Tag Archives | Gaming

Bungie Aligns With Activision: R.I.P. Halo?

Posted by Jared Newman on April 29, 2010 at 7:01 pm

Two of the biggest names in video games, Activision and Bungie, announced an exclusive 10-year development deal today, stunning Halo fans and leaving Microsoft’s golden video game franchise at a crossroads.

The deal will maintain Bungie’s status as an independent game developer, but it will give Activision exclusive rights to publish a new gaming franchise on multiple platforms. Bungie manager Brian Jerrard told VG247 that almost the entire studio will concentrate on this new IP, and that Halo: Reach “is definitely Bungie’s final Halo game.”

That alone doesn’t mean the end of Halo, which transformed first-person shooters with innovations that are now industry standard — small things like regenerating health and big ideas like an automatic matchmaking system for online play. Microsoft owns the Halo IP, and that won’t change. Given the rabid enthusiasm Halo fans exude (we had over 1,000 responses to our Halo: Reach beta code giveaway), Microsoft will probably continue to create new Halo games in-house.

But in my eyes, Halo has always been about Bungie. They endlessly tinker with Halo’s multiplayer to keep things fresh and to refine the game based on how people are playing. The studio has cultivated a culture of fandom with an active forum and weekly updates on everything they do, and they keep a staff of community managers who are as obsessed with the series as its players.

Bungie is an independent studio, which means all of those resources and efforts will be going towards the new IP, except for a small group of employees who will support Halo: Reach after launch. If Microsoft intends to keep Halo alive with the same spirit it enjoys today, the company has some big shoes to fill.

6 comments

Get an Early Halo: Reach Beta Code

Posted by Jared Newman on April 28, 2010 at 12:40 am

[UPDATE: We’re closing the contest–thanks to everyone who entered! We’ll notify winners soon.]

Want early access to the Halo: Reach multiplayer beta? Courtesy of Microsoft, we’ve got seven codes to give away. These will let you start playing on Thursday, April 29, so you won’t have to wait until May 3 and you won’t need a copy of last year’s Halo 3: ODST. As long as you can download the beta over Xbox Live, you’re good to go.

Here’s what you need to do for a chance at one of the codes:

  • Comment on this blog post with your thoughts about Halo: Reach. Use your valid e-mail address (it won’t be displayed, but we’ll need it to contact the winners).
  • You can alsot Tweet your answer to Harry (who’s @harrymccracken), if it fits in 140 characters including the @harrymccracken.
  • We’ll select people at random and deliver the code on April 29 by e-mail or direct message, so you must follow Harry on Twitter or use a valid e-mail address.

A brief primer on Halo: Reach’s multiplayer: The fundamentals of cat-and-mouse first-person shooting are the same as they’ve always been, but the developers at Bungie added new weapons and tweaked old ones, gave special armor powers that players can choose at the start of match, and created new modes (Ars Technica’s preview has a solid guide to what’s new). The beta allows people to get excited for the game while letting Bungie make adjustments based on how people play in the real world.

Good luck to those who enter. If you don’t win, you can still access the beta on May 3 with a copy of Halo 3: ODST. Either way, you’ll find me playing the beta on Xbox Live as ThePimpOfSound. I’ll destroy you all.

1,039 comments

Supreme Court to Rule on Violent Game Law, Finally

Posted by Jared Newman on April 26, 2010 at 6:27 pm

It’s about time the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in on the matter of violent video games.

The justices agreed on Monday to rule on whether the government should ban the sale of violent games to minors and fine stores $1,000 each time they fail to comply. At issue is a California law, passed in 2005 but struck down by lower courts, that defines violent games as works that depict “killing, maiming, dismembering or sexually assaulting an image of a human being,” in a way that’s offensive, appeals to morbid interests and otherwise lacks artistic merit.

So basically, the government would play tastemaker and decide what’s offensive and what’s artistic, what should be treated like porn and what should be treated like culture. If you can’t tell, and haven’t read our previous coverage, this idea unsettles me. I have no problem with video game retailers turning down minors who want to buy Grand Theft Auto, but government should not be at the helm. Video games have a system of self-regulation that’s among the best in the entertainment industry, not to mention parental controls on consoles.

Supporters of the California law argue that video games need the extra regulation because their interactivity makes them inherently worse for children than movies or other media. I’m not going to get into that debate here — check out this recent article by PC World’s Matt Peckham to get a sense of the back-and-forth — but the fact that six states have attempted violent game laws, and none have passed muster with their respective courts, shows that judges aren’t comfortable making video games an exception to the First Amendment.

I’m glad the Supreme Court is looking at this, if only as a way to put an end to all the madness. If the court sides with the games industry — and I’ll be shocked if it doesn’t — it’ll set a precedent for lower courts around the country, and stop the waste of more resources on these misguided laws.

4 comments

Social Settings Are Halo: Reach's Coolest New Feature

Posted by Jared Newman on April 21, 2010 at 3:38 pm

My level of excitement for new Halo games has dropped off over the years, as the series’ refinements stopped adding up to anything radically different. But a new feature in the upcoming Halo: Reach sounds like a game-changer, and it has nothing to do with shooting.

I’ll just quote Ars Technica’s Ben Kuchera, who got to sample the game’s multiplayer ahead of next month’s public beta:

You also have social settings to choose from, to make sure you play with people who match your style. Do you talk? Are you quiet? Do you play competitively, or simply to enjoy yourself? Do you go Rambo, or enjoy teamwork? Do you like a polite game, or are you a trash talker? By adjusting all these options you’ll be able to filter out people whose play styles may be distasteful, allowing you a better play experience.

The idea is so simple, yet so smart, that I wonder why no one’s thought of it before. Essentially, you’ll be able to play with like-minded people without manually cultivating lists of online friends. Given how obnoxious some online gamers can be, this could breathe new life into Xbox Live.

I’m reminded of when Halo 2 introduced matchmaking more than five years ago. The game automatically found players, created teams and chose maps to play on. At the time, online console games made you manually select from a list of open matches, and if you weren’t quick to join one, they’d fill up and you’d have to refresh the list. This system became unpopular as other games mimicked what Halo 2 pioneered.

The same thing ought to happen with Halo: Reach’s social settings, provided the developer, Bungie, can properly execute the concept.

2 comments

No More Xbox 360, PS3 Manuals for Ubisoft

Posted by Jared Newman on April 19, 2010 at 4:39 pm

It’s an old joke in video game culture — or perhaps culture in general — that nobody reads the instruction manuals. Realizing this, Ubisoft announced that it will stop including printed manuals with its games for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

The move is ostensibly an attempt to go green while reducing production costs. Along with scrapping the manuals, Ubisoft says it’ll start shipping games in polypropylene cases made only of recycled materials, reports CNet.

I don’t care much about any of that. To me, the move is more of an acknowledgement that the way we learn to play video games has drastically changed since the advent of home gaming consoles.

As a kid, I relished reading those little staple-bound booklets. You never knew what you’d find in there. The Super Mario Bros. manual revealed “secret tricks” — basically, chain-stomping Goombas and using Koopa shells to take out surrounding foes — and the Double Dragon manual had stylized illustrations of all the characters, which somehow made the 8-bit game seem so much cooler. And because old-school games were never very good at exposition, the manuals provided otherwise non-existent plots to Atari classics such as Berzerk.

None of that is necessary anymore. Games are considered a failure if they don’t teach you how to play within the game. If you need help, you’re more likely to consult GameFAQs than the instruction booklet. Fancy illustrations and written plot summaries aren’t necessary when the games themselves are spectacles of light and sound, with professional voice acting.

So, knowing things will never be the same as in childhood, I welcome Ubisoft’s decision. And yeah, I suppose it’s nice that the environment’s getting some love, too.

(By the way, if you’re feeling nostalgic, Vimm.net has a growing archive of old video game instruction manuals, which is where I got the above image.)

12 comments

Games Bounce Back, and Sony Gets a Killer App

Posted by Jared Newman on April 16, 2010 at 4:08 pm

A couple significant things happened with last month’s North American video game sales figures from NPD: The industry as a whole improved over March 2009, and software sales for Sony’s Playstation 3 dominated the charts.

The overall industry gains aren’t a huge deal to me. Console and software makers will boast to their investors that March 2010 was a year-over-year improvement, but that’s only because sales tanked in 2009. Compared to March 2008, overall video game sales are still in the red, at $1.53 billion this year compared to $1.7 billion two years ago.

More interesting is how Sony took more games in the top 20 than any other console, and led the charts with the blockbuster God of War III. That game sold 1.1 million copies. Looking back at the debuts of other notable PS3 exclusives — Uncharted 2, Killzone 2, Metal Gear Solid 4, LittleBigPlanet — no other game came close. Another Sony exclusive, MLB 10: The Show, also got into the charts last month.

Non-exclusives are a wash: Final Fantasy XIII for PS3 outsold the Xbox 360 version, probably because the series is a Playstation mainstay, but Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was most popular on the Xbox 360, perhaps because Xbox Live provides a better multiplayer experience, and because there weren’t many other hit action games out for the Xbox 360 last month.

Still, Sony’s got to be thrilled that its heavyweight games are finally going toe-to-toe with the Xbox 360. For game developers, it signals that the console’s ripe for development (see: Activision’s once-harsh words for Sony), and that’s always good for PS3 owners.

Meanwhile, I’m just loving that the PS3-exclusive Heavy Rain stuck around in the top 20 for its second month. Maybe there’s a market for experimental interactive drama after all.

No comments

Time to Play Some Original Xbox

Posted by Jared Newman on April 14, 2010 at 4:42 pm

As promised, Microsoft will shut down Xbox Live support for the original Xbox at midnight Pacific time, so this is your last chance to play any of your favorite online games from the previous generation.

I’ve pulled out all the online-enabled Xbox games in my library, and while in all honesty I’d rather be playing something newer (and should actually be finishing up my taxes instead), I’ll probably run through all the games for old time’s sake. I’m mostly curious to see if anyone’s still enjoying Doom 3, or whether any players of Mortal Kombat Deception are bad enough to at least let me win a round.

Also, if you fire up Halo 2 today, Bungie says you’ll get “a piece of visual flair” to be used in multiplayer for the upcoming Halo: Reach, and the developer is giving away prizes as well. You’ll also apparently see some funky messages while waiting for games to begin.

Microsoft isn’t doing anything special to say goodbye to the previous console, and that’s okay. But soon after service shuts down, the company should offer more details on what players stand to gain. Microsoft said in February that it needs to make changes to Xbox Live that are incompatible with original Xbox games, without giving specifics.

With online play for original Xbox shutting down, the time for answers is now. The 100-person cap on friends lists will probably be lifted, as that was apparently a technical limitation of the original Xbox, but I hope that won’t be the only benefit for Xbox 360 owners. Not all of us are popular enough to say the trade off is justified.

4 comments

Blockbuster’s Still Working On Those Game Rentals

Posted by Jared Newman on April 13, 2010 at 6:53 pm

I had a touch of déjà vu today after reading that Blockbuster is testing a mail-order video game rental program in Cleveland, with plans for a nationwide rollout before year-end. That’s because 14 months ago, Blockbuster was telling essentially the same story.

It’s not clear what happened. Did the pilot program die and come back to life, or is testing just taking a lot longer than planned? Whatever the case, you still have to be a mail-order movie subscriber to rent games, but the pricing has changed. It’s now $7.99 plus tax for every month you rent a game, instead of $5. You can only rent one game at a time, and it counts towards your allotted number of movie rentals.

Blockbuster’s plan would be more enticing if you could take out games from the store, but only exchanges are allowed, and they cost $4.99 for each new game you take out (exchanges for movies cost less, depending on your rental plan). I’m guessing Blockbuster’s financial troubles make it harder to offer big bargains.

Looking over my coverage from February 2009, it’s funny how I said it would take significant savings to pull me away from GameFly. Cut to the present, and I’m thinking about ditching mail-order game rentals altogether. Too often, I’ve tried to get the newest releases from GameFly, and waited weeks for availability. Even months-old games take a little while to ship.

Mail-order game rentals don’t work when you’re trying to play the next big thing. There are only a few top-tier games that come out every month, and everybody wants them. Rarely is there an off-the-beaten-path game (like the equivalent of an art-house flick) that no one’s waiting for, so you stand in line with everyone else. Unless Blockbuster figures out a solution to that problem, its system won’t fare much better than the competition.

3 comments

iPhone Game Center: OS 4’s Most Revolutionary Feature?

Posted by Jared Newman on April 8, 2010 at 6:24 pm

Reading the coverage and comments on iPhone OS 4, I’ve seen some sentiment that Apple isn’t really doing anything fresh, and is merely catching up on features already offered on other mobile phones. That’s true for some things, but not with iPhone Game Center.

The service will be a social networking layer for iPhone games. Players can invite their friends to multiplayer games, and in lieu of friends, they can use a matchmaking service to find other players. There appear to be achievements for in-game tasks, which accumulate in a sort of meta-game, and there are online leaderboards as well.

As a list of bullet points, Game Center is nothing new. It’s more or less a clone of Xbox Live, which offers all the same features. Even on the iPhone, the existing Plus+ and OpenFeint networks offer friends lists, achievements and leaderboards.

So, why is this revolutionary? Because there isn’t a single mobile gaming platform that’s already doing it. Sony dropped the ball when it said last year that the PSP won’t support achievement-like trophies, and there’s no platform-wide invite feature that encourages players to jump between games. Nintendo’s just oblivious when it comes to online gaming, and Microsoft, which arguably could do great things with Xbox Live on Windows Phone 7, will still be months from launch when iPhone Game Center arrives.

Predictions are always risky, but I’d be surprised of other phone platforms and portable consoles don’t scramble to follow Apple’s lead. You can’t say that about multitasking, folders and customizable wallpapers.

13 comments

Most iPad Apps Are Games, But Why?

Posted by Jared Newman on April 7, 2010 at 5:08 pm

Three days after the launch of Apple’s iPad, video games are dominating the app landscape, according to analytics company Distimo (via TechCrunch).

Distimo counted 2,385 iPad-specific apps as of April 6, and 833 of them were games. The closest behind were entertainment apps, with 260 specifically for the iPad. Games account for roughly a third of all iPad apps, compared to almost 60 percent on the iPhone.

It makes sense that games account for fewer total apps on the iPad than the iPhone, but the discrepancy is still shocking given what Apple tells us about the applications people are downloading. Looking at current top 10 charts on the iPad, there are only three games among the most downloaded paid apps, and none among the most downloaded free apps. For all the games in the iPad App Store, few are making a dent in overall sales, especially compared to the iPhone, on which games account for eight of the top 10 paid apps and seven of the top 10 free apps.

What are people downloading the most on the iPad? Productivity tools like Pages and GoodReader, informational apps such as The Weather Channel and USA Today, and entertainment portals such as iBooks, Netflix and the ABC Player. From the initial charts, it seems that people are not nearly as interested in playing games on the iPad as they were on the iPhone. Anecdotally, I’m not. I’m still waiting for a killer music creation app and a blogging tool that actually works.

Of course, things can change. The top download charts could eventually list more games as they flood the App Store — especially if developers get desperate and start slashing prices. As a gamer, I certainly wouldn’t complain, but I also hope developers see the need for more productivity, information and content apps, and fill it.

12 comments