No 3rd party for Nintendo

Nintendo Whi (Y)
Why don’t you want to make games for us


“Do you guys have any wii’s?” 6 months later and Nintendo’s revolutionary system is still nowhere to be found. Its not that Nintendo never shipped it, it’s that it sells out as soon as it hits the shelf and in most cases it never even hits the shelf. but why? Why 6 mouths of nonstop sales, something’s wrong here? One theory is that, Nintendo only ships out a few at a time, and that retailers hold them for their weekly ad which creates more hype like a new system launch every week.

But a system is only as good as its games, and the way that the wii sells it must have some amazing games. At first glance looking at games like Zelda: Twilight Princess, Wario Ware Smooth Moves, Super Paper Mario, and of course Wii Sports. You can see that there are some great games on the system, but the list is rather short for games that you must own. Shirley there must be some amazing in the Future for the Wii? Well yes there is, Super Smash Bros, Mario Party 8, Super Mario Galaxy, and Wii Music.

Noticing a trend yet? Flipping through magazines, sifting through the Internet wish lists you start to notice that (pretty much) the only games that people are interested in are Nintendo first party games like Mario. That’s not necessarily a bad thing considering Nintendo’s been able to hold there own in the past and pretty much carry the game cube through the valley of death. But where are the 3rd party games? With the system out selling everything on the market why aren’t developers jumping all over this thing?

But its not like there are no 3rd party games at all on the wii, there’s far cry, splinter cell, call of duty, need for speed and so on. But the problem is 90% of the 3rd party games are just ports and the general idea that most wii owners also own a PS3 or 360. So you got to ask your self, Do I want to buy call of duty on the wii with dated graphics and no online or for the 360? My guess is that if you going out to buy call of duty you going to get it on one the big systems so that you can reach the games full potential.

I don’t think the 3rd party developers understand this theory. Just porting your popular franchises over to the wii isn’t going really get you any where because, the people who bought the wii didn’t buy it to play Splinter Cell the bought it to play stuff like Wii Sports (Games that are designed around the Wii mote). Because in all honestly if you don’t design a wii game around the wii-mote all your left with is a PS2 looking port with cumbersome controls.

I guess where I going with this rant is if the system is selling as well as it is and its hyped as big as it is, why isn’t the 3rd party community taking it serious and standing behind it? Why aren’t there more original titles and less ports and children’s movie game remakes? So you might say, “well the wii is suppose to appeal to all ages, so it needs to have kiddy games”. Ok, yes this is true, but lets be honest here… go to you local retailer look at the wii games and tell me that 50% or more of the wii titles are not meant for a 13 and younger. (Not literally I’m just making a point)

So what did I buy a kiddy system? Well tell that to a Nintendo fan boy and he will quickly bust out his flamethrower. So if its not all meant for kids and the geriatric where does the core gamer demographic fit in? Are the games for our crowd the splinter cell ports and call of duty ports? That clearly can’t be it? Oh sure manhunt 2 is coming but it’s a multi-plat former as well and it’s a rockstar “sub category game” but I wont get into that.

What’s the first thing you think about when you hold the wii-mote, what does it remind you of? … You guys are sick… haha no but seriously some sort of sword or bat or melee weapon right? Nintendo boasted the whole “360 degrees of motion”, so where is it? Most of the games are using the wii mote no more then Sony’s Sixaixs. Sure there are a few mini games in the mini game bundles (wario ware, raving rabbits) but where is the full game using the wii mote to its full potential?

I guess the only thing in Nintendo defense is that it’s early in the game and that only time will tell. But they could at least let us know that they are working on doing this to spread some light at the end of the tunnel because as for now, all we have to look forward to are Nintendo 1st party games, ports, and kids movies.

On a side note, we all know that if Lucas did a lightsaber battle game for the wii using the full 360 degrees of motion it would most likely be the best selling game of all time. geeks, casual star wars fans (like myself) and even non-star wars fans would eat it alive. *Hint, Hint Lucas Arts*

~ Ryan Waltz

**DISCLAMIER** while I cant be everywhere at once and this post isn’t updated every second if you have found said game that I'm referring to, that’s nice... but I wasn’t look for one game I’m referring to the industry as a whole.

"Pretty soon you wont be able to tell the differeance between games and real life.."

We've all heard that statement before, from someone standing in front of a kiosk at E3, at EBgames, at Target.. Wherever the case may be, people look upon a new game and think, "that’s amaza'zing, how did they do that". But the catch here is 9 times out of 10 they are watching the trailer, weather or not its game play footage or a CG video, its a trailer. What’s wrong with that? Ill tell you...

pre·de·ter·mine (prē'dĭ-tûr'mĭn) Pronunciation Key v.

1. To determine, decide, or establish in advance: "These factors predetermine to a large extent the outcome" (Jessica Mitford).

The initial problem with a trailer is that its predetermined, basically meaning the way that plane flew under the motorcycle just at the right time, or the way that he used the special move when 6 guys were perfectly placed around him. Which is all placed in the trailer at the right time and place, but they left out the other 100 some odd try’s it took to get that shot. But it doesn’t stop at game play footage, a predetermined CG video using the games characters moving in life like motions misleads you to the experiences you are actually going to get when you coin up the 20-60 bucks for that game.

Lets date my blog and use some examples, ill start with an easy one that everyone’s talking about... Killzone 2, ah yes the beloved Killzone 2 trailer that BLEW our minds at E3 2005. We thought "ZOMG the ps3 is going to be like playing real life!" now from a rendering stand point of mapping and just the visual aspect, yes that’s possible. On the ps3? I donno, but its still possible. But the life like motions of the characters and the so forth should have been a big red flag.

Another good example is the Marvel: Ultimate Alliance opening video. This looks like the love child of Marvel, Pixar, and a comic geeks wet dream. Look closely in this video at the way their bodies move, the way their hands and fingers move, they way they use all of there human muscles like a normal human (or mutant is this case) would. Where am I going with this? well...

in order to actually have movements like that in "real time game play" you would need a controller with somewhere in the neighborhood of a 1000 buttons. And even then you wouldn’t be able to operate all the movements and muscles the way they are done in a predetermined video. I mean if you had a controller that had 10 analog sticks for just the fingers an so forth, do you really think you could... in real time, animate that character and make it even do anything let alone pulling of the amazing stunts you saw in the opening video?

The truth is you cant, its physical impossible to make a game have real-time game play that looks like "that", with a hand held controller. Think about it, you typically have 1 analog stick to move the character in platformer games such as, say god of war. So basicly your moving kratos with the same thing they used on the Atari? you push up he runs up with the "runs up" animation. If you spin it a circle he rotates in a circle. Now try to run down the wall, jump off over a cyclops head, while stabbing a dead guard on your way back to the ground and then kick him while throwing your blade behind you... in real time.

You cant unless the game developers set it up that way and it would be the same animation every time you did it, because executing that move brings up that animation. So will games ever look like the trailer or like real life? Well, yes and no, it depends on how you look at it and the type of games your talking about, let me explain.

A car essentially has 2 major controls of movement, "steering" and " go/stop". You can’t throw your weight and change the way the car turns; the only other thing that you have major control over is the gearbox. So with something like this the only thing that’s stopping game developers from making it seem like your really driving a car is honestly graphics. Sure an analog stick isn’t the same as driving but, what about steering wheel contorllers and pedals? The actual controls of a car are covered its only the graphics that are left, for the most part.

The problem is games that involve some kind of living character. The only way to get the same realistic movements in the game "in real time" would be for you to ware a full motion capture suit, like the ones they use to make most of thoughts predetermined videos you see. Only then could you get the same arm and body movements that would seem life like, but then the problem is you pretty much steeping into Virtual Reality (VR).

Virtual Reality has its drawbacks and I think Nintendo is going to find this out with their "Wiimote". The easiest problem to point out would be "collision detection". So lets say your waring this motion capture suit, or even more realistically your holding a Wiimote and for the sake of argument your playing a samurai game. What happens when you swing your sword?

Well I guess it depends on what you’re swinging at, if you swing at the air it will just follow your movements, but if you swing at say, A stone? the sword in the game would stop when it strikes the stone, but your arm, being as though it didn’t hit anything, would continue to swing. So now your sword is up here while your arm is pointing at the ground and as soon as you move your arm away from the stone it would "skip" or "jump" to the new position that your arm is at, thus breaking the realistic experience.

All this aside no matter how you make the game or how you play the game it still goes back to my original point, "predetermined". Even if you could figure out the VR problems, the game still will never be as cool as the trailer because the trailer is a show case of the coolest things that "could" happen in this game. But who’s to say you'll actually pull that off, you my find your self running into the wall all night, then throwing your controller down and end up going outside to play some basketball?

Bottom line is, trailers are miss leading and gameplay will never look like real life.

~ Ryan Waltz

Money-grubbing retards or Marketing geniuses

*note this was orginally written Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Sony:

Money-grubbing retards or Marketing geniuses

So with the launch of the Playstation 3 (PS3) growing closer, rumors, speculations, accusations, and contemplations are running ramped. The initial price announcement of the PS3 was quite the shocker to the world. With most people feeling that $399.99 for an xbox was steep, the hefty $499.99 and $599.99 price tags almost gave gamers everywhere a simultaneous heart attack. Instant backlash ensued, claiming that it was overpriced. Honestly though, 600 bones for a console is almost ridiculous, so what are you getting for your 60000 pennies.
Lets take a quick overview.

The PS3, on paper, is the most powerful console on the market, no dout about that. Now at first no one will noticed the difference between a 360 game and a PS3 game, but over time (1-2 years) the games will start to utilize the systems full potential, Same concept with the PS2 and Xbox 1. When the xbox first shipped, the games looked no better then the PS2 games, but towards the end of its short life the xbox's games started to show a little more "crispness" then its counter part, the ps2. This only really matters for the hardcore graphics junkies because, the untrained eye still cannot make the difference between a PS2 game and a last gen xbox game, but the difference is still there.

The PS3 supports blu-ray (Sony's high definition disc format) out of the box on both models. Where as the 360 requires you to buy a $200 add on for Microsoft's challenging format HD-DVD. So buy a Premium 360 and a HD-DVD drive and you could have bought the high-end $600 PS3, which also has wireless controllers, HDMI and a high def disc support, for the same price. So now the $599.99 PS3 doesn't look so overpriced, but I'm sure some of you are saying "but I don't care about high def movies I care about games." Well this affects your games too, read on and ill explain this more in a minute.

So what is that extra $100 for then on the $600 unit, verses the $500 one? How bout a 60 gig hard drive, which is 40 more then the 360? Out of the box WiFi support? Which is a $100 add on for the xbox. And HDMI support, which the xbox has. So hold on a second… if I want a comparable 360 to the $600 PS3 I would need a premium 360 $400, a HD-DVD drive $200, a WiFi adapter $100, which would run me $700 and I'm still 40 gigs short on my hard drive… hmmm … strange … "but wait there's more" I believe is how the line goes.

The $600 PS3 has Music, Movie and Picture play back support, which the 360 does but limited. The PS3 has a web browser for your TV, which the 360 does not. The PS3 can stream any data saved on the hard drive to a PSP from any WiFi hot spot in the world. Which means if your PS3 in San Francisco has some south park episodes uploaded on its hard drive and your on vacation in New York, you can go to the local star bucks, access your PS3 that's across the country and watch that episode. Which the 360 cannot do.

I also failed to mention that the HD-DVD drive is only for movies, where as, the Blu-ray discs are available to the game developers to use as they see fit. So if you want to make an xbox game, the most space (realistically) you can use would be 8gigs (which is still a lot to last gen standards) where as, a dual layer blu ray disc can hold up to 50gigs. Imagine the crazy things game designers could do with that much space, at this point in time it almost seems like too much space. But you'll be surprised in a year or two when a developer starts to use a blu ray disc for a game that demands more then 8 gigs?

So in conclusion, an equally equipped 360 would run you $100 more then the high end PS3 and it still doesn't do half the stuff the PS3 does? But, I didn't write this to convince you to buy a PS3. I could care less… I'm not even convinced if I am going to buy any of the systems. I'm really not impressed with the games out at the moment enough to drop that kind of coin on any of the big 3. Although something that I do find interesting is, the way that Sony has such a huge shortage of something that they know will sell millions of even at a $1000 price tag. Its almost like there's something fishy going on here?

Think about this, Sony releases 400,000 units in the US on November 17, which is clearly not enough, BUT the media will go nuts over this. The news will be reporting people camping out over night even after the launch, people may get into fist fights at stores, ebay auctions will go through the roof, the internet will be crawling with stories of PS3'mainia. All the while Sony sits back and watches the world advertise their product for them free of charge. It gets to the point where, people are doing so much just to get one that you ask yourself, if people are doing "that" just for a videogame system, then I might want to check this thing out.

The demand will be crazy and then Sony unloads there lot of the 2 million they promised and they sell liked they are gold plated vials of the fountain of youth. From a consumers standpoint this is ridiculous and frustrating, you just want your "stupid ps3" so you can just play your games. It makes you mad and you tell your self that you wont buy one because of it. But once they are readily available on the shelves you will rethink that, because it's just human nature, you cant help it.

From a business standpoint this could be a genus-marketing ploy. Supply and demand, step 1. Cut the supply and build up demand, Step 2. ??? Step 3. Unload supply = profit. So either Sony is a bunch of business orientated geniuses or they are just a bunch of money-grubbing retards that don't know how to make deadlines… who knows? It's any ones guess really and only time will tell. And if it is just a marketing ploy, it's a smart move but not an original one because, this isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened nor is it the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, yadyadayadya…

So what was the point of this? No more then to share information, a lot of people are misinformed about the PS3 and I see it all day because I work in electronics retail. I get customers coming in all day saying "oh man $600 for a xbox with a Sony logo? I'm cool... " ... No… your ignorant that's what you are. And it was also to put out my own PS3 speculation of why they would release such a short amount on launch day. Becasue, I'm sure Microsoft did the same thing to boost the hype for the 360 when they had their "last minute shortages" as well.


~ Ryan Waltz

Mircosoft Holds Back Next Gen Gaming

*note this was orginally written Thursday, September 21, 2006

Next Gen, not so Next Gen?

Microsoft jumped the gun on the next gen system launch thinking that they had the upper hand by releasing their system first. They got a whole years head start on Sony and Nintendo and from a software perspective it seems as though the xbox is now the mother ship for game testing and building. Most companies are using the 360 to build their code, because they have had their hands on it for over a year. So it seems as though Microsoft's push to get the 360 out a year early was smart?

On the other hand, it may have been a bad move from a financial standpoint. The past year the ps2 hardware has been selling just as much as the 360 and the same with software titles, if Microsoft had waited until now to release the 360 they could have made an extra years worth of profit off the existing hardware, which was clearly not out dated yet. On top of that, they would have also had an extra year of R&D to work out the bugs, which would have resulted in less overheating, freezing, and defective systems. Which we all know Microsoft struggled with.

Another point is that if MS had waited, they would have also known what the competition had up their sleeve. With that extra year they could have found a way to add the HD-DVD drive into the system as standard hardware. Now most people say, "who cares about HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, I'm buying it to play games not watch movies?" … While your opinion is valid, you missing a crucial point. Did we say we didn't want a DVD player in the PS2? No… but if we did we would still be using CD's to make games and games like grand theft auto san andreas would not be possible or would be on 12 CD's.

Without the support of HD-DVD games are stuck to the standard 4GB DVD's or dual layer 8GB DVD's. How will this affect games? Well with the graphics getting better and games getting bigger, game developers are limited to last gen size disc's for next gen sized games. This won't affect the games right way; for instance, when the PS2 launched a lot of games were still on a CD. But as time went on developers demanded more space for bigger games and now 99.9% of console games are on a DVD.

Chew on this, San Andreas was on a 4GB DVD disc and it used the whole thing. A dual layer Blu-Ray disc can hold 50GB, that's 12 DVD's on 1 disc. Could you imagine what rockstar could do with a disc like that, with a game like grand theft auto? Similar numbers were said when Sony announced that the PS2 would support DVD, 12 cds on 1 disc.. Everyone said that was a "crazy amount of space" and "who would need that much". Who? Apparently everyone consider most PS2 and Xbox titles are DVD based.

So how does this affect the future of gaming? Well since blu ray is standard on both the 20GB PS3 and 60GB PS3 the option is there for developers to make games that big. But with the 360 if a company wanted to make a game on a HD-DVD disc they would have to expect everyone who buys their game to buy the separate external HD-DVD drive for a cool $100 so that's about $170 for 1 game? Think anyone you know would fork out that kind of cash for 1 game while their buddy just has to buy the game for $60-70 on his PS3?

Another problem this creates is mulit-platform games. With the growing cost of game devolvement it is almost standard that most games launch on all current systems. So say a large company like EA who supports both sides wants to up their games and start using HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, they would be faced with the question of, do we chance the fact that people will stop buying our games on the xbox because they need the separate drive? They wont chance that because they know that they will lose money, because people will not buy the drive just to play EA games.

Another example is Rockstar Games, makers of the infamous Grand Theft Auto series. They are constantly pushing the boundaries of the ESRB but they are also constantly pushing the boundaries of "how much content can we cram into 1 game?" for a company like them HD-DVD and Blu-Ray means no limitations, they can build a city 4 times as large as San Andreas with hundreds more cars and missions and just go nuts making it. But because we all know that MS didn't launch the 360 with HD-DVD support is safe to say that when GTA4 launches "simultaneously" in Oct of 2007 on both the 360 and the PS3 it will be on a standard DVD.

So not only did Microsoft shortchange their faith full and loyal fans, but they also are holding back the developers from going truly next gen. Some people may be skeptical of this theory, but the facts are there. Look back at the PS1 to PS2 jump and the switch between CD and DVD, nobody thought that DVD based games would take off as much as it did when Sony first announced it, and now look where were at. So the next time you hear someone talking about Blu-Ray and HD-DVD don't just discredit it to movies, this could also affect the future of your favorite games too.

~ Ryan Waltz