02.27.13 |
Gaming |
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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.
02.11.13 |
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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.
02.08.13 |
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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.
02.07.13 |
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Ben Kuchera, writing for The PA Report:
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.
02.06.13 |
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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.
01.23.13 |
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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.
01.14.13 |
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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.
01.11.13 |
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Valve CEO Gabe Newell:
We’ll come out with our own and we’ll sell it to consumers by ourselves. That’ll be a Linux box, [and] if you want to install Windows you can. We’re not going to make it hard. This is not some locked box by any stretch of the imagination. We also think that a controller that has higher precision and lower latency is another interesting thing to have.
I’m going to take a guess and say an ‘official’ Steam Box should make it ways out by the end of 2013, coinciding nicely with the launch of next-gen consoles by Sony and Microsoft. We could have a potential PC (Steam) vs. console (Sony, Microsoft) vs. mobile (iOS) race ahead of us, fighting for attention in the living room. I think iOS mobile gaming will inevitably stay strong and get stronger, but all bets are off in terms of how consoles and PCs will end up two years from now.
01.03.13 |
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2012 was the first year I really started taking iOS games seriously, and the first I found the device a life saver for gaming over long subway rides and vacation trips. A lot of great titles were released, and as usual Touch Arcade has a great handle on what stood out. (I still find Punch Quest and Pinball Arcade monopolizing far more time than I expected.)
12.28.12 |
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Gaming site Giant Bomb has always distinguished itself with stellar video work, but they have outdone themselves with their game of the year recap videos. Their TV spoofs, especially their dead on 60 Minutes send up (“reporter” Brad Shoemaker has the vocal cadence down cold) linked here, just kills.