by Ian
Hardingham
Sony appear to have impressed a lot of people with a
lot of rubber ducks. The web is full of
analysts predicting Sony’s early victory with the impressive power of the
PS3. The main argument seems to be: if
Sony beat Microsoft when it had the less powerful console, it’s definitely
going to win when it has the more powerful one. I’m not going to be making any predictions on the victor of Sony
vs Microsoft part 2, I’ll leave that to May 2008 when we all have a bit of a
better idea of what’s going to happen, but I’ll sure provide some variety to
games analysis this morning by listing some reasons you don’t want to
get in Sony’s bath too soon.
You know, I have a
glass of water on my desk which could produce quite a lot of power in cold
fusion. I don’t have the time to
perform cold fusion on every glass of water I see, so that’s not much use to
me. The playstation 2 had one hell of a
lot more power than the Dreamcast, but you know which version of Dead or Alive
looked better? That’s right, the
‘Cast’s, because the DC had nice anti-aliasing routines you didn’t have to code
for yourself. And now we have the PS3,
with ten of these revolutionary ‘Cell’ chips.
Well done Sony, if you have programmers with experience of these chips
and the time (and frankly inclination) to write an engine using ten concurrent
processes that actually works, you can have a bath load of ducks. I’m not buying this. Sure, the best looking PS3 game will look
better than the best looking 360 game, but getting there will cause an awful
lot of companies to stop trying.
Let’s get one thing straight: it’s not a lot of fun writing software for multiple processors. These processors might have a cool name, do stuff really fast, and each have a memory stick slot on the top of them, but it’s not easy to make them work together. Fact: it will cost more to make the same game on the PS3 than it will on the 360. And converting high-end 360 games to the PS3? Forget it. If your game won’t run on one Cell chip, porting will be expensive. And boring. And to be honest, it won’t be that easy to port the other way either. Add this to the fact that Nintendo aren’t even playing the same game anymore (They’re not measuring the Revolution’s power in terms of terraflops, they’re measuring it in terms of how many rotational sensors they have. By the way, that means they’re beating both Sony and Microsoft 1-0. Way to go guys) and you’re looking at a next-gen landscape with one hell of a lot less ports. More games will be single system only, and if you think people are going to choose Sony automatically, think again. In the current climate people are looking to cut costs. And the 360 is offering that.
Listen Sony, I’m sure you’re all partying and drinking a lot of champagne (or sake or whatever) because you whipped MS’ butts last night, but really: are you sure it was even that good an idea? I mean, you just humiliated the captain of the football team in public. You just stole his girlfriend, and that was despite him being on MTV last week. He’s going to get revenge.
Sure, Microsoft don’t like losing money. But let’s be clear here, they hate losing. So be happy and party now, but beware the 360’s launch. If you’re still the strong popular favourite then, don’t be surprised if you see the 360 launch at $100. And no, I don’t care how many ducks you can render: if come launch day punters have a choice between paying $300 for a PS3, and $150 for a 360 and Halo 3, you are going to have a bad weekend.
Now, a lot of people are pretty much putting Nintendo in third place this morning. I don’t have a problem with this: third place sounds just about right for a company looking to make actual games. The majority of buyers on this planet want to “play” movies and they’ll be buying one of the other two consoles. Nintendo seem to be quite happy with this and although it’s looking disappointingly like the Revolution won’t be the first ever 3D holographic console, it’s still going to cause a whole lot of interest among hard-core gamers. Make no mistake: Revolution will have far fewer games than either of the other two, but the games will be unique and interesting (assuming people don’t run out of new ideas of how to use a rotational sensor in a game). The real question here is: can Nintendo sell enough copies of Pokemon to keep themselves afloat while doing the greater good for the games industry with the DS and the Rev? My advice: sell Pokemon (and, if things get desperate, Kid Icarus) on the PS3 and the 360. You’ll get more respect from your fan base (you know: the customers who don’t buy Pokemon) because they’ll now be able to take the piss out of people who buy Pokemon out loud. You’ll get more money. And you’ll really piss off the people who say you’re selling out because they’ll come home one day and find their little brothers playing Pokemon Mellon-Green on their precious PS3. It’s a win-win situation.
Who else is hoping we’ll be able to use our DS’ to control FPS games on the Rev? I’m sorry, I know that people who played Halo have convinced themselves you can play an FPS properly with two sticks, but it’s just not happening. And the only thing apart from a mouse and keyboard that even vaguely does the job is the DS’ touch screen. Who would’ve guessed when first loading up the Metroid Hunters demo that the control would be so intuitive? With the DS, I don’t find myself walking backwards when I want to aim up, I don’t find myself rotating and looking at the ceiling like I’ve had too much Canadian Spirit whenever I try to move, but mainly I just don’t have Turok 2 flashbacks the whole time. That sells me.
With the DS connecting to the Revolution out of the box, this seems like a great easy thing for Nintendo to do to instantly give them the advantage in the console FPS genre. Do it. And port the original Goldeneye to the DS while you’re at it.
Some preview code of this third person invade-themed action title from Pandemic has been doing the rounds, and I’ve seen one analyst describe it as a quote feel good third person action game end quote. Now, I have no idea what this means. Quite apart from the difficulty I have in believing there’s anything good in a third person action game, I’m just trying to understand the idea of a “feel good” game. Surely if you’re down you want to watch an episode of Joey, not try desperately to control your camera while “locking on” (button R) and “shooting” (button A) some amusingly animated cartoon animals. Surely if you need some cheering up you should go see some friends, rather than trying to collect a load of musical notes while watching your character perform the same animation over and over and over again. Listen: if you’ve just been dumped, there are only two things that are going to make you feel better, and neither are third person action games. You need a bottle of Scotch and a mid-price hooker. Pandemic are a company with a good pedigree, and I’m sure DAH will be an above average example of the genre. What it won’t be is a good counsellor.
Hey guys, did you hear 3D Realms’ great idea? Fed up with being the industry’s poking-goat for having the most delayed game in history, they hatched a plan to make some other company resurrect Prey, a game even more ancient than DNF. Suddenly, Prey would be later than Forever by about five years, and people would stop throwing stones at you in public. Nice idea guys, just a pity you forgot one important bit of the plan: to get another company to do it. Now, instead of no longer being the biggest joke in the industry, you have the two most delayed games in history on your books. Nice work.
1. Why is Will Wright raving about how good the art compression in Spore is? Sure, he’s got a demo which goes all the way from cells to outer space, so why is the thing he’s second-most excited about in this game some compression technology? It’s alright dude, we’ve all got broadband now. Calm down.
2. Why haven’t I heard anything about the Phantom recently? Come on guys, this is E3: it’s the time of the year where you roll out that plastic box the kid in science class made for you and pretend it magically downloads games over a telephone wire, while playing a video of Marble Blast.
3. Why aren’t more analysts being rude about The Matrix Online? People seem to have forgotten about it, despite the fact that it needs at least another three months of constant shouting-at to make up for it’s truly terrible 3D green text effect. That thing is so bad that when I saw a screenshot of it I actually loaded up a video to make sure it was really that idiotic. That is the worst implementation of a good effect in the history of this industry, and no, I haven’t forgotten about Soldner.
1. Follow Valve’s lead with engine technology. Don’t spend five years on an engine for one game and then throw it away (or at Raven or whatever): that is a waste of time. Is it any wonder games cost this much to make when you lot think each one needs it’s own engine? Valve are doing the sensible thing and using the HL2 for a whole load of their new games. Yeah yeah, I know you’ve all bought the HL2 engine too, but use it for more than one game.
2. Stop hiring people to work on the new Tomb Raider. I mean, first you make one of the most unbelievably irrelevant moves in history by hiring Warren Spector to work on the new Lara-em-up, not understanding no-one who knows enough about the industry to have heard of Warren Spector will ever buy your game, and then you get back the original TR designer Toby Gard. Listen: in the five years he hasn’t been working on Tomb Raider the only things Toby Gard has learnt are: (a) how to make a character in a third person action game avoid obstacles on it’s own, thus removing pretty much 90% of the challenge from the genre, and (b) you can’t put breasts on a pirate. Oh good, so now he’s back… what? Lara’s going to jump for herself? The last time anyone cared about Tomb Raider was when it looked like Bono from U2 might buy it. He decided against it and the rest of us with him. Tell you what, hire Ed Del Castillo and John Romero and then you’ll have a development team so irrelevant they might just produce something fun.
3. Stop pretending your game is the next Goldeneye. This is getting absolutely pathetic. What on earth are you doing telling me your new squad based world war II FPS is the next Goldeneye? Do you know what Goldeneye is? Do you know how old Goldeneye is? When you say your new game is the next Goldeneye do you mean your new game is Goldeneye: Rogue Agent? Listen: people have been telling me their new game is the next Goldeneye for seven years, and all those next Goldeneyes sucked. If you’re telling me your next game is the first game since Goldeneye to be good and play like Goldeneye, then I don’t believe you. Considering even Rare showed they didn’t understand what made Goldeneye Goldeneye with Perfect Dark, I don’t think you know, especially not if you’re making a squad based world war II FPS. You can be the next Tac-Ops if you like.
Till next week,
Ian Hardingham