Chains of Olympus for PS2 for Xmas '08

This isn't an announcement, but a prediction. Provided the porting of Daxter from the PSP to the PS2 is true (see here, originally seen here), then Sony has to be seriously considering porting God of War: Chains of Olympus to the PS2 as well. Keep in mind that both Daxter and God of War on the PSP share some engine code, so a port of the former would accelerate a port of the latter.

According to NPD's figures, Chains of Olympus sold well over 300,000 copies in its first month on the market. A PS2 version would easily sell a million and would complement a $99 PS2 model quite well.

Given that I completed the PSP game twice (something I almost never do for long-form action games), I'd probably end up picking up the PS2 port. So make that a million copies, plus one.

In an ideal world, Sony would also get someone to port the game to the PS3 and sell it for $15 on PSN. But this is Sony we're talking about, so it will never happen.

Labels: business, ports, ps2, ps3, psn, psp, sony

--jvm at 09:24

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Sony is Dancing on HD-DVD's Grave

If you ask me, all the furore surrounding the HD-DVD gloom and doom buzzing around the internet can only be a "good thing" for Sony. It's all just further proof that the symbiosis between games console and media accessory is irrevocably complete and the resulting abomination is the future. And I'm not even going to begin to theorise about how the PS3 might have helped Sony's Blu-Ray empire.

Sony are probably going to use the news as a metaphorical ladder to climb towards their metaphorical goal in the universe, which is to sell the PS3 as a "lifestyle" console. This serves the dual purpose of inevitably infuriating people who spend a considerable chunk of their time browsing internet forums (i.e: me) and also generating a huge swathe of attention (case in point: this post) where the ensuing knock-on effect will cause some people to put down money and actually buying one.

There's got to be some fence sitters, who both want to adopt a HD format and not buy the next Betamax. This news will surely encourage them towards a PS3. Right?

Of course, there's the bigger picture. We all want to be seen as cool and Sony are no different. By touting their universally-panned fence-sitting jack of all trades black box as some sort of arbitrary accessory to life then Sony aren't just making a games machine for teenagers they're making something you're not ashamed of having in your living room. I'm sure that's the sort of general consensus that Sony are getting at. I'll bet you my right arm that's the kind of stuff they talk/make Powerpoint graphs about in business meetings

Don't get me wrong, Sony are no worse than the competition. After all, my 360 has spent the last three weeks slapping me round the face with news about how I can download movies onto my games playing console, provided it's not too busy randomly exploding and I can buy a sound system big enough to drown out the console's turbine engine.

I bet even Nintendo would do it if their little white brick was powerful enough.

Labels: business, hdtv, ps3, sony

--Martin at 06:17

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UT3 PS3 can't download mods directly: true

But this isn't news, despite complaints by Penny Arcade and now Kotaku:

FileFront has the download and installation instructions, which, curiously, point out that removable storage of some sort is required for import. Whether it be compact flash, Memory Stick or simply a USB thumb drive, it seems one can't simply download to the PS3's built-in mass storage via the internet browser. What's up with that?

Believe it or not, this was known almost a full month ago. I remembered reading it today after Mike sent me the Penny Arcade link. Read it:

What we do to finalize it, make sure it makes the most efficient use of memory, and runs the fastest, is we bake it down to the PS3 version, but that's just like saving a file in Word in a different format. If you save it on a PlayStation 3 format, you can stick it on the Internet, and someone can download it, put it on a memory card [USB drive, memory stick], and import it into their PlayStation 3 version of the game. That works really well.

Awkward? Yes. Should it have been fixed before launch? Of course. Sony needs to fix it ASAP. I recall having trouble downloading themes directly from the PS3 browser too. And remember, this is the same outfit that hasn't gotten movie downloads online yet and can't seem to make an online PSP storefront that doesn't involve another machine (Windows PC or PS3).

But, hey, free fricking mods and levels, people. For all the kvetching we see over paid downloadable content, isn't free better, even if it takes a tiny bit of elbow grease? Jeepers.

And, no, that's not Free. It's free.

Labels: business, modding, online distribution, ps3, sony

--jvm at 23:45

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November 2007 NPD

It's that time of month again, with NPD releasing data and me burning a weekend looking at numbers. The results are here.

The guys on NeoGAF picked up what may be an inaccuracy in the numbers NPD provided to me. I might have to fix the graph showing original Sony IP sales, since the Resistance: Fall of Man number appears to be YTD, not LTD.

Now I'm going to enjoy a little time with actual games and not sales numbers. The Burnout Paradise demo is quite slick (and just annoying enough that I'd be tempted to buy the game instead of continuing to enjoy the demo long term). I'm enjoying Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror on the PSP.

Oh, and a copy of Deep Fear for the Saturn arrived. I think I'll give that a try. The audio I've heard (MP3 link) is hilarious. Could be fun.

Labels: business, data, graphs, nextgen, npd

--jvm at 13:55

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What will the normals think?

How do normal people even begin to understand videogame titles? I just saw that there is going to be a new Rainbow Six game from Ubisoft and the title is this:

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2

I'm sure there are worse names, but this one struck me this morning as ridiculous. The only thing recognizable to an average person there is Tom Clancy. Most will have no idea what Rainbow Six means. (My recollection of the original PC game was that Rainbow referred to the nationalities of the team members.) The connection to Las Vegas isn't much of a help. And it's a sequel. Yuck.

Anyway, all this makes me wonder what soccer moms think when a kid says they want a game whose title seems so random.

Then again, over 20 years ago Mom did buy me Zork II and Zork III without really asking many questions.

Labels: business, marketing, media

--jvm at 12:51

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Horrible Sony marketing

Finishing Uncharted at the same time that I'm seeing Sony hire a new advertising agency reminds me to mention the horrible Sony presence in local GameStop stores. Sony's big first-party games for the holiday are Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, and (maybe) Heavenly Sword. These are practically invisible to shoppers.

One particular GameStop that I visit about once a week has a single copy of Uncharted on display. Recently I saw it on the shelf with only its spine showing, making sure it won't catch anyone's attention. The copy of Ratchet & Clank they have there is on the top shelf of the PS3 section, which puts it above everyone's eye level. And I'm not even sure they have a copy of Heavenly Sword.

Sony apparently is spending some huge wad of cash ($150 million?) on promoting the PS3. The TV ads someone showed me online today were pretty good. The Uncharted one certainly nails the tone of the game. But when people get to the store, if the PS3 display is as uninteresting as what I'm seeing, then all that money will be for naught.

Then they have a PS3 kiosk, but no really interesting demos. It should be locked on a Ratchet & Clank demo or something. Heck, get a Japanese account like I did and download the Japanese Gran Turismo 5 demo. It's a beautiful looking game and will get people interested.

Labels: business, game stores, ps3, sony

--jvm at 22:18

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Best year? Not for Reviews, but for Sales.

Next-Gen asked me to look into whether this was the best year ever and I started tallying up review scores. Some interesting things came out of that, a few of which are in an article there today about how this could be considered the best year.

The deal is that review scores overall are down this year. In fact, only 2006 is worse. And it's not just a fraction of a point, it's a point or two spread.

By several other measures, this has been a great year. I honestly think we could see sales over $19 billion this year. Software sales are way up. People appear to be really enjoying games, in part because of the Wii and games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero.

But my favorite bit was recalling the discussions -- particularly right after Sega went software-only -- about how maybe the market could only support two major consoles. If anything, this year has shown that the market has grown to support FOUR consoles: PS2, PS3, Wii, and Xbox 360. Sure, the PS3 is hurting, but it will still probably do a good bit better than the GameCube eventually. Maybe you want to say that the PS2 + PS3 count as one -- I'd probably accept that, but the point stands that the market is robust enough to keep three systems going, minimum.

I got some more stuff out of the digging behind this article that will either end up here or somewhere else eventually.

Labels: business, data, graphs, nextgen

--jvm at 10:10

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October NPD

Another month, another set of graphs. I stuck my neck out a bit more than usual with the comments at the end on what we could expect to see in November. I might regret that.

Labels: business, data, graphs, nextgen, npd

--jvm at 11:47

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First fruits of Game 3.0?

This post that just popped up on Sony's PlayStation blog shows off a way to get users creating pieces of games. Basically, you scan in objects on a white background and they become objects in some sort of game/program. Simple, but effective.

My older son has been drawing a lot lately, and getting more sophisticated as he works at it. I would really love to be able to draw some characters with him and put them into a game we could play together. Heck, how about just letting him use a prefabricated character to play in levels that he creates and scans into the PS3?

Mostly Sony has let the whole Game 3.0 concept wither away, but if this is what they plan to do with it, count me in.

Labels: business, design, sony

--jvm at 16:28

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Hold on to your PS2, controllers, discs...

Last night Sony put a downloadable version of Twisted Metal 2 up on the PlayStation Store. I'd been meaning to check out one of these downloadable games, and TM2 is by far the best one they've made available. So I gave them my $6 and a few minutes later was enjoying frantic car combat in a fictional part of Los Angeles.

I liked having access to a PS1 game without having to extract it from the shelves of my library. Sony should put more games up on the store or -- my preference -- sell a downloadable software package that allows me to rip my existing PS1 games to my PS3 hard drive. Or, perhaps, charge me a small fee (say a dollar) for the service. Make me an offer, Sony, and I'll consider it. This $6-or-more-per-game racket isn't my thing, even if it is more convenient.

However, the real trouble I had with Twisted Metal 2 on the PS3 is that my preferred control scheme -- Run 'n Gun -- isn't really feasible with the SIXAXIS controller. The lower controller triggers now have a lot of analog throw, and so are not very useful as digital switches. Since PS1 games like Twisted Metal 2 don't need analog triggers, they suffer. I briefly wondered how I could hook up a PS1 or PS2 controller, and remembered that it involves some controller-to-USB dongle that I don't own (yet).

So, with rumors that a cheaper, smaller PS2 system will be out next year, this just reinforces how I think people should view playing Sony games from here on out: get two systems. Keep a PS2 around for PS2 and PS1 games and view the PS3 as purely for PS3 games and Blu-Ray movies.

Labels: business, ps2, ps3, psn, sony

--jvm at 09:25

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Hope for Sony

This is apparently from a presentation by Satoru Iwata of Nintendo:

I want to highlight this one in particular:

That jump in PS3 sales in Europe is pretty amazing. The PS3 is outselling the Xbox 360 immediately following the launch of Halo 3, if I'm reading it right. I believe that's following the launch of the 40Gb PS3, and my recollection is that European countries were getting some reasonably decent bundles (like a football game or something).

If we see anything like that when Sony introduces the 40Gb PS3 here, it might be a happy holiday for Sony after all. If they're selling 2-3 times as many PS3s after the 40Gb model was introduced into Europe, that would be comparable to selling 40,000 to 60,000 PS3s per week here. That would put Sony at 160,000 - 240,000 systems per month. During the Holiday 2007, I think you can safely double that, or even triple it.

We won't know how the 40Gb $400 model is really doing February 2008, maybe even March 2008, because Holiday sales will skew the numbers higher than usual. Regardless, it sure is going to be fun to watch.

Labels: business, ps3, sony

--jvm at 23:15

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We need videogame history yesterday

I'm too tired to go through it in detail right now, but the headline on this piece convinces me that most people writing about videogame companies haven't spent enough time reading their history.

Labels: business, history, media

--jvm at 21:28

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Sony rushed the October price drop

Last week I wrote in my NPD article:

Anecdotally, the October price drop for the 80Gb model appears to have been less well planned than its June introduction, as fliers the week after the announced drop to $500 still reflected the higher $600 price.

I thought I might possibly be reading too much into the mistake, but now I think I had it right. In my local Circuit City Sunday advert:

That's right -- it still shows the 80Gb PS3 at $600. If you check online or in the store, the price is actually $500.

Leaks from printed fliers were the source for rumors of the summer price drops by both Sony and Microsoft. Now we're seeing the reverse: Sony dropped its price unexpectedly and it's taking the fliers a couple of weeks to adjust.

Labels: business, ps3, sony

--jvm at 09:16

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Sony fails at selling the PSP

When my God of War PSP demo finally came in, this little cardboard advertisement was packed inside the mailer. It's marketing like this that explains why the PSP isn't living up to its potential. Sony simply doesn't know how they want to sell the system:
The two main reasons this advertisement fails:

1. Photos, Music, and Video come before Games. The PlayStation name is synonymous with games. Not photos. Not music. Not video. GAMES.
2. Game shown (MLB '07 The Show) is available on other platforms, with better graphics and probably better network support. It does not sell people on the system's uniqueness.

Sony could be selling the PSP based on exclusive games like Exit, Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, Lumines, Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, LocoRoco, and on and on. I know The Show is a Sony baby and they want to sell it, but for the love of all that's good and wholesome, THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE DOING! Sony keeps going after short-term, selfish gains at the expense of establishing long-term platforms for third parties that will make even more money.

Look, Sony, the competition is outselling your PSP by at least a 2-to-1 ratio every month with its non-photo-music-video Nintendo DS. Their handheld's software actually gets in the top 10 on a regular basis, and even had the #1 spot for a while this year. Their marketing is focused on one thing: games. Wise up!

Labels: business, psp, sony

--jvm at 15:46

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And now you've got 3 cents, Sony

Tonight Sony started offering David Jaffe's Calling All Cars games on PSN for only $4.99. I'd been considering buying it for a while, so I took the plunge. When it comes time to pay, I use my credit card to pay and...what's this? I can only put money on my account in round dollar amounts?

See, everything you can buy on PSN has a price that ends in 99 cents. Previously, when I'd purchased games, I'd been able to charge the exact cost. So last week I paid precisely $9.99 for Everyday Shooter. Perfect. Zero balance.

Now I've paid $5.00 into my PSN account and spent $4.99. That one penny is going to sit there and I won't be able to use it until I've bought 98 other items and the pennies add up. ARGH!

Labels: business, ps3, psn, sony

--jvm at 20:52

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PS3 faring better than PS2, forget BC

I'm not talking about sales, mind you, just my experience. I spent about the first year of my PS2 ownership playing very few really impressive PS2 games. We had SSX and...right. By the time we got Metal Gear Solid 2 and Grand Theft Auto III in late 2001, many of us had spent a fairly barren year playing DVDs and PS1 games.

Here we are, coming up on 11 months into the PS3 life, and I've finally got a PS3. Despite what is literally a wall of unfinished PS2 games, I'm completely absorbed with PS3-specific games. Super Stardust HD is brilliant. The high score table is huge, but you can filter it to just show your friends. I've just squeaked by a friend's high score by a mere 20,000 points and he's vowed to get past me again. I presume this kind of feature is copied from Xbox Live, but it's just brilliant. Even if I don't get bested, I intend to increase the gap between my friend's score and my own, as soon as I find the time to play again.

On the other hand, flOw continues to engage me. I've discovered the third lifeform and will hopefully get another soon. I believe there are five. My elder son enjoys playing with the little creatures, even if he doesn't entirely understand the controls and lacks the fine motor skills to use the controller effectively sometimes.

I picked up Oblivion for a mere $30 and hope to grab both Warhawk and Resistance: Fall of Man before the end of the year.

And now Everyday Shooter is coming out this week.

So, I understand Josh's complaint about Sony completely dropping backward compatibility with PS2 software. I want it, and I'm glad I picked up a 60Gb model. On the other hand, I've found more than enough to keep me busy with just the PS3 parts of the system that I could have gotten a non-backward compatible model and really not have noticed very much.

That said, Sony really needs to get below $400 with their system. They're going to do ok this holiday, I suppose, but they better hope the 2008 software lineup doesn't get delayed any further and, most of all, delivers a compelling reason for Joe User to drop the money on a PS3.

Labels: business, online distribution, ps2, ps3, psn, sony

--jvm at 20:27

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Next Generation NPD

My writing on NPD's monthly videogame industry data moved this month to Next-Gen.biz. It also grew into two separate articles.

Hardware part.
Software part.

Comments, as always, are welcome.

Labels: business, data, graphs, nextgen, npd

--jvm at 10:05

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Karraker Gone

One of the better things to happen to Sony in the past year is having someone who appeared mostly sane heading up PR. Now that guy, David Karraker, is leaving to work in the "spirits industry". I suppose one might say he needed a stiff drink. In the interview he did with Next-Gen.biz today, he touts Sony's PlayStation blog as an important contribution.

He's right.

I don't keep refreshing my RSS reader waiting for a new post penned by Jack Tretton, mind you. The blog is just a glorified PR space. On the other hand, when they make an announcement on the blog before they send out a press release to the news sites, they're doing precisely what Karraker said they needed to do: take control of their own message. Sure, it's often PR garbage, but at least the public can get the PR garbage directly from that tap instead of filtered through IGN or Kotaku. Direct is better.

Of course, Sony's message, no matter how direct, hasn't always been clear. Where is Game 3.0, anyway? Why are they letting leaks set up expectations of how well PlayStation Home is progressing? They've got work to do. But, for the most part, they're right back to a healthy back-and-forth with the media and their competition.

I hope Sony gets someone as good or better than Karraker for the next PR guy. They're going to need it.

(Disclosure: I have written and continue to write for Next-Gen.biz, to whom I've linked.)

Labels: business, ps3, sony

--jvm at 16:40

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Total moronic reversal

It's been an interesting few days watching the Sony situation. I have more than a few game news outlets in my RSS reader and I read NeoGAF every day. Previously I felt that the game press and forum denizens were very harsh on Sony, jumping on every piece of news that could cast Sony in a bad light. On the other hand, reports in the mainstream press were generally neutral or positive on Sony, letting Sony spin without penalty and taking Sony's line that the PlayStation 3 is both a movie player and a game machine (which allows Sony to mitigate poor game sales with better-than-HD-DVD movie sales).

The roles appear to have reversed.

After Sony's price strategy announcement (it's a drop to me, but not others apparently) and reasonable E3 press conference (again, my opinion), the game press has seemed mostly positive on Sony's prospects and the NeoGAF tide has definitely turned to favor Sony a good bit more. On the other hand, places like Forbes are giving Nintendo lots of kudos and slapping Sony around. Microsoft is just there.

The muddling of the 60Gb PS3 issue today -- saying it's going away and then not -- hasn't helped.

Anyway, you know my bias already, but that's my view.

Colin Campbell at Next-Gen.biz has an editorial about Sony's fortunes that you might read. He's not pro-Sony. Disclosure: I've written and continue to write occasionally for Next-Gen.biz.

Labels: business, ps3, sony

--jvm at 22:36

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Sony's Infinite Price Drop Loop

Give Sony credit. They've hit on a way to announce a price drop every week from here until Christmas. Here's how it works:

1. Sell two configurations, one at $500 and a better one at $600.
2. Discontinue the $500 model, mark the $600 model down to $500.
3. Create a newer model, price it at $600.
4. Goto 2.

Brilliant, I tell ya.

Labels: business, ps3, sony

--jvm at 22:09

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The Race to Cut

Sony has announced a price drop. Other than "Do I buy in August or November?", my question is this:

Is Sony beginning the same kind or price war they started (and won) with Sega?

For context, see the text of this comment by MonkeyKing1969 on my post documenting price drops for the original PlayStation.

The blue laser diodes have reportedly dropped in cost. The Emotion Engine hardware has been dropped from the new 80Gb PlayStation 3. Sony has reported that they have nearly full capacity production of the PlayStation 3 systems. Ideally they should be able to drop prices as their costs change, and this $100 price drop seems to be part of that.

So what's different? Whereas I suspect that Sony controlled the production of almost everything in the original PlayStation and in the PlayStation 2 (except perhaps the RamBus stuff), they have a partnership with NVIDIA for the PlayStation 3's graphics chip, the RSX. That's an entanglement I bet they wish they didn't have. As I recall, NVIDIA and Microsoft didn't part on the best of terms from a similar relationship on the original Xbox.

Microsoft doesn't own everything in the Xbox 360, but it does own more than the original Xbox. Still, it does depend on IBM and ATI/AMD for parts. The Xbox 360 ain't no Saturn, so to speak, but I'd like to hear a professional's opinion on how quickly and deeply Sony and Microsoft will be able to reduce costs of their respective systems.

If Sony drops the price again in a year by another $100, I do wonder if Microsoft will be able to keep up. Perhaps at that point, Nintendo's Harrison will want to reconsider his bravado.

Labels: business, ps2, ps3, psone, xbox, xbox360

--jvm at 23:53

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Enough blame to go around

In a conference call to investors today Strauss Zelnick, Take Two Interactive's chairman, said (my emphasis):

"We don't see ourselves in the AO business," Zelnick explained. "But if we find ourselves in the AO business, it would be because we have a title that we consider art and entertainment, that we consider is appropriately rated at AO, that we'd like to bring to market, and that I and Ben [Feder, CEO] are prepared to stand behind.

"In that instance, one has to ask oneself what's the purpose of a rating if it in fact means that a title cannot be released? But I don't think that that issue falls at the door of retailers. Retailers are acting responsibly, frankly, and I think a retailer has a right to say, 'This is what I'm prepared to put on my shelves.' It's not correct to be critical of the retailers at all.

"Because this is a voluntary ratings system in the US, we have to be critical of ourselves if we've allowed a system to develop that prevents us from bringing a title to market that we want to bring to market. That's something that we have to address."

Let me disagree completely.

The system that is broken here is the consolidated videogame retailer market. I know we're all tired of movie-to-game comparisons, but I think the one I have in mind is fitting. Bear with me. There will be nudity, if that matters to you.

It is my belief that smaller video rental shops can survive by offering the one thing that Blockbuster (et al) will not: dirty movies. The independent video stores in our old city all had naughty sections in the back -- tastefully separated from the mainstream movies by curtains. According to a grad school friend who used to work in one, they made a killing off of the dirty movies. (Aside: He was even encouraged to watch a variety of them so he could advise customers.)

Then all of those shops seemed to disappear and only Blockbuster remained. If you like getting your movies from behind the curtain and Blockbuster is your only option, then consolidation has limited your options. (Perhaps cheap broadband access and a river of porn on the internets killed the smaller video shops, but I have to think that Blockbuster did the most damage.)

The connection to games should be obvious. I look around and I see that in my current city the small independent game shops are gone. Instead I can now drive to a half-dozen GameStops in under 15 minutes, all with nearly identical stock. If you don't want to buy your games there you can go to Wal-mart, Target, Best Buy, or Circuit City. That's about the end of it. Or you can shop online.

Look, I understand that Sony and Nintendo refusing to license AO games in the U.S. is also a problem, but even if they weren't there, the big retailers who control most of the market would still balk at stocking an AO-rated Manhunt 2. I'd even guess that some of Sony and Nintendo's reluctance is based on the positions of the retailers. After all, lots of crazy stuff gets licensed and released in Japan and sometimes Europe.

As Josh has said recently, the ESRB should focus on informing consumers about what's in the game. The user-generated content issue notwithstanding, I think they're doing that. What happens after they assign a rating isn't really their problem.

The real problem is that Rockstar and Take Two are trying to squeeze a filthy, violent camel through the eye of a conservative corporate needle. The conservatism comes not from the ESRB but from the console manufacturers (who can be swayed, I believe) and the retailers. So yes, let's blame the retailers.

Can they be swayed too? Perhaps, but I'd rather we have a case like Manhunt 2 where Sony relents and permits a download of the game to PlayStation 3 owners and it sells like gangbusters. If the retailers smell enough profit, I'm sure they'll come around.

Labels: business, esrb, game stores, sex, violence

--jvm at 22:54

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When did the original PlayStation drop in price?

My friend Kyle was asking me when the original Sony PlayStation -- the PS1 or PSX as we called it back then -- dropped in price. I had looked when I did my recent piece on console price cuts, but hadn't looked in the right places. With a bit of Lexis-Nexis hunting, I came up with the following:

Sony PlayStation launches on 9 September 1995 at $300 (i.e. $299.99).

The first price drop is from $300 to $200 and it happens on Thursday 16 May 1996, according to an AP news item that day titled "With Rollout of New Systems, Upturn Begins in Video Game Industry" written by Evan Ramstad. Quote:

The Nintendo machine, along with Sony's Playstation and Sega's Saturn, stand out from their predecessors in graphics, speed and game-playing features. Sony lowered the price of its system from $ 300 to $ 200 on Thursday, beating the $ 250 price level of Sega and Nintendo.

The second price drop is from $200 to $150 (i.e. $149.99) on Monday 3 March 1997, according to an AP news item that same day titled "Sony slashes prices of PlayStation, Nintendo says it will not follow" written by Rachel Beck. Quote:

Sony Computer Entertainment America launched a price war in the video-game industry Monday when it slashed the cost of its PlayStation system and accompanying software by over 25 percent.

Sony's popular PlayStation will now have a suggested retail price of $ 149, down $ 50, and its games will sell for $ 49.99 and under from the previous price of about $ 70.

Rival video-game maker Nintendo said it would not immediately match the cuts, although analysts said the Japanese company may have to pare prices soon to compete.

If someone has the dates for later drops, let me know and I'll add them.

To my knowledge, the precise dates of these drops were not available out on the generally available internets, but there they are now.

Labels: business, history, psone, sony

--jvm at 21:43

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Give Tretton a Cookie

I've not been impressed with SCEA president Jack "$1200" Tretton, but if Sony's going to fight Microsoft's moneyhats with words, I thought this was decent:

We have a very different approach to exclusives than some of our competitors. We don't buy exclusivity. We don't fund development. We don't, for lack of a better term, bribe somebody to only do a game on our platform. We earn it...

[shnip]

Microsoft is too dependent on the third-party community, and Nintendo is too depended [sic, dependent, I presume] on first-party. We like to feel that we got a pretty good mix.

I'd give Jack a cookie for that one.

Labels: business, ps3, sony

--jvm at 15:28

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Tomb Raider Anniversary sets distribution record

Not for the number of copies of Tomb Raider Anniversary sold (we'll know more about that next month) but for the number of distribution methods in the first three months on the market. A new one was just announced today. Let's count them:

1. Retail box (Windows and PS2 now, PSP in a week or so, Wii and Xbox 360 late this year)
2. Steam (Windows now)
   
3. GameTap (Windows now, but GameTap will have a MacOS version late this summer. From GameTap's point of view, I can't think of a better way to introduce Mac gamers than to offer Tomb Raider Anniversary for MacOS X...)
   
4. Episodic game for owners of Tomb Raider: Legend on Xbox 360 in September
   

Seriously, this is crazy. Eidos is really making a big move by partnering with so many different distributors, but I have a feeling it's going to work out well for them.

Labels: business, gametap, online distribution, steam, tomb raider

--jvm at 11:12

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NPD analysis at Gamasutra

Recently the editor of Gamasutra asked me if I was up for some analysis work, and we worked out an opportunity for me to do some Friday morning comments on the monthly NPD data releases. The first such piece is up this morning. You can drop your usual insults and criticisms into the comments below.

In addition to the link, I want to raise two points that came to me while I was doing the legwork these past couple of days:

• If you don't pay for the NPD reports (expensive), getting all the information in one centralized location is a real chore. While you can get some stuff from places like NeoGAF, a lot of the stuff I wanted was written out in sentences, not tables. So I spent hours extracting numbers from articles, putting them into a spreasheet, and in many cases deducing the numbers which were not said.
  
  To elaborate: If NPD reports total sales, hardware (console and handheld combined) sales, console software sales, and accessory sales then you can deduce portable software sales by subtracting hardware, accessory, and console software from the total. If you have numbers for one segment of the market for two out of three months in a quarter and also the quarterly totals, you can deduce the missing month's segment numbers. And then using the growth percentages, you can compute numbers for all categories for the previous year.
  
  Then there are the top software sales lists. Lately NPD is reporting top 10 software titles with sales numbers, and later in the month you can get a top 20 list, but without numbers on places 11-20. If you're lucky there will be one or two numbers for spots 11-20 mentioned in the text of an article somewhere, which gives you a bit more data for the scale of the sales for places 11-20.
  
  Which is all to say, I'm finally in a position where I think I've got this data under control and can fill in holes and add new data as it becomes available. Perhaps I'll make periodic dumps in CVS, ODS, and XLS format here, so stay tuned.
  
  
• While I was looking at present and upcoming software releases, I began to wonder if Tomb Raider Anniversary will appear on the PC sales charts for June. As we've covered before, the sales are not only in brick-and-mortar stores but also on GameTap and Steam. I consider it possible (although I don't know yet how probable) that TRA will miss the sales charts because (I believe) NPD doesn't count sales of the game through online distribution.
  
  But the point is more general than just Tomb Raider -- as the relationship between online distribution and brick-and-mortar stores changes, a company like NPD that measures sales in brick-and-mortar stores will have to adapt. Certainly the hardware figures will continue to be interesting, but the software numbers may lose some of their meaning.

Labels: business, data, graphs

--jvm at 10:45

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Comment [ 6 ]

Good timing

Yesterday I had a piece out saying that most consoles last generation sold for under $200, that therefore the magic console price is around $200, and that Microsoft was in line for a price cut given that they're about 19 months out from launch.

Today, Bloomberg has a report that says:

That may mean a price cut heading into the holiday season to spur sales of games, which do make a profit, [UBS AG analyst Heather] Bellini said.

[snip]

She expects a price cut as early as September.

[snip]

"We are well aware that the sweet spot of the market is really 199 bucks,'' said David Hufford, a director of Xbox product management. Sony sold 75 million PlayStation 2s at or below that price.

Short of an actual announcement of an Xbox 360 price cut, I couldn't have timed that any better.

Labels: business

--jvm at 10:25

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Comment [ 1 ]

Console price cuts

A piece about console pricing with lots of pretty graphs is up today at Next-Gen.biz if you care to check it out. I will try to get the data I used into a presentable form and attach it as an update to this post when I get time, so others have an opportunity to poke around and see what else is there.

Now if Microsoft will just drop its price, I'll be sitting pretty.

Labels: business, data, graphs, nextgen

--jvm at 07:20

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Comment [ 4 ]

ESRB statement on anti-tobacco groups

Has the ESRB received any pressure from anti-tobacco groups regarding the rating of games and the use of tobacco in videogames? Spokesman Eliot Mizrachi says that "[the] ESRB has not experienced 'pressure' with respect to this issue, and this may be due in part to precisely what you pointed out - that ESRB's content descriptors do a good job of identifying content that parents would be interested in knowing about given the rating category assigned." You might recall that the data I collected showed that games with a rating below M were more likely to note tobacco use or references.

Labels: business, data, esrb

--jvm at 20:40

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Comment [ 0 ]

Tobacco and game ratings, take two

I did contact the ESRB about tobacco and game ratings, and I got a very helpful response. I'm still trying to get more details, but it's worth giving this different interpretation of the data I showed the other day. The games in the ESRB game ratings search engine which show a descriptor referring to tobacco can be grouped this way:

• 29 rated E
• 18 rated E10+
• 91 rated T
• 3 rated M

Now, consider this point in the ESRB FAQ:

Do content descriptors list all of the different content found in a game?
Content descriptors are not intended to be a listing of every type of content one might encounter in the course of playing a game. They are applied within the context of the rating category assigned to that game, and are there to provide consumers with additional information about elements in a game that may have triggered a particular rating and/or may be of interest or concern relative to the age appropriateness of the rating category assigned.

Since content descriptors are applied in the context of their respective rating category, the absence of a content descriptor may not necessarily mean the total absence of such content, and a given content descriptor may not always refer to precisely the same type or intensity of material depending on the rating category that accompanies it. For instance, Suggestive Themes in an E10+ game may refer to a flirtatious remark whereas in a Teen game it may refer to provocative clothing on a female character.

Two conclusions I think we can safely draw from this:

1. There are several games with M ratings that include references to tobacco or that show tobacco use but do not carry a tobacco use/reference descriptor. So the two M rated games in the ESRB searchable database are simply the two which happen to be M rated and carry a tobacco descriptor.
   
   
2. The tobacco descriptor is more appropriate for games which are rated below M, namely E through T, and accordingly that's where we find almost all games using a tobacco descriptor. That seems to indicate that the rating system is doing the right thing, namely pointing out tobacco use in precisely the situations where a parent would want to know about it. If a parent is letting a child play an M-rated game, then it is quite possible that tobacco use is of far less concern than the violence that probably earned the M rating.
   

Without more data from the ESRB, however, we cannot answer this question:

Question 1: How many games that include any tobacco reference/use are rated M for other reasons?

With more data we could certainly answer that question and it would give us a basis to compare ESRB rating of games with this statement about rating of movies:

From July 2004-July 2006, the percentage of films that included "even a fleeting glimpse of smoking" dropped from 60 percent to 52 percent, and 75 percent of those fetched an R rating for other factors, [MPAA chairman and CEO Dan Glickman] said.

Because I'm curious, I'd like to see if I can get an answer to this question:

Question 2: What contact has the ESRB had with the advocacy groups which have put pressure on the MPAA regarding tobacco use?

I've asked the ESRB for an answer to Question 1 and I'll also try to pursue Question 2 as well. I'll let you know if I get any answers.

Labels: business, data, esrb

--jvm at 16:08

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Comment [ 0 ]

GameDaily: How Microsoft can win (if by win you mean lose)

I think you can rightly accuse me of being an occasional ivory tower pundit, but even I can see that this tripe from GameDaily is, well, tripe. Apparently Microsoft can take five steps to a definitive lead over Sony and Nintendo, and those steps can be summed up as "Lose money on everything."

The steps are:

1. Slash the price (i.e. lose money)
   
2. Bundle Halo 3 for Holiday '07 (i.e. lose money)
   
3. Make Xbox Live free (i.e. lose money)
   
4. Acquire more studios, pay for exclusives (i.e. gamble)
   
5. Enter the kiddie game market (i.e. go up against Nintendo on its own turf)
   

Seriously? Look, Microsoft haven't been at the top of their game lately, but why in the name of all that's good and wholesome would they give up the very advantages they have over the competition, the advantages which will make them huge vats of money over the next few years? It just boggles the mind.

They are not going to give up on making a profit -- I just don't think the company or shareholders are prepared to see another year or two of massive losses in the Xbox venture. They're not going to discount the one game that every owner -- or prospective owner -- will happily pay $60+ for this holiday season. They're not going to kill the Xbox Live goose which keeps laying those golden eggs. So far Microsoft hasn't shown the best judgment when it comes to buying studios (although Bungie turned out well), and the age of buying exclusive games has passed for now. More likely is that Microsoft should pay for exclusive bonuses for their version of a cross-platform game -- and that should be a lot cheaper than buying the whole game outright.

I understand the usual argument is that Microsoft can afford to lose money hand over fist, but does anyone really think that this reckless strategy is sound? Other than GameDaily, of course.

Labels: business, microsoft, nintendo, sony, xbox360, xboxlive

--jvm at 21:27

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Comment [ 9 ]

Sam & Max Season 1 DVD does the right thing

The new Sam & Max episodes, currently available only on the GameTap service, will be available on DVD soon. I had wondered in my recent discussion with Simon whether they might require a network connection, and it appears they will not:

Will the episodes on the disc require online activation?
No, they won't. You'll need your disc in the drive to play, but that's it. See, we do listen to you guys!

Well, it's heartening to know that in some cases the consumers are demanding standalone games and the developers & publishers are responding with the a proper alternative.

Labels: business, copyright, drm, gametap, online distribution

--jvm at 20:54

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Comment [ 6 ]

Tobacco and game ratings

Update: After reading this over, I suggest going to this later post for follow-up comments, including information from the ESRB.

In response to public pressure, the MPAA will now consider tobacco use, particularly smoking, when assigning movie ratings. While they've stopped short of automatic R ratings for movies that show a person smoking, it does appear that they will bump a movie up in some cases if the use of smoking appears gratuitous.

I wondered what our dear old ESRB has been doing about tobacco use in games. Does smoking of tobacco get a game rated at least a T? Or maybe even M?

Apparently not.

• 15 games with the descriptor "Use of Tobacco" (1 E, 4 E10+, 8 T, 2 M)
  
• 13 games with the descriptor "Tobacco Reference" (5 E, 3 E10+, 5 T)
• 27 games with the descriptor "Alcohol and Tobacco Reference" (6 E, 8 E10+, 13 T)
• 86 games with the descriptor "Use of Alcohol and Tobacco" (17 E, 3 E10+, 65 T, 1 M)

Put another way, the 141 games which refer to tobacco or show use of tobacco break down as:

• 29 rated E
• 18 rated E10+
• 91 rated T
• 3 rated M

While it's not a pure oranges-to-oranges comparison, the following about movies provides an interesting contrast:

From July 2004-July 2006, the percentage of films that included "even a fleeting glimpse of smoking" dropped from 60 percent to 52 percent, and 75 percent of those fetched an R rating for other factors, [MPAA chairman and CEO Dan Glickman] said.

So 75% of movies with even a fleeting glimpse of smoking were given R ratings -- and thereby limited in theory to people who were 17 years of age or older. By comparison, only 3 out of 141, or 2.1%, of games with any mention or use of tobacco were given an M rating, the rating that most closely approximates the MPAA's R rating. It should be noted that those 141 games include some that are several years old, and rating standards have changed over time. (I've discussed such changes at least once before.) Still, the PlayStation 3 game Calling all Cars, released just this week, has the "Alcohol and Tobacco Reference" descriptor and is rated E.

To the ESRB's credit there are no EC (early childhood) games with any substance (alcohol, tobacco, or drugs) references. In fact, EC is so clean it doesn't include any violence (cartoon or otherwise), salty language, or gambling. Good to know.

Back to the point, this seems to highlight a difference between movie and game ratings. Glickman said that those movies with any smoking at all had generally received an R rating for other reasons. That doesn't seem to be the case for games. If I have time later, I may try to dig deeper into that disparity, but knowing there is a difference one can point to easily is interesting by itself.

Finally, I do wonder if the ESRB is getting pressure from the same interest groups, like the American Cancer Society, that have been lobbying the MPAA. Maybe I'll try to give them a call on Monday and ask for a statement.

For the record, I do not use tobacco in any form, nor does anyone in my immediate family or circle of friends.

Labels: business, data, esrb

--jvm at 03:46

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Comment [ 5 ]

On game preservation and GameTap

Simon of GameSetWatch has posted excerpts from a recent email conversation he and I had regarding GameTap and similar services, especially with an eye toward game preservation. You can go read it yourself.

I'll only add here that I meant to get in a mention of Save the Whales, a game which was reportedly distributed online-only and was almost lost to the digital abyss. Did I mention it was an Atari 2600 game? That's right, a game distributed through a modem to an Atari 2600 over 20 years ago. Anyway, it apparently wasn't a great game, but it didn't have to be f