With a day delay due to a busy weekend, here's this week's rundown of the important console war news of the week.
Quick Hits
Nintendo finally launched the “News” channel on their Wii console. The news service rounds out a group of Wii channels (including the Weather channel) featured on the system at launch but not yet functional and currently provides headlines and stories via the Associated Press. Both this and the Weather and Internet channels are interesting moves for Nintendo, considering how much more focused on gaming they seem to be compared to Sony and Microsoft. I’ve previously discussed Microsoft and Sony’s obvious attempts to turn their consoles into full-on home entertainment systems that provide every function we could hope for in our interview. Nintendo still doesn’t seem to be going for the same thing right now, but these small additions to the Wii at least hint towards possible future pursuits.
Also from Nintendo this week, we got word of some of Nintendo’s first hard numbers on sales since the Wii’s release. Covering the nine month period ending on December 31st, the results showed net sales for the company rising 72.8% and operating income 102.5%. The net profits for Nintendo have reached a record $1.09 billion. Nintendo’s current success with the Wii and DS comes as no shock, but there’s also some interesting software numbers. During the period covered, nineteen first-party Nintendo titles sold over one million copies. This points to one of Nintendo’s greatest strengths and weaknesses. They make amazing games that everyone wants to play. But in the same note, if so many of Nintendo’s own first-party titles are selling so heavily, third-party developers are discouraged from releasing games on the system. As I’m sure I’ve heard it put by several developers before, the hardest part about developing for a Nintendo system is competing with Nintendo itself. Whether or not the Wii will suffer from the same lack of third-party support that plagued both the Gamecube and N64 is going to be a real factor in the continued strength of the system.
Microsoft released second quarter results for the period ending Dec. 31st, 2006. Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices division (which includes the Xbox) posted a $289 million loss subtracting from the company’s overall $2.63 billion profit. This nearly matches the $286 million loss from the same division last year, but according to Microsoft (and the generally luke-warm reception of consumers), part of the loss is due to the launch of the Zune, Microsoft’s MP3 player/iPod competitor. Another part of the loss, according to the big M, was their extension of 360’s 90-day warranty, leading to a deluge of new repairs that Microsoft had to fully cover.
Shortly after the release of that information, Microsoft also announced that they were cutting their estimates for number of 360s shipped by June 30th, 2007 from 13-15 million to 12 million. According to Microsoft CFO Chris Liddel, “We are just being cautious about the second half.” This isn’t a bad or extremely telling move on Microsoft’s part, as 360s are readily available on store shelves and aren’t likely to move too quickly until winter 2007 (and a new Christmas season) approaches. In fact, I wouldn’t expect a surge of 360 sales until Halo 3 hits shelves.
Once again, the Japanese sales charts for the week provided some fascinating results. A new volume in Namco’s .Hack series topped the charts, but the real surprise was the Western-developed, 360 exclusive shooter Gears of War reaching number seven on the week of it’s Japanese release. This is only the third 360 game ever to crack the top ten in Japan, and it’s even more shocking because it’s a shooter. Gamasutra’s David Jenkins suggests that it may have been helped by the third-person rather than first-person gameplay, but whatever the reason, it’s another boon to Epic’s game. How many more weeks of great Gears of War news will we have?
As expected, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade broke PC sales records in its release two weeks ago. Selling 2.4 million copies in its first 24 hours (1.2 in North America, 1.1 in Europe), making it far and away the best-selling expansion pack in gaming history. Blizzard reported that by the end of the day, 1.7 million players had upgraded their accounts and logged on. Blizzard has reportedly planned on releasing one expansion pack every year for their popular MMORPG; if they can drum up this kind of excitement for each one, World of Warcraft is certain to remain the most-played PC game. Personally, I expect the number of players to continue rising past the recently-achieved 8 million mark throughout 2007.
Casual games developer MumboJumbo acquired Ritual Entertainment. Ritual was one of those few adventurous PC developers dipping their feet into the realm of episodic gaming, their Sin Episodes: Emergence launching just before Valve’s Half-Life 2: Episode 1 with both on the Steam download service. Where Valve’s second episode received numerous delays, Ritual’s completely dropped off the map following somewhat weak reviews. Now with the purchase by MumboJumbo, a second Sin episode seems even more unlikely, especially since the stated reason for the buyout was to “strengthen MumboJumbo’s casual games force”. The Sin Episodes site has pared down the “Episodes” section, which previously showed a bevy of upcoming releases, to a mere one release that is cryptically labeled “Coming Soon”. Now if only we could get a really good developer to do episodic gaming right…
ABI Research put out a study this week stating that gaming consoles are quickly becoming the top market for digital distribution. The report predicted that by 2011, microtransactions would be ringing in $833 million out of gamers’ pockets. Not shockingly at all, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is the current leader in this new arena of video game profitability. If Xbox Live can continue offering a clean, easy-to-use, and easy-to-implement in games service, they could definitely see the majority of that huge chunk of cash from microtransactions. While both Sony and Nintendo obviously have their own means of digital distribution, neither currently do it close to as well as Microsoft. A perfect examples is EA’s Godfather, where you can pay a small fee on Xbox Live to gain access to the most powerful henchmen in the game. Simply talking to one in the game world pulls open the 360’s Marketplace tab where you can then freely purchase if you so desire. How far gamers are willing to put up with this kind of nickel-and-diming, ABI does not say, but if their predictions are correct, we’ve only just begun.
Surprise Announcement of the Week
Popular JRPG developer Square-Enix announced that they have licensed the Unreal 3 engine from Epic. This move is shocking both because of the way this Japanese company has cut a deal with a Western developer and also because of how much Square has hyped up their new White engine, which was first showcased in a video for Final Fantasy XIII. This is pure speculation on my part, but I suspect this might be another step for Square-Enix in its move away from Sony and the Playstation 3. I would not be at all shocked if Square’s first game utilizing the Unreal 3 engine shows up on the Xbox 360.
Theory Break
Earlier this week, a geology professor explained to me the “roomful of peanuts” model of economy. The theory goes like this: take a small room – say your bed room or dorm room if you’re one of those lucky college students. Now buy enough peanuts to fill that room completely from floor to ceiling. Done? Good. Now, start eating those peanuts one by one. According to the theory, you’ll eventually reach a point where it takes too much effort to dig through the mess of empty shells you’ve created to find a peanut worth chomping on. Thus with peanuts (or natural resources, such as oil, as it were), they never really run out; it just becomes too economically pointless to put forth the energy and effort to get the very last peanut.
I got to thinking about how this idea might apply to gaming. I cannot guess how many people reading this are like me, but if you are, you have a stack of video games sitting somewhere in your house that you’ve never finished. How many of your games do you complete? How many do you get every last drop from, finding every hidden item or extra cutscene?
Now I wouldn’t say I find this the best way to think about games, but I have a feeling that’s how most developers think about them, on purpose or not. When I’m playing the latest action game and find out that it, too, has a ridiculous number of random hidden items in the game world for players to find, I don’t get excited about digging through the peanut shells. I roll my eyes.
I think what I’m trying to get at is: many developers need to start reconsidering the very core of how they design their games. They shouldn’t give us a game full of peanuts to chase down – red herrings that offer no real satisfaction compared to the amount of energy we need to put in. I’m not entirely sure what the solution is, but I’ll be thinking about it more, and I’d love to hear your ideas. Over-extended metaphor? You better believe it!
Alright, folks, that’s all for this week. As always, send comments to kefkataran@gmail.com or post them here.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Sunday, January 21, 2007
TWiG 3: A Lonely Winter Week
It’s definitely a slow winter news week, but here’s this week’s rundown of the news.
Quick Hits
Hot on the heels of last week’s news from CES that Gears of War had sold 2.7 million copies since its release, Microsoft put out a press release late this week announcing a new landmark: 3 million copies of Epic’s shooter sold. They also noted that over 750,000 copies of the free Gears of War map pack from Epic have been downloaded over Xbox Live since being released January 10th. 750,000 seems a mite bit small for a free map pack, but these numbers are as impressive as ever. The press release hypes Gears of War as quickly becoming one of the most popular and best-selling franchises. One wonders if Microsoft will try alternating Halo and Gears of War sequel releases in the future.
In what seems to be an attempt to make up for previous pricing plans that have received heavy criticism, Microsoft announced several cheap add-ons to Lumines on Xbox Live Arcade. The add-ons include a new skin (free) and a new VS CPU pack (100 points) and Puzzle/Mission pack (100 points) that will be at the low prices listed for the first month – from Jan. 24th until Feb. 21st. It’s not proof that Microsoft is really trying to change their pricing plans, but at the very least this shows that when the crowd gets upset over a decision, Microsoft hears them. After the promotional month, the add-on packs will revert to the normal price of 300 points, which is still probably a bit better than might have been expected.
Popular RPG developer Bioware revealed their plans for episodic content in upcoming releases. This includes downloadable additions to PC releases Dragon Age and Jade Empire: Special Edition as well as 360 exclusive Mass Effect. A game with as much hype and potential as Mass Effect can only be helped by the ability for Bioware to add to the game universe’s size post-release. If done right (i.e. if they’re not charging for horse armor), this could seriously help legitimize episodic content, especially on consoles.
In further RPG digital distribution news, Bethesda announced the first official expansion to hit 2006 RPG Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. Titled The Shivering Isles, the expansion will be released this spring for both the PC and the Xbox 360. Most interestingly, the 360 version will only be available as a download on Xbox Live. This worries me if only because most of the Xbox Live add-ons to Oblivion have been sparse to say the least. Of course just putting the same small add-ons into a box wouldn’t increase the value any, so it’s still wait and see on this expansion.
The Japan sales charts this week are topped by Wii Sports. Even more interestingly, every title on the charts save one was on a Nintendo console – two Wii titles and seven DS titles. The non-Nintendo title, at number 8 is Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops on the PSP. Nintendo’s sales in Japan are remaining quite strong, and the DS success seems to slowly be translating to Wii success as well. Curiosity: six months from now will we see an equal or close to equal number of Wii and DS games on the charts?
The hit PS2 rock series Guitar Hero is switching to a new developer. Following the acquisition of RedOctane by Activision last year, it looks like Guitar Hero III will be developed by Neversoft, the group behind the Tony Hawk series of games. Surely fans of the shredding simulator will be waiting nervously for the next iteration to make sure the developer doesn’t ruin the game, but if there’s something Neversoft has done well in the past, it’s create strong yearly updates to a well-respected IP.
My Week in Gaming
You don’t really know what you’ve got until it’s gone… and then back again. As I briefly mentioned last week, my 360 got sent in for repair right at the start of the year. A new unit arrived safely in the mail from Microsoft this week, prompting me to spend several late nights this week reminding myself why I love Xbox Live Arcade. Of the twenty or so games I’ve purchased on Live Arcade, I probably spent a significant chunk of time with at least half of them this week. Part of the beauty of the types of games found on Live Arcade currently is this ability to just jump in and out. Sure, I hadn’t played Geometry Wars or Bejeweled or Galaga for a month or two. But all it took was a quick look at my achievement list to remind myself what I was currently trying to do in the game.
I also finally got to test out the copy of Viva Pinata that I bought my girlfriend for Christmas. This game is quite the anomaly – an sickeningly cute game on the very adult-focused 360, which is strange enough in itself, but also a game obviously targeted at kids that no kid under the age of 10 could ever actually play. As a breeding simulation, Viva Pinata is fairly successful, fun, and definitely addictive. But there’s so much complexity in the ever-growing list of requirements to keep your piñatas happy and mating and the sheer number of tasks available to complete that I can’t imagine many children getting past poking around with Whirlms and Sparrowmints, the game’s starting creatures.
No, Viva Pinata is actually something much more fascinating than a children’s game on the Xbox 360. As others have astutely pointed out, it is in fact a game meant to be played by parents that they can safely and enjoyably play with their children in the room. Even when making a game that appears to be kiddy in nature, 360 titles are stubbornly maintaining their adult focus. Still, it’s hard to complain about the variety. An Xbox 360 title that’s not a shooter, sports, or driving game? I’m happy to support that.
As always, thanks for reading, and your comments are very appreciated. Either comment here or send e-mails to kefkataran@gmail.com. Hope to see you next week!
Quick Hits
Hot on the heels of last week’s news from CES that Gears of War had sold 2.7 million copies since its release, Microsoft put out a press release late this week announcing a new landmark: 3 million copies of Epic’s shooter sold. They also noted that over 750,000 copies of the free Gears of War map pack from Epic have been downloaded over Xbox Live since being released January 10th. 750,000 seems a mite bit small for a free map pack, but these numbers are as impressive as ever. The press release hypes Gears of War as quickly becoming one of the most popular and best-selling franchises. One wonders if Microsoft will try alternating Halo and Gears of War sequel releases in the future.
In what seems to be an attempt to make up for previous pricing plans that have received heavy criticism, Microsoft announced several cheap add-ons to Lumines on Xbox Live Arcade. The add-ons include a new skin (free) and a new VS CPU pack (100 points) and Puzzle/Mission pack (100 points) that will be at the low prices listed for the first month – from Jan. 24th until Feb. 21st. It’s not proof that Microsoft is really trying to change their pricing plans, but at the very least this shows that when the crowd gets upset over a decision, Microsoft hears them. After the promotional month, the add-on packs will revert to the normal price of 300 points, which is still probably a bit better than might have been expected.
Popular RPG developer Bioware revealed their plans for episodic content in upcoming releases. This includes downloadable additions to PC releases Dragon Age and Jade Empire: Special Edition as well as 360 exclusive Mass Effect. A game with as much hype and potential as Mass Effect can only be helped by the ability for Bioware to add to the game universe’s size post-release. If done right (i.e. if they’re not charging for horse armor), this could seriously help legitimize episodic content, especially on consoles.
In further RPG digital distribution news, Bethesda announced the first official expansion to hit 2006 RPG Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. Titled The Shivering Isles, the expansion will be released this spring for both the PC and the Xbox 360. Most interestingly, the 360 version will only be available as a download on Xbox Live. This worries me if only because most of the Xbox Live add-ons to Oblivion have been sparse to say the least. Of course just putting the same small add-ons into a box wouldn’t increase the value any, so it’s still wait and see on this expansion.
The Japan sales charts this week are topped by Wii Sports. Even more interestingly, every title on the charts save one was on a Nintendo console – two Wii titles and seven DS titles. The non-Nintendo title, at number 8 is Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops on the PSP. Nintendo’s sales in Japan are remaining quite strong, and the DS success seems to slowly be translating to Wii success as well. Curiosity: six months from now will we see an equal or close to equal number of Wii and DS games on the charts?
The hit PS2 rock series Guitar Hero is switching to a new developer. Following the acquisition of RedOctane by Activision last year, it looks like Guitar Hero III will be developed by Neversoft, the group behind the Tony Hawk series of games. Surely fans of the shredding simulator will be waiting nervously for the next iteration to make sure the developer doesn’t ruin the game, but if there’s something Neversoft has done well in the past, it’s create strong yearly updates to a well-respected IP.
My Week in Gaming
You don’t really know what you’ve got until it’s gone… and then back again. As I briefly mentioned last week, my 360 got sent in for repair right at the start of the year. A new unit arrived safely in the mail from Microsoft this week, prompting me to spend several late nights this week reminding myself why I love Xbox Live Arcade. Of the twenty or so games I’ve purchased on Live Arcade, I probably spent a significant chunk of time with at least half of them this week. Part of the beauty of the types of games found on Live Arcade currently is this ability to just jump in and out. Sure, I hadn’t played Geometry Wars or Bejeweled or Galaga for a month or two. But all it took was a quick look at my achievement list to remind myself what I was currently trying to do in the game.
I also finally got to test out the copy of Viva Pinata that I bought my girlfriend for Christmas. This game is quite the anomaly – an sickeningly cute game on the very adult-focused 360, which is strange enough in itself, but also a game obviously targeted at kids that no kid under the age of 10 could ever actually play. As a breeding simulation, Viva Pinata is fairly successful, fun, and definitely addictive. But there’s so much complexity in the ever-growing list of requirements to keep your piñatas happy and mating and the sheer number of tasks available to complete that I can’t imagine many children getting past poking around with Whirlms and Sparrowmints, the game’s starting creatures.
No, Viva Pinata is actually something much more fascinating than a children’s game on the Xbox 360. As others have astutely pointed out, it is in fact a game meant to be played by parents that they can safely and enjoyably play with their children in the room. Even when making a game that appears to be kiddy in nature, 360 titles are stubbornly maintaining their adult focus. Still, it’s hard to complain about the variety. An Xbox 360 title that’s not a shooter, sports, or driving game? I’m happy to support that.
As always, thanks for reading, and your comments are very appreciated. Either comment here or send e-mails to kefkataran@gmail.com. Hope to see you next week!
Saturday, January 13, 2007
This Week in Gaming 2: The Number Game, Vol. 1
Welcome to Week 2 of This Week in Gaming, an experimental weekly blog where I round up and analyze the week's biggest gaming news as relates to the current-gen console wars.
The Big Stuff
The Consumer Electronics Show ran this week in Las Vegas. The biggest gaming news out of CES was probably Bill Gates’s Microsoft keynote. Along with touting the success of the Xbox 360, Gates and Robbie Bach announced a new upcoming service for the 360: IPTV. IPTV on the 360 will provide gamers the ability to stream television programming onto their TVs through their 360s and will also open the 360 up for digital video recording, picture-in-picture capabilities, and messaging friends while watching TV.
Speaking after his CES keynote, Bill Gates controversially followed in Sony’s footsteps, referring to Microsoft’s next-gen gaming machine as a computer rather than a console. As much as this statement has garnered laughs both when Gates said it and when Sony’s Ken Kutaragi said it of the PS3, the implications of these comments do very clearly mark the differences between what Sony and Microsoft are going for compared to Nintendo. Where the Wii has reached for a saccharine level of simplicity, to the point where they are turning away some hardcore gamers, Sony and Microsoft are very obviously trying to move towards their systems being all-in-one entertainment machines. Each have had varying levels of success so far, but if Microsoft and Sony have anything to say about it, Xbox v.3 and the PS4 will provide everything consumers want in entertainment – film, television, internet access, and, almost as an afterthought, gaming. As one friend of mine put it upon hearing news of the Microsoft keynote: “You thought Microsoft’s computer monopoly was a big deal? We ain’t seen nothing yet.”
Outside of CES, the biggest story this week was easily the NPD sales info for December. For those who don’t know, NPD (National Purchase Diary) is a group that collects information about purchase numbers each month and provides them to manufacturers and retailers. For gaming, this information includes hardware and software sales. There’s always a lot of controversy when the NPD data is released each month over how trustworthy NPD is, but the general consensus in the industry seems to be that they know their stuff. Certain big-name stores like Wal-Mart supposedly do not report to NPD, but the group is said to have very accurate formulae for approximating the number sold from places not reporting.
So what’s the big deal with December’s NPD? As might be expected from the holidays, hardware sales skyrocketed a whopping 59%. Game sales only went up 5%, but even if they didn’t have the games to play them, it looks like a lot of people were waking up to new systems under the tree. Last-gen’s Playstation 2 remained the best-selling console of the month, with the Xbox 360 close behind. As many predicted, the 360 was a popular choice for people looking for a next-gen system but unable to find Playstation 3s or Wiis. The continued popularity of the Playstation 2, along with its cheap price and steady stream of strong releases, may actually be harming the PS3 at this point. Whereas the Playstation 3 is still experiencing the normal drought of titles after its launch, the PS2 just had a huge group of releases in Fall 2006 and still has a lot of big titles coming, including Rogue Galaxy and God of War 2. There’s not a lot of incentive yet for the army of PS2 owners to upgrade to the next-gen Sony console, especially with the 360 costing less and the Wii offering completely new experiences.
Both the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP offered up impressive handheld sales – 1.6 million and 953,000 respectively. The continued popularity of the DS was expected, with some reports stating that they were as difficult to find at stores as the Wii. Perhaps more surprising was the PSP, which is selling quite strongly despite many continued complaints about its small library of desirable titles and weak design. At the very least, the PSP has gotten to the point in its popularity where it’s almost certain that Sony will continue in the handheld market.
As far as software goes, the top-selling title of the month was Madden NFL 07, proving as definitively as it ever has that it is not hardcore gamers buying the biggest-selling games. Certainly some hardcore gamers do play the Madden games, but for them to fill EA’s pockets the way they do, there’s a much wider audience being appealed to. Some other franchises that might be considered targeted to a more hardcore (if only slightly) crowd were also near the top, though: Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Call of Duty 3, and Need for Speed: Carbon were also in the top five, along with THQ’s Cars adaptation. NPD also released year-round numbers, which once again showed Madden NFL 07 as the top-selling game of the year. Close behind was New Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo DS and Gears of War on the Xbox 360 – impressive spots for games released on a single platform compared to Madden, which is on every platform imaginable. The fast rise by Gears of War is great news for Microsoft, who obviously posited the game as a placeholder for the Halo franchise. It worked, and Microsoft can now be said to have two best-selling shooter franchises exclusive to their system, as well as a true killer app for the 360 finally.
The guys behind Famitsu revealed this week that the Japanese software market has jumped 125% in 2006. This is after several years of Japanese decline and could be good news for Japanese game developers, who have had to live with the reality of the poor Japanese economy for many years now. Eight of the top ten selling Japanese titles of 2006 were Nintendo DS titles. It’s no secret that the DS has become one of the hottest Japanese trends this year, but this just drills it in once more. Seeing news like this, it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone to see even huge franchise games like Dragon Quest IX coming to the DS, though the PS2 still had the highest number of games (42) on the list. Also interesting was that of the next-gen systems, only the Wii made it into the top 100 games sold in 2006, with Wii Sports at number 21. No PS3 or Xbox 360 titles made it this year. The 360’s Japan struggles are well-documented, but perhaps the PS3 will have some troubles there also.
The Small Stuff
With the commercial success of the Wii and the DS over the holiday season, Nintendo has raised their expected profit forecast by 20%. In the fiscal year ending on March 31st, 2007, Nintendo expects to make $1.01 billion. Obviously there is something quite positive to be said for making money off of hardware sales right out of the gate.
Microsoft executive Peter Moore has confirmed that Microsoft has plans to bring video games to their Zune portable media player by summer 2008. The Zune, widely hyped as Microsoft’s “iPod killer”, has met with generally poor reception since its debut. According to the Gamasutra article I’ve linked to, Microsoft expects to sell 1 million Zunes by June 30th compared to 17 million iPods in the fourth quarter alone. It doesn’t seem likely that Zune’s gaming capabilities will actually compete with the DS or PSP; instead, it will probably just be able to play simple casual games like can now be downloaded from iTunes for the latest iterations of the iPod.
After lots of curiosity from fans, Microsoft revealed this week that they will be ignoring their 50MB Live Arcade size limit for upcoming PS1 port Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Previously, Microsoft has kept any Xbox Live Arcade releases below 50 MB so that users who bought the 360 Core version or otherwise didn’t have a hard drive could easily fit Arcade titles onto a 64 MB memory card. The much-anticipated release will be the first to break that rule, though Microsoft has said the rule will still be in place. They’re simply willing to make exceptions for the right games. Hopefully more high-end XBLA content will pop up as 2007 progresses.
Microsoft added to the good news about the 360’s holidays sales with several other impressive numbers. First off, again, Gears of War is an unabashed success, having sold 2.7 million copies in a mere eight weeks. There are 10.4 million total 360s shipped worldwide, just topping the number Microsoft promised they’d reach before the end of the year. Microsoft has also stated a goal of 6 million 360 users on Xbox Live by June 2007. They confirmed that they’re well on the way, having just surpassed the 5 million mark. The total attach rate of the 360 (number of games sold per console) has risen from 5.1 in October to 5.3 now. So what do all these numbers and statistics mean? Basically, things are looking up for the 360 heading into 2007. Microsoft has pulled out a seriously impressive number of “wins” at the start of the year, and they have a momentum that Sony currently lacks.
Soaring on the hype for their soon-to-be-released first expansion pack, World of Warcraft hit 8 million subscribers this week. This includes 2 million players in North America, 1.5 million in Europe, and 3.5 million in China. Seemingly becoming a more unbeatable behemoth every day, it will be interesting seeing how sales of expansion pack The Burning Crusade go – right now it appears to be one of the most anticipated expansions ever. The expansion hits stores next week, so I’ll keep an eye on it.
Despite the NPD numbers having revealed that Sony’s Playstation 3 has only sold 700,000 units since its launch, Sony confirmed at CES that they have shipped 1 million PS3s in the U.S. The timing for this announcement may not have been very keen for Sony, as it coincided with the NPD numbers and numerous reports of stacks of unsold PS3s in stores around the nation. The sense seems to be that the rush for the Playstation 3 has died down more or less altogether while people are still clamoring for a Nintendo Wii.
Anecdotal Evidence
With my work at Evil Avatar and on the Evil Avatar Radio podcast, I obviously come into contact with a lot of hardcore gamers. But I’m also a college student, a library employee, a comic shop worker, and generally a guy who likes to talk to a lot of people. Invariably this leads to discussions about gaming with people who aren’t hardcore gamers. This section is for talking about what the non-hardcore gamers in my life are thinking.
So I haven’t had too much contact with other people this week since winter break is still on, but tonight the girlfriend and I went to Local Movie Rental Facility. Movie Rental Place Employee #1 is an acquaintance from school. A few weeks earlier he’d run up to me in the student center to inform me that he’d been talked into buying a Wii and was officially on the lookout. As of this weekend, he remains on the lookout.
“I could buy a Wii right now, but I can’t even find one. I’m just going to wait until April or May, because they’re not even mass-producing them until February.” Not sure where that rumor got started. “Kudos to Nintendo, though. It’s about time they had a hit this big.” And about the PS3: “Sure, it’d be nice to have Final Fantasy 13. It’d be nice to have Kingdom Hearts 3. But they’re not even going to be around for at least a year and a half. There’s just not anything on the PlayStation 3 right now that appeals to me. I’ve got a friend who has one and he hardly plays it.”
The Wii myth among casual gamers just seems to keep building, and I expect that to continue until supply catches up with demand. Movie Rental Place Employee #1 also mentioned that he has friends looking for Wiis who have already purchased games for it, and he was considering doing the same. It’s really wild seeing that kind of devotion among people who are more or less casual gamers.
My Week in Gaming
Due to my 360 being shipped off for repairs – complete with a ludicrous 14-business-day wait for a repaired unit – my gaming this week has almost completely being taken up by my brand new PlayStation 3. Along with Resistance: Fall of Man (the only game I purchased for the PS3), I’ve been playing demos for Motorstorm and Lemmings. Even on my SDTV, Motorstorm is easily the most beautiful game I’ve ever seen. If the final version runs as smoothly as the demo and has lag-free multiplayer, it’s definitely going to be the next must-purchase title for the PS3.
Resistance: Fall of Man has impressed me a lot more than I expected. The single-player game, while far from revolutionary, is astoundingly solid. The campaign mixes together huge war battles akin to Call of Duty with linear solo shooting ala Half-Life 2. More fun yet is the online mode, which was absolutely nailed in every respect, despite worries about the PS3’s ability to do online gaming. There’s the obvious deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the flag modes, but there’s also a couple of interesting new modes. One of them especially, Meltdown, has proven to be quite addicting. This mode has two teams vying for control of nodes to help prevent their reactors from overheating, and it’s a blast. Destroying an enemy’s node at the last second of a match so that their sliver of reactor energy goes down just a little bit faster than yours is a complete and wonderful rush.
Resistance online also importantly offers a completely lag-free experience. Whether or not this will continue in future PS3 online titles remains to be seen, but it’s extremely nice here when you can enter a match with 40 other players and have no slow-down or jerkiness whatsoever. There’s also a complex ranking system that helps match you up to people in your same skill level and give you something to shoot for when gaming. It’s rare to find the “just one more level” mentality in a shooter, but that’s absolutely the feeling I had when I was playing Resistance at four in the morning this week. If nothing else, Resistance online proves that the potential for amazing online experiences is there in the PS3. It's just going to be up to Sony to continue producing games that put the potential to good use.
Alright, that's all I've got for you guys this week. As always, thanks for reading, and your comments are very appreciated. Either comment here or send e-mails to kefkataran@gmail.com. Hope to see you next week!
The Big Stuff
The Consumer Electronics Show ran this week in Las Vegas. The biggest gaming news out of CES was probably Bill Gates’s Microsoft keynote. Along with touting the success of the Xbox 360, Gates and Robbie Bach announced a new upcoming service for the 360: IPTV. IPTV on the 360 will provide gamers the ability to stream television programming onto their TVs through their 360s and will also open the 360 up for digital video recording, picture-in-picture capabilities, and messaging friends while watching TV.
Speaking after his CES keynote, Bill Gates controversially followed in Sony’s footsteps, referring to Microsoft’s next-gen gaming machine as a computer rather than a console. As much as this statement has garnered laughs both when Gates said it and when Sony’s Ken Kutaragi said it of the PS3, the implications of these comments do very clearly mark the differences between what Sony and Microsoft are going for compared to Nintendo. Where the Wii has reached for a saccharine level of simplicity, to the point where they are turning away some hardcore gamers, Sony and Microsoft are very obviously trying to move towards their systems being all-in-one entertainment machines. Each have had varying levels of success so far, but if Microsoft and Sony have anything to say about it, Xbox v.3 and the PS4 will provide everything consumers want in entertainment – film, television, internet access, and, almost as an afterthought, gaming. As one friend of mine put it upon hearing news of the Microsoft keynote: “You thought Microsoft’s computer monopoly was a big deal? We ain’t seen nothing yet.”
Outside of CES, the biggest story this week was easily the NPD sales info for December. For those who don’t know, NPD (National Purchase Diary) is a group that collects information about purchase numbers each month and provides them to manufacturers and retailers. For gaming, this information includes hardware and software sales. There’s always a lot of controversy when the NPD data is released each month over how trustworthy NPD is, but the general consensus in the industry seems to be that they know their stuff. Certain big-name stores like Wal-Mart supposedly do not report to NPD, but the group is said to have very accurate formulae for approximating the number sold from places not reporting.
So what’s the big deal with December’s NPD? As might be expected from the holidays, hardware sales skyrocketed a whopping 59%. Game sales only went up 5%, but even if they didn’t have the games to play them, it looks like a lot of people were waking up to new systems under the tree. Last-gen’s Playstation 2 remained the best-selling console of the month, with the Xbox 360 close behind. As many predicted, the 360 was a popular choice for people looking for a next-gen system but unable to find Playstation 3s or Wiis. The continued popularity of the Playstation 2, along with its cheap price and steady stream of strong releases, may actually be harming the PS3 at this point. Whereas the Playstation 3 is still experiencing the normal drought of titles after its launch, the PS2 just had a huge group of releases in Fall 2006 and still has a lot of big titles coming, including Rogue Galaxy and God of War 2. There’s not a lot of incentive yet for the army of PS2 owners to upgrade to the next-gen Sony console, especially with the 360 costing less and the Wii offering completely new experiences.
Both the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP offered up impressive handheld sales – 1.6 million and 953,000 respectively. The continued popularity of the DS was expected, with some reports stating that they were as difficult to find at stores as the Wii. Perhaps more surprising was the PSP, which is selling quite strongly despite many continued complaints about its small library of desirable titles and weak design. At the very least, the PSP has gotten to the point in its popularity where it’s almost certain that Sony will continue in the handheld market.
As far as software goes, the top-selling title of the month was Madden NFL 07, proving as definitively as it ever has that it is not hardcore gamers buying the biggest-selling games. Certainly some hardcore gamers do play the Madden games, but for them to fill EA’s pockets the way they do, there’s a much wider audience being appealed to. Some other franchises that might be considered targeted to a more hardcore (if only slightly) crowd were also near the top, though: Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Call of Duty 3, and Need for Speed: Carbon were also in the top five, along with THQ’s Cars adaptation. NPD also released year-round numbers, which once again showed Madden NFL 07 as the top-selling game of the year. Close behind was New Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo DS and Gears of War on the Xbox 360 – impressive spots for games released on a single platform compared to Madden, which is on every platform imaginable. The fast rise by Gears of War is great news for Microsoft, who obviously posited the game as a placeholder for the Halo franchise. It worked, and Microsoft can now be said to have two best-selling shooter franchises exclusive to their system, as well as a true killer app for the 360 finally.
The guys behind Famitsu revealed this week that the Japanese software market has jumped 125% in 2006. This is after several years of Japanese decline and could be good news for Japanese game developers, who have had to live with the reality of the poor Japanese economy for many years now. Eight of the top ten selling Japanese titles of 2006 were Nintendo DS titles. It’s no secret that the DS has become one of the hottest Japanese trends this year, but this just drills it in once more. Seeing news like this, it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone to see even huge franchise games like Dragon Quest IX coming to the DS, though the PS2 still had the highest number of games (42) on the list. Also interesting was that of the next-gen systems, only the Wii made it into the top 100 games sold in 2006, with Wii Sports at number 21. No PS3 or Xbox 360 titles made it this year. The 360’s Japan struggles are well-documented, but perhaps the PS3 will have some troubles there also.
The Small Stuff
With the commercial success of the Wii and the DS over the holiday season, Nintendo has raised their expected profit forecast by 20%. In the fiscal year ending on March 31st, 2007, Nintendo expects to make $1.01 billion. Obviously there is something quite positive to be said for making money off of hardware sales right out of the gate.
Microsoft executive Peter Moore has confirmed that Microsoft has plans to bring video games to their Zune portable media player by summer 2008. The Zune, widely hyped as Microsoft’s “iPod killer”, has met with generally poor reception since its debut. According to the Gamasutra article I’ve linked to, Microsoft expects to sell 1 million Zunes by June 30th compared to 17 million iPods in the fourth quarter alone. It doesn’t seem likely that Zune’s gaming capabilities will actually compete with the DS or PSP; instead, it will probably just be able to play simple casual games like can now be downloaded from iTunes for the latest iterations of the iPod.
After lots of curiosity from fans, Microsoft revealed this week that they will be ignoring their 50MB Live Arcade size limit for upcoming PS1 port Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Previously, Microsoft has kept any Xbox Live Arcade releases below 50 MB so that users who bought the 360 Core version or otherwise didn’t have a hard drive could easily fit Arcade titles onto a 64 MB memory card. The much-anticipated release will be the first to break that rule, though Microsoft has said the rule will still be in place. They’re simply willing to make exceptions for the right games. Hopefully more high-end XBLA content will pop up as 2007 progresses.
Microsoft added to the good news about the 360’s holidays sales with several other impressive numbers. First off, again, Gears of War is an unabashed success, having sold 2.7 million copies in a mere eight weeks. There are 10.4 million total 360s shipped worldwide, just topping the number Microsoft promised they’d reach before the end of the year. Microsoft has also stated a goal of 6 million 360 users on Xbox Live by June 2007. They confirmed that they’re well on the way, having just surpassed the 5 million mark. The total attach rate of the 360 (number of games sold per console) has risen from 5.1 in October to 5.3 now. So what do all these numbers and statistics mean? Basically, things are looking up for the 360 heading into 2007. Microsoft has pulled out a seriously impressive number of “wins” at the start of the year, and they have a momentum that Sony currently lacks.
Soaring on the hype for their soon-to-be-released first expansion pack, World of Warcraft hit 8 million subscribers this week. This includes 2 million players in North America, 1.5 million in Europe, and 3.5 million in China. Seemingly becoming a more unbeatable behemoth every day, it will be interesting seeing how sales of expansion pack The Burning Crusade go – right now it appears to be one of the most anticipated expansions ever. The expansion hits stores next week, so I’ll keep an eye on it.
Despite the NPD numbers having revealed that Sony’s Playstation 3 has only sold 700,000 units since its launch, Sony confirmed at CES that they have shipped 1 million PS3s in the U.S. The timing for this announcement may not have been very keen for Sony, as it coincided with the NPD numbers and numerous reports of stacks of unsold PS3s in stores around the nation. The sense seems to be that the rush for the Playstation 3 has died down more or less altogether while people are still clamoring for a Nintendo Wii.
Anecdotal Evidence
With my work at Evil Avatar and on the Evil Avatar Radio podcast, I obviously come into contact with a lot of hardcore gamers. But I’m also a college student, a library employee, a comic shop worker, and generally a guy who likes to talk to a lot of people. Invariably this leads to discussions about gaming with people who aren’t hardcore gamers. This section is for talking about what the non-hardcore gamers in my life are thinking.
So I haven’t had too much contact with other people this week since winter break is still on, but tonight the girlfriend and I went to Local Movie Rental Facility. Movie Rental Place Employee #1 is an acquaintance from school. A few weeks earlier he’d run up to me in the student center to inform me that he’d been talked into buying a Wii and was officially on the lookout. As of this weekend, he remains on the lookout.
“I could buy a Wii right now, but I can’t even find one. I’m just going to wait until April or May, because they’re not even mass-producing them until February.” Not sure where that rumor got started. “Kudos to Nintendo, though. It’s about time they had a hit this big.” And about the PS3: “Sure, it’d be nice to have Final Fantasy 13. It’d be nice to have Kingdom Hearts 3. But they’re not even going to be around for at least a year and a half. There’s just not anything on the PlayStation 3 right now that appeals to me. I’ve got a friend who has one and he hardly plays it.”
The Wii myth among casual gamers just seems to keep building, and I expect that to continue until supply catches up with demand. Movie Rental Place Employee #1 also mentioned that he has friends looking for Wiis who have already purchased games for it, and he was considering doing the same. It’s really wild seeing that kind of devotion among people who are more or less casual gamers.
My Week in Gaming
Due to my 360 being shipped off for repairs – complete with a ludicrous 14-business-day wait for a repaired unit – my gaming this week has almost completely being taken up by my brand new PlayStation 3. Along with Resistance: Fall of Man (the only game I purchased for the PS3), I’ve been playing demos for Motorstorm and Lemmings. Even on my SDTV, Motorstorm is easily the most beautiful game I’ve ever seen. If the final version runs as smoothly as the demo and has lag-free multiplayer, it’s definitely going to be the next must-purchase title for the PS3.
Resistance: Fall of Man has impressed me a lot more than I expected. The single-player game, while far from revolutionary, is astoundingly solid. The campaign mixes together huge war battles akin to Call of Duty with linear solo shooting ala Half-Life 2. More fun yet is the online mode, which was absolutely nailed in every respect, despite worries about the PS3’s ability to do online gaming. There’s the obvious deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the flag modes, but there’s also a couple of interesting new modes. One of them especially, Meltdown, has proven to be quite addicting. This mode has two teams vying for control of nodes to help prevent their reactors from overheating, and it’s a blast. Destroying an enemy’s node at the last second of a match so that their sliver of reactor energy goes down just a little bit faster than yours is a complete and wonderful rush.
Resistance online also importantly offers a completely lag-free experience. Whether or not this will continue in future PS3 online titles remains to be seen, but it’s extremely nice here when you can enter a match with 40 other players and have no slow-down or jerkiness whatsoever. There’s also a complex ranking system that helps match you up to people in your same skill level and give you something to shoot for when gaming. It’s rare to find the “just one more level” mentality in a shooter, but that’s absolutely the feeling I had when I was playing Resistance at four in the morning this week. If nothing else, Resistance online proves that the potential for amazing online experiences is there in the PS3. It's just going to be up to Sony to continue producing games that put the potential to good use.
Alright, that's all I've got for you guys this week. As always, thanks for reading, and your comments are very appreciated. Either comment here or send e-mails to kefkataran@gmail.com. Hope to see you next week!
Saturday, January 6, 2007
This Week in Gaming 1: Introduction
2007 is going to be one of the biggest years for video games since their creation. It's hard to deny this. Gaming is more popular than ever, raking in more money than ever, and arguably getting more complex and better than ever. Most importantly, this is the year when all three of the now current-generation consoles have been released. We've got the Xbox 360 -- released a year ahead of the other guys with two SKUs, a killer online service, and a hi-def focus. And then there's the Playstation 3 -- the behemoth sequel to last gen's hands-down winner with a bigger size, bigger online plan, and much bigger price. And rounding out the triumvirate is Nintendo's Wii -- pint-sized both physically and performance-wise, but full of potential innovation via a motion-sensing controller that's quite unlike anything we've ever gamed with before.
So now that the full bevy of challengers are all out in the public arena, it's obvious that 2007's going to be important. We may not know who the fully defined winner of this generation is by the end of the year, but we're definitely going to have a better idea of which direction the pendulum of public adoration is swinging.So what is This Week in Gaming all about? This Week in Gaming is a year-long weekly series of bloggings about the state of gaming and the games industry as this landmark year progresses. Every Saturday night, I will write up a new post, each of which will attempt to accomplish two things:
1. Looking at the gaming news of the past week to analyze what happened and look at how it affects the over all console race
2. Discuss my personal week of gaming and how my own opinion is being shaped based on my experiences with the new technology and games
I've been planning this experimental blog for a long time, and I'm really looking forward to writing a weekly column on the medium I love most. Thanks to all of you who are joining me in this venture and will jump in as we progress -- your thoughts and opinions are ALWAYS welcome either as comments here or in e-mails to kefkataran@gmail.com. Next week we'll really kick this deal off, so hope to see you then.
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