The dual message couldn’t more clear: Consoles are bigger than ever, and they need to change immediately, or die.
“Consoles, in terms of the way that they’ve been operating and failing to evolve, have to change,” says Mark Kern, head of the game developer Red 5 Studios. “The console model is hamstrung by the whole box-model mentality, the idea that you pay $60 for a game and you go play.”
Regardless of the outcome, holiday 2013 is going to be a fascinating time. With Microsoft and Sony very likely unveiling their next generation hardware, how will they sell in the face of heavy mobile competition? Will the distribution model be radically different?
Famed game designer Peter Molyneux speaking at a worldwide game jam inspired by a Twitter lookalike:
“Personally, I’m just a bit bored,” he said. “Bored of all the same pap that’s been popped out year after year after year. What we need is innovation, and we need to come together and do crazy things, whether they be radioactive babies or blind men walking into lampposts—I don’t care what it is. That’s what the world wants from us.” It was a debatable assertion, but Molyneux powered through it. “Now let’s go and do it!” he concluded, and the room erupted in applause.
Molyneux is one of those idiosyncratic game geniuses that I don’t know if he’ll ever fully get his groove personally. Yet Wired paints a great picture here.
As Rachel Helps explores in this brief Kill Screen Daily post, what if we put ourselves on an “information diet” for video games? What if our focus moved away from games with “repetitive loops” (e.g. Call of Duty, Bejeweled) and instead games with stories that change based on user interactions, that evolved and grew as you go through them?
Mobile gaming on devices like the iPad and iPhone will (or already has?) supplanted consoles as the flagship, mainstream gaming device going forward. That’s what makes this podcast episode of BYOT (Bring Your Own Topic) so interesting. The very knowledgable Dan Hsu sits down with Andy Yang and Gabe Leydon, two experts in the mobile gaming sphere. Lots of talk about monetization, free to play and more.
Eurogamer reporter Chris Donlan talks about the experience of playing L.A. Noire with his dad, a retired beat cop who worked the streets of L.A. when and where the game was set:
We drove about for another hour or two after that, and by this point dad was hooked. Not hooked on L.A. Noire’s narrative, perhaps, or caught up in the complex chains of missions, but hooked on the city, on the fascinating, insightful job that Rockstar had done in stitching the past together. Even though I can’t actually drive, and the car we were in wasn’t a real car anyway, I had a strong sense that I was in the front seat, turning the wheel beneath my hands, and he was riding low in the back, face pressed to the glass. Role reversal. It happens to all fathers and sons eventually, I guess. Why shouldn’t it happen because of games?
Really great writing here. As many quibbles as a had with L.A. Noire as a game, its detail in terms of its setting and place is unbelievable.
Loren Brichter’s Atebits just released this fun word game in the App Store last night. As The Verge put it earlier today, it’s “an amorphous Words With Friends“. You’ve got a five by five grid where you pick letters, making it kinda like Scrabble, but also there’s a conquest Reversi-like strategy where you can surround and “lock down” letters, shutting their access away from your opponent.
It’s a free download, with a buck unlock to play multiple games and visual themes. Really slick UI and from what little I’ve played I hope it ends up being a huge hit.
The gaming news site Polygon just launched late last night. I’m pretty excited given the team’s editorial strength – Arthur Gies, Christopher Grant, Brian Crecente, Russ Pitts, among others.
Also if you’re at all involved with the web (even if you could care less about video games) the website design and development is very unique (I still have to make up my mind if that’s a good or bad thing.) Fully responsive design, web typography in Gotham and Mercury, minimal navigation and much more.
Experimentation on open platforms is one of the primary sources of innovation in the computer industry. There are no two ways about that. Open software ecosystems are what gave us most of what we use today, whether it’s business software like the spreadsheet, entertainment software like the first-person shooter, or world-changing revolutionary paradigms like the World Wide Web…
…With Windows 8, Microsoft is in a pivotal position to help make this future a reality…Or, Microsoft can ship Windows RT, Windows 8, and Windows 8 Pro with their current policies in place, and be just another player in the touch device space, with their own set of ridiculous hurdles that severely constrain software possibilities and waste developer time with ill-conceived certification processes.
Many fair points made here, but I wonder if the author is confusing the far more restrictive Windows RT – which is very akin to the closed iOS model – with Windows 8 as a whole.
A great video over at The Gameological Society that talks about the impact of the 1980s Nintendo sci-fi classic Metroid. I remember growing up with this game and feeling so bad ass after my friends and I defeated Mother Brain. Its influence on modern gaming is undeniable.
Sony has lost this generation, and there is no reason to lower the price and lose more money than necessary. Sony’s focus is on next year, and its next generation console; they are aware that there’s little that can be done to fight off the competition this holiday season…
…The PlayStation 3 and Vita are going to be low sellers during the North American holiday season. Full stop. That lack of momentum going into 2013, mixed with Sony’s ongoing financial problems, puts Sony in a defensive position in 2013. We won’t be seeing many bold moves when it comes to hardware; Sony doesn’t have the power at the moment to take risks with the proprietary architecture and bleeding edge components that led to the PlayStation 3’s high launch price. This may make it hard to differentiate the console from its competitors, and create even more of a marketing challenge for Sony.
Ben has a good point. Vita will end up as a complete platform disaster for Sony, and what’s the big “hook” for prospective customers to pick up a Playstation 4?