Tag Archives | Gaming

What a Paid Playstation Network Might Actually Look Like

Posted by Jared Newman on December 18, 2009 at 4:39 pm

Earlier this week, I pondered the ways in which I might pay for the Playstation Network, because Sony is considering a premium version of its online service for next year, but hasn’t explained what it will entail.

It appears that Sony’s been asking some of its customers to ponder as well, with a survey conducted by IPSOS Online Research that lists 22 potential features. Not all the features are included in every plan, and survey takers were asked to choose the plan the like best. Kotaku has that entire survey posted here, but I’d still treat it as a rumor because it was sent in by a reader, not officially from IPSOS. And it’s just a survey, so there’s a chance none of these features will make the cut.

It’s important to note that the survey doesn’t mention any existing PSN features. Sony has said that everything you currently get for free will remain free. With that in mind, I’m torn between “Option 1” and “Option 2,” both of which are proposed for $70 per year. Here are some highlights from those plans:

Access to Beta Games: I don’t really enjoy playing part of a game in unfinished form, but I could see some members digging the idea of exclusive early access. That’s what makes E3 such a rush for us press types.

Cross-Game Voice Chat: Oh heck no. This oft-requested feature, which Xbox Live has offered since the Xbox 360’s debut, really ought to be free. But I’d really like to have it either way.

Full Title Trial – First Hour Free: Now we’re talking. If you avoid one game purchase because you hated the trial, the PSN membership pays for itself.

Free Access to PSOne Classics, PSP Minis and PSP/PS3 Themes: At last, a huge perk in the form of actual games to play. This would be a dealmaker for me.

Discounts on Store Content: Technologizer reader ReynaldoRiv had this on his wishlist. Someone at Sony must’ve been listening.

Loyalty Program Rewards: And I had this on mine. It’s only fair to butter up your best customers.

Catch-Up TV: I don’t know enough about this to give a “yay” or “nay,” but I’m intrigued.

The features in this survey are less ambitious than the ones I dreamed up, but they’re also more practical in the short-term. If Sony fused together all the above options in one package, I’d probably pay for that, too.

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Enough With the Wii Fitness Studies

Posted by Jared Newman on December 17, 2009 at 5:48 pm

Every week, it seems like there’s a new study that either praises or decries Nintendo’s Wii as a vehicle for getting into shape.

The most recent comes from the University of Mississippi. The study loaned Wii Fit units to eight families, who spent three months without the console and Balance Board, and three months using it. In conclusion, moderate Wii Fit use “may have provided insufficient stimulus for fitness changes,” said the study.

Nintendo would beg to differ. The company recently funded a study by the National Institute of Health and Nutrition in Tokyo, which found that a third of the games in Wii Fit and Wii Sports meet the American Health Association’s guidelines for moderate exercise.

Yet another recent study from the American Council on Exercise found that the Wii Fit provides “underwhelming” health benefits. However, ACE conceded that Wii Sports is more strenuous, and could help people meet minimum intensity guidelines for exercise.

Do we really need all these studies to declare whether the Wii is an exercise machine? Of course not. If you’re sweating a little after a round of Wii Sports Boxing, chances are you got some exercise. You also probably understand that it’s less of a work out than actual boxing, but it’s better than sitting on the couch. Duh.

The bigger problem with trying to quantify the Wii’s fitness value is that there are too many variables. You can play Wii Sports Tennis from your couch, or you can flail around like maniac. You can play Wii Fit every day for two months, and then never touch it again. Like any exercise, the Wii is totally dependent on what you put into it.

Indeed, the most important point in the University of Mississippi study is glossed over as an afterthought: After three months, the amount of time families spent playing Wii Fit dropped by 82 percent. Sounds a lot like my gym-going habits.

I can’t say it better than Kotaku editor Brian Crecente did in a Forbes feature on the matter: “What Nintendo did is they tapped into that desire people have to be healthier… Everyone wants to work out, but nobody really wants to put the effort into it.”

No amount of scientific fitness measurements can account for that.

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3 in 5 Homes Have Game Consoles

Posted by Jared Newman on December 15, 2009 at 5:19 pm

With Nintendo’s Wii worming its way into the homes of unlikely gamers, the number of U.S. households with video game consoles has spiked dramatically.

VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi has the details on the State of Media Democracy report from consultancy Deloitte, which found that game console ownership jumped from 44 percent of homes three years ago to 60 percent this year.

That’s probably because Generation X and Baby Boomers have either rekindled a lost love for video games or discovered it anew thanks to the Wii. Roughly 70 percent of Gen Xers now own a game console, compared to 53 percent in 2006, and 44 percent of Boomers own a console, up 13 percent from three years ago.

There are certainly other contributing factors besides the Wii. The recession may have caused people to seek video games, which provide more hours of entertainment on the dollar than a vacation or even a movie. I’m also hesitant to pin the entire rise in game console ownership on the Nintendo. Though the Wii has dominated sales charts since its debut, the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 have appealed to broader audiences by functioning as Blu-ray and DVD players, respectively, and by offering videos on demand. But the Wii’s success shows that people don’t necessarily need those extra multimedia features in a game console. They want to play games, and in that regard, the Wii still reigns.

As I read back over this information, a lot of it seems pretty obvious, but when you realize that the majority of households have a game console — not just a PC for playing casual browser games — it’s pretty remarkable.

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How I’d Pay for the Playstation Network

Posted by Jared Newman on December 14, 2009 at 4:24 pm

Sony’s been grumbling a bit lately about how it’d like to charge monthly fees for the Playstation Network, not for the online gaming and video downloads that Playstation 3 and PSP owners already enjoy, but for additional services.

The first mention came a few weeks ago in a Sony investors’ conference slide, and re-emerged in a Nikkei interview with Sony’s Masayuki Chatani. The company has avoided specifics, which makes me think Sony is still toying with ideas. Seems like a good opportunity to toss out a few ideas of my own. Here are some ways I could be persuaded to pay for PSN:

Help me replace cable: Instead of forking over $200 for a Boxee Box, I’d consider a monthly payment — say $20 — to Sony, especially if the service went above and beyond existing free Web TV offerings. Throw in live sports, and the deal is sealed. Licensing TV content is a sticky mess, so I’m calling this one unlikely in the near future.

Give me game rentals: I’m somewhat happy paying $25 per month for GameFly, but I’d be happier if Sony let me skip GameFly’s occasionally unbearable wait times by offering full game rentals for download. Because the service would only include Sony consoles, pricing would have to be less than GameFly, or more creative. Maybe a certain dollar figure for a limited number of play hours every month. I’d say this is unlikely, but Sony reportedly surveyed PSP owners about a game rental program in May, so it’s not absurd.

Stream me some indie games: The Playstation Network is home to some great small-scale games, such as Flower, Noby Noby Boy and the PixelJunk series. I’d think Sony has more control over these titles than big-budget releases, so why not let PSN subscribers play an unlimited amount of them every month?

All of This, Plus: If Sony could roll my entire wishlist into one attractive package, I could be persuaded to pay as much as $60 a month for it all (after all, I’d be relying on the service for television and a lot of gaming), but I’d like some perks in return. Maybe a monthly discount on a particular retail game, or a free movie download. Incentives go a long way towards keeping the customer roped in; GameFly’s discounts on used games are one of the reasons I’ve never canceled my subscription.

Am I asking for too much?

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Gaming’s Flop of the Year is Tony Hawk: Ride

Posted by Jared Newman on December 10, 2009 at 5:47 pm

Even as skateboarding legend Tony Hawk mechanically read from the teleprompter during Microsoft’s E3 press conference in June, I got the sense that he was genuinely excited for Tony Hawk: Ride, which uses a motion-sensing, skateboard-shaped peripheral instead of a traditional controller.

Turns out, gamers didn’t share his enthusiasm, as Tony Hawk: Ride sold only 114,000 units across all three current-generation consoles in its November debut, according to IndustryGamers.

It’s actually surprising that the game performed so well. On the review aggregation site Metacritic, the game has an average score of 48, and aside from a few glowing reviews, the general opinion is below average or downright negative. The controls didn’t work, critics said, and the game itself felt sloppy and rehashed from a dozen other Tony Hawk skating games.

But I like Patrick Klepek’s theory over at G4: Ride was doomed from the start, he argues, because it doesn’t offer the easy fantasy that makes games like Guitar Hero or Wii Sports so compelling. At worst, it only frustrates the player into understanding the difficulty of real skating, but you get none of the thrill in the process.

This reminds me of what I’ve previously written about music games: Even to musicians, they’re fun because they encourage a shared obsession over the nuances of music, even among people who aren’t aficionados or fellow musicians. In other words, Guitar Hero and Rock Band offer an experience that even real instruments can’t duplicate. The same can’t be said for Tony Hawk: Ride. If you can ride a skateboard, you’ll get very little out of the game, and if you can’t, you’ll get even less.

I should’ve known Tony Hawk: Ride would flop when I saw the game’s E3 Trailer. “If you’ve had an interest in skating, but maybe didn’t want to put yourself in a position of getting injured, here’s your chance,” said pro skater Paul Rodriguez. When a game’s primary reason for existence is avoiding injury, that’s a bad sign.

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EA is All About the Pirates

Posted by Jared Newman on December 9, 2009 at 5:18 pm

Electronic Arts chief executive John Riccitiello is no hard-liner when it comes to software piracy, and in an interview with Kotaku’s Stephen Totilo, he’s back on the stump for pirate-as-potential-sale.

“They can steal the disc, but they can’t steal the DLC,” he said, referring to downloadable content that’s often sold after a game’s release.

Riccitiello’s tone is less extreme than it was in June, when he told IndustryGamers that “if there are any pirates you’re writing for, please encourage them to pirate FIFA Online, NBA Street Online, Battleforge, Battlefield Heroes…” but the idea is the same: If you don’t demonize the bootleggers and illegal downloaders, there’s a chance they’ll purchase some extra content, and that’s better than nothing. They may even go legit as a way of showing support for developers.

Minus that last part, it’s essentially the same view Riccitiello — and much of the games industry — takes towards buyers of used games, from GameStop or other second-hand sources. Even if EA didn’t make any money off you for the base purchase, they can still get you on the optional extras.

I like Riccitiello’s dovish stance, but there’s a dark side in just how much DLC has become available, to the point where it seems like legitimate buyers are eating some of the costs of piracy and used games. Where extra content was once an afterthought that came months down the road from release, it’s not uncommon now to see additional content available on the day of purchase. Dragon Age: Origins, published by EA, is a recent example, where some of content was free, but some cost money. At least the publisher rewarded buyers with some free content as well, which pirates or second-hand purchasers would have to pay for.

Still, it’s hard to argue that you’re not getting your money’s worth from a game like Dragon Age, which boasts over 100 hours of play. And Riccitiello says that when customers are offered more DLC, they lap it up. He may be on to something.

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Synergy! PSP Minis on Your PS3

Posted by Jared Newman on December 8, 2009 at 5:49 pm

Sony’s PSP may be threatened by the iPhone and woefully behind the Nintendo DS in sales, but it’s the only handheld gaming device that has a console big brother and genuinely plays nicely with it, letting you stream movies and original Playstation games from the Playstation 3. That bond will strengthen later this month, when Sony brings PSP Minis to the PS3.

PSP Minis are a collection of cheap, small-scale games that debuted for the handheld in October. Many are ports of existing iPhone games, but unfortunately they’re more expensive, partly because they require an ESRB rating. Come December 17, an optional PS3 firmware update will turn on the emulator for PSP Minis, letting users play the games on both devices for no extra cost.

Sony’s way ahead of the curve on this idea, not only trumping Apple and Nintendo, but Microsoft as well. Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has talked about the “three screens” of PC, mobile and television, but so far that vision hasn’t applied to gaming. Yes, you can purchase movies through the Zune Marketplace and watch them on either device, but the ZuneHD’s entry into gaming has been rather timid with just a handful of Microsoft-made, ad-supported games, and no talk of support on the Xbox 360. Earlier this year, it was rumored that Microsoft would release a gaming handheld that could transfer games from the Xbox 360, but that report hasn’t panned out.

I’ve come down hard on Sony in the past — the company is content to ignore the iPhone as it hovers in the PSP’s blind spot — but treating the PSP and PS3 as siblings in more than just branding is a good idea. More of this, please.

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The Video Games Your Kids Shouldn’t Play

Posted by Jared Newman on December 7, 2009 at 5:32 pm

Common Sense Media has spoiled the fun of teens and ‘tweens everywhere, releasing a list of 10 games parents should avoid giving their kids as gifts this holiday season.

The list includes 10 alternatives, but that’s of little consolation when most of them are third-tier or year-old releases. For instance, Assassin’s Creed 2 is swapped for last year’s Mirror’s Edge. Battlefield: Bad Company is recommended in place of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Some of the alternatives don’t even resemble the original, like the platform puzzler Braid instead of the fantasy RPG Dragon Age: Origins. I also got a kick out of Demon’s Souls’ downvote partly because of its “depressing vibe” and brutal difficulty that can “break the spirit of even the most seasoned gamer.” How true!

I don’t want to rag on Common Sense’s list too much, as I like anything that helps parents be smart about media, but in general I tend to be wary of “play this, don’t play that” recommendations. One reason is that some of the games mentioned have parental restrictions built in. Brutal Legend, for example, asks at the start of the game whether you want to see gore and hear curse words. It’d be too bad if some teens, especially if they love metal music, missed out on that game, so a more valuable list would say which of these games has parental controls.

But the bigger issue is that the rating isn’t necessarily the be-all end-all. The teen-rated Infamous, for example, lets players become forces of evil (or good, if they choose) and kill innocent people. The game’s not as gory as Borderlands, but it stands on trickier moral footing. Left 4 Dead 2 is a bloody game, for sure, but it demands teamwork with real people online to defeat a common foe.

I’m not saying a 10 year-old should necessarily play either of those games, but a little more understanding of what the games entail, regardless of their rating, can go a long way towards making decisions that keep everyone happy.

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Games for Windows Gets On Demand Downloads, But Why?

Posted by Jared Newman on December 3, 2009 at 7:29 pm

Microsoft is being Microsoft and stepping into a market that the competition proved fertile a long time ago. This time, the company’s offering on demand downloads of PC games, going toe-to-toe with Steam, GamersGate, Direct2Drive and others.

The service, called Games on Demand, launches on December 15 as part of Games for Windows – LIVE. (I guess that awkward en dash prevents people from thinking of Windows Live, which is something entirely different. Chalk it up to bad naming habits, maybe?)

Anyway, I’m scratching my head, looking at Microsoft’s press release and trying to determine how Games On Demand will distinguish itself from the competition, particularly Steam, which rules the market. Looks like a pretty straightforward download service to me, but the company swears this one is different: “With Games on Demand, we didn’t just want to create a cut-and-paste version of existing digital distribution services,” Mike Ybarra, general manager of Live Engagement Services, boasts.

The one specific benefit Microsoft describes is the ability to “re-install your games whenever you want, wherever you want.” Steam does that too, because games are linked to your Steam account, rather than a specific computer. As for games, Steam already sells everything Microsoft lists as launch titles, including Resident Evil 5, Red Faction Guerrilla, Battlestations: Pacific, World of Goo and Osmos. Also, the features you get with Games for Windows look pretty much like Steam, with matchmaking, voice chat, text messaging and achievements.

I’m not questioning Microsoft’s move — they’re now selling game downloads on the Xbox 360, so they might as well get some PC action too — but I don’t see any clear reasons for gamers to abandon the download services they already use.

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Redbox May Do Gaming, But It’s a Tough Sell

Posted by Jared Newman on December 2, 2009 at 5:37 pm

Redbox wants to do for gaming what it did for movies by offering nightly game rentals from its popular kiosks.

According to Reuters, Redbox is talking with game developers (publishers, more likely) about renting games for $2 per night. The company won’t say which publishers are involved, but THQ, the company behind Saints Row, said it would consider the idea. Redbox is already testing the program in Wilmington, N.C., and Reno, Nev.

There are only two problems: Just as Blockbuster is following Redbox’s lead with movie rental kiosks, Redbox was beaten to the punch by Gamefly, which has been operating G-Box kiosks since March. More importantly, as I’ve experienced first-hand, renting video games through kiosks is unpleasant, at least with the business model that both companies are pursuing.

Game rentals are fundamentally different from movie rentals. You can watch a movie in one evening, but you can’t play an entire game in one night without a four-pack of Red Bull, and possibly the next day off from work. The real money from game rentals, I suspect, is made when you keep that game beyond the first day. That’s probably why Gamefly constantly sends me coupon codes for free rental nights. (Seriously, they’re like AOL demo discs in e-mail form.)

Unfortunately, the G-Box costs $2 per day, the same price Redbox chose for its pilot program. If either kiosk operator is serious about game rentals, it needs a weekly price scheme for considerably less than $14. As it stands, gaming by kiosk makes the most sense for people who want to try before they buy — and the G-Box does let you purchase games from it. Otherwise, you’re better off renting from a place that won’t put you under so much pressure. There’s enough of that going on in the games themselves.

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