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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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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September NPD graphs and babble

Another month, another piece about videogame sales.

I keep the official article as emotionless as possible, but I'll let go here a bit. Going over Sony's numbers is grim business. The PS2 is slowly fading. The PS3 is not growing, but shrinking. The PSP is moving hardware, but the software market for it is essentially moribund.

I've said it before -- perhaps not here -- but I don't understand why they abandoned the simple, cheap, easy-to-develop-for model that brought them such success on the PS1. With its ease-of-development, it's no surprise that developers don't mind putting their bigger games on the Xbox 360. And cheaper games find an easy home on the Wii -- although sales could be better for third party software.

Each hardware manufacturer has had its own unique hardware problem this term. Microsoft has had hardware failures. Nintendo has had supply problems. Sony has had high hardware costs.

Extended warranties appear to have fixed Microsoft's problem, for the time being. Nintendo is gradually increasing supply. Sony -- it's clear that the June price adjustments weren't enough. I'm not convinced that the new $400 model will do the trick either.

Labels: data, graphs, nextgen, npd

--jvm at 10:15

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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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30 years, 30 defining events

An article of mine on events that defined the industry is up on Next-Gen this morning. I actually thought we'd go through some revisions, but the editors apparently worked with the draft I submitted. So imagine my surprise finding it in my RSS reader this morning.

After I wrote it, I noticed that Sony shows up in a few places throughout, but does not claim any defining event for itself (in my view, natch). I wonder if that's because Sony's contributions are so diffuse that it's difficult to point to any one and say "There! That's it!" or if it's my personal perspective.

Feel free to note events you think I missed or corrections in the comments.

Update (19:47): There was about a 30 minute discussion of the list on the Game Theory podcast today.

Labels: history, nextgen

--jvm at 10:45

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Game Price Trends since 2004

Someone recently suggested I look at game prices, especially since the advent of $60 PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 games. The results are up today at Next-Gen.biz. I used mostly public data on the top 10 and top 20 lists since June 2004, with some additional data provided by NPD.

To my mind, the upshot is that Wii games are holding the $50 floor while $50 and $60 Xbox 360 games are filling in the top 20, pushing the average price of the top-selling games higher. PlayStation 2 games are getting pushed out, removing the main downward pressure from console games. Only the Nintendo DS presence in the top 10 and top 20 is pulling game prices below $50.

Additional bits that didn't go into the article:

• NPD was very helpful providing more data. While I didn't get everything I wanted (understandable), they did take a sample spreadsheet from me with a formula in it and apply the same to months for which unit sales data is not public. I especially need to thank David Riley of NPD for his patience and effort helping me.
  
  
• The public NPD data on the top 10 and top 20 is easiest to get from this page on GameDaily.
  
  
• NPD apparently revises their lists, but the published lists don't reflect this. For example, Bully for the PS2 placed #9 in October 2006 according to published charts. It actually placed #3 on the October 2006 list I got directly from NPD. There were some other very minor changes here and there, mostly transposing two games (say #2 and #3 switching).

As usual, thoughts and so forth in the comments.

Edit: Fixed link. Blogger's WYSIWYG interface hates URLs with ampersands.

Labels: data, graphs, nextgen, npd, prices

--jvm at 08:25

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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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Ancestry of Game 3.0

A piece I put together on Sony's Game 3.0 is up today at Next-Gen. Consider this post a place to file complaints and other comments.

I would like to credit Josh at Cathode Tan for an idea I used in the piece, with his permission. Here is his original post in which I first read about NDAs being in the mod community, from which I drew the connection. The original forum thread that Josh is referencing is here.

I had a couple of comments about Game 3.0 that didn't fit in with the piece that I'll probably put into a later post.

Labels: business, nextgen, ps3

--jvm at 06:12

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Well, that explains the Game Boy market, doesn't it?

MobyGames just posted this from a Game Developer Conference talk by Trip Hawkins:

Trip also talked about the overcrowded license market and how more original titles will encourage the growth of the industry. Trip also talked about the royalty fees that a major licensor imposed awhile back. For GameBoy games it was 4%, for Playstation it was about 7%, online stuff it was about 11%, and for mobile games it was about 50%. This type of abuse causes the quality of games to be lower and as a result, the consumer, the publisher and the developer all end up getting burned.

Seeing that fee structure, is it any surprise that more than 50% of the GBA library was
licensed games when I crunched the numbers over 3.5 years ago? I'm betting it's far, far higher now. Of course the PlayStation was also a dumping ground for junk, as was its successor.

How depressing.

Update: Next-Gen.biz is also covering the Hawkins talk, and adds this bit:

He added that some larger publishers are too interested in playing safe, saving some direct criticism for the Electronic Arts, the company he originally founded. "They spent a lot of money tying up Tetris and gaining placement on the decks, but if that's the best we can think of [them?] then there is something very wrong." He said too many customers are simply being offered old games but in a second rate form.

I think Hawkins licensed this fiery old Costikyan rant regarding GDC 2003 changed a few words, and made it mobile-centric:

Year by year, budgets increase. Year by year, sales increase less. And year by year, the publishers become more conservative; at $3m a pop and a 3 year dev cycle, it's too risky to invest in any game that's--risky. Thus only sequels and licensed drivel get funded. -- Greg Costikyan, March 2003

Sequels, remakes, and licenses flood the game market. Now the same is happening game conference speeches. Where will the madness stop?

Labels: developers, gba, nextgen, psone

--jvm at 15:36

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Response to Next-Gen editorial on PS3 BC

Colin Campbell gives a spirited defense of Sony's decision to drop the hardware in the PlayStation 3 that provided near complete backward compatibility with PSOne and PlayStation 2 software. I'm a fan of such compatibility, and I'm of course distressed that we may see compatibility diminish from what we've come to expect from the original. Campbell's editorial has a link soliciting responses and here's how I replied.

Two key points are glossed over in your piece.

1. True, Nintendo is not providing backward compatibility to all its previous consoles. However, this misses the important point that Nintendo is providing GameCube compatibility in the Wii. While it does not necessarily imply that Nintendo sees great value in backward compatibility, if it felt that it weren't worth the effort it would not have spent the time and money to make it polished enough for consumers to use in the finished hardware.
   
   
2. Sony knows that its most important PlayStation 3 software will not arrive until later in 2007. In fact, the most important software for Sony's console business in the next six months will probably be on the PlayStation 2: Guitar Hero II and God of War 2, among others.
   
   Consequently, it would be foolish to limit PlayStation 2 backward compatibility on the PlayStation 3. Doing so would provide one more hurdle to the consumer considering a PlayStation 3.
   
   While I can grant that PSOne compatibility is not critical, I cannot discount the importance of PlayStation 2 software as the PlayStation 3 gets up to speed.
   

In defense of your position, I would add:

1. A frugal shopper can get full PlayStation 2 and PSOne compatibility for under $100. It's called a PlayStation 2, and they're on store shelves now. It's a minor price to pay for hardware that plays some of the best games from the past 12 years.
   
   
2. Moreover a point I thought you might have made in your defense of Sony is that no one knows the extent of the compatibility offered yet. Perhaps they're playing it safe and it'll be higher than the pessimists expect. And, at the very least, there is the potential for it to significantly improve over time.

Labels: business, nextgen, ps2, ps3, sony

--jvm at 11:43

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The first PS3 hardware revision shipping next month?

Reports this morning like this one at Next-Gen.biz and this one at Reuters indicate that something has happened to the PlayStation 3 hardware. The result is reduced PlayStation 2 compatibility. If the Reuters report is to be believed then, it looks like an internal change (my emphasis):

Software will take over some of the functionality that was originally taken care of by dedicated chips, which means far fewer PlayStation 2 (PS2) games can be played on a European PS3 compared with the Japanese and American PS3 models which play 98 percent of old games.

So the first hardware revision of the PlayStation 3 may be to remove the PS2 chips that were inside to provide compatibility? I have no idea how much that costs, but perhaps it will save some dough. Then later this year there will be the move to a 65nm chip fabrication process for the Cell which will, supposedly, cut costs for Sony even more.

If the hardware has changed, I wonder when we'll see those systems on American shelves. As I've said before, initial console hardware often has its own bugs, but also has features that get cut from later revisions. Not that is was a particularly bold prediction, but I did say at the time:

If/when they move to a software emulator I think it highly unlikely that they'll achieve the same compatibility they can with hardware. Then again, the mighty Cell is magick, so anything's possible.

Looks like that's coming true.

Even these cost-cutting measures may not mean a cut in price for the PlayStation 3. As indicated in this Next-Gen.biz report, Sony may look at adding cheap bits to the package to make the current prices more acceptable. That didn't work for the PSP and it won't work for the PlayStation 3 either.

I think Sony is missing the point. The $500 and $600 prices are simply too high for most people, regardless of what kind of bonus junk you pack in the box. There's a mental barrier around $300 beyond which most people will simply stop paying attention. Sony needs a basic system at $400 to be on the periphery of consumer consciousness.

Labels: business, nextgen, ps2, ps3, sony

--jvm at 08:39

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The dream, or nightmare, of a videogame standards commission

Eric-Jon Rossel Waugh is has a commentary on Next-Gen.biz today which starts from David Jaffe's recent comment that in ten years there will be a single console and goes from there to propose a videogame standards commission. Here's the critical bit, I think:
Comments:

• Board members nominated by whom? By the initial board? And who will make up the initial board? While such a system could evolve into a workable system, I can easily see it devolving into an insiders group.
• Businesses are not going to give away details about what their future plans are. If such a commission had existed before the Wii and its controller became public, would Nintendo have wanted to talk about their newest advance? Or the Nintendo DS and its touch screen? Sure, they could talk about encouraging new concepts in user input and feedback, but they're still giving away some of what they consider ground they want to stake out before others do.
• That instinct by businesses to protect their advantages is addressed later by saying that the visionaries would need to take the lead and push from within each organization. I don't work in the private sector, but rather in a public institution. If anyone has ideals, it is some of my colleagues (and myself, occasionally). Yet, I have enough experience to see that even those with the power who also have ideals are very rarely able to achieve them. The best we can hope for in much of life is to have striven for ideals and accepted what tiny progress reality affords us.
  
• I'm not convinced that there can be a practical constitution of irrefutable primary standards and ideals for videogames. If someone made a proposal, I'd be happy to consider it, but my gut tells me that it will be either too specific (and rule out things that later turn out to be important) or too vague (and thus difficult to promote in any concrete manner).
  
• I naturally mistrust bureaucracy. Adding a layer here strikes me as ill-suited to the problems it seeks to solve. I suspect it will be fraught with competition from factions on the board and any progress made will be glacial. (See: OpenGL ARB.)
  
• Requiring unanimous consent gives every member a veto on every other one. The United States Congress will move like a cheetah compared to such a board.

I think the OpenGL Architecture Review Board provides an instructive example. Whereas OpenGL was favored by John Carmack in the mid-1990s, we are now in a situation where id Software's primary development is on the Xbox 360 using what I presume is a form of Direct3D, Microsoft's competing interface. By gathering ideas from hardware vendors and then making benevolent dictatorial decisions, it would seem that Microsoft's standard (so to speak) has grown far faster and better than OpenGL could through the OpenGL ARB (which consisted of much the same hardware vendors). Although it may strain the analogy, I think the Linux kernel is another example of how a benevolent dictator, here Linus Torvalds, is key to keeping a system coherent and on course.

Which is to say, I think a commission like the one Eric-Jon Rossel Waugh proposes is unlikely to happen, and if it were to happen it would probably not lead the industry anywhere.

Labels: business, nextgen

--jvm at 11:42

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Another view of sales by genre and publisher, plus spreadsheet

This is my last post on this data, but I was a bit dismayed to see that the graphs in Next-Gen.biz's huge article yesterday (previous post) only counted titles in each genre and from each publisher, not taking into account the sales of each. That's sort of like the Senate version of the data. Here is the House of Representatives version where I've taken publishers and genres and totalled the unit sales for each.

First, unit sales by genre. As always, click for the larger version.
Compare to the original Next-Gen.biz graph here.

Notes:

• Sports games pull a bit ahead of licensed (non-sports) games.
• Shooters jump ahead of Action games by a hair.
• RPGs move way up to parity with Action games and Shooters. (This is largely Square-Enix, although also some Pokemon.)
• Finally, the Other column shrinks relative to the others.

Next, we look at unit sales by publisher:
Compare to the original Next-Gen.biz graph here.

Notes:

• EA pulls even further out ahead of everyone else. Much of that is just Madden NFL 07.
• THQ jumps to third place with its licensed game sales.
• Activision jumps to fourth on the strength of Call of Duty 3 and Guitar Hero 2.
• Take Two drops to fifth because they have more titles but none are huge sellers. (No GTA on consoles aside from the Liberty City Stories port from the PSP.)
• Square leaps from the bottom of the pack to the middle thanks to its small number of huge-selling RPGs.
• Microsoft jumps ahead of Sony primarily on sales of Gears of War.

As promised, here is my spreadsheet. If you add anything else to it, like release dates, please drop me a copy and I'll upload it here.

• OpenOffice 2.0 ODS format (showing formulas and charts)
  
• CSV of just the game data

Enjoy.

Labels: business, data, graphs, nextgen

--jvm at 12:58

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Correlation between Sales and Review Scores

There is a wealth of data in the Next-Gen.biz post today. Regrettably, I did not see a spreadsheet of data to play with. I have made one which I will upload later. Using my copy of the data I made a scatter plot of sales versus review scores. I excluded Madden since it is an aberration, an outlier. It would be at 6500 on the horizontal axis and 85% on the vertical one, so you can see how far out it would be. (Click for a larger version.)
The correlation coefficient shows whether there is a correlation between two sets of data. The closer it is to 1.0, the more closely correlated the data are. The closer to 0.0, the less a correlation. The correlation between unit sales and revenue, for example, is 0.97, which shows that higher sales is closely correlated with higher revenue.

According to OpenOffice, the correlation coefficient between unit sales and score is 0.29. I think we can speak of 0.29 as being a bit low. There is a closer correlation between revenue and review score at a 0.38 correlation coefficient.

Interestingly, Madden skews the numbers a great deal. Taking it out of the data, the correlation coefficient between unit sales and data is 0.34 and the correlation coefficient between revenue and review score is 0.46.

Which leads me to think that there is more than just my intuition to tell me that "consumers know quality when they see it" isn't quite the real picture. They may know quality, but that doesn't mean they want to spend their money on it.

Labels: business, data, graphs, nextgen

--jvm at 18:55

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15% crap or 38% crap?

I hope to get more time going over the stats later today, but at first glance I was bothered by this statement in Next-Gen.biz's latest entry in the TOP 100 TOP 100 LISTS OF ALL TIME.

It also shows that consumers know quality when they see it. Only three games in the top 20 scored an average of less than 75%.

Ok, so that's 15% are below average. What about the whole list of 100 games? Well, 38 games (i.e. 38%) are below average. That's a big difference and a far bit from convincing me that consumers know quality when they see it.

Labels: business, graphs, nextgen

--jvm at 08:25

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Next-Gen's take on retail policies

Colin Campbell has published a Next-Gen.biz commentary on DVD Empire's departure from online game retail. In addition to writing a whole two pages without using the term price point*, here are a few other bits I thought interesting.

First up:

All large retail accounts and distributors are offered price protection of varying degrees of 'generosity' on products. As publishers 'mark down' a game, refunds are passed down the channel according to a game's strength at retail. Even small retailers should be able to negotiate some protection with their distributors on prices that come down.

[snip]

The best way to avoid this problem is to not stock bad games, which generally drop in price faster than good games, or to manage stock in such a way that it becomes less of an issue.

I'm not comfortable with a retailer -- large or small -- deciding a priori which are the good games and which are not. For example, most people would hate Tecmo's Deception, but I thought it was devilishly charming and inventive. I was willing to look past the chunky graphics and terrible translation to the entertaining mechanics. It sold enough to get a sequel, but if some high level decisions are made to undersell niche games, then we're one step closer to prime time TV homogenization than we were before.

Colin has previously argued for this kind of pricing:

This site has long argued for more fluidity in the market for games, based on their popularity. Clearly, some games are worth a good deal more than others; a fact that becomes clear very soon after a game is released. Games that sell well ought to remain at a higher price for as long as possible, while games that review badly and track poorly via online search mechanics, ought to be released at a lower price. The relative shares of these price fluctuations ought to be borne by different sectors of the market appropriately.

As I understand it, make prices proportional with demand. If millions want Halo 3, then it should command a high price. Applied to, say, the PlayStation 3 this would have permitted Sony to reap the rewards that went to eBay scalpers.

While I'm uncomfortable with the idea, I cannot give a solid reason -- other than my own wallet -- to argue against it. Anyone else have that vague sense of unease?

This seems to miss something:

The 'long tail' has never been so much of an issue with games, which are super hit-driven, and rely heavily on new technology and the latest look.

It's true that the leading edge of the industry is currently driven this way, but the long tail is becoming more important with every Wii virtual console release, every PSOne game on the PlayStation Network, and every classic game retrofitted for Xbox Live Arcade. Retailers will move the used game horizon forward faster as the back catalogs get shifted to download services. And if we move to a completely online distribution system, the tail will grow longer as older media can stock the virtual shelves as long as the publisher wants to provide a means to purchase. Just look at GameTap -- as long as it can make money, it has no reason to remove any titles from its catalog, whether they're niche or not.

The "Finally Finally" section at the end of the column does address this as a future issue. When all three major consoles have these kinds of download services, I think you can consider it a current issue, not a future one.

Which brings me to:

Consumers do not browse games stores as they might some other form of media.

I don't think this is true of services like GameTap. I think it's entirely possible, in fact probable, that most people who use GameTap will buy in for a few games they know and hang around to try games they know a little about or have never seen before. I'm no GameTap fan, but that's precisely the kind of thing I enjoyed about having older games stocking the Rhino shelves.

On the topic of used games:

There is something unpleasant about these creations being sold on again and again without any reward going to the makers but the pros of this practise may well outweigh the cons.

I find nothing unpleasant about used bookstores, garage sales, or thrift stores (aside from the occasional funky aroma). Selling used games is the same idea. As it is, this industry is always pushing gamers to upgrade from, dispose of, or drop older products. It is that attitude that I find unpleasant, not that consumers live up to the expectations set for them.

* On the other hand, the podcast a couple of weeks back did use the term "price point" eighteen times in about 10 minutes. Yes, I counted.

Labels: business, nextgen

--jvm at 12:06

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Homer Simpson comments on Bioshock multiplayer

On the Next-Gen.biz podcast this week, Ken Levine of Irrational Games comments on how the multiplayer modes are neglected in most games, not by developers but by players:

[Bioshock] is our first game that hasn't had multipayer. [...] And I don't think anyone has ever spent any real time playing our multiplayer in our games. So System Shock 2, Freedom Force, they've all had multiplayer. And maybe SWAT, some people have spent some time playing SWAT multiplayer. But if you go and you look on Xbox Live, and you go look in GameSpy -- people are still paying SWAT on GameSpy -- it's really kind of interesting that the people who play Halo, who play Counterstrike, there are huge numbers of players playing those games. And then you think about all the work people have spent building multiplayer for these other games and then you go look on who's playing, say, Brothers in Arms, even when it just came out multiplayer, in the world, you're talking about in the world, playing on Xbox Live, I remember we looked right after the game came out, and there were six people playing it. And you think about the effort that went into that, and the effort that didn't go into single-player and you just want to cry like a little girl.

In response, Homer Simpson had this to say:

Kids, you tried your best, and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.

Of course, it really hasn't ever gotten any better than 2fort5 on QuakeWorld TF, so I don't really know why people keep trying.

Labels: bioshock, nextgen, xbox360, xboxlive

--jvm at 12:32

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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.

This post also offers an opportunity for y'all to flame away or offer your own observations, so feel free to hit the comments below.

Labels: art, business, gamecube, nextgen, ps2, xbox

--jvm at 11:12

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Again, with the nub!

From Kris Graft's piece today on the PSP games we can expect in 2007:

We know what you're thinking; shooters rarely work on PSP because of the sad analog nub.

No, I wasn't thinking that. In fact, now that you mention it, I still think it's wrong. Let's look at some shooters on the PSP and review quotes about the controls:

Positive:

• Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror - "smooth, well-designed control scheme" (source)
  
  
• Killzone: Liberation - "The shooting mechanics are handled very well in Liberation." (source)
  
  
• SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo - "intuitive interface" (source)
  
  
• SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 2 - "Whether you're sneaking or shooting, the controls are easy to grasp and they work well for the most part." (source)
  
  
• Medal of Honor Heroes - "It takes a little while to become accustomed to the default control scheme, and it does have a few shortcomings, but overall it works quite nicely." (source)

Neutral:

• Pursuit Force - "Control is, admittedly, slightly wonky. But thanks to a lock-on mechanism, it's easy to handle crowds of gun-toting gang members." (source)
  
  
• Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops - "complicated control scheme has a steep learning curve" (source)
  
  
• Bounty Hounds - "With a better camera and improved controls, it could have been a real contender." (source)

Negative:

• Star Wars: Battlefront II - "Interface makes for somewhat awkward controls" (source)
  
  
• From Russia with Love - "the idiotic method of auto-targeting makes it a real problem" (source)
  
  
• Ghost in the Shell - "Sluggish, imprecise controls" (source)
  
  
• Armored Core: Formula Front - "manual controls are sluggish and difficult to use" (source)

Is every shooter as good as Syphon Filter? No, of course not. But I'd say that with the positive reactions to the shooter controls on the PSP, it's a far cry from "rarely" working. I hate putting Metal Gear Solid in the netural category, since a steep learning curve isn't a statement about the quality of the controls once you've learned them. When you've got the hang of it, MGS:PO controls beautifully. Heck, people were similarly concerned about how Ace Combat X would fare on the PSP's controls and it turned out very well.

As a consistent reader of Next-Gen.biz I see plenty of stuff that Kris has written, and generally I think it's well done. The slamming of the nub, however, is really off the mark. It's like the Jaguar controller crap all over again.

Labels: nextgen, psp, sony

--jvm at 12:51

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