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
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