetration compare to X-Box Live and the PS2's online services?
While it's technically wrong to say that the Cube has no online services, in any serious business decision, you cannot include the Cube's network adaptor as a factor. It's sold far too few and it's not going to start selling them now, so late in the cycle.
Blizzard's decision makes perfect sense and I doubt most people outside of slashdot games will even notice.
Alcohol is great, but it runs into problems when your drive brand (the generic DVD+RW shipped with umpteen thousand Dell PCs) can't even see the disk to begin with, which was my problem with Quake 4.
Although, as I point out in an earlier post, I'd be tempted to be a bit kinder about the weapons than Zonk was, I can probably explain some of the points he's making here.
The main difference from the weapons in Doom 3, Quake 4, Half-Life 2 etc is the near-complete lack of reloading. Weapons have a set rate of fire. Some, like the double-barreled shotguns, have what looks like a reload animation, but other than the pistol, none of them actually interrupt their normal rate of fire for a reload. The game doesn't even have a reload key. This can feel a bit basic after playing other recent fpses, but it fits SS2 well.
The shotgun's a funny issue. It's not actually a bad weapon, if you think of it as a normal fps shotgun. It's got about the same rate of fire, damage and spread as you'd expect. However, the model for the shotgun shows a huge great multi-barrel affair, that looks like a gatling gun. When you pick it up, you expect that holding down the trigger would unleash a fully-automatic hail of death. It doesn't. Once you get used to this, the gun's fine. However, the model does create a bit of a false expectation. The double-barreled shotgun also seems to have less spread than I remember from the original game.
God knows what he meant about the controls. They feel fine to me.
The aiming on the rocket launcher does feel a bit broken, though, which may be what Zonk was referring to elsewhere. There seems to be a slight lag between pressing fire and the weapon actually triggering. The shots don't always seem to go exactly where they were pointed, either. Could be my imagination, could be some random left-over code from the console versions, or could be neither of the above.
In fairness, the game has some pretty damned unique weapons. The flying parrot bombs aren't something I've seen elsewhere.
Quake 4's a rehash, yes, but I don't think it's entirely without value.
First of all, it manages to do a lot of stuff on the Doom 3 engine that I'd not seen there before. Now, I understand that Raven had to virtually re-write a lot of the engine, but the results are still damned impressive. Outdoors looks a bit sparse compared to Farcry, but it actually manages to *do* outdoor sequences without grinding to a halt, which is more than could be said for Doom 3. In fact, the game in general looks every bit as good as Doom 3 and yet, for some reason, runs significantly better on my far-from-stellar system (P4 3.4ghz, 1 gig RAM, Radeon x800).
The gameplay isn't half bad either. Sure, it's essentially the same run-and-gun gameplay as Quake 2, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing - the play-style was fun then and it's still fun now. There's a good range of weapons and they're all satisfying to use. Plenty of enemy types and the game manages to keep throwing new ones at you until right near the end. Even a few creepy sections, although the game never really replicates the constant tension of Doom 3. It's not a genre-defining game, but it's still about as good a game as the PC can hope for these days.
The multiplayer seems very Quake 3, which disappointed me a bit. I always loathed Quake 3 and thought it was a major blip in id's record. However, I'm sure the multiplayer scene will be graced with the usual assortment of mods that should extend the game significantly over time.
HOWEVER, I do have one very major gripe with the game that lowers the score I would have given it from the 8 or so it should have deserved to about a 4 or so. Namely, the retarded copy-protection system prevented my DVD+RW drive (the only drive in my gaming desktop) from reading the disks at all. The "helpful" customer service guy explained that this was a "known" issue with my brand of drive... no fix in sight. Eventually, I worked out I could install the game over the network by sharing my laptop's DVD drive, and then downloading and installing a crack. Hardly ideal.
I hate games piracy. Really, I do. I know a few people who work in the industry (although I wouldn't work there myself if you put a gun to my head) and outside of a few of the biggest studios, profit margins on PC games are pretty minimal in most cases. Games piracy digs into this already slim margin and, for once, the hype about it costing jobs seems pretty justifiable (unlike in the music industry, for example). Until the advent of these retarded copy protection systems, I'd never used a warez site or a peer to peer network to find a game or a crack for one. Sadly, even though I still purchase all my games legally, I'm now intimately acquainted with both. And I'd be lying if I said that the temptation to go further wasn't there now.
Serious Sam 2 had the misfortune to come out in the middle of a fairly bumper crop of big PC fpses. In particular, Quake 4 and F.E.A.R. really stand out.
I picked up both Serious Sam 2 and Fear (I can't be arsed typing all the capitals and.s again) last weekend and I can tell you now that switching between sessions of the two games is a truly mind-bending experience. One moment you've got incredible amounts of cheese (and I think Zonk kind of misses the deliberate badness of SS2's cutscenes), then the next you've got brooding darkness and pants-wetting terror.
Bouncing through a Fear map in a happy, bouncy Serious Sam 2 mood is to set yourself up for a serious scare - in my case, making a high volume "urk" noise and nearly falling off my chair - the first time you run merrily around a corner. Playing Serious Sam 2 in a state of nervous exhaustion, crouching in corners and freaking out at the sight of each enemy, on the other hand tends to... well... take quite a while.
On a side note, I more or less agree with the review above, although it does seem a bit too harsh in places. The plot made me smile, with its complete and blatantly deliberate disregard for plausibility and sanity and the weapons seemed satisfying enough to me. Besides, the cutscenes are skippable and slamming a game for having cutscenes just seems a bit too "I'm l33ter than you because I think cutscenes in games suck and are not for REAL GAMERS". The vehicles do suck, though. Least entertaining fps vehicles ever.
Don't believe me, fanboy? Take it from the horse's mouth
To quote "It looks like the product's life is nearing its end." That's not something a company says about a product unless they consider it to be retired.
One or two games in the pipeline for a system do not mean that it is still considered to be "live". Final Fantasy IX was the lowest grossing installment of the series in recent memory, largely because its release for the PS1 coincided very nearly with the launch of the PS2. The backwards compatibility of the PS2 did a bit to negate the effect on sales, but you're never going to get away from the fact that people will want to play "new" games on their new console. The new Zelda is probably doomed to share the same fate.
Before I start, I should say now that I think the article is basically crap. Playable machines in games stores aren't that relevant - the controllers will be broken in a week by the fat, smelly 12 year old in the sleeveless vest who stands there hitting them randomly anyway.
However, I think PC gaming has certainly been on a bit of a rollercoaster compared with console gaming over the last couple of years. In particular, I think the PC has struggled to establish itself against the curret generation of consoles in the same way that it has past generations. For me, the absolute nadir of PC gaming came in 2003, when Call of Duty was voted game of the year by pretty much every outlet that covered PC gaming. If your game of the year is a technologically obsolete and gameplay-deprived clone of a game released the previous year (Medal of Honour), you know your industry has problems. This was at a time when major titles were appearing for the consoles on a more or less weekly basis.
The PC has rallied slightly, since then. 2004 saw the PC creeping ahead of the consoles in terms of visuals for the first time, with Doom 3, Farcry and Half-Life 2 being the most impressive examples. It also finally saw some respectable big-name games for the PC. This has continued somewhat in 2005, particularly with Quake 4 and F.E.A.R, both of which look and play better than equivalent console fpses.
However, don't take this as an indication that the PC can continue to hold its own against the consoles in the longer term. The current gen consoles have virtually run their cycle now. Nintendo have all but admitted that the Gamecube is retired and the PS2 might as well be. The X-Box is still hanging on, but even there, we're about to be hit by the next generation.
However, when you compare the level of technical lead the PC has built up during this cycle and the speed with which it established it, it's pretty pathetic. Think about it. When consoles were playing Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog, the PC had X-Wing and Strike Commander. When the PS1 and N64 were at their height, PC gamers had Half-Life. By contrast, the PC has only just narrowly edged ahead at the end of this cycle. With the next gen about to hit, it's going to get knocked to the back of the field entirely.
Of course, the PC will never die out as a gaming platform completely. It remains the only sensible platform for widescale distribution of home-brew games. Nobody's yet managed to make an RTS interface that works on a console (although I'd argue that console fpses can be pretty sweet now). PC releases are much easier for companies who can't afford to go through the mandatory Q&A cycles for the consoles. However, if the PC doesn't get a clear technological lead over the next-gen consoles early in the cycle, it's finished as a mainstream platform.
How can this happen? I suspect there are two major steps that need to be taken. First of all, ATI and Nvidia need to get a proper strategy. They need to stop putting out a new $600 graphics card every 3 months and make solid, decently specced and non-confusing card ranges that the average consumer can use and not suffer for using. Next, they need to start insisting on their own Q&A programmes for PC games. Console games with serious bugs merit their own slashdot story. With PC games, it's expected. Until somebody forces devs to confront this situation, PC gaming is going to continue to bleed market-share in the long term.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't honestly think Sony's presentation was that bad. In some respects it was messy - it wasn't as slick as we've come to expect from the big three, with a slight air of farce in places. The "stripped down" version of the console is undoubted crap and I seriously hope they don't make this represent too large a proportion of the initial batch, or there are going to be a lot of seriously disappointed people come Christmas.
However, in other respects, I thought this was fairly promising for Sony. They clearly know the power of their own brand and how to exploit it, which could, I think, be important given the high price-point. I know it's easy to say that people won't pay over the odds for a console on the strength of the brand, but just look at what the average consumer is willing to pay over the odds on a pair of trainers to get a fancy logo on them. As for the controller features...
Well, if I was Nintendo, I would be alternating between two activities right now. Gibbering in panic and frantic consultation with lawyers. This episode starkly highlights one of the biggest flaws with Nintendo's concept for the Wii (even bigger than the name), namely that if you base your console heavily on the controller, you're screwed if reasonable equivalents of said controller turns out to be available for your competitors' machines. The competition doesn't have to be as good as the Wii's controller, it just has to be enough to remove the scent of exclusivity. The nightmare scenario for Nintendo has got to be launching against a PS3 which has a controller with most or all of the functionality of their own, along with the much better brand recognition and infinitely vaster range of games that Sony bring with them. You can bet your bottom dollar that this is the scenario that Sony are looking to achieve. If Nintendo have been playing their cards right, they will be able to slap Sony with some nice big patents at this point; it certainly wouldn't be out of character for them. However, there's something about the confidence and lack of subtlety of Sony's announcement that makes me suspect that they haven't.
As for Microsoft... I don't think that this demonstration was really a big gain or loss for them. They've known what the situation would be ever since they decided on an early 360 launch, trading early market-penetration off against a technological disadvantage. They've managed to get decent sales in most of the world, although not in Japan (although with the Japanese economy's continuing woes, you could probably make a case for the declining importance of the Japanese consumer), and Sony's technological advantage does not, on the face of what we've seen so far, look as though it's going to be vast. I suspect we won't know for another 18 months whether Microsoft's gamble worked.
Maybe it doesn't make me think of video-games. But it does make me think of urine. That's not good, and no amount of "cute" or "friendly" is ever going to overcome that in an English-language market. Worse still, a name like this is going to go a long way towards diminishing any playground cred that the machine has, which is going to be particularly devastating in the 8-14 market. Spend any amount of time in a school and you'll soon be reminded of the depth of the pleasure that kids can take in comparing each other to the products of assorted bodily functions.
Believe me, the immature jokes on slashdot are going to be Oscar-fucking-Wilde compared to what Nintendo's traditional core audience is going to do to this name,
Multi-lingual? As in "equally nonsensical and daft-sounding in multiple languages"? In that case, let me try a few suggestions of my own:
The Nintendo Plurk
The Nintendo Wakkiwakkinong
The Nintendo Xlurtlflurx
Not only are all of those perfectly multi-lingual by that definition, but they all have the decided benefit of not sounding like a well known euphemism for piss.
It's not an April 1st. Right now, the only explanation I can think of which casts Nintendo as anything other than a bunch of utter muppets is that this is the first half of some multi-staga announcement, in which it's revealed, once the initial furore has died down, that "Wii" is either an acronym for something less stupid, or the start of a longer name. For this reason, I'm holding back right now, for fear of being made to look stupid later.
However, I've commented on Nintendo's decade-old talent for self-destruction before, so it's entirely plausible that this is, in fact, nothing more than a really good example of them shooting themselves square in the foot again.
Yes, but...
Will it have Frungy?
Will I be able to load in the stats from the latest Frungy season? All the latest players, their colouring patterns, tentacle length and favorite flavour of delicious lichen? Will I be able to customise team-lineup, including the infamous 1-9-18-2 formation? What about personalised limpets? Man, I was so steamed when I found out that we... ah... I mean those funny, yet unutterably powerful, fearsome yet compassionate and all-around great guys the Zoq-Fot-Pik had been cut from the atrocity that was Starcon 3.
All I can say is, you better get it right this time!
I think this is maybe missing the point of publications such as National Review (and its equivalents from across the political spectrum) a bit. Before I go any further, I should probably put my own cards on the table. I'm a conservative and a subscriber to National Review's digital edition, so I can't claim to be free from bias.
Assuming we accept that the publication's role is, effectively, a Republican think-tank (which is disputable, but perhaps not worth disputing here), you have to bear in mind what a think tank does. The most successful think tanks aren't the ones that try to shape policy in the present, on a scale of weeks and months, but rather the ones that try shape political movements over a matter of years. If you want an example from the other end of the political spectrum, look at the UK's Labour Party in the late 80s and early 90s, where a few think tanks, with Tony Blair as their figurehead (although decidedly not the leading intellectual light), formulated what was to become New Labour. This took place at time when most of the party was still wedded to programmes of nationalisation, punitive taxes for high earners and a ban on private schools. Although much of what the think tanks were saying was heresy to much of the party at the time, it formed the basis for a successful political movement that has already dominated the UK for over a decade.
If you look at the history of National Review, a similar pattern can be seen. It played a central role in the formation of the modern conservative movement back in the 50s and 60s, when the conventional wisdom was that conservatism was dead. It identified Reagan as somebody to watch and support in the days when the idea of him as President would still have provoked gales of laughter from across the political spectrum. More recently, it predicted much of the present brand of conservatism, with a strong emphasis on moral values, that we see under Bush, back in the days when Clinton was in office. Rather than criticising the divide between what the think tanks are saying and the party is doing, it's more useful to look to the think tanks to discern the possible future directions the Republican party can take. It's interesting to note that there's a near-uniform consensus in such think-tanks now that while they are glad Bush won the last 2 elections, US conservatives would not tolerate another big-spender of the same ilk.
The exercise is made a bit more difficult by the very nature of a think tank. There is no one consistent strand to its thinking. Indeed, if you read the articles and the associated blogs regularly, you can see some persistent and often heated areas of dispute. "Intelligent" Design is one area that keeps coming back up, although fortunately the editorial view seems to have shifted largely against it. However, you'll also find disputes on social and education policy, immigration and relations with the Islamic world. We've seen both sides of the videogame debate put forward on NR, although I think the more libertarian line seems to be winning out. Does this indicate the future direction the Republicans will take post Bush? Not necessarily, but don't rule it out.
As a closing note, don't underestimate the power of these publications, which is growing all the time. A decade ago, they were read only by the more academic of the party-faithful. Today, they've got a much wider reach. National Review in particular has been extremely successful in establishing a widely-read online presence and its blogs in particular have become extremely well known. As these publications gain a wider base, their power to influence the base as well as the elites starts to grow.
Just plain wrong on the player-base and level of success. It's steady at around the 550k mark, split about 40/40/20 Japan/US/EU (it was harmed in the EU by an extremely late release and almost no marketing). Player base hasn't grown for a while, but nor has it shrunk. It was the first Western MMORPG to be bigger than Everquest and was the biggest MMORPG around until WoW came out. World of Warcraft is undeniably bigger by an order of magnitude (6 million or something last time I heard). Lineage and the Korean RPGs are always controversial... their player accounts traditionally include a lot of time-limited subscriptions given away free with magazines and other promotions, which are never actually activated. Real player numbers are nigh on impossible to come by, probably a good bit lower than what you hear quoted.
On the one hand, Bioware have made some of my favorite RPGs ever: The Baldur's Gate games, the first Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire.
On the other hand, they've always specialised in story-intensive stuff. A MMORPG is a pretty big departure.
But then again... Square-Enix came from the same place when they made FFXI, and that went on to be a major success by the standards of most MMORPGs (leaving aside WoW). Plus Bioware are arguably one step ahead already, as Neverwinter Nights was online focussed, even if it was a long way from being a MMORPG.
But then... bigger development houses than Bioware have struggled and buckled under the insane workload required to produce and maintain a MMORPG.
It'll be interesting to see what license, if any, they're using. I was kinda surprised they didn't get drawn into doing D&D Online, given they've basically made the only D&D games in recent memory that don't suck. If they had, maybe that game wouldn't be getting such dire launch publicity.
It'll also be interesting to see if they follow up on the work they did with NWN by trying to make a MMORPG that allows for at least some player storytelling capacity (perhaps via a limited player Dungeon Master facility). That would certainly be a new direction for a mainstream MMORPG.
FFXI not being successful outside of Japan is rubbish. Just one of those typical FUDs that seems to fly around on slashdot sometimes. The game has a player-base in the 500-600k range, split roughly 40/40/20 between Japan, the US and Europe. Sure, that's not on the WoW level of success, but most other MMORPGs, including Star Wars Galaxies, both Everquests, Eve Online etc would kill for that kind of player base.
OK, this is a tricky one. On the one hand, new MMORPGs are only generally going to succeed if they can draw in an audience from outside of the existing MMORPG player pace. With the amount of investment needed to get anywhere in a MMORPG, most players tend to stay loyal to a single game for a long time and getting them to switch is hard. Franchises are a great way of doing this.
On the other hand, a rigid franchise doesn't always sit well in an open ended context. Galaxies, in particular, suffered from being squashed into a particular spot in a particular, well developed time-line. Basic changes that were needed to make the gameplay work clashed with the requirements of the franchise.
Personally, I think the best balance occurs when you get a reasonably open-ended franchise, which sets the scene and brings a fan-base with it, but has no particular plot committments. Final Fantasy XI and World of Warcraft are probably the best examples and are, of course, among the most successful MMORPGs around.
Amen to that.
Exact same problem here.
£20 deposit taken, from Dixons in my case, back in August. Phone call from them at lunch time to tell me to forget it. If I'm lucky, I *might* have it by Christmas. But don't get your hopes up. I go into the store and the arsehole manager basically laughs in my face.
The only thing keeping me from saying I'll never darken the door of another Dixons again as long as I live is the knowledge that all high street chains have some stores which are worse than others. Back when I lived in Durham, the local Dixons was great - helpful staff, clean store, good product range. However, Dixons the one on Victoria Street, Westminster is an absolute joke. I've been *this* close to reporting them to trading standards before over their little "habit" of leaving the signs for expired special offers up (with no indication they've expired) and then refusing to honour them when you get to the till. I'm not sure whether it's incompetence or malice, but it's unacceptable. Had this 3 times there now, usually on blank CDs/DVDs. Guess I should have known what I was getting into when I pre-ordered from them. The ASDA on the Isle of Dogs isn't a million miles from where I live. I'd go there now, except the chances of getting there and back with my life and wallet intact after dark are near zero, especially if I actually managed to procure the eminently desirable piece of kit in question.
Here in the UK... with the official launch in about 10 hours, I'd say an emphatic yes.
I found out today that the UK's most incompetent high-street retailer, Dixons, won't be honouring my pre-order, which I made in August. After work, I trawled around central London, trying to find shops that had reserved some stock and *weren't* doing a midnight opening, from which I might be able to grab one first thing in the morning. Pretty much nowhere had any full systems. However, most places assured me they had more than enough Core systems, if I wanted one (which I don't). I'd say there was a hint of desperation in some cases.
I love my X-Box and I can't wait to get my 360, but this launch has been the biggest self-inflicted cock-up ever. Had MS concentrated entirely on the full system, they could have sold of these just as quickly and wouldn't have had surplus stock of the Core looking like it could be sat on the shelves until Christmas.
And, in case I didn't already mention, Dixons, all their staff and all their stakeholders, utterly, utterly suck.
The difficulty in creating a Star Trek MMO is that you're dealing with a much less combat-intensive universe than is normal for a franchised MMO. With Final Fantasy, Star Wars, the Matrix etc, combat has always been the most notable aspect of the universe, so having a game based heavily upon it is understandable. Of course, this also means that you end up with the Galaxies situation of having to spend weeks running around hitting wamp rats with a stick before you can do anything interesting.
The challenge for Star Trek Online, or whatever they call it, is to break out of the traditional MMORPG mode by balancing combat more evenly against other game elements and offering new modes of progression. My own suggestion would go something like this:
Players start out by picking an affiliation to one of the game's factions. Probably Federation, Romulan, Klingon and a couple of other races if the devs have time. I'm not really sure Borg would work. Players start out with a 1 man shuttlecraft, the bare minimum of skill to find it and a couple of whatever resource unit the game decides to use as currency (which is a major issue in itself). From here, players can choose to develop their character (who would start as a blank template - no class selection) through their actions. Participating in exploration, combat, trading etc would all increase the player's stats in that field. So far, so Galaxies. You've got people running around on planets exploring, encountering monsters, trading with eachother and so on.
However, where the Star Trek franchise really has the potential to turn into a great MMO is in the social and interstellar sections of the game. What I'd really like to see, and what would make me vastly more likely to buy the game, would be some kind of co-operative ship-control system. Make it so the smallest ships, shuttles and whatnot, can be flown by a single player, but also make it so that they're fairly useless except as runabouts.
However, make it so that controlling a starship requires a team of players, each with their own specialisations. So, for example, a specialist helmsman would be able to turn a starship more efficiently and execute more complicated manoeuveurs. Make it so that master engineers could coax more speed from a ship's engine and repair shields faster. For the stuff that doesn't directly involve turning or shooting a ship, use minigames whose difficulty scales depending on the player's skill level. Remember Paradroid for the C64? The minigame you played to take over an enemy droid? Have stuff like that for engineering, sensors and whatnot, with the difficulty scaling depending on both the player and the size/type of the ship. Imagine fighting a battle between two capital ships where not only do you have 1 player turning and one shooting, but you've got other players in the background doing their own thing to keep the ship functioning effectively.
Now extend it so that you can do more than just fight each other ships. Add appropriate minigames etc to incentivise research, exploration, negotiation etc and, most importantly, MAKE IT FUN.
Now add in an optional military command system (I'd have players start as Civilians with the option of joining their faction's military) and you've got a game I might consider playing.
The moon on a stick would be nice, as well.
I've got a 360 on pre-order, which I'll be picking up the day it comes out. I've been a vocal defender of the X-Box and the 360 for some time. Even I have to admit that this list is not good enough. The impact of this on my own games is:
Working
BG: Dark Alliance 2, Battle Engine Aquilla, Crimson Skies, Forza, GTA3, GTA:VC, Halo, Halo 2, Jade Empire, KOTOR, KOTOR 2, Spyhunter 2.
Not working (*s indicate games whose inclusion here frankly defies belief, as they've been major titles)
Area 51, *Burnout 3*, *Burnout Revenge*, *Chronicles of Riddick*, Colin McRae 04, *Full Spectrum Warrior*, Mechassault, *Mechassault 2*, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Secret Weapons over Normandy, *SW: Republic Commando*, Wallace & Grommit.
The titles I've starred there are some of the biggest games on the X-Box. A good number of them are relatively recent releases. As far as I'm concerned, there's no excuse whatsoever for them not being included. All I can say is that this will need to change by the launch date.
Nope. No servers have been merged. Ever. Nor has it ever been rumoured that any would be. This is just FUD.
My statement that player numbers have increased is based purely on my experiences with how many players are on at the same time as I am. Hardly a truly objective assessment, I admit, but better than your baseless assertions and FUD.
Wow... somebody's bitter that he couldn't beat the Promyvions.
I'll agree with the grand-parent. There are more players online than ever and I think the Euros are getting more common now, particularly at the higher levels. It'd be nice if Square-Enix would extend the auto-translate to cover French and German, but I guess we'll cope.
I'll also echo the grandparents' points about Chains of Promathia. Its value wasn't apparent right away, but in the long term, it's emerged as one of the best aspects of the game, and also one of the closest to the traditional Final Fantasy experience. Reviews written in the first few weeks after its release would have no way to reflect this.
Now please, go crawl back into your corner.
Could be any number of reasons here. I suspect the most likely issue are concerns about the expense of getting it to work on a decent spread of PC hardware. With console development, you know the exact hardware yur customers are going to use. For PC games, you've got to make sure your game will run on umpteen billion different combinations of hardware. Even after extensive testing, most developers don't actually maange this, which usually results in bad publicity and noisy forums.
It's not surprising that, with PC sales being relatively small next to PS2 and X-Box sales, Blizzard would decide not to bother in this case.
And how many games make use of it? How many consumers are likely to own one? How does the market penetration compare to X-Box Live and the PS2's online services?
While it's technically wrong to say that the Cube has no online services, in any serious business decision, you cannot include the Cube's network adaptor as a factor. It's sold far too few and it's not going to start selling them now, so late in the cycle.
Blizzard's decision makes perfect sense and I doubt most people outside of slashdot games will even notice.
Alcohol is great, but it runs into problems when your drive brand (the generic DVD+RW shipped with umpteen thousand Dell PCs) can't even see the disk to begin with, which was my problem with Quake 4.
Although, as I point out in an earlier post, I'd be tempted to be a bit kinder about the weapons than Zonk was, I can probably explain some of the points he's making here.
The main difference from the weapons in Doom 3, Quake 4, Half-Life 2 etc is the near-complete lack of reloading. Weapons have a set rate of fire. Some, like the double-barreled shotguns, have what looks like a reload animation, but other than the pistol, none of them actually interrupt their normal rate of fire for a reload. The game doesn't even have a reload key. This can feel a bit basic after playing other recent fpses, but it fits SS2 well.
The shotgun's a funny issue. It's not actually a bad weapon, if you think of it as a normal fps shotgun. It's got about the same rate of fire, damage and spread as you'd expect. However, the model for the shotgun shows a huge great multi-barrel affair, that looks like a gatling gun. When you pick it up, you expect that holding down the trigger would unleash a fully-automatic hail of death. It doesn't. Once you get used to this, the gun's fine. However, the model does create a bit of a false expectation. The double-barreled shotgun also seems to have less spread than I remember from the original game.
God knows what he meant about the controls. They feel fine to me.
The aiming on the rocket launcher does feel a bit broken, though, which may be what Zonk was referring to elsewhere. There seems to be a slight lag between pressing fire and the weapon actually triggering. The shots don't always seem to go exactly where they were pointed, either. Could be my imagination, could be some random left-over code from the console versions, or could be neither of the above.
In fairness, the game has some pretty damned unique weapons. The flying parrot bombs aren't something I've seen elsewhere.
Quake 4's a rehash, yes, but I don't think it's entirely without value.
First of all, it manages to do a lot of stuff on the Doom 3 engine that I'd not seen there before. Now, I understand that Raven had to virtually re-write a lot of the engine, but the results are still damned impressive. Outdoors looks a bit sparse compared to Farcry, but it actually manages to *do* outdoor sequences without grinding to a halt, which is more than could be said for Doom 3. In fact, the game in general looks every bit as good as Doom 3 and yet, for some reason, runs significantly better on my far-from-stellar system (P4 3.4ghz, 1 gig RAM, Radeon x800).
The gameplay isn't half bad either. Sure, it's essentially the same run-and-gun gameplay as Quake 2, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing - the play-style was fun then and it's still fun now. There's a good range of weapons and they're all satisfying to use. Plenty of enemy types and the game manages to keep throwing new ones at you until right near the end. Even a few creepy sections, although the game never really replicates the constant tension of Doom 3. It's not a genre-defining game, but it's still about as good a game as the PC can hope for these days.
The multiplayer seems very Quake 3, which disappointed me a bit. I always loathed Quake 3 and thought it was a major blip in id's record. However, I'm sure the multiplayer scene will be graced with the usual assortment of mods that should extend the game significantly over time.
HOWEVER, I do have one very major gripe with the game that lowers the score I would have given it from the 8 or so it should have deserved to about a 4 or so. Namely, the retarded copy-protection system prevented my DVD+RW drive (the only drive in my gaming desktop) from reading the disks at all. The "helpful" customer service guy explained that this was a "known" issue with my brand of drive... no fix in sight. Eventually, I worked out I could install the game over the network by sharing my laptop's DVD drive, and then downloading and installing a crack. Hardly ideal.
I hate games piracy. Really, I do. I know a few people who work in the industry (although I wouldn't work there myself if you put a gun to my head) and outside of a few of the biggest studios, profit margins on PC games are pretty minimal in most cases. Games piracy digs into this already slim margin and, for once, the hype about it costing jobs seems pretty justifiable (unlike in the music industry, for example). Until the advent of these retarded copy protection systems, I'd never used a warez site or a peer to peer network to find a game or a crack for one. Sadly, even though I still purchase all my games legally, I'm now intimately acquainted with both. And I'd be lying if I said that the temptation to go further wasn't there now.
Serious Sam 2 had the misfortune to come out in the middle of a fairly bumper crop of big PC fpses. In particular, Quake 4 and F.E.A.R. really stand out.
.s again) last weekend and I can tell you now that switching between sessions of the two games is a truly mind-bending experience. One moment you've got incredible amounts of cheese (and I think Zonk kind of misses the deliberate badness of SS2's cutscenes), then the next you've got brooding darkness and pants-wetting terror.
I picked up both Serious Sam 2 and Fear (I can't be arsed typing all the capitals and
Bouncing through a Fear map in a happy, bouncy Serious Sam 2 mood is to set yourself up for a serious scare - in my case, making a high volume "urk" noise and nearly falling off my chair - the first time you run merrily around a corner. Playing Serious Sam 2 in a state of nervous exhaustion, crouching in corners and freaking out at the sight of each enemy, on the other hand tends to... well... take quite a while.
On a side note, I more or less agree with the review above, although it does seem a bit too harsh in places. The plot made me smile, with its complete and blatantly deliberate disregard for plausibility and sanity and the weapons seemed satisfying enough to me. Besides, the cutscenes are skippable and slamming a game for having cutscenes just seems a bit too "I'm l33ter than you because I think cutscenes in games suck and are not for REAL GAMERS". The vehicles do suck, though. Least entertaining fps vehicles ever.
Don't believe me, fanboy? Take it from the horse's mouth
To quote "It looks like the product's life is nearing its end." That's not something a company says about a product unless they consider it to be retired.
One or two games in the pipeline for a system do not mean that it is still considered to be "live". Final Fantasy IX was the lowest grossing installment of the series in recent memory, largely because its release for the PS1 coincided very nearly with the launch of the PS2. The backwards compatibility of the PS2 did a bit to negate the effect on sales, but you're never going to get away from the fact that people will want to play "new" games on their new console. The new Zelda is probably doomed to share the same fate.
Before I start, I should say now that I think the article is basically crap. Playable machines in games stores aren't that relevant - the controllers will be broken in a week by the fat, smelly 12 year old in the sleeveless vest who stands there hitting them randomly anyway.
However, I think PC gaming has certainly been on a bit of a rollercoaster compared with console gaming over the last couple of years. In particular, I think the PC has struggled to establish itself against the curret generation of consoles in the same way that it has past generations. For me, the absolute nadir of PC gaming came in 2003, when Call of Duty was voted game of the year by pretty much every outlet that covered PC gaming. If your game of the year is a technologically obsolete and gameplay-deprived clone of a game released the previous year (Medal of Honour), you know your industry has problems. This was at a time when major titles were appearing for the consoles on a more or less weekly basis.
The PC has rallied slightly, since then. 2004 saw the PC creeping ahead of the consoles in terms of visuals for the first time, with Doom 3, Farcry and Half-Life 2 being the most impressive examples. It also finally saw some respectable big-name games for the PC. This has continued somewhat in 2005, particularly with Quake 4 and F.E.A.R, both of which look and play better than equivalent console fpses.
However, don't take this as an indication that the PC can continue to hold its own against the consoles in the longer term. The current gen consoles have virtually run their cycle now. Nintendo have all but admitted that the Gamecube is retired and the PS2 might as well be. The X-Box is still hanging on, but even there, we're about to be hit by the next generation.
However, when you compare the level of technical lead the PC has built up during this cycle and the speed with which it established it, it's pretty pathetic. Think about it. When consoles were playing Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog, the PC had X-Wing and Strike Commander. When the PS1 and N64 were at their height, PC gamers had Half-Life. By contrast, the PC has only just narrowly edged ahead at the end of this cycle. With the next gen about to hit, it's going to get knocked to the back of the field entirely.
Of course, the PC will never die out as a gaming platform completely. It remains the only sensible platform for widescale distribution of home-brew games. Nobody's yet managed to make an RTS interface that works on a console (although I'd argue that console fpses can be pretty sweet now). PC releases are much easier for companies who can't afford to go through the mandatory Q&A cycles for the consoles. However, if the PC doesn't get a clear technological lead over the next-gen consoles early in the cycle, it's finished as a mainstream platform.
How can this happen? I suspect there are two major steps that need to be taken. First of all, ATI and Nvidia need to get a proper strategy. They need to stop putting out a new $600 graphics card every 3 months and make solid, decently specced and non-confusing card ranges that the average consumer can use and not suffer for using. Next, they need to start insisting on their own Q&A programmes for PC games. Console games with serious bugs merit their own slashdot story. With PC games, it's expected. Until somebody forces devs to confront this situation, PC gaming is going to continue to bleed market-share in the long term.
In which case the whole thesis about gamers being tired of consoles is also invalid and the original poster's point is still wrong.