06.11.12 |
Gaming |
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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.
Nintendo has lost its way
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’s SmartGlass could be big
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.)
An awkward transition period between current and next gen tech
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.
06.11.12 |
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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.)
06.08.12 |
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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.
06.08.12 |
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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?
06.06.12 |
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In the midst of all these quick E3 news snippets this week, I appreciated this longer Wired story on Epic Games and the revolutionary effect of the Unreal Engine on modern gaming:
Then something surprising happened: Kismet [a simplified event scripting tool] democratized programming. “There were people who weren’t programmers but who still wanted to create and script things,” says James Golding, senior engine programmer. In other words, some artists weren’t content simply to draw the monsters; they wanted to define how they acted as well. Kismet let them do that. “When we got them a visual system,” Golding says, “they just went completely bananas with it.” This was off-label usage, though; while it was a great secondary benefit, Kismet hadn’t been designed for this task, so it was kludgy and slow.
And thus was born Kismet 2, which again converts tedious lines of code into an interactive flowchart, complete with pulldown menus that control almost every conceivable aspect of behavior for a given in-game object. Need to determine how many bullets it will take to shatter that reinforced glass? Kismet 2 is your tool. Once behaviors are set, they can be executed immediately and edited on the fly. With Kismet 2, Epic empowers level designers—the people responsible for conceptualizing the world—to breathe life into that world directly, rather than relying on programmers to do it on their behalf.
I knew gaming engines were crazy, but not that crazy.
06.06.12 |
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Kyle Orland over at Ars Technica played NintendoLand, one of the main launch titles for the Wii U. It has some nice touches, but there’s a learning curve:
The main problem with the five NintendoLand mini-games the company is showing at E3 is that they tend to require quite a bit of explanation to understand. Take Animal Crossing: Sweet Day, a slightly tweaked version of the hide-and-seek tech demo Nintendo showed off at last year’s E3. Before we got going, a PR rep had to spend about a minute explaining how the four players with Wii Remotes are working together to collect candy, how carrying more candy slows a player down, and how to drop candy when the antagonists (controlled by the GamePad) got too close. It’s not too complicated by video game standards, but it’s far from the five-second “swing it like a tennis racquet” explanation of Wii Sports, and it’s likely enough to scare away anyone not already versed in how games work.
The short version: there’s no Wii Sports equivalent when this thing launches.
06.06.12 |
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Kotaku’s Luke Plunkett recapped the winners and losers from day two of E3. Nintendo’s Wii U hardware came out as a clear loser:
It’s got some promise, but we’ve also got some concerns. The battery on the controllers only lasts for 3-5 hours. At most. Use two pads at once and the framerate for games drops by half. Throw in the fact that nothing shown this week looks anything remotely like a “next gen” game and the Wii U as a piece of hardware isn’t off to the brightest start. At least some of the games are coming along.
Graphics that barely match the current gen XBox 360 and PS3. 3-5 hours on a charge. Not good.
06.04.12 |
Gaming |
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E3 news coverage grows at a seemingly exponential rate each year but much of it amounts to little more than regurgitated press releases. At this point there’s only a few sources I’d personally recommend. On Twitter I’ll follow analysis by Giant Bomb’s Patrick Klepek (level headed, great reporting depth) and Polygon’s Arthur Gies (highly opinionated). I’m counting on stellar video reports and recaps on Giant Bomb.
For more traditional gaming news I’m giving Polygon a try this year. I really dig the Verge style “story stream” – a bunch of related articles are thrown together in a single thread – and their heavy usage of full bleed, high resolution imagery. I have high hopes but it is their first year; if their coverage starts to lag I’ll jump to Joystiq, a mainstay of previous years.
For live blogs of the big pre-E3 press conferences (EA, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony) I’m going to start with Ars Technica. Ars has a no-nonsense, “just the facts” house style that should suit the play by play well.
Note that all of this news source speculation may be overkill: according to many experts this year’s E3 won’t generate huge news. The assumption is we’re a year before Microsoft and Sony release their next game console iterations. That translates into conservative behavior by game studios as they tackle the programming hurdles necessary for next-gen hardware. But who’s to say there won’t be some surprises?
06.02.12 |
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Unique little design stories like these totally make my day.
06.02.12 |
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Today’s console games push computing to the limit. But as fidelity and realism improve, the gaming industry demands higher quality voice acting. Troy Baker is one such voice actor heavily in demand and Joystiq looks into how he got his start. It’s an interesting read:
Around 2004, Baker “stumbled” into doing car commercials, which led to a chance encounter that would shift his entire career focus. “Since we were doing album work at the same studio, it was just right place right time. So I started doing commercial work, and met Christopher Sabat who plays Vegeta in Dragonball Z.” Soon he was cast in a slew of minor roles throughout the anime and video game world: various iterations of Dragonball Z, bit parts in Lupin III, roles in One Piece, Bloodrayne 2 and Mega Man X: Command Mission. Things started to explode, and did so with a sonic boom when he was cast as the memorable Frank Archer in Fullmetal Alchemist.