The actual PS4 casing, whatever it looks like, isn’t really going to be that important to the way you actually experience the console. Like every console that’s come before it, the PlayStation 4 is going to be a box that sits in your entertainment center. You’ll interact with it directly for maybe five seconds while you put in a disc and turn the system on (even less if you download games and use the power button on the controller). After that, you’ll be ignoring the casing for hours as you stare at the images on the TV screen—you know, the kind of images that Sony actually made the focus of its announcement last week.
There’s been many ‘why we should have/shouldn’t have seen the box’ arguments, but Kyle’s resonates the most with my viewpoint. Compared to so many other factors – price, game selection, UI, to name a few – the look of the box is pretty unimportant.
After a noisy opening, the darkened bar lit by the cathode glow of its attendant squadron of machines, success was quick and consistent. “The popularity surprised me,” says [Barcade founder] Kermizian, “and [the fact] that it didn’t wear off, that it became a place where people came regularly. We were worried that this might be a lot of fun for people, but that they would only view it as a once-in-a-long-while thing. I was astounded at how many regulars we found right away, and how dedicated they became.”
Barcade was a great idea, and it’s awesome to see its popularity catch on, at least around here in New York.
EA’s mobile driving game Real Racing 3 has gotten a lot of flak since its debut last week. The primary controversy surrounds the game’s free to play model that leverages artificial timers to generate revenue. Repair or upgrade a car and it’s unavailable to play for a set amount of time, anywhere from 5 to 25 minutes (in rare cases, far longer). Of course by spending real money you can end a timer early, and EA clearly hopes you will. Many tech and gaming journalists on my Twitter feed have called the practice “abominable” and refuse to play. Others have taken the exact opposite stance: it’s a free game on your phone, relax and wait a few minutes! I disagree with a one sided position on RR3; the right answer for me lies somewhere in the middle.
One aspect RR3‘s critics get decidedly wrong is the impact timers have on gameplay. Many make the mistake of judging RR3 from the perspective of a traditional console or PC game, not a mobile title. Console and PC games tend to be played in longer sessions of at least an hour; in that context a twenty minute repair timer would be catastrophic. In contrast, mobile games are usually played for far shorter intervals, which minimizes the impact of RR3’s timers. Furthermore, early on in the game (in my case, with less than an hour of gameplay) you start acquiring multiple cars. By just shuffling between cars that are not in repair, you can nullify a timer’s effect. Already I’m at four cars and timers are effectively a non issue.
The real problem with RR3‘s economic model is less about actual gameplay than principle. Traditional games charge for extra content, not to pay off an arbitrary delay timer. Normally games give you the full package for a set price, while the equivalent with RR3 (to unlock all tracks and cars) costs hundreds of hours or dollars. Overall RR3‘s timers are, as Alex Navarro over at Giant Bombwrote, just plain invasive. It’s applying a Zenga or Farmville like min-max model on what should be a fun racing game.
While RR3 is a mobile game, it’s also an AAA game on all levels: polished graphics, depth, varied gameplay and a big budget. I want to hold the game to a similar standard as a full console title and expect a more traditional pricing model, or at least free to play with real enhancements, not repair timers.
But that didn’t happen, and the larger root problem here wasn’t EA or RR3. Instead we should direct more blame to the mobile app store market as a whole. Over the last few years, a race to the bottom price mentality has eliminated almost any iOS or Android game that’s more than $3, and the app store supervisors, most notably Apple, haven’t done a thing to slow or stop it. EA knows $1 or $2 purchases en masse couldn’t come close to matching their high budget; free to play was the only viable option. Even the “traditional” free to play (e.g. paying money for more cars and tracks) that we’re use to on mobile wouldn’t cut it. Only invasive timers, in EA’s mind, ensures profitability. In short, timers may be wrong on principle, but given the mobile app store climate, they are likely a sound economical bet for EA.
Overall RR3‘s strange free to play model is a clear signal that gaming is in a tricky, experimental and indeterminate state. Yet as gamers we can vote with our dollars. We should support games financially that are fun and worth the investment, from assorted free to play or cheap iOS diversions to $60 console games and everything in between. I’m conflicted over RR3, a solid game with a sketchy business model; I’ll continue to play but I’ll minimize how much I spend on it.
Core gamers had high expectations on this week’s PS4 keynote and for good reason: it’s been seven years since the XBox 360 launch, the longest gap ever between game console generations. But gaming has been redefined by social media, mobile games on smartphones and tablets, along with a resurgence in PC gaming on Steam. Can consoles placate core gamers while still bringing a more mainstream audience into the fold?
In light of this challenge, Sony did a great job this week addressing the core fan base, but there’s some unanswered questions and problems with their approach for the overall public.
Let’s start with Sony’s core audience. It’s a smaller group than seven years ago, but it’s still important. You want a strong base of early console adopters for that first “lean year” when there’s fewer release titles and developers are still grappling with how to program effectively on the device. Overall, Sony appears to have learned from the major mistakes they made with the PS3: system updates, a major PS3 annoyance, will be taken care of in the background. With 8 GB of fast RAM and a x86 processor, development should be easier than on the PS3 Cell chip. The PS4 incorporates streaming technology for quick demos and live spectating on friends games, an innovation a lot of the hard core audience wants and will actively use to share clips on Facebook, YouTube and other social media. Add in flashy demos from big traditional gaming houses (e.g. Activision, Ubisoft, Square Enix), combined with two huge newcomers (Bungie, Blizzard) makes for a strong showing for those already sold on traditional console gaming.
But there was a troubling amount of PS4 content that felt very much like something we saw back in 2005 but with much flashier graphics. Did Sony really have to open their gameplay demos with a six minute clip from another, tired first person sci-fi shooter? Why were there so many game demos sequels or small variants of existing IPs?
I think the biggest area Sony and Microsoft have to address is a very potent middle tier gaming market comprised of mostly smaller, indie developers who would price content generally in that $5 to $40 sweet spot that neither iOS or AAA game publishers generally cover. Granted, Sony’s PSN has a few much lauded indie titles (e.g. Journey, Limbo), and the PS4 nabbed acclaimed Braid developer Jonathan Blow for The Witness. The PS4 keynote even opened up with Sony’s Andrew House stating “PSN supports free to play” right off the bat. But PSN has a long way to go to match the open nature of Steam or the iOS App Store. A healthy indie market would give Sony the diversity it needs much more than just a console’s expected $60 AAA sports and shooter games. Imagine a big library of accessible casual games you could easily find and download for a few bucks each on PSN – much larger and more diverse than what we see today. It would be more than what you’d pay for your average iPad game (who’s race to the bottom market has effectively killed off games north of $3), but in return you get exponentially more engrossing graphics and gameplay depth.
I’m also concerned about the price tag on this device. There’s a lot of expensive sounding hardware and features, including a DualShock 4 that clearly took the kitchen sink approach (touch screen, movement tracking, headphone jack) without justifying a “why” behind it. Anything much more than $400 for the base console I think is dangerous territory for the holiday 2013 launch.
While you can’t place final bets until at least a year from now, Sony has clearly evolved from its last place PS3 finish in the previous round of console wars. But even with that correction, the PS4 could languish by failing to address the very different, mobile friendly gaming landscape of 2013.
You can read endless speculation on Valve’s upcoming Steam box on almost any gaming or tech site. But for a one stop, comprehensive look on what we really know, T.C. Sottek piece over at The Verge is stellar. If you’re at all mildly interesting in the future of gaming you should read this piece.
I couldn’t put it better than Ars Technica writer Lee Hutchinson’s own tag line: a minimum wage gig in the 1990s turns into pretty much the Best Job Ever. Fun read and makes me a bit nostalgic for those earlier days of gaming in my teenage years.
I took my son to Math and Science night at his school last night and saw three kids playing MineCraft on tablets or phones. They discuss what’s happening on their respective servers at lunch. It’s a huge hit, and an innovative platform.
It also would have been impossible on any existing console.
MineCraft may have ultimately come to the Xbox 360, but the game breaks many of Microsoft’s rules.
In case you thought all top selling games were first person shooters, here’s Brian Crecente for Polygon:
And perhaps that’s the more important point: Not all video games are for everyone and not all of them are violent. The game industry produces a surprisingly eclectic mix of titles.
Nearly 18 million copies of Minecraft have been sold. While last year’s top-selling games included Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, half of the top games of 2012 weren’t violent. Those non-violent games include sports titles, dancing games, even a Lego game. And that’s just counting games sold in stores in the U.S. When you start to look at mobile gaming, where Angry Birds remains the king of the platform, overtly violent games become even less prevalent.
This article by The Verge‘s Laura June has gotten a lot of buzz online, and deservedly so. There’s so many bits of information I had no idea about (pinball was banned in NYC until 1974?!). The page layout is stellar as well, with pull quotes in big typography against a parallax-style background.
Robert Rath, writing for The Escapist, on Corvo, the protagonist of the stealth adventure Dishonored:
In the eyes of British honor culture, Corvo is a villain. His conduct is not that of a gentleman: he allows himself to be subjugated, he takes unfair advantage, and his vicious methods speak to his foreign origins. Interestingly, when we look at Dishonored from this perspective of honor culture, its themes appear very different.
This was a really fascinating read, and not just because I recently finished Dishonored. It’s primarily because there’s a lot of insights here on British vs. Italian honor culture that make solid contextual sense, both for history and this game.