Just last week I was sitting on my porch drinking my evening Earl Grey, and as the hot southern Georgia sun began to gently lick the barren plains en passe to its nightly resting place beneath the horizon, thought to myself:
“What this industry needs to more fluffed up franchised generic shooters, gimmicky peripherals, and contrived ‘services’ selling things we already own or never use. I really don’t think this industry could bear anymore original IP and culture-centric direction; it’s overrated.”
Imagine how content I was to find out that’s exactly what has been shaping up in some of the bigger E3 conferences. Also, that was sarcasm and a lot of it.
E3 is an annual event that normally makes the hearts of gamers sing and this year is probably going to be no different. Twitter, facebook, even myfonts.com has some kind of E3 updating mechanism, so it goes without saying how big a deal the expo is and how excited people become over the announcements. But, this guy – this guy for some reason hasn’t been overly shocked or pleased with the direction he suspects things are headed.
Now, this isn’t about the software per se, but the hardware since that seemed to be the big theme this year. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo walked in and did their little dance. Some of it was entertaining and some of it was lackluster. So, this piece is dedicated primarily to the hardware presentation and the message that the presentations sent out.
For several years now gamers have been awaiting the time that Microsoft would finally be releasing a ‘slim’ version of their console. Many were dissatisfied with the fact that they hadn’t followed suit with Sony in the last generation and now, finally they have. Piano black, smaller and less abstract form factor, bigger internal fan for quieter operation, built in wi-fi and shaped more like an abridged dictionary being slightly squeezed at its angular middle. The new XB360 will be the only model produced from release date forward (existing stock of older Xb360 consoles will be sold until stock is exhausted, according Microsoft).
I’m not sure whether I find Microsoft’s console strategy very appealing in terms of forking over money in this unstable economy. Microsoft’s new Xbox 360 and Kinect feel like they’re playing catch-up with everyone at once. Finally joining the ranks of their two top competitors they’ve included wi-fi, after years of temperature control issues they’ve adjusted the heat dissipation with a chip redesign and fan rearrangement, and then they’ve finally rethought the second generation of visual ugliness under control to be something that doesn’t look like it came from a NASA trashbin. In the break down of the new XBox there were things that Microsoft or anyone has yet to bring up and talk about like adjusting their hardware quality control or if there’s anything indicating addressing the fears of a new run of RoD error, the problems with disc scratches and revamping anything in the LIVE side of things to help balance out the negativity that adorns the user base.
To go with the console redesign was the re-unveiling of Project Natal as “Kinect”. 15 games at launch, a few announced by EA to work with it and a few that will be retroactively compatible. Microsoft presented stuff Nintendo did and wore out mixed with some Caucasian nerds dancing around in such a way that it lends credit to the stereotype given by non-Caucasian comics (or they looked like unashamed DDR addicts, take your pick). Well, at least we know how Microsoft feels about sloppy seconds and if you’ve ever watched Steve Balmer try to fire up a crowd, you already know how they feel about bad dancing (he loves it, especially to bad music).
The internal alterations of the new XBox 360 are superficial changes in retrospect and the Kinect isn’t all that innovative by itself, in my opinion – the biggest and most important change noticed is what these hardware changes and peripherals may indicate in terms of core business philosophy.
Call it success if you want, but it seems a lot like fear manifesting with a price tag, and that’s not helpful – it’s keeping up with the Jones’. I’m not implying that Microsoft or the XBox is by any means in danger of falling off, that they ‘suck’, or that what they’ve done here is stupid, but it really seems as though they were scared of losing more of the market share to either Sony, Nintendo, and now possibly Apple, and that in order to reinvigorate their user base they’ve more or less claimed “XBox 360: so can we”.
While all of these things are productive and helpful to the overall fanbase, or at the very least helpful in terms of a better product I have to wonder if these changes too late and to whom are they really marketed? Most existing 360 owners won’t see much in the way of added befit to acquiring the new model of 360. Chances are they’ve already got a wi-fi adapter or have simply learned to deal with wires. There aren’t any new peripherals included in the non-bundles and Microsoft has stated that Kinect will be compatible with all existing XB 360 models. Maybe Microsoft was feeling as though the software was the only thing really carrying the device to this point and got lonely in the dark, and if that’s what it took to finally make the changes in the hardware then there are bigger problems that I thought – these changes are things that for the most part, were attainable standards in 2005 when the XBox 360 was initially released. It’s not new offerings, but a latent fix after years of excuses and immovable opinion.
XBox 360 fanpersons rejoice! Your days of being the only online subscription service on a console rape victim in town will be over in a matter of days. What’s more is that you guys now apparently get a lot more for your buck even if you’re paying for it twice – because not to be outdone with relatively disappointing news, Sony held their press conference and confirmed the paid subscription boogeyman does in fact exist in their world too; “PlayStation Plus” it’s being called. Generic in term, the explanation of it all by Jack Tretton is underwhelming in nature, and the reality of it is really, really contrived.
Sure, it seemed really humorous that XBox LIVE subscribers paid Microsoft to ‘provide’ services on the XBox fans and zealots could get free elsewhere such as Facebook, Last FM, and Netflix – and it still is. However, even though most of the down-loadable content and so on require online connectivity to utilize, and without Xbox LIVE there is no ‘connectivity’, access to the data remains in the hands of the consumer. PlayStation Plus will give subscribers:
- A grab bag of full games rotating each month via PSN, they pull together a list and you pick from that.
- A video magazine subscription to “Qore”. It’s been highly criticized for lack of substantive content and too many ads for the amount of content.
- Early access to betas and demos (something that a Qore subscription already game players)
- Premium themes and avatars for free, most of which are poorly designed and obstructive or intrusive.
- Pushing firmware behind the scenes to keep the game going instead of the current method which is to alert the user every few minutes until the upgrade or force the upgrade to play the game
- And a few other uninteresting things
So, the PlayStation Plus set up, as explained, serves to ultimately replace Qore in terms of forcing fringe benefits and fix a few flaws in the current design for a price and only for as long as you pay that price (that’s right – you get Wipeout HD as part of your subscription, it is unusable if you ever cancel), and still no cross game chat – one of the few things that PS3 fans have been just shy of offering fellatio in order to get, and it’s still not there.
What Sony has done is take the existing service that was free and subdivide it into two systems, including some of the things people didn’t care about and trick them into caring about them without making them any more appealing or worthwhile rather than incorporate a separate and better service. It sits opposite Microsoft’s ‘all or nothing’ philosophy but that doesn’t make it a better idea in the long run, only a different bad idea.
Sony, dropped the soap and wants me to pick it up? Not happenin’
Nintendo so far seems to be generating the most buzz across both the blogosphere and big gamer-centric magazine houses largely due to their confirmation of the 3DS. Here’s how it went down:
A man walks on stage and says, “20 years ago audience members sat at a table, a plain brown table and ate beige plain oatmeal from a plain brown bowl. In the very near future, Nintendo will revolutionize that beige plain oatmeal and that plain brown bowl. How? Well, with a taupe plain oatmeat to eat from a burnt sienna container shaped like a the hat of a plumber.”
And the crowd promptly soiled their pants, because finally, their beige plain oatmeal had changed to something different – taupe plain oatmeal.
That’s not really how it went down, but it may as well have. Nintendo popped out of a birthday cake like Erika Eleniak in Under Siege; disoriented and annoying through a majority of the film, but topless and nearly naked long enough to make the lack of substance perfectly okay. For the most part Nintendo has always got assets to distract us from the relatively spotty performance and manages to attract an audience and retain loyalty with the few things they do really, really well. For every Virtual Boy and PowerGlove they produce a SNES and DS to make up for it – and we love them for it.
Nintendo presented the fan favorites in a line up that was relatively expected, to say the least: Link, Kirby, Mario, DK, and the rest of the gang. It’s sad though, that stating ‘the rest of the gang’ is definitive of the software assets a company provides. They’re synonymous with Nintendo and without their first party titles, they’d probably be sitting next to Sega, making titles with sporadic success. Nintendo has succeeded in that sense – they’ve been able to hold on their hardware market share because of their software. It’s not broken, but it’s boring. We know what Zelda is about and what Link can generally do. We rarely have to relearn the game play mechanics to play the games produced, so it’s old. But, with old comes nostalgia and that’s not been lost on Nintendo; it’s actually one of their finer qualities at times.
Nintendo kicked off the mundane first party reconfirmations with something more exciting: The Nindendo 3DS
Nintendo’s problem though is that they have more versions and editions of their hand-held systems than Microsoft has versions of Windows (no, really) and what better way to kick off the launch of such a device than to push players into a world they’ve already visited. I’m reminded of John Stewart’s character in Half Baked as he popped up to conspicuously ask “.. .but have you watched it on weed?” Have we played Kid Icarus? Most of us over 25 have probably played it, but have we played it in 3D? Nope, and aside from the token upgrades and minor arbitrary game mechanic enhancements that accompany all reboots it shouldn’t be a different experience in the end.
Maybe I wouldn’t be a little irritated by it if I knew in my heart that in order to play those nostalgic game with old graphics and pretty much the same experience, I need to pay the same now as I did back then to do so.
The Ninendo 3DS handheld touts the ability to natively display upcoming titles in 3D at varying degrees. I can’t say I’m overly ‘moved’ by the confirmation, as 3D movies, TVs, and the few games I’ve played never truly altered the experience or immersed me into the important part of the gaming experience any more than I was before the resurgence of 3D; call it… the ability to use my imagination. But, for some it’s an amazing prospect full of potential, and for those people I’m happy – enjoy your oatmeal.
It’s like the concept of James Cameron’s Avatar, in your hand… yes, the movie was good – uninspired, but good and the 3D was actually neat (but didn’t make the movie any better). Still, all that money and flashy concept work, hype, advertising and fanfare only for Hurt Locker to walk away the winner, imagine that. Maybe there’s something to the whole ‘function over form’ philosophy, but what what do I know?
The hand-held gaming world suffers with the users being relatively conservative and utilitarian. Hand-helds aren’t exactly the most practical way to game and there’s no established standard of performance or capabilities, only a set of things that some do and others do not. It doesn’t matter if the few things a device does are poorly executed it only matters that the device does them (look to the PSP on this one). How many things do people want in their pocket at any given time? 2,3,5…. 12? No. One, and Apple is acutely aware of this fact. If their phone can do everything a DS or PSP can do, or do enough of the same things with the same or similar games to where the consumer is stuck choosing between them, they’re going to stick with the most functional of devices; their phone (and Apple is acutely aware of this fact also). 3D suddenly seems pretty dumb on a hand-held device that now requires yet another generation of redundant software to mobilize itself until 6 months down the road Nintendo will announce the 3DSiXL^2.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that while E3 has been happening, 4th generation iPhones and Androids have been selling at record setting numbers, and there’s a pretty good reason why.
So what does all of this amount to? An empty box.
There are things that were presented by the big three that have merit and worth some degree of excitement. There’s sign of progression but it’s been bogged down by convoluted schemes and contrived system that only take away from what should be making us happy and the real joy within the culture; The original ideas and patent flare for groundbreaking advancements presented at this expo have left and it’s a sure sign that the industry is fresh out of ideas; Nintendo has little in the way of new IP but a slew of titles that are safe sequels to their top titles, most of which are so dilute that the original spirit of them died long ago or resurrected games that aren’t just archaic, they’re pre-historic; Sony and Microsoft have their own executions of a concept that held Nintendo back and done little more than to propagate shovelware around every corner; Microsoft still hasn’t figured out that dropping the long term cost of ownership is the fastest way to get popular overseas, that proprietary peripherals always fade to obscurity over time and somehow managed to convince Sony that the US market is more than willing to bend over the couch and get prison fist fucked for the sake of a label.
Where do they go from here? What are they going to do? They’d like us to believe they’ve clear plans but with thinly drawn directional lines that envelops technologies and mechanical methods of play yet to prove themselves, it’s really hard to gauge where it’ll all end up. Really, the only certain thing is that for the next couple of years gamers will be in a pit of experimental concepts feeling forced to adapt to horrible games leading to the path of being forced to adopt more poorly executed gimmicks otherwise lose out on gaming altogether. And the saddest part about it is that many gamers would believe just that.
I sure do hope that the software side of things can break away from the total lack of ideas, lack of direction, and lack of originality that their counterparts have demonstrated. I remain vigilantly hopeful but at the same time wearily doubtful. Perhaps next week I’ll be proven completely and totally wrong and my expressed fears and opinions will be seen as ‘without merit’ and textbook paranoia surfacing after years of suppressed nerd rage. Maybe I’m that old man shouting at those damn kids to get off my lawn in constant search of the glasses around my neck and a bottomless cup of prune juice… but until then, I’ll be watching trailer after trailer of generic shooter announcements on Game Trailers with “E3 2010″ in the title…
