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?

The First Nail?

I’ve said before that Sony had better hope that MGS4 and FFXIII don’t get delayed.  Well, so much for that.  MGS4 was just delayed to Q2 2008 “in order to make further improvements to the quality of the game and provide even greater enjoyment for more customers worldwide.”  That means the earliest it could come would be April 2008 (if my calculations are correct, despite Kotaku suggesting March), although my (admittedly arbitrary) guess is that it will actually come out closer to June, or be delayed again until closer to the holiday season (if they’re any indication, both MGS2 and 3 launched in mid-November, and MGS1 launched at the end of September).

Sony has already had to excise backwards compatibility and slash the price of their PS3 $200 within the first year of launch.  They’ve just doubled their projection for losses in their game unit to over 100 billion yen for the year. Having perhaps their biggest potential system seller delayed even a little as the 360 and Wii continue to pick up steam can’t be making them feel any better.

What can Sony do?

Aegies over at Eat-Sleep-Game has an interesting analysis of whether the rumored $400 40GB PS3 can actually help save Sony from the Gamecube’s fate. I generally agree with his points, which are summarized below:

1) A strong software lineup for the 360, combined with more reliable hardware, will be difficult for Sony to match.  There are still no real killer apps for the system, and several PS3 exclusives, like Unreal Tournament 3, have been delayed until next year.

2) Sony hasn’t been able to demonstrate a significant technological advantage for the PS3 over the 360.  In fact, many multi-platform games have so far shown the opposite, and come out substantially later than the 360 version.

3) The cheaper PS3s continue to actually remove features, such as backwards compatibility, which would potentially be a huge asset to the 120M+ PS2 owners in the world.

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PS3 is the new Gamecube

According to a Gamepro analysis (via Kotaku), the PS3 is on track to sell worse than the Gamecube, assuming it continues to sell as horribly as it has.  Over their respective first 10 months available, the Gamecube actually sold 22% more units than the PS3.  Considering Sony’s huge advantage in the last generation, this is obviously a huge problem for them.  Apparently, PS2 owners are either not upgrading or are moving to another system.  Almost a year into the launch with no standout killer app and games still being delayed due to “technical difficulties”, I still wonder whether they should’ve just taken Gabe Newell’s advice.  After all, it does almost seem like the PS3 launch last year was sort of unnecessary, given the PS2’s huge market and the PS3’s obvious lack of games this year.  Sure, giving Microsoft a 2-year “head start” in this generation, particularly after Halo 3, could’ve easily been a disaster as well, but if they were able to continue leveraging the PS2 for profit while actually preparing a reasonable launch lineup at a price people were willing to pay instead of what they did, I have to imagine that would’ve been better for them in the long run.  Although I suppose there were even other factors at play as well which may have made the launch unavoidable.

In any case, will cheaper 40GB PS3s and a couple promising titles this year be able to jumpstart the PS3 back to life in the face of the 360’s Halo 3 juggernaut and the Wii’s overall phenomenal success?

All I can say is that Sony had better hope Konami and Square finish up MGS4 and FFXIII as quickly as possible and avoid the “technical difficulties” that are plaguing just about every other developer.  If they come too late, even they may not be enough to save the PS3 from the same fate as the Gamecube.

Shake Shake Shake your controller yourself if you want rumble

In yet another baffling move, Sony has announced the Dual Shock 3 will be available in Japan at the end of this year and in the US in “Early ‘08″.  Of course, several games will actually support “rumble” before the end of this year, including Haze and supposedly Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (if I remember reading some TGS impressions correctly).

No, rumble isn’t the most important feature in the world, but it can be an effective addition to a game nonetheless.  The fact that these games will be available and support rumble before we even have the ABILITY to utilize it is frustrating.  Certainly, the games can still function just fine without them, but its unlikely I’ll go back and play either of them again after the Dual Shock 3 becomes available just so I can have rumble.  So I basically have the choice of playing a sort of “incomplete” game or waiting to play the games until I can buy a Dual Shock 3 controller.  Is this really the kind of choice Sony can afford to give its potential customers right now?

I really don’t get what’s so difficult. Unlike software, a controller requires virtually no localization (just an instruction manual).  Why would it be so difficult to release the controller in its biggest market (the US) at the same time as Japan?  I have a couple theories:

1) Not enough supply.  This theoretically shouldn’t be an issue, as Sony claimed the tech inside the DS3 is the same as that inside the DS2.  However, reports from TGS seem to suggest that the tech is at least a little better in the DS3.  This could, forever reason, cause delays in getting enough supply together for a multi-region near-simultaneous launch.

2) Sony already has way too much unsold stock in stores as is for both consoles and extra SIXAXIS controllers, all sporting the original SIXAXIS design.  Sony would rather sell the rest of these out of date controllers to unsuspecting people first before starting to package in the newer DS3.

Multiple Configurations

I have to agree with this PtB post on multiple PS3 configurations.  And this doesn’t just apply to Sony.  There’s room in the world for a “Basic” and “Premium” version of each console.  Other than that, stop wasting our time.

What If They Threw A Game Show, And Nobody Came?

Via Kotaku, apparently attendance at the Tokyo Game Show has dropped a bit: only 64k visitors came on the first day this year, compared with some 85k gamers from last year.  Kotaku attributes this to the fact that Nintendo is forgoing the show this year; the hypothesis seems reasonable, since the Wii and DS are the hot things on the market at the moment and Sony can’t carry the show itself (the 360, of course, is a non-factor). 

I’m a little hesitant to start drawing conclusions based on a single day’s worth of data, but if there is a discrepancy, it brings two things to mind: first, that Nintendo is definitely successful enough this generation to dictate its own rules - why give free publicity to Sony when it can throw its own conference and have people show up? - and second, that it’s quite impressive Sony can draw 75% of last year’s audience considering how relatively unsuccessful the PS3 and PSP have been on a global scale thus far.  That may say more about Japanese tastes than the companies per se, but still: don’t count them out yet.

Manhunt 2: Blurry Mess Edition

IGN has now had a chance to play the M-rated version of Manhunt 2 and check out the differences from it’s original AO form. The results are slightly disappointing, although not all that unexpected.

Apparently the gameplay mechanics are unchanged, but some of the more anticipated “features” of the game have been changed. For instance, the infamous sequence where the player could actually use pliers to pull out a victim’s testicles has been completely removed. As IGN notes, this perhaps isn’t a huge deal as it only effects one sequence out of many throughout the game.

The far bigger deal is the fact that the “death” sequences are now “blurred” out. IGN writes:

“The biggest and most disappointing change relates to the major death strikes. When Danny sneaks up on an enemy, gamers can hold the A button down, at which point they will be given the option to pick from three different murder animations (on Wii, they get to act them out with Nintendo’s motion-sensitive controllers). In the AO-rated build of Manhunt 2, we could clearly see these over-the-top and horrific animations. In the M-rated version, Rockstar has added both an extreme blur effect and in most cases darkened the graphics so that it is nearly impossible to make any sense of what is going on. Players will be able to see character movement, blood splatters, and sometimes they may catch a glimpse of an identifiable action (for example, Danny jamming nails into the legs of a chair-bound opponent), but mostly it’s guesswork - a garbled, motiony mess that’s far less satisfying. This truth is doubly unfortunate because both everything else is unchanged and because these death strikes are what gamers will want to work toward; they’re the pay off for a job well done, but now the pay off is not nearly as rewarding.”

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If Only Every Game Came with a “Reviewers Guide” (Update)

This has to be one of the most absurd things I’ve seen. Sony is sending out a “Reviewer’s Guide” for Lair to various media outlets. Let’s ignore the fact that the outlets have already reviewed the game weeks ago… What exactly am I supposed to think if I receive a “Reviewers Guide” for a game?

To me it says, “We know this game is shitty, but if you play it JUST RIGHT it can be fun!”

Here’s the thing with games, or for that matter, any media. When it’s in my possession, I get to do with it what I like. I can read a manual that tells me how to play, ok… but if I don’t like it, then I don’t need the developer/director/writer telling me “No no no… you just didn’t play/watch/read it right. What you really need to do is…”

It kind of reminds me of this old Penny Arcade comic where Kevin Smith defended his crappy movie “Jersey Girl” by saying it “wasn’t for critics.” Guess what? Critics are people too, just like non-critics, and they can watch a movie, read a book, and watch a movie however they want. We don’t need a guide to tell us how we should use your media to have fun as long as you *gasp* actually make it fun.

*UPDATE* If you want to see the whole thing, Destructoid has it here.