Author Archive | Jared Newman

Hey Pop-Up Ads, Get Outta My Xbox!

Posted by Jared Newman on August 4, 2009 at 1:27 pm

Over the weekend, I sacrificed the better portion of one evening to my Fight Night Round 4 addiction. Home alone, playing offline (but connected to Xbox Live) and grinding through match after match, I was confronted with this:

fightnightRIP

Aah!

After a moment of shock, I realized this was an advertisement for the upcoming film The Final Destination, and suddenly Fight Night Round 4 was stumping for it in every available nook and cranny. Each post on the corners of the boxing ring had a number you could text message to enter a movie-related contest, and the floor mat had the name of the film running down the center.

What most offended me was not the ghastly imagery, but the ads that appeared during the boxer recovery phase between rounds. I call them pop-up ads because they make no effort to blend with the game world, as most in-game advertisements do. They’re just plain tacky (by the way, these photos were hastily shot on my iPhone, so my apologies for the quality):

fightnight2

A similar set of pop-ups for Ford appeared in an earlier session, but I had no camera at hand to prove it. Keep in mind that I had already logged countless hours with the game before seeing either of these ads, and that I was playing offline, against the computer, while connected to the Internet.

It’s not clear whether this is happening on the Playstation 3 as well as the Xbox 360, but I’ve asked Microsoft whether this has anything to do with Silverlight ads coming to Xbox Live, and I’ve requested that Electronic Arts answer a few questions as well, such as how the ads are being delivered and for long we’ll be dealing with them. I’m hoping to hear back from both parties.

In any case, I hope these ads aren’t the start of a new trend. Buying this game, no one told me it’d be cluttered with ads that have nothing to do with boxing. While a bit of in-game advertising is appropriate when it fits the surroundings (such as street billboards in a racing game), blatant banners that cover up the game screen are just uncalled for.

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The iPhone Outpowers the Wii? Who Cares.

Posted by Jared Newman on August 3, 2009 at 3:43 pm

A game programmer is getting mouthy about the Wii, saying that an iPhone is more powerful for gaming.

This argument transpired at the forums (via GameZine) for TellTale, which developed Tales of Monkey Island as a downloadable title from the WiiWare online store. A programmer with the handle “Yare” explained that the Wii is just not meaty enough to address all of the issues players are having, including blurry textures and choppy framerates.

“Frame rate issues will probably get sorted out eventually, but keep in mind that the Wii is just not a powerful console,” Yare wrote. “An iPhone is much more powerful than a Wii, even.”

A boisterous claim, no doubt, but does it hold water? It’s hard to say given that neither Apple nor Nintendo freely discusses hardware specs. You can take a look at the leaked specs for both the Wii and the iPhone and be the judge, but even then you’d have a hard time making a direct comparison.

In any case, I don’t think it really matters. One of the things I like about WiiWare is how it forces simplicity. The console space is so otherwise littered with face-melting graphics that a space for constraint in game design and visual aesthetics is welcome. To that end, a couple of my favorite games for this generation of consoles — World of Goo and Bit.Trip Beat — are downloadable WiiWare titles. Both games have simple foundations, but they manage to create complex challenges without relying on technical muscle.

I understand some of Yare’s concerns, particularly that WiiWare titles can be no larger than 40 MB in size (Nintendo has not explicitly confirmed this, but has said the company encourages smaller games). With Nintendo now allowing access to games directly from an SD card, there’s room to relax those constraints, but that doesn’t mean the floodgates should open for games of all sizes. I don’t want WiiWare to become musclebound.

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Playstation 3 Now 70% Cheaper … To Build.

Posted by Jared Newman on July 30, 2009 at 4:36 pm

Here’s a tidbit from Sony’s recent investor conference call that everyone but TotalVideoGames apparently missed: The Playstation 3 is roughly 70 percent cheaper to build than it was at launch.

This is according to Nobuyuki Oneda, Sony’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, who provided the figure when pressed by investors. More than any of the rumors we’ve been hearing ad nauseum for months, this is the best indication that the Playstation 3 will have a lower price tag this fall.

Nonetheless, it was only a few weeks ago that Sony’s chief executive, Howard Stringer, said the company would lose money on every console sold if the price were lowered. Both claims can’t be right, so one of these Sony execs doesn’t have his facts straight.

Sony hasn’t disclosed the PS3’s original manufacturing cost, but a couple estimates have pegged the number at $800 at launch, dropping to $400 in January 2008. iSuppli’s estimates from last December said the console costs $448.73 to build, so there’s room for error in the unoffficial estimates.

But let’s just say the PS3 build cost was $800 per unit initially. Knock off 70 percent and you’re left with $240 per unit. That means Sony not only gains from each console sold at $400 each, it can afford to bestow the now-mythic $100 price drop and still profit.

Not that a price cut would surprise anyone. Game publishers have on several occasions raised their cries for a cheaper PS3 to a crescendo. The logic says more console sales equals more game sales, but Sony has always insisted it can’t take the hit up front.

The problem is, both console sales and software sales were down last month, and Sony is taking huge losses. There will eventually come a point where it’s more economical for Sony to invigorate both sides of the equation than to keep maxing out earnings on console sales alone. I think that time is coming sooner than later.

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Booyah Society Treats Life Like a Game, Sort Of

Posted by Jared Newman on July 28, 2009 at 6:59 pm

booyahlogo In the same way that Booyah Society is rooting for me, I’m really hoping the new iPhone app can do better than it has.

It’s an idea with a lot of promise, which is why I was excited to meet with one of the creators, Keith Lee, for lunch last week. The “social game,” as he bills it, offers “achievements” — like the accolades you get within Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 games — but for real-life accomplishments.

In other words, instead of getting a symbolic pat on the back for becoming a Level 40 Sword Master or scoring five headshots in 10 seconds, you’re congratulated for going to the gym or eating organic food. Or so it goes in theory.

Continue Reading →

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Ubisoft Strikes 2 From the Holiday Lineup

Posted by Jared Newman on July 27, 2009 at 5:32 pm

If you were hoping to find Splinter Cell: Conviction or Red Steel 2 under the Christmas tree this year, too bad.

Ubisoft said today that both games will be pushed back until the fourth fiscal quarter — corporatespeak for some time between January and March of 2010.

These aren’t small-time games. Conviction is the fifth game in the popular Splinter Cell series, which focuses on steathily hunting down enemies from the shadows. Red Steel 2, a Kill Bill-inspired hack-and-shoot, is a marquis title for the Wii’s MotionPlus, a peripheral that makes motion controls more sensitive and accurate.

When Bioshock 2 was delayed a couple weeks ago, I prayed aloud for the end of the infamous holiday game glut, during which publishers release all their top shelf titles to cash in on shopping season. It’s a strategy that’s worked for years, but it tends to inundate game fans, only to hit them with a drought in the summer.

Things have changed in the last two weeks. Before then, we all knew the industry was deflating, because this year had no Wii Fit, no Grand Theft Auto IV and no Mario Kart Wii to carry everyone along. Console sales have been better, too. But when the NPD finally blamed June’s poor sales on the recession, it was a wake-up call even though everyone knew what was happening.

Now, we have publishers retreating into 2010, and that’s fine with me, because there’s a silver lining: Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot noted that in these summer months, Call of Juarez and Anno met sales expectations, and they “demonstrate that good products are continuing to sell well.”

Well, duh. If publishers can carry that mentality into 2010, the whole year could be a lot of fun.

(By the way, all’s not lost for holiday gifting. Running through Gamespot’s upcoming release list, I found a dozen games that interested me personally, due for release between mid-September and mid-December. Three games per month is just fine, thanks.)

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How Low Can EA Go? Contest Encourages “Acts of Lust” With Booth Babes

Posted by Jared Newman on July 24, 2009 at 5:31 pm

Update: EA’s Dante Team has apologized “for any confusion and offense that resulted from our choice of wording, and want to assure you that we take your concerns and sentiments seriously.” The team further explained that “commit acts of lust” is “simply a tongue-in-cheek way to say take pictures with costumed reps.” Full statement here. Original post below.

Electronic Arts is no stranger to controversial PR stunts, so maybe I’m playing right into the company’s hands by decrying its latest giveaway for Dante’s Inferno. Whatever, I’ll risk it.

Have a look at the contest flyer, as posted on Kotaku. The idea is for San Diego Comic Con attendees to take pictures of themselves with booth babes and send them in to EA. The more pictures sent, the more entries in the contest. EA calls these photo ops “Acts of Lust.”

To the winner, the contest promises “Dinner and a sinful night with two hot girls, a limo service, paparazzi and a chest full of booty.” The innuendo is cringe-inducing.

In a way, I’ve got to hand it to EA for pointing out the very backwards aspect of the games industry that unashamedly degrades women. If only the gaming blogs covering the story could see the forest from the trees. Destructoid, for example, cries foul despite having no problem celebrating booth babes during E3.

And then there’s the game itself, poor Dante’s magnum opus dumbed down to yet another male power fantasy, and a God of War wannabee to boot. I guess EA figured it had already lost the female demographic by turning a cautionary tale on sin into a hack-and-slash bloodbath. Why not alienate them completely?

Stunts like these — and booth babes themselves — give gaming a bad name, but it’s only made worse when related to a work that’s treated with dignity in any other medium. Game publishers have gone to some incredibly puzzling lengths for publicity before, but this is the most offensive example I’ve seen, in more ways than one.

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Earth to Chicago: Gaming’s “M” is Movies’ “R”

Posted by Jared Newman on July 23, 2009 at 7:37 pm

There’s a storm brewing in the Windy City over the allegedly unconstitutional treatment of video game ads, with an industry trade group suing Chicago’s transit authority.

This turn of events stems from Grand Theft Auto IV. Last year, a rash of shootings led the Chicago Transit Authority to pull GTAIV bus ads, after a local Fox News report drew a tenuous link between the ads and the incidents. GTA Publisher Take-Two Interactive claimed breach of contract, and the transit authority reinstated the ads, but later banned all advertisements for M-rated games. It’s important to note that R-rated movie ads are still allowed.

That brings us to the Entertainment Software Association’s free speech lawsuit, and a question posed by the Christian Science Monitor: “Are ‘mature’ video games worse than rated-R movies?”

No. Let’s put the “games are worse because they’re interactive” argument aside for a moment and look at the ratings themselves. Here’s what the Motion Picture Association of America says about R-rated films:

An R-rated motion picture may include adult themes, adult activity, hard language, intense or persistent violence, sexually-oriented nudity, drug abuse or other elements, so that parents are counseled to take this rating very seriously.

Now, here’s the Entertainment Software Ratings Board on the M rating:

Titles rated M (Mature) have content that may be suitable for persons ages 17 and older. Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language.

Looks pretty similar to me, especially the phrase “intense violence” in both descriptors. If the ratings themselves are so similar, the point of contention will surely be interactivity. But as courts have repeatedly found, it isn’t proven that violent video games cause violence because you play them, while movies don’t because you watch them.

Whether you like violent video games or not, their first-amendment protections should be a no-brainer to anyone who’s even dimly aware of past laws and lawsuits. I can’t see how the Chicago Transit Authority will emerge the victor in this case.

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Xbox Sells Costlier Game Downloads. Why Can’t the App Store?

Posted by Jared Newman on July 22, 2009 at 6:17 pm

Xbox Live Arcade is no longer a purveyor of quick-hit, $5 video game downloads, but a place where $15 games are beginning to thrive.

That’s what Kotaku found after looking at the cost of downloadable Xbox 360 games, from the console’s launch in 2005 up to last month. The average cost of video game downloads has climbed, especially in the last two years, but the reason is a shift in how many of these games cost $10, $15 or even $20 for a purely electronic copy. The tell-all chart, compiled by Stephen Totilo and Andrew Freedman, is located here.

The rise in prices on Xbox Live Arcade isn’t a bad thing. It means the kinds of available games are richer experiences, coming closer to what you’d get from a boxed title. Braid, an indie game priced at $15, is the perfect example. Same goes for the recently released Sam & Max Save the World ($20) and upcoming Shadow Complex (likely to cost at least $20).

Digesting this, my mind jumped to the iPhone’s App Store, whose free market is a mixture of zero-dollar “Lite” games, $10 offerings from major publishers and everything in between. A recent report by Pocket Gamer found that the average price of top 10 titles is $1.89, while top 100 games average $3.80. So I wonder: Will App Store games get better, causing a surge in prices?

Before I go on, let me acknowledge that I’m totally comparing apples (har har) and oranges. Not only are the two data sets different, but the gaming platforms don’t necessarily lend themselves to the same demographics or same style of play. But my point isn’t to make a direct comparison between two non-competitive marketplaces.

What interests me is how Xbox Live Arcade is cleverly evolving into a place for high-quality game downloads, while the App Store is not. Pocket Gamer notes that the most successful $10 iPhone games are big-name franchises, such as Doom: Resurrection and The Sims 3, but those are just dumbed down versions of their computer counterparts, and even they’re undermined by the amount of inexpensive and simple games available. Meanwhile, Xbox Live Arcade is bringing in entirely new games while phasing out the cheap stuff.

The difference, of course, is that Microsoft takes on a greater role in regulating its market. I’m not saying Apple should do the same, but when it comes time to spend $15 on a downloadable game, I know which market will get my money.

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The Xbox 360’s 3-Disc Dilemma

Posted by Jared Newman on July 21, 2009 at 5:50 pm

Sony likes to boast that it’s selling “future technology” in the Playstation 3, but let’s be honest, most games hardly show it.

An exception could come from Doom 4, a distant release that will apparently take full advantage of the PS3’s Blu-ray discs. In a Game Informer interview (via VG247), id Software’s John Carmack said the game will “almost certainly” be split into three DVDs for the Xbox 360, while the PS3 version will only require one Blu-ray disc.

This, I think, is more important than any advantage you might see in graphics. Give me a big-screen HDTV, and I’ll generally be pretty happy no matter which console you put in front of me. Making me get up after a cliffhanger moment to swap out discs — twice — is a different story.

The Xbox 360’s inability to store everything on one disc poses other challenges if games begin demanding more storage space. Carmack said another upcoming id game, a racing and shooting adventure called Rage, will need two discs for the Xbox 360 version, but still just one for Blu-ray. It would’ve been easier to split Rage in thirds for the Xbox 360 version, Carmack said, but the game is designed around two major wastelands, so three discs wouldn’t work as well.

Now, think about non-linear games, such as Grand Theft Auto. I can’t say it would be impossible to split this kind of adventure into several discs, but it could be problematic unless each disc contained the entire game world.

On the flip side, Carmack said programming for the PS3 required much more “sweat equity” than the Xbox 360, despite its lack of size constraints. But if game developers someday embrace the roominess afforded by the PS3’s Blu-ray discs, Microsoft will find itself at a real technical disadvantage.

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Games Industry Suffers From Recession, Finally

Posted by Jared Newman on July 16, 2009 at 5:34 pm

After a few months of lagging sales, market researcher NPD Group is finally saying the recession caught up with the video games industry. All it took was for gaming to suffer its biggest year-over-year sales drop in 9 years.

Total industry sales in North America were down 31 percent in June, compared to the same month in 2008. Hardware took the biggest hit, with a 38 percent drop in sales, and software fell 29 percent. Accessories fared the best, but still saw a 22 percent decline, according to GameDaily.

June is not the first recent month that the industry was in decline. Video game sales have fallen year-over-year for the last three months in a row. Still, NPD avoided chalking this up to the recession. After all, last year was particularly strong, with the fast-selling Wii Fit and blockbuster games such as Mario Kart Wii and Grand Theft Auto IV doing well in the spring. Plus, the three current generation consoles were fresher a year ago, and no company has cut prices since then.

But now, NPD analyst Anita Frazier is finally blaming the economy. “This is one of the first months where I think the impact of the economy is clearly reflected in the sales numbers,” she told GameDaily. Sales haven’t plummeted this drastically since September 2000, when there was a 41 percent industry decline.

Why pull the recession card now? To paraphrase Frazier, it’s a combination of weak line-ups, stagnant console price points and a lack of must-have games, combined with consumers’ unwillingness to spend more until things change. In other words, you can’t expect people to pay the same money for lacklustre products just because they’re video games. To put it one more way, the video game industry is not recession proof; it was just piggybacking on the strength of the Wii and a few blockbusters, so let’s please let that label die once and for all.

Frazier isn’t throwing all her optimism out the window. There’s a chance, she said, that a strong second-half could bring total 2009 game sales on par or slightly above last year’s numbers. Game makers aren’t fully cooperating, though, as Take-Two delayed the much-anticipated Bioshock 2 in hopes of reaping better sales during FY2010. Heavy Rain, a Playstation 3 exclusive that’s getting some attention, was also put off until next year.

To save 2009, the games industry needs Wii Fit Plus to spur more sales of the Wii Balance Board, it needs Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Halo 3: ODST to sell like true holiday blockbusters, and it needs people to splurge on high-cost peripherals such as the band kit for The Beatles: Rock Band.

Holiday price cuts for the three major consoles couldn’t hurt, either.

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