Curmudgeon Gamer
23 February 2007
Exclusives for the new generation
Platform exclusive features will be the replacement for platform exclusive games. The latest case is Spider-Man 3 for the PlayStation 3 which will have a special New Goblin mini-game.
We saw the beginnings of this trend last generation: Splinter Cell (exclusives map on PS2, GBA connection on GameCube), Soul Calibur II (platform-exclusive characters), and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (original Prince of Persia emulated on the PlayStation 2, the sequel Prince of Persia 2 on the Xbox). It will only get worse this generation.
It used to be that you could buy all three platforms and the exclusive games for each. Now, to get access to everything you not only need all three platforms but also all three versions of a particular game. Lovely.
And, yes, I did buy both versions of Pinball Hall of Fame, one for my PlayStation 2 and one for my PSP.
We saw the beginnings of this trend last generation: Splinter Cell (exclusives map on PS2, GBA connection on GameCube), Soul Calibur II (platform-exclusive characters), and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (original Prince of Persia emulated on the PlayStation 2, the sequel Prince of Persia 2 on the Xbox). It will only get worse this generation.
It used to be that you could buy all three platforms and the exclusive games for each. Now, to get access to everything you not only need all three platforms but also all three versions of a particular game. Lovely.
And, yes, I did buy both versions of Pinball Hall of Fame, one for my PlayStation 2 and one for my PSP.
--jvm at 21:28
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22 January 2007
A few notes on artistic games
A piece I wrote speculating on an aspect of games this coming generation is up on Next-Gen.biz this morning. The topic is what I call artistic games, and I thought it might be worth adding few comments here.
- I intentionally left the term "artistic game" vague, which some might feel is a weakness of the piece. I can certainly appreciate that criticism. There are a few games that folks generally agree are artistic (or simply art) and I tried to stick to those as examples to minimize the discussion of just what constitutes art and focus on the point, which is that an evenly split market may lead to a more conservative market.
- There are some notable exceptions to the observation that most artistic games ended up on the PlayStation 2. I think Odama would count, and I could even see The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker too. Maybe something oddball like Cubivore or P.N. 03? All the examples I came up with were on the GameCube and I couldn't think of anything on the Xbox, although that might be simply my relative lack of knowledge of the Xbox library.
- I had to exclude handhelds since there are more experimental, and therefore artistic, games in that space. In particular, I find several of the games from the Bit Generations line for the Game Boy Advance to be beautiful specimens of design.
--jvm at 11:12
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13 January 2007
Wii expands the GameCube market? Feh.
Mike pointed me to an article I missed in Thursday's updates to Next-Gen.biz: O3 Still Loving GameCube. It brings up an angle on backward compatibility that I don't recall being raised back when we last discussed its importance: it expands the base of the older platform, and therefore opens possibilities for smaller publishers to make some money.
O3 is bringing a Japanese shooter on the GameCube called Radio Allergy and depending on the Wii to expand the potential audience. That's a neat theory, but I don't think I really believe Wii players will be browsing the GameCube section of their stores enough to pick up cheap games. Sure, I know that I will do precisely that, but one thing the commenters on this blog have made painfully clear is that my habits are often widely divergent from the typical consumer habits. I suspect this is one of those cases.
We have a precedent, of course: the PlayStation 2 transition period. There we had nearly perfect backward compatibility and a successful system leading into yet another successful system. However, the kind of games that smaller publishers brought out were often quite poor. In O3's defense, I have no idea whether their game will be brilliant or ridiculously bad.
I hate to pick on Mud Duck Productions, since they at least have a nifty name, but their post-PS2 output for the PSOne is typical of what I expect will happen to publishers who look to the GameCube and Wii as one platform: cheap, one-off games like Qix Neo and Puzznic that sell for $10 and languish on shelves for years. (I think their pre-PS2 game Gubble falls into the same category, but I digress.) I just don't see Wii players jumping at the chance to own similar quality GameCube games.
There might actually be a profit in such ventures, especially if the production values are low enough and the number of gullible buyers is high enough*, but this isn't some sort of GameCube renaissance waiting to happen. The next time you see a really great game on a GameCube, it will probably be a homebrew title created by a fan somewhere around 2012.
* Yes, I own Qix Neo. I'm making my own library of games, for crying out loud, and that means getting everything, good and bad. I try not to pay too much for the dreck, naturally.
O3 is bringing a Japanese shooter on the GameCube called Radio Allergy and depending on the Wii to expand the potential audience. That's a neat theory, but I don't think I really believe Wii players will be browsing the GameCube section of their stores enough to pick up cheap games. Sure, I know that I will do precisely that, but one thing the commenters on this blog have made painfully clear is that my habits are often widely divergent from the typical consumer habits. I suspect this is one of those cases.
We have a precedent, of course: the PlayStation 2 transition period. There we had nearly perfect backward compatibility and a successful system leading into yet another successful system. However, the kind of games that smaller publishers brought out were often quite poor. In O3's defense, I have no idea whether their game will be brilliant or ridiculously bad.
I hate to pick on Mud Duck Productions, since they at least have a nifty name, but their post-PS2 output for the PSOne is typical of what I expect will happen to publishers who look to the GameCube and Wii as one platform: cheap, one-off games like Qix Neo and Puzznic that sell for $10 and languish on shelves for years. (I think their pre-PS2 game Gubble falls into the same category, but I digress.) I just don't see Wii players jumping at the chance to own similar quality GameCube games.
There might actually be a profit in such ventures, especially if the production values are low enough and the number of gullible buyers is high enough*, but this isn't some sort of GameCube renaissance waiting to happen. The next time you see a really great game on a GameCube, it will probably be a homebrew title created by a fan somewhere around 2012.
* Yes, I own Qix Neo. I'm making my own library of games, for crying out loud, and that means getting everything, good and bad. I try not to pay too much for the dreck, naturally.
--jvm at 00:57
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