Pretty fascinating breakdown of Diablo 3 addition. Author Alex Curelea asserts the game’s problems stem from its (real life currency based) auction house.
(While I can’t compare my addition level with a twelve year old game, Diablo 3 certainly has done something right; I log a few hours every week, a significant dent in my already busy schedule.)
E3 discussion continues on the 6/12 edition of the Giant Bomb podcast. Skip to the one hour mark for some thoughtful criticism of several big game press trailers: The Last of Us, Tomb Raider and more.
Giant Bomb’s Patrick Klepek:
We arrived to our Capcom appointment, I plunked down with Lost Planet 3, and Alex Navarro was ushered over to play Devil May Cry. In a room of kiosks, there were pole dancers. It’s unclear what that has to do with Devil May Cry. The girl hired to skimpily waltz around was sitting on the floor, looking bored…
…Elsewhere, I refused to play any 3DS games at Nintendo’s booth because the company didn’t have a table with machines, and instead tethered its lineup to attractive women.
It’s disgusting to hear stories like this. It’s 2012. Console gaming is a mainstream, billion dollar industry. Yet its marketing is crazy violent, often sexist, and almost entirely targeted toward a young, hyper-masculine audience. No wonder so much of their potential target demographic is moving to gender neutral mobile platforms like iOS.
Famed game designer Peter Molyneux:
You’re presented with this white room. In the middle of the white room is a black cube. If you touch on that black cube, you’ll zoom into it. This black cube is made up of millions of tiny little cubes. You can tap away at that cube.
As you’re doing that, these words will come up: ‘Curiosity, what is inside the black cube?’ That’s when you realize it’s not just you tapping away at that black cube, it’s the whole world. The whole world is tapping away is revealing layers of this cube.
So so Molyneux to run a project like this. Here’s hoping it translates into a kick ass game.
Pay what you want and get four highly regarded games – Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery, Limbo, Amnesia and Psychonauts – for Mac, PC and Linux. Pay a bit more (about $9 at the time of this writing) to unlock four more games, including Bastion and Super Meat Boy. If you’re at all vaguely interested in PC or Mac gaming you’ve probably heard about this. It deserves the hype. I’m generally not much of a Mac gamer, but the chance to catch up with Limbo, Braid and Super Meat Boy for bit more than $10, much of which goes to charity, is a no brainer.
Act soon – there’s only one day left in this offer.
The Verge’s Paul Miller wrote a solid article on how the big three console companies will evolve:
In the game world, where the topic of “casual” vs “hardcore” gaming is still a hot-button issue, Microsoft has side-stepped and pulled its chips off the table: it’s just mainstream. When Microsoft and Sony built Kinect and Move, respectively, to compete with the then-dominant Wii, they were both making a casual play. When the backlash came a year later, as hardcore gamers felt like they were being abandoned, Sony was quick to shore up that fanbase, but Microsoft kept it casual.
I wouldn’t quite go so far as saying Microsoft is “just” mainstream but Paul is on the right track. You can substitute ‘mainstream’ here with ‘evolving’; Sony is steadfast on 3D and the hard core market while Nintendo has a multiplayer network out of the 90s and regurgitating IPs from the 80s. Only Microsoft acknowledges the mobile elephant in the room.
As most gaming analysts predicted, this was a pretty quiet year for E3 news. Companies made very conservative moves and announcements given we’re at the end of this generation’s consoles. Several console manufacturers are also wary of making a costly misstep as mobile gaming devices (e.g. iPhone, iPad) eat up an increasing amount of their market share.
However, there were a few major trends worth noting.
The 3DS wasn’t a strong seller out of the gate. Wii sales have crumbled. Nintendo is gambling a lot on its Wii U, and from what I’ve seen from E3, it looks like a non starter console. I’m aware that’s a strong prediction, but let’s break down what we’ve seen. First of all there’s the price, rumored to launch at $300. That’s almost surely cheaper than the next generation of consoles that Sony and Microsoft will offer. But then factor in the cost of those bulky controllers that I’d predict are far north of $100 each. That’s not exactly family friendly territory. There are other hardware problems as well: a controller only lasts for 3-5 hours per charge. It likely has a processor only marginally more powerful than a current gen Xbox 360 or PS3.
Finally, there’s a lack of compelling software. Nintendo’s E3 presser was depressingly conservative, even by Nintendo standards – few new IPs, no new Zelda or extra details on Paper Mario. Their flagship launch title NintendoLand doesn’t appear to have the crossover success of Wii Sports. And has Nintendo secured third party support? The company’s failure in that aspect really tanked long term sales of the Wii. The trend threatens to repeat itself with the Wii U.
Note that there are plenty of dissenters with my outlook. Josh Topolsky over at the Washington Post praised Nintendo’s “heads-down, single-minded mentality.” Time also defends Nintendo well, making some especially strong points regarding its hardware. Also Pimkin 3 looks great, but it doesn’t change my feeling that Nintendo could be out of the hardware business within a few years if it isn’t more careful.
Microsoft had the best of the pre-E3 press conferences this year. It was yes, conservative, but it balanced the hardcore gaming and “casual” multimedia camps well. Most importantly, don’t underestimate SmartGlass. SmartGlass is a companion app for mobile devices (Windows phones, iOS, Android) that gives users the ability to control and interact with games and other XBox content. For instance, on the latest Madden you can preview and select plays before the huddle. For a TV show or movie extra bonus content is synced and displayed in SmartGlass as you watch. The Verge put together a nice preview.
Granted, Microsoft has pushed the multimedia convergence angle on every recent E3 and ended up bombing most of the time. Last year the Kinect got the hard sell. This year saw Internet Explorer for XBox, a total head scratcher. But SmartGlass is different because it’s not about selling a service or device that you have to run out and buy. A huge percentage of Microsoft’s target audience already has an iOS or Android phone, and as long as developers have incentive to make SmartGlass functionality, it could be a huge incentive to stick with the XBox over an Apple TV or Roku (there’s a nice Hacker News thread discussing this topic.)
There were a few new IPs announced that look incredible like Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs and Star Wars 1313 from LucasArts. However, their developers are cagey with regard to launch platforms. Watch Dogs may someday come to PS3 and XBox 360 but these E3 demos were clearly running on high-end PCs. I bet those demo PCs closely mirror the specs of Sony’s and Microsoft’s next gen consoles.
I’d expect any game without an early 2013 release date will debut on both current gen and next gen platforms. I’d also predict that next year is going to look very dry for console gaming as platforms shore up support for their big next gen console launches. That’s going to be a very interesting tech period. Mobile gaming will have matured by a full year, and the iOS ecosystem will be likely far more comprehensive, revolving around a completely revamped and relaunched Apple TV. Will console gaming thrive or weaken? It’s hard to say but we’ll know a lot more a year from now.
There was some excellent gaming analysis on the latest Hypercritical episode. Host John Siracusa breaks down the E3 pressers and how Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony are positioned for future competition. Pay special attention to the last 20 minutes where the hosts discuss how Apple fits into all of this. (Spoiler: it’s console gaming’s biggest threat by far.)
This Polygon E3 video a bit scattershot in terms of quality so I’d recommend just skipping to the 1:49 mark. Adam Sessler (former editor-in-chief of gaming network G4) rants for a few minutes on Microsoft’s SmartGlass, Ubisoft’s strong showing and Nintendo’s lack of direction. I agree with almost everything he says.
Gamasutra editor-in-chief Kris Graft:
If you witnessed E3 as an intelligent enthusiast of video games, you realized the sad truth: The joy is dead, delight is gone. Joy and delight just aren’t worth the monetary investment anymore for big-budget games. Joy and delight are replaced by “I fucked your shit up, and I’m a bad-ass, let’s crack open a Dew.” It took all of these games in one place for me to finally, reluctantly, admit that this is what triple-A video games are now. At least that’s how E3 and triple-A game publishers apparently want to portray the world of video games. Are you not entertained?