Microsoft Gains First Strike and Scores a Critical Hit!

You’ve probably heard by now that one of Sony’s biggest theoretical exclusives, Final Fantasy XIII, is coming to the 360.  To be honest, even before I owned a PS3, this was never a huge concern of mine.  To begin with, I knew the game was basically never coming out.  And as much as I liked Final Fantasy IV, VI and VII, I never really got too into any of the other ones (got close to the end in VIII, barely started IX, played a little bit of X… X-2 and XII are on my shelf unplayed).

But, yeah… I know there are a lot of Final Fantasy fans out there and this will make probably half of them ecstatic, a quarter furious, and a quarter who don’t care.  Either way, this is, at the very least, a major psychological blow to Sony and a big coup for Microsoft.  A friend of mine was literally trying to sell his 360 to pick up a PS3 MGS4 package because he figured he could play MGS4 and (what he most wanted) Final Fantasy XIII whenever it finally came out.  Based on this news, that is no longer going to happen and he is keeping his 360.

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E3 Sneaks Up Next Week

Kotaku was nice enough to point out that E3 was coming up next week and while I’m sure we’ll hear more about games like Gears of War 2, Resistance 2, Far Cry 2, Rock Band 2, and Killzone 2 (that’s a lot of 2’s), I’m actually more interested in seeing if we’ll get more information about games that we DON’T already have some decent information about.  So, here’s my list of things, divided by platform, that I’d like to see next week (and that I have no clue if they’ll be shown or even exist):

• God of War 3 (PS3)
• New Ico/Shadow of the Collosus team game (PS3)
• Heavy Rain (PS3)
• New Zelda (Wii)
• New Nintendo IP (Wii)
• Peter Jackson Halo collaboration (360)
• Amplitude 2 (Non-Rock Band Harmonix game, perhaps the name “Wavelength” would be more appropriate) (Multi)

Admittedly, there are other games I’d still like to see more about (including the ones listed before, and others such as Resident Evil 5), but these are ones that we basically have hardly any information on, or don’t even know if they exist, and would make great surprises for E3.  What does everyone else think?

The Difference Between Fads And Trends

The title of this post is slightly misleading, but I think that Microsoft and Sony may be on the verge of compounding a major strategic error with another strategic error.  The jumping-off point for this post is a New York Times article that reviews GDC speeches by the major manufacturers and developers, with the nominal topic being social gaming.

Naturally, there’s a hagiographic section on Nintendo’s prescience in identifying the gaming casual market, and highlighting how successful that strategy has been.  But I’d like to focus a bit more on the competition’s response.  Read the rest of this entry »

How Not to Learn a Lesson

You’d think that with all the controversy surrounding media hype, inaccurate previews, publisher pressure and the internet’s eagle-eyed denizens who, among other things, are able to discern the number of pixels actually used in games, that publishers would wise up about releasing doctored gameplay photos of their games.

You’d think that this would be even more the case with Guerilla, the team responsible for Killzone 2, since they were already criticized for trying to pass off a CG trailer as gameplay footage back in 2005 and actually given somewhat of a reprieve this year when they showed a real gameplay trailer that actually came somewhat close (according to media reports anyway) to matching the fake 2005 one.  But some people apparently just don’t learn from their mistakes, as Guerilla has admitted that recently released screenshots are “the tiniest bit touched up.”  Here’s the comparison shot provided:

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Double-Facing Kotaku On The PSP

I’m going to both agree and disagree with Kotaku (or more specifically, with Mark Wilson) simultaneously.  Jason Chen of Gizmodo wrote a column entitled “Why the PSP Might Overtake the DS.”  It was, as Wilson points out, an interesting variation of Xeno’s Paradox - well-reasoned, articulate, and deeply flawed.  I’ll provide an overview of the article, then discuss why the entire conversation is off-base.

Chen’s post contains 8 pieces of evidence for the PSP’s ultimate domination.  I’ll let you read them in detail or yourself, but they all fall into one of three categories:

• Sales momentum: The PSP has sold 1M units in Japan in two months, sales for the PSP are up while the DS’s are down, and the PSP has sold as many units as the PS2.
• Product quality: The PSP has more highly-rated games, as well as more add-ons and media interactivity.

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Riddle Me This…

How exactly can SCEA state that they don’t disclose console unit sales until NPD releases them, while providing percentage increase figures over a previously disclosed figure?  Moreover, it seems quite odd to dispute a competitor’s claims while not providing evidence of that claim.

Does that mean Microsoft is correct?  By no means.  But it would’ve made sense to wait to prove it.

Killing The Messenger

It’s fashionable (for obvious reasons) to beat up on Sony, but I don’t know that it’s fair to blame their advertising agency for the PS3’s troubles.  The issue, as always, has been much more of an internal marketing problem - primarily around feature inclusion and pricing - rather than an ad-based issue.

Can you really blame TBWA/Chiat/Day for failing to sell a product that was, barring some obvious design and price problems, practically able to sell itself?  I think you’re deluding yourself if you try to argue that the PS3 was going to fly off the shelves… if the agency had just come up with some better advertising.

Fun With Statistics, Part IV

You have to love a press release that names percentages rather than whole numbers.  For example, this Sony release on the sales of PS3s this Black Friday vs. last year’s.  When you have nice round numbers like 178%, you know things are looking good.

Square Struggles, Sony Cries (Update)

It seems like I’m reporting a new one of these every week now.

Destructoid is reporting that at Square’s recent yearly fiscal meeting they announced that Final Fantasy XIII may not make it out until 2009. Apparently, they are having trouble developing the “White Engine”, which is supposed to power all of their PS3 development.

I can’t say I’m extremely surprised with the news, as we’ve heard next to nothing about the game since the first “footage” of the game was released. But once again, another huge title for the PS3 looks like it’s being pushed back to the point of what could be near irrelevance. By the time it comes out, Microsoft will probably already be talking about its next console and we’ll probably start hearing rumors about the next Playstation and Wii. Obviously, it’ll still be a big release, but with rumors swirling about the NEXT system, it doesn’t seem like it will have nearly the impact that it could have had if released on time.

As a side note, it’s still unbelievable to me how many companies have had trouble creating game engines for the PS3. Valve, Epic Games, Bethesda, Ubisoft. Midway, and EA have all experienced issues either releasing games on time or getting their engines up to par with the 360 version. How could Sony made such an impossible to develop for console? The only company that seems to be able to do amazing things with the hardware is Insomniac. If only Sony had several companies like them, then they wouldn’t have to worry as much about their big exclusive 3rd party games not releasing on time.

*Update* - In yet another exclusive (and unsurprising) delay, Joystiq is reporting that Haze has been delayed until next year. Although Haze doesn’t have nearly the following (or hype) that a game like Final Fantasy has, Sony still seems to have an epidemic of delays on its hands. Will Little Big Planet make it in Q1 next year?

What happens if my 60GB PS3 Breaks?

Has this been addressed yet?  With Sony having phased out all of the fully backwards compatible PS3s in under a year, I’m starting to worry about what happens if (when?) my PS3 fails.

Already this generation I’ve had problems with my 360 (bad USB port) and Wii (stray pixel issue) that required me to send my system back to the manufacturers for repair (in the 360’s case) or replacement (in the Wii’s case).  Maybe the next generation of hardware will take reliability seriously, but since this generation basically hasn’t, I’d at least like my repair processes to go smoothly.

My PS3, since I’ve had it, already makes strange “clicking” sounds when I’m running something on it.  It doesn’t quite sound like hard drive clicking, but it’s still a bit worrisome.  The only reason I haven’t done anything about it yet is because my games have seemed to work just fine (with an occasional freeze, unfortunately something else common to this generation anyway), until just recently.  During one of my Ratchet and Clank Future sessions my audio and video became seriously out of synch during cutscenes. There is a stutter (like, “R-r-r-Ratchet” instead of just “Ratchet”) and then suddenly the visuals (including the lip synching) doesn’t match the audio that’s playing.   So far it’s happened only once, but I haven’t heard anyone else mention it yet as a problem with R&C, so I’m chalking it up to my PS3.

So my question is, if my currently fully backwards compatible system breaks now, will I get a fully backwards compatible system back?  Quite honestly, the biggest factor for me in buying the PS3 when I did was ensuring I had backwards compatibility.  I’d be extremely angry if they were not able to guarantee that I’d get a backwards compatible system back if I sent in my system for repair.  Hell, if they make the 40GB SKU their “main” one, I don’t even know if I’d get as big a hard drive back in the process.  Maybe Sony would send one of their new $100 PS2 consoles as a consolation for making me downgrade to an inferior version of their product, despite the fact that it still mostly defeats the purpose of having a backwards compatible system to begin with.

The removal of all backwards compatibility (after it was available initially) has to be the biggest change to a console’s capabilities during its run, especially so early in its lifetime.  The Gamecube removed its component output, which was annoying for some late adopters, but at least it could still play all the same games and component, particularly Progressive Scan capable component, was still not widely available on TVs anyway.  The PS2 Slim I believe made just a couple more PS1 games incompatible.  Other than that, can anyone else think of another supposed version of the “same” product that’s actually removed as much capability as the PS3 has now, and what exactly did that company do to support the older, more fully featured products?