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by Published on August 29th, 2012 22:08- Categories:
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With few expecting a giant gaming leap at launch, what may matter most is not what you buy but how you buy it, says Johnny Minkley
Sony Computer EntertainmentSony Computer Entertainment is a Japanese videogame company specialising in a variety of areas in the...
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With not a great deal of note happening in the arid console space this summer, gossiping about next-gen consoles has proved an irresistibly fertile way of passing the time at industry gatherings.
It'll be a "quantum leap", Alan Wake developer Remedy chirruped excitedly to this site last week. Which was in stark contrast to the underwhelmed shrug I got from a middleware company I chatted to off the record at Gamescom, familiar with both Orbis and Durango.
Seven years on from the launch of Xbox 360, the first thing to say is it had bloody better be a "quantum leap" from the creaking innards of today's systems. The issue, naturally, isn't that the tech clearly will be an order of magnitude more powerful - it's how platform holders and software publishers can articulate this and "sell" the next-gen vision to spoilt-for-choice consumers via marketing and content.
That there are mixed feelings, depending on who you speak to, about the potential of the next console cycle is hardly in doubt. With official announcements from Microsoft and Sony expected well within the next 12 months, apathy from within certain quarters of the industry itself is worrying if not altogether surprising. But what about consumers?
The HD era began with Xbox 360 as a pure gaming machine; now it's an entertainment hub that also happens to play games. Microsoft always said this generation would be about software and services, and EA now explicitly sees its games less as "products" and more as "services", with Peter Moore recently observing: "Games are turning into 365 days a year live operation experiences".
"Games are turning into 365 days a year live operation experiences".
EA's Peter Moore
As consumers become ever more tied into, and therefore get more out of, their favourite games, then, the argument for upgrading to another expensive box becomes exponentially harder to make.
With little expectation of triple-A software prices falling, all the pressure is on the hardware cost and where that will fit into a diverse market. Ever since Microsoft launched its $99 subsidised Xbox 360 trial in the US earlier this year, there's been much chin-stroking over whether this model will be adopted for next-gen systems.
The irrepressible Michael Pachter is betting that Microsoft is already tying up deals with US cable companies to offer a subsidised next-gen Xbox at a fraction of the standalone price, in exchange for signing up to something like a two-year cable/Xbox Live contract.
It's an enormously appealing proposition. And, irrespective of the details of how this might work across different territories, I'm increasingly of the view that Microsoft and Sony (Nintendo, as ever, ploughs its own furrow) can ill afford not to make it work.
The obvious example of subsidised hardware in the games space to look to is iPhone. Who buys one of those for £500 (the standalone price of the cheapest 4S)? Meanwhile, we're all comfortable these days subscribing to all sorts of related services for our entertainment, from Sky and Virgin to Napster and Spotify.
"The obvious example of subsidised hardware in the games space to look to is iPhone."
The key advantage Microsoft has over Sony here are the many, many millions of customers and credit cards it already has signed up and used to subscribing regularly to a service: Xbox Live. (Sony has the credit cards - let's not go there - but PlayStation Plus is hardly in the same league as Live).
Furthermore, while Sony has broader concerns to deal with across the whole enterprise, Microsoft has the financial clout to spend whatever it takes to help make the next Xbox a success at launch. It will presumably be encouraged here by what it achieved with Kinect. Despite widespread dismay over the price - and, hands up, I thought they were nuts to come in over £100 - the reported $500m the company splurged on messaging was enough to confer 'must buy' status upon it.
As a result, Kinect remains the fastest-selling consumer electronics product in history, beating anything even Apple has achieved. But, needless to say, its success wasn't as straightforward as chucking enough money at a problem: it also had the good fortune to appear revolutionary and represent a step change, perfectly captured by its unimprovable slogan: "You are the controller".
That the reality fell so clumsily short of the vision is beside the point: at the time it captured everyone's imagination. But what step change is the next gen likely to offer at first?
The leap to HD, though it required a not inconsiderable investment in a compatible display, was a clear point of difference last time around. Take away HD and how much better to the untrained eye did a PS3 launch title look compared with, say, PS2's God of War II?
...by Published on August 29th, 2012 21:32- Categories:
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The creative producer of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance has admitted that the collaboration between Kojima Productions and Platinum Games, two studios who are used to being granted almost complete autonomy in development of their games, is at times rather problematic, telling us: "We clash all the time."
In an interview, Kojima Productions' Yuji Korekado insists that while the two studios' fierce independence means the occasional clash of heads, it's actually going to result in a better game. When the two teams disagree, they discuss it, and come to a resolution that is, often, better than one team or the other would have come up with itself.
"Platinum Games is a studio that's very similar to Kojima Productions in that they have a very specific belief towards their game creating," Korekado, lead programmer on Metal Gear Solid 4, tells us. "They have things that they don't want to change, that they really believe in. At Kojima Productions we have the same strong feelings toward creating a better game.
"But because we are similar, when there are things that we want changed, we clash all the time. We always clash. We have to discuss."
Pressed for specifics, Korekado tells of Etsu Tamari, the KojiPro staffer who is writing the game's story, and frequently found himself at loggerheads with the game director, Platinum's Kenji Saito. The solution, Korekado explains, was to lock the pair away until they sorted it out.
"We put them in a room for three continuous days, and they discussed from morning til night what the writer wanted to create for a story and what the game director wanted to create as a game," he tells us. "And after those three days, it seemed like they had been good friends for a very long time. So we sorted that."
The first clash between the two studios came when discussing the game's setting. KojiPro originally planned for the game to take place between the events of Metal Gear Solids 2 and 4, but Platinum felt it would be too tightly restricted by having to adhere to that timeline. Korekado explains: "So we told the game director, 'We don’t have to place the game between 2 and 4; to have more freedom we were thinking it might be better just to put the story in a different time'."
The two studios are bound to clash; they're used to working alone, granted near-total autonomy by publishers who are mindful, and respectful, of their considerable abilities. What's important is that they turn those disagreements into something positive, and Korekado is adamant that they are doing precisely that.
"In the end, the motivation of both studios is to make a better product," he says. "When we collide, we can usually see what is good and what is bad in each other's ideas. And it helps us make something better.
"So as the creative producer, I think we have a lot of problems, but all these problems have given us the right direction to follow."
http://www.edge-online.com/news/meta...clash-all-time ...by Published on August 29th, 2012 21:25- Categories:
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And over 180,000 are available from Amazon's unique library.
Much like Apple's iPad dominates the tablet space, Amazon's Kindle is the king of the e-reader market, and it prides itself on providing Kindle-exclusive e-books that rivals can't touch.
The retailer says that the library is 180,000 strong, and users have bought, downloaded, or borrowed from the platform more than 100m times in less than a year.
Authors can make their books exclusive to the Amazonian e-reader by joining the Kindle Direct Publishing Select initiative, and those that joined in July earned 77 per cent more from paid sales than they did in the previous quarter.
The milestone supports Amazon's recent claim that more e-books are sold in the UK than print counterparts.
Meanwhile, Fifty Shades of Grey recently became the first e-book to ever cross one million downloads on the Kindle, stimulated by readers looking to keep their penchant for sauce a secret.
http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/read/...nloaded/019180 ...by Published on August 29th, 2012 14:47- Categories:
- DCEmu
An editorial at IGN discusses healthy (and unhealthy) ways to play video games. The author says that while gaming is a perfectly legitimate hobby, it needs to be approached with moderation and an understanding of what you get out of playing. Without understanding your motivations and compulsions, it's quite possible to play video games in a way that's detrimental. From the article:"Games, especially modern ones, revolve around the principle that if you put the time in, you will be rewarded. Many gamers claim to not understand how anyone could put up with grinding in a video game. But grinding is comforting. Grinding tells us that, no matter what, if you keep playing you'll become more powerful. ... The real world does not operate this way. You can 'grind' at a job for 10 years and still be laid off. You can 'grind' at your physical health your whole life but if you switch to an unhealthy lifestyle you will immediately begin losing this progress. ... It's important for gamers to have mastery of their own mind. Are you grinding out a level in World of Warcraft because you're truly enjoying the experience, or are you doing it to replace missing feelings of self-worth that you don't want to confront? Do you revel in your virtual successes to avoid the uncomfortable internal dialogue regarding of your abandoned gym routine? Are you playing games because you're having fun, or because you have an unconfronted fear of failure?
http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/0...-right-reasons ...by Published on August 29th, 2012 14:24- Categories:
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Developer says the future of gaming is in the palm of your hand.
Games publisher EA continues to make its fondness of mobile known, admitting it will become digital-only in the future, a snub to its video game heritage.
Meanwhile, recent data from PopCap shows that 125m people use handheld games devices in the UK and US, with most of the mobile play taking place indoors.
SuperData also found that the mobile games market is set to be worth £4.8bn by 2015, a near threefold growth on today.
Mobile games studio Neon Play crossed the 40m downloads milestone yesterday, achieved in two years, and CEO Oli Christie reckons consoles are on the way out.
Christie, said: "In less than five years, your iPhone or your iPad will be console-quality in terms of the graphics and processing power…You won’t need a console any more.
http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/read/...onsoles/019177 ...by Published on August 28th, 2012 23:56- Categories:
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Microsoft and Sony's next generation of consoles could struggle if they don't fully embrace free-to-play gaming, says Crytek's Cevat Yerli - although he admits the two platform holders face some tough decisions if they're to pursue such a model.Yerli has bullishly stated that Crytek is itself embracing a free-to-play future, an area it's testing with some degree of success with Warface. After production has completed on Crysis 3, Ryse and Homefront 2 - the game being developed by Crytek's UK studio - all of the company's games will utilise the business model."I hope for them that they do," Yerli said when asked if a free-to-play model would be at the heart of Microsoft and Sony's next consoles. "If they don't then it's going to be a tough time for them."It's quite a challenge for those companies logically because they rely so heavily on retail to sell the hardware and to sell the games where the margin for retail really is," Yerli continued. "If they would forgo their entire retail business and go digital free-to-play, then they would not be selling any more Xboxes as well. There's a chicken and egg thing there. And they have to make radical calls."Microsoft has resisted introducing free-to-play games on the Xbox 360 in the past, while Sony, with the likes of CCP's Dust 514, has proven more receptive to the idea. Yerli's already said that he's in talks with both platform holders about getting Warface, the free-to-play first person shooter, to consoles, although he acknowledges the perception that such games have."We know that free-to-play games have a bad image," he said. "They have a bad reputation - it's pay to win, it's low quality. I completely get that, but we are making free-to-play that's high quality. It's CryEngine 3, it's a big investment."Yerli's beliefs hold up - Digital Foundry recently investigated Warface and came away impressed with a free-to-play game that boasted triple-A production values.And Yerli's adamant that Crytek will stick to its guns when it comes to free-to-play - and that the kind of social gaming that implies would, for example, be a part of any future instalments in the Crysis series beyond the one that's planned for early next year."We will do a single-player esque experience," Yerli said when asked if Crytek would produce another single-player experience. "But it will be for you and your friends together. Single player with two players! Story-rich experiences for at least two people. The premise I can say clearly is that free-to-play is going to be part of any business model we have going forward."...
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...e-free-to-playby Published on August 28th, 2012 22:37- Categories:
- DCEmu
After watching this video, a lot of you are going to wish you were Dave Carter, who works at the University of Michigan's Computer and Video Game Archive. He deals with video games, from the oldest hand-helds and consoles to the newest Xbox and PC games and controllers. A lot of his time is no doubt spent fixing things that break, finding obscure games, being generally helpful, and making sure nobody breaks the games, consoles, computers, controllers, and even board games and memorabilia in the collection. But still, this has got to be the ultimate job for a game junkie. And it looks like a great place to visit, because this museum is part of a library, and just as a library encourages you to pick up books and read them, this is a place where you can actually play the games, not just stare at a ColecoVision console in a display case. You can play in a cubicle or, for games that take some space, there are a couple of big gaming rooms with soft-looking sofas and big flat-screen TVs, where you can jump up and down like crazy while you're doing Guitar Hero or using a Wii or Kinect. And if you can't make it to Ann Arbor, MI, there's an informative blog that's all about video games past and present that's must reading for almost any serious gamer.
http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/0...-archive-video
...by Published on August 28th, 2012 12:53- Categories:
- DCEmu
Sleeping Dogs is number one in the UK all-formats software chartfor a second week, providing further vindication for Square Enix's decision to pick up the publishing rights to a game Activision had cancelled.
The continued success of United Front's open-world brawler means THQ's Darksiders II can only enter the chart at number two.Transformers: Fall Of Cybertron is the top ten's sole other new entry, making its debut at five.
01. Sleeping Dogs (Square Enix)
02. Darksiders II (THQ)
03. New Super Mario Bros 2 (Nintendo)
04. London 2012: The Official Videogame (Sega)
05. Transformers: Fall Of Cybertron (Activision)
06. Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes (Warner Bros)
07. Ghost Recon: Future Soldier (Ubisoft)
08. Mario & Sonic At The London 2012 Olympic Games (Sega)
09. Batman: Arkham City (Warner Bros)
10. Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7 (Warner Bros)
http://www.edge-online.com/news/slee...ds-uk-top-spot ...by Published on August 27th, 2012 22:00- Categories:
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A while back i set up an automated site that posts the latest in releases from China, the site features Games, Consoles, Accessories and the very latest in gadgets from Android Tablets to Phones to Glasses that make you think you are watching a 52 inch TV.
Today ive done some tidying up on the site and everything seems much better.
Check out Chinese Gadgets and Games here --> http://hongkong-gaming.dcemu.co.uk/ ...by Published on August 27th, 2012 20:48- Categories:
- DCEmu
This isnt a newspost and for many not interesting, but this week thanks to a double slashdotting we reached 7500 Online at one time. Our Record for the site was an impressive 8,960 Online back in February 2007 and if memory serves me right it was when the Wii was cracked for Homebrew.
This week we got the viewers because of a Mario Game on the Atari 2600 and also an Ebay Auction for Final Fantasy 2 (english version).
Whilst we will always be a Homebrew site that stays on the right side of the law, we have always posted about the commercial side of things (we all buy the consoles for the games first then homebrew right?) and at the moment, because Homebrew has gone very quiet the commercial side is vastly more noticeable with news.
Though the network isnt in the greatest of shapes, the hacking early last year and a couple of times before and server crashes wiped out our downloads but we are still here and everything is searchable should you need it again, infact if you want a specific file then post in this forum and ill personally do my best to find the download required.
This week we have installed new software so that this forum stays family friendly and we hope you can all remember that.
Those of you who have news, releases or even reviews can do so in our News forum here --> http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/for...utorials-Forum
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Catherine: Full Body’s English translation for the Vita