Tomb Raider: 11th Anniversary Edition

According to Tomb Raider Chronicles we won't be seeing Tomb Raider: 10th 11th Anniversary Edition until the "second half of the 2007 financial year". If their financial year ended 30 June 2006 we won't get this game until Spring or later, which is well into Tomb Raider's 11th year.

From the outside, it is difficult to discern what really happened, but I'd speculate that when someone leaked the Core Design trailer of their version of TR10AE back in June 2006, it set the current (different) project, headed by Crystal Dynamics, back at least six months. In brief, the trailer was too true to the original and the Crystal Dynamics remake took too many liberties with the source material.

Mind you, no one has seen anything of the Crystal Dynamics work, at least no one we know of outside of Eidos/SCi and Crystal Dynamics. If we presume, for now, that Crystal Dynamics was going to use the Tomb Raider: Legend engine as the basis for their remake of Tomb Raider, then it would probably have been significantly different from the original, simply because movement in TR:L is so dramatically different from that in the original game. What today's uncultured videogame pundits call the "unforgiving" or "clunky" controls of the original Tomb Raider are actually well-suited to that game's puzzles and levels. Loosely speaking, in TR:L the game is more forgiving and certain parts are designed specifically to take control of fine actions away from the player, for the sake of making things move a little more smoothly for Average Joe Gamer. If you change the controls, then you change the game. If you change the game, then you'll have to change the levels. The result cannot be Tomb Raider.

I'm dying to see just what Crystal Dynamics manages to make. My guess is that they're working to adapt their game to fit the expectations set by the trailer. Unfortunately for them, they now have to work harder than before and the results will always be compared to a trailer for a game that no one else will ever play.

--jvm at 11:51

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Lego Star Wars II for X-box 360 Tainted By Dark Side

Reported in Aeropause's comparison of the various ports of Lego Star Wars II, it seems that all the console versions of the game are largely identical in content. There is no real reason to choose the Gamecube, PS2, X-box or X-box 360 version over the others -- except for one little issue.

The current-gen versions have a feature where by paying 250,000 "Lego studs", the in-game unlock currency, you can import a save file from the first Lego Star Wars, and play through the various scenes of the Original Trilogy with any characters found from that game. LSW2 is already unreasonably awesome, but being able to fight through areas like the Mos Eisley Cantina or Jabba's Barge as Mace Windu, Darth Maul, or Yoda the Hedgehog is like icing on the cake.

But let's investigate the mechanics behind this feature. The player must collect the 250k studs, which is about three levels' worth of play, and must also have a save from the original game with the characters unlocked. This entails additional play, sure, but it also technically requires that you have played, through whatever means, the original game. This means you have paid actual money, at least to rent it, and if you have the really cool characters you've probably bought it.

Technically this is a means of rewarding players who have paid Lucasarts additional moolah. This is not an unheard-of tactic for game publishers. Many early-generation DS games unlocked extra features if the player had specific games in the GBA cartridge slot. Despite the precedent, this is still at least slightly Evil, since a player's financial outlay purchases progress in an already-bought game, but at least in LSW's case the naked greed is cloaked by gameplay. Even if you have the first game, nothing is unlocked that hasn't been unlocked before, you still have to come up with the 250,000 studs to import a save, and nothing should prevent players from finding a friend who has already gotten everything and getting a copy of his save file.

Unless, that is, you're playing the X-box 360 version. The X-box 360 never had a port of the first Lego Star Wars game. (The original X-box did, and it's one of the few working backwards-compatible games.)

So what did they decide to do with the old characters? Removing them from the game would make the 360 version notably inferior. They COULD just unlock them along with the other characters, especially since there's roughly an equal number between both games, but somehow that doesn't seem EVIL enough....

So what they decided to do was outright sell access to them, for $2.50, on the X-box Live Marketplace. The player is essentially paying real money to set that bit in his save file to allow the use of the old characters. Worse, despite that access to these characters cannot be unlocked by playing the game normally, they are still listed as a selling point on the game's info page, with no mention that extra dosh must be burnt to access them, even though the "Content from Marketplace" entry is still there.

Kotaku, it turns out, reported on the story before the game's launch, and even lauded Lucasarts for the decision, but I'm not so comfortable with it. $2.50 may not be much, but it's still another step down that slippery slope. What do you, the reader at home, think?

(Cue a half-dozen voices saying Geddoverit.)

Labels: microsoft, xbox360

--JohnH at 11:09

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Bigfoot Networks Killer NIC M1 PCI Network Adapter with a 400 MHz Network Processing Unit (NPU) - Retail at Newegg.com

That's right, folk. Only $279.99 plus shipping and handling and you, too, can have gigabit ethernet, providing your network supports it and your ISP's faucet pours that quickly. Use the "BUYKILLER" code and save $30! Mo' great info on the card.

Man, what a deal.

--ruffin at 02:14

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The dark future of microtransactions

As a GNU/Linux zealot, I used to worry that monopolistic Microsoft would lead us into a dark age of service-not-software applications, that if you didn't keep up your Microsoft Word lease then all your documents would become useless. Ah, poor Microsoft hasn't got there (yet) but Sony and Polyphony are doing their best to get videogame players accustomed to the idea for games. (Background reading.)

At least, that's one way to view the comments of Christian Svensson (of Capcom), speaking on Next-Gen.biz's latest podcast about the model being proposed for Gran Turismo HD on the PlayStation 3:

If what they [Polyphony, creators of Gran Turismo HD] could afford to do in the scope of the development time frame was to provide 100 cars and 20 tracks, and that's what you got for 60 bucks versus with this [microtransactions] model -- it does take money to repurpose all these cars, it does cost money to recreate all of these tracks -- and hopefully, God willing, with this model ongoing, post-launch this becomes a service oriented business, not an "I put s--t in a box and ship it" business.

(In all this, emphasis is mine and typos are mine from transcription.)

So there you have it. We've gone from the software being licensed to you (which has been happening for years) to the software being a service that the publisher controls. I ask again: if there is some tether from the software to a main server, what happens when they pull the plug? Are they going to keep the data and service available for all time? Or will the terms of whatever license you agree to say "We can terminate this service at a time of our choosing"?

Svensson continues:

Publishers and developers want to keep people playing their games for as long as possible. Having an extended revenue stream is part of that.

Well, that's a new one. It used to be that publishers and developers wanted you to buy a game, finish it, and then buy another. Now they want you to buy (and I use that word loosely) a game and keep paying for tidbits for that same game for as long as they can. They're service providers, like your power company or cable provider.

Then there's this:

Let's say they do it [sell the base Gran Turismo HD disc] for 19 bucks. For 19 bucks you then have theoretically forty dollars to buy a whole bunch of other content that customizes that experience for you. And then ask yourself this, seriously, when you play Gran Turismo how many cars do you really use?

That's a slippery point, and I think it needs to be addressed.

For $50 (or less) I can get Gran Turismo 4 with 700 of cars and 50 tracks. How much to get that with this new model? Way more than $50, that's for sure. Moreover, the product I bought has resale value whereas the bits on my PlayStation 3 hard drive are essentially worthless to anyone but me, and then only as long as the system (both my console and whatever online service might be required for it) is functional. I really cannot see this as a win for the consumer, unless you are a consumer for whom customization is exceptionally valuable. As you might imagine, I am not one of those consumers.

Incidentally, at this point Gary Whitta said he didn't want to be down on microtransactions too much and that he didn't "want to sound like a curmudgeon". Heh. I should get him for using my trademark. Despite that, he does make the point I just made: if what we were getting before now costs more, then the consumer is getting the shaft.

Svensson is quick to respond with what has now become a common refrain by developers and publishers alike: Making games is now more expensive than ever. In particular:

The cost of development is so much higher. You just can't compare the two [the retail-oriented model and the new online model]. So let's say they were able to manage over three iterations -- and all they were doing was iterating, let's face it -- in Gran Turismo 2 and 3 [sic] on the PlayStation 2, they were reusing content and assets that they created in the prior ones. So ultimately you got the benefit by the time you bought Gran Turismo 4 of 600 cars but those were created over the course of three different games previously. Here, coming out day one, you've got to create everything from scratch.

Got that? Creating Gran Turismo (PSOne) helped in the creation of Gran Turismo 2 (also PSOne) which helped in the creation of Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec (PlayStation 2) which really paid off in the development of Gran Turismo 4 (also PlayStation 2). But -- hold on! -- to make Gran Turismo HD you have to create everything from scratch! I realize the models and courses will need to be more detailed, and I certainly expect that of a new game, especially one known for looking beautiful, but don't try to tell me that they're starting from a completely blank slate to create this game. Something from the previous games should surely be useful in the making of Gran Turismo HD!

Maybe Svensson meant that a brand new racing game by another company could start now and build itself through microtransactions, but as a justification for the game under discussion -- Gran Turismo HD -- it just doesn't make sense. Surely Polyphony, of all companies, will be able to utilize their previous work as a stepping stone to yet another racing game.

Finally we get to monopolies where Svensson raises the possibility that these online/microtransactional models will lock players into one game in that genre:

You can't expect the same amount of content at a reasonable cost to come into a single boxed product at the same time. The only way you could do this is by a microtransactional model, number one, and numer two, the other beauty of a microtransactional model is it allows you to build barriers to entry in the category. Given enough time and a long enough head start, someone else [a competitor] is going to have to come out with 250 cars, day one, and X number of tracks in a box to compete with what's available online six months, nine months, twelve months, two years later. I'm sure that when they ship, they're going to continue offering content online as long as it makes sense.

This is really troubling. Like getting locked into an iPod and the iTunes Music Store, the idea here is to make the investment so large that you don't want to switch to a competitor's system which is incompatible with all those bits you downloaded.

Incidentally, note the ominous phrase "offering content online as long as it makes sense". That could very easiliy turn into "as long as we feel like leaving the servers on".

But back to lock-in, you can imagine Gran Turismo metastasizing from its current form into all forms of racing, simply by tweaking their current system and offering the new stuff online. Certainly makes sense: if you have a general purpose racing system, why not go ahead and offer every kind of racing people are asking for? Why not a NASCAR download pack for Gran Turismo HD? (Yes, officialy licensing would be trouble, but you get the point.) Is it illegal for you to use your monopoly on realistic racing games to enter the market of NASCAR racing games? Let me fire up Netscape and look it up.

It's all very unsettling. More than ever before, I'm wary of these new services, and I do not look forward to a day when they replace physical media.

--jvm at 00:04

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Exclusive, not exclusive

Apparently Bioshock has an exclusivity to the Xbox 360 and Windows, at least for now. On the other hand, some version of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is coming to the PlayStation 3 and the PSP.

So this is what it felt like to be a Sega Saturn owner back in 1997.

Labels: microsoft, xbox360

--jvm at 22:31

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Orbital (GBA) and Play-Asia

After Baines pointed out Soundvoyager, an aural game in the Japan-only bit Generations line for the Game Boy Advance, Ruffin and I went ahead and imported it along with another bit Generations game, Orbital. Two points:

1. I have purchased from Play-Asia three times now and I have been very pleased each time. The merchandise I've received has been in great condition and has arrived quickly. I recommend them based on that experience. If my opinion changes with future purchases, I'll say so.
2. Orbital is enjoyable. You play a moving mass in a field of other masses, each of which can affect your motion as if by gravity. Your two actions are to increase the attraction to other masses or to emit a repelling force. Through this primitive mode of navigation you can collide with and consume masses smaller than yourself, enter an orbit about larger masses, collide with larger masses and lose a life, and ultimately attract satellites of your own. The thirty levels offer increasingly complex systems of masses. As promised by the minimalist theme of the bit Generations line of games, it's simple and elegant with mostly circles for graphics. I find Orbital to be challenging and relaxing at the same time.

That is all.

--jvm at 16:40

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This comment, apparently from the author of Quest for Saddam, an fps that's been reskinned, apparently poorly, and re-released by Al-Qa'eda as Quest for Bush/The Night of Bush Capturing, gave me pause.

While I feel greatly flattered to have had my work copied by such a highly esteemed group as Al-Qa'eda, despite the slightly unnerving aspect, it is indeed in violation of intellectual property rights and we are looking into the possibility of suing Al-Qa'eda for such reasons.

Proves Matt's favorite theory. Wherever there's money, somebody's going to try and make a hat.

--ruffin at 14:55

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Post-TGS, revisiting Sony's troubles

With the Tokyo Game Show 2006 finally over, has Sony improved its standing? In my mind, only a very tiny bit. A couple months ago, I suggested a few things I felt Sony needed to do. Here's where we stand with those:

• Explain the network strategy - This is still unclear. My working assumption from here on out is that they really don't have a strategy.
  
  
• Explain backward compatibility - No news on this front, from what I've read. I fear that this will end up being a feature added on to the system sometime in 2007.
  
  
• Explain game pricing - We know Activision is looking at $60 games, and I'm guessing others will follow.
  
  
• Publicize exclusives - Ok, the ones I know I'll want are Metal Gear Solid 4 and Resistance: Fall of Man. That's pretty slim, although the Xbox certainly got by on and Halo and Halo 2 plus a few others.
  
  
• Without Blu-Ray, what does PS3 do that others can't? - No news here either.
  

I now find myself in a position that I suspect many long-time Sony users find uncomfortable: Watching a number of interesting games show up on the competition, here the Xbox 360, and hoping that they eventually show up on a Sony machine. For an entire decade PlayStation users have had the cream of the crop served up regularly, but Microsoft has disrupted that system. I don't blame Microsoft -- as far as I can tell they've been just as cutthroat as everyone else. I blame Sony for not understanding their own success , too easily taking that success for granted, and failing to understand Microsoft's successes in the passing generation.

What Xbox 360 games am I longing for? In particular, I'll offer that BioShock has some interesting features, and certainly isn't hurting for good graphics. (Rather interesting 15 minute demonstration here on Eurogamer. Found via Cathode Tan.) And certainly Dead Rising has gotten a lot of praise from the press and general gaming public alike. Will the PlayStation 3 also get Half-life 2: Episode Two, which is currently slated for the Xbox 360? I hope so, since Valve has hinted at a complete Half-life 2 package for Sony's machine, but just when and how that will happen is far from clear.

I'd been waiting until after the TGS to comment more on this subject. As I said earlier, there are some bright spots for Sony.

However, they should have used the time in the TGS spotlight to explain why they have things under control. Perhaps the reason they didn't explain is that they couldn't -- they don't have a network strategy, they don't have backward compatibility under control, they have lost key exclusives that 5 years ago would have been unquestionably on the PlayStation, and worst of all they bet the farm on Blu-Ray and that appears now to have been a horrible choice.

Labels: microsoft, ps3, sony, xbox360

--jvm at 23:19

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Heavy Rain tech demo from E3 2006

As I do more combing through Tokyo Game Show 2006 videos, I ran into this technology demo from E3 2006 for a game called Heavy Rain which is slated for release on the PlayStation 3. It shows a virtual actress trying out for a role in Heavy Rain and despite some glitchy mouth animations and odd modelling around the jaw, it's effective. Regrettably, it says absolutely nothing about the game itself. I sure hope Quantic Dream, the developer, puts this technology to good use and makes a game as interesting as this demo.

There is some strong language toward the end, just so you know.

Heavy Rain technology demo trailer on YouTube.

--jvm at 00:46

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Sony's best showing so far

I downloaded a whole pile of trailers to watch, and I finally saw two games that make me a tiny bit excited for Sony's post-PlayStation 2 era: Resistance: Fall of Man for the PlayStation 3 and Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops for the PlayStation Portable.

Resistance presents an alternate history of the mid-twentieth century in which a horde of malevolent creatures -- mutants or aliens, not sure which -- stream out of Russia and across Europe. The Brits make a fight of it on their island nation, and the player appears to assume the now-familiar first-person shooter role of savior super-soldier.

From what I've seen, the game mixes parts of Doom 3's scary corridor crawling with wide-open squad-based combat through urban landscapes, providing the player with both conventional and alien weaponry. Other than looking very sharp, I think what attracts me to this game is the apocalyptic theme. This isn't aliens on Mars. This isn't just a Black Mesa incident. This is the end of humanity. Perhaps it's the uncertainty I feel about the times I live in, but I'm ready to go toe-to-toe with some clearly marked bad guys, plug some nasty, fang-lined pie holes with well-placed explosive rounds, and save the world along the way.

Oh, and the trailer features an air raid siren. As a recovering Silent Hill player, air raid sirens still make me clench up in fear.

The other promising game is Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops. I'm still not sure how this will be played, precisely, but as long as it's not Metal Gear Acid, I'm willing to give it a look. What really attracts me is that the storyline appears to fill in a key era in the Metal Gear timeline: what happens to Big Boss after Metal Gear Solid 3 but before the events in the first Metal Gear. If you're familiar at all with the Metal Gear stories and characters, you'll be intrigued by the likes of Roy Campbell's first meeting with Big Boss. Putting a piece of the Metal Gear canon on the PSP is sure to sell systems to Metal Gear fans who don't yet have that handheld system.

The only thing left to do is make the game play as well as the trailer looks.

Resistance: Fall of Man trailer on YouTube.

Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops trailer on YouTube.

--jvm at 21:43

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How do you know your ape has jumped the shark?

He's in a kart racing game.Oh, sure, it might surprise us. But in your heart of hearts, doesn't this seem like the end?

--jvm at 01:41

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MGS:DGN doesn't need a sequel

Apparently the Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel is getting a sequel. I hope they consider actually making the new one entertaining, because the first one was painfully bad. It had a horrible interface. It had nothing new to say, since it's the same story as Metal Gear Solid. It was boring item collection mixed with storytelling, and that simply wasn't fun. What a waste.

--jvm at 10:49

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I'm not real sure how I feel about this quite yet:

We've got some really great ideas for iPod games if Apple will open up an iPod SDK to developers -- everything from doing handheld specific branded games, like what we've done with Tony Hawk Pro Skater and Call of Duty 2 for PocketPC, to some unique and new gameplay mechanics that integrate with the music already on your iPod" added Aspyr's [Glenda] Adams.

Essentially long-time Mac game makers want to know 1.) Why they didn't get to write the first iPod games, since most of the new games were not created by Apple, and 2.) Why there's no SDK for them to start doing so now.

It would seem part of the answer's pretty obvious. Aspyr and friends don't have an uber-name brand to offer, like Pac-Man or Tetris, the latter probably being the game for portable players. I know it sold quite a few original Game Boys to quite a few nonstandard gamers. Many of the other games, short of Texas Hold 'Em, are similar crossover games, and even that appeals to the non-twitch gamer. They're not exactly like Tony Hawk Pro Skater, one that Adams suggested as an iPod possibility to MacWorld.

I wonder if games written to the open source iPod interfaces (here's one) would give them a good proving ground for making great games. Also wonder if these things are being written in assembler, or if there's much in the way of APIs for iPod gaming; the second being required for the SDK these companies want to be worth much.

In any event, this is just another example of the gestalts/synergies/[catchphrase here] of building atop the binary medium. It's now cheaper to provide music with binary data decoded with generic processors than any other setup, and whaddya know, games just happen to be developed in a similar fashion! Voila. Reeses.

Labels: apple

--ruffin at 16:03

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Digital Distribution

People now use "digital distribution" to mean "online distribution". It makes no sense to me. Other than type-in programs in the likes of Compute! magazine, when did we ever use analog distribution for games?

In the future, I hope new intellectual properties will be digitally distributed at competitive price points....

--jvm at 09:55

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Say what?

Some responses to statements made in the podcast yesterday.

• jvm: "That would have been the Jaguar, I think, with the last pack-in [game]."
  
  Wrong, wrong, wrong. At least the Sega Saturn was later, with Virtua Fighter in the box. I think, other than specially branded console packages (like the Gran Turismo-branded PlayStation 2 package) that might well have been the last pack-in console game, certainly at the launch.
  
  I'll happily accept further correction if someone knows of a more recent pack-in game, especially at a console's launch.
  
  
• Gary Whitta: "We'd all like to see more sex in games. I know I would."
  
  Ok, I'll say it. No, I wouldn't. I mean, if we're talking about more Playboy Game or Riana Rouge, then I can do without, thanks. If we're talking sexy, that's another thing entirely. Lara almost had it right, and Eva in Metal Gear Solid 3 was really quite fun.
  
  But we all want to see more sex in games? I'm not sold yet.
  
  
• Colin Campbell: "That's the nature of content nowadays. That publishers and consumers to a certain extent assume that it has a limited life [...] and that the music that I'm listening to now I may well not be listening to in five years time and it doesn't matter that I don't have such and such album in a hard form. I personally have no respect for the boxes, the discs, and all that stuff that I have to buy at retail. I'll be perfectly happy for everything to be downloadable over the internet." (my emphasis, obviously)
  
  Man, where to start? First of all, I have a peculiar attachment to the boxes and manuals and catalogs and all the ephemera packed with each game. So Colin and I couldn't be starting further apart. But as a consumer, I am not thinking of the games I buy as limited lifetime anything. I hope, as long as possible, to be playing Atari 2600 games right alongside my PlayStation 3 games.
  
  And if everything were available on the internet, that'd be one thing, but it isn't. And things that were online are gone. Someday Amazon may not provide you with a download of those items in your Digital Library or whatever it is they call the electronic items that come with some purchases. Or StarROMs may not still be around to provide you with updated, licensed copies of the ROMs you already bought from them when MAME changes the format. (Hint: They aren't around anymore, and some of the ROMs they sold initially need to be in a different format.)
  
  It is true that once online, many things appear to live forever, but it's not a sure thing. I can think of a couple of things that I haven't been able to find that used to exist.

That's it. Now I'm off to play Angband for a bit.

--jvm at 21:13

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Next-Gen.biz podcast

I was asked to join in the Next-Gen.biz podcast this week. I can't bring myself to listen to the finished product, Next-Gen.biz Podcast Episode #2, but you can and then leave comments here. The producer, Jeremy Williams, made a comment after we finished recording along the lines of "I think it was good to have a bit of disagreement in the podcast". I think everyone looked in my direction at that point, through their respective Skype clients.

Addendum: Ruffin helpfully suggested that I might comment on the anti-Valve comment I made, so I will. Valve's succeeded on the back of a pile of servers being run by the public, and over half of them (for a long time) were GNU/Linux servers running the server that Valve put out for just that purpose. However, they never bothered to port their client to GNU/Linux for those helpful GNU/Linux people to play the game with. It's not that a port was impossible -- we know for sure that a nearly fully functional client was ready to go for MacOS at one point, using OpenGL as you'd use on GNU/Linux. With the advent of Steam you've got a new GNU/Linux server for the Valve games that knows how to talk to the Steam service, but according to Ryan Gordon, that isn't actually a Steam client. They've done the bare minimum to avail themselves of the GNU/Linux community without actually giving that community a game to play. Compared to Epic or id Software, they're parasites. If they ran their own servers, like Xbox Live servers are run by Microsoft, that wouldn't bother me one bit. It is, after all, their game. But asking for my help and then shunning me is too much. See my Linux User's Lament at Curmudgeon Gamer Classic for a longer rant.

Sorry all you freedom lovers, but it appears they don't provide an Ogg Vorbis version, just MP3. You can at least get it through iTunes, a direct-download, and some in-browser player.

Posting has been light. Last night I was looking at topics for the podcast and Tuesday night I was grading like mad. Tonight...tonight...maybe I'll have time to actually play a game. Maybe Sound Voyager and Orbital will come in...

Labels: linux

--jvm at 06:03

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My Favorite Game Trailers

I enjoy really well-made trailers, whether for movies for games. I think these three are noteworthy. I'd be curious to know what favorites other people have.

1. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots - There are so many things packed into this trailer. The monologue itself is mesmerizing, with a big handful of interesting ideas -- nanomachines in soldiers preventing them from shooting their commanders, global conflicts run by corporations, biomechanical military "creatures" who massacre a group of humans and then appear to defecate on the battlefield. Kojima's vision for a possible future is striking and, like a good tease, leaves me wanting to see more as soon as possible. The trailer also demonstrates the kind of technological power that Sony wants the public to associate with the PlayStation 3.
   
   See it here (Quicktime). Or just hit any of the "15 minute" trailer links here.
   
   
2. Silent Hill 2 - Before this game came out, I remember watching this trailer numerous times and trying to figure out what the pieces all meant. It's all there: an ominously sick cough, a man carrying a woman's limp body in his arms, a young woman staring at the knife she's holding, bizarre creatures with grotesque movements, and the odd bits of dialogue ("I'm not your Mary"). Having played through the game essentially twice, I now watch the trailer to revisit the odd mixture of emotions I had while playing. Certainly one of the most mature games I've ever played -- in the real sense of the word, not the ESRB rating sense. And, like the original Silent Hill before it, the theme music is essential to nailing the tone.
   
   See it here.
   
   
3. Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War - This is a game I haven't played, but the trailer has lots of little bits that intrigue me. The introduction about the three types of aces is a nice hook, I think. Then cut among the bits of combat you'll see a whole cast of characters flash by in the middle of the trailer. I want to play the game just to see who they are and how they fit into a game that is, essentially, an air combat arcade game. The footage is well cut for the energetic music track. Then everything comes to a head at the end with the narrator giving one last line, an unfinished thought, perhaps the beginning of an epic story.
   
   See it here.

Runners up would be "The Friends You'll Make" for Liberty City Stories, "I'm your brother - You can trust me" for Vice City Stories, and the E3 2006 teaser trailer for Halo 3.

--jvm at 16:52

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Costikyan: GameTap doomed

So Greg Costikyan (of Manifesto Games) rants a bit about the game market, pricing, and GameTap -- all topics guaranteed to get my attention. Let me see if I can summarize, briefly:

• Games don't spoil with time, as fruit do - The retail market is geared this way, however, so games go from premium price to bargain bin as they age. Online games, however, can sell for a fixed (lower) price for years.
• PC market shinking, online market growing - The retail model is the wrong one for online distribution. There are many competing models for online distribution, and one or more of them will ultimately succeed and replace retail PC distribution.
• GameTap model is bad (for Turner and publishers) - Currently a lot of old "spoiled" games are available for a relatively low (rental) fee. However, this model is built on a PC games market where old games are treated like spoiled fruit, and once things move online, where games will never spoil, that cuts off GameTap's supply. Moreover, publishers probably only get tiny residuals from games kicked into GameTap.
  

It's an interesting theory, and of course anyone giving decent reasons that GameTap will fail has my attention.

Of course, moving the games online where they don't spoil is contrary to my own interests -- I want a huge library of games and I want it as cheaply as possible. I love physical media, even in this age far past the era when the box and accompanying materials don't get one tenth the attention that Infocom used to put into them. I love used games under $10 and I sometimes luck into finding new ones at that price too. I like sifting the bins of crap (too often crap I already own) for that special gem of a game I've been seeking for months, even years.

Yes, I realize there are advantages to online distribution. I'm not comfortable with them yet, and I like exploiting the system I know. (As Ruffin would say, sticking it to the man...legally.)

There is another bit here that bothers me. Basically, the plan online is to charge $N for a game until the Sun burns out and we all collapse into a black hole. What bothers me about that is that -- with copyright extension -- this means the value of any copyrighted works which have renewable demand is essentially infinite. For example, if "Yesterday" by The Beatles were to stay copyrighted forever and future generations continue to buy it for the audio medium of their time (at essentially the same price, adjusted for inflation) then it would generate a theoretically infinite amount of money. Likewise, a game like Tetris, available through online distribution for a fixed price, not resellable, and eternally in demand would generate a theoretically infinite amount of money.

Something about that just rubs me wrong, but I'm not sure I fully understand why I feel that way.

--jvm at 14:20

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Wii pricing: EGM was right, mostly

Back on 10 May 2006 I wrote that Wii would be $250 and virtual console games would be between $1 and $10, all via N-Sider reporting from a copy of EGM.

Today we find out the hardware price was right -- Nintendo is launching the Wii at $250 -- and the software price was a little low -- at $5 to $10. [Update: NES = $5, SNES = $8, N64 = $10, according to this.] The catch on the system price is that you get a free tech demo ... *ahem* ... game, Wii Sports, for the $250. Full game prices will be $50.

Could it be that Nintendo adjusted the virtual console game prices upward since May based on the recent success of Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade? I would not be surprised one bit. They've always been exceptionally profitable, even with the N64 of all things, and they have got to smell money in this downloadable games market. With current XBLA prices and Sony planning PSOne downloads for $15 or more, Nintendo is still undercutting the competition on pricing and getting rich doing it. Best of all, unlike Microsoft and Sony, Nintendo gets to keep the majority of the profit from the Wii Virtual Console since they actually own many of the games people are going to buy.

Ruffin is fond of saying that Microsoft runs every good idea it has through a profit maximizer. That's true, but I really do think they're being outdone here by Nintendo with the Wii. Nintendo will have the most accessible console (larger potential audience), using the cheapest hardware (upgraded GameCube with a gimmick wand), and the largest library of popular games (Mario, Zelda, et al plus the third parties).

Labels: nintendo

--jvm at 10:45

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Looks like Apple's made the iPod into a gamer, and this might explain the ad for game developers on their jobs site a ways back. The poster-child game is, not surprisingly, Tetris. Bejeweled, Cubis 2, Mahjong and friends suggest this is an attempt to shoot at the market that plays Yahoo games -- so less male-centric. Still, Texas Hold 'Em (a popular PDA game) and Pac-Man seem to aim at the "old" demographic.

I just had to try Pac-Man, so I bought it. Hard to tell how I'm doing on my iPod Shuffle, though. I think Pac just ate Blinky.

I do wonder, though doubt, if they'll play within iTunes, like TV shows do now, turning your iMac into a iPod Advance Game Player. Could this enable the next Pippin?! Sure hope not.

Hrm. Now that I think about it, I suppose this is exactly what I'd asked for a while back. What happens if you think of and program for the iMac as a platform? Matt's wondered about an iTunes method of delivery, a la Steam, but friendlier. Certainly Macs have the wherewithal to easier compete with Xbox, etc's new classic game downloads style of play.

Labels: apple

--ruffin at 15:04

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More wrong must be better

Sony's going to stick more crap in the PSP retail box and hope more people jump on board. I don't have any feel for how that will work out, although my gut tells me that selling the base system cheap and letting people add the extras later would be better. Then there's this:

During the meeting with analysts, Sony also said that it would market the PSP's non-gaming capabilities more aggressively.

Good heavens. Give up on the PSP being some ueber-iPod already. Focus on what you do (or at least have done) best and give us a PSP that lives up to its potential as a game machine.

Sheesh.

--jvm at 12:05

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Yes, the GBA gets a lot of dreck

Dark Arena is an original Doom-like for the Game Boy Advance. It is terrible.

Midway's Greatest Arcade Hits is a set of conversions of Defender, Joust, Robotron: 2084, and Sinistar. Each one of the conversions is an abomination.

You have been warned.

--jvm at 23:58

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Just between you and me...

Tonight, I had this exchange with dude at local GameStop.

Me: I'd like Game A and Game B. [I point at games in used Game Boy Advance game case]

Dude: Ok. [he opens case, hands over games]

Me: While you've got that open, can I look at the Castlevania? [I point at Aria of Sorrow]

Dude: Sure. [he hands it over]

Me: [I peer closely at the label, then in the case right above metal contacts] Yeah, that's counterfeit. Thanks.

Dude: Oh? That's cool. How can you tell?

Me: First key was the label. That one doesn't look like the one I own. Then when I looked at the contacts, I didn't see the word "Nintendo" on the circuit board. Look here at Game A. [I hand him Game A, pointing at circuit board]

Dude: Whoa. [he takes Aria of Sorrow from me] You're right, it doesn't say "Nintendo". That's cool.

Me: Yeah. If you peel the price sticker off, you can probably tell the back of the cartridge is slightly different. And if you take the case apart you'll see a nasty cheap battery and a blop of black epoxy or something over the main chip.

Dude: Whoa. Learned something tonight! [he hands back Game A, puts Aria of Sorrow back in case] As long as it's just between you and me, no problem, right? [he closes case]

Me: Uh. I guess so.

So much for well-trained employees. I can't tell which response I like better: this one, or the guy who told me that the counterfeit Zelda cartridge really was real and that he'd be happy to power it up and show me...

Labels: nintendo

--jvm at 21:41

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Tomb Raider: 10th Anniversary Edition ... where the heck is it?

As I was thinking about the Fall 2006 release schedule, I realized we are less than two months from the 10th anniversary of Tomb Raider's first release, and next to nothing is officially known about Tomb Raider: 10th Anniversary Edition for PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 2, and Windows.

No official trailer. No screenshots. No previews. No launch date.

Nothing.

Rockstar has a habit of holding back information on its Grand Theft Auto releases. For example, Vice City Stories for PSP is due at the end of October, around the time I'd have expected TR:10AE to have come out. We've already seen screenshots and, more recently, a great trailer showing off parts of the game.

Still nothing about TR:10AE.

I'm beginning to think it's really cancelled. If it isn't, then they better be holding back a big doggone rabbit in their hat.

--jvm at 11:34

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GameTap dude vs. Xbox Live Arcade

This interview by Joystiq's Christopher Grant with David Reid of GameTap had an interesting exchange at about the 4 minute mark (emphasis added):

Grant: ...of course Microsoft is now really pushing digitally distributed content with Xbox Live Arcade. What do you think of that kind of service? [...] What do you think of their successes so far?

Reid: Well, it's pretty exciting stuff. I mean, again, you see the results of launching Galaga, Pac-man, Frogger, Street Fighter, whatever it is, and you see that that core gamer audience still remains hungry for that content and that digitally distributed vehicle of getting it. And the more and more success you see there the more and more I get excited about the GameTap story. I mean, really, Xbox Live launched Frogger and had a lot of success with that. And then when we launched Frogger, we also launched Contra Hardcorps, three Castlevanias, Time Pilot and Time Pilot 84. I mean, the more and more you get used to the notion of spending 5, 10, 15 bucks to buy one of these digitally distributed games the more you realize that 620 and games and growing, 20 plus multiplayer games and growing, [...] thinking about $9.95 a month, I don't have to buy any new hardware, seven accounts per subscription, all those things feel like a very powerful value proposition. And that's a way for people who may not be up for buying a PS3, buying an Xbox 360, whatever it is, to get that content with the hardware they already own.

There is, of course, another model for selling those old games: sell us the original ROMs. Feel free to provide your own emulator, even charge for it if you want, but I'd much rather have the independence to move that game from place to place. StarROMs provided just such a service, and I think they'd've made a good show of it had they been about five years earlier to the show. As it turns out, StarROMs got their shop running a little before, or during, the time when Turner (GameTap) and Microsoft (XBLA) started negotiating for similar rights through their respective online models. Now StarROMs is history.

Basically, I'd like an iTunes for games. Sure, Apple sells the files and gives away the player, but they make sure that their player is the one you'd rather use. Even if you don't want to, they give you an escape hatch: burn the audio to a CD, rip it, play it where you want. When I'm on the Mac or on Windows, I'm likely to just fire up iTunes, and Apple wins. If I'm on GNU/Linux I'll open up RhythmBox and play the Ogg versions I made, and I thank Apple for giving me that option.

Anyway, with GameTap and XBLA dominating the conversation, I'm not hopeful the promise that StarROMs offered will ever be realized. Ah well.

Labels: microsoft, xbox360

--jvm at 21:35

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Max Payne, Revisited

I ran into a nice used copy of Max Payne (the first) for the PlayStation 2 and added it to my library for a mere $3 plus tax. I just finished replaying the first part (out of three). It sure hasn't aged very well.

Compared to, say, Black on the same hardware, this game looks positively ancient. Levels are broken into tiny pieces with frequent load times. The models are chunky but with high resolution textures pasted onto the wide, flat surfaces, giving the whole thing a rather surreal appearance. The same half dozen thugs populate every other room and they are all predictably poor shots, especially in the face of bullet time. Having played Max Payne 2, it's also clear that the original bullet time was only half-baked; the formulation in the sequel was much more satisfying. There are some icky platform sections which require moving across tiny beams with feet that slide as if on ice. And the writing...if I have to listen to one more tortured metaphor tangled in a simile delivered in the same gravelly monotone...

Fortunately, I'm filing this one in the library permanently. It's still just as bad now as it was way back when.

--jvm at 02:19

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Eyeing the PSP release calendar until 2007...

Will there be anything for the PSP worth putting on my Xmas list this year? I ran through a list of releases until 2007 and these are the games that caught my eye (roughly in order of release):

• Myst - I never really played the original. Maybe it'd make a good handheld game?
• Bubble Bobble Evolution - I am not convinced that 3D Bubble Bobble is a good idea. The screenshots I've seen don't look horribly promising. Available as an import now, but I haven't heard anyone talk about it.
  
• WTF - Not an online exclamation but a minigame collection. Sounds like a PSP exclusive and designed for a handheld, but I'm going to read a few reviews first.
• Powerstone Collection - Enjoyed playing one of the Powerstone games (not sure which) on the Dreamcast against Daniel over at Epic when I visited a few times. Not sure how fun it'd be solo.
• Ace Combat X - I'm a sucker for Ace Combat, but I'm doubtful they'll ever top Ace Combat 2 and Ace Combat 04.
  
• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories - The trailer is beautiful. I should finish Liberty City first...
• Capcom Classics Collection Reloaded - With all three games in the Ghosts 'n Goblins series, a pile of shooters, the Street Fighter II series, and some hack 'n' slashers, could be fun. But why does it cost $10 more than the PS2 version?
• Capcom Puzzle World - Only five games? Booooring. But when it hits discount...
• Metal Slug Anthology - Mildly interesting. I played the GBA Metal Slug, my first of that series, and it was...ok.
• Every Extend Extra - Good word of mouth. I don't understand everything I've seen in the trailer, but it's shiny and pretty and mesmerizing and shiny and pretty.
• Sega Genesis Collection - Yes, I'm a sucker for these. Bite me.
• Thrillville - Sounds light on micromanagement and heavy on quick games. That's what the PSP needs.
  
• Dungeons & Dragons Tactics - I'm still not sold on the whole "tactics" idea, but a decently engaging dungeon crawl would be fun.

Except for WTF and EEE I don't see anything particularly unique here for the PSP. What a shame.

--jvm at 20:20

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What's wrong with these numbers?

Ah, yet another entry in the TOP 10 LIST OF TOP 10 LISTS OF THE 21st CENTURY! Today Next-Gen.biz runs down the top selling games since January 2000 and leaves me wondering about the health of the PC market. A quick run through the list gives me these numbers:

Games from 2000: 32
Games from 2001: 31
Games from 2002: 16
Games from 2003: 12
Games from 2004: 8
Games from 2005: 1

I'm trying to reconcile two ideas:

• The Windows PC gaming market is not dying, may in fact be growing.


• The bulk of a game's sales are made in the first 3 months after launch.

If the Windows PC gaming market were not dying, then I'd expect more games since 2002 to be in the list. Certainly, I'd expect there to be more games on the list from 2003 and later if the market were actually growing.

However, the explanation at the end of the list says that "[g]ames are ranked by units sold; then by revenue generated" and that "[t]his tends to favor games released earlier, rather than later, and games which have spent a long time at a lower price point". So maybe the old rule of thumb that a game gets most of its sales in the first 3 months after launch just isn't true. Perhaps in the long run more games are profitable than it appears just from what they recoup in their first year, or even two years?

--jvm at 08:13

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New Yorker puts PlayStation 3 on cover!

My wife brought me the latest New Yorker magazine (dated Sept. 4, 2006) while I was waiting for my CT scan on Friday, and I was amused by the cover. The cartoon shows a kid walking to school and a color map of the various sections of his brain. Nestled alongside Algebra (yay, Math!) and Manga and Scarlett Johansson are PS3 (i.e. PlayStation 3) and Counter-Strike. Here is the relevant part of the image, since I couldn't find the cover online anywhere:

I hope that's within the bounds of fair use for the New Yorker folks.

Further on in the magazine (p. 74) is a cartoon featuring a Game Boy Advance (not the SP). To show it here would be to give away the joke, so you'll have to hunt down your own copy.

Labels: ps3, sony

--jvm at 14:51

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Comment [ 5 ]

Appendicitis Sucks

That is all.

--jvm at 14:56

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