Microsoft’s PC initiative, Games for Windows Live, hasn’t exactly been a smashing success. Actually, calling it anything close to that would be the first sign of insanity. The service has been plagued with complaints of pricing structure, user-interface issues, and cries of “Steam rip-off”. Well Microsoft’s attempting to reverse the ship now by completely redesigning GFW.
Continue reading Microsoft Redesigns Games for Windows Live
Epic Games President Mike Capps has recently been interviewed by GamesIndustry.biz and has given some newsworthy information about his and Epic’s stance on the used game market. He called the secondary market “a huge issue in the United States”.
We all know Epic has been making steps to curb used game sales, namely putting an unlock code for six new maps in each retail copy of Gears of War 2, but something Capps later said was very… startling:
I’ve talked to some developers who are saying “If you want to fight the final boss you go online and pay USD 20, but if you bought the retail version you got it for free”. We don’t make any money when someone rents it, and we don’t make any money when someone buys it used - way more than twice as many people played Gears than bought it…
Obviously, he isn’t going to name individual developers here but he makes it sound like many developers are kicking around this idea to fight against used game sales and rentals, both of which don’t make the publishers any money.
I understand that charging people if they bought used copies of games would be beneficial to publishers but this policy would be horrible for gamers. Imagine being barred from playing the last quarter of a game just because you bought it used or rented it; I’m sure developers’ forums and email inboxes would be filled to the brim with complaints and flame which makes me think they wouldn’t dare do this. However, if multiple developers were to do this at the same time, many gamers would just conform and either buy retail copies or buy downloadable unlock code.
Personally, I think that the developers should work out this problem with retailers like Gamestop and Blockbuster rather than taking it out on gamers. However, money problems like these are quite hard to compromise upon by big corporations.
Good news developers: you won’t have this problem in a few years since everything is going towards digital distribution. So would you please hold this off this policy for a while?
If you don’t know by now, I love numbers. So, I decided to introduce a new segment that I’ll run a few days before the NPD releases for the previous months. Basically, I’ll just give my predictions of the top selling games and consoles of the previous month. Then we can compare my predictions to the actual results (which usually come out around the 15th of the month). Alright well enough jabbering, let’s get into the predictions:
I put the Wii on top because although supply is still limited, more and more Wiis have been reaching stores; obviously that’s going to lead to more sales. The other Nintendo juggernaut, the DS, will then have to take second. Microsoft will still be riding the tails of the huge price cut they had and will be a strong third. The PS3 probably had a decent month because of LittleBigPlanet, but was soundly beaten by the competitors’ consoles. And the PSP, which hasn’t had a big release in ages, will be left in the dust.
This section was a little trickier; there were just so many great games releasing in October. In the end, I put Fallout 3 on top because even though the game was available in October for only a short amount of time, it had a huge amount of hype and was released on three major systems (PC, Xbox 360, PS3) and, when those three versions of Fallout 3 are added up, it will probably come out on top. Second place goes to Saints Row 2 because of gamers’ endless addiction to open world games. Sony’s exclusive, LittleBigPlanet, gets third in my book because its botched launch couldn’t suppress the amount of hype this game had. Fable 2 had a great month at fourth and Dead Space rounded out the list at number five.
Well, that’s pretty much it. Voice your opinion of my selections or what you think of this section in the comments section.
Today, on ClickZ, writer Kevin Carney has caused some disturbance in the gaming market by proclaiming that the “consoles are facing extinction” because of the casual market and the lack of innovation in the current consoles. In fact, he goes so far as to say that this generation was a “giant leap backwards”.
Well, first of all, I have a problem with that statement. How could anyone in their right mind call this generation of consoles a “leap backwards”? The era of HD graphics (for the PS3 and Xbox 360) was thrust upon us by this generation which was innovation in itself. Also, this generation has brought about many innovative input devices, the most innovative being Nintendo’s Wiimote (and the least being Sony’s SixAxis). And on top of that, Xbox Live has created a better experience than ever seen before, one that will once again be improved when the New Xbox Experience launches.
Continue reading Is the Casual Market Driving the Consoles to “Extinction”? Absolutely Not
The original Gears of War was absolutely great in my book. Sure the story wasn’t very classy, but the gritty graphics and addictive gameplay really made that game in my opinion. And good news for Gears fans: Gears of War 2 keeps the great things about the original Gears and tries to improve upon some of the original’s faults.
I’ve played about three hours of the campaign but only a few multiplayer matches so I’ll stick to describing the campaign for now.
The latest issue of EGM should be hitting mailboxes and shelves in the next couple of days and in it, there’s some juicy new rumors from EGM’s rumor-finder, Quartermann. This month, the mysterious Quartermann has the scoop on Cliff Bleszinski’s next game after Gears of War 2 and what Sony is planning to do with LittleBigPlanet.
Most games enter the “gold” status about a month before the release date. At this time, the game has been finished and polished to a sheen (usually) by the developers and they’re ready to ship the game to manufacturers and start ramping up advertising. Most publishers and developers need a month to complete this process so they can physically make enough copies of the game to satisfy demand.
Well, sticking to its maverick roots, Mirror’s Edge has just gone gold. This is pretty strange considering the game is due out next week. Hopefully EA can press enough discs to satisfy demand in this short amount of time.