Falafelkid.com

Gaikai remarks about next-gen consoles exaggerated beyond reason

2012-01-16T09:44:00.000+01:00

Welcome back to my blog and welcome to 2012, a most interesting year in gaming. The year starts with the rumour that Sony or Microsoft will not compete in the next console generation and presumably leave the hardware market altogether.

An article by IndustryGamers cites comments made in a panel on the future of consoles.

Speaking during CES (...), Nanea Reeves, chief product officer for Gaikai, predicted, "Not all of the current console makers will have one more generation. That will be the big news at E3."

Reeves' comments can be understood better in the context of the entire session:

“Are we all in agreement that there will be a PS4 and there'll be an Xbox 720? And/or when is the console dead?” [panel host Mike] Vorhaus asked the panel. (...)

“I think some will have one more cycle and I think others will not,” said Reeves. “I think that will be the big news at E3. That's just my prediction.” “That's a very newsworthy opinion,” said Vorhaus. “Which of the three people are not going to have a next console?” “I'm not going to say which one, but I will predict that there will be one.” said Reeves. (...)

The panel ended with a provocative question: What will be the biggest surprises coming up for 2012? (...) Nanea Reeves, Gaikai: “I will go with the previous comment. I think one console will opt out of the next gen.” (...)

Mike Vorhaus, Magid Advisors: “I think Nintendo will be the one to do what you are suggesting [opt out of the next gen].”

I am very surprised that these comments have been spun into so many news stories, assuming Reeves has actual first-hand knowledge of either Microsoft or Sony bowing out of the hardware race. I am certain she doesn't. I called them up and they refused to elaborate on the story. It is clear, though, that they enjoy all the press coverage.

Ask yourself: Who is making these comments? Gaikai has a vested interest in talking up the death of gaming consoles - and understandably so. Steve Perlman, CEO of Gaikai's rival OnLive, told me in an interview in 2010 that this (meaning Wii, PS3 and Xbox360) was "probably the last generation." This is not news, this is PR. This is like Mercedes spreading rumours that the Japanese car industry is in big trouble.

Also, such comments are meant to be overstated. I have hosted a number of such panels myself and the point is to get the participants to make exaggerated statements which news outlets pick up on and which the community can discuss.

Besides, if any company really were to leave the hardware market they would not formally announce it at E3, because that would blatantly hurt their current-gen sales and third-party relations. They would refuse to comment for as long as possible.

So, rest assured that these comments are not worth your attention. Microsoft and Sony may, indeed, opt out of the hardware race. But Gaikai would not know about it any sooner than us. And, in my mind, we will eventually see another PlayStation and another Xbox competing with the Wii U.

´The Nintendo Story´, as told by me

2011-11-04T16:04:00.000+01:00

Again, I have been busy with another big project. I have just produced a thirty-minute television documentary on the history of Nintendo, featuring Shigeru Miyamoto, Michael Pachter, Steve Wiebe as well as many fans and experts. The documentary is trying to surprise even the most knowledgable fan of videogames with interesting facts. Did you know that Nintendo was founded in 1889? Did you know that in ´Donkey Kong´, Popeye was originally meant to jump over the barrels? Did you know that the Sony PlayStation started as commission work for Nintendo?

I have received great support from beforemario, Pix'n Love Publishing, EDGE magazine, EGMNOW, various artists participating in the iam8bit exhibition, as well as - of course - from Nintendo and Sony Computer Entertainment.

The documentary is in German. English and Japanese soundbytes are only subtitled, though. And we have taken great care to produce some pretty and pretty self-explanatory slides. The documentary is called ´The Nintendo Story´ and is scheduled to air in two weeks, namely on Friday, November 18th at 9:30pm on ZDFkultur. If you cannot receive the digital channel on your set, you can either watch it on Zattoo or through the ZDF network's streaming portal, the Mediathek.

Alternatively, the documentary is set to be repeated on 3sat the following Sunday, November 20th at 4:30pm. I hope you are able to watch it and I am most interested in your feedback.

EDIT And here is the direct link to the video stream in my tv network's streaming application, the ZDF Mediathek. Enjoy.

Pachter: Nintendo should become third party

2011-09-28T09:58:00.002+01:00

Market analyst Michael Pachter (Wedbush Securities) has suggested that Nintendo should consider licensing their intellectual property like ´Super Mario´ and ´The Legend of Zelda´ to rival console makers, as well as tablet and smartphone manufacturers and providers.

Pachter said this in an interview with me the day before yesterday and he reiterated his point during the market analysis panel at Gameplaces International in Frankfurt yesterday. Alongside Pachter, Jesse Divnich from EEDAR and Peter Warman from Newzoo took part in the 90-minute discussion, hosted by myself.

Paraphrasing him, he noted that there were no more blue oceans for Nintendo to discover. They got lucky with the Wii, he said. Now, though, the company would have to face direct competition in what he called a red ocean full of sharks and they were sure to lose such a battle. He also noted that he did not view the Wii U as a next generation console, but simply as an HD-capable Wii, which merely catches up with Xbox360 and PS3. As such, Pachter said, it will arrive two years late and likely suffer from a similar lack of software as the 3DS did - and still does. In what was a lively and often entertaining discussion, the charismatic Pachter also noted rather modestly that he was "often wrong, but never in doubt."

His colleague Peter Warman appeared to disagree on the issue of Nintendo. Slightly exaggerating his point, he noted that market analysts are the single reason why Nintendo is struggling at the moment. Investors rely solely on their market data and vision on the future of games. And on many points analysts views are exact the opposite from those of Nintendo, or at least Nintendo's CEO Satoru Iwata.

Warman believes the challenge of Nintendo is not as much battling the other console manufacturers but competing against the long list of companies and investors lining up to take the cloud, browser and app gaming experience to the TV screen. And casual games will go first, taking a stab directly at Nintendo's core business. And because of Nintendo's very early announcement, Nintendo has provided Apple the opportunity to announce their Apple TV on the same day the Wii U launches. After all, Apple launched the iPad 2 on the same day as the 3DS. That was no coincidence.

"Games are no longer products but a service," Warman added. "A service you take across the various screens you interact with and a service that keeps evolving ensuring never-ending engagement and entertainment. A service allowing you to pay an amount of money that suits your budget and suits the kick you get from playing it."

When the discussion moved on to Sony, Jesse Divnich said that the Xperia Play was, again paraphrasing here, dead in the water. He questioned why Sony Ericsson was in charge of the device and not SCE. There was no reason to even talk about it, he asserted. The Vita, however, received almost unanimous praise by the three analysts. They were getting enthused about the hardware and the relatively low price tag. Further entries in the home console arena, Michael Pachter asserted, would not launch before 2014, though.

EDIT I misrepresented Michael Pachter's opinion and I apologise for doing so. Michael clarified his stance thus:

I said that they must consider supporting other platforms with their software, but didn't mean to suggest that they must get out of the hardware business altogether. I merely believe that they can no longer command the prices and market share from their hardware that they have enjoyed in the past, as competition is eroding their advantage.

Life after gamescom

2011-09-03T22:28:00.001+01:00

You may indeed have wondered why I was strangely absent of late, especially since the gamescom in Cologne would have been an ideal topic to discuss in recent weeks. Well, I have been extremely busy with an intriguing project. Remember last year's media blowout, featuring the 3sat Neues expert panel with Louis Castle and Matias Myllyrinne?

This year, I have been responsible for the first broadcast of an eSports tournament on a public sector television network. The three-hour long program was called FTW - For the Win, aired on August 20th on ZDFkultur and centered around the prestigious Pro Series, staged by the Electronic Sports League (ESL). Of course, we all hope that it will become a regular fit.

The brainchild of my former boss, I was solely responsible for actually getting his idea on air, suggesting presenters and a title for the show, finding guests and producing most of the items on various topics concerning eSports. Some you may find them interesting, even though they are all in German. The real treat is this year's expert panel from GDC Europe, featuring legendary developer Richard Garriott, which is all in English. Here are the links:

ZDFkultur expert panel featuring Richard Garriott (30 minutes, English)

FTW - For the Win, ESL Pro Series Winter Season kick-off at gamescom (3 hours, German, restricted access due to age rating)

Introduction to eSports, ZDF Sportreportage (5 minutes, German)

Bootcamp, Team Alternate (2 minutes, German)

Clan structures, n!faculty (2 minutes, German)

Artist Aram Bartholl, building the de_dust map in real life (2 minutes, German)

Hope you enjoy this year's media blowout. Please let me know what you think.

3DS receiving significant price cut

2011-07-28T23:53:00.001+01:00

Nintendo announced a significant price cut of around 40 percent for the 3DS amidst poor sales. In one way, I told you so. But then again, I did not.

PS4 coming 2012, feature Kinect-like controls?

2011-07-04T22:09:00.000+01:00

The PlayStation4 will hit markets in 2012 and feature a control mechanism based on body movements similar to Kinect, Digitimes has learnt.

Sony will have Taiwan-based partners begin production of PlayStation 4 (PS4) featuring body movement-based control like Kinect at the end of 2011 for launch in 2012, according to Taiwan-based component makers.

Foxconn and Pegatron Technology, assemblers of PS3, will undertake assembly of PS4 as well, the sources pointed out. The planned shipment volume of PS4 in 2012 is at least 20 million units, the sources indicated.

It seems likely that next year, all three next generation consoles will launch (or will at least be announced to launch in 2013). Remember that Microsoft also has a successor console sent out to select third-parties, according to rumours.

More than two years ago, I predicted that all three next generation consoles would be announced in 2011 and 2012 and that the ten year lifecycle Sony envisaged for the PS3 was an illusion.

With the PlayStation3, Sony may be committed to a ten year life cycle. But Microsoft will clearly pull a successor to its Xbox360 out of the hat before 2012 by the latest. The same goes for Nintendo. And if the PS3 isn't selling now, why should it be selling in three years time, when there will be two next-gen consoles out, which are both sure to surpass the PS3 in either hardware power or controller scheme or both.

Ken Levine has no plans for Wii U, Valve does

2011-06-22T21:35:00.000+01:00

With the Wii U's graphics horsepower revealed, developers have commented on the console.

In comments made exclusively to ZDF German television at E3, Ken Levine revealed that his studio Irrational Games had no concrete plans to develop for Wii U. His positive comments in a developer reaction video shown during Nintendo's E3 press conference were made solely as a gamer, not as a developer, Levine explained.

Gabe Newell, head of Valve Software (´Half-Life´, ´Left4Dead´), however, has plans for Wii U.

"Wii U seems to be a lot more powerful than the previous generation," he told Joystiq. "It sort of fits better into the scalability in terms of graphics performance and CPU performance, so I think it'll be a lot easier for us to fit it into our scalability model." Valve has yet to release any of its games on a Nintendo console, though Gabe told us, "We've always loved Nintendo." He also pointed out that Valve has been slowly transitioning from the PC to console counterparts, starting with Xbox 360 and more recently moving to the PlayStation 3 in a major way with Steam getting ported to Sony's console.

And it looks like Nintendo may be next, as Newell restated, "Now it's a lot easier to look at Wii U and have it fit within that framework."

Finally, Square Enix has committed itself to making the Wii title ´Dragon Quest X´ also compatible with Wii U.

E3 reactions

2011-06-08T20:41:00.000+01:00

After the big three press conferences at E3, various discussions have sprung up regarding the two new consoles, Sony's PSVita and Nintendo's Wii U. Here are some interesting tidbits.

For a start, PlayStation boss Kaz Hirai told Reuters Japan (via Andriasang) that PSVita will be profitable in three years. This suggests that Sony is selling the hardware at a significant loss.

Sony Computer Entertainment's Head of Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida thinks that the PS3 and the Vita can replicate the Wii U setup and that certain games may be developed for both platforms, Develop Magazine writes.

Regarding Wii U, there is some discussion regarding the hardware power of the console. It is a given that Wii U will, by some, be perceived as a mere upgrade and not as the first eighth generation console. Yet in the above forum, a number of posters claim that what we know about the console's CPU already makes it a few times more powerful than the PlayStation3's Cell chip.

If you want to get technical, here is the info you need. The IBM press release regarding the Wii U's CPU is here, the AMD press release regarding the console's GPU is here.

Mark Rein, president of Epic Games (´Unreal´) twittered about potential Wii U support that there was no announcement to make today but that ´water was meeting fish.´ Also, Rein stated that he was at Nintendo's press conference, for the first time ever. Remember that ´Aliens: Colonial Marines´, due to come out for Wii U, is running Unreal 3 technology.

While industry insiders are all marvelling at the level of developer support Nintendo is getting, investors did not get to grips with the Wii U with Nintendo shares taking a 5,7 percent tumble in Tokyo, falling to the lowest level in many years. Some market analysts voice their confusion about the console.

Sony shares, on the other hand, gained a little. Bear in mind, though, that Sony is an electronics giant with a diverse product range. Also, the latest PlayStation Network outage made Sony shares tumble over the last few weeks. With PSN back up, the shares are also set to recover.

Lastly, Microsoft shares rose on Monday but have since returned to the level before their E3 press briefing. Microsoft, too, is a huge corporation and poor sales of Windows Phone 7 handsets may be to blame for a declining share price.

Wii U unveiled, first hands-on experiences

2011-06-07T21:32:00.001+01:00

Finally, Wii U has been unveiled and we have learned a number of things. Firstly, all those fakes were just that. The rumours regarding the touchscreen were true. My expectations regarding an unusual form factor were in vain. But the gameplay I predicted earlier today - using augmented reality and tracking - was spot-on.

As far as the name is concerned, Nintendo chose to stick with the Wii brand, which may be clever. But for the same reason, the console may also not be perceived as a new console generation, but rather as an upgrade to the existing Wii. In fact, it may simply be such an upgrade.

No sign of Rockstar being on board with ´GTA V´, but Irrational Games (´BioShock´) are. And it looks as if ´Battlefield 3´ will be on the system. ´Batman: Arkham City´, ´Darksiders II´, ´Tekken´, ´Assassin's Creed´, ´Ghost Recon Online´, ´Ninja Gaiden 3´, ´Aliens: Colonial Marines´ and ´Metro: Last Light´ are all confirmed. It appears as if Nintendo is ramping up third party support yet again. The mantra of uniting casual and core gamers may actually materialise.

The controller may be compared to tablets like Apple's iPad. But it has two features that make the device far better suited for games: physical buttons and a stylus. Strangely enough, the actual console has not been the focus of the presentation. In fact, it has been strangely absent. A more critical point we have not heard about tonight is pricing. The controller will have to be rather expensive. My guess is $100. But these details will be revealed at E3 2012, for sure.

For now, let us read what the lucky people wrote who already got to play with the Wii U.

The Guardian

Our first glimpse of anything running on the console was emphatically that: a lengthy fly-through in an immaculately constructed virtual Japanese garden, from the viewpoint of various birds, designed to show off Wii U's graphics-processing power.

Which was impressive if not jaw-dropping – on a par with the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, running in full HD, with depth of focus and convincingly modelled water and weather effects. We had established that Wii U will be able to run the sort of third-party titles that currently only make it onto the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 (...)

So will Wii U eclipse the Wii? Initial impressions would leave us answering that question with a resounding "Yes". In typical Nintendo fashion, Wii U is one of those objects that you have to get your hands on before you get what it is trying to achieve.

The new controller is such an odd, unlikely-looking thing that it will undoubtedly generate a wave of early cynicism. But the joyously unusual nature of the gameplay experiences that even a couple of hastily assembled tech-demos can engender bodes more than well.

And its sensible amount of under-the-bonnet grunt (an area in which the underpowered Wii suffered from its inception) gives it much more hardcore appeal than its predecessor. (...)

It will be the oddest console ever, and possibly the best, too. Or it may turn out to be a complete cul-de-sac. But one thing is for sure: it won't just be another generic games console.

Game Informer

The demo was not hyper-realistic, nor was it the greatest thing I’ve seen in the current generation of consoles, but it was definitely beautiful, crisp, and far above the visual quality possible on the original Wii. Also of note, the same visuals that appeared on the TV were being emulated on the controller’s screen. (...)

After this brief first hands-on experience with the new Nintendo system, I’m equally excited and anxious for the prospects of this unique controller. As they did previously with the Wii’s motion controls and the DS’s dual touch-screen innovation, Nintendo is introducing something wildly unique to the industry. If developers are able to wrap their head around this technology, it could lead to some incredibly interesting gameplay mechanics that simply won’t be possible on current competing consoles. With the DS, that put Nintendo ahead of the competition. With the Wii, it got them behind in third-party support because developers struggled to put the motion controls to good use. With the new system, it could go either way.

There are tons of questions left. With the amazing technology in the controller, how much will the system cost and (perhaps more importantly) how much will extra controllers cost? What about online? Will Nintendo finally become a major online player or will they remain stuck in the past? Where are the full games from Nintendo? Hopefully most of these issues will be cleared up one way or another on the march to the system’s current broad launch window of April 1, 2012 to December 31, 2012.

Joystiq

What's the thing feel like? In an artificially extended word, awwwwkwaaaaard. It's designed so that the players holds sort of the top area of the controller, and my (admittedly small) hands were placed such that my thumbs fell naturally onto the analog sticks. But not the buttons. Though the Shield Pose demo didn't require buttons, I tried it, and I had to make a very conscious effort to actually hit the face buttons instead of unconsciously tapping the circle pads while I was going to do something.

The demo also didn't make use of the touchscreen, so I can't speak of its quality or ease of use at the moment. Other demos did use this feature, and I will get hands on as soon as the opportunity arises, along with more detailed impressions of the rest of the functions. I will say that while the display on the touchscreen looked really similar in quality to the Shield Pose demo, it didn't appear to be HD itself -- and the Shield Pose game was extremely graphically simple, in the style of first-party "Wii" series games.

What Nintendo may show today

2011-06-07T08:51:00.005+01:00

Microsoft's and Sony's presentations are over, Nintendo's is yet to come. It is time to sum up the first two and speculate a little on what Nintendo may have in store for us in just a few hours.

Microsoft: Kinect

In their E3 press conferences, Microsoft greatly emphasized Kinect. Most titles like ´Kinect Sports´, ´Kinect Disneyland Adventures´ or ´Fun Labs´ appear all too reminiscent of dozens of titles already available on Wii. However, with ´Kinect Star Wars´ and especially ´Ghost Recon: Future Soldier´, ´Mass Effect 3´ and ´Ryse´, Microsoft is finally showing us more mature Kinect titles. Voice activation, to be integrated into Kinect, sounds intriguing too.

Sony: 3D

Sony's press conference, however, came across as more appealing. Their emphasis was clearly on 3D, showing ´Resistance 3´, ´God of War: Origins´ and ´Uncharted 3´, as well as introducing a PlayStation-branded 3D screen for $500. As far as software is concerned, attracting the ´BioShock´ license to both the PS3 and the PSVita is a coup in its own right.

The PSVita, the PSP's successor, impressed me less. The games look solid. But the price point of $250 for the WiFi-only model and $300 for the 3G version was to be expected. Anything above and Sony would have priced itself out of the market. Remember that I still believe the 3DS is too expensive.

Nintendo: Project Café

So what may Nintendo be up to? We will know in just a few hours. A large touchscreen as part of the controller is pretty much confirmed by now. But will the controller simply be a tablet? I expect Nintendo to surprise the world with a completely new form factor once again, just like they did with the Wii. I cannot imagine what such a controller may look like, though. Yesterday, someone suggested that the touchscreen may not be held across, but lengthwise. And what if the screen were not rectangular but a different shape? What if the six inch screen is composed of two halves that can be folded shut like a laptop? This seems anyone's guess, really.

What I am more certain about is that the new cosole will feature a strong emphasis on augmented reality and tracking, just like ´Face Raiders´ on the 3DS. Now, imagine this type of gameplay coupled with a traditional screen. Here is an example of what this may enable.

Check around one minute, when the ball pops out of the tv screen and lands on the floor. Also, the interaction with another person later on might give you an idea of what gameplay Nintendo may be wanting to leverage with the new console.

Of course, the tracking seems a little awkward here. Tracking can, however, be perfectly done. See the following technology demo by a company called Invensense.

It all boils down to cost. I cannot imagine a tablet-like controller with truly original features which enable ground-breaking gameplay for less than $200. And such a scenario would only be possible if this new controller would work with the Wii, which is already in 90 million homes or so. You cannot ask consumers to shell out $400 for two controllers and then buy a new console, too. And will such a touchscreen controller, which must double as a standalone portable console, not cannibalise the 3DS market?

We know quite a bit about the Wii successor Project Café already. But once you try to put the pieces together, you realise that we just do not see the big picture yet. I am very excited about the press conference. Microsoft and Sony had good presentations, but Nintendo has a chance of stealing the show this year.

Watch the big three press conferences at E3

2011-06-06T13:41:00.002+01:00

Here are the details and webcast links for the big three press conferences at this year's E3 show in Los Angeles.

Microsoft
Monday, June 6, 10am PDT
Live webcast

Sony Computer Entertainment
Monday, June 6, 5pm PDT
Live webcast

Nintendo
Tuesday, June 7, 9am PDT
Live webcast

Nikkei confirms touchscreen controller for Wii successor

2011-06-06T10:33:00.001+01:00

The Japanese newspaper Nikkei has confirmed that the Wii successor will feature a six inch touchscreen and a camera, in line with previous rumours. The article was translated by Andriasang.

Wii 2 will feature a new type of controller that includes a touch screen. The controller will give tablet-like controls to games, tapping the touch panel to control the characters on your television, for instance. The controller can also be used as a portable game machine.

The touch panel on the controller is six inches. The controller itself has a built in rechargeable battery and includes a camera. The camera can be used for a variety of play opportunities -- for instance, a player making an avatar of himself for use in a game.

Nikkei says that Wii 2 could be released as early as mid 2012.

Here is the original source (registration required) and here is a machine translation of the page.

Sony NGP to be called PSVita

2011-06-06T09:22:00.000+01:00

Just ahead of Sony's E3 press conference, a patent filing reveals that the PSP successor, previously known by its codename Next Generation Portable or NGP, will be called PSVita. Here is the accompanying logo.

The website is not directly accessible. Visit the E.U.'s patents and trademark site and enter 010017903 under the first field Trade mark No.

This validates a previous rumour by a blogsite that went offline shortly after posting images of the NGP with the new logo and name on it.

Project Café video fake, E3 invitation confirms ´Stream´?

2011-05-22T23:37:00.005+01:00

A video clip allegedly showing a presentation of Nintendo's next home console has surfaced. A number of regular commentators here have argued about whether the clip should even be discussed. I am certain that it is fake, but believe that it is worth pointing out why. Here is the clip.

This clip was uploaded by YouTube user privateconnex and is entitled ´Nintendo Project Cafe leak "private developer conference"´. The clip itself, however, starts with a slate reading "Private Presentation of 'Project Cafe' by a Video Games Editor". Now, this is the most compelling reason to believe this is a complete fabrication: no videogames editor in the world would be giving a presentation of gaming hardware that is yet to be made public. I even believe that no videogames editor in the world has even seen the console. But even if so, it is hard to believe that Nintendo would trust media outside of Japan. The young woman seen in the clip is clearly not Japanese.

Another aspect is the location. The clip appears to be filmed inside a lecture theatre, commonly found in universities. These are practical, but no-frills places for any presentation. A company like Nintendo would on no account book a venue like this. Next up, the slides are reminiscent of previous fakes. I wrote about those images: "Any kind of presentation would use renders rather than simple outlines. Such basic images are only ever used in patent documents. This is surely a fake." If used in any kind of presentation to the outside world, it is even more important to keep up appearances.

Lastly, the person following the presentation appears to resemble Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime. This might, at the surface, appear to validate the video as real. On second thought, it does the very opposite, though. If this presentation really did take place and someone in the audience would want to break the NDA they undoubtedly had to sign prior to entering and hence risk their job, how much more foolhardy would it be to film the event sitting right behind Reggie? This is just plain stupid.

Various points I made earlier with regard to the hardware are also applicable here. It might strike us as odd that previous fakes have all shown the same hardware design, both console and controller. But either they originate from the same person or subsequent fakers realised that their work would become more credible if they picked up on it. You can rest assured that all images and videos purporting to show the Wii successor so far are fake.

What we can do, legitimately, is speculate on the basis of facts. There is very little, but here is a little more. This is an invitation by Nintendo of Europe for a media reception at E3. Notice the design.

Note that the imagery used is a combination of the squares with beveled edges we know from the DS family with the blue circles that have appeared in connection with the Wii. Combining them is what appears to be a stream or a wave. This may suggest that the next console will bring home consoles and portables closer together. It also may corroborate that the console will be called Stream, as previous rumours suggested.

Project Café screenshots are obvious fakes

2011-05-13T22:56:00.001+01:00

The first alleged Project Café screenshots are in circulation. A blogger on Gameolosophy has posted two images, apparently showing Pikmin 3 and Endless Ocean 3. There are various reasons why they must be fake. The blogger seems to believe they are real, though.

I do not claim these screenshots to be official. But my sources gave me the scoop on a million things about the new Nintendo console before other sources caught wind of them (Pikmin, Rockstar, Retrostudios). And through these sources, they have supplied me with some screenshots for two games.

I cannot verify whether said blogger really did post those rumours first. I certainly read them elsewhere. The images in question are, quite obviously, fake. They appear to be real-life photos with crude graphical elements and text from videogames pasted on top. What is more, there are a number of interesting comments below the article. User Watchdog points out that the Pikmin screenshot just pasted the HUD from Pikmin 2 onto a real photo. He then notes “that ´Final Floor´ makes no sense when you’re outside.”

The article, though careful to assert that these images are to be thought of as rumour, lacks any kind of journalistic approach. The author even admits this.

I post anything I receive on here for your amusement/entertainment and my amusement and entertainment. You have the choice to believe or not to believe. It doesn’t matter. E3 will be here before you know it.

I guess we have another rumourmonger here who is keen on artificially pushing up her click count.

Nintendo E3 invite may hint at Wii successor

2011-05-10T06:32:00.003+01:00

Nintendo has sent out invites for their E3 press conference. The invites contain an image of three warp pipes from Super Mario Bros. in black and white. Thanks to my good friend Michi-Hiro for the image.

Could this be a clue of sorts? The image could hint at a linear progression, perhaps to leap higher and higher with the possibility to be sucked deeper and deeper in to the tubes. Height and depth could be the ideas conveyed here. Also, the number three may play a role. Obviously, there are three dimensions. But the first two tubes could also stand for the Nintendo DS family and Wii console - the current consoles and cornerstones of Nintendo's success - with the promise of the next hardware surpassing them. I believe that the ideas of progression and extension are quite obviously evident here. What do you come up with?

EDIT Here is the image within the context of the mail invite.

EDIT Reader Kevin noted that this image was already part of last year's invite and has kindly uploaded an image. He also asserts that it was used before then. I have to admit that I did not remember. But now, I think we can safely assume that the image contains no hidden meaning with regard to Nintendo's next home console.

Xbox360 successor in EA's hands, source responds

2011-05-09T20:25:00.000+01:00

Microsoft may also be announcing a new home console at the E3 expo in early June, Develop magazine has learnt. At the very least, one publisher is in possession of early hardware to work on launch titles.

The successor to the Xbox 360 console is on desks at an unnamed Electronic Arts studio, Develop understands. The new hardware, sent to EA last month, is a very early build with no casing – it is in fact being stored inside a PC shell. EA developers are getting to grips with the tech to create first-generation software, Develop has been told. (...) Develop’s source is not employed at either company.

The source believed, but did not have certain information, that the new Xbox would launch by the end of 2012. The individual expects an announcement will be made, at least in some form, at E3. (...) A seperate inside source has told Eurogamer that an E3 reveal for the new system is "highly unlikely".

There are a number of things I would like to point out. Firstly, furnishing any third party with early hardware is a move that every manufacturer will consider very carefully. The only reason to do so is to facilitate good enough launch titles. There is no reason to supply publishers before they need to start actual development. Add the fact that launch titles usually have a slightly shorter develoment cycle - I expect no more than two years and perhaps as little as one-and-a-half - and you can safely assume that Microsoft may be shooting for a late 2012 launch at the earliest and early 2013 at the latest. This corroborates the above rumour and, in turn, may suggest that Microsoft will indeed announce the Xbox360 successor this year and use E3 2012 to announce launch dates and pricing, as well as to offer hands-on sessions.

My guess is, though, that this June would be a little early for an initial announcement. Microsoft obviously want to steal Nintendo's thunder, which must be the only reason why they would churn out a new home console, anyway. But they still have plenty of time left to do so, if they do not mind handing this E3 to Nintendo. In fact, many companies are following Apple's lead of making hardware announcements at their own dedicated events, because then the news will focus exclusively on them.

As far as motivation for a new console is concerned, both Microsoft and Sony want to play out this generation for as long as possible. But hardware defects and extra costs of one billion dollar for extended warranties aside, Microsoft learnt the lesson that it can help your installed hardware base to be first to market. Admittedly, Sony's many problems did their part to facilitate Microsoft's early lead. But regardless of that, by the time the PS3 launched, the Xbox360 already had an impressive software portfolio. This time, Microsoft will not be able to beat Nintendo. But they certainly will not want to launch last. Then again, Sony will employ the same strategy. So expect them to announce a new home console soon, as well (though I expect they will wait until the NGP has been on the market for some months).

In an exclusive statement I can add to the story, an anonymous source (who may or may not be in the know about the details of Project Café), has responded to this rumour with these words: "Microsoft better be bringing more to the table than mere hardware power."

Nintendo to incorporate haptic feedback?

2011-05-03T06:24:00.003+01:00

There are fresh rumours regarding the controller of Nintendo's new home console. The touchscreen will offer haptic feedback in a way that allows different surface structures to be distinguishable, Swedish gaming news site Loading has learnt from a "source close to Nintendo". Apparently, the console may be called Nintendo Feel. Thanks to Fook for this one.

The revolutionary aspect will once again be found in the controller itself. (...) Haptic technology is a form of tactile feedback used to simulate the experience of touching different objects shown on screen. The player can move their fingertips across a surface and clearly feel the difference between soft, smooth or rugged textures. Electronic companies across the world have been conducting research in this field for years. It’s been rumored that Apple is close to patenting a similar technology, and we’ve seen the Toshiba demonstration of ‘New Sensation UI Solution’, that applies a thin film over a screen in order to achieve a haptic effect. (...)

You have to try Nintendo Feel to really understand. But the idea itself is very easy to sell, no matter if you are aiming for hardcore players or the wider audience that was first introduced to games through DS, Wii or Kinect. (...) Remember Vitality Sensor? It will most likely make a comeback at this year’s E3, though not as a peripheral for Wii, but as a key feature of Nintendo Feel.

The author goes on to imagine stroking and feeling fur in ´Nintendogs´ or drawing patterns in the sand in ´Legend of Zelda´, feeling the cool river, hot lava or the structure of the bark of an old tree.

You may remember that an early haptic accessory, the Novint Falcon, has been mentioned a number of times before the Wii was fully unveiled.

Wii successor confirmed for 2012 amidst first fakes

2011-04-25T22:09:00.004+01:00

Nintendo has confirmed that a Wii successor will be unveiled at E3 in Los Angeles in early June and released in 2012, as expected. On the Japanese website's investor relations page, a brief notice was published today in the form of a PDF document entitled Wii's successor system:

Nintendo Co., Ltd. has decided to launch in 2012 a system to succeed Wii, which the company has sold 86.01 million units on a consolidated shipment basis between its launch in 2006 and the end of March 2011.

We will show a playable model of the new system and announce more specifications at the E3 Expo, which will be held June 7-9, 2011, in Los Angeles.

Sales of this new system have not been included in the financial forecasts announced today for the fiscal term ending March 2012.

The last sentence implies that the launch date will be no earlier than April of next year.

Recapping on all rumours so far, the system appears to:

be called Stream and bear the codename Project Café
feature a tri-core PowerPC CPU by IBM, an R700 series GPU by AMD and at least 512MB RAM
be capable of outputting 1080p resolution
be capable of stereoscopic 3D (contested by another source)
feature motion controls
feature a controller with a 6.2 inch HD touchscreen, to which content is streamed from the console, also bearing two analogue sticks, a camera and eight buttons
be backwards compatible with Wii software as well as with Wii controllers
feature a Blu-ray drive (contested by another source)
be already be in the hands of various developers, including Ubisoft, Activision, EA and Rockstar
get ´Grand Theft Auto V´, developed by Rockstar, perhaps even for launch
get the successor to ´Donkey Kong Country Returns´, developed by Retro Studios
cost between 350 and 400 US-Dollars

In the meantime, various images have popped up purporting to be internal Nintendo documents.The first one appeared on someone's TinyPic account.

Under the headline Innovation reinvented, the text reads:

Project Café is simply the most developer friendly SDK the industry has ever seen. Deliver unparalleled next generation performance at current generation costs. It doesn't get any easier than this.
Easy portability from PC, Xbox360
Anytime live update past release
Integrated M-Live framework

The image itself could, in theory, be genuine. The design of both the alleged presentation slide and the console appear professional enough. But I cannot imagine what kind of presentation such a slide might be from. I do not believe that Nintendo visits publishers with an interest in their top secret SDK to show them a PowerPoint presentation that is designed to convince them of the kit. They do cost money, obviously, but I do not believe that you need to convince a publisher with corny sales slogans like "It doesn't get any easier than this".

Also, if such presentations really were made, they would likely feature lots of technical details and not the general mumbo-jumbo you find in the first paragraph. Lastly, the second bullet point appears to be not too well worded. Okay, even the brief financial statement above contains a syntax error (it should read "of which the company has sold") but I would assume such slides to be compiled with more care. There is no real evidence to go by, but I believe the image to be fake.

On to the second piece. In the following collage of images being sent to TechnoBuffalo, we see the outline of the same console, along with more text.

Here, the text reads:

Screen stream takes the 1080p image and pushes each rendered quarter to the player's personal TV screen.

If the first image was slightly dubious, these ones are doubly so. Any kind of presentation would use renders rather than simple outlines. Such basic images are only ever used in patent documents. This is surely a fake.

Of course, we are free to speculate what the controller may look like and many mockups are circulating, from serious suggestions to plain humorous. In my mind, the idea that we will get a standard, pre-Wii controller with a touchscreen slapped onto it is obviously wrong.

Such a standard controller with an HD touchscreen would not only receive gaming content streamed from the home console, it would have to double as a handheld console to justify the high price. And if so, these sales would cannibalise sales of the DS line. The same is true of a standard tablet setup, though perhaps to a lesser extent.

For this reason alone, I cannot see the controller being a standard setup. Also, remember how we knew the basic elements of the Revolution controller in 2005 but noone actually thought of it mirroring a remote control. I am sure that Nintendo will surprise us in a similar manner this time. Either the 3DS is the Stream's controller or the controller will take a very different shape to whatever we can imagine.

EDIT The following images have surfaced via Wii HD Rumors. They show the same console design present in the other images above.

I continue to believe that they are fake. Firstly, this cannot be a development kit. Such units look more functional and have less of an emphasis on design. The Dolphin (the GameCube dev kit) looks like an ugly PC and the Wii's dev kit is a simple black box with open LEDs. So this can only be a design prototype for the final console, if real. But judging by the hardware specs the size is too small, while the Nintendo logo, from a design perspective, is far too big. Also, it is very early for a final design to be shown to anyone, even internally. Only very few people within Nintendo are privy to this and it is near impossible that one of these privileged people shares photos such as these.

EDIT Now, another photo of the alleged console has surfaced, courtesy of Wii 2 Blog. Here it is. Thanks to Spazer for the heads-up.

The image has apprently been sent to the blog accompanied by the following information.

This is not the final design, this unit does not have a working drive or final parts. The unit powers on and is an internal test kit that is no longer being used because more complete units have now been distributed. The design is close to what we will see at E3. The colour scheme does not necessarily reflect that of the final model either.

The blog author continues:

My source said that the photo was taken by a friend of his who sent the picture to him. His friend does not work directly for Nintendo, but she “has access to early kits.” Lastly, he told me that the final kit will probably be thinner and more detailed.

These words practically prove that these units are all fake. The claim is that the source does not even work for Nintendo. It is obvious that noone outside of Nintendo will have seen any of the final design prototypes. Not a single person. This is true of NCL in Japan and more so of Nintendo of America. Ask yourselves the simple question: would anyone at Nintendo of America even need to see such prototypes? Of course not. And it is way too early to show the design to accessory manufacturers.

The claim that it is an "early kit" is also misinformed. Early kits are development kits and bear no design whatsoever. These are purely functional units. Design prototypes are something different altogether and it is highly likely that even NOA president Reggie has not seen one of those yet.

EDIT Since there have been assertions that the unit shown here could actually be the dev kit, allow me to make this point very clear: dev kits are purely functional units. Have a look at the Wii dev kit right here. This is the GameCube's dev kit. Notice any design kinks? No? No, you wouldn't. Also, this thing is way too small for a first generation dev kit. Compare it to the first PlayStation3 dev kit. Even the PSP dev kit is bigger than this alleged unit. You can check out more images right here. To suggest that this could be a dev kit is just really misinformed and that is being polite.

I have also come across another image in the style of the very first one, this one bearing the logos of both IBM and AMD. It originates from an image sharing website and originally shows a collage of images.

The text is cut off, but there is mention of the terms Streamplay and StreamWare, as well as of N-Live middleware. The collage of three images with the outlined console and controller above, though, mentions Screen Stream instead, while the sister image to this new one almost definitely makes note of an M-Live framework. How many different technologies with similar names could be at work here? Clearly, there are way too many technical terms flung around. Also, most of these are trademarked within software development. This alone should unmask at least some images as fake.

Wii successor details, to be announced within two weeks

2011-04-15T11:37:00.011+01:00

A Wii successor will be announced within the next two weeks and properly unveiled at E3, according to rumours from various reliable sources. If all details are to be believed, the console will be capable of 1080p output, feature an all-new controller with a built-in screen and be backwards compatible. It is apparently slated for a late 2012 launch.

Here are all the sources. Game Informer started off the round of rumours.

The company will unveil it at E3 this summer if not sooner.We have confirmed with multiple sources that this new home system is capable of running games at HD resolutions. There are conflicting reports, however, as to whether its graphics will be comparable to those on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 – meaning it could surpass or fall short of those systems. (...)

Nintendo is already showing publishers the system in an effort to get them interested and allow them plenty of time to start developing titles in anticipation of the system's reported late 2012 launch.

CVG added details about a new controller with a built-in screen. This may relate back to Nintendo recently revealing that they had toyed with the idea of a separate 3D screen for the GameCube.

What's most exciting about the Wii successor however is its all-new controller, which industry sources have indicated is not simply an upgraded Wii Remote, and will even feature a built-in HD screen.

Our sources did not specify whether or not the controller displays will feature any other functionality, such as that of the DS's touch screen, but it's easy to imagine the sort of innovation an extra screen could bring to Wii 2 games.

"Nintendo's plans sound unreal," one source said. "Publishers are already planning launch titles and it's all very exciting.

"The hardware is even more powerful than current HD consoles and backwards compatible with Wii. The controller will be all-new and has a HD screen on it."

We're told Nintendo plans to launch the Wii successor in late 2012

Kotaku and IGN then heard that, indeed, the system will be more powerful than the current competitors (which in my mind is a given, anyway. Even the Wii is more powerful than PlayStation2 and the original Xbox by most standards). IGN also added more details.

Our sources have said the the console is significantly more powerful than the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and that Nintendo's intent is to recapture the hardcore market. Another source said it is capable of 1080p resolutions.

Nintendo is reportedly showing the console to publishers to garner interest for a late 2012 launch.

Additional sources tell IGN that Nintendo will release a pre-announcement this month with a full reveal expected at E3 and that the console will be backwards compatible with current Wii software.

Now, I believe that a separate screen integrated into the controller would be the biggest news here, if true. As mentioned above, Nintendo had this idea before and it is obvious that the company strongly believes in 3D technology while not believing in glasses. So the built-in screen might not be an extra screen, as CVG interpretes. It might be a proprietary solution for stereoscopic visuals. What such a controller might look like is another question. I am badly trying to get the image of the Nintendo On out of my mind...

EDIT Now, British gaming magazine EDGE has weighed in on the debate. These comments seem to undercut any speculation about stereoscopic 3D.

Ubisoft, Activision and Electronic Arts have had development units of the new hardware for months. They have also claimed that the system retains motion control, with capabilities that are “better than Move”, meaning that they boast higher fidelity. We do not yet have word on whether or not its motion-controlled solution introduces a camera.

EDIT According to even more rumours by Blu-ray.com, Nintendo will include a Blu-ray drive in the Wii successor.

Sources have revealed to Blu-ray.com that Nintendo are looking at including Blu-ray as the main optical drive. This would be a natural progression from the Wii which uses DVD, but it isn't clear if Nintendo would enable BD movie playback on the new console or whether they would just use it for data as they do with DVD on the Wii. This new device could be the internal successor to the Blu-ray enabled Wii that was rumored for release in 2010.

EDIT There is another crazy rumour relating to Nintendo's next home console. According to the French gaming news site who confirmed the above rumours and added the codename Project Café to it (this time translated by my good friend over at GoNintendo), Rockstar (´Grand Theft Auto´, ´Red Dead Redemption´) is already in possession of development kits. Also, they are said to be working on GTA V for the console, which may even make it for launch. The launch is still slated for late 2012 with June a possibility for Japan. At E3, we should expect tech demos and some games.

I have not yet reported about the details added by the French site, because I have not yet found the time to confirm whether they really did blow the lid off the hardware specs of Sony's Next Generation Portable (NGP), as it is claimed. They also added nothing new, apart from the codename Project Café, which sounds unusual for a Nintendo codename (compared to previous ones like Dolphin, Nitro, Revolution or Project Reality). I will look into it as soon as I can.

EDIT Whoa, this post just keeps growing, eh? Now, Kotaku is adding more detail, noting that they have heard that the Wii successor will be compatible with Wii remotes, as well as with that new touchscreen controller.

Nintendo intends for many games on its new console to be controlled with the same kind of arm-swinging and controller tilting made capable by the Wii Remote. Think of it this way, hypothetically speaking: a new Wii Sports could use the Remote; a new Zelda could use the screen-based twin-stick controller. (...)

The 6.2-inch screen will receive data wirelessly from the Nintendo console and presents an array of options, from putting the player's inventory or map on the controller screen, to allowing players to combine it with the controller's camera to snap photos that could be imported into a game or even turning it into some sort of glorified viewfinder (we're unclear about whether the camera on the controller points at the player or can be outward-facing; we've heard both — maybe it swivels?).

The controller screen could even run a separate app. Consider a bad co-op idea from us as an example, though not a recommendation: one player zips through mini-games that run on the screen-controller. Succeeding in each keeps the player using the Wii Remote alive — in a game running on the TV in the same room. (...)

In fact, you could think of the new Nintendo console as turning your living room into a glorified mega-DS.... your TV is the upper-screen; your controller is the lower touchscreen.

Also, I have been wrong above, noting that French site 01net added no more than the alleged codename Project Café. They also detailed system specs:

multi-core IBM PowerPC CPU
ATI R700 series GPU
at least 512MB RAM

And a recent Fudzilla article backs those claims up, as well as adding plenty more detail.

From the whispers we hear, we expect the new Wii2 to be powered by an IBM Tri-core PowerPC CPU that we expect to be clocked at the same speed or slightly higher than the CPU in the Xbox 360. The GPU will be again powered by AMD and sourced from the ATI R700 family, featuring a shader unit version 4.1 support; and we expect GPU to have access to 512MB of RAM. (...)

Depending on the exact clock speeds, we suspect that the Wii2 will have performance that is close to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 or maybe slightly better, but that is hard to say. We are expecting the use of 32nm and 40nm chips for Wii2. Despite a lot of talk about the possibility of the Wii2 using AMD’s Fusion technology, our sources tell us that it isn’t happening because it is simply just too expensive at this point.

The biggest question is storage, and that does not seem to be one that is going to be easy to answer. Sources say that Nintendo is at least resistant to adding a hard drive and we prefer to stick with flash memory. (...) Expect no change on the disc front. It will continue to use DVD-ROM drive and we are told there is no chance that the Wii2 will offer Blu-ray support. (...)

We are also told that it will arrive next year, but a release is more likely for April than March of 2012. From the latest that we are hearing, we don’t expect any new console from Microsoft or Sony before 2014; so Nintendo will be on their own with a console that is said to be not much more than equal to or better than the current generation offerings from Microsoft and Sony. Still, as one of our shadow dwellers said, it is still much better than what they have to work with today, which could lead to some very interesting releases from Nintendo for the platform.

Plus, another article by the same author claims that Retro Studios (´Metroid Prime Trilogy´) have a sequel to ´Donkey Kong Country Returns´ in the works for the Wii successor. With so many details out already, I cannot help but be reminded of the Xperia Play, the industry's worst kept secret. Perhaps the Sony Ericsson mobile will have to forfeit that title.

EDIT Right, this is getting ridiculous. IGN has added Stream as a potential final name for the system which may sell for up tp $400. They also confirm the system specs noted above and add further details regarding size and manufacturing. The first retail units will apparently leave the manufacturing plants in six months already. Nintendo may want to stock up on inventory before selling them, though, which will also affect the price.

Most intriguing is the assertion that the system will offer stereoscopic 3D at least as an option, although no details are given as to how this may be achieved technically. We all know that Nintendo does not believe in glasses. So the additional screen may be a proprietary 3D screen, after all.

According to sources with knowledge of the project, Nintendo's next console could have a retail price of anywhere between $350 and $400 based on manufacturing costs, and will ship from Taiwanese manufacturer, Foxconn, this October, putting the earliest possible retail release anywhere between mid-October and early November.

However, Nintendo could also opt to build up a sizable supply of the system and allocate more time for software and games development by launching in early 2012. Similarly, Nintendo could attempt to lower the retail price of the system with lower profit margins to make the price more alluring. Since the manufacturing is taking place in Taiwan, the earthquakes and tsunami that hit Japan last month will not impact the console hardware as previously expected. (...)

The system will support 1080p output with the potential for stereoscopic 3D as well, though it has not been determined whether that will be a staple feature. In terms of the design of the console itself, the overall size will be comparable to that of the original Xbox 360 and the system is likely to resemble a modernized version of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). (...)

Finally, Nintendo is considering naming the console Stream, though it is potentially one of several names currently being vetted by the company.

The potential name Stream betrays what Nintendo sees as the central feature of the console, streaming content to the proprietary screen on the controllers. Alongside the option of 3D visuals, the controller in question may not be a controller as much as a central display unit which is simply detached from the console which does all the work. You may hide the console similarly to a subwoofer in a loudspeaker setup whereas the central display unit may become the focus point of the gaming experience. I am thinking of a similar setup to the imaginary technology shown in a 2007 Ubisoft trailer.

In this context, think back to Physical Optics Corporation being involved with a Videogame company for at least four years. The company has since updated its 3D display website with a portable solution.

What all these leaks prove, at least, is that dev kits have indeed been in the hands of various developers for some time and that the system is almost ready to be publically announced.

3DS hardware components cost $100

2011-03-25T09:24:00.001+01:00

Analysts have estimated that the total costs of the Nintendo 3DS hardware components (a so-called ´bill of materials´ or B.O.M. estimate) comes to $100. The figure was made public by Eurogamer who have been given a preliminary estimate by David Carey, VP of technical intelligence for UBM TechInsights.

Bear in mind that the costs for assembly and distribution are not included and Nintendo will be keen on recouping their research and development investments, too. Still, the margin between the $100 B.O.M. and a $250 retail price appears unusually large, even given that Nintendo does not subsidise their consoles. After all, the positive reaction of journalists after the 3DS outing at E3 2010 was to blame that for the console to be marked up somewhat.

3DS review

2011-03-20T16:13:00.006+01:00

Since getting back from GDC in San Francisco, it's been a busy two weeks for me. But now, the GDC special of the weekly technology program I work for has aired and so have our video diaries on Facebook. Why not watch all of it and pick up some German?

Right in the midst of all this work, on Friday 11th, I got a parcel which certainly sweetened my weekend (and subsequent days). I got a 3DS and have been playing around with it pretty much every waking moment I could spare, playing ´Nintendogs + Cats´, ´Pilotwings Resort´ and ´Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition´. It is a great console and it will take the market by storm, I am sure, but there are also indications of the device being rushed to market. Let me give you my impressions in detail.

The 3DS in comparison with the DSlite and the DSi XL

Hardware

While I have always felt that the 3DS lacks the high-class finish of the DSi XL, the retail unit feels better than the various prototypes I handled. It still lacks the satinized surface of the XL and it oddly lacks the minimalistic design of most of its predecessors which was highly reminiscent of Apple products, but you will not be disappointed by the look and feel of the hardware. Particularly the gradient in both the cosmos black and aqua blue (which really is a green turquoise colour) looks nice.

In-built software

Nintendo Germany were quite clever. They sent out the units a few days ahead of the games. So we were forced to play around with the software that comes with the system, which we might not have done with a number of proper games to try out. None of them, it must be said, do the hardware power of the device any justice. Then again, the 3DS channels are not meant to wow you graphically. There are some nice tools in there, though. The augmented reality channel works a treat and is not what you might immediately expect from a system whose main feature is 3D vision. Similarly, Face Raiders is a wonderfully quirky idea and will keep you busy for some time.

The Mii Maker is a sobering experience, though. You will have seen that advert where a guy takes a snapshot of himself which is turned into a Mii with a great likeness. This simply does not work in my experience. You have to tell the system a surprising amount of detail first. And still, most Miis will look nothing like the person in the photo. Sure, there are some additional facial features and options for crafting Miis by hand, above and beyond the Wii's Mii Channel. But the promise of turning photos into Miis did not materialise.

The channel home screens rotate faster depending on microphone input

There is one tiny, almost insignificant feature which I would like to spend some time on, though. Watch the video above and see how you can manipulate the rotation speed for the 3DS channel home screens. You blow, cough or whistle and the Mii Plaza, for example, turns quicker. Sweet, I thought at first. But there is something akin to a bug in there. If you take the system with you onto a bus or train (which is what you would do with a portable console, right?) the constant background noise will make all objects rotate constantly at a very high speed. Watching this in 3D made me extremely dizzy - and I almost never suffer any adverse effects when perceiving 3D visuals. It would have been fairly easy to teach the system to tell short noise bursts and constant background noise apart, to prevent the latter from manipulating the rotation speed. The fact that Nintendo did not makes me believe that the system was, at least slightly, rushed to market. There are other little details that might suggest this.

The 3D effect

Okay, but let us focus on the main feature of the device. You will remember that the gaming press who tested the 3DS at E3 last year were unanimously euphoric. And my various hands-on sessions prior to me actually receiving the console mirrored that. It is a very pronounced 3D effect,while extremely easy on the eyes. And coupled with the increased hardware power, there is an amazing amount of detail to discover in the 3D images.

What has been baffling me is the seemingly large variation in the viewing angles. As you tilt the device sideways while playing, you will reach a point at which the two images are no longer exclusively seen by the eye they are meant for. You will see a double image, two layers which are slightly off, until you bring the device back into a middle position in front of you. This tolerance varies greatly from game to game. The built-in software seems to have a large tolerance, as does ´Nintendogs + Cats´. ´Pilotwings Resort´ seems to be somewhere in the middle, while ´Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition´ is rather difficult to handle. And I believe the reason to be more than just the fact that you are more likely to tilt the console in a heated ´Street Fighter´ battle than you are when gently stroking a dog. It appears to also be related to the objects and depth portrayed on screen.

Do not get me wrong. In any game, you will find that sweet spot and be mesmerised by the visuals. But some games seem to be more suited to be actually played on the road than others.

Software

Now, let us briefly talk about the software titles Nintendo has kindly supplied. My expectations of which game would be the best were surprisingly overturned. I expected ´Nintendogs + Cats´ to not really interest me a lot. I had played the first version silly, or rather various versions, to be honest. And I expected to be finished with virtual pets for life. But this title will become the top seller, I am sure. When you see those beautifully rendered puppies put their little feet up on the frame of the screen, your heart will melt. This is nothing like the original games, I tell you.

Similarly with ´Pilotwings Resort´, I expected to be turned off by the fact that we all know Wuhu island by now and the gameplay is not exactly what a hardcore gamer has in mind. But there are amazing moments in the game which really play out the whole 3D experience: closely brushing past a tower or plummeting towards the ground from great height just feel awesome.

´Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition´ is another matter, unfortunately. The game itself is absolutely great. The visuals clearly illustrate the hardware power of the device. But the implementation of almost all menus into the game is rubbish. When you finish a battle, a window may just pop up out of nowhere above the layers that you had adjusted to, which feels very uncomfortable. In fact, in some camera angles, the character will actually slice through a status window. Also, the story sequences are entirely in 2D and the animated sequences just before and after each match are barely 3D. I realise it is a port, but it shows. It is still a great game, but I am shaking my head in disbelief at the little blemishes. After all, this game is distributed by Nintendo. Again, I get the feeling that the title just had to ship regardless.

Kiss my shiny, metal console: The 3DS surface has a metallic touch to it

Summary

I think that you will see some evidence here and there that the system may have been rushed out the door. Luckily, none of these details matter all too much. The menu rotation aspect will surely be addressed in upcoming firmware updates. Little flaws in a ported game will be forgotten about once the exclusive titles like ´Resident Evil´ and ´Metal Gear Solid´ start rolling in. (On that note: do not expect MGS to come out this year) The 3DS is, for the most parts or certainly all the parts that really matter, a great system and sure to be the first 3D entertainment device the public will eat up. I certainly will.

Wii successor will surprise, Konno confirms

2011-03-04T00:28:00.000+01:00

Nintendo's Hideki Konno, in charge of the 3DS hardware since 2008, has repeated that the company's next home console will surprise people. He did not confirm that 3D was planned for home consoles, of course. Previously, though, various Nintendo executives and producers made similar statements.

In a 45-minute interview with me, Konno said that simply transferring the 3DS' visual experience to a home console would not be enough. He also expressed doubts about peripherals needed for viewing 3D visuals, referring to glasses and proprietary screens alike. You will remember that Nintendo toyed with the idea of offering a separate autostereoscopic screen for the Gamecube, but canned the idea.

Konno went on to state that the strength of the 3DS was in offering 3D visuals out of the box. Also, its portability allowed for others to experience the device easily. When pressed about cooperations with movie studios, he could not confirm whether full-length 3D movies will be available on the console. So far, only movie trailers have been announced.

PS3 shipments confiscated in Europe, Mizuguchi to produce gaming documentary

2011-03-01T19:34:00.002+01:00

While we landed in San Francisco for GDC, some big news are coming out Europe. A Dutch court has ruled in favour of an injunction by electronics giant LG against Sony, resulting in the confiscation all PlayStation3 console shipments destined for the European market for at least the next ten days, British newspaper The Guardian reports.

Tens of thousands of PS3s were seized by customs officers last week in the Netherlands, the Guardian has learnt, in a dispute that centres on Sony's allegedly infringing use of Blu-ray technology belonging to LG. Sony, which imports around 100,000 of the consoles a week, is frantically trying to get the ban lifted. The Japanese company has the right to appeal to the European patents office.

LG meanwhile, could apply to the same patents office to get the 10-day import ban extended. Alternatively, the Korean company could apply for a court order to get the consoles destroyed but it is highly unlikely the court would grant a request to eliminate the warehoused goods.

LG argues that Sony PS3s infringe a number of its patents relating to playback of Blu-ray Discs. LG called for an investigation into the PS3's Blu-ray use in a filing with the US international trade commission earlier this month, and said it sought a "permanent exclusion order ... excluding entry into the United States" of the games console.

If Sony is found to have infringed LG patents, it could be forced to compensate the South Korean manufacturer for each PS3 it has sold around the world, which could cost hundreds of millions of pounds.

On a side note, I just chatted to star developer Tetsuya Mizuguchi (Rez, Space Channel 5) who is producing a 45 minute documentary about videogames for Japanese television network NHK. He swapped his GDC developer badge for a media one and has joined our ranks, at least temporarily. Great idea, I find. Unfortunately, he was unsure about the documentary being available online. It will air in Japan at the end of this month.

EDIT Regarding the temporary PS3 import ban is concerned, it has been lifted. The dispute, though, is not yet over:

"The latest ruling orders LG to pay substantial damages, however it does not mean Sony is off the hook. It will still have to defend the claims of patent infringement at a later date."

Off to GDC

2011-02-25T22:27:00.000+01:00

On Monday, I will be flying out to San Francisco to attend the Game Developers Conference, GDC. Unfortunately, I will not be iterviewing Nintendo president Satoru Iwata or Sony Computer Entertainment president Kaz Hirai. I have got an interview slot with Hideki Konno confirmed, though, who is 3DS project manager. Other interviews are yet to be confirmed. If I have any time during the week, I will keep you updated.

Activision to buy Take-Two?

2011-02-14T09:06:00.000+01:00

Activision Blizzard, the world's largest publisher, is rumoured to be interested in buying its rival Take-Two. Such a move would bring the various Rockstar studios and series like Grand Theft Auto under the same roof as the Call of Duty and World of Warcraft franchises. Activision recently cancelling the most recent instalment of True Crime, a game that is similar to Grand Theft Auto, may be seen as cosying up to Take-Two and its portfolio.

"There are very strong rumours amongst people at a very senior level within the global business," a senior executive told MCV this week. (...) It could be that the killing off of True Crime: Hong Kong, a title that was believed to be almost entirely complete prior to cancellation, is being seen as a possible sacrificial lamb to benefit the fortunes of Grand Theft Auto and is simply fuelling the rumour. (...)

Earlier this week Take-Two reported a seven per cent year-on-year increase in net profit to $40.8m for the quarter ending December 31st 2010. Since Friday February 4th shares in the company have risen 11.6 per cent. Activision has a proven track record of big-money moves, with its 2008 merger with Blizzard proving a resolute success. It's also not afraid to shut under performing developers and, conversely, plough seemingly endless resources into projects in which it has confidence.

In 2008, Electronic Arts attempted such a buy-out which Take-Two successfully fended off. But new stakeholders are thought to be more open to the idea of selling the publisher. MCV points out, though, that the contracts for the key developers within the Rockstar studios will expire in 2012, unless they are renewed. This includes the Houser brothers, creators of the GTA franchise.

Xperia Play officially announced

2011-02-13T22:21:00.000+01:00

The Xperia Play or PlayStation phone, which has become known as the industry's worst kept secret, has finally been officially announced. The device will be the first Android smartphone that will be PlayStation certified and it will launch in all relevant territories in March.

The slide out game pad reveals a digital D pad, two analogue touch pads, two shoulder buttons and the four PlayStation icons: circle, cross, square and triangle. Qualcomm’s optimized Snapdragon processor with a 1Ghz CPU and embedded Adreno GPU graphics processor deliver silky smooth 60fps play-back 3D mobile gaming and Web browsing with minimal power consumption so Xperia PLAY users can enjoy long hours of battery life and game time. (...)

XperiaTM PLAY will run on Gingerbread (version 2.3), the latest version of Google’s AndroidTM platform. The XperiaTM PLAY will also be the first PlayStation Certified device. This means it will have access to PlayStation® game content provided through the PlayStation® Suite initiative, currently under development by Sony Computer Entertainment and due to launch later this calendar year. (...)
Sony Ericsson has partnered with key publishers in the gaming industry to deliver a rich, vibrant ecosystem at launch and post launch with many leading new titles available via the AndroidTM Marketplace. Leading franchises coming to Xperia™ PLAY includes EA’s Need For Speed, Sims 3 and a world-first multiplayer version of FIFA 10 for mobile. GLU Mobile/Activision will be bringing Guitar Hero while Gameloft’s titles include Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell. Sony Ericsson is also partnering with Unity Technologies, using its award-winning development platform, to ensure a continuous flow of high quality 3D game titles.

I, for one, am quite excited about the Xperia Play and will have to manage purchasing the device alongside the 3DS now. I find myself often not having my DS on me, but wanting to play. And I personally would greatly enjoy titles from ´WipeOut´ to ´Vib Ribbon´ on the go. This is precisely the deep and immersive gaming experience I cannot currently get on any phone. I can even do without a great amount of exclusives on the system and still be excited for it.

In fact, it can be expected that the device will see ports both from older PlayStation home consoles, as well as from the PlayStation Portable. Yet that may be all the Xperia Play needs in order to be successful. Some media outlets sound quite bullish on the Xperia being superior to other current smartphones.

The company also wants to define itself as superior to Apple's iPhone, which Xperia Play is from a gamer's perspective. Assuming a similar games library and similar application pricing, what would you rather have? A 3.5-inch touchscreen? Or a 4-inch touchscreen with an alternative slide-out gamepad that employs familiar d-pad and button controls?

Meanwhile, Sony insists that the Xperia Play's high-powered sibling, the NGP, will not kill off its predecessor, the PlayStation Portable. I am slightly cynical here, remembering Nintendo's three pillar strategy of supporting their home consoles, the DS family and GameBoy handhelds.

Smartphone maker HTC invests in OnLive

2011-02-10T20:58:00.001+01:00

Taiwanese Smartphone manufacturer HTC will buy a significant share in the gaming streaming service OnLive. They will "spend $40 million on 5.33 million preferred shares in the OnLive Inc, HTC said. HTC did not specify how big its share in the company would be after the acquisition." HTC also invested in mobile video service provider Saffron Digital.

HTC is best known for building the first touchscreen-based PDA phones with the MDA series and have built the Experia for Sony Ericsson, the original Google phone, as well as its successor Nexus One. They are also expected to announce more tablets at next week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, following the Shift, a tablet / UMPC hybrid, which preceded the iPad. While HTC almost exclusively built Windows Mobile handsets in the past, they now have their emphasis on Android devices.

So why is the company branching out like this? I would like to suggest that HTC has clear ambitions to establish Android as the main platform for meaningful, i.e. deep gaming in the smartphone market and it wants to build the handsets to go along with it. The Financial Times author Robin Kwong believes that HTC is poised to become a major content provider in the mobile arena.

HTC has already started hiring staff to work towards the possible launch of an online store, and it is now busy striking up partnerships with content distributors. These deals make sure that when the store comes online, HTC will have content to sell that is distinct from rival Android phonemakers such as Samsung or Motorola.

OnLive, for example, had just said at CES that it was expanding to mobile devices as well as home TVs and PCs. It’s not hard to see them now integrating their service into HTC’s smartphones. (...) OnLive already has an application on the iPad – though that doesn’t support actual gameplay. Its CES announcement also said it was integrating its gameplay service into Vizio’s tablets and smartphones. In Saffron’s case, even though HTC is acquiring the entire company, Saffron will remain an independent agency free to also offer its services to others, such as its current customers Nokia and Sony Ericsson.

In theory, this means that Samsung and others could also turn to OnLive and Saffron to replicate what HTC has done. But in reality, it seems more likely that HTC will remain much closer to these companies because of its share ownership.

After Sony announced PlayStation Suite, which will bring older PlayStation games to Android phones, the platform is set to dominate mobile gaming in the smartphone space. Perhaps, HTC will also be building the Xperia Play, the PlayStation phone, which will also be officially unveiled in Barcelona. Certainly, HTC aims to be the leading manufacturer of mobile gaming phone hybrids.

Redesign live

2011-02-09T13:36:00.000+01:00

Finally, the promised redesign is now live. It is still in its beta version, I am afraid. It will take me a while to convert the linklist into the new design, so please be patient there. I also hope to be able to include the site search function again in the near future. Please also note that this blog has undergone a name change and will now officially be available through the URL falafelkid.com while the old URL will, of course, remain active. But the new name reflects that I have never exclusively written about one specific console, but all home consoles and portables.

You will also notice that the console images and image tabs in the posts have vanished. They will also gradually disappear from older posts, as they no longer fit the main design. This will open up the rather rigid post structure of the past and enable me to write anything from short news alerts to long articles. And speaking of long articles, I expect my article on Nibris to appear very soon. Now the studio website has disappeared and Nibris successor Bloober Team is about to hit the stock market, I want to include all the recent developments.

Please let me know how you like the new design. I ask for your understanding that there will be little tweaks here and there. I very much appreciate all of you coming to this website and hope that I can now serve you better.

Sony NGP announced, likely to lose to 3DS

2011-01-30T15:32:00.004+01:00

Thursday saw the announcement of the successor to Sony’s PlayStation Portable, codenamed NGP or ´Next Generation Portable´. Up until now, I was busy producing this report about all devices scheduled for 2011 (in German). As expected, the device will feature an OLED display and impressive hardware power. Apparently, porting PS3 games over to the new handheld will be a simple task and content does not have to be scaled down much. The only real innovation lies in the controls. Besides two analogue sticks and a directional pad, the NGP will feature a touch-sensitive panel on the back of the device. It also comes with built-in 3G for online gaming and downloads, although I have significant doubts whether 3G is fast and reliable enough for constant connections.

What is interesting is that Sony is developing a two-tier strategy in this field. Alongside the NGP, the company has announced the ´PlayStation Suite´, a new marketplace with less hardware hungry PlayStation titles, aimed at Android smartphones and tablets with a set of minimum specifications. Undoubtedly, the yet-to-be-announced ´Xperia Play´ by Sony Ericsson will be one of those devices. The underlying idea seems to be that ´PlayStation Suite´ will be the bait to get users to eventually buy an NGP for the full experience. The new marketplace is also expected to connect the Android devices with the NGP and the PlayStation3.

While it seems at first that Sony is employing a completely different philosophy to Nintendo here – pursuing perfection of existing technologies rather than innovation – there are also some similarities between the NGP and Nintendo’s 3DS, which will be available at the end of March in Europe and North America.

Both devices feature augmented reality games and social services. The NGP will offer ´Near´, which shows other owners in your vicinity, what they are playing and how far they have played. The service will also record your own movements. The 3DS will offer ´Streetpass´, which automatically connects to other devices near you to transfer data and virtual goods (similar to the tag mode in ´Animal Crossing: Wild World´ or ´Dragon Quest IX´). While some experts point out that such features are really only effective in Japan, where a large part of the population lives in densely populated areas, whereas they will be practically useless on other territories, the issue of data protection remains. These handhelds will require careful adjustments of the privacy settings, which will hopefully be in place, to make sure the owner actually wants to share his data.

I already asked the question whether the 3DS will hit markets too late and at too high a price. With the NGP officially announced for the holiday season 2011 and a delay until spring 2012 a likely move given Sony's track record, I no longer believe that the 3DS will come too late. The price of around $250/€250 remains painfully high, though. Especially given how the 3DS lacks the high class finish of the DSi XL or, indeed, the NGP. It will sell well regardless, but I would have preferred a price point of $200/€200 for consumers to buy the device without remorse.

Analysts expect the NGP to be even more expensive, at $300/€300 or above. Regardless of how well produced the device will feel, this will price Sony out of the market, for sure. I do not think that anyone who will play the odd casual PlayStation game on his Android device will want to invest that much into a dedicated gaming device. I certainly would not. It takes an innovative and unique feature like 3D to convince me to spend this type of amount and I will do so only grudgingly. Also, the NGP will encourage plenty of ports from the PlayStation3. So I expect a fair bit of cannibalisation between the new handheld and its home console sibling. While I expect ´PlayStation Suite´ to be a fairly successful service, the NGP is almost bound to fail and sell even less than its predecessor. The 3DS, albeit at a steep price, will sell extremely well, though. My guess is that Nintendo will sell more than 20 million units in 2011. The company expects to sell four million units in the first four weeks of availability in Japan with barely a week's availability in Europe and North America.

EDIT Codemasters CEO Rod Cousens has weighed in on the debate about the NGP price saying that "my hope is sub £200 (...) but I suspect something in the £229 - £249 [range] to be more likely." He continued that Sony had learnt "the lesson of over-engineered hardware" with regard to the original PSP. They have indeed and more obviously so with the PlayStation3. Back in 2006, they were losing up to $300 on each unit sold. Meanwhile, GameStop has posted an estimated price of $999,99 for the device, probably as a marketing trick, but taken the site down since then.

EDIT Now, Ubisoft's executive director of EMEA, Alain Corre, has gone on record to say that he expects an attractive price for the NGP: "I trust Sony to know their market very well and to be able to offer a price that will make their machine attractive. (...) If Sony can capture this huge market - and they do have a unique offer for that market with the NGP - then success will definitely be on the agenda for them."

I absolutely agree. As long as Sony manages to keep the price below €300 / $300, the device will sell successfully, I believe. But, comparing the 3DS and NGP, if you have to pay a premium for a machine that offers, albeit far more detailed, 2D graphics only, Sony will not be able to convince enough punters for the console to become a success.

Nintendo 3DS details, PSP2 details next week

2011-01-19T20:57:00.004+01:00

The Nintendo 3DS will launch in North America on March 27th for $249 and in Europe on March 25th for an expected price of €249/£249 or below. This is in line with expectations (see post below). However, no fixed price was issued for the European market. Nintendo is leaving it up to retail to set individual prices. To my knowledge, this is the first time Nintendo is not naming a price alongside a console's launch date. When the Wii was announced for Europe, the price was fixed and communicated. While most European outlets fall in line by pricing the 3DS at around 250 in either currency, UK retailers range from below £200 to a staggering £300.

While no further deals with major Hollywood Studios have been announced (above and beyond the three already committed to the system), Nintendo is partnering with sports broadcasters Sky and Eurosport in Europe while no such partnerships have been announced for North America. Not yet, anyway.

Only next week, Sony will reveal its PSP2 handheld, the successor to the PlayStation Portable, it is believed. While we know most things about the PSP2's sibling, the PlayStation Phone, already (without it being officially announced), the PSP2's features are still largely unknown. It is rumoured to be the handheld equivalent of the PS3.

And there may be unexpected competition in the form of an Apple product. The company is said to be considering 3D for its new iPod Touch. While Apple identifies its place in gaming as a "subset of casual games", such devices would compete directly in terms of other content.

EDIT The first substantial details regarding the PSP2 have emerged from a Japanese newspaper through Andriasang and via Engadget and Joystiq. According to the source, the device will feature an OLED screen, by far the best, albeit most expensive screen technology currently available. The report goes on to state that the console will be able to connect to 3G networks, which might facilitate online multiplayer and access to downloads practically anywhere. Apparently, the PSP2 will not be able to place calls, though. Details of a PSP phone have already been leaked.

Live-Stream from 3DS launch event in Amsterdam

2011-01-19T11:32:00.001+01:00

There will be a live stream from Nintendo's 3DS launch event in Amsterdam today. It is expected that the European launch date and price will be announced. At 3pm Central European Time, visit this page. Here are the most important time zones:

2pm GMT
9am Eastern
6am Pacific

If your time zone is missing, please check the Time Zone Converter.

Very briefly: I expect a price tag of €249 and a European launch date of early April.

How Wii 2 might display 3D visuals

2011-01-09T01:26:00.004+01:00

A significant admission

Nintendo has admitted to recent plans to sell a 3D home console and proprietary display. This may hint at future plans regarding the successor to the Wii console.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has confirmed that the GameCube, Wii's predecessor, was capable of displaying 3D visuals when hooked up to a parallax barrier LCD screen, the type of display also used in the upcoming handheld 3DS. The comments were made in a recent ´Iwata asks´ session, translated by Andriasang:

GameCube also had circuitry for 3D compatibility, revealed Iwata. If attached to a special LCD screen, the system could display 3D images. Nintendo even had a functional 3D version of Luigi's mansion. Due to the cost for the LCD screens, though, Nintendo decided that there was no market for the tech at the time.

Funnily enough, Iwata said the same thing in an interview last June and noone noticed. Worse still, two days before, 3DS hardware director Hideki Konno told IGN the same story in more detail:

When I was directing Luigi's Mansion on the GameCube we experimented with placing a 3D panel on the screen and making Luigi's Mansion play in 3D. However, at that time we had screen resolution issues. And cost issues. And to separately sell a panel for 3D gameplay wasn't a practical idea as a mass-market product.

Why should anyone have picked up on that? Those comments reveal which 3D technology Nintendo has been experimenting with for home consoles and that they had plans of selling proprietary displays. The latter aspect is significant. We already know that Nintendo's next home console will be capable of displaying 3D visuals. We just do not know how. Hang on. Do we really know the Wii 2 will be a 3D console? Let us recap.

Will Wii 2 really be a 3D console?

Yes, pretty much. Speaking to a Japanese newspaper in June 2010, Iwata announced the company's "plans to make the successor to the Wii 3D compatible, telling (...) that «a full-scale entry into this field will take some time because 3D televisions will not catch on right away.»"

Around the same time, Iwata told a different Japanese newspaper that the Wii could not be upgraded to display 3D visuals but they would "probably do it with the next system."

If you display a 3D image, the image quality becomes extremely bad, so we'd probably do it with the next system. We're thinking that the timing should be once the 3D television adoption rate crosses the 30% mark. We're looking at the adoption trends.

Our next clue arrived in September, courtesy of Spanish gaming site 3DJuegos (Spanish) which quoted ´Metroid´ co-creator Yoshio Sakamoto as follows:

At Nintendo we always have the obligation to surprise users with a new console. We have never done what others do. We prefer to create something new that catches people's attention, and I think this will continue at this time. Surely the new Nintendo machine will leave you all with your mouths open.

And finally, in a recent feature, IGN found more clues regarding Wii 2 being a 3D console (although they failed to quote the above statements). In a Japanese interview last September, again translated by Andriasang, game developer Tomonobu Itagaki (´Ninja Gaiden´, ´Dead or Alive´) spoke about his upcoming game ´Devil's Third.

Mysteriously, Itagaki said that the game could be released on platforms in addition to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. "We're developing it so that it can be brought to as yet unknown hardware as well. Specifically, the various areas of technology are scalable."

Impress asked if this means Nintendo 3DS and a next generation PSP are included in Itagaki's sights. Responded Itagaki, "More than that, although I can't say this easily because I don't have any information, it's possible that Nintendo could release a higher end console. Something like that."

As far as a possible launch window for a Wii successor is concerned (which I am not concerned with in this article), bear in mind that the game is slated for an early 2012 release.

The IGN feature does not separate the context correctly. The above quote was not made in the context of 3D visuals. Yet, only a few paragraphs above, Itagaki had noted his interest for such technology:

Itagaki appears to be big on 3D as a whole, saying "The thing I'm most interested in now may be 3D televisions." Rather than necessarily feeling the appeal of 3D itself, though, Itagaki said that he just likes new things. There are positive and negative aspects to 3D, he explained. The positive aspects include the impact of the visuals, and the wider expressive power. The negative aspects include the narrow sweet spot and the requirement for goggles.

So, in conclusion, there are "plans to make the successor to the Wii 3D compatible" and Nintendo would "probably do it with the next system" (both quotes by Iwata). "The new Nintendo machine will leave you all with your mouths open," a key Nintendo developer promises and a third party developer says "it's possible that Nintendo could release a higher end console" soon after talking about 3D technology. I am not going out on a limb here when I interpret this as confirmation of Nintendo's next generation home console being a 3D console.

How will Wii 2 display 3D visuals?

As you noticed from his statements above, Iwata is tying the release date of a 3D home console to 3D screens already available in households, which would suggest Nintendo is no longer looking into selling proprietary screens itself. And in another interview, Iwata dismissed the idea of parallax barrier technology applied to big screens.

With this parallax barrier technology, the LCD must be a certain distance away from the screen. It also needs a certain viewing angle. We think it is not a great match for the home TV set. As one of the engineers, I can anticipate that someone will invent a 3D TV that does not require you to wear 3D glasses. As far as today is concerned I do not think they can do it well. We need an invention to make it happen. If you ask me when, I have no idea.

And yet I would like to suggest that Nintendo might be doing just that: opting for a proprietary screen to be used with their next-generation home console. Instead of waiting for multi-functional 3D-capable tv sets to penetrate the market, Nintendo might want to offer a dedicated (and thus cheaper) proprietary solution. It might not be a parallax barrier and you may as well be able to hook the console up to standard television sets (i.e. it might be an add-on rather than integrated into the hardware). But Nintendo might want to sell an autostereoscopic 3D display. There is some evidence to support this.

Such technology has been rumoured to be an upcoming peripheral for the Wii in the past. Most notably, in November 2005, Nintendo star designer Shigeru Miyamoto told Business Week:

It's convenient to make games that are played on TVs. But I always wanted to have a custom-sized screen that wasn't the typical four-cornered cathode-ray-tube TV. I've always thought that games would eventually break free of the confines of a TV screen to fill an entire room. But I would rather not say anything more about that.

Rumours of a ´last secret´ concerning the Wii persisted for some time. As late as October 2006, Nintendo of America´s Perrin Kaplan confirmed that some features of the console had not yet been announced, saying "We do have a couple of other surprises" and noting that they would especially please the hardcore crowd.

Later that month, Reggie Fils-Aime was rumoured to have hinted at a "big Wii revelation" that would be announced around launch.

Specific rumours regarding some kind of 3D projection device started very early on, especially in the wake of the brilliant fake that was the Nintendo ON. But there were hard facts, too. There was (and is) proof that a Japanese gaming company had invested in 3D projection technology. Today, we still do not know which company is mentioned. Could it have been Nintendo investing in technology that will make it into the Wii successor?

If you want to read a dated, but thorough article about other hints at the Wii being coupled with a proprietary screen, check out an old Xgaming feature (via Wayback Machine). There are plenty of fakes in there, but it is worthwhile to consider the quotes and the patent, which baffle us still today. Of course, you can also just skim through my archive.

I think it is important, at this point, to consider what form a proprietary display could take and how much it could change gaming. Please consider the following excerpt of a Ubidays 2007 trailer.

Of course, Ubisoft denied that any such hardware ever existed or was ever planned. But the mock-up is inspiring nevertheless. And there is a small chance that Nintendo might be considering a 3D projector like this one for its next-generation home console. At the very least, the company considered selling a proprietary display for its last home console. And, again, this is a significant admission.

EDIT In fact, Nintendo translated the ´Iwata asks´ session themselves. Here are the relevant excerpts:

Iwata: To go back a little further, the Nintendo GameCube system actually had 3D-compatible circuitry built in.
Itoi: Huh?
Iwata: It had the potential for such functions.
Itoi: Nintendo GameCube did? And all the Nintendo GameCubes systems around the world?
Iwata: Yeah. If you fit it with a certain accessory, it could display 3D images.
Itoi: What a secret!
Iwata: Nintendo GameCube was released in 2001, exactly ten years ago. We’d been thinking about 3D for a long time even back then.
Itoi: Why didn’t anyone ever know?
Iwata: The liquid crystal for it was still expensive. Simply put, Nintendo GameCube could display 3D images if you attached a special LCD, but that special liquid crystal was really expensive back then.
Itoi: Yeah, we’re talking about ten years ago.
Iwata: We couldn’t have done it without selling it for a price far above that of the Nintendo GameCube system, itself! We already had a game for it, though—Luigi’s Mansion, simultaneously released with Nintendo GameCube.
Itoi: The one in which Luigi shoulders a vacuum cleaner?
Iwata: Yeah, that one. We had a functional version of that in 3D.
Itoi: That was 3D?
Miyamoto: It would jump out at you pretty nicely.
Iwata:Even without special glasses, the 3D looked pretty good. But we considered how much the liquid crystal would cost, and it was just too expensive. We figured the market just wasn’t there for it.
Itoi: So you gave up. Whew! And now you’ve done it. I see! You never give up!
Iwata: Yeah. We never give up. (laughs)
Miyamoto: (laughs)
Itoi: I bet the one who was most persistent in pursuing 3D was Miyamoto-san.
Iwata: (laughs)

More details on 3DS, PSP phone

2011-01-06T00:07:00.005+01:00

A rumour and a leak provide more details regarding both the Nintendo 3DS and Sony's yet unannounced PlayStation Portable Phone. Firstly, Spanish website Exponente Geek claims to have taken the following snapshot from the regional GameStop website, detailing an April 7th launch date for Europe at an expected price tag of €249.

The original webpage has since been taken down, it is claimed. The Google cache does not reveal the apparent content either.

Previously, a 3DS model had apparently been smuggled out of a factory for pictures and a video. Since there have been many events already, though, at which the console was presented to the world's media (albeit it could only be filmed from the side or switched off), the impact of this story has been overstated in my mind.

Engadget, meanwhile, has published new and surprisingly high-resolution images of the PlayStation Portable Phone, Sony has yet to announce. The images show both Sony Ericsson and Xperia logos, as well as the familiar PlayStation insignia.

EDIT In his CES keyote, Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Kaz Hirai hinted at other products besides the PSP Phone, as recorded by Joystiq.

Hirai teased that Sony's "strategy encompasses driving the development of a variety of new strategic products and services including tablets currently in development as well as smartphones, all the while of course integrating the know-how and the assets that we've accumulated from our PlayStation business."

What does that mean? It sounds like the PlayStation Phone is just part of the plan to leverage the PlayStation branding and games for Sony's other products. He continued, "In 2011, you will start to see an implementation of a strategy we've developed and continually refined over the past 18 months. And you will see this strategy executed in the form of great new products and services coming to market that leverage Sony's strongest assets. In addition to launching a line of Sony tablets, we'll be building upon the video, music, game and book offerings on our Qriocity and our PlayStation Network services to deliver a compelling, unique experience for Sony across a wide range of consumer electronic devices."

EDIT The matter regarding the PlayStation Phone is getting ridiculous now: a Chinese website has just published videos (via Engadget). I guess Sony is holding out until February 14th to reveal the device at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Looking ahead at 2011

2010-12-31T00:04:00.001+01:00

Allow me to give you a brief glimpse of what 2011 will bring to this blog and videogames in general. ´Duke Nukem Forever´ will actually be released and kick off what will be a great year in gaming. The PlayStation phone will be announced. Soonafter, the 3DS will be launched and will undoubtedly sell like hotcakes, despite a hefty price tag of $249 and €249, respectively. Its success will convince the consumer electronics industry at large that autostereoscopic displays are the way forward. 2011 will definitely be a strong year for mobile gaming.

Do not expect any news about home consoles. No new consoles will be announced, for sure. Sony and Microsoft have just updated their hardware and will want to hedge their bets. What about these updates? I have always believed that Kinect will outsell Move because Move is too similar to the Wii controller. After playing with both long enough, I do not see Kinect games as having a lasting appeal, though. Give me ´Socom 4´ with Move any day. ´Kinect Adventures´ may be full of great and original ideas. But this type of game seems to be the only type available and the Wii cornered this market four years ago.

Almost every Kinect hack out there seems to have more appeal than the actual games. Of course, Microsoft will want to push Kinect in 2011 by churning out great software for it. But remember that they chose to drop an internal chip which leaves the actual console with the additional calculations. Analysts have not been sure whether this will affect performance in a noticable way, but this point may explain why we have not yet seen a ´Gears of War´ type game working with Kinect and, perhaps, never will. What commentators have been sure about is the additional lag the system is burdened with, as a result. And even leaving this point aside, I am still sceptical of the hardware (I am sceptical of any entertainment product that actually tells me to move my furniture before I start playing) because I simply have not had very satisfactory playing experiences in general.

Move already has a far more diverse portfolio and this should make Move sell far better than Kinect in 2011. But Move will not become a system seller for the console. Nintendo took a huge gamble by including motion controls in the console and, pretty much, forcing developers to incorporate it into all games. But by doing so, they did not fragment the user base further.

A PS3 or Xbox developer has to consider that the number of motion control interfaces sold for either platform is only a small fraction of each console's total hardware base. Why develop only for a few million potential customers when you could be developing for a few dozen - at less cost to boot? Kinect and Move will both sell in 2011 (with Move outselling Kinect, I believe) but both will never be truly successful. Neither hardware will play a significant role come 2012.

Nintendo will reduce the Wii's price tag in 2011 and be awarded by another and much needed sales spike. The 3DS will have some nifty ways of being hooked up to a Wii, I expect, and this interoperability will further help the home console's sales somewhat. I stand by my year-old prediction that the Wii will remain market leader this generation. PS3 and Xbox will outsell the Wii for much of 2011 (Nintendo will reduce the price in the late second half and then significantly, I believe) but they will not come close to the Wii's life-to-date sales.

What will 2011 bring to this blog? First of all, the year will start with a redesign and a new focus. I will publish everything from mammoth articles to short notices to reduce the wait and accomodate my increasingly hefty professional workload. And, of course, I will finally publish that Nibris article soon, which I believe will be very worthwhile. Like the one on Crossbeam Studios, I also expect this one to have swift and far-reaching consequences. The main reason for it still not being online is that hardly anyone wants to talk about Nibris. Even the founders do not want to talk about it, it seems. I have not yet received a reply to my interview questions via mail.

And, finally, what will 2011 hold in store for me? Well, I very much hope to be able to share some great and interesting news with you very soon, regarding my professional future. Last year, I already broadened my horizon significantly by co-hosting the European Innovative Games Award in Frankfurt. This year, I will be able to share a new and exciting project with you, if everything goes well. As 2010 ends, though, I would like to thank each and every one of you for continued support of this blog. I realise that updates have been far too rare of late but I promise you that 2011 will be different. Have a good one ushering in the new year. 2011 will be a blast.

Must-have Wii game: ´Golden Eye´

2010-11-24T14:53:00.001+01:00

Activision has set a new benchmark for Wii shooters with the release of ´Golden Eye´, the remake of the classic N64 game. Every Wii owners even vaguely interested in action should purchase this game.

The graphics are astounding, the levels beautifully crafted, character animations are extremely fluid and lifelike, the AI is among the best I have experienced in any game, the actors' performance ranges from good to excellent, the music score is a perfect fit and the frame rate almost never slips below a comfortable measure guaranteeing fluid camera movements. And that is not to mention the online multiplayer, which will keep you occupied for many months after you finish the engaging single-player campaign.

Joystiq has a full review here, if you want to find out more details. But believe me: this is as close to a 360 or PS3 game as you are going to get on Wii. And even across all platforms, ´Golden Eye´ is just a great shooter that can be compared with any other title in the genre.

Just how did they get those graphics out of the machine? Me and another expert believe that there are horizontal lines missing in order to maintain the overall graphic quality at a stable framerate. I have contacted the studio Eurocom for confirmation and will update soon. ´Call of Duty: Black Ops´ is pretty good on the Wii, too, but you will experience framerate difficulties here and there. If you want the best action game on the platform, ´GoldenEye´ is it.

Apple wanted to buy Bungie, considering other acquisitions?

2010-10-28T14:35:00.004+01:00

Apple executives were considering buying ´Halo´ developer Bungie Studios back in 2000, Develop magazine reports. The article cites former Xbox executive Ed Fries and Tuncer Deniz, then project lead at Bungie.

His [Deniz'] account of the circumstances was that Phil Schiller – Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing – then had a meeting with Steve Jobs to discuss if the Macintosh manufacturer should proceed with acquiring Bungie.

“Schiller asked Steve, who said no,” Deniz tells Develop. “[But] after a week, Steve said yes. Schiller calls Bungie, but Bungie had already consummated the deal with Microsoft”.

Apparently, Jobs was furious at the news that Microsoft had beaten them to it.

But now, speculation is rife again that Apple may be looking for another acquisition. The New York Times believes that it could even be a games company. Apparently, 50 billion US-Dollars are earmarked for acquisitions and such a large sum leads analysts to speculate that Apple might want to buy ARM Holdings, Netflix, Facebook or, indeed, Electronic Arts.

I have always said that Apple will most likely not enter the traditional gaming space again. To be more specific, Apple will never manufacture another dedicated games console. Buying a large publisher could be a viable option for them, but Apple could not allow EA to continue development for other platforms or they would run the risk of cannibalizing their own platforms.

And if EA titles would only be available on iOS and MacOS platforms from now on, EA would obviously wither away, I believe. MacOS still does not have the necessary installed base to allow brands like ´Medal of Honor´ to flourish and merit multi-million Dollar investments. The iOS platforms, on the other hand, simply are not built for deep and engaging titles (the main obstacle here being the lack of buttons). So, I would be very surprised if Apple really did make an acquisition in the gaming space.

Sources: Develop magazine, New York Times

PlayStation Portable phone leaked

2010-10-27T22:41:00.005+01:00

The long-rumoured PlayStation Portable mobile phone has been confirmed via a leak published by Engadget (read their update).

Engadget is adamant that the photo really shows a prototype of what is soon to go into production. The product's codename is apparently ´Zeus´ and you may be surprised to hear that it is supposedly running Android.

As we reported back in August, the device you see is headed into the market soon, likely boasting Android 3.0 (aka Gingerbread), along with a custom Sony Marketplace which will allow you to purchase and download games designed for the new platform. The device snapped up top (and in our gallery below) is sporting a 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8655 (a chip similar to the one found in the G2, but 200MHz faster), 512MB of RAM, 1GB of ROM, and the screen is in the range of 3.7 to 4.1 inches. Looking almost identical to the mockup we hit you with this summer, the handset does indeed have a long touchpad in the center which is apparently multitouch, and you can see in the photos that it's still bearing those familiar PlayStation shoulder buttons. For Sony buffs, you'll be interested to know that there's no Memory Stick slot here, but there is support for microSD cards.

The particular model in these shots is still in prototyping mode. As such, the unit doesn't have a custom skin (not even SE's Timescape design seen on the Xperia devices), and is said to be rather buggy. We're digging into more facts as we speak, but it's likely that much of what we reported earlier is still accurate, and though the device could still be headed for a 2010 release, 2011 is looking much more realistic. Still, there's a lot of time between now and the holidays... so keep your fingers crossed!

I myself am rather surprised at the news, since Sony failed with their PSP Go, but the phone functionality may become for the PSP what 3D is sure to become for the DS.

EDIT CNET posits some interesting questions we should be asking ourselves regarding the PSP phone.

* Will this device be a PSP 2?

* Will PSP gaming be possible on other Android phones?

* Will it enable touch-screen gaming?

* Are there analog pads?

* When will it be released?

* What is the price?

Sources: Engadget, Engadget
Thanks to: Joystiq

3DS - too expensive and too late?

2010-09-22T16:20:00.011+01:00

The 3DS will go on sale in Japan on February 26th for 25.000 Yen, which amounts to $300 or €220. In North America and Europe the device will launch in March. No specific date has been set.

According to information for investors, the standard bundle will include a recharging cradle (possibly using induction), six AR cards (which will enable gameplay familiar from the PlayStation3 game ´Eye of Judgment´) and a telescopic stylus.

Another document details how confident Nintendo is about the device. In just over four weeks of availability in Japan and under four weeks in the rest of the world, the company expects to sell 4 million hardware units and 15 million units of software. To compare, Apple's iPad sold one million units in just under four weeks and is considered a big success.

Here are the two video clips shown at the presentation event in Japan.

The movies will soon be available for download here.

Having had extensive hands-on time with the device twice already, I can mirror the almost exclusively positive feedback by other journalists. Especially the hardware has been upped significantly. According to IGN, developers believe that the device can easily hold its own against current home consoles.

Numerous developers working on software for the platform have likened its graphical capabilities to current-generation consoles like the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, albeit on smaller, lower-resolution screens.

However, there had been rumours that the 3DS would launch this year. And I myself have been expecting a $200 price tag, which is now out of the question. The 3DS may come too late and at too high a price to meet Nintendo's own high expectations. It will still be tremendously successful, for sure. But I believe that a lot will depend on the non-game offering, particularly a movie download platform would help the 3DS greatly.

On a separate note, some more rumours about a Wii sucessor have surfaced. We already know that the Wii 2 will be 3D compatible. Now, Spanish gaming site 3DJuegos (Spanish) is quoting ´Metroid´ co-creator Yoshio Sakamoto as follows:

At Nintendo we always have the obligation to surprise users with a new console. We have never done what others do. We prefer to create something new that catches people's attention, and I think this will continue at this time. Surely the new Nintendo machine will leave you all with your mouth open.

Lastly, I just wanted to throw one late gamescom impression out there. I have seen a demo of ´Bioshock Infinite´ and this game is going to be huge, believe me.

EDIT It seems that I am not the only one surprised by the 3DS price tag for the Japanese market. Only the German edition of Gamesindustry.biz called the price of "only €220" "quite affordable". At least we know why Nintendo is tearing down the pain barrier in handheld pricing. Bloomberg (via Andriasang, thanks to Joystiq) is reporting that we, the game journalists, are to blame. It was our unanimously positive response that justified the price tag for Nintendo president Satoru Iwata. As collective jaws dropped, the price tag rose.

EDIT At least the 3DS software will come at only a moderate premium, as Andriasang cites Nintendo president Satoru Iwata.

EDIT In a Q&A session published on the Japanese Nintendo website, president Iwata explains the timing and pricing of the 3DS.

If we launched it this calendar year, it would be difficult to produce a sufficient amount. Also, in terms of the completion level of the product, we believe that it will reach the most satisfactory level by our standards if we will launch it on the date we just announced. (...)

[Regarding the] concern that it is more expensive than Wii. Portable video game machines integrate both a gaming device and a screen. You do not need any other hardware devices to be connected in order for you to play with it. We do not think, "the price relationship between portable devices and home consoles must stay intact simply because it used to be that way."

While it is always better for the price to be as accessible as possible, in terms of its cost, and in order to make a healthy and sustainable business for both the hardware and the software, and given the positive reactions since E3, which give us the indication on how the public are likely to appreciate the value of Nintendo 3DS if they can have hands-on experiences and, above all, by taking other factors into careful consideration, we have concluded that we should propose this price point to our consumers.

The fact that Nintendo addresses these rather negative issues in such an open way clearly shows that I was right to pick up on it. Also, I believe that we can now assume that the 3DS will be more expensive than the Wii in all territories. Iwata specifically says that a handheld can cost more than a home console, so I now expect price points of $249 and €249 in North America and Europe, respectively.

Sources: Nintendo investors relations, IGN, 3DJuegos (Spanish), Adriasang, Nintendo investors relations
Thanks to: GoNintendo

Media blowout: Louis Castle, Matias Myllyrinne, Warren Spector, David Cage, Josh Sawyer and more

2010-08-20T20:58:00.006+01:00

I am extremely happy to share with you the 3sat Neues expert panel featuring Louis Castle (InstantAction, formerly Westwood Studios) and Matias Myllyrinne (Remedy Entertainment) discussing the current state and future of the games industry, hosted by myself. Here is the video stream of the 30 minute debate.

Why does a movie license to be used in games cost millions while a game license to be used in movies costs a few hundred thousands? Is Hollywood still not taking the videogame industry seriously?

Are services like OnLive, Gaikai or Louis Castle's InstantAction posing a threat to traditional games distributed the traditional way?

And can the videogame industry ever emancipate itself as a medium of art? Comic books managed to win Pulitzer prizes and deal with topics like the Holocaust. Will videogames ever be able to do likewise? Please check out the interesting debate of two industry visionaries on these questions.

We also bring you two GDC Europe lectures in full:

Heavy Rain: How Far Are You Prepared to Go to Develop an Original Project? by David Cage (Quantic Dream)

Chilling Tales from Red Steel 2: How Motion Control Will/Won't Change The Future by Jason VandenBerghe (Ubisoft)

Finally, 3sat Neues presenter Yve Fehring conducted a series of interesting interviews, which we also host on YouTube.

Warren Spector (Junction Point) speaks about ´Epic Mickey´, his slightly undeserved legacy of being a dark developer as well as why he loves German board games and what we can learn from them.

Josh Sawyer (Obsidian Entertainment) talks about the upcoming ´Fallout: New Vegas´ and whether it is a trend to give established series to new developers.

There are further interviews in German:

Olaf Wolters (BIU association) and Franko Fischer (koelnmesse) discuss this week's gamescom in Cologne, the current industry trends and why Canada was chosen as the first host country.

Heiko Klinge (IDG) and Stephan Reichart (GAME association) discuss how the financial crisis has affected the industry, how to get a career in gaming and how the career pavillion at the gamescom can help.

Finally, Lars Buttler (Trion Worlds) talks about the company's new MMO which will be developed alongside a TV series.

Andreas Lange talks about the computer game museum in Berlin opening later this year and shares one extremely rare item from the collection, as well as old footage of Ralph Baer playing the Magnavox Odyssey.

Join Louis Castle, Matias Myllyrinne and myself

2010-08-14T23:09:00.009+01:00

I am very happy to invite you all to a very special event taking place alongside the GDC Europe, the first 3sat Neues expert panel. Join Louis Castle (InstantAction, formerly Westwood Studios) and Matias Myllyrinne (Remedy Entertainment) in a discussion about the current state and future of the games industry, hosted by myself. Here are the details:

Monday, 16th of August 2010
Offenbachsaal
Congress-Centrum Ost Koelnmesse/KölnKongress
Deutz-Mülheimer-Straße
50679 Cologne / Germany
7pm - 7:45pm

Registration for GDC Europe will not be necessary. Fifteen minutes will be reserved for Q&A. Here are all the travel details. I very much hope that all of you attending GDC Europe can come. If you are unable to attend, you may want to check out the on-demand stream of the session, provided by my television network ZDF/3sat. Check back for the link Monday evening.

Nintendo post-E3 event impressions (including 3DS hands-on)

2010-07-14T07:49:00.004+01:00

Yesterday I attended a post-E3 event at Nintendo of Europe and caught up with the line-up presented at the Los Angeles trade show. Here are my impressions.

3DS

Obviously, I played around with the 3DS for quite a bit. And I have to share the comments from people who tried it out before me. It really is most impressive. The effect is simply stunning and it is almost obvious that this device will become a megaseller and the new must-have gadget.

The quality of the hardware seems below that of the DSi, though, perhaps somewhere between the original DS and DSi. The shell feels “plasticy” and does not have the same quality finish of the later DS models. These were prototypes, though. So let us hope that this will be touched up.

The most impressive trailers were undoubtedly ´Metal Gear Solid 3D´ and ´Resident Evil: Revelations´. Both proved how much more powerful the 3DS is, albeit generating two separate images. It really is Wii and PSP quality, if not better. In ´Kid Icarus: Uprising´, you can see every bit of detail on Pit. The most impressive game was ´Nintendogs & Cats´. The animals came to life so much more in 3D, I am totally motivated to play this title silly like I did the DS games.

´PilotWings Resort´ did not work for me. I lost the 3D effect quite often, perhaps because there is so much depth. The leeway the device allows in terms of sideways movement appears to vary greatly from title to title. And here I was trying to navigate the plane while adjusting the 3D depth. Not a pleasant experience, but presumably something you will only have to do at the very beginning.

What got me excited again, though, was the movie trailer for ´Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole´. It looked brilliant and I can quite imagine watching entire movies on the device. Finally, playing around with the camera was great fun. To look through a digital camera and get a 3D image in the viewfinder was a revelation. While Nintendo is settling once again for a mere 0,3 megapixel, the quality seemed sufficient on screen.

´ Metroid Other M´ (Wii)

This game has a very high production value, as could have been expected. The cutscenes are cinema quality, the in-game graphics also amazing. It is essentially a 3D game with a level design that, at times, makes it feel like a 2D side scroller. There is a large degree of auto-aim. But you never feel that you are playing “only” in 3D. Combat is made easier by features such as missiles replenishing automatically. But the bosses seem quite tough. The transition between isometric and third-person perspective works very well and you will manage them easily within boss fights. This will become a must-have title.

´Zelda: Skyward Sword´ (Wii)

Unfortunately, this seemed to be the most underwhelming title there. Having played through ´Twilight Princess´ (and quite a few other Zeldas), this game seemed a step back in terms of visual quality. The world just seemed simpler and less rich than the one in its predecessor, without it oozing style like ´Wind Waker´. I played for a while and defeated two level bosses. And, for sure, the combat is much more complex. With Motion Plus, you need to slice those piranha plants in half the right way, depending on which way they open. But the game failed to capture my imagination and I heard similar comments from other game journalists at the event.

´Donkey Kong Country Returns´ (Wii)

This certainly was the surprise hit in my books. I did not expect ´Metroid Prime´ developer Retro to instantly get the Jump ´n Run genre right, but they sure did. In fact, I do not remember playing such a game with so many fresh ideas. The visuals, of course, were equally satisfying. Undoubtedly a must-buy for the console.

´Kirby: Epic Yarn´ (Wii)

This game is one of the most stylish and original games I have seen in a long time. I played through three levels and was blown away by the originality in the visual style and how that ties in with the gameplay. You might not be a Kirby fan, but you should definitely check this one out.

Wii successor 3D-compatible, Nintendo to shift towards hardcore gamers

2010-07-05T20:25:00.007+01:00

The successor to the Wii home console will be 3D compatible. Also, Nintendo wants to strengthen its ties with third party developers and shift towards hardcore games, company president Satoru Iwata told Japanese newspaper Nikkei (via Gamespot).

Iwata is quoted as saying that he is keen to "expand into elaborate games targeting serious gamers", which appears to be the strategy both for the next home console, as well as for the next handheld, the 3DS.

Iwata went on to suggest that the current DS and its software only caters to those who do not play games; something that he hoped to rectify with the 3DS in terms of advances in graphics and gameplay. Recognising this shift in focus from first-party to third-party development, Iwata told Nikkei that Nintendo went to great lengths to incorporate software developers' requests when making the 3DS and called on these developers to make games for the new system.

"These partnerships are good for both Nintendo and the software developers," Iwata said.

Iwata also announced Nintendo's plans to make the successor to the Wii 3D compatible, telling Nikkei that "a full-scale entry into this field will take some time because 3D televisions will not catch on right away."

Nintendo appears keen to occupy the 3D space of videogaming, which has remained largely untapped until now. Sony has only just launched the first 3D games for its PlayStation3. Microsoft has ruled out 3D for the short term. The 3DS will undobtedly become a huge success, if only Nintendo can offer a clever solution to bring 3D movies and other content to consumers, as well as games.

And the games may be a departure from the current DS offering, too. A shift towards more hardcore games would be all too welcome. Not too long ago, the ´Resident Evil´ franchise was exclusive to Nintendo platforms. So, will we see such collaborations again and, more importantly, will we see them last?

As odd as that may sound, Nintendo's big problem is the huge success of the Wii console. Its successor is doomed to become at least as successful or it may be seen as a failure. Motion control has now been copied by both competitors. Cloud gaming services like Gaikai and OnLive are threatening the traditional console business model. Technologywise, the only way Nintendo can go is 3D. I am most intrigued, though, which technology the company will choose. I do not see them investing in traditional solutions with polarised or shutter glasses and Iwata pretty much said so himself. So, will the Wii's successor also incorporate some autostereoscopic solution, much as we suspected right on this blog five years ago?

EDIT Iwata has commented on the Wii's successor and 3D before. EDGE quotes him in an interview with a Japanese newspaper, speaking about the Wii's 3D potential.

If you display a 3D image, the image quality becomes extremely bad, so we'd probably do it with the next system. We're thinking that the timing should be once the 3D television adoption rate crosses the 30% mark. We're looking at the adoption trends.

In a lengthy interview with Venture Beat, Iwata dismissed the idea that the 3DS' parallax barrier technology could also be applied to big screens.

With this parallax barrier technology, the LCD must be a certain distance away from the screen. It also needs a certain viewing angle. We think it is not a great match for the home TV set. As one of the engineers, I can anticipate that someone will invent a 3D TV that does not require you to wear 3D glasses. As far as today is concerned I do not think they can do it well. We need an invention to make it happen. If you ask me when, I have no idea.

This statement is rather surprising, since there are a number of autostereoscopic technologies out there that are far developed and practically mass market ready.

Source: Nikkei (via Gamespot), Electronista, Gamasutra, EDGE, Venture Beat
Thanks to: Fook

Nintendo 3DS hands-on summary

2010-06-17T10:56:00.013+01:00

First of all, I did not attend E3 this year, unfortunately. In March, I spent a week in San Francisco to extensively cover GDC instead. But we had a freelance reporter covering the show for us, so check out her report when it goes live in a few hours.

My predictions were slightly off, in parts. Although an additional surprise I was very much expecting may be found in Nintendo's announcement that the 3DS would also play Hollywood movies. We will have to wait and see how big studio support will be and how those movies will be distributed.

For now, I want to summarize some media outlets' early impressions after their hands-on session with the Nintendo 3DS, since you are no doubt wondering how good the effect is, as I am. First off, here are the two most interesting videos I found on the net.

The second video's claim that the 3D effect cannot be communicated via a standard video camera is probably rubbish. I myself have filmed an autostereoscopic display at the 2009 CES Samsung booth and the 3D effect came across beautifully. Unfortunately, noone seems to have tried. But there are some scenes in the above videos where you get an early impression of what the device will deliver. Far more detailed are some select media outlets' impressions and here they are:

Joystiq

The effect is pronounced, but seems far less distracting than you'd expect. The lack of plastic glasses imparts a level of viewing comfort that you simply don't get from 3D televisions, though the comparatively smaller screen is also easier on the eyes. The visuals are bright -- easily on par with the DS Lite -- and offer a good viewing angle. However, viewing from the side reveals the blurry, overlaying effect of the 3D screen, so you'll want to turn the 3D effect down via the slider.

The Guardian

Yes, it works beautifully. Nintendo is almost certain to have used an off-the-shelf lenticular screen technology, already seen in several mobile phones and laptops. You can perceive 3D only if the console is directly in front of you, but this is fine for handheld gaming. I actually found it pretty adaptable in terms of viewing from different vertical positions. It was much more sensitive if the handheld was turned slightly to the left or right, but really, it coped perfectly with the slight shifts and jerks you'd get on a morning commute.

Engadget

It's not great, but the 3.5-inch screen on top certainly gives a firm illusion of depth without resorting to glasses -- or eye crossing. The feel is definitely reminiscent of those 3D cereal box prints, and as soon as you turn the device from left to right to try to look around anything the effect is immediately lost. You need to stare at the screen for a moment for your eyes to adjust and then not move around too much. If you do you'll need to adjust again. But, stay reasonably still and it's a compelling effect.

Eurogamer

It's a new DS with hugely improved graphical performance - eclipsing PSP and getting close to Wii - a beautiful widescreen display, and an excellent analogue controller.

Its 3D screen (and camera), however, elevate it from a must-have games machine to a must-have consumer device of any kind. It's not perfect - there's no doubt that there are more flawless ways to view 3D out there. But it works without glasses, in your hands, in any lighting conditions - and works very well. Its simplicity and immediacy are devastating, and in their way make it more exciting and impressive than any other 3D experience you can have.

GayGamer

It actually does exactly what they say, which is to deliver a mind-blowing 3D experience without glasses. The effect is amazing, and there's even a little bit of leeway as far as the viewing angle (though not much). The graphics are crisp and clear, and there is no blurring or fuzziness because of the 3D effect. And as I mentioned in my wrap-up of the Nintendo press conference, the graphics are better than regular DS games, approaching Wii levels of quality and detail.

Wired

Nintendo’s new 3DS hardware is, in a word, unbelievable. The company didn’t talk about how its stunning technology works during Tuesday’s brief demo for members of the press. But work it does: Without using special glasses, you can see a deep, rich 3-D display on the top screen of the new Nintendo 3DS portable. (...) The graphics, which are much more advanced than you’d expect from Nintendo, left me pretty much in disbelief. They’re on a level with Sony’s PSP, probably even a little better than that. But the eye-popping 3-D effect makes everything that much richer.

IGN

Holy crap. Trust me, you really have to see this thing in person to understand why I'm incredibly impressed. Nintendo is using an LCD technology that sends each eye an independent image that the brain merges together, and the effect adds depth. A lot of depth. The effect is immediately obvious, yet seems so natural. And there are multiple sweet spots, so you don't have to awkwardly hold the system in a position that doesn't feel comfortable. If you twist the system you'll get double images and lose the 3D, but it's simple to keep the stereoscopic effect within view.

Gizmodo

The images jump out, like a window—an effect that's surprisingly natural, actually—until you view the screen from the side. Anywhere but head-on, the 3D effect fails completely and the colors wash out a bit. (...)

I'll hand it to Nintendo, they seem to have made 3D extremely intuitive. In our admittedly brief hands-on, we were impressed but not necessarily floored by the tech alone. The screen has a somewhat low resolution with plenty of noticeable jaggies. We're guessing if it were sharper, we'd have gotten a bit more of that "this is the future!" buzz.

Ars Technica

After playing with seemingly every 3D technology under the sun—going to CES for the past four years will do that for you—this is the only bit of 3D tech that I can see actually sitting down and playing with. My eyes didn't feel as strained as they do when I wear 3D glasses. More importantly, the content looked great, and the effect actually adds to the sense of space and immersion inside the game. (...) To put it bluntly, Nintendo has an amazing piece of tech on its hands, and this is a very exciting system to play for the first time.

EDIT Here is the first trailer of a third party 3DS game, which has just been released. It is ´Resident Evil Revelations´ and looks pretty impressive. I have also added the ´Kid Icarus: Uprising´ trailer below, which was the only public trailer of a 3DS title so far.

EDIT Just a quick addition regarding the ´Resident Evil Revelations´ trailer. In a press mailing, Capcom detailed: "Featuring appearances from Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine the trailer is rendered in real time using the game engine."

E3 predictions

2010-06-13T13:15:00.005+01:00

As promised, here are some predictions for E3, which is kicking off today and getting into full swing next week. Let us start with what I know. A big publisher will present a very promising peripheral for Wii. You might think that all sensible peripherals have been done, but not quite. This one could become quite useful. And, surprisingly, the publisher has managed to secure the support of other publishers for it, I am told. So this one will not gather dust as soon as that ´Tony Hawk Ride´ board, they hope. I will only give you a cryptic hint: the peripheral will enable some seminal DS games to be adapted to Wii better than would otherwise have been possible. A cryptic hint, like I said. Anything dawning on you?

Moving on to speculation, I very much expect that Nintendo's big announcement will be something other than the 3DS. All too willingly, the company announced the 3DS prior to the show. So, in my mind, there is a far bigger gun to be brought out or, at least, there is some aspect to the new handheld that people have not expected. Again, this is not based on what I have been told, but it is what I suspect.

As far as Capcom expecting Nintendo to mimick their App Store is concerned, I do not see this happening. Both WiiWare and DSiWare are superior platforms for digital distributions, in my mind. I have been playing around with an iPad for the last few days and have been astonished at some of the basic features missing from the App Store. Apparently, if you browse all titles, say, in the category games, you cannot filter the search results further by price or any other criteria. By comparison, WiiWare is much easier to browse through. I am not ruling out changes to Nintendo's digital distribution agenda, but I do not see them copying Apple. In my mind, Apple needs to copy everyone else. But that is another story. Also, Sony's PSP Go flopping so badly will send clear signals to the industry at large.

I also predict that Nintendo will reveal the new ´Legend of Zelda´ game to heavily utilize the vitality sensor. The peripheral is the most underrated idea, I am sure. While most game journalists seem to have forgotten about it entirely, I envisage that the sensor has the potential to become a milestone of videogaming. For the first time, you will not influence a game by pressing a button, saying a word or waving a controller - you will influence the game by how you feel. And Link lacking a sword in that infamous teaser image may be indicative of just that: you will fight your foes not with traditional weapons controlled by a mundane button or movement, but with your heart rate, perhaps triggering a more esoteric type of attack, like some kind of magic.

I have made my predictions exclusive to Nintendo because I do not see Sony or Microsoft revealing anything revolutionary. We have seen and played both Move and Natal. We will learn far more details about both and see a number of titles for them. But I do not see either company revealing new hardware of any kind.

Moving back to hard facts, there are two exclusive tidbits of information I have not yet made public, unrelated to the E3. They are nothing earth-shattering, but some of you might find them interesting in some way. Firstly, Nintendo really has been offered the ´Project Natal´ technology prior to Microsoft and refused it, as some other insiders have claimed. This refusal has been officially discussed at internal Nintendo of Europe meetings, I can reveal. The second interesting fact is that some people have claimed that the ´Metroid Prime Trilogy´ did a good job of upgrading some of the textures of the first two parts from GameCube to Wii standard. In fact, the very opposite is true. In order to fit all three games onto one disc, Nintendo had to reduce the textures on at least some of the titles. This may or may not be related to the decision to take the trilogy off the market. Like I said, these tidbits are nothing spectacular. But they may be worth knowing to some of you. Who knows.

Anyway, enjoy the E3. This will be another huge one, for sure. And I suspect Nintendo will steal the show, after rather humble offerings over the last years.

Apple calls its gaming efforts a "subset of casual gaming"

2010-06-04T13:21:00.006+01:00

Tucked away in Apple CEO Steve Jobs' lengthy interview at the D8 conference, was an interesting admission regarding the company's gaming efforts. Jobs admitted that games from the App Store belonged to "a subset of casual gaming". Here is the full quote:

Q: What’s your vision of social gaming?

A: Clearly, iPhone and iPod touch have created a new class of gaming and it’s a subset of casual gaming, but it’s surprising how good the games are. Typical console games cost $40, but on the iPhone, they cost somewhere between free and $10, and gaming on the platform is taking off. We’re trying to do the right things to enable more gaming and social gaming.

You may remember my lengthy article arguing that iPhone or iPad shouldn't be thought of as gaming platforms. It seems that Steve Jobs has no illusions about Apple's status as a player in the games industry. While a otherwise reputable German games magazine heralded both iPhone and iPad as "new gaming consoles" and wondered whether they challenged "the right to exist" of both DS and PSP, the above quote appears rather humble and justifiedly so.

Source: D8 conference

Nintendo returns to 3D gaming

2010-03-26T09:14:00.003+01:00

The 3DS

By now, you will have read most details about the Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo's return to 3D gaming after the failed Virtual Boy.

Since I am late to the party, reporting about this, I will concentrate on a few interesting details and aspects that have not been widely reported. First of all, the technology used is called a parallax barrier and will likely be provided by Sharp. You will find a pretty good description of this over on The Register.

Parallax barrier

I have used this tech before, in the form of a third party screen available for the iPhone. The results were very disappointing. However, a German exhibitor at this years's Game Developers Conference, which I attended, showed such a screen for a big monitor and the 3D visuals were pretty amazing. The only drawback was that you had to find a good position to perceive the effect from and stay put. In discussions over the last few days - including Nintendo employees - everyone agreed that Nintendo would only bring technology to market if it was perfected.

My chat with Miyamoto

Now, onto the timing. Some analysts suspect that Nintendo issued the news to prevent a news leak. Ironically, only days before the reveal, I was among a few lucky journalists who were able to interview Shigeru Miyamoto in London, ahead of his BAFTA award. And regarding a Wii successor, I asked him how Nintendo would try to innovate again, after being copied by both competitors. I suggested that 3D technology was the only route available. His answer was that while he could not talk about a Wii successor, I should wait for E3.

In fact, Miyamoto hyped E3 so much, that the official 3DS unveiling will most likely not be the main news at their press conference. There are a number of reasons. Of course, the timing and form of Nintendo's 3DS announcement appeared rushed. There are no images accompanying the news and the timing could cannibalise the launch of the DSi XL. But while most Nintendo employees I talk to were totally surprised about the hardware as well as the announcement, key people in all major territories knew that new hardware was coming. They may have been surprised at the 3D aspect. But they had been given advance warnings of such a revelation. In fact, a few have claimed that we can expect more. This must be why Nintendo blew the lid on the 3DS early. Because they will announce something far bigger at E3.

PlayStation Move update

Finally, just a quick note on PlayStation Move. My dear colleague Valentina posted a link on her blog (German) to the latest Engadget Show. In it (43:45 into the show), a number of videos illustrate the origin of PlayStation Move technology.

You may remember me writing about playing with early PlayStation Movbe tech back at the ECTS 2001. What you see in the video, labeled as 2004, is precisely what they publically showed three years prior to that. Lord knows why they do not give the correct date.

PlayStation Move hands-on and more

2010-03-11T07:05:00.002+01:00

Just a few hours ago, I was able to play at some length with Sony's PlayStation Move. The presentation was impressive. The hands-on session less so. I talked to some guys from Engadget and Joystiq and we were all in agreement that the lag was immense across all games. The Sony people at hand noted that it wasn't due to the Move hardware but due to the low framerate of the early demos. Most were pre-alpha versions. So the finished product should be much more responsive.

The range of games on display was pretty good. I played ´Socom 4´, ´Move Party´, ´The Shoot´ and a fighting simulation. ´Socom 4´ looked very good, while the one level I played of ´The Shoot´ was looking rather poor. All games displayed the lousy framerates mentioned above, though, and the high latency this entails.

I later interviewed Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter who joked that he finally got the Wii HD he predicted, only that it wasn't manufactured by Nintendo. He was impressed, but didn't think it would necessarily be a system seller. The console is still $300 and the Move hardware bundle will cost another $100. He did note that it was time for Nintendo to act, though.

I also interviewed Westwood founder Louis Castle, who is now building an exciting new delivery platform called InstantAction and - amazingly - remembered me from our last interview years ago. His service allows games like ´Monkey Island´ or ´Assassin's Creed´ to be offered via social networks like Facebook. You click on the demo button and the game downloads onto your hard-drive amazingly fast. You can then embed the banner which launches the game to your blog or any other site. It seems like a great idea and works a treat.

And I was also able to speak to Steve Perlman, CEO of OnLive. He showed an iPhone running Crysis and it looked pretty much unbelievable. We have a street date and a price (June 17th, $14,95 a month), so the critics who cried vapourware were silenced. That's it for now. Tommorrow we will interview Peter Molyneux and Sid Meier the day after. Stay tuned for more impressions from GDC.

The future of games

2010-02-20T14:53:00.004+01:00

At the D.I.C.E. Summit, which closed yesterday, Jesse Schell held an interesting talk on the future of gaming. Schell is CEO of Schell Games and tutor at the faculty of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University. He also used to work for Disney and still acts as a consultant for them.

His presentation entitled ´Design Outside The Box´ examines recent phenomena in gaming and their impact, as well as the future, where mundane tasks may come in the form of videogames.

I would like to introduce his presentation as follows. Consider a single game that is currently played by more than 70 million active users. Sounds impossible? No, there really is a game like that. But they must have collected this user base over many, many years, right? No, they only started out in June, so that is barely more than half a year.

That game in question, arguably the most successful game in the world at this point, is FarmVille on Facebook. Developer Zynga Game Network has attracted some big talent from traditional game companies. Its Vice President of Game Development should sound familiar: Mike Verdu recently left Electronic Arts, where he was General Manager at EALA and responsible for the ´Command & Conquer´ series.

What's more, Richard Garriott, better known as Lord British (´Ultima´, ´Tabula Rasa´), has just announced he is moving into social gaming and will be using Facebook as a platform with his new company Portalarium.

I myself have argued many times on this blog that the epicentre of gaming has already shifted with Wii. A core player is no longer one fond of gory horror and action shooters, but of ´Wii Fit´ and ´Brain Training´. Those games now constitute the core of gaming - which is a simple question of numbers. And now, Facebook is fast becoming the core of gaming. How will that change gaming? Where will gaming head in the future? Let Jesse Schell tell you.

Source: G4TV
Thanks to: Bitmob

How good is ´Alan Wake´?

2010-02-19T18:21:00.003+01:00

How good is ´Alan Wake´? The game by Finnish studio Remedy (´Max Payne´) has been tipped as one of the big hopefuls for the Xbox360. I just attended a presentation of the exclusive title in Hamburg and had a good hour hands-on time – enough to give you some first impressions.

Alan and I go way back

´Alan Wake´ has been in development for at least five years. I remember a presentation at Microsoft’s showcase event X06, where the basics all seemed in place and at least one level was playable (though journalists did not get any hands-on time). It is an open secret that the game was reworked significantly a number of times. The developers noted that the game was finished last summer and they have allocated almost a year for quality assurance and fine tuning. Obviously, after pouring this many resources into it, Remedy and Microsoft have a lot riding on this ticket. To be fair, the developer is only about fifty people strong, which is rather small for a project of this magnitude. They did use sub-contractors for a number of tasks, though.

So, was it worth it? Can ´Alan Wake´ measure up to upcoming exclusives on the competing consoles like ´Heavy Rain´ on PS3 or ´Metroid: Other M´ on Wii? Luckily, at the event, Microsoft lifted the original embargo agreement, which all attendees had to sign beforehand, which would have prevented me from writing in detail about the game until mid-March.

Photorealism meets ethereal effects

The brief presentation by the developers was impressive and the visuals lived up to the hype. While the character models do not measure up to those in ´Heavy Rain´ and the lip-syncing is off far too often, the environments appear more detailed and meticulously crafted. This type of photorealistic depiction is offset by many ethereal effects like mist or fog. The contrast between light and dark plays a central role in the gameplay mechanics and glow and burn effects give the game a unique visual touch. Also, the zombie-like attackers, which Alan encounters in the night, called ´The Taken´, are surrounded by a smouldering aura and they often become semi-transparent or vanish completely. When attacking them, Alan needs to blind them with a light source and shoot them with either a gun or, more effectively, a flare. When dead, ´The Taken´ dissolve in a burst of glowing light. Flares are fired in slow motion with the camera following the projectile.

A leaf or two out of Stephen King novels

The central element of ´Alan Wake´ is the story. The main protagonist is a famous writer who has come to the little town of Bright Falls for inspiration. As his wife disappears, Alan finds himself entangled in a thriller he has written but has no memory of writing. He finds pages of a script by him which anticipate what will happen next, which makes for an eerie and uncomforting sense of foreboding.

Obviously, Remedy took a leaf or two out of Stephen King novels like ´Misery´, television series like ´Twin Peaks´ or movies like ´The Shining´ (the latter is even mentioned by Alan Wake when an axe-wielding foe is about to break down the door separating them).

Inspired from seminal horror films and television series

Rather than putting Alan up against ´The Taken´ only, the game presents them only as one humanoid manifestation of what is referred to as ´The Dark Presence´. In other manifestations, oil barrels start to roll around and hover or cars are tossed up into the air and rammed into the ground. This way, the game continuously reminds you that you are up against something much larger and much more powerful than the regular foes you are facing – a very effective and fairly unique aspect. Games like ´Resident Evil´ usually put you up against larger enemies in boss battles only. ´Alan Wake´ often confronts you with those forces without you being able to fight back. With these supernatural phenomena suggesting an evil omnipresence, you may be reminded of movies like ´Poltergeist´.

The game also draws on many other elements from seminal horror films. As in the original ´Nightmare on Elm Street´, no enemy is clearly visible. ´The Taken´ are dark, as if they are covered in soot, and further shrouded in the ethereal, smouldering aura I described earlier. As in ´Evil Dead´, evil voices constantly turn from shrieking high-pitch to an unnatural low and back, while also sounding metallic or robotized. I found this feature as effective as it seemed familiar and almost obvious, which made me wonder why no other game has utilized this before, to my knowledge. Many other journalists at the event noted the outstanding audio design in general.

Finally, the presentation of the story is also unusual for videogames and invokes jargon known from television series. Players a given a recap of the story so far, introduced by the narrator announcing “previously on Alan Wake” and finishing the segment with “Alan Wake continues.”

Conclusion

The hour or so of hands-on time was too short to comment on gameplay mechanics at great length. The level we were able to play took place mostly during the night. We were simply told that the night and day cycle were key gameplay elements, as well as the dynamic weather. As far as health goes, I should mention that your health recharges with time or while standing under a street light or such, where you are also safe from attacks.

The hour was sufficient, though, to be able to say that ´Alan Wake´ looks like a very solid effort and is genuinely scary. It is clearly inspired by media other than videogames, which is refreshing. Its gameplay mechanics, though, draw mainly on tried and tested elements with a few original ideas thrown in for good measure. In stark contrast to a title like ´Heavy Rain´, ´Alan Wake´ feels more like a traditional game. It throws you into the action straight away and gives you the story basics later, while ´Heavy Rain´ takes a long time before you get to do anything exciting in the traditional sense of action videogames. Whether this will help or hinder sales remains to be seen. But, perhaps unfortunately, I believe that the majority of gamers will stick with what they know. So I expect ´Alan Wake´ to sell more copies than ´Heavy Rain´.

Coming up

Finally, I will be attending the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco next month. So stick with me while I can bring you more exclusive impressions of upcoming titles. Later this year, I will be able to make a big announcement regarding my work. And if only my various contacts get back in touch, I should also be able to publish the article on Polish Wii developer Nibris within a few weeks.

´Heavy Rain´ to turn the tide for PS3

2010-02-18T13:11:00.003+01:00

The PlayStation3 exclusive ´Heavy Rain´ is likely to turn the tide for the console, which has been trailing its competitors up until now. The installed hardware base is now within close range of the Xbox360 and – if buyers perceive a better line-up of games – could be set to overtake it this year. The current tally is as follows:

Wii: 67.45 million
Xbox360: 39 million
PlayStation3: 33.71 million

I believe that, given the recent surge in sales, Sony CEO Howard Stringer is confident that the PlayStation branch can soon turn a profit. I no longer believe that Sony is considering leaving the home console business, although that possibility was certainly discussed by Sony executives over the last years. For a final judgement, of course, we will have to wait for the introduction of ´Project Natal´ and ´Sphere´. How the public perceives these new motion control technologies will determine the fate of both the PS3 and Xbox360.

´Heavy Rain´ – a videogaming milestone

As far as ´Heavy Rain´ is concerned, I can assure you that it is a milestone of videogaming and, if marketed effectively, can certainly help to turn the tide for the PlayStation3. It is a thriller with an extremely dense and dark atmosphere, developed by Quantic Dream (´Fahrenheit´, aka ´Indigo Prophecy´). It draws from movies like ´Blade Runner´, but also ´Saw´. As a game, it is highly reminiscent of ´Shenmue´, since it involves players in cut-scenes via quick time events and does not follow the usual pacing of action titles. Instead, the player is invited to take his time and has to engage in mundane tasks, such as cooking lunch, taking a shower or minding kids and infants. As in ´Shenmue´, the game offers an unusually slow but rewarding pacing. The mundane tasks serve to identify with the characters and to only heighten the action which invariably follows.

What greatly sets it apart from ´Shenmue´ is that the game always continues, even if you miss all the quick time events. Your current character (out of a total of four playable ones) may die or another character may die as a result of your failure. But the game will continue, missing out chapters that would have contained those characters, and bringing the story to a conclusion, albeit a grim one. The story, it is claimed, will always make sense, no matter how it plays out individually. And, of course, the choices are sometimes drastic and not easy. Would you go as far as to harm yourself in order to save your child’s life?

As such, ´Heavy Rain´ is taking a number of big risks. If you only play through it once, you will only see a fraction of the entire game. Also, the player is bound to feel frustration and regret, since you cannot easily restart the game when you failed in a specific task. Ideally, the game should be played through without any cheating. For some, frustration may simply put them off. But the majority, I believe, will simply itch to play the game again, right after finishing it for the first time. ´Heavy Rain´ certainly has the highest replay value of any such game I have ever seen.

Emotionally engaging, astounding graphics

And, I can assure you, it is a very emotional game. The plight of a father who wants to save his remaining son from a serial killer is extremely well communicated and the mundane tasks aid this greatly. Playing with a withdrawn and depressed child and eventually making him laugh is utterly rewarding and emotionally engaging. This effectively raises the stakes for you performing well. Failure will result in some feelings of guilt.

The graphics are nothing short of astounding. I attended the game’s premiere in Paris and meeting the actors was an eerie experience, because some of them looked exactly like their digital counterparts. In fact, I would argue, the game is so much closer to photorealism than any other game that you inevitably realize just how far we still have to go to achieve full photorealism. Real facial expressions are extremely subtle, based on dozens and dozens of intricate muscles. In ´Heavy Rain´, the range of emotional expressions is still limited and so the acting comes across as a little woody. But this is by far the best effort in this regard ever. It is leaps and bounds ahead of any other game and probably will remain so for some years to come.

Forgivable flaws

The game is not without its flaws, of course. Since the camera will change automatically, to give you that cinematic experience, the controls are compromised. You start off in one direction, but if the game cuts to an opposing camera angle, you will end up pointing the analogue stick straight back while continuing to walk forward. There is a small latency built in, so you don’t mess up when correcting your path. But it is a little awkward nonetheless.

Also, the frame rate ranges from excellent to abysmal, especially when surrounded by around one hundred people. But these slight technical issues appear irrelevant, given the most rewarding experience that ´Heavy Rain´ offers. An admissible criticism is the fact that the player’s freedom is an illusion, to some extent. Not all quick time events have wide-ranging consequences. You cannot, for example, save the main character’s first son from being killed in a car accident in the very beginning, no matter how well you keep up with him. So ´Heavy Rain´ also shows the limits of a non-linear videogame. But with more than two dozen different endings, this is as good as it gets.

There are some minor features worth noting. Innovatively, it allows the player to show the current character’s thoughts via what looks like a tag cloud. The same system is used for conversations. If the character is irate, the tag cloud will shake and make your choice more difficult.

Launch Event

At the Paris launch event, legendary director Terry Gilliam headed a group of movie professionals which discussed the game. Speaking to Gilliam, he found much praise for ´Heavy Rain´ and, after a screening of the first hour, noted many scenes that played out differently when he had played it. I wondered whether the rich artistic visions he brought to the silver screen, such as ´Brazil´, could ever be realized in a videogame and acknowledged the intrinsic contradiction between a linear story and an interactive medium. But Gilliam was genuinely convinced that videogames had great potential as a storytelling tool and that ´Heavy Rain´ illustrated that potential well. Speaking to David Cage, he was flattered by me calling the game a milestone. He downplayed the comparison with ´Shenmue´, though, telling me that he never played it, which is striking, given the parallels. The event on the whole was impressive, if only for the presence of such a talented movie director as Terry Gilliam.

Experience it yourself

Finally, I urge every one of you to play this game and experience it for yourself. It could easily become a system-seller for the console. Needless to say, it will be bundled with the hardware. Let us see whether ´Heavy Rain´ can truly turn the tide for the PlayStation3. On Friday, I get a close look at ´Alan Wake´. Stay tuned to find out how these games compare and measure up.

EDIT I have to slightly reevaluate the game after playing it a second time. My assertion that "if you only play through it once, you will only see a fraction of the entire game" was wrong. It turns out that only very few key scenes can have potential consequences at all. Very often, missing QTEs causes the game to wait for you until you get it right, like ´Shenmue´.

Here are some examples (from earlier chapters to minimize the spoiler effect). When the detective needs to reach for his inhaler, you have no time limit at all. You can safely leave the game for an hour and come back and he will still be waiting for you. Him collapsing without the medicine and the story taking a different turn has not been implemented.

In Ethan's dream-like sequence in the station, you have an unlimited number of attempts to focus on the task of getting through the crowd. Again, you cannot fail. Worse still, later in the game you need to steer the detective's car while an upset passenger is trying to steer it in the opposite direction. Getting everything right yields the same result as missing every single one. You will be able to see this in my review when it goes on air and online at the same time, next Sunday.

In another instance, there appears to be no consequence of the first fight scene, regardless of whether you lose or win. Only walking away from it altogether slightly changes an upcoming scene. Finally, even the dialogue choices lead to the same answers, regardless of whether you act compassionate or cold. This was the case in all dialogue scenes I tested.

Of course, many of the above instances may contribute to an aggregate which will determine which end scene you will get. However, a great many moments where you feel you have to perform well ´or else´ have no immediate effect. This, of course, mitigates the game's ambitious goals, as well as its replay value.

In the few key scenes I mentioned, two out of the four playable characters can die, in which case subsequent chapters featuring them will be dropped. And not knowing which scenes are key will give the players the illusion of a story constantly branching off. It is, however, an illusion to a large extent. And I would estimate that playing through the game once will get you to experience around seventy percent of content or more. It is still a remarkable game and a welcome break from the norm, as well as the new standard in interactive storytelling. ´Heavy Rain´ simply leaves it up to successors in the genre to offer a broad range of choices and consequences.

Iwata comments on new hardware

2010-02-03T20:07:00.007+01:00

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata made various comments regarding new hardware the company was working on, likely to succeed both the current Wii and DS consoles. Iwata noted firstly in an investors note (Japanese), translated by Andriasang:

If asked if making the Wii compatible with high definition - just making it compatible with high resolution - will get players throughout the world to buy it, I would of course say, 'Do you think it would sell with just that? It needs something new.' (...)

If there were no rival makers in the world, I could give examples of the things that we are considering. However, for competitive reasons, I cannot give specifics today on the what or when of the things we're considering.

Speaking to The Associated Press (via Yahoo News), Iwata was keen to quell rumours about a new DS equipped with motion-sensors, as well as about a hardware revision for the Wii, capable of high-definition video output.

"I question whether those features would be enough to get people to buy new machines," he said of the DS. Nintendo engineers are developing new machines, he said, without giving details.

Iwata also doesn't expect 3D video-gaming to catch on, although he welcomed 3D movies at theaters like James Cameron's hit "Avatar."

"I have doubts whether people will be wearing glasses to play games at home. How is that going to look to other people?" he said at a Tokyo hotel.

Sony Corp. and other technology companies are making big investments in 3-D TVs, expecting it will boost sales growth in the next few years.

Kyoto-based Nintendo, the maker of Pokemon and Super Mario games, would also have to look into the possible health effects of longtime 3-D game playing, which is likely to last longer than a two-hour film, Iwata said.

Iwata made it clear that successors to both DS and Wii will have to go beyond high-definition and motion sensors. His comments on 3D technology seem highly sceptical. However, he specifically mentions traditional stereoscopic displays with either polarised or shutter glasses. Long-time readers will know that autostereoscopic displays (not requiring any kind of headgear) are in the pipeline and could already be offered at a mass-market price.

I personally see 3D technology as the only possible option for Nintendo, as far as a Wii successor is concerned. And Nintendo has earned enough money over the Wii's lifespan so far to make the investments necessary for such a revolution in gaming. With the advent of streaming content threatening all current consoles and with both Sony and Microsoft adopting motion controls for their high-definition hardware, this would be the only technology to give them an edge against both of those threats.

Sources: Nintendo (Japanese), Andriasang, Associated Press (via Yahoo News)
Thanks to: Joystiq

PlayStation3 to become fully compatible with PSP games

2010-02-03T19:52:00.004+01:00

The PlayStation3 will become fully compatible with PlayStation Portable software, the latest system update to so-called debug consoles has revealed. The PS3 Debug Firmware 3.15 has revealed a PSP Emulator. This find has been discussed on the PS3News forums, but has not been reported by media outlets.

This could mean, in practice, that you could buy portable games via a PSP Go and then transfer then to and play them on your PS3 and vice versa. Will this give the ailing platform the boost it so desperately needs? The PSP Go currently sells less than 2.000 units in Japan in one week.

Thanks to: PS3News forums

Are iPhone and iPad gaming platforms?

2010-01-29T11:02:00.004+01:00

Now that the iPad is out of the bag, will the 'big Apple' become the new capital of gaming? Or will the device turn out to be an 'iFad' in this field? With the iPhone’s phenomenal success and its app store also featuring plenty of gaming content, some gaming analysts have seen Apple as a new and important player in videogaming. Are they? I will discuss the iPad in general first and then move on to it and the iPhone as gaming platforms.

IPAD

The iPad 3G

Like many other analysts, I was expecting Apple to show something as original as the Microsoft Courier prototype. The way it is, we got just a big iPod Touch. Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ assertion that 75 million people already know how to use one must be followed by the fact that very few of them are likely to buy an iPad for the very same reason. Why own both?

The Microsoft Courier prototype

Of course, the iPad will have some cool features. It will run everything from photo albums to the browser very fast and smooth, though this is not surprising with such a closed and restrictive system, as we shall see. It has an extremely impressive battery life, which is one of the most important features to have with mobile devices (the single most important reason why the original GameBoy destroyed its competition). But, again, this feature comes at some dear costs, to be examined below. And you have a number of dedicated applications by third parties, like five book publishers, and content channels by some newspapers.

Yet Information Week and other news outlets were quick to point out a number of important features missing from the iPad. To briefly summarize, the browser does not have flash – mostly for security reasons and to save on battery life – and you also have no choice of browser, since every program must be downloaded through Apple’s platform. MacOS applications will not work on the device because it runs the iPhone’s operating system. Already, Jobs’ promise of ”the best web experience you've ever had” appears questionable.

The iPad running iBooks

The device surprisingly features no USB ports and no SD card slots (you need proprietary adapters) and it also has no HDMI output. It has no camera (where two were expected) and offers no multitasking. Only one application can run at a time. Apple’s carrier of choice is still AT&T, whose 3G network in the US is said to be shaky, I hear. Finally, it seems, the iPad will not feature real GPS. The 3G versions will use some kind of triangulation, I suppose.

The iPad has no USB ports and no SD card slot

I am writing this on an HTC Shift, which boasts pretty much the same specs as the iPad but natively runs Windows Vista (as well as Windows Mobile) and Windows 7 is running perfectly on it. Battery life does not compare to the iPad, but then you get a full OS and the ability to multitask. You also get a camera, flash support and free choice of carrier. And you can install any program you like. The list goes on.

The HTC Shift

As does the list of iPad’s shortcomings. I myself particularly regret that the device lacks an OLED, which had been rumoured to be included. And I find the standard resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels rather humble given the screen’s size. I also miss a physical keyboard integrated into the device. ”It's a dream to type on,” Steve Jobs said yesterday. But typing must be an awkward experience, because if you want to rest it in your lap, it faces straight up. You need to rest your feet on something to tilt it up in an ergonomically correct fashion. If you put it down on a table, it gets worse. The back is rounded, so it will constantly rock when you touch it. The stand accessory may come in handy here – although the limited height of the stand will surely make the iPad wobble when you are using the touchscreen. This is a mobile device and should be useful anywhere.

PRICE POINT

As far as mobility is concerned, I do not understand Apple even producing models without 3G. The main reason must be to be able to announce a $499 entry point. The non-3G product line is a total scam, in my opinion. This device needs to be able to go online, as Market Watch agrees:

At first glance, the beginning $499 price for a 16GB model that was announced by Jobs seemed a surprise compared to forecasts calling for something closer to $1,000. But the $499 does not include a 3G wireless connection, so that device would be only useful primarily at home or office networks.

The price with 3G wireless is $629 -- which compares with $259 for the Amazon Kindle, which is a single-use e-reader but can purchase and download books virtually anywhere.

I think it is highly questionable whether the iPad will find a noteworthy market. But what about games?

GAMING

Four years ago, I looked at an Apple patent that sounded very promising for games. It promised ”a wild new video game application for Apple’s accelerometer technology”:

It provides specific gaming examples of user as a driver and pilot and even provides a glimpse of how the accelerometer will be used in First Person Shooter games.

A user holding the tablet can turn around and see the view looking backwards from a position in a two or three dimensional image or object database as if the user walks into a virtual reality game space.

Apple patent "Methods and apparatuses for operating a portable device based on an accelerometer" (2006)

Why did we see no such games yesterday then? The ones demoed looked solid, but they were nothing spectacular. Apparently, ´Need for Speed Shift´ was even merely upscaled to run on the iPad. Will the big publishers hop onto this bandwagon, though, and throw their weight behind this device? Do they even support the iPhone in any serious fashion? Electronic Arts executive Peter Moore told The Guardian just before Apple revealed the iPad:

If it's got a great screen, some buttons, you can turn it on and it connects to the Internet, it's got the ability to be a games machine.

The iPad running iTunes

I wonder whether the remark about it featuring buttons was a swipe at the iPhone. I myself see one of the biggest hardware shortcomings of the iPhone as a gaming device in it lacking buttons and a stylus. You need a stylus to actually make use of every pixel on that screen (fingers are naturally broader than a pointy object, effectively reducing the playing field). And you need some physical buttons (or a touchscreen with haptic feedback) to give the player some feedback, a feeling that he is actually touching something. The iPhone has neither and I believe Moore was keen to point that out. His second condition for it becoming a games machine – the ability to connect to the internet – is only true of half the models. Entry models have no means to go online but Wi-Fi.

The iPhone running iTunes

The iPhone / iPod Touch combo has attracted some big names, true. But it still is no attractive platform for them and, most likely, never will be. Look at the Wii and its main problems with third party development. Cheap shovelware seems to sell too well (see ´Carnival Games´) for most publishers to give the hardware a real shot and invest some serious resources. With the iPhone, this problem is ever so much bigger. You have the umpteenth clone of ´Jewel Quest´ selling like crazy. And why not, it’s usually only 79 cent. But where are the big names in the iTunes charts? There are some, but almost all of those games are free or light versions of what are already very light versions of a big console franchise. You cannot charge more than $9,99 for a game and you already have a problem convincing the user base to buy a game for $4,99. They are conditioned for prices around one Dollar and with a plethora of offerings in this category – quality aside – they are not going to notice a proper game that has been meticulously crafted by a professional team, but comes at a premium price.

The iPhone running ´Scrabble´

In fact, such a large amount of shovelware is a marketing nightmare. Imagine going to your local GameStop and finding the store extended to the size of an airplane hangar. There are more than 7.000 games available. But do they compare with what we consider proper games? Apparently, the iPhone is in competition with the DS and PSP consoles, some people would have you believe. But you simply cannot compare the games. A blockbuster game for either of the gaming platforms costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions. You cannot afford to sell it at anything but a double digit price, even if half a million people will buy it. So you churn out mini-games and slap a big franchise name on it. And you hope to sell more than some creative programmer who single-handedly programmed an iPhone version of ´Where’s Waldo?´.

CHARTS

At the time of writing, the US top ten list of games contains only two entries by videogame publishers: ´Rock Band Free´ and ´Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies Lite´. Both are free. The UK charts only contain the latter and in both territories the free ´Call of Duty´ game is beaten by ´FallDown!´, developed by a lone Swedish guy.

Screenshot of ´FallDown!´ for the iPhone

As far as paid apps are concerned, ´Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars´ is the only game by a big publisher in any top ten list. In both the UK and the US, Rockstar Games’ entry for $9,99 (on DS and PSP the game costs a minimum of $20 and $30, respectively, after already being reduced) is beaten by ´Doodle Jump´ for 99 cents, developed by a guy and his brother.

Screenshot of ´Doodle Jump´ for the iPhone

Don’t get me wrong. iPhone and iPod Touch have brought fame and fortune to some very creative indie developers out there. The platform creates a level playing field between amateurs and big publishers. But for precisely the same reason, big publishers shy away from it. Obviously, big publishers do not want a level playing field and, if you like deep, meaningful and immersive games, they don’t deserve to be dragged into one. Ironically, for all the control Apple exercises over games (no game is allowed to utilize the camera, by the way, for some unknown reason), they allow shovelware and the thirtieth Tetris clone to flood their market. They announce the amount of games available for the platform like it is a good thing. It is not. 7.000 games are way too many for any kind of manageable filtering to tell the good from the bad, the clone from the original. The PlayStation2 – the best-selling home console to date – has managed a software library of 1.900 titles by 2009 and it already suffered from great amounts of shovelware.

INCENTIVE FOR DEVELOPERS

I don’t see developers making efforts to include the iPad in their projects. If you already have a user base of 75 million people who own iPhone or iPod Touch (according to the Apple presentation), why go out of your way to include a special iPad mode when their userbase is obviously starting at zero. Gamasutra agrees, calling the iPad ”as big a crap shoot for developers as the iPhone is.”

It's obvious that, at least at launch, most developers are going to worry about making iPad-native versions of existing apps. Sure, "most" iPhone apps are compatible with the device out of the box, but while they're totally playable, they don't benefit much from being blown up to two times their native resolution. The benefit here is that the Apple fanatics who buy this thing at launch will already have access to their existing software libraries on their new device, which may reassure some purchase decisions.

But the retrofit mania will happen mostly because it won't make sense for many developers, particularly cash-strapped indies, to pour resources into iPad-native games when its future is less obviously bright than the iPhone's was. And indies won't be the only ones doing this. After demoing a version of iPhone Need for Speed Shift, quickly retrofitted for iPad, EA's Travis Boatman said, "We're going to be able to bring all of our other EA games from the App Store to this device in no time."

iPad running ´Need for Speed Shift´

Much more so than at the original App Store launch, it's going to be exceedingly difficult to stand out from day one -- unless you can come up with a tremendously original idea, execute on it well, and market it aggressively.

If you do come up with that great new idea, "we're going to put it front and center" on the App Store, promises Apple's SVP of iPhone software, Scott Forstall. That's a promise you can rely on. Apple routinely features strong software on the App Store and, more importantly, makes the choices itself, based on quality, without ad buys coming into the picture. But the slots are so limited and the process so opaque that you can't rely on it happening to you.

There is also another problem. Will developers curtail their market twice by, firstly, choosing to develop for the iPad only (ignoring many millions iPhone users and potential customers) and then curtail their user base even further by concentrating on only the 3G models? Hardly believable. An optional mode for iPad and another for iPad 3G could be an alternative but a costly one. Why invest in such special modes if you know the bulk of your returns is going to come from the iPhone userbase anyway? This way, the phenomenaly success of the iPhone will, ironically, hold back the iPad and prevent it from getting off the ground.

Xbox360 Arcade

Similarly, the Xbox360 still suffers from the models not including a hard drive. Developers are still required by Microsoft to make their games compatible with systems that only use a memory card. It splits the userbase in two, forces the manufacturer to impose silly rules on third parties and confuses developers.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, I believe the iPad sales figures will be anywhere between abysmal and modest. For this reason alone, it will not get off the ground. It will lack dedicated apps for a variety of reasons. And as a platform for the big game publishers, it will never become truly attractive – which can also be said about the iPhone.

EDITI just discovered a small but embarrassing blunder in Gameloft's presentation which may show the limitations of the hardware. At 37:30 minutes into the keynote, the first attempt of throwing a grenade by sliding two fingers up the screen fails and moves the camera instead. Sure it is just a demo and was put together in a few weeks. But they chose to show it, so they must have been satisfied with the controls. If Gameloft cannot play their own title properly, how should I get to grips with the controls?

EDIT Wall Street analyst Brian Marshall of BroadPoint AmTech has calculated the manufacturing costs of each iPad model - a so-called ´bill of materials (BOM) analysis´, speaking to Computerworld.

The 16GB WiFi-only iPad components total $290.50, including manufacturing and warranty service costs. Its price tag is $499, making Apple's profit margin 42.9%. The 16GB iPad with WiFi and 3G costs Apple $306.50 and is sold for $629 at a profit margin of 52%.

So including 3G costs Apple a mere $16 extra, which seems to suggest that a non-3G entry model for $499 really is just a dummy, to be able to advertise a lower entry price, similarly to Microsoft's strategy with the Xbox360 core model, i.e. the Arcade.

The 32GB 3G model costs Apple $332 and is sold for $729, pushing the margin to 55.1%, the highest of any models, according to the estimate. Such margins sound very high, but are standard for the company, the analyst notes.

High profit margins are standard for Apple, which earlier in the week boasted that its corporate margin for 2009's final quarter was 40.1%. Some products, in fact, have estimated margins even higher than Marshall's iPad numbers: The consensus for the iPhone 3GS is above 60%, for example.

EDIT For those of you who understand German, I have translated most of this article with some marginal updates on the 3sat Neues blog.

Ubisoft, Capcom and Sega to shift focus away from Wii

2010-01-13T22:52:00.006+01:00

With Ubisoft, Capcom and Sega, three major publishers are announcing a shift of focus away from the Wii console. Most recently, Ubisoft announced that their casual titles on DS and Wii failed to generate the expected revenue and, as a result, the company would favour developing core games for Xbox360 and PS3.

Despite relatively robust sales for Wii casual games, and particularly the success of Just Dance, sales in the casual segment are expected to be down for the full year by around €160 million, representing a drop of around 50%.

Further market concentration towards AAA high-quality games. Ubisoft has demonstrated its ability to react to this trend through the success of Assassin’s Creed 2, which has achieved sell-through sales topping 6 million. However, not all of the Company’s games have reaped the full benefits of the measures implemented, with James Cameron’s Avatar™: The game and several non-casual Wii titles reporting lower-than-expected sales. (...)

We intend to continue to refocus our development resources on our major franchises and on the Xbox360 and PS3, the two consoles which are expected to see sales growth in games for gamers in 2010. Ubisoft has already demonstrated its capacity for success in the high-end games market thanks to Assassin’s Creed 2, with sales 40% higher than for the first title. The 2010-11 line-up – which is stronger in franchises for Xbox360 and PS3 – reflects our refocusing efforts and should enable us to both win market share and enhance our profitability.

Previously, Sega announced that they will "probably not" consider any more mature titles on Wii while Capcom more broadly notes that "the future is the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360." The commercial failure of games such as ´Dead Space: Extraction´ or ´MadWorld´ is quoted as a catalyst for the move.

This story corroborates my previous comments that the Wii has failed as a vehicle for mature games, at least as far as third parties are concerned. ´Monster Hunter Tri´ and ´Red Steel 2´ may be the only third party Wii titles for some time, it seems.

Sources: Ubisoft, Nintendo Everything, MTV
Thanks to: Joystiq, Joystiq

Summing up 2009, looking ahead at 2010

2009-12-13T17:09:00.019+01:00

As the year is coming to an end, I would like to look at the three consoles and assess their current situation, while looking ahead at their potential performance in 2010.

The Wii is still the runaway success of this generation, but Nintendo obviously has the most to lose from this point on. Astonishingly, some Wii first party titles have remained among the top sellers across all platforms for years. ´Mario Kart´ and ´Wii Fit´ sold as much as ´Grand Theft Auto IV´ in 2008 and are among a total of five Wii titles in this year's top ten sellers in the US so far.

As far as a slowdown in hardware sales is concerned, some observers have overstated the case, I believe. Of course, when comparing sales this year to 2008, the numbers have indeed slowed down significantly. The price cut is the best proof of that. Companies only ever cut the price when the product is not selling. That was true of the Xbox360 and PS3 as well as the Wii. But NPD analyst Anita Frazier recently pointed out how well the Wii is doing still.

While there has been a lot of focus on Wii sales as compared to last year, the system was still the best-selling console system by a margin of 54 per cent. (...)

At this same point in the PS2 lifecycle, the PS2 was down in unit sales by 23 per cent over the previous year, but as history has shown, it continues to have a great deal of life left in it. So focusing on a comparison to Wii's stellar 2008 performance masks the reality of just how well this system is selling.

So do not worry. Nintendo is still raking in the money with both the hardware and first party software. But how well are third parties doing on the Wii? We had this discussion in January 2008 and again in August as well as in October of that year. In the last post, I noted the following:

A grand economic success of titles like ´The Conduit´, ´House of the Dead: Overkill´ or ´MadWorld´ will surely become examples the entire industry will follow. On the other hand, if these titles sell poorly, the Wii will get less and less mature titles and will become a casual console.

By now, it is quite clear that the latter scenario came true. All titles mentioned sold poorly or even abysmal, despite two of them being great games. So the Wii has failed as a platform for mature games by third parties, it must be said. And it is highly unlikely that this will change. In fact, I believe that Capcom may be regretting moving ´Monster Hunter Tri´ from a PS3 exclusive over to the Wii. The game is selling very well in Japan, but international sales are likely to disappoint as was the case with the games mentioned above. Of course, the Wii has become the console of choice for survival horror and Resident Evil fans alone cannot afford to be without ´Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition´, ´Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles´ and ´Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles´. But we are still waiting for a decent shooter and a few other genres, notably RPGs, are also understaffed.

Nintendo is even openly criticised by partners like Electronic Arts. Their CEO John Riccitiello has expressed disappointment about poor sales on the Wii platform and noted some problems Nintendo may be facing in the near future.

One, it's a very compelling platform. Two, third-parties can do a lot better on the platform with the right support from Nintendo. They've always been first-party-centric, and they're learning how to be third-party supportive.

My belief is the first platform to reach $149 is going to inherit much of that [PlayStation2] business. (...) The Wii is not gone. But if they maintain $199 and don't innovate, they're going to have a hard time competing with what's already been announced from Microsoft and Sony.

According to Games Industry, Riccitiello made the following remarks in the company's recent earnings call.

To be honest with you, I think the Wii platform has been a little weaker than we had certainly anticipated. And there is no lack of frustration to be doing that at precisely the time where we have the strongest third-party share. (...)

I think driving revenues up on that platform from where we already are, which is up substantially from where we were a year ago, we are reaching out to Nintendo to find ways to partner to push third-party software harder.

Wii is where we are missing it and so I really do think that the opportunity exists to find different ways to partner with first party in this case to sort of help establish in the minds of the consumer legitimacy of some of these other brands when they are going out multiplatform because very, very few multiplatform titles are succeeding on the Wii. (...)

I would point out, by the way, the 50 million number of course includes Asia or Japan and I don’t think any of the Western companies are likely to participate much at all on the Wii platform in Japan, so the addressable market we see is just a little bit below 40 million but that is still an important opportunity.

In the transcript of the earnings call, more background is provided.

Fiscal Year To Date, EA is the #1 independent publisher on the Wii with share of 21% in North America and we estimate 14% in Europe – up 8 and 10 points, respectively. Our non-GAAP Wii revenue is up 50% year-over-year. While we have hit our share goal for the Wii business, revenue is well below expectations due to underperformance of the Wii platform.

The problem is clear. Being such a strong first party publisher, Nintendo itself made most of the money off of the Wii platform. Although it is the clear market leader and will likely remain at the top, Nintendo failed to mobilise third parties. So whatever successor Iwata and Miyamoto are planning, it will suffer from the very same problem.

In fact, a successor to the Wii will in itself be a grand challenge. Normally, companies innovate with one generation and consolidate with the next. At least, this is the way Nintendo has done it so far. With the Wii lagging so clearly behind the competition in terms of hardware power and the competition ramping up their own motion control systems, which will no doubt be perceived as more advanced when they hit the market, Nintendo cannot afford to consolidate.

The next console, which may be called ´Zii´, had better be as innovative as the Wii. And in my mind, the only way this can be achieved is by some kind of 3D visuals. There has been plenty of evidence to support this and Sony is already ramping up their efforts in this department.

Yet Sony has very little money to invest. The corporation has come under intense pressure this year to reduce the price of their PlayStation3. They finally did and sales soared. However, this means that Sony is still subsidizing each unit sold, according to market intelligence firm iSuppli.

Based on a dissection and analysis of the console, iSuppli has determined that the 120Gbyte Hard Disk Drive (HDD) version new PlayStation 3, released in September, carries a combined Bill of Materials (BOM) and manufacturing/test cost of $336.27. At a newly reduced retail price of $299, the latest version of the PlayStation 3 comes closer to breaking even than any previous version of the product.

Losing money on each hardware unit sold some three years after the product launch is probably unprecedented in this industry and it is, naturally, the economics of the madhouse. At the very least, it is a huge gamble for Sony. They are finally selling decent amounts. But will those sales figures be enough to convince third parties to commit to more exclusives and thus spur on sales even more?

Notable PS3 third party exclusives are: ´Agent´, ´Final Fantasy XIII Versus´ and ´Final Fantasy XIV Online´, ´Heavenly Sword´, ´Last Guardian´, ´Metal Gear Solid 4´, ´Ninja Gaiden Sigma´ series, ´Ridge Racer 7´ and ´Valkyria Chronicles´. This list is clearly dominated by titles which do well in Japan, but may not prove to be blockbusters in Europe or North America. As a counterweight to this, first and second party titles appear to come predominantly from the company's North American and European branches, SCEA and SCEE. Yet with the majority of PS3 third party titles also available on Xbox360, which is significantly cheaper and boasts a more impressive list of third party exclusives, the Xbox360 still looks like the better proposition.

I believe that motion control will be the deciding factor. If the PS3's ´Sphere´ can outshine the 360's ´Project Natal´, Sony has a chance to come second this generation. The launch portfolio and the marketing will decide which system buyers will see as the technological successor to the Wii. ´Sphere´ has the advantage that the technology has been around and has been tested by Sony for almost ten years. At the ECTS 2001 in London (before the launch of ´Eye Toy´ for the PS2), I played a technological predecessor to ´Sphere´. Colored swords and maces were simulated on-screen and in real-time. This was only ever used in marginal games like ´Eye Toy Hero´. But Sony sure has perfected this technology since. It is a slim chance (pun intended), but 2010 could yet become the year of the PS3.

It could all go wrong, however. Let us not forget that IBM discontinued the Cell chip line, after Sony had talked the chip up to be the ultimate CPU, soon to revolutionise not just personal and super computers but also household electronics. This decision has ramifications for a possible PS3 successor, or rather betrays Sony's future plans (because if Sony had planned for a Cell-based PS4, IBM would not have discontinued the chip line). It seems highly unlikely that such a device would have a Cell-based chip, which in turn spells a high research and development budget. Quite obviously, this is money Sony does not have and/or is unwilling to invest. So, the worst case scenario is Sony no longer planning a PlayStation4. As unlikely as this might be, it is certainly a possibility.

It seems that there is next to no news regarding the Xbox360 at this point in time. And this is good. Unlike with the Wii and PS3, no third party is complaining about the platform, no analyst is heralding an imminent doom and most gamers seem content, too. Everyone is happy with the console's performance, it seems. And there is every reason to be.

Third party support is arguably the best among the three. Exclusive games of note include ´Alan Wake´, ´Lost Odyssey´, ´Blue Dragon´, ´GTA IV DLC´, ´Dead Rising´, ´Beautiful Katamari´, ´Lost Planet´ (timed), ´Gears of War´ and ´Mass Effect´ series, ´Too Human´, ´Ninety-Nine Nights´ and ´Prey´ series, ´Splinter Cell: Conviction´, ´Ridge Racer 6´, ´Quake 4´, ´Left 4 Dead´ series and ´Dead or Alive 4´. Alongside Microsoft's own efforts concentrating heavily on family friendly gaming (albeit this is more evident in their marketing than in the actual software output), I believe the 360's portfolio to be the most balanced overall, particularly as traditional gaming (without motion control) is concerned.

Of course, the console business has been an extremely costly endeavour for Microsoft, leaving nothing but a bill of around six billion US-Dollar by 2007. And while the division (which also includes the Zune player) is at least making money, their operating income declined 66 percent from 2008. As is the case with Sony, Microsoft still appears to be subsidizing most SKUs, since they shipped more consoles in 2009 than in 2008, while operating income fell.

Xbox 360 platform and PC game revenue decreased $161 million or 3%, primarily as a result of decreased revenue per Xbox 360 console due to price reductions during the past 12 months, partially offset by increased Xbox 360 console sales and increased Xbox Live revenue. We shipped 11.2 million Xbox 360 consoles during fiscal year 2009, compared with 8.7 million Xbox 360 consoles during fiscal year 2008. Foreign currency exchange rates accounted for a $74 million or one percentage point decrease in revenue.

It is fair to say that Microsoft bought its way into the home console business. But considering that the company has the financial stamina to continue investing in the project, this may yet turn out to be a worthwhile enterprise. I have always said that if Microsoft had known the full extent of the necessary investment, they would obviously never have entered the market. But now that they are in and seeing some success, they are here to stay.

They are still clearly in second place and ´Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2´ selling more than double on Xbox360 than on the PS3 in the US underlines their dominance in their home market. While the console will probably never see sustained growth in Japan, it is doing very well in Europe. And a strong position in two out of three territories, as well as the number two worldwide is not a bad place to be.

Just like I noted above, Microsoft's fortune will greatly depend on the public perception of ´Project Natal´ as opposed to Sony's ´Sphere´. I see the Wii as unbeatabale in this generation, just like the analyst cited above. But Nintendo will lose reputation to either of the competing motion control technologies. And ´Project Natal´ has some very compelling features. No controller at all is a great proposition for everyone who does not want videogaming invading his living room and cluttering up the space. The downside of it is that it is not easily suited for all kinds of games. I do not see any chance of playing a shooter with ease. And even for racing games, I doubt that it will deliver the precision needed. That will not be too much of a disadvantage if a game like ´Milo´ can bring a new level of artificial intelligence and interaction to gamers. If done right, this game alone has the power to keep Microsoft ahead of Sony for the remainder of this generation.

Sources: see above
Thanks to: Joystiq, Joystiq, Joystiq

IBM discontinues Cell chip line, PS4 affected

2009-11-20T08:26:00.008+01:00

IBM is discontinuing the Cell chip line of products. A successor to the current PowerXCell-8i chip will not be brought to market, the company's Vice President of Deep Computing, David Turek, told the German IT news site Heise.

Turek did note that the Cell design was not dead and would in parts be implemented across IBM's various other chip designs. The future, though, belongs to hybrid designs and heterogenous multiprocessing, Turek said.

The ramifications for a possible successor to the PlayStation3, which contains the Cell chip, could be significant. Its architecture can no longer be Cell-based, which would entail the following: Firstly, backwards compatibility to the PS3 would no longer be possible on a hardware basis. It would have to be emulated, which is always the worse option. And, secondly, Sony could no longer look forward to a relatively cheap research and development budget for the PS4.

Over the past two years, various reports have sprung up that Sony was very much considering a Cell-based chip for the PS4.

The plan to use variants of Cell in future PlayStation iterations was always in place, explains [Impress Watch technology writer Hiroshige Goto], which is why Sony invested so heavily in the chipset. However, while the use of the Cell in the PS4 may seem like Sony just sticking with its original plan, the real reason could be that the company in its current form doesn't have the reserves to create another chipset and build all the requisite development tools above it.

Going with Cell has the benefits of keeping production costs down for the PS4 and also allowing cutting game development costs due to a consistent architecture. Sony would also be able to include a smaller chip size from the start, potentially reducing the system's retail price.

Of course, IBM would not discontinue a chip line if Sony was still interested in it. So we can safely assume that Sony changed its mind. But why? A Cell-based solution would have had many advantages for the company, as noted above. One possible explanation would be that Sony has cancelled its plans for another PlayStation and will be leaving the home console market. Analysts discussed this option years ago.

And while the slimmer version and price cut have helped the console gain some market share, the price cut is costing Sony dearly. The Washington Post reported that Sony is further away from profitability than previously thought.

Sony (...) pushed back its target for an operating profit margin of 5 percent to March 2013. Chief Executive Howard Stringer had originally set the target in 2005 for the financial year to March 2008, but plans for recovery were waylaid by the economic slowdown.

In my mind, withdrawing from the home console market altogether is a real possibility. And IBM discontinuing the Cell chip line may be the first indicator of such a move.

EDIT I welcome all people from NeoGAF to read up on the exclusive stories I broke. I understand that some of you people may be suspicious of this blog's title but I can assure you that I am an impartial games journalist (have been for ten years) and work for a German television show focussing on games and technology.

It should not be a taboo to discuss the possibility of Sony withdrawing from the home console market. Given their financial status and their CEO's attitude, it is not out of the question. And with IBM discontinuing the Cell chip, Sony would have to invest a huge research and development budget into a new console. I welcome reasonable discussion and invite you to share your thoughts in the comments section.

EDIT Sony apparently considered the Intel Larrabee for the PlayStation4, a CPU / GPU hybrid, according to Japanese site PC Watch (translated by Joystiq). The plans have likely been abandoned since, as the project has been downgraded and delayed by Intel. An unnamed source within Sony Computer Entertainment is quoted as saying that the chip may be used in future generations: "Larrabee can help us to plan PS5 and PS6, but it cannot make it into PS4."

Sources: Heise (German), IGN, Washington Post
Thanks to: Joystiq

Wii 2 rumours a complete fabrication?

2009-10-29T10:20:00.003+01:00

MaxConsole has published rumours about a possible hardware upgrade for the Wii console. The system is said to be Blu-ray enabled and will apparently feature 1080p support.

A simultaneous worldwide release date is said to be planned for the third quarter of 2010 and Nintendo is apparently considering a trade-in scheme for original Wii consoles. The site lists a marketing employee of Nintendo of France as the original source.

I would just like to remind people that MaxConsole has been one of the most unreliable gaming news sites on the net. They have both written complete bullshit as well as spread other people's.

My inside knowledge of Nintendo is that Nintendo of France would have absolutely no knowledge of such plans, if they existed, so early on. Nintendo of Europe, based in Frankfurt, is hardly ever told so well in advance of new hardware; at least not the guys in marketing. To me, this is a complete fabrication. The idea of such a trade-in scheme is also laughable.

Source: MaxConsole
Thanks to: TheOddOne

Nintendo cuts Wii price by twenty percent

2009-09-25T00:13:00.005+01:00

Nintendo has cut the price of its Wii console by twenty percent to $199.99 in the US and by an equivalent amount in Japan. Nintendo's European media site makes no mention of the move, at least not in German. It seems that most of Europe will not benefit from a price cut, although France apparently will (according to the French news agency Agence France Press). There are conflicting reports regarding this territory. Previous rumours mentioned that European Wii bundles may be upgraded by a copy of ´Wii Sports Resort´.

It is the first price cut for the console, after a record-breaking period of almost three years. The move vindicates earlier rumours and is in keeping with my editorial below. In a press release, the company details the decision:

The new $199.99 Wii price point delivers the full iconic Wii gaming experience, including the motion-sensing Wii Remote™ controller, Nunchuk™ controller and Wii Sports™ software, and furthers Nintendo's mission to expand the gaming universe by making video games accessible to more and more consumers. (...)

"Wii has reached more video game players than any game system before because it attracts everyone—both men and women, and people of all ages," said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. "Our research shows there are 50 million Americans thinking about becoming gamers, and this more affordable price point and our vast array of new software mean many of them can now make the leap and find experiences that appeal to them, whatever their tastes or level of gaming experience."

Reuters (via Yahoo News) reports about the economic repercussions of the news, which coincided with Sony Computer Entertainment president Kaz Hirai's keynote speech at the Tokyo Game Show.

Following the announcements of the Wii price cut and Hirai's keynote speech, shares of Nintendo closed up 0.5 percent at 24,550 yen, while Sony gained 3.1 percent to 2,670 yen and the benchmark Nikkei average rose 1.7 percent.

News of Nintendo's price cut came just as Hirai was delivering his keynote speech.

EDIT Just to clarify the situation in Europe: Nintendo has not set a recommended retail price, but will reduce the wholesale price of the console. This will result in a price cut from €249 to €199, valid for the whole of Europe, except for the UK and Ireland. There, the price will remain but the bundle will be upgraded by the inclusion of ´Wii Sports Resort´ and a Motion Plus dongle.

Sources: Nintendo of America, Reuters (via Yahoo News)

Why the Wii needs a price cut fast

2009-08-28T21:00:00.005+01:00

Smooth ride up until now

The Wii needs a price cut fast and here is why. Up until now, Nintendo has had a very smooth ride this generation. They started out with the lowest price proposition by far and the most revolutionary, intuitive and immersive control scheme and biggest fun factor to top it all off. At least, that is what more than 50 million people around the globe think.

Sure, the white box can only deliver 480p as its top resolution. And the rest of its hardware is equally modest, making sure that most graphics-intensive games by third parties get either a toned down version, a completely unique adaptation (some examples are ´Overlord: Dark Legend´, ´Dead Space Extraction´, ´Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles´) or pass the console by completely. But, all the unquestionable Nintendo goodness aside (´Metroid Prime 3´, ´Zelda: Twilight Princess´, ´Super Mario Galaxy´), hardcore gamers got a few third party gems, too. Particularly in the survival horror genre, Wii boasts more titles than any other console ever offered, I reckon (I have counted 20 already) and some are absolute must-haves. So, Wii sold to new gamers as well as to veterans, who probably own more than one console anyway. And it has been smooth sailing for Nintendo up until now, with Wii selling about as many units as the two competitors put together.

Microsoft seemed to endlessly tweak the SKU variety of their Xbox360 as well as their price. And, leaving the elusive fun factor aside, the 360 has been the best value proposition by far for a long time. But even this circumstance could not change the reality that is each companies' respective market share. Sure, Nintendo has hit dry spells in the past, with other consoles selling more units for a few months in one territory or another. But these dips were usually related to a lighter release calendar. When bigger titles drew nearer, sales rose again.

Software no longer moves hardware

Not anymore, it seems. The news of Wii hardware sales taking a 30 percent dip in the US last month despite the release of ´Wii Sports Resort´ should have Nintendo worried. Very worried, in my opinion. Because the title should move hardware as much as any other Nintendo game. A gigantic marketing campaign in the US should have made sure that the consumers were aware of the release. The fact that it did not move a significant amount of hardware can only really mean one thing: everyone that wanted to buy a Wii in the said territory has bought one. If a title like ´Wii Sports Resort´ cannot invigorate sales, then no title can (at least not of Nintendo's casual variety, which undoubtedly was the backbone of the console's success). The only option available to Nintendo of America may be a price drop. This would surely convince more people to hop on the Wii bandwagon. But software no longer seems to move hardware.

Upcoming games to disappoint

First, a little reality check: Am I being unfair here? Of course, all the other consoles sold badly in July. Well, yes. But the PS3 only took a 25 percent dip and the 360 went down a mere 15 points, only half of the Wii's loss. That is a significant difference. But what about other territories? In Japan, year-to-date year-over-year changes show big losses for the console. Europe may be the Wii's last resort (this is actually a double pun, if you remember an obscure PC game from 1996) but a worldwide downward trend is becoming clearer and clearer, it seems.

But what about other upcoming titles, particularly the third party portfolio, which is still a sore spot for Wii owners? Surely, exclusive titles like ´Monster Hunter Tri´ or ´Red Steel 2´ will sell hardware to the traditional crowd, if the more casual titles now fail to shift consoles. Unfortunately, I have it on good authority that both of these highly anticipated games will not deliver. They may look nice, but both titles are being rushed out of the door. Wii owners will have a few good survival horror titles to mull over. But there is no shortage of those on the platforms. So a ´Dead Space Extraction´, no matter how good it will be, will not become the killer app that a polished ´Monster Hunter Tri´ could have become.

Price cut the only solution

Especially with the PlayStation3's price drop and sleeker re-design, as well as motion control around the corner for both high definition consoles, Nintendo is coming under intense pressure this generation for the very first time. The only way out seems to be a price cut, preferably to be announced around Tokyo Game Show next month (though Nintendo will not exhibit, as always). I do not see any alternative for Nintendo (and I am not alone with this opinion), if they want to maintain the impressive momentum they have exhibited so far. This is the curse of a runaway success: maintaining it. After all, a boom, in economics, is a highly unstable and volatile state. And if they do not re-position the Wii's price point, Nintendo may soon find out the hard way.

EDIT Looks like I was spot on with my analysis. The following image was published by Kotaku. It may be fake, of course. But both the timing and extent of the price cut would fit perfectly, so I believe it is legit.

Source: Joystiq, Joystiq, Chart Get! Chart Get!
Thanks to: Some German Guy

Sony CEO shrugs off mounting pressure to cut PS3 price

2009-07-06T09:26:00.003+01:00

Sony Corp. CEO Howard Stringer has shrugged off Activision's demand to either cut the price of the PlayStation3 or risk losing the Activision portfolio. Stringer spoke to Reuters about the threat issued by Activision CEO Robert A. Kotick:

He likes to make a lot of noise. (...) He's putting pressure on me and I'm putting pressure on him. That's the nature of business.

Reuters then asked Stringer about the logic of not giving in to the demands and cutting the price, to which Stringer mysteriously replied:

I (would) lose money on every PlayStation I make -- how's that for logic.

This statement is an odd one because Sony has lost money on every unit sold from day one and still is, according to Sony CFO Nobuyuki Oneda. Referring to the end of March, Oneda stated that Sony still subsidized each console sold with around $42.

I contacted the author and editor of the article to verify how and why the word ´would´ was added. This is the reply I received.

I think you can use the story without the word "would". It was probably added in the editing process in an attempt to clarify the quote, which was "I lose money on every PlayStation I make -- how's that for logic."

So what did Stringer mean? Was he self-critical of his company's business model of subsidizing consoles? Confronted with the assertion that there is no logic in not cutting the price, did his reply insinuate that there is already no logic in Sony's business model of heavy subsidies? Please discuss.

The pressure on Sony to cut the price is certainly mounting. Only days ago, the CEO of Tecmo Koei, Kenji Matsubara, chimed in on the debate in an interview with CVG:

Whenever I discuss this with Sony reps I always ask them: "Please cut the price", but I don't have a clear view on Sony's situation. Yes, from a publisher's point of view we would welcome a price cut for PS3, and we are waiting, definitely.

It's definitely a way of boosting the PS3 market, but it's Sony's strategy and I don't know their cost structure. Sony introduced cutting-edge technology in the PS3, that's why people in the industry accept that the PS3 cost is so high, but we'd welcome a price cut.

In 2007, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot and Square Enix president Yoichi Wada were the first to criticize Sony's pricing and marketing strategy, respectively.

Sources: Reuters, CVG
Thanks to: idahoblue, Some Guy

Activision Blizzard threatens to stop PlayStation support

2009-06-20T13:17:00.010+01:00

Activision Blizzard, the world's largest third party publisher, has warned that they "might have to stop supporting Sony" as early as next year, the company's CEO Robert A. Kotick told the British daily newspaper The Times.

I'm getting concerned about Sony; the PlayStation 3 is losing a bit of momentum and they don't make it easy for me to support the platform. It's expensive to develop for the console, and the Wii and the Xbox are just selling better. Games generate a better return on invested capital on the Xbox than on the PlayStation. (...)

They [Sony] have to cut the price, because if they don't, the attach rates are likely to slow. If we are being realistic, we might have to stop supporting Sony. (...) When we look at 2010 and 2011, we might want to consider if we support the console — and the PSP [portable] too.

Analysts have already predicted doom and gloom for Sony Computer Entertainment, which is nothing unusual. Analysts do not have to be terribly diplomatic and others have voiced similar criticism concerning the other console manufacturers. But this is not the first time that Sony has been confronted with unusually harsh criticism by third party publishers, which is rare in this industry.

Back in May and September of 2007, respectively, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot demanded a price cut for the console ("They have to decrease the price quite significantly") and Square Enix president Yoichi Wada criticized Sony's marketing efforts ("[The future of the PS3] would be tough if its marketing strategy is not straightened up.")

The future of the PlayStation depends on when Sony will reduce the PS3's price tag. The latest guess by an analyst is August. But I maintain that Sony simply has not got the financial resources to reduce the price until Christmas. Sony CEO Stringer has made it quite clear that he puts profitability above everything else.

The real question is, though, whether Activision Blizzard is merely bluffing or if these unusually harsh comments contain a very real threat. Sure, a number of the publisher's games sold more than a million on the PS3. So the console generates revenue for them. We simply don't know what little profit is left. Kotick revealed some of the additional costs of developing for Sony, noting that Activision Blizzard "paid $500 million to Sony in royalties and other goods last year." Again, such a disclosure is highly unusual. What is Kotick up to? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

EDIT Videogame analyst Michael Pachter has commented on the story, noting:

Of course Bobby’s bluffing, and good for him. (...) I think Bobby’s obviously interested in Sony selling as many PS3s as they possibly can, and he’s not happy with their penetration so far. I think he favours a price cut, and would rather see one sooner than later.

Sony Computer Entertainment has yet to respond in a meaningful way.

I would also like to remind you of the last big debate about whether the PlayStation3 is dead or dying. Back in December, an analyst's assertion that the PS3 was a "sinking ship" which was "flopping so badly" had sparked a lively debate which I quoted extensively.

EDIT As expected, the news of Activision's threat has sparked a lively debate, which I will attempt to capture here, in the familiar style of guest commentary.

Sony's clearly in a pinch

Is the PS3 really losing momentum? It depends, as usual, on where you're standing. Since the system launched in late 2006, it's clearly been growing in year over year unit sales. In 2008--the system's best year yet--Sony sold over 10 million PS3s worldwide. And while sales have been down for all contenders recently, Sony's sold nearly as many PS3s worldwide as Microsoft has Xbox 360s so far this year. Of course Microsoft still has more than a third as many Xbox 360s in the wild, but since 2008, Sony's slowly (very slowly) been gaining. (...)

That said, Sony's clearly in a pinch. Its game division lost nearly $600 million in 2008, the PS3 consistently lags in NPD's US sales reports, and the system charts the fewest high sales software titles month after month.

If Sony lowers the PS3's price, we've been assuming they'll lose even more money. But if they keep it sky-high, they theoretically stifle sales and by virtue thereof, their growth rate, frustrating publishers, who naturally want to sell to as many customers as possible.
PC World

Stark and somewhat surprising

A stark and somewhat surprising statement. (...) PS3 price cut soon, surely?
Play.tm

Could seriously hurt console sales

That’s pretty serious considering Activision is the largest video game publisher in the world. It probably won’t come to that — I can’t see them not lowering the cost in the next year or so regardless of what Kotick thinks — but if I were Sony I would definitely be a little nervous about this. If this inspires some bravado in EA and they make a similar statement it could seriously hurt console sales.
A+E Interactive

The pressure is on

For its part, Sony, which is mired in third place behind Nintendo and Microsoft in the next-gen game-console wars, keeps saying it won't be pressured into trimming the price of the PS3. But with industry heavyweights like Activision making these types of remarks, it's becoming more and more clear that the pressure is indeed on.
CNET

Ever saw a publisher threaten a platform holder?

In that absolute worst-case scenario, that would mean no Call of Duty for Sony consoles. No Guitar Hero for Sony consoles. No Tony Hawk, either. It probably won't ever come to that, of course, but Kotick's words are still worth noting. After all, when was the last time you ever saw a third-party publisher so openly threaten a major platform holder?
Kotaku

A huge bomb

Activision boss Bobby Kotick has dropped a huge bomb on Sony. (...) While Kotick may sound a bit cocky here, I don't think Sony wants to sit on statements like these. And no one is going to argue about the PS3 needing a price cut either.
Destructoid

Nintendo has issued similar denials

Sony has continued to insist that it will not be pressured into lowering PS3 prices before the 2009 holiday season.

"I think everybody but us would love to see it given away for free," Jack Tretton, president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of America told CNBC. He added that cheapest wasn't always the most successful, but rather, "what you get for your dollar."

It should be noted that Nintendo has issued similar denials regarding a lowered Wii price tag, despite confirmation of a (May) 57 percent year-on-year drop in sales.
TG Daily

What if EA said the same thing?

Now, Kotick's words are just corporate smacktalk (bottom line: Activision still makes money on the platform). But what if a company like EA came forward and said the same thing? No good can come of this for Sony.
Gizmodo

Activision Blizzard needs the numbers Sony delivers

Is it a credible threat? That is hard to say, but the industry has ample evidence of just how ruthless Activision Blizzard has become. (...) By slamming the console maker in public it creates a perception of weakness witih Sony's platforms. Now the developer is in a very good position to bargain for lower licensing fees, help with advertising dollars, or other financial rewards to "stick with" the PS3 and PSP platforms.

It's doubtful Activision Blizzard has lost money by supporting the PS3 and PSP as platforms, and again, the company needs the numbers Sony delivers to meet its goal of having Modern Warfare 2 be the "biggest property launch of all time." What Kotick can do is attack Sony in the press and create a perception of weakness and then exploit it for better terms when releasing these blockbuster titles, and that's what we're seeing here.
Ars Technica

A crazy precedent

Activision is the world's largest third-party publisher, with huge franchises like World of Warcraft, Guitar Hero and, most importantly, Call of Duty under its belt. The loss of even Call of Duty seems to me like it would significantly hurt the PS3. Still, the big question everyone is wondering is if Kotick has enough sway to actually force Sony into a price drop. Maybe Kotick's just blowing steam, but it'd be a crazy precedent for the largest publisher to drop the system entirely.
GameSpy

Cutting prices would be difficult for Sony

Kotick's comments have weight because of the market strength of Activision. The company is the world's largest independent computer games company and has a market value of $16 billion.

Cutting PS3 prices would be difficult for Sony. The company last month reported its first annual loss in 14 years, caused by a strong yen and a sales slump in its consumer electronics business. While the economic downturn hurt sales, Sony also suffered from competitors' lower prices.

As a result, sales in Sony's electronics business fell 17% from the previous fiscal year, and revenue from its game unit fell 18%. While Sony sold more units of the PS3 and PSP, the company saw a drop in software sales.
InformationWeek

PS3 could be Sony's last big console

Could Activision really be considering ditching the PS3? If so, this concept breathes a lot of life into the possibility that the PS3 could be Sony's last big console. Sure, the company would stay afloat if Activision was the only publisher to back away, but that might encourage a lot of publishers to get out of Dodge. Is Sony a sinking ship? (...)

I'm a firm believer in the idea that all three console makers should have a spot on the market. Competition breeds excellence and innovation. Sony cannot disappear, if they do... what would happen to gaming?
Kombo

A total bluff

Sounds like a total bluff — I can’t see Activision pulling support from Sony, but I can see them attempting to influence PS3’s price by publicly threatening to.
Wired

Sources: The Times, VG247
Thanks to: Joystiq

How good is ´The Conduit´?

2009-06-07T12:15:00.008+01:00

76 percent?

How good is the futuristic Wii shooter ´The Conduit´? With many hopes pinned on a handful of more mature Wii games paving the way for a steadier flow of such titles, gamers, journalists and industry insiders are closely watching the critical and commercial reception of said games. Among them, ´The Conduit´ appears to be one of the big hopefuls with most observers, as well as the most controversial with some. While noone denies that it offers astounding visuals, its gameplay and originality are sometimes drawn into question.

A third and critical review has now surfaced that offers that very assessment. The score by the UK's Official Nintendo Magazine, though not catastrophic, is a sobering 76 percent. An article by GoNintendo which linked scans of the review got subsequently deleted and only exists in its Yahoo cache version. The review remarks:

It's really not bad at all. It looks nice, it feels nice and feels decidely grown up. Unfortunately it also feels about ten years old. The rosy whiff of Rare's ´Perfect Dark´ is detectable through much of ´The Conduit´, though that's no bad thing. The action is seemless and immediate, the story is fast-paced and full of conspiracy. (...)

The problem is you can detect the formula almost immediately. Run through a corridor, crouch behind a box and chuck a grenade, flush out side rooms, storm bigger rooms, restore health, repeat all over again. There's nothing wrong with that, it just might mean you lose the incentive to get through the whole ten or so hours of the game's single player campaign. (...)

The reason ´The Conduit´ falls short of must have status is down to the repetition on offer in terms of influences and design decisions. Levels often become a chore, especially the ones set in dull grey military facilities, while the drudge aliens are aptly named. For all its lack of inspiration, ´The Conduit´ is still an enjoyable shooter. Just don't expect miracles.

I find it slightly irritating that the review's tone is largely positive and does not appear, in my mind, to match the review score. The only criticism seems to be lack of originality and the article notes more than once that that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Article deleted

So why has the GoNintendo article been deleted? While the magazine itself insists that the game has officially not yet been rated, there are two alternatives. The most likely is that the rating stands, the publisher simply wants to prevent early publication. For the very same reason, GoNintendo recently had to pull an article based on information by the same magazine publisher.

The second, less likely explanation is that early publication of the rating has led to a formal complaint by the publisher and the rating has been recalled by the magazine. Often, reviews are based on review code, which may differ substantially from the final retail version. And sometimes, there is flawed communication between studio, publisher and reviewer about which aspects will still be changed. This is unlikely, but has happened before.

Other review scores

Let us assume the rating stands and compare it to the others. Nintendo Power gave ´The Conduit´ only a little more, at 80 percent. Here is a summary of their alleged explanation:

The Conduit – “worthwhile endeavor” but wouldn’t “make as big an impact on a competing console”

Pros
-large amount of customization
-good weapon selection
-Intriguing locals (Library of Congress, Pentagon, etc.)
-“platform defining online play”
-Bounty Hunter mode
-best pure first person shooter on the Wii

Cons
-story is rote
-enemy AI fails to impress
-little innovation to speak of (outside if the controls)
-level of detail in the environment can be inconsistent at times
-no destructible environments
-The “All Seeing Eye” is a cool idea but underutilized
-the abrupt, Halo-esque ending (hints at a sequel?)

In fact, here is a scan of the entire article, courtesy of Nintendo-Online.de.

Finally, a German Wii magazine gave the game 87 percent. All in all, those are not catastrophic review scores, like I said before. But the fear is that if an official Nintendo magazine gives the game a 76, scores by important online portals like Gamespot or IGN could be lower.

Rave previews

What is also irritating is that the game received some rave previews. The Official Nintendo Magazine praised the game only in April. And the preview was written by the very same author. His review, as noted above, seems to find mostly praise for the game and differs little from the preview. It is mainly the review score that does not seem to fit the picture.

So how good is ´The Conduit´? We simply cannot tell right now. It is reassuring to note that the graphics really appear to live up to the hype. But a little originality would not be a bad thing, either. It will be interesting to keep track of the game's Metacritic score, averaging all important reviews, as more scores come in.

Also, let us bear in mind that critical reception is not as important as commercial success. And even poor sales figures of ´The Conduit´ would not convince publishers that the Wii is no vehicle for mature games. But the title is an important piece in the puzzle and its commercial success will go some way towards more such games in the near future.

EDIT The rating stands. Metacritic has now included the 76 percent rating on the game's profile.

EDIT In their review, IGN gave the game a staggering 86 percent. The article made me wonder whether the good people over at IGN read this blog. Read it for yourself.

I've no doubt that overzealous system-hating fanboys will assert that there is nothing particularly special about The Conduit, but I don't believe that. In my experience, the title features the tightest, most comfortable control scheme of any console-based first-person shooter to date and that's true because of an innovative, highly customizable configuration that's already changing the way developers approach FPSs on Wii. (...)

Meanwhile, the technology powering the experience is leaps and bounds ahead of most third- party offerings for Nintendo's system. Combined, you've got a game that controls flawlessly and looks great. If you're okay with a few presentational cliches -- a story involving aliens that seems played out -- and a shooting experience that rarely strays from straightforward running and gunning, you're probably going to love the end product. If, on the other hand, you own another system, nothing The Conduit offers, fantastic controls aside, will seem extraordinary. Supposing you are a single console owner, though, High Voltage's shooter not only delivers a fun single-player quest, but an engaging online mode that will keep you fragging complete with WiiSpeak support for months to come.

With poor ratings by Gamespot and especially 1Up (58 percent), the Metacritic average now stands at 75 percent. It is rare to see a game display such a broad range of ratings by the main reviewers.

Source: GoNintendo (Yahoo cache)
Thanks to: GoNintendo, grandjedi6, Nintendo-Online (German)

E3 2009: Microsoft challenging Nintendo, Sony finished

2009-06-03T14:45:00.004+01:00

So, the three press briefings have come and gone. What remains? Quite obviously, Microsoft had the biggest surprise in store for us. Project Natal is certainly ambitious and may serve to position the Xbox360 quite differently in terms of target demographic. Nintendo, while briefly showing that odd finger sensor had almost no surprises when it comes to hardware. Team Ninja working on a new Metroid game was the big news of the briefing and it is hard to exaggerate the ramifications of this collaboration, given Nintendo’s poor track record with third party developers in the past.

Immediately, arguments ensued over whether Xbox360’s Natal or Wii’s Motion Plus will be the more accurate system. But that appears to be an academic debate. The big question in my mind is: where does that leave Sony? The truly gargantuan sales figures of a ´Brain Age´ and a ´Wii Fit´ clearly show where the gaming mainstream has shifted to (or rather, where the new mainstream has been discovered). This is precisely where Nintendo is positioned and it clearly is where Microsoft would like to be with Natal. Sony, however, will have nothing to offer this new mainstream. If they really are working on a Wiimote-like controller themselves, they will show it no earlier than E3 2010 and it will launch no earlier than 2011. This will be too late for this generation because, in my mind, by 2011, Microsoft and Nintendo will be talking about their successor consoles. And with the next generation of consoles, no one will care about a PS3 peripheral.

It seems quite obvious that the PlayStation3 will be falling behind even further, after the E3 announcements. While mainstream gaming has shifted (and opened up to millions new gamers in the process), Sony has remained where the mainstream used to be. Of course, ´God of War III´ will be a spectacular game. But, in terms of sales figures, it will be a niche product and fail to move substantial amounts of hardware. Especially given that Sony boss Stringer will not allow a price cut until Christmas at the earliest. I am absolutely sure: Sony will remain in third place for this generation and I am even less optimistic about Sony’s progress in the next console cycle.

EDIT I stand corrected. Sony did show motion controls other than the Sixaxis. I was unable to watch the Sony conference and really had not seen the motion control section in Joystiq’s live transcription. Sorry. Thanks to Some Guy for pointing out my mistake.

It is interesting to note that I wrote about the patent most likely implicated by this technology back in 2005 and I even tried out a similar prototype at the 2001 ECTS, London’s former videogame expo. There, a webcam connected to the PlayStation2 was tuned to certain bright colours and had the dimensions of various tools and weapons stored in memory. Holding a brightly coloured plastic sword or mace, the console could estimate a 3D position based on the object’s dimensions by comparing them to the actual view in perspective. This way, the same weapon was replicated in the game and moved almost in real-time to my movements. Considering this was fake 3D – since the console only estimated a spatial position based on the distorted perspective of a 2D image – it worked pretty well. It seems to me that the demo shown at the Sony conference was almost the same technology and will work the same way.

However, even if the technology shown will be available next year and works well, it is still no comparison to Nintendo’s and Microsoft’s real 3D motion controls. The only advantage is that Sony’s approach should work with a standard webcam, which will make it the cheapest of the three. But the experience may be less immersive, too. So I stand by my initial judgement: Microsoft may be successfully moving on what now is Nintendo’s turf – the new mainstream – but Sony will most likely fail to catch up.

Telecommunications giant behind ´ZuneX´ fake

2009-05-31T16:34:00.009+01:00

The ´ZuneX´ rumour I recently reported about is a fake, I can exclusively reveal. It is an interesting fake, though, since it is perpetuated by German telecommunications giant and multinational corporation Deutsche Telekom AG, Europe's largest according to Wikipedia.

The German gaming site who posted the various ´ZuneX´ images, Mimbee, notes in their imprint that they are part of the Telekom's network. The Whois information for the domain confirm this. While I found it hard to believe that a multinational corporation would be behind such a fake, my research revealed that the gaming site is not even an outside commission job, but an in-house development. Apparently, their reasons for the stunt have nothing to do with hunting down cheap clicks, though, as a member of staff wrote to me in an email. Above everything else, it was meant to be satirical, they claimed.

I replied, voicing concern that a large corporation has joined the ranks of fifteen year-olds in their parents' basement by devising and perpetuating such a relatively elaborate fake. Their reply, again, contained no apology.

To this day, the site has not come clean on the fake. Quite the contrary. In a recent entry, the Telekom bragged about the reach of the story, including mentions in the Playboy, Yahoo, Boing Boing and various reputable gaming news sites.

In my mind, this episode is nothing more than a cheap attempt at getting clicks. It is flawed viral marketing by another multinational (remember Sony's attempt) and it will most likely become equally successful. And, for those people who know what the term means, that last comment was meant to be satirical.

It's one thing to have to debunk teenagers. It's quite another thing when someone like the Deutsche Telekom is leading you on, in a desperate hunt for page impressions.

EDIT You can read the original story in German over on my newsroom's blog.

Image Source: Sol.de