Author Archive | Jared Newman

Street Fighter IV: Appeasing the Old-School

Posted by Jared Newman on February 27, 2009 at 3:07 pm

sfivryu While relaxing at a friend’s house last weekend, an ad for Street Fighter IV aired during a commercial break from SportsCenter. I recognized it right away — Chun Li and Zangief battling amidst a layer of artistic flourishes —and a lull soon filled the room as my friends followed suit. Finally, when Ken and Ryu made an appearance, one of my buddies, who hasn’t owned a game console since we met in college, spoke up.

“Is that Street Fighter?”

That, I imagine, is the response Capcom was going for. Yes, Street Fighter is back, just as you remember it, but stuffed with polygons instead of pixilated 16-bit sprites.

Actually, Street Fighter never went away. Dedicated fans kept the series alive in Japanese arcades and the few left here in the states. Each incremental release after the iconic Street Fighter II was more obscure than the last, tailor-made for players with twitch reflexes and a rock-solid memory of combos. For the average gamer, challenging any of these veterans would constitute a wasted quarter.

So in reinventing the series, Capcom had the unenviable challenge of appeasing its base while bringing lost fans — myself included — back into the fold. The result is actually quite admirable.

Continue Reading →

No comments

Christmas Isn't Everything, EA Realizes

Posted by Jared Newman on February 26, 2009 at 11:47 am

Good news for people who don’t like juggling a half dozen top-shelf video games at the tail end of the year: an Electronic Arts manager says the company might be backing off the holiday release strategy.

The big takeaway from last year’s success of Mario Kart and Grand Theft Auto is that AAA games don’t have to be introduced in the holiday season to perform well. NPD Group analyst Anita Frazier said as much after her company put out its annual sales figures. “Get some high profile releases out in the first and second quarters,” she suggested.

Mulling over a fairly unsuccessful year, Electronic Arts is coming around to that school of thought. Glen Schofield, General Manager for the EA branch that developed Dead Space and Mirror’s Edge, told Gamesindustry.biz that there were “far too many” games to choose from before the holidays.

“I think that we traditionally thought that people only buy games at Christmas or around holiday time, and now we’re looking back and going, ‘You know what, GTA launched in May; Resident Evil comes out in March’.”

I picked this story up from Destructoid, where one commenter posed a clever theory: Publishers previously had the mindset that video games are just kids’ toys, and children are most likely to get them on Christmas. Personally, I can relate to that. I used to always get a video game on the eighth night of Hannukah, but now I just buy them when they deserve my $60, period. I would have loved to play Left 4 Dead in the summer of 2008, when nothing was going on. It’s still on my backlog now.

Let’s hope other publishers follow suit. With Halo Wars and Resident Evil 5 coming next month, and Street Fighter IV in stores now, it seems that this strategy might already be in play.

No comments

Nintendo Blames Entire Countries for Piracy

Posted by Jared Newman on February 25, 2009 at 2:31 pm

For all the money Nintendo is packing in right now, it could be making more if it weren’t for those darned software pirates.

Apparently, the Big N has a yearly tradition of telling the U.S. Trade Representative which countries are the worst at cracking down on piracy. In 2007, Nintendo, along with its publishers and developers, lost a collective $975 million in sales, if you believe that people would buy the products if they couldn’t be stolen.

This time, the company didn’t say how much was lost during 2008, but many of the same naughty countries return from the previous report. New to the list is Spain, which has an “alarming” availability of game copying devices, Nintendo said.

Overall, there seems to be either an unwillingness or inability from these countries to really stick it to software pirates. Efforts to prosecute in China, Brazil and Mexico are nowhere near what Nintendo would like, and Spain appears to lack laws against Internet piracy entirely. In Brazil, customs agents didn’t seize a single shipment of illicit Nintendo products. The situation is stickier in Paraguay, where corruption makes it easier for pirates to do business.

There are some bright spots in Nintendo’s letter. Korea has been seizing lots of material at customs and holding perpetrators accountable, and Mexico seems willing to let trademark owners train customs and postal service workers. In Spain, customs agents are getting a bit more cooperative.

It’s not clear what happens to these comments, or how involved Nintendo gets from here on, but I do like the idea of an annual report. Whether you’re an upstanding citizen or shameless pirate, it’s pretty interesting to see where all this stuff comes from.

3 comments

California Video Game Law Smacked Down, Again

Posted by Jared Newman on February 23, 2009 at 4:19 pm

Back in October, a federal appeals court listened to arguments on a three year-old bill that would put government labels on mature video games and ban their sale to minors. At the tail end of last week, the court ruled that law unconstitutional.

Judge Consuelo Callahan said while the games that concerned lawmakers are “unquestionably violent,” there are ways for parents to keep them from children, such as parental blocking features on consoles and the voluntary ESRB labels that appear on every retail game. Further, Callahan dismissed studies that suggest a link between violent games and aggression. None of it establishes or suggests a casual link between playing games and real mental harm, she said, according to the AP.

State Sen. Leland Yee, who wrote the bill, wants the case taken to the Supreme Court, but it’s not known yet how the state’s attorney general will respond.

The original hearing was one of the first stories I wrote about for Technologizer. Fresh-faced, I let out some of my pent-up frustrations with these kinds of laws, which have failed numerous times in the past. In short, sealing off mature video games as “harmful to minors,” along with cigarettes and pornography, can really hurt a medium that does address serious topics in new ways. Bioshock, Mass Effect, and Fallout 3, while violent, are great examples.

Entertainment Software Association president Michael D. Gallagher called the laws “an exercise in wasting taxpayer money,” which sounds funny given that the trade group is taking some of that money back — Californians were already forced to pay $282,794 to the ESA after the legislation was originally sticken down. Still, the industry does have the right to recoup its legal costs, and when it says a Supreme Court battle would only hurt taxpayers more, the anti-game crusade becomes even tougher to justify.

5 comments

Microsoft Reportedly Keen on Wii-Killing Motion Cam

Posted by Jared Newman on February 18, 2009 at 4:30 pm

Here’s a fun little rumor: Microsoft is said to be mulling an acquisition of 3DV Systems, an Israeli company that makes “virtual reality” imaging technology for digital cameras. The implication is that advanced motion controls are coming to the Xbox 360, or perhaps Microsoft’s next console.

The report comes from Haartez, a respectable Israeli newspaper, but lacks sources or quotes. Microsoft is reportedly offering $35 million to acquire 3DV — not a fantastic deal considering the company has already raised $38.6 million. Some investors would lose out if the report comes to fruition.

3DV made news at the end of 2007 when it unveiled the ZCam. Unlike the Playstation’s EyeToy and the Xbox Live Vision camera, which only read location in two dimensions, the ZCam detects depth as well. VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi, who also wrote about the Haaretz report, said from first-hand experience that the ZCam is “much more” accurate than the Wii’s motion controllers.

It’s obvious why Microsoft might be interested in the technology; now that everyone’s seen how much money the Wii is making, console makers are questioning the old video game model of thumbplay. A device that allows players to punch toward the screen with their fists or flap their arms to make avatars fly sounds fun, and therefore lucrative. It’s not a carbon copy of the Wii, but it’s a similar enough to make for healthy competition with Nintendo.

I don’t doubt that Microsoft is considering various motion control technologies for video games. Entertainment division president Robbie Bach hinted along those lines when he said it’ll take more than something “faster and prettier” to lure consumers the next time around. But rumors come and go about current generation motion controllers, and speculation on the Xbox 720 (or, for that matter, whether it’ll be called that) isn’t a rarity either. It’s a little early to say how the ZCam will play into Microsoft’s future gaming plans, if at all.

4 comments

Red Ring of Death Nightmares Are Over, Says Microsoft

Posted by Jared Newman on February 17, 2009 at 11:52 am

Are the Xbox 360-killing problems that cause the infamous Red Ring of Death gone? And will people who send in their consoles for repairs have to cycle through the process multiple times to get a real fix?

Over at Edge, Kris Graft put those questions to Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg, who said the console’s biggest technical woes have come to pass. “We’ve put the worst behind us on this, but we know there are a few lagging systems, and so we want to take those and make it right,” Greenberg said. Asked about the technical nitty-gritty of hardware updates, Greenberg wouldn’t answer, saying that Microsoft’s attorneys “would not allow me to say that.”

In the summer of 2007, Microsoft fessed up to an “unacceptable number” of defective systems. We’ve heard of failure rates as high as 30 percent — which I’m skeptical of — but the company never provided specifics. In any case, all console owners were given an extended 3-year warranty should any red ring problems arise.

Since then, new Xbox 360s received an upgrade. These so-called “Jasper” models feature a new motherboard and a smaller, cooler-running GPU. This is huge, because ATI’s original graphics card was at risk for overheating, thus warping the motherboard and putting undue stress on solder joints. Greenberg said the improvements that went into the new models also go into repairs.

In stores, different Xbox 360 models aren’t clearly marked on the packaging. If you’re considering a new console, look for “12,1A” where the power information is listed on the back of the box. Greenberg, always restrained when he’s talking about this stuff, told Ars Technica last month that Microsoft obscures that information because it wants customers “to buy with confidence,” he said. “They shouldn’t, you know, get hung up on the internal components of the device.” (Read: We don’t want them to worry that it’ll brick.)

55 comments

Acclaim’s Music Game Approach Could Please Labels

Posted by Jared Newman on February 16, 2009 at 12:02 pm

The massive multiplayer music game RockFree has been in public beta for a while now, and will launch for real in a few weeks. When that happens, players will get a taste of the revenue model that’s built to please record labels more than that of Rock Band and Guitar Hero, VentureBeat’s Evan Van Zelfden reports.

In those console hits, the publishers paid a flat fee to license each song, with Activision paying $20,000 per track. Naturally, the troubled music industry gets irritated when the game franchises then rake in millions of dollars, or billions in the case of Guitar Hero.

Acclaim won’t pay any licensing fees at all. Instead, CEO Howard Marks said his company will hand over 20 percent of the revenue from microtransactions to a song’s master holder and publisher.

The otherwise free-to-play game includes three playlist “slots” that can be filled with selections from an online library or uploaded by users. Players can purchase more slots at $1 a pop, and Marks expects that the average user who chooses to pay will fork over $14 per month for this privilege. Warner Music — whose CEO, Edgar Bronfman Jr., called the flat fees for Guitar and Rock Band “paltry” — is in the database for RockFree.

I’m a little skeptical that RockFree will be more lucrative for record labels. At 20 cents for every new track, 100,000 transactions per song are needed to equal what Activision was paying for its Guitar Hero tracks. And the problem with that is, RockFree kind of stinks. Massive multiplayer perks aside, banging out guitar tracks on a computer keyboard doesn’t compare to wielding a fake plastic instrument — which isn’t as cool as playing a real instrument, but that’s another story.

This arrangement will probably work out nicely for the companies involved because it’s happening on a smaller scale. I don’t expect it to shake up how the bigger console franchises are doing business.

No comments

Midway Files for Bankruptcy

Posted by Jared Newman on February 12, 2009 at 2:01 pm

This is no surprise, seeing as the company was looking at $150 million in debt last December with just 50 days to pay it, but today Midway Games filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy.

Chairman, President and CEO Matt Booty called the filing “a difficult but necessary decision,” adding that it buys the company time to figure out how to proceed from here. For now, business continues as usual, and Midway has filed several First Day Motions in hopes of keeping it that way as restructuring takes place.

But enough of that business talk. As various publications covered the news today, they unwittingly pointed out the publisher’s biggest flaw. “Midway Games Inc., the creator of the Mortal Kombat video-game series … ,” wrote the L.A. Times. “Midway, famous for its ‘Mortal Kombat’ franchise … ,” Reuters noted. “The long-struggling publisher of Mortal Kombat filed for bankruptcy this morning,” Kotaku wrote.

See the pattern? Now, try to think of another major publisher whose entire existence is defined by one franchise. EA’s got Madden, but it also has The Sims and Spore. Activision has Call of Duty, Guitar Hero and — after becoming Activision-Blizzard — World of Warcraft. Ubisoft has several successful franchises under the Tom Clancy umbrella.

You could argue that Take-Two will be remembered most for Grand Theft Auto, but that just proves my point. GTA seems to reinvent itself as something new and exciting with each generation, but Mortal Kombat is no longer revolutionary. Cartoonish blood and gore, once a novel concept, is old hat now. Without that trick up its sleeve, the franchise became a follower of better button-mashers like Soul Calibur, Tekken and Virtua Fighter. To be fair, Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe is doing well, but that idea is more of a gimmick than a long-term cash cow.

The sad thing is, Midway was once a glorious game publisher. It put out Space Invaders and Ms. Pac-Man, for goodness sakes. And who could forget NBA Jam?

Apparently, everybody. I could go on about why those games aren’t viable anymore, but the point is that Midway has done little to stay relevant. While other companies have figured out how to milk their best franchises through the years, Midway seems like it never grew out of the arcade era.

9 comments

Blockbuster to Offer Games By Mail

Posted by Jared Newman on February 11, 2009 at 2:27 pm

Looking to up the ante against both Netflix and Gamefly, Blockbuster is rolling out a mail order rental service for video games. As part of the “Total Access” program, a select number of customers will soon test the new venture, with nationwide availability coming in the second half of this year, Kotaku reports.

The news raises some key questions, mostly in regards to pricing. Considering that a two-disc subscription to Gamefly costs $9 more per month than Netflix’s movie plan and $6 more than the plan at Blockbuster, I can’t imagine that existing Total Access customers will be able to rent video games without ponying up extra dough. On a related note, I wonder if it will be a separate plan that subscribers can choose instead of movies, or if it will only come as part of the whole package.

To be honest, it’s going to take significant cost savings for me to drop Gamefly. Sure, it can take a week or longer to get high demand titles, but otherwise I’ve had very few problems with the service. Plus, Gamefly offers nice perks, such as coupons and discounts for purchasing used games and respectable trade-in rates that help offset subscription costs. Besides, poor selection and availability of games at Blockbuster’s brick-and-mortar stores brought me to Gamefly in the first place, so I won’t even consider switching until Blockbuster can prove itself.

And then there’s Netflix. The movie-by-mail company doesn’t offer games, leaving the door open for Blockbuster to be the be-all end-all of media rentals. Unfortunately, we’re still waiting on Blockbuster’s streaming movie partnership with Sonic Solutions, and I can already watch streaming Netflix movies from my Xbox 360.

Here’s a thought: Blockbuster becomes the Playstation 3’s movie streamer as part of an all-inclusive game and movie rental package. That’d make me jealous of Sony’s console for sure.

Update: Joystiq has dug up some more information on the program. It’ll cost $5 more per month than any existing plan, but only if you add games to your queue that month. Blockbuster Online VP Bob Barr dodged questions about game availability compared to Gamefly but said the company won’t be augmenting its library for the program. There are “no conversations explicitly going on” in regards to a streaming service for Sony, Barr said.

5 comments

Sony vs. Microsoft: A History of Trash Talk

Posted by Jared Newman on February 7, 2009 at 10:20 am

When Microsoft boasted of 1 million sign-ups for the Xbox 360’s Netflix application — covered briefly Thursday in Harry’s “5Words” news roundup — Sony struck back, saying the Playstation 3’s movies and rentals download faster and don’t require subscription fees. Ouch.

But this was just the latest in an endless back-and-forth between the rival companies. Taken as a whole, this record of petty bickering actually makes for a good overview of each console’s pros and cons. Join us after the jump for more snipes, disses and burns. Continue Reading →

34 comments

← Previous 1 … 91 92 93 … 96 Next →