Rock Band Gets Keyboards, Guitar Hero Gets Hard Rock. FIGHT!

The battle of the band simulators just got interesting. Rock Band 3 Vs Guitar Hero 6 looks set to be the most epic plastic axe face-off ever, bigger than RB1 vs GH3.

In the RB corner, we have two massive additions (in terms of importance and price, no doubt) in the form of three-mic harmonies, lifted from The Beatles RB and keyboards. Yes, keyboards.

A recent Xbox 360 Green Day Rock Band demo hinted at the inclusion of keyboards with a little monochrome keyboard symbol along with the usual drums, bass, guitar and (three) mic symbols – all alongside a jagged, Rock-Bandy 3. Harmonix haven’t officially confirmed it, but it doesn’t take a Science Genius Girl by Freezepop to work out that the keyboards are coming to the next proper Rock Band.

What could this mean exactly? Well, a much needed reinvigoration of a stagnating music genre for one. And secondly, Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. If the epic seven-minute wonder is in RB3 and playable on keyboard, expect sales to fly like a rocket ship soaring through the sky (yes, I know that’s Don’t Stop Me Now, which would be equally welcome).

This brings us to Guitar Hero 6’s response. Well, it’s going to have to be big, isn’t it? Well, the setlist which has so far been confirmed by an Official Playstation Magazine UK leak isn’t so much ‘big’ as eye-wateringly, head-bangingly massive. Dragonforce are back, and Slayer, Megadeth, Metallica, Ozzy Osborne and Children of Bodom have come to join them. Oh, and it definitely has Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody (except without the keyboards, we assume). It’s going to be epic.

Activision’s response to Harmonix’s ‘ultra-realism’ band sim (they are, apparently, going for a more realistic approach to RB3) is to make Guitar Hero an axe-shredding, finger-burning cavalcade of killer rock again, like it used to be before they sold out and started putting in Coldplay.

That means no more turgid pop-‘rock’, no more teeny-bopper indie bands (that’s what Band Hero will do now, apparently). GH6 is going to be Guitar Hero III – The sequel, like everyone wanted World Tour  to be. It might still have full band support but the focus is squarely on guitar riffs and screaming solos.

Thus, we have two very different approaches to the music game genre from the two largest behemoths in gaming – EA and Activision. The original Rock Band sold like hot cakes despite GH3 having been out at roughly the same time and selling some 12 million copies in the face of EA’s full band sim (whereas GH3 had only guitar or bass support). This would suggest that there’s room for both in the crowded genre – but that was years ago when the phenomenon was still exploding.

Whether people opt for Harmonix’s super-real, keyboard-toting, all-in-one band sim or Neversoft’s monster rock and metal fest with a killer guitar setlist might decide the direction of the industry for years to come.

I’ll have one of each, thanks. It’s like Gran Turismo V Burnout – If they both keep to their own identities rather than ripping off each other, there might be room on gamers’ shelves for two new rhythm action games this year.

And really, who saw that coming?

ModNation Mindblowing

It's brilliant. Fantastic. Great.

That's all you need to know about Sony's latest Play Create Share title - the LittleBigPlanet of the racing world.

But in case you do want to know more, here you go: It's better. A bold statement - certainly - but it's true. In just a few hours, I've created a couple of genuinely fun-tracks, three karts (with 'Eat My Dust' on my rear bumper) and a bunch of celeb mods. The internet, too, has delivered. No sooner had I checked the servers was my hard drive teeming with pixel-perfect plumbers, bending units and villains (that's Mario, Bender and The Joker). I even found a Monaco F1 track (a free cookie for anyone who can recreate a Wipeout circuit, by the way) - and the game hasn't even hit US shores yet. I can only hope Sony doesn't start deleting the copyright-infringing content, because it would be a huge disservice to the extraordinary level of cartoony realism that can be crammed into every 'Mod'.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to rip off Mickey Mouse, build a Bugatti Veyron and maybe, just maybe,  even race.

Sony to give away free games on a premium PSN model

That's right, E3 is coming up. Which also means that the rumour mill has gone into overdrive. Aside from a supposed quad-core, cell-based PSP2 powerhouse portable set for 2011, the other big 'leak' (take it with a grain of salt) is the arrival of a premium PSN at this year's E3.

The rumoured features include a spotify-like music streaming service, which will also play in the background of games and one free PSN game every month for subscribers to the new premium model - free for only £50 per year.

What suprises me here is that people across the internet are already being pulled in by the marketing spin. Ooh ooh! A free game every month! Well it isn't free, is it? You're paying for it in the subscription charge. The beauty of the model - from Sony's point of view - is that you PAY to get 'FREE' stuff. The other extras, like a music streaming service, will cost a little for Sony to set up, but then next to nothing to run in the long term. Similarly, bonuses which we might get (purely speculation here) like giving new features to premium users, or updating premium user's PSN store a day earlier, again would cost nothing to Sony. It's just a gimmick to ensure that Sony can pull you into spending a dedicated amount of money on PSN every year - i.e., to ensure they make money, while pretending that you're really getting stuff for free to pull you in, and your wallet out.

And do you really expect the 'free' games to be top of the line ones? No, they'll be games over a year old and under £5 each when bought normally, anyway.

Don't believe the spin, is all I'm saying, if Sony really do bust out this pay-for-PSN model at E3 alongside the current free service.

Having said that, if Wipeout HD sells a few more copies thanks to giveaways under such a model, I'll be signing up. If you can't beat 'em and all that.

(Thanks to VG247.com for bustin' out this rumour).

Guns don't kill people, violent games do

Have you ever wanted to stab a man? Maybe you’re not a blade sort of fella; perhaps gunning down a group of helpless pedestrians on your nearest pavement just because you can, just to see quite what this murder lark is all about, before you hurtle your Ferrari, new-car smell still lingering, into the nearest wall/river/yawning chasm, is more your thing.

Probably not, though. Most of us would be horrified at the thought of such monstrous, inhuman behaviour. It just wouldn’t be polite, frankly. But more importantly, because we know there are consequences. That man had a wife and kids. He had dreams, ambitions. He was scared of bees. Similarly, that Ferrari took a group of underpaid Italians weeks to watch the automated machines to make, cog by cog. Wrecking it would be like licking the Mona Lisa clean – tragic, inexplicable and pointless.

That’s real life, though. What about in games?

Games are not real. Regardless of what Jack Thompson (that guy who hates GTA), Barack Obama or the BBFC (those stiffs who slap 18 symbols on our games here in the UK, along with PEGI) might have told you, the guy you just ran over on Liberty City’s grimy ‘street’ isn’t real. He didn’t have thoughts, feelings or a family to go home to. In fact, he’s the same guy who was in the gun shop a minute ago – and I swear he just came back from the dead and is now walking around the park without a care. In short, he was a just a bunch of polygons, duplicated ad nauseam. It doesn’t matter that you just checked your tyre pressure on his legs.

But that’s not how the government, angry mothers and the media seem to see it. Games, to these groups, are sick, depraved filth causing our youth to turn into violent yobs, stabbing everyone they meet for kicks because they saw it in Call of Auto 6: Generic Subtitle.

It is, quite simply, ridiculous. As a society, we’ve gone – in just a few hundred years – from ‘children’ marrying at 10, being industrial slaves by 12 and fighting wars by 16, to a bunch of mollycoddled fatties who might be influenced by the ‘horrific’ scenes in the latest shooter – so terrible that they’ll obviously cause an entire generation to run into the streets and overthrow society one pistol round at a time. By that logic, the 1980s should have seen a sudden uprising of sickening turtle stampings, ghost persecution and Italian u-bend menders eyeing apes suspiciously.  Violent games don’t modify children’s behaviour any more than watching darts makes us all fat beer drinkers.

Games are an arena in which we can live out our wildest fantasies; driving obscene race cars, saving the hot girl and shooting the bad guy. But they are also – and this is something that some people will simply never grasp – consequence-free simulations in which we can let our darkest curiosities play out; stealing a cop car, causing a 10-car pile-up and yes, mowing down every Tom, Dick and Harry in the latest ‘sandbox’ city just because.

After all, better that than on a real street; with real people, with real families. We can’t hide away our healthy desires any easier than we can our slightly psychotic thoughts (“let’s see what happens when I minigun that helicopter”), but we can at least have a place that we can explore both sides of our psyche without causing problems.

After all, parents shouldn’t be letting their children play these games anyway. They’re sick, violent, and they’re all mine. The difference is – I’m over 18. I understand where gaming ends and reality begins. Parents need to understand that they have the responsibility to protect their kids until they are old enough to realise, too – whatever age that is in each case.

Now pass me the pad; I’ve got this sick idea.

Background patching for PS3: Rumour or reality?

Hello there. I hope that you're here to roam through the internet, to attempt to soak up as much gaming information and commentary as your brain will allow before you forget how to eat soup or wash.

But there may be another reason, in fact. If you're a PS3 gamer, you might well be here for one very simple reason: you can't actually play your PS3 right now. It's updating. Again.

Gamers new to this generation don't know they're born, with their shiny HD graphics, their particle effects and their universal online capabilities. In my day, we had a cartridge, a dark room and a high score to beat. But one way in which gaming has definitely gone backwards is in its laborious and time-consuming insistence on patching every damn time we turn our console on.

PS3 owners are certainly the most-blighted by this irritating new phenomenon. Barely a day goes by in which I'm not patching the thing or one of the games I want to play. The other day I felt like playing Burnout Paradise - big mistake, even bigger mandatory download. How on Earth Criterion felt they needed to add another 385MB to my hard drive, I'll never know. I backed out of the menu and have been avoiding one of my favourite racers ever since. It's gotten to the point where I have to insert a disc which I haven't played in a while just to check that I don't require an epic, internet-breaking download the next time I actually want to fire it up.

It shouldn't be this way. I should be able to game on my own terms, not be dictated to by a little (well, large) black box about when I install what. And, for the love of all that is holy, games developers need to learn how to release a polished, perfect game from day one, not rely on epically large, hard disk-stuffing updates in order to keep glitches at bay.

What about the (still significant) proportion of HD gamers without readily-available internet access on their console? It's not fair to release your latest run 'n' gun 'n' race 'n' pimp title full of glitches and game-breaking problems and expect the internetless-minority to just put up with it. Two to three years of development producing games which are immediately patched upon release just smacks of a poor attention to detail and a lazy development studio.

That's why I hope that the recent rumours of background patching on PS3 are true. It's about time. Time-poor gamers can't afford to lose even half an hour to install a bunch of 'updates' which, nine times out of ten, are simply security patches built to lock out the active minority trying to tap into the system. If I had all the time back that I'd been waiting for patches, well, I might have found the time to slog through Final Fantasy XIII.

I know, I know. That would have been an equally wasteful  use of the time. But it would be on my terms - and that's what Sony needs to realise - a games console is built to provide entertainment for the gamer, on demand. That's why if background patching is no more than a rumour, I implore the Playstation people to make it a reality.

The Art of Gaming

Games can’t be art, apparently.

Well, that’s if you believe Mr. Roger Ebert, who argues this very point in a recent blog post;

 “One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game. It has rules, points, objectives, and an outcome... an immersive game without points or rules ceases to be a game and becomes a representation of a story, a novel, a play, dance, a film. Those are things you cannot win; you can only experience them.”

Tosh. Ebert would not be the first to assume that he had the medium of games figured out. Think of some of the stereotypical images of ‘gaming’ which many see as typical of games – sweaty teens turning the air blue, red in the face, pulling the trigger until they black out from malnutrition. Unwashed football fans ripping one other’s personal pride to shreds in Fifa 10. Even happy families playing Wii Sports golf, rosier though the image is, are a far cry from achieving anything ‘artistic’ when they play.

Well, that’s all true. In the same way that much ‘art’ is unfettered nonsense (cross-sections of Sharks, or diamond-encrusted skulls are not art), or many films are less about serious cinematic issues (Harry Brown, Billy Elliot) and more about inane fart jokes and boobs (American Pie, Road Trip), many games are not about serious artistic direction, but simply exist for the purpose of having fun.

This is where Mr.Ebert, I think, is getting confused. Because in the games industry, for every Modern Warfare 2 there is a serious, art-driven title given much less media exposure.

Games can be art despite also serving a purpose. A painting on a canvas is pretty straightforward – some paint, an image and perhaps a subtle dig at society. A film, similarly, can go about creating whatever representations it wants, because all you need to do is watch. A game, as Mr. Ebert quite rightly points out, carries a goal, requires an input. It’s something you can win or lose.

But that doesn’t mean that they can’t be artistic, or that they can’t carry within them a sense of character, of commentary, of inherent beauty. Think about Okami, the criminally-overlooked Zelda-alike which hit PS2 late in its life, and was more recently (excellently...) ported to Wii. The game had a goal; to push through the story, beat enemies and kill bosses. But the execution of that goal, and of individual aims within that game, was nothing short of an artistic masterpiece. At the press of a button, you could call upon a ‘Celestial Brush’, turning the very environment around you into your canvas. Drawing a line across an enemy in ink would do damage, and encircling a dead tree would rejuvenate it, instantly, restoring rich watercolours to its immediate surroundings. Not only did this form a sense of creating art whilst conquering your goals, but the very presentation of each environment was artistic in itself. The graphics were lusciously poured onto a sort of ‘rice paper’ effect, every tree had a hand-drawn look, every enemy seemed to move as if a painting had come to life. Okami is art.

Heavy Rain is another prime example of a different sort of art. Sony’s hard-hitting, gritty ‘interactive movie’ dealt with serious issues, placed the player in difficult moral dilemmas, and did so whilst maintaining an air of mature realism. Its story-telling was at times clunky, the controls could be chaotic, but as a stab at genuine art, serious narrative and exposition, it showed how far gaming has come.

These are perfect examples of games which can be artistic in spite of the need to ‘win’, or to achieve something. But there are a whole host of games which require no such thing. There are games which outright encourage artistic expression and individuality.

You may not have heard of Korg-10 DS. It’s a ‘game’ which allows the player to create music, a sort of virtual synthesiser inside a DS cartridge. Its bleak black and white presentation, low-fi feel and niche appeal didn’t translate into the hottest sales, but it’s a very versatile tool for music creation. This month, a trio of teens took to the stage in Germany to perform a gig using only their Korgs and DSes.

Similarly, Flipnote Studio, the free DSiWare application, is art. It is actually art. The whole ‘game’ involves drawing a series of slides by hand with the stylus and replaying them to create miniature, amateur movies to upload online. Aardman animations, the studio behind Wallace & Gromit and Chicken Run, have already created several superb Flipnote animations to help publicise the ‘game’.

Ever since Mario Paint on SNES, gamers have been encouraged to get creative. Even today, in the likes of Littlebigplanet, Drawn to Life or the upcoming Modnation Racers, games have allowed people to express themselves.

Whether that expression is by games developers, creating environments which carry the creativity and beauty of a modern masterpiece, creating narratives which ask the player serious questions, or it comes from gamers themselves, constructing their own artistic creations, the truth is that gaming has never been closer to art than it is today.

Just look at Wipeout HD. What a masterpiece.

360 = Going Round in Circles

Failure. It’s not a concept that any company wants to have associated with their products. Just look at the furore surrounding Toyota’s recent accelerator-happy death traps on wheels. Turns out, people like it when their cars stop when they tell them to.

Similarly, people like it when their games consoles work. I was very unhappy, as a young ‘un, when I managed to spill strawberry milk into my Gameboy Colour, promptly and unceremoniously killing it. I was equally unhappy when my PS2 decided it preferred to produce disk read errors rather than operate on top of my booming soundsystem’s basslines.

But those were my fault. The Xbox 360, however, is another matter. The 360 is a better investment in the long term as a doorstop than it is a games console. They simply don’t stop breaking.

This is the part where I’d usually tell you about the mate of my mate’s who’s been through eight 360s in four years (true story). But there’s no need. Because as it turns out, the recent results of a survey of gamers  by No Fuss Reviews.com has resulted in some shocking evidence.

Of the 500,000 surveyed, the number of Wii owners that needed a repair is an impressive ‘less than 1%”. For PS3 players, that number jumps to a worrying 8% (that’s 800 people in every 10,000 consoles – far too many). But the 360? A staggering 42%. That’s almost half of all 360 owners. For ‘3 repairs or more’, the number is still an unbelievable 39%.

39%!? So, over a third of Xbox 360 buyers will need to have their console repaired three times or more? It's not even five years old yet. Compare that to the PS3’s 2% or the Wii’s 0% and the figure seems inexcusable.

These kind of failure rates are simply unfathomably huge. When you consider that the 360 has sold nearly 40 million, it must be considered that a shade over 16 million of those will break. That’s a lot of unhappy customers.

Surely, then, the Xbox 360 is the Toyota of the games industry – except Microsoft haven’t reacted to try and rectify the situation, haven’t apologised and, er, haven’t even fixed it yet, as new 360s still seem to die as easily as the old models did. Great.

Obviously, I’m not having a go at anyone who did buy a 360 – and there are a lot of people out there, more than the PS3 – but you have to wonder whether those customers would have stumped up a bit more cash for Sony’s offering if they knew about the appalling failure rates of Microsoft’s console. It’s a great console because of its wealth of excellent exclusives – Halo, Forza and Gears of War, to name just a few – and its frankly brilliant online service and achievement system. But technically speaking, it’s not a great console. It’s a dreadful, rushed, noisy, ugly beige box prone to random death at any moment, made viable as a purchase only for the efforts of Microsoft and other developers in furnishing the console with a ton of games and features at an affordable price. If the fragile Xbox had to get by with PS3’s early range of games and online services, it would be long dead.

People should not have to put up with it, though. Sony’s system has caught up in most regards, and excels in some others (Hello, Uncharted 2). Microsoft should be made to pay the price for rushing an untested system to market knowing they’d just have to fix them all later.

I love gaming, and that’s why I can’t love Microsoft. Go and make a console that I can actually game on, consistently, and I'll buy it instantly. But I can't accept the inherent faults built into half of all Xboxes, and other gamers shouldn't have to, either.

Modern Warfare 3 is imminent...

Well, it looks like there's a lot more Warfare on the way. Activision today let slip that Modern Warfare 3 is in development (like they weren't going to make one after MW2 sold more than 15,000,000 copies in just a few months).

The bad news? It was let slip as part of official court filings by two ex-Infinity Ward employees (the Modern Warfare developers). Not only was the split between Activision and these key IW members very acrimonious, it seems unlikely that the top talent will return to the series any time soon.

So, let's get this straight: some of the top devs have left the series, they're making lots of spin-offs (hello, World at War and the upcoming COD: Spec Ops) and the series is going to continue because it's making lots of money. Get ready, because Call of Duty is about to go the way of Guitar Hero.

You think they'd learn, wouldn't you?

Just to prove that I'm not biased towards big business...

Below is Sony's official response, hot off the press, to the criticism of PS3's new-found Linuxlessness (see the blog post below). I have, though, amended it with a few, er, additions:

"We are sorry if users of Linux or other operating systems are disappointed by our decision to issue a firmware upgrade which when installed disables this operating system feature. [We're sorry that people can get money off us for disabling Linux, we didn't realise that was possible]. We have made the decision to protect the integrity of the console [our wallets]  and whilst mindful of the impact on Linux or other operating system users [both of them] we nevertheless felt it would be in the best interests of the majority of users [our wallets] to pursue this course of action.

As you will be aware we have upgraded and enhanced functionality and features of the console by numerous firmware upgrades [*cough Home cough*] over time and this is a very rare instance where a feature will be disabled. Further enhancements are in the pipeline [Yes! Even more Sackboy outfits!].

Users do have the choice whether to install the firmware upgrade [as long as they don't mind not using PSN or playing online] and this is clearly explained to them at the time the firmware upgrade is made available for installation [it's buried deep within several pages of tiny text which no-one reads]. Furthermore our terms and conditions clearly state that we have the right to revise the PS3's settings and features in order to prevent access to unauthorised or pirated content [We're Sony, you're a common peasant: tough]."

If you didn't understand what this is all about, read the next post. Ultimately, though, this is a very big mess that's only going to end badly for all of us. Fun, though (unlike Linux, or indeed, Home).

Why Sony was right to remove 'Other OS' from its PS3

Notice anything new about your PS3 the last time you updated it? Probably not. In all likeliness, you watched a long download process, followed by an install bar, when all you really wanted to do was play Modern Theft Hero 6.

 Well, those of you who had Linux, the freeware operating system, running on your PS3 will have noticed that it, er, doesn’t work.

That’s old news now, though. Literally tens of people were outraged at this turn of events, obviously, the rampant popularity of PS3-Linux systems being what they are. Almost every Playstation owner has, at some point, thanked the gods of gaming that their console of choice can run an obscure OS with a large amount of effort and a lot of hassle.

 Well, maybe not. But every PS3 owner certainly should be interested. After all, they might be entitled to a free refund.

  The news surfaced this week that Amazon, the internet shopping giant, gave a European PS3-purchasing customer a 20% refund to make up for the lack of a Linux-install option on the console. Legally, they argued, the customer had a right to a refund or substitute (in this instance: cash) because Sony broke EU law, as the console no longer operated completely as advertised. They didn’t ask for the PS3 back, just gave them £84. And this was a 60GB PS3 owner – not exactly a fresh buyer.

This has massive repercussions for Sony, obviously. I severely doubt that Amazon are going to hand out cash reimbursements without asking the games company for a cheque in return, or that they would do so if it wasn’t completely legally necessary.

 This is obviously a huge problem for Sony at a time when the PS3 is beginning to regain momentum. Personally, though, I think it’s ridiculous.

 The Linux install option was a very, very underused feature. That isn’t the reason – if even one gamer enjoys a console’s feature, then removing it shouldn’t be done unless absolutely necessary. I love being able to move the PS logo from horizontal to vertical, for example – but even if I’m the only one, I don’t want to see it go.

The thing is though, the removal of the OS is actually necessary. The reason Sony removed Linux is because a cocky forum-dweller somewhere on the depths of the internet (read: in his bedroom) brazenly revealed that he had circumvented the PS3’s beefy piracy restrictions.

 I’m not some fascist, fat-cat-loving money man (hello, New Labour), but sometimes, the actions of big business can be justified.

Piracy is massive because it’s so easy. I download things that in reality, I should probably pay for. You probably have. It’s everywhere. I don’t judge these people, nor the many many individuals whom I’ve met playing on DS R4 cards. If the option is there, it’s hard to resist. If I could download a Ferrari, despite the fact that it’s sort of hundreds of thousands of pounds/dollars/Hungarian forints' worth of theft, I’d do it.

But this is different. Outrightly attempting to break a console’s security for the sake of free games is a bit wrong, and was only going to end up with one result: the loss of the feature forever.

Two wrongs don’t make a right, and really, both Sony and the pirate are at fault in some way, but the bottom line is that anyone who does want Linux on the PS3 can’t have it, Sony might have to destroy its profit margins to reimburse Amazon customers (and maybe more), and we still can’t play pirated games. If this situation really does get out of hand, we might not even get legal Playstation games any more. The losses for Sony – a company not exactly flush with revenue at the moment – could be devastating. Lose-lose-lose.

 Maybe after the dust of this new scandal settles, the next bedroom console-cracker might think twice before attempting to break some console security. And in a roundabout way, that would benefit us all – the developers who make those games that pirates steal, the publishers who depend on them, and the hacks like myself who write about the industry.

 For now, though, go claim your £84 refund if you’re an EU Amazon PS3 customer. After all, no-one can resist free stuff, can they?

An Extra Dimension of Touching

Okay, so I'll admit it. Right here in this very blog, I said that Nintendo wouldn't be making their next console a handheld. Well, with the recent announcement of the 3DS, the proper successor to DS, I can say that I was quite wrong.

The theory was sound, at least: DSi is graphically more capable than DS, a sort of subtle-successor to DS Lite, ready to have exclusive, shinier games (which, though it looks unlikely now, Nintendo can still make). Meanwhile, Wii is facing a stern test in seeing off the new motion control options offered by its competitors (see below for more on that...).

But that is Nintendo for you. Unpredictable. As ever, Nintendo came up with a pretty left-field idea and caught us off-guard with the announcement of a handheld that can create the effect of a 3D image on its two screens without glasses. Not only that, but it's going to be a true graphical leap from the current DS, and it will probably release this year.

Why now? Well, perhaps Nintendo was rattled by reports that Apple, that 'non-gaming' behemoth, has snatched 19% of the handheld gaming market - more than PSP - without even selling a dedicated handheld. Perhaps DSi didn't sell as well as they'd anticipated. Maybe rumours of an ultra-powered PSP2 forced Nintendo to get in first.

The likely answer, though, is none of the above. Nintendo does things on its own terms, sometimes infuriatingly so (hello, friend codes). The question we should be asking, though, is what this announcement means for the games industry.

Well, whether it actually works remains to be seen. Something closer to Avatar than Journey to the Center of The Earth (not the great book, the awful '3D' film with Brendan Fraser)in terms of 3D quality would be a big boost to the handheld's credentials, but the practicalities of the actual experience are important too. Will the images be 3D on both screens? Will they conflict with each other - or form one huge image? Do I have to hold it in a certain, awkward way?

We don't know, and we're not likely to find out until E3 this year. But on paper, the idea is full of promise. It seems that Nintendo has hit upon something massive. The one barrier to entry to 3DTV adoption, when they go on sale this year, is certain to be the price. Yes, Sony will update the PS3 with 3D-gaming capabilities, but can you afford the £1000+ tech to play on? Anyone who recently emptied their bank account on an HDTV won't exactly be itching to throw their 42" in the bin just yet.

What's the point of a 3D-enabled device if most owners don't and won't own a 3DTV? Well, when you buy a handheld, you buy a screen (or two, in the DS' case). Make them 3D capable at a low enough price and suddenly every 3DS owner has a 3D-enabled games console. That also means that Nintendo can make the 3D capabilities central to the experience. If Sony put in 3D-only content in Killzone 3, for example (like a puzzle that requires the extra dimension), they'd cut out the majority of players from accessing some of the content. But Zelda 3DS can utilise the added depth to the full, because every player can see the mind-bending puzzles. It's simply a stroke of genius.

Don't take my word for it, though. I've been wrong before. Time will tell whether the extra dimension can make the DS a success all over again. Whatever happens though, at least people won't notice now when Sony copies DS' touch screens. That's old news now.

Copy That...

First of all, apologies for the lack of activity recently; without regaling eager gamer-readers with the intricacies of my personal life, it’s been hectic.

It seems I’m not the only one who’s been busy though, nor the only one in need of making an apology.

It seems that Sony fans everywhere should be extending the olive branches right now – Playstation Move, the new motion controller from Sony, is a real Wii-too effort.

Nintendo fans everywhere are – quite fairly – lording it over their Sony counterparts, partly from the smug realisation that their downtrodden Ninty had fought back to literally and metaphorically lead the pack, in sales and ideas, partly out of anger from being so blatantly copied. Should Sony find runaway success with Move, Nintendo might well feel a little hard-done by.

The games industry, though, is above such petty squabbles. The fact is that Nintendo’s move towards motion has just taken one step closer to being the gaming standard. Will traditional button-based pads remain come PS4? Probably, but for the foreseeable future, if you aren’t up for arm-waving, you’ll be waiving your chance to play some key titles. Rumours of a motion-based Uncharted 3, a waggle-infused Heavy Rain add-on and even some sort of integration into the ever-delayed Gran Turismo 5 are flying around almost as readily as limbs in a sports-based set of mini-games, one of which has already been announced as a launch title for Sony’s wagglesticks (wonder where they got that idea, too?).

Gamers need to be ready to embrace motion, because it’s where the games industry wants to go next. Even Microsoft’s ‘big new idea’, Natal, is based on the idea of limb-flailery in the extreme. It may use a sophisticated camera to track your movements rather than any sort of controller, but the end result is the same – jumping about to kill, explore, score and kill again. All the usual gaming objectives can be accomplished.

The thing is, many gamers aren’t ready. For every gamer out there who wants to literally punch the air to make a kill or hit a home run, there is at least one who wants to stab X, eat crisps and gawk at the telly from the comfort of their sofa. If the ratio is even 1:1, that creates a dangerous split in the demographics. Yes, for now, Sony will still serve up great button-based titles – but what if Move doubles PS3 sales? Roughly speaking, that would mean that roughly half are still traditional gamers – but you can bet that motion would be crowbarred into every title, regardless of the large contingent who aren’t interested.

This is the real issue. It seems that no one actually wants to serve the traditional gamer any more. Why spend a hundred million pounds making a GTA V when you can knock up a motion mini-game collection for 3% of the development cost but 50% of the revenue?

The Xbox 360 and PS3 have so far amassed sales of 71 million consoles, combined, since the beginning of this generation without any kind of motion controller being available on either system. Never mind that this is actually more than Wii’s 69 million, but it’s pretty clear that the traditional gamer is still a market worth paying attention to.

Sony might find some success by mimicking Nintendo’s little white box, and Microsoft with their quirkier new camera, and I wish them luck, but they would do well not to Move too far from those gamers that bought ten million copies of Modern Warfare 2. Hopefully losing standard game-pads forever will be one motion gamers won’t carry.

Let's Get Critical

Games reviewers. Both our best friends and our worst enemies. When they slap a high score on that title we’ve already thrown down a hefty pre-order price for, we’re quick to sing their praises. When they cruelly slam our most anticipated titles with a witheringly low ‘6/10’, or some such figure, the conspiracy theories fly. ‘They’re Xbox fanboys!’, ‘they hate this genre’, ‘they’ve been bribed by Sony/Microsoft/etc.’
Our relationship with reviewers, then, is truly Marmite – which is to say, very love/hate. But is it just our crazed internet personae being baited into knee-jerk reactions online, or is does the system itself need to come under review? I certainly think so.

Games, it has often been argued, are an entertainment media on the up. What was once seen as a childish or nerdy pastime (though the medium still struggles with such labels) is more commonly being seen as a serious form of escapism, culture and very occasionally, art. Titles like the recently-released Heavy Rain (pictured) seek to show a more considered, mature side to gaming.

Not the big guns, big swears, bigger 18-symbol kind of mature, but the kind which focuses on strong narrative and adult dialogue. Games like Brain Training and Wii Fit have taken a stab at gaming maturity in an entirely different, but arguably even more successful way, taking a ‘kiddy’ pastime and allowing adults to utilise it to solve deadly serious adult problems like weight gain and senility.

It is time, now more so than ever, that we treated the medium seriously. Which is to say, critically. We cannot allow games to have an easy ride, especially when the standards of production values, graphics and even writing have never been higher. It’s time we got critical.

Other serious forms of entertainment are regularly given a rough ride, panned and pulled apart for every tiny flaw. Whilst I’m not arguing that every film is minced by critics, nor that every game should be, either, it is only by calmly acknowledging a game’s drawbacks can we improve for the future. If games reviewers simply foam at the mouth every time a good game comes along, we’ll never be able to tell what’s truly hot and what’s just hyperbole.Case in point: Grand Theft Auto: IV. The darling of reviewers this generation, garnering a 98/100 average on reviews-aggregate website, Metacritic.

Hold on. 98/100? On average? It doesn’t take a mathematical whiz-kid to work out that 98 on average is an absurdly-inflated score. Similarly, Super Mario Galaxy, Nintendo’s biggest critical success on 97/100 average, is obviously over-scored.
As a regular reader of gaming reviews, it is quite difficult to accept. SMG is possibly Nintendo’s single greatest achievement, potentially besting Super Mario 64 or The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. In my humble opinion, it does. But I still don’t think it deserves a 97/100 average. I don’t think any game does.
Film reviews are more considered. You get the feeling that the critics aren’t simply raving fanboys, rabid hype-junkies or silly company-politics obsessives.

 For example, Avatar, now the most successful film ever, garnered a very impressive 84 on Metacritic.That's a hugely positive review score, and any game developer should feel proud to achieve such a stunning critical reception for their title. Except, that’s not quite the case. For games reviewers have become accustomed to only using the top end of the scale.

 As a result, a 6/10 seems ‘a poor score’ when in reality it’s above-average. Similarly, 9/10s and 10/10s are dished out like Guitar Hero instalments, meaning it’s difficult to distinguish a truly outstanding title from a pretty good game. Now, games reviewers have created a vicious cycle in which only the highest scores will do. Regularly, reviewers point out real flaws in a title whilst going on to award it a 10/10 regardless.

Some publications do things differently, and get a fierce kicking from all corners of the internet as a result. EDGE magazine, for example, recently handed Final Fantasy XIII a 5/10. They argued that the game was technically accomplished but far too linear. Fair complaints, if we take linearity to be a bad thing (but that’s for another day...). A 5/10 is not a bad score, it is average. A game doesn’t need serious flaws to score in the middle of the scale, just be a game which is not particularly outstanding. Many forum-dwellers quickly pointed out that ‘an EDGE 5 is a normal 7 or even 8’.
Sadly, they’re right. Games reviewers and the industry at large needs to realise that high scores should be the exception, not the rule, if gaming as a medium is to truly be respected.

Don’t agree? Good. We need to be more critical.

Pre-OWNED

You. Yes, you. You’re a thief. Well, you’re a gamer, and that means that you probably have some pre-owned titles on your shelf. And according to Sony, that makes you a common crook, unworthy of fully-featured games because you’re too tight to cough up for a sealed copy.

We’ve learned that Sony thinks this way from their recent treatment of Socom: Fireteam Bravo 3 gamers. Apparently, if you buy this PSP game second-hand, you can’t go online unless you stump up $20.

Now, I’m all for measures to stop piracy. Sony have indeed confirmed that illegal downloaders of this title won’t be able to access the online features at all, for any sum of money (other than the price of an actual copy of the game...). This is a good thing.

It is crucial that companies take measures to stamp out piracy, and more importantly, to establish that it is both illegal and damaging to the industry. But should second-hand game owners really be lumped in with the download bandits and punished, too?

Well, no. Despite what the likes of Sony, Microsoft or Activision may tell you, the second hand games industry is actually very beneficial. While it is certainly true that fresh copies are sometimes overlooked for pre-owned games which are $5 cheaper, it is also true that the availability of quick trade-ins fuels the new game market. If all stores stopped accepting trade-ins tomorrow, you could expect to see a huge downturn in new game sales by next week. One of the reasons that downloadable games haven’t yet quite taken off is because you’re stuck with a duff title if you make the wrong choice.

Take away the trade-in schemes and you add a sense of caution and slight uncertainty to every gamer’s next purchase. All but the most established franchises would see sales drops, and this would only further stifle an industry not exactly renowned for breeding innovation in recent years. After all, why buy an interesting new IP when you won’t be able to trade it in if you don’t like it?

Single player games would be hindered, too. There’s less incentive to buy a six-twelve hour offline adventure if you can’t trade it in when you’re finished. Slapping some wonky online multiplayer onto every title is not exactly the brave new world I want to embrace either, and will only serve to undermine the single-player experience if developers are forced to divert their attention.

All in all, the second-hand games industry was created out of necessity. It is there to help cash-strapped gamers fund new purchases. It’s there to give niche franchises a chance to gain momentum (after all, you might try a quirky-looking game on impulse if it’s only $10, and you might buy the full-priced sequel as a result). It’s there because we need it to be. No-one is suggesting that the second-hand book market, or the pre-owned car market, is akin to piracy. They’d be laughed out of the country.

It’s time, then, that the games industry treated the second-hand market with a little respect and realised that it does more good than harm for gamers and developers alike. Sony’s ruthless strategy of charging pre-owned buyers for online access is simply greedy and unfair.

Pre-owned buyers are legitimate purchasers, too, and if games companies want to pursue anyone, it should be the greedy stores which perpetuate the second-hand market, making miniscule offers to gamers and slapping second-hand titles on shelves at huge mark-ups. After all, games companies do own the rights to their titles, and if they stipulated that titles require a small percentage of sell-on money if they are re-sold, the stores would have little choice but to stock them and pay the compensation. After all, if Sony required ‘sell-on contracts’ with stores before allowing them to stock Gran Turismo 5, what choice would they have? This would be the fairest compromise for all.

Fairer than shutting out and victimising second-hand buyers, that’s for sure.

When The Music Stops

Plastic-axe shredders are a fickle bunch, it seems. No sooner than the Guitar Hero franchise exploded into multi-billion dollar sales, churning out titles quicker than Nintendo re-releases portables had the rhythm action genre suddenly died, like an exploding star that fell in on itself.

Harmonix this week announced that Viacom, one of their complex-legal-license-partners for Rock Band, had asked for a refund ofa bit of bonus money they’d handed them. $200 million, if you want the precise figure. The reason? Flat-lining music game sales that had seen RB’s revenues plummet.

This is obviously a problem, not least for the company being asked to repay almost a quarter of a billion dollars that were bonuses – not loans or agreed finance – but for the games industry as a whole. The games economy is too reactionary, throwing money at anything that looks popular then quickly cutting off the cash supply when players have lost interest.

Case in point: ‘casual’ Wii titles. There are literally hundreds of the things. Baby Shopper Party, Family Potato Farmer, Dress My Kitty and such drivel. Not even I'm sure if those are real or I just made them up. It's gotten that bad. So bad, in fact, that last month, Best Buy, a large American department store, announced they’d no longer stock ‘casual’ or ‘mini-game’ titles. The market, it’s clear, has become oversaturated.The games economy simply isn’t set up to take the kind of hits that result from these sudden changes of plans. Activision blew, it’s rumoured, over $100 million on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Luckily, the game shifted ten million copies a second, roughly, but imagine if it hadn’t. Imagine if the games-playing populace had already moved on to the ‘next big thing’? Only a couple of years ago, Halo was the shooter of choice. Stretching back a couple of decades, the likes of Doom and Quake were the top trigger-happy titles.

Times change fast, and every shift only hurts the industry when the big guns and the little guys bet on their game making big bucks and lose. Activision will undoubtedly give Modern Warfare 3 an even bigger budget, and it may well pay off, but if gamers have moved on by 2011, they’ll be in big trouble.

 It looks highly doubtful that Final Fantasy XIII, out next month, will recover the multi-multi-million dollar development costs from the four years it took to make, what with the slightly cold reception it's received from its initial reviews.

The games industry, then, needs to calm down and get better at predicting the tastes of tomorrow rather than aping the top titles of yesterday. Brain Training clones soon saw that market stagnate, and the landslide of shooters we’ll see over the next two years may see the same thing happen to the FPS genre – MAG, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, MW3, New Call of Duty Spinoff, Killzone 3, Spec-Ops: The Line.The list goes on and on. If racing, or action titles (like Uncharted 2 and Assasin’s Creed II) become more popular, for example, all those FPS developers will just be shooting themselves in the foot.

As with the fall in popularity that rhythm action games have suffered, no doubt due to the sheer volume of plastic-banding titles released recently (GH:Metallica, GH: Greatest Hits, GH: World Tour, GH:5,GH: Van Halen, Band Hero, Rock Band: The Beatles...), if the gunfire ceases, it sure won’t be pretty. Games developers need to learn the Guitar Hero lesson before it’s too late.

Have handhelds had it?

Gaming on the go is big business. Nintendo have sold over 120 million DS consoles, and Sony have shifted a not-too-shabby 60 million PSPs. This is the largest number of handhelds that have ever been sold in a single five-year period. Clearly, setting lap times on the loo is here to stay.

But whether it’s going to remain in its current form is another matter entirely. Over the coming years, the handheld market is going to see a huge period of change, the likes of which could see even the mighty Nintendo ousted from their multi-billion dollar market-leading position.

The cause of this looming upset is undoubtedly the Nokia N-gage.


No, really. This may sound ludicrous, but the success of Apple’s iPhone, with its App store full to bursting with cheap, accessible games, can be traced back to Nokia’s failed handheld-meets-mobile.


Nokia’s doomed device was the first real stab at a games/phone combo, and although it failed spectacularly, it set a trend that was to have far-reaching consequences for the handheld games industry. The beauty of a gadget that can just as easily call your gran as it can zap alien scum is that it can be bought very easily. Want a DS? That’ll run you £100. A PSP? £130. Don’t even mention the PSP Go’s absurd price tag. But an Apple iPhone, or a similarly powerful smart phone?

 Certainly. Just sign on the dotted line, sir.

Monthly phone contracts may be expensive in the long run, but they allow adults with a regular income (so, anyone who isn’t a starving freelancer like myself) to walk into a phone shop tomorrow and pick up a snazzy new gadget. A gadget, like an iPhone or any one of a number of similar superphones, that will download and play cheap, accessible games on the go. No lining up in funny-smelling game shops, no wrestling with an overweight brat for the last copy of Halo Theft Turismo 7. Just hit ‘download’ and play until the train arrives.

Now, Sony have tried something similar. The PSP Go is a download-only console, which should pack the same kind of advantages as Apple’s efforts. But it became a flawed device, destined for failure the moment Sony decided not to also make it a phone as well – even a bad one.

PSP Go can’t be bought for £0 up front on a contract (a staggering £250 up-front, actually), it can’t go online anywhere – so no downloading Tetris while you wait in traffic – and the thing simply won’t go everywhere you do, because it isn’t a phone – it isn’t an essential.

The iPhone’s App store may be teeming with rubbishy tat titles, it may be devoid of most traditional big-hitters – think Call of Duty, Halo, GTA – but it’s cheap, and it’s easy. Whilst most seasoned gamers may well stick to their pricey, inconvenient consoles with their tiny selection of downloadable titles (that goes for DSi and PSP Go), the general public – the mass market – will buy titles on their phones and play cheap and cheerfully on the go. This emerging demographic will soon be much bigger than the traditional handheld market – which isn’t exactly something to be sniffed at as it is.

Backing this up, mobile phone development last year shot up – to 25% of overall games development, from 12% the previous year. Worryingly for Nintendo and Sony, that’s more than twice the support that DS or PSP receive (Source: Game Developer Research: Game Development Survery 2009-2010)

Time, then, for the traditional handheld companies to adapt, or be left behind – at home, or worse, on store shelves. Portable gaming needs to be mobile, too.

Why Nintendo's Next Console isn't DS2

Rumours. You have to love ‘em. From Rockstar’s gentle teasing in GTA game manuals to the dark-room-dwelling crackpots who spew spurious nonsense because they know someone who knew a guy who passed Microsoft's headquarters once, the games industry is built as much on rumours as it is on actual announcements.

Which is why the recent 'New Nintendo Platform' leak is such big news. Yes, it may well be a load of tosh perpetrated by bored geeks, but - as is so often the case in an industry brimming with speculation and quieted whispers - we might just be on to something here.

DS2 is most people's first guess. It's not a bad one either. The original handheld released in 2005, making this its fifth year, and the thing's already seen three iterations - four if you count the DSi on steroids that is the XL. In normal videogame tradition, this means that the game is nearly up for the creaky old handheld, especially if the rumblings of a Sony PSP2 are to be believed. Nintendo don't want to kill DS sales, which are still absurdly strong, but they don't want to be left behind, either. And then there’s Apple’s iPhone and iPad.

Falling by the technological wayside is really the main issue. Nintendo aren't going for graphical clout this generation, as we all know. But a DS would surely be shamed by a PSP2, especially if the latter throws in a touch screen and motion sensors for good measure. And the iPhone is already cutting sharply into Nintendo’s target demographic.

But Nintendo will release a Wii HD instead, except with a catchier title. Why? Well, the Wii is in a similar predicament. Increasingly ignored by third-party devs at a time when HDTV adoption is skyrocketing, the little white box is starting to show its age. Nintendo won't want to stilt Wii sales but they won't want Microsoft's Xbox 360 or Sony's resurgent PS3 to steal its thunder, either. In fact, when Xbox 360 gets its controller-free camera, Natal, and PS3 gets Wiimote-alikes this year in the form of its new ‘Arc’ controllers, the Wii will face its sternest test yet.

Going HD would go some way to drawing the three systems onto a level playing field once Wii loses its greatest advantage - its novel controller. Iwata recently hinted that HD alone wouldn't be enough for the Wii's successor, which is why there'll almost certainly be more to it than that. An HD Wii, with Motion Plus built into controllers and another new way to play - be it a Natal-esque camera, or some crazy new idea? It'd maintain Nintendo's advantage at a critical time, stop Microsoft or Sony from making Wii feel outdated, and draw third parties back to the console.

As for the DS? Well, that's simple. DS2 is already here - it's called DSi. Nintendo's newest dual-screen has four times the memory of the DS, for example, and twice the processing power. Nintendo have even promised DSi-enhanced and DSi-exclusive titles at some point down the line. The recent announced of Pokemon 5, the next true sequel to Diamond/Pearl, could fit the bill perfectly. With the hidden technical improvements of the DSi, there's simply no need for a new DS altogether when so many people are walking around with a more powerful DS in their pockets already.

Imagine this at this year’s E3: new, exclusive DSi titles announced to seamlessly transition the DS to a new generation without stifling DS sales - whilst remaining fully backwards compatible - and a Wii HD to keep the home console fighting in the face of fresh competition. This very much could be where Nintendo goes from here.

But for now, keep it quiet. I might just be a babbling crackpot, you know.

-- Alex Evans, February 6^th 2010