Nintendo WiiU Specs keep popping up. I could link to about ten different projections over the last few weeks. The problem with these is, like when every console is getting closer - that they have no anchor in reality. When someone says "2x Xbox 360" to you, what images does that conjure in your mind?
The problem is with these unquantifiable reports that are ultimately meaningless. Kind of like this post. I'd love to read some official tech specs - proper ones - but Nintendo is extremely unlikely to trumpet them (and that is a stance I applaud). Ultimately, hardware should be important to Nintendo. They can't launch first and get left behind (like the Dreamcast, for example). I don't think an early lead is a long-term plan. In fact, I think Microsoft were extremely lucky that in the current gen Nintendo decided to ignore stats, and Sony inadvertently crippled their own consoles (dual-CELL design downgraded to single CPU+ancient GPU). I cannot think of any console that has really benefited from a long head start without losing their market for being significantly inferior to the competition hardware-wise. Hmm...PlayStation 2...I guess I can think of one! Though the PS2 may be a poor example, as it was an early release that fared poorly hardware-wise versus Xbox and GCN, but exceeded the Dreamcast.
So please, for the love of all things good and true, ignore the rumours and wait until we see something solid with our own eyes. It will at least match the PS3/360 in terms of power, and I think it would be trivial to exceed them all these years after their release. Nintendo aren't positioning themselves as the '5-year-old hardware guys', so I don't think it's time to be calling out the as-yet unknown WiiU hardware as a failure (though we'll talk about 'game industry analysts' very shortly on an extremely similar topic).
Monday 27 February 2012
Thursday 23 February 2012
PS4 GPUs and the CELL
PlayStation 4 to use AMD GPUs
This is pretty obvious I think. AMD supply the GPU for the Xbox 360 and the Wii (and the GameCube before that). Microsoft used nVidia chips in the original Xbox, but abandoned them in favour of AMD (then ATi) for reasons I forget (I should probably research that but I'm feeling lazy tonight and I still have a bunch of work to do).
Sony used the junk nVidia chip currently in the PS3 because nVidia were willing to cut them a good deal. nVidia had been snubbed by Microsoft and they were pretty pissed about it. The Radeon core used in the Xbox 360 was also superior to the older design nVidia offered Sony. Presumably this decision was made entirely on price - this is the time that Kutaragi-san was being quietly removed from Sony and a lot of last minute decisions were being made to make the Playstation 3 into a competitive machine (and many of the sacrifices were performance ones - I would love to have seen where the PS3 would be today if it had retained the dual-CELL CPU design originally planned. Prohibitive price would have destroyed the Playstation brand however, in my opinion.
This would be a logical step for Sony. My bigger curiosity is whether Sony will continue to use a CELL-based CPU, given that most of the original design consortium have abandoned it.
This is pretty obvious I think. AMD supply the GPU for the Xbox 360 and the Wii (and the GameCube before that). Microsoft used nVidia chips in the original Xbox, but abandoned them in favour of AMD (then ATi) for reasons I forget (I should probably research that but I'm feeling lazy tonight and I still have a bunch of work to do).
Sony used the junk nVidia chip currently in the PS3 because nVidia were willing to cut them a good deal. nVidia had been snubbed by Microsoft and they were pretty pissed about it. The Radeon core used in the Xbox 360 was also superior to the older design nVidia offered Sony. Presumably this decision was made entirely on price - this is the time that Kutaragi-san was being quietly removed from Sony and a lot of last minute decisions were being made to make the Playstation 3 into a competitive machine (and many of the sacrifices were performance ones - I would love to have seen where the PS3 would be today if it had retained the dual-CELL CPU design originally planned. Prohibitive price would have destroyed the Playstation brand however, in my opinion.
This would be a logical step for Sony. My bigger curiosity is whether Sony will continue to use a CELL-based CPU, given that most of the original design consortium have abandoned it.
Saturday 18 February 2012
Misleading
This headline from Joystiq makes it seem like Apple's new app-sandboxing in Mac OS X Mountain Lion specifically targets games, and the article doesn't bother much to make it any clearer. By default, OS X 10.8 will only run apps from the Mac App Store and third party apps which carry a digital signature. This means all applications, not just games. It can be turned off so that any software will run. The idea is to ensure that applications are doing the right thing - it will decrease the likelihood of running trojans or malware by accident for those less tech-savvy users.
The most obvious thing here is that every major game developer making games for the Mac will sign up immediately for the digital signatures or already distribute through the Mac App Store, so games are actually the least likely application to be affected. Older applications that have been forgotten or abandoned may not work with the higher security level of Gatekeeper (but you can simply turn it off to get functionality back) and applications that do nasty things in places they really shouldn't will also be affected.
I guess (all) the facts don't make for very exciting news though, do they?
The most obvious thing here is that every major game developer making games for the Mac will sign up immediately for the digital signatures or already distribute through the Mac App Store, so games are actually the least likely application to be affected. Older applications that have been forgotten or abandoned may not work with the higher security level of Gatekeeper (but you can simply turn it off to get functionality back) and applications that do nasty things in places they really shouldn't will also be affected.
I guess (all) the facts don't make for very exciting news though, do they?
No PS4 at E3, PS Vita does the dinosaur, WiiU challenges and the pre-owned game market.
A distraction is enough of an excuse not to reveal the PS4, right? It certainly wouldn't have anything to do with trying to recoup the extraordinary costs of PS3 development by flogging the system for as long as humanly possible, would it?
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Duke Nukem co-creator George Broussard was quoted as saying "The PS Vita launch feels like the last dinosaur showing up to a mammal convention." As a person who works in entertainment (TV) this rings very true to me. Entertainment markets are going through an upheaval that is going to dramatically change their business models in the coming decade or two (only so slowly because they are resisting so hard). The old business models are being disrupted by new technology.
The internet and the compressed audio file upended the music business. Record labels had been warned repeatedly, there are plenty of stories of young executives urging the business to move in and define the market, but because internet distribution would directly impact compact disc sales and their ability to "print money' (Miyamoto and Iwata style) it was resisted. Cue the rise of napster, the advent of internet piracy, and Apple being the only business to step in with a concrete plan to make online music sales painless and profitable.
Television and Film ignored the plight of the record industry, because download limits and speeds, and video compression formats pretty much guaranteed that video piracy would remain niche short-term. Today, however, we have massive amounts of people watching unrestricted HD content the day it is released all around the world, whilst the TV stations and cinemas are seeing lower and lower viewer numbers. Television used to have an easy monopoly - if you wanted to watch programmes, you had to watch TV. Now, with PVRs and time-shifting and bit torrent downloads, why would I ever watch another network commercial? These programmes are paid for by advertising and merchandise sales - but as the advertising revenue dries up due to lack of viewers, where does the market go then?
The video game market is seeing a similar shift, particularly in handhelds (home consoles, you are safe for now, but don't get complacent!) This article outlines precisely a big part of the issue - in Australia (where I'm from) I can get a 3DS or PS Vita game for $69.99 - $89.99, but similar (or sometimes the same game) can be purchased on iOS or Android for $5. Other than physical controls, what justifies the extreme disparity between these, particularly when the handheld console is actually a slight inconvenience to have on my person, whereas my phone goes with me wherever I am? Sony missing the opportunity for convergence is something I wrote about recently. More frustrating when talking about price is the mark up we pay in Australia. Despite our very strong dollar, a new Xbox 360 or PS3 game title is $119.99, whereas in the USA the same game (often identical due to increasing indifference about region locking) is $59.99. Video games are risking pricing themselves out of having a market, and the industry should be concerned.
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This article claims to have all the answers for a strong WiiU launch for Nintendo, and I think it is a mixed bag.
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Duke Nukem co-creator George Broussard was quoted as saying "The PS Vita launch feels like the last dinosaur showing up to a mammal convention." As a person who works in entertainment (TV) this rings very true to me. Entertainment markets are going through an upheaval that is going to dramatically change their business models in the coming decade or two (only so slowly because they are resisting so hard). The old business models are being disrupted by new technology.
The internet and the compressed audio file upended the music business. Record labels had been warned repeatedly, there are plenty of stories of young executives urging the business to move in and define the market, but because internet distribution would directly impact compact disc sales and their ability to "print money' (Miyamoto and Iwata style) it was resisted. Cue the rise of napster, the advent of internet piracy, and Apple being the only business to step in with a concrete plan to make online music sales painless and profitable.
Television and Film ignored the plight of the record industry, because download limits and speeds, and video compression formats pretty much guaranteed that video piracy would remain niche short-term. Today, however, we have massive amounts of people watching unrestricted HD content the day it is released all around the world, whilst the TV stations and cinemas are seeing lower and lower viewer numbers. Television used to have an easy monopoly - if you wanted to watch programmes, you had to watch TV. Now, with PVRs and time-shifting and bit torrent downloads, why would I ever watch another network commercial? These programmes are paid for by advertising and merchandise sales - but as the advertising revenue dries up due to lack of viewers, where does the market go then?
The video game market is seeing a similar shift, particularly in handhelds (home consoles, you are safe for now, but don't get complacent!) This article outlines precisely a big part of the issue - in Australia (where I'm from) I can get a 3DS or PS Vita game for $69.99 - $89.99, but similar (or sometimes the same game) can be purchased on iOS or Android for $5. Other than physical controls, what justifies the extreme disparity between these, particularly when the handheld console is actually a slight inconvenience to have on my person, whereas my phone goes with me wherever I am? Sony missing the opportunity for convergence is something I wrote about recently. More frustrating when talking about price is the mark up we pay in Australia. Despite our very strong dollar, a new Xbox 360 or PS3 game title is $119.99, whereas in the USA the same game (often identical due to increasing indifference about region locking) is $59.99. Video games are risking pricing themselves out of having a market, and the industry should be concerned.
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This article claims to have all the answers for a strong WiiU launch for Nintendo, and I think it is a mixed bag.
- Start off with a bang. Agree - this is incredibly important. 3DS suffered due to lack of software (the price was arguably a secondary concern). Once the dry spell ended, 3DS sales took off. GameCube suffered similarly. A few (at least two) good core titles would guarantee day one sales, especially if Mario is present. Zelda would blow everyone away, but making a new Zelda game this close to the release of Skyward Sword is unrealistic given the usual development cycle for console Legend of Zelda titles.
- Know its audience. I thought this was going to offer advice leaning towards making sure there were more core experiences but it actually leaned the other way, arguing the case for attracting the casual audience. Whilst I agree that the casual audience is extremely important and will sell hardware, there has been evidence that the core audience software attach rates are extremely low, these are people who buy a Wii for WiiFit, then purchase maybe one or two other titles. This does not make a market for software, only for hardware. A smaller, cheaper Wii with WiiFit embedded as the only software and a Fit Board would have arguably done just as well in the market, and would have had just as much impact on software sales (with the exception of 3rd party fitness titles, and rhythm dance games). If Nintendo want to keep making games for the casual market then that is good, but make sure there is incentive for core players in the same software. WiiSports with online, leader boards, and additional competitive modes would not have hurt the casual experience.
- Get online right. No-brainer. I hate online gaming, but be damned if everyone I know doesn't love it. Heck, I have an Xbox Live Gold account I pay for and rarely use, because if people want to play games with me it will be online. Nintendo have been traditionally weak with software (firmware) and they really need to repair that image. 3DS looks like it is taking good steps in this department, but more needs to be done.
- Share the spotlight. This is in reference to third party developers having a hard time getting traction on Nintendo systems. The tone, however, implies that Nintendo cripples them in some way, to ensure their own success. Whilst this was certainly true in the N64 generation (I'm sure a lot of devs and gamers alike are shaking their fists) Nintendo worked hard to turn this around with the GameCube. GCN struggled with a 'kiddy' image due to the whimsical and friendly look of the console itself (and that cute little carry handle!) Third party devs produced a fair few mature titles for the console, some of which did very well, but it was a problem with image all around. Nintendo made no effort to advertise 3rd party games in any meaningful way, they promised online and then decided it was too much bother (just as online was taking off, look at Halo 2). They also disappointed the core crowd (see above) with Zelda: Wind Waker, cementing in the gaming industry's mind that Nintendo were 'all about the kids', despite Wind Waker being a brilliant game and an achievement. With the Wii, the opposite happened. 3rd party games were junk. As a core gamer I saw little to like. I was offended that a port of Resident Evil 4 was among the best looking games on the platform for a number of years. Nintendo focused on the new casual audience and hoped that third parties would pick up the slack; the reality was a slew of terrible PS2 ports and barely playable half attempts at games (everyone is looking at you, Red Steel). Nintendo have tried sharing the spotlight, the problem is that no-one came in to fill the gap.
- Let players keep their games. This is just about transferring Virtual Console games to WiiU. This is a definite must.
The 'things Nintendo should not do' list was considerably shorter.
- Focus on gimmicks. Nintendo should be careful not to be seen as gimmicky. They have been walking a fine line here since the release of the DS.
- Alienate the hardcore. Ties in with what I said above regarding 'knowing their audience'.
- Ignore other forms of entertainment. This is a must, but the article here refers directly to DVD and Blu-Ray, and I don't believe either of those to be relevant. Nintendo need to make sure they support streaming media - YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, BBC and ABC streaming players - these are where content delivery will be happening and will grow exponentially as newer and better services are added.
I could probably write an article about what Nintendo need to do with WiiU, but that's for another day I think.
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Finally, this bit from Volition design director Jameson Durall discussing his opinion of the rumours that the next Xbox console will block out used games. This is the sort of old-fashioned thinking that will do damage to the video game industry. Pre owned games are a huge market, and a massive profit machine for companies like EB Games and GameStop. The issue is that these games are physical units - when I sell someone a game I owned, or trade it in, I no longer have it. If I get a cabinet and decide to sell it for whatever reason, the cabinet maker is not making it incompatible with anyone else's house.
The looming shift to digital distribution as a primary game source is going to largely prevent this anyway, as game licences will be locked to your user account. This is a model that can work, certainly. Look at the PC software market - in some cases your license is transferrable, in other cases it is not. The approach taken has to be balanced. A look at Apple's Mac App Store shows a model where it works - apps are distributed digitally with a DRM protection that locks the software to your user account. To mitigate collateral damage the software is generally priced much more cheaply - recently Apple shifted their Logic audio editing studio to the Mac App Store, and the software went from $800 to $200. Lowering the burden of entry makes this locked system more palatable. If I could download an Xbox 360 game in a restricted form for $50 versus the retail one for $120, I wouldn't hesitate to buy the digital version, and I'm sure a heck of a lot of other people would buy into the digital version too - even knowing that there was no way to recoup the money. Leave the retail versions as they are, unrestricted and free, and watch as digital acquisition moves from niche to gold standard.
Sweeten the deal further. Make it so licenses can be transferred to other people - even at a dodgy cost of $5 or less and you've got a second hand market that drives post-sale profits directly to game makers and distribution channels that are no longer having any active involvement in making the game. If it was $5 to transfer a game license to your friend, he can still 'borrow' your copy of the game at an extremely negligible cost and devs and distributor benefit from the revenue that was non-existent before. Better yet, make it so a license can be shared from someone who owns the digital copy to his friends in a time-limited form. 24 hours with the full game as long as a friend owns it, then the option to simply pay the purchase price for the game that is already downloaded on your system. Keep your save file, continue your experience seamlessly after purchasing the game on your credit card.
At the end of the day, what is best for consumers is whatever is quickest and easiest. DRM-covered movie files shaft the end user because it limits the devices the user can watch their movie on, often the quality is limited by whatever arbitrary standards are required by the studios, and they are usually much more expensive than necessary. The same movie on Bittorrent (for example) will probably be higher quality, compatible with everything or easily converted, and easily shared. Look at the explosion in popularity the iTunes Music Store experienced once they finally convinced the record labels to drop DRM. People are willing to pay for content even when it is freely available, it's the willingness to offer it in a cheap and versatile way that stands as the impediment to making digital copies a true and extremely viable alternative to retail.
Thursday 16 February 2012
Not angry enough
Sony issued a response to the rumors that devs are jumping ship from the PS Vita to 3DS.
The issue with the PS Vita certainly isn't short-term developer support after launch, though weak software forecast will certainly disappoint sale growth. Look at the 3DS launch: it was known that devs were canning some titles, but others were simply being put in the cupboard to be released later on, presumably 'when the console was doing better'.
Nintendo had one advantage in this arena however; they had strong first party titles that were guaranteed system-sellers. Waiting until a post-Mario 3D Land/Mario Kart 7 3DS painted a much different picture and the sales certainly reflected that. The emergency price drop did little to mitigate industry watchers concerns, but it certainly led to healthy sales supported by desirable software. Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil will certainly help support growth among the massive adult gamer market, but I don't necessarily believe they were system sellers. In the same way that Twilight Princess saw a Wii port for launch, and Halo 2 backwards compatibility was prioritised for Xbox 360, these consoles looked to supporting software to help cushion their otherwise-bare launches.
I am with Sony on this at the moment though; rumors of the PS Vita's death have been greatly exaggerated. It is too soon to write it off, and I certainly believe that the PS Vita will go on to be a minor success for Sony. However, not differentiating itself from smartphones; and rather attempting to be more like them as a class of hardware will only hurt it long-term. This is especially true when you look at Sony's smartphone business - PlayStation on Android via gaming focused smartphones may eventually replace the need for a dedicated PlayStation altogether. Sony need to embrace this rather than resist it, as cannibalisation of their own products should be okay versus the alternative: being beaten to it by a competitor.
Now, I do know that smartphone game consoles have done very poorly in the past. Nokia's N-Gage was a serious case of a company misjudging a market entirely. Sony have the expertise to make this work if they made the effort. Smartphone gaming has become an enormous market (virtually overnight) and they have already made moves to capitalise on this. However, their current efforts have been pretty poor - look at the awful build quality of the Xperia Play. The eventual merging of Sony's handheld game system and mobile phone markets was obvious from the launch of the original PSP, and as the years go on it is only becoming more obvious. Nintendo have chosen to continue their tried-and-tested strategy, and I believe that it will work for them. Nintendo also have extremely powerful leverage to sell hardware with their first-party library; whilst Sony have some decent IPs I don't believe it is enough to push strong sales.
Battery life remains the sticking point for smartphone gaming, but if Sony are prepared to release a dedicated console with 2-5 hours of play time then they're essentially putting themselves straight into smartphone territory. Touch screen controls hold back most meaningful play experiences on smartphones, but GTA 3 proves that developers are willing to see what can be done with what exists and try and make it work.
Where does it leave Sony when a smartphone can match (or best) the PS Vita spec-for-spec on paper, and have the additional power of being in the hands of ten times the number of consumers? This reality isn't far away. Controls hold the market back from totally breaking through though. But with products like the iCade to test the popularity of these physical input add-ons on smartphones, how far away is 'official' support?
Sony should be nipping this in the bud right now and releasing a PlayStation branded Xperia that makes a serious attempt at being a handheld console and a smartphone. Add a 3G modem-less model and sell it similar to the iPhone/iPod touch model, and they may have a serious contender for serious gamers dollars.
Wednesday 15 February 2012
Actually playing games
Today I had a sudden feeling I haven't had in some time - I wanted to play a videogame. I had a sudden flash in my mind of running through the junkyard in Omnitopia in Secret of Evermore. Poor Square Enix USA, they didn't stand much of a chance.
Check this out for a stroll down memory lane.
Check this out for a stroll down memory lane.
Dead or...dead some more?
Eh??
Team Ninja are taking the sex and violence out of Dead or Alive.
Exciting news: this holiday season, play the exciting Settings Menu and see the visceral Title Splash in Dead or Alive 5: Attack of the Language Select Screen!
Team Ninja are taking the sex and violence out of Dead or Alive.
Exciting news: this holiday season, play the exciting Settings Menu and see the visceral Title Splash in Dead or Alive 5: Attack of the Language Select Screen!
Tuesday 14 February 2012
PS Vita
I'm just reading the Engadget review of the PlayStation Vita.
PS Vita appears to be the culmination of Sony's efforts not to understand how the video game industry works at all. Like the Nintendo of old (and the Sony of always) they're trying to push the hardware side of the business with seemingly no actual idea of what people would actually *like* to use.
When it was announced with its quad core CPU, 5" screen and other goodies, promising 'PS3-like graphical quality' I couldn't help but feel like I'd seen this dance played out before with the PSP. Sony are once again offering current-gen console graphics in a handheld that seemed determined to sacrifice battery life and portability for pixels, polygons and vertices.
The reason this amazes me so, is that the precedent for consumers wanting the opposite is well established. Not that I think you should give consumers what they think they want - I'll write an article on that at some point no doubt - but there have been three major victories in portable technology that put life span and potability ahead of all other aspects of the device, and these have been the iPod, the MacBook Air and the Nintendo Game Boy.
Paint me an Apple fanboy if you will, but hear me out at least. With the iPod, Apple had a portable media player that put accessibility and battery ahead of virtually all other aspects of the hardware. Every major revision boasted improved battery life and functionality, whilst things like video playback were relegated to a long-delayed afterthought despite the competition all offering a healthy market of PMP devices which would play music, movies and radio (all with terrible battery life). I recall reading about a PMP with a large LCD that would give only an hour of video playback - that means you couldn't even watch a full movie on it - who was the real market for this device? Most of these PMPs were the size of a 3.5" hard drive, which meant they were hardly pocketable.
The MacBook Air followed a similar philosophy - try and optimise battery life and size/weight. In the original (and oft mocked) model, the hardware was severely compromised: the CPU was extremely slow and tended to overheat easily, the GPU was slow, the price was exorbitant, the supplied hard disk was slow as molasses and contributed to the poor overall system performance. After the first major revision however, the MacBook Air became a kind of gold standard for laptops, something Intel is now aggressively pushing all PC manufacturers to emulate. Intel were also extremely ready to abandon the high clock speeds they were aggressively pursuing when they saw that portable designs were taking off. This is what effectively ended the Pentium 4's architecture as they moved development onto the Centrino platform to develop the 'core' CPUs (Centrino itself was actually a side project to make low power CPUs based on the Pentium 3).
The Game Boy (getting on to actual video games!) was chunky, but followed two main design considerations - battery life and durability. The Game Boy was durable as heck, and compared to every single competing system, it had a battery life to kill for. Game Boy remained stagnant in the hardware department for a decade, before the extremely minor upgrade in the form of Game Boy color was released. Game Boy Advance followed the same principle, and Game Boy Advance SP took it to (arguably) the ultimate level, being perhaps the ultimate in portable console design (regrettably, hardware isn't timeless). Nintendo DS began to eschew the battery life ratio in favour of a radical new design and philosophy, but the course was corrected with DS lite, though the lite was pushing the boundaries of durability that Nintendo usually had.
Nintendo 3DS changed all of that though. Though smaller than the DS lite, it seems chunkier. The battery life is extremely disappointing - I cannot leave mine in sleep mode for longer than a day or two or it will go flat. Sony has once again sacrificed battery - three hours with default settings is simply awful, and consumers shouldn't settle for Sony's 'solution' - an external battery. Nintendo should be celebrating PS Vita though - in comparison the PS Vita makes the 3DS longevity go from 'barely adequate' to amazing!
I feel the biggest issue that will plague the Vita will be its power. We are looking at quad-core smartphones this year, and looking at some iOS and Android titles I'm seeing the gap closing quickly. I'm also still not convinced that extreme graphics are even a compelling reason to buy a handheld. The best handheld titles seem to be the simple 'pick up and play' sorts. I have found Super Mario 3D Land much more playable than Resident Evil: Revelations, for example, though Revelations did try to tackle the short-form style admirably. A great example is probably The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which is a little too true to its console roots and lacks a save system that complements portable gaming.
No amount of hardware will make many of the best portable games any better. PS Vita's lacklustre additional 'abilities' make it a poor contender next to the iPod touch or iPhone, which are realistically its most direct competitors. Nintendo should have released 3DS much cheaper, and I still think it should be cheaper than its RRP today, but Nintendo have almost found a sweet spot by remembering their original market - children. Nintendo have never lost their stranglehold on that market, and whilst the adult market is now larger by an order of magnitudes, it gives a steady user base.
PS Vita also continues Sony's long tradition of needless proprietary junk by using a Vita-exclusive memory card, which is many times more expensive than standard micro SD cards. Presumably this is to protect their software, but realistically this will be hacked within days (if it hasn't been already).
If the PS Vita does well I will be genuinely surprised. If the PS Vita does well because of the appearance of third party console emulation and pirated games via hacks, I will not be surprised. I am currently preparing to not be surprised. Go team.
PS Vita appears to be the culmination of Sony's efforts not to understand how the video game industry works at all. Like the Nintendo of old (and the Sony of always) they're trying to push the hardware side of the business with seemingly no actual idea of what people would actually *like* to use.
When it was announced with its quad core CPU, 5" screen and other goodies, promising 'PS3-like graphical quality' I couldn't help but feel like I'd seen this dance played out before with the PSP. Sony are once again offering current-gen console graphics in a handheld that seemed determined to sacrifice battery life and portability for pixels, polygons and vertices.
The reason this amazes me so, is that the precedent for consumers wanting the opposite is well established. Not that I think you should give consumers what they think they want - I'll write an article on that at some point no doubt - but there have been three major victories in portable technology that put life span and potability ahead of all other aspects of the device, and these have been the iPod, the MacBook Air and the Nintendo Game Boy.
Paint me an Apple fanboy if you will, but hear me out at least. With the iPod, Apple had a portable media player that put accessibility and battery ahead of virtually all other aspects of the hardware. Every major revision boasted improved battery life and functionality, whilst things like video playback were relegated to a long-delayed afterthought despite the competition all offering a healthy market of PMP devices which would play music, movies and radio (all with terrible battery life). I recall reading about a PMP with a large LCD that would give only an hour of video playback - that means you couldn't even watch a full movie on it - who was the real market for this device? Most of these PMPs were the size of a 3.5" hard drive, which meant they were hardly pocketable.
The MacBook Air followed a similar philosophy - try and optimise battery life and size/weight. In the original (and oft mocked) model, the hardware was severely compromised: the CPU was extremely slow and tended to overheat easily, the GPU was slow, the price was exorbitant, the supplied hard disk was slow as molasses and contributed to the poor overall system performance. After the first major revision however, the MacBook Air became a kind of gold standard for laptops, something Intel is now aggressively pushing all PC manufacturers to emulate. Intel were also extremely ready to abandon the high clock speeds they were aggressively pursuing when they saw that portable designs were taking off. This is what effectively ended the Pentium 4's architecture as they moved development onto the Centrino platform to develop the 'core' CPUs (Centrino itself was actually a side project to make low power CPUs based on the Pentium 3).
The Game Boy (getting on to actual video games!) was chunky, but followed two main design considerations - battery life and durability. The Game Boy was durable as heck, and compared to every single competing system, it had a battery life to kill for. Game Boy remained stagnant in the hardware department for a decade, before the extremely minor upgrade in the form of Game Boy color was released. Game Boy Advance followed the same principle, and Game Boy Advance SP took it to (arguably) the ultimate level, being perhaps the ultimate in portable console design (regrettably, hardware isn't timeless). Nintendo DS began to eschew the battery life ratio in favour of a radical new design and philosophy, but the course was corrected with DS lite, though the lite was pushing the boundaries of durability that Nintendo usually had.
Nintendo 3DS changed all of that though. Though smaller than the DS lite, it seems chunkier. The battery life is extremely disappointing - I cannot leave mine in sleep mode for longer than a day or two or it will go flat. Sony has once again sacrificed battery - three hours with default settings is simply awful, and consumers shouldn't settle for Sony's 'solution' - an external battery. Nintendo should be celebrating PS Vita though - in comparison the PS Vita makes the 3DS longevity go from 'barely adequate' to amazing!
I feel the biggest issue that will plague the Vita will be its power. We are looking at quad-core smartphones this year, and looking at some iOS and Android titles I'm seeing the gap closing quickly. I'm also still not convinced that extreme graphics are even a compelling reason to buy a handheld. The best handheld titles seem to be the simple 'pick up and play' sorts. I have found Super Mario 3D Land much more playable than Resident Evil: Revelations, for example, though Revelations did try to tackle the short-form style admirably. A great example is probably The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which is a little too true to its console roots and lacks a save system that complements portable gaming.
No amount of hardware will make many of the best portable games any better. PS Vita's lacklustre additional 'abilities' make it a poor contender next to the iPod touch or iPhone, which are realistically its most direct competitors. Nintendo should have released 3DS much cheaper, and I still think it should be cheaper than its RRP today, but Nintendo have almost found a sweet spot by remembering their original market - children. Nintendo have never lost their stranglehold on that market, and whilst the adult market is now larger by an order of magnitudes, it gives a steady user base.
PS Vita also continues Sony's long tradition of needless proprietary junk by using a Vita-exclusive memory card, which is many times more expensive than standard micro SD cards. Presumably this is to protect their software, but realistically this will be hacked within days (if it hasn't been already).
If the PS Vita does well I will be genuinely surprised. If the PS Vita does well because of the appearance of third party console emulation and pirated games via hacks, I will not be surprised. I am currently preparing to not be surprised. Go team.
Monday 13 February 2012
Brütal comic
Penny Arcade
This comic rang particularly true for me, because I really thought Brütal Legend was rubbish. Basically, it was 15 minutes of a good game (the intro) and a heck of a lot of generic game with Jack Black once again trying to place himself among the legends of rock and roll by playing the 'gatekeeper to rock', something no other human being has ever been able to comprehend apparently.
My dislike of Jack Black aside, Brütal Legend was really a terrible game. Clunky, repetitive, and as shallow as a puddle. The humour wore exceedingly thin about a quarter of the way through, and the boss fights were kinda neat but poorly executed (actually, thinking of the boss fights in Brütal Legend is only giving me flashbacks of League of Legends...ugh).
I have no insights into anything in this post, so maybe we can call it a review. Yep, this is the first game review on Gamer Ant. If I can save at least one person from buying this game, then I've done some good in my life. Seriously - get the demo. The demo contains the only good bit in the entire game.
This comic rang particularly true for me, because I really thought Brütal Legend was rubbish. Basically, it was 15 minutes of a good game (the intro) and a heck of a lot of generic game with Jack Black once again trying to place himself among the legends of rock and roll by playing the 'gatekeeper to rock', something no other human being has ever been able to comprehend apparently.
My dislike of Jack Black aside, Brütal Legend was really a terrible game. Clunky, repetitive, and as shallow as a puddle. The humour wore exceedingly thin about a quarter of the way through, and the boss fights were kinda neat but poorly executed (actually, thinking of the boss fights in Brütal Legend is only giving me flashbacks of League of Legends...ugh).
I have no insights into anything in this post, so maybe we can call it a review. Yep, this is the first game review on Gamer Ant. If I can save at least one person from buying this game, then I've done some good in my life. Seriously - get the demo. The demo contains the only good bit in the entire game.
Saturday 11 February 2012
A treatise on the console wars
I like games. I like the game industry. However, I like talking about games more than playing them these days, because I mostly think most games suck. I have decided that my over-opinionated self needs an outlet now that all of my friends have blocked me on Facebook, so I've started a blog. A Blogger blog. Thanks Google, don't be evil and all that (yeah, right).
I have biases, but I always try and be objective when considering the industry and the direction it is heading. I'm an old-school Nintendo fan, I'm half on board with Microsoft, and I usually berate everything Sony does (because Sony seem to have absolutely no vision). I also did deadly combat with the floating head of Ken Kutaragi, so that may have left me with a bad impression of the company as a whole.
I might as well start off with some summary opinions of vidya gaem companies to kick this baby off.
Sony
The PS3 is in a worrying position right now, I think. Sony lost a bucket load of cash on the console (thanks to the overzealous designs of Ken Kutaragi) and are in a bad position as they continue to try and recoup. The hardware was crippled by the last minute design changes, taking it from a dual-CELL CPU powered machine that could probably time travel, to the inferior single-CELL and GPU combo, which slapped a last minute GPU in that was actually *older* design than the Radeon core used in the year-old Xbox 360. Ouch.
Going into the next gen, Sony will have to be careful. Management will surely want to see some of the awful losses from the PS3 recouped before cash is doled out on a new console. However, depending on what Microsoft and Nintendo are planning, it may not be a matter of when Sony want to deliver, but when the market demands it. The Wii suffered from a lack of cross-platform support, and if the PS3 falls behind it will possibly get left behind, no matter how much the fanboys insist that it has 'so much potential yet to be unlocked'.
An observation about the PS3: It was over-designed and overpriced. It has an inferior texture cache. It has an inferior central memory system. It has some weird bus issues (and bottlenecks) when talking to the GPU. It was released alongside the arrogant assertions of its creators that it would bend time and space. The observation? I could have just described the Nintendo 64.
Microsoft
Microsoft are playing runner-up to a T. Even when they're ahead, they're acting like they're losing. I'm not even sure what the hell goes on in Redmond. I'm pretty sure they're all partying non-stop, because that's the only way to explain their bizarre E3 presentations. Too many celebrities, not enough games. Don't even get me started on Kinect - the motion controller they had to have. Sony were copying Nintendo, dressing it up with some superior tech and trying to say they always meant to do that. Didn't exactly take off, but that's life. Microsoft set a record with selling the Kinect add-on. But where the heck is the content? Oh, their 2011 E3 show was virtually only Kinect content? In that case, where is the GOOD content?
Microsoft surely must have noticed that Kinect was furiously limited when they were testing, but were so determined not to be playing copycat (even though they were) that they simply released some hardware without any real idea of what to do with it. When reading pre-release interviews where they were talking about the ridiculously-pronounced 'Project Natal', often they were asked how it would work in to the average gamer's play. Examples were given of being able to throw grenades...and stuff. There was no real talk about how to play real games, and in my opinion that was a worry. Press releases and press demos and television spots all hyped what it could do - motion tracking, depth tracking, all that fun stuff. They showed off some admittedly impressive fitness games. That thing was MADE for fitness applications. Brilliant. But outside of 'Wii Sports' style compilations, there was little to actually do - and in real life it was a little finicky about things like room size and furniture, two things Microsoft dismissed constantly despite doing every 'hands-on' preview in large, empty spaces.
Microsoft have had success with software, and Xbox is finally profitable. Microsoft have been capitalising on that. But Microsoft are proving that they still don't know how to handle success and combat repeating failures. They hit gold buying Bungie and releasing Halo, and now that Bungie have gone they have a new company taking the reins; 343 Industries. The first thing they do? Retcon the content. Immediately I am concerned that retcons will be common whenever Microsoft want a spin-off (I heard rumours that Microsoft/343 specifically demanded that Halo Reach feature SPARTAN-IIIs, presumably to introduce them to the audience to show that there was more 'beyond' Master Chief). The anime Halo shorts were awful, the Forerunner 'prequel' novels are unnecessary, and the general feeling I'm getting is that Halo is about to be flogged to death over a gruesome few years.
Nintendo
What is there to say about Nintendo, except for them having no long-term strategy? Nintendo are showing something that's fairly endemic of the old-school Japanese hardware manufacturers; they don't 'get' software. The Wii was almost a total fluke - the 'channel' interface was developed in the last six months before launch according to Iwata, meaning that it was a serious case of hardware first, everything else later. The Wii wasn't just like a souped up Gamecube, it WAS a souped up Gamecube. The firmware of the console literally booted itself into 'Gamecube' when you popped a Gamecube disc in (that's why you couldn't return to the home menu). When new hardware was released like the WiiMotion+, it was impossible to add compatibility to old games because the Wii had to revert to 'firmware 11-2007' when you stuck an old disc in. This also prevented DLC and patches. It meant that the channels offering additional content and interactivity were never really coming, because the Wii simply wasn't capable of doing much at all.
It added to Nintendo's woeful online service, a lack of competitive online offerings and really compelling after-sale feature expansion.
Add Nintendo's normal hostility towards third party publishers, and the third party publisher's rather unusual apathy toward such a popular console, and there were the makings of a mid to late life crash. Nintendo lucked out again with WiiFit - a game that actually made the 'casual' market walk into a store and pick a game up off the shelf. But third party publishers weren't having the same successes. Nintendo took some time off 'core' titles to develop their 'casual' audience material, anticipating that the third party publishers would pick up the slack. Yet no-one seemed to bother. Disappointingly, despite being a Gamecube over clocked x2 the third parties only seemed to be capable of making games that looked like PS2 games, even when they weren't multi-platform. When Resident Evil 4 - a previous gen game - is among the nicest looking games on the console, one really has to wonder why no-one was putting more effort in, particularly when there were spectacular efforts from Nintendo themselves with Mario Galaxy, Zelda: Skyward Sword and Smash Bros. Brawl among others.
Nintendo were back from the humble Gamecube years and released the excessively overpriced 3DS to a dismissive market, effectively blocking out the core audience of school kids who didn't own iPhones or the iPod touch - after seeing the 3DS launch price I am 100% sure a lot of parents would have tried talking their kids into the iPod for its multi functionality. Now the future of the WiiU is a question mark. Nintendo have to convince the core crowd they haven't given up on them, convince the casuals they want to own what may be perceived as 'the same thing as the Wii', and try (again!) to woo the third party devs.
It's gonna be tough to explain to the core audience what the difference between Wii and WiiU is, when I have known people who are reasonably switched on with technology who are convinced the 3DS is simply a Nintendo DS with a 3D screen. This is a real issue Nintendo have with brand differentiation considering they have stuck with essentially the same names for two generations of console.
That's my first rant about the companies involved, and a bit of a sneak peek at where this blog will go. I will mostly Ant on about articles/press releases/video game news I read, though there may occasionally be the odd actual-gameplay-rant (erm...Ant) if I ever find the time to actually play any games rather than just complain about the people who make them.
Woo
I have biases, but I always try and be objective when considering the industry and the direction it is heading. I'm an old-school Nintendo fan, I'm half on board with Microsoft, and I usually berate everything Sony does (because Sony seem to have absolutely no vision). I also did deadly combat with the floating head of Ken Kutaragi, so that may have left me with a bad impression of the company as a whole.
I might as well start off with some summary opinions of vidya gaem companies to kick this baby off.
Sony
The PS3 is in a worrying position right now, I think. Sony lost a bucket load of cash on the console (thanks to the overzealous designs of Ken Kutaragi) and are in a bad position as they continue to try and recoup. The hardware was crippled by the last minute design changes, taking it from a dual-CELL CPU powered machine that could probably time travel, to the inferior single-CELL and GPU combo, which slapped a last minute GPU in that was actually *older* design than the Radeon core used in the year-old Xbox 360. Ouch.
Going into the next gen, Sony will have to be careful. Management will surely want to see some of the awful losses from the PS3 recouped before cash is doled out on a new console. However, depending on what Microsoft and Nintendo are planning, it may not be a matter of when Sony want to deliver, but when the market demands it. The Wii suffered from a lack of cross-platform support, and if the PS3 falls behind it will possibly get left behind, no matter how much the fanboys insist that it has 'so much potential yet to be unlocked'.
An observation about the PS3: It was over-designed and overpriced. It has an inferior texture cache. It has an inferior central memory system. It has some weird bus issues (and bottlenecks) when talking to the GPU. It was released alongside the arrogant assertions of its creators that it would bend time and space. The observation? I could have just described the Nintendo 64.
Microsoft
Microsoft are playing runner-up to a T. Even when they're ahead, they're acting like they're losing. I'm not even sure what the hell goes on in Redmond. I'm pretty sure they're all partying non-stop, because that's the only way to explain their bizarre E3 presentations. Too many celebrities, not enough games. Don't even get me started on Kinect - the motion controller they had to have. Sony were copying Nintendo, dressing it up with some superior tech and trying to say they always meant to do that. Didn't exactly take off, but that's life. Microsoft set a record with selling the Kinect add-on. But where the heck is the content? Oh, their 2011 E3 show was virtually only Kinect content? In that case, where is the GOOD content?
Microsoft surely must have noticed that Kinect was furiously limited when they were testing, but were so determined not to be playing copycat (even though they were) that they simply released some hardware without any real idea of what to do with it. When reading pre-release interviews where they were talking about the ridiculously-pronounced 'Project Natal', often they were asked how it would work in to the average gamer's play. Examples were given of being able to throw grenades...and stuff. There was no real talk about how to play real games, and in my opinion that was a worry. Press releases and press demos and television spots all hyped what it could do - motion tracking, depth tracking, all that fun stuff. They showed off some admittedly impressive fitness games. That thing was MADE for fitness applications. Brilliant. But outside of 'Wii Sports' style compilations, there was little to actually do - and in real life it was a little finicky about things like room size and furniture, two things Microsoft dismissed constantly despite doing every 'hands-on' preview in large, empty spaces.
Microsoft have had success with software, and Xbox is finally profitable. Microsoft have been capitalising on that. But Microsoft are proving that they still don't know how to handle success and combat repeating failures. They hit gold buying Bungie and releasing Halo, and now that Bungie have gone they have a new company taking the reins; 343 Industries. The first thing they do? Retcon the content. Immediately I am concerned that retcons will be common whenever Microsoft want a spin-off (I heard rumours that Microsoft/343 specifically demanded that Halo Reach feature SPARTAN-IIIs, presumably to introduce them to the audience to show that there was more 'beyond' Master Chief). The anime Halo shorts were awful, the Forerunner 'prequel' novels are unnecessary, and the general feeling I'm getting is that Halo is about to be flogged to death over a gruesome few years.
Nintendo
What is there to say about Nintendo, except for them having no long-term strategy? Nintendo are showing something that's fairly endemic of the old-school Japanese hardware manufacturers; they don't 'get' software. The Wii was almost a total fluke - the 'channel' interface was developed in the last six months before launch according to Iwata, meaning that it was a serious case of hardware first, everything else later. The Wii wasn't just like a souped up Gamecube, it WAS a souped up Gamecube. The firmware of the console literally booted itself into 'Gamecube' when you popped a Gamecube disc in (that's why you couldn't return to the home menu). When new hardware was released like the WiiMotion+, it was impossible to add compatibility to old games because the Wii had to revert to 'firmware 11-2007' when you stuck an old disc in. This also prevented DLC and patches. It meant that the channels offering additional content and interactivity were never really coming, because the Wii simply wasn't capable of doing much at all.
It added to Nintendo's woeful online service, a lack of competitive online offerings and really compelling after-sale feature expansion.
Add Nintendo's normal hostility towards third party publishers, and the third party publisher's rather unusual apathy toward such a popular console, and there were the makings of a mid to late life crash. Nintendo lucked out again with WiiFit - a game that actually made the 'casual' market walk into a store and pick a game up off the shelf. But third party publishers weren't having the same successes. Nintendo took some time off 'core' titles to develop their 'casual' audience material, anticipating that the third party publishers would pick up the slack. Yet no-one seemed to bother. Disappointingly, despite being a Gamecube over clocked x2 the third parties only seemed to be capable of making games that looked like PS2 games, even when they weren't multi-platform. When Resident Evil 4 - a previous gen game - is among the nicest looking games on the console, one really has to wonder why no-one was putting more effort in, particularly when there were spectacular efforts from Nintendo themselves with Mario Galaxy, Zelda: Skyward Sword and Smash Bros. Brawl among others.
Nintendo were back from the humble Gamecube years and released the excessively overpriced 3DS to a dismissive market, effectively blocking out the core audience of school kids who didn't own iPhones or the iPod touch - after seeing the 3DS launch price I am 100% sure a lot of parents would have tried talking their kids into the iPod for its multi functionality. Now the future of the WiiU is a question mark. Nintendo have to convince the core crowd they haven't given up on them, convince the casuals they want to own what may be perceived as 'the same thing as the Wii', and try (again!) to woo the third party devs.
It's gonna be tough to explain to the core audience what the difference between Wii and WiiU is, when I have known people who are reasonably switched on with technology who are convinced the 3DS is simply a Nintendo DS with a 3D screen. This is a real issue Nintendo have with brand differentiation considering they have stuck with essentially the same names for two generations of console.
That's my first rant about the companies involved, and a bit of a sneak peek at where this blog will go. I will mostly Ant on about articles/press releases/video game news I read, though there may occasionally be the odd actual-gameplay-rant (erm...Ant) if I ever find the time to actually play any games rather than just complain about the people who make them.
Woo
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