Blog FeedGames of 2007: A Debate by Mail
Vermouth,
I appreciate you giving me the last word on this, especially since you arethe senior writer on Aelon, between the two of us, anyway.
I’ll give you your points on Deus Ex and the graphics. The game simply wasnot a monster in that area, and while I didn’t realize Quake 3 was releaseda year earlier, its graphics were far superior in every way.
There was one last point about judging games by their predecessors, but thisbeing the last exchange, I’ll stick with your report card idea. Perhaps another time.
There really is no other grade you can give Nintendo for 2007 other than anA+. Even Nintendo’s biggest detractors have to realize they’ve made aScrooge McDuck-sized vault of money this year.
The Nintendo DS, as you might have judged from my top games list, is myfavorite platform of this generation. I didn’t expect much from thisdual-screened workhorse, and I have to admit I was a little disappointed Ireceived it as a gift over a PSP a few years ago. However, that was thegift that keeps on giving. Essentially every genre I enjoy has found a home on the Nintendo DS and it has even turned me on to some of the casual Touch Generation games Nintendo has introduced.
Amazingly enough a lot, a lot of people seem to agree with me, some even unexpected. At this point, three of my five family members have a DS and the other two are my younger sister and my mother. Go figure.
The only thing I’d like to see Nintendo do with the DS is upgrade it with afew gigs of flash memory and allow me to copy my GBA cartridges and DS cardsonto the hardware and have fifty games in my pocket.
As for the Wii…honestly, I don’t get it. I cannot comprehend how Nintendohas gone from being the company people were wishing would go the way of Sega, to the industry powerhouse it is today. Talk about going back to the future.
In retrospect, I don’t think anyone should be surprised. The greatest criticism of video games has long been the notion that it creates couch potatoes and the games themselves lack any discernible relation to real-life actions. Nintendo seems to have torn down the fourth-wall of gaming, so-to-speak, and has created a way to play that makes sense for everyone.
I’ve written about this before: my mother was talking about buying a Wii last year. That was before she played it. This summer when we were on vacation with my uncle’s family, his son brought his Wii. Well, almost every night there were Wii Sports Bowling tournaments and all kinds of Mii being made. My mother couldn’t believe I hadn’t bought one yet.
Again, it just boggles the mind that after a solid year of being on the market, you just can’t find one. To this day I haven’t seen a Wii in the wild outside of the Nintendo World Store in New York City. In retrospect, I should have picked one up then.
What’s Nintendo’s homework assignment? Largely the same as yours. The third-party eco-system just isn’t making it. Capcom is Nintendo’s biggest booster and that isn’t going to make it. I’ve read a number of reviews of Resident Evil 4 and they’ve mentioned it is the best version to get. I believe it has done reasonably well in sales, so for a game that has graced three consoles, Capcom should have milked that cow for all its worth. Of course, there’s Zakk & Wiki, which despite getting strong reviews seemed Dead on Arrival due to its art direction and near-lack of advertising.
Like you said though, besides Capcom, who is making money on the Wii? Nintendo. That’s something that will have to change or a year from now, the Wii will be the most common household appliance gathering dust across the globe. Nintendo probably has enough content to appeal to the mass market and needs to get some serious, only on Wii-type games that appeal to the core gamer, and it needs to come from Activision, EA, and Ubisoft, among others, if they want their financial success to continue.
The only other thing Nintendo needs to be doing, besides that one small endeavor, is to deliver a storage solution for the Wii that isn’t an SD card. I’m beginning to see stories popping up about owners simply runningout of room on their SD cards for all the VC and online content Nintendo has been rolling out. With two more mystery consoles being prepped for the VC treatment, we are running out of cartridge-based systems to be getting games from. We’ll be hitting the CD-based games soon and there has to be a hard drive or something to store all of this on. The question is: how to get customers who are normally peripheral-adverse to buy it. Then again, most of the people who own the Wii might not care about any of this.
Despite the incredible showing in 2007, Nintendo cannot rest on its laurels or Microsoft and Sony will eat their lunch.
Moving on. Microsoft: B. A solid grade, largely coming from the constant string of top-tier games from about August all the way through December. No one can deny the success of games like BioShock, Halo 3, Call of Duty 4,Assassin’s Creed, and Mass Effect. I’m sure there are other great games out there in the wild, but those are the cream and nothing to sneeze at.
XBox Live! Arcade continues to be a great value-added attraction to the system. Between making great, smaller games available from a wide variety of publishers and direct-to-download media content like music, videos, movies and TV shows, the XBox 360 is a great media hub to have in the bedroom or living room.
That is, of course, if your system is working. Microsoft really drops afull grade on the issues with hardware. The “Red Ring of Death” is simply inexcusable, especially for hardware that has been available for two years already. I believe Microsoft is intentionally low-balling the numbers of units affected and I’m surprised that mainstream media outlets haven’t picked up this story. I have friends who have experienced the RRoD, and I’ve been to numerous retail outlets where the display system is boned. Something is rotten here and Microsoft needs to fess up and just replace the faulty units with ones that work properly and move on from this. Maybe theyneed to take a cue from EA and start throwing a bunch of free games in the mix.
So, homework? Send every customer with a RRoD a brand new, Zephyr model, a new game or two, issue a public mea culpa and put this nastiness behind them. Also, they need to figure out how to make Xbox Live! free. In theface of Sony’s free online network and Nintendo slouching towards a viable online presence, Microsoft cannot justifiably charge sixty bucks for the service, especially when they are not providing dedicated servers to ensure lag-free gaming sessions.
As for the casual gamers…they don’t need them. Even if the Xbox becomeFortress America, there is no reason they can’t muscle Sony completely out of the market, presuming they play their cards right.
Sony. This is a hard one. I’m tempted to give Sony an F simply because they have destroyed almost every reason I had for wanting a PS3. I have also almost completely written off the PSP, but damn if I don’t want to play Final Fantasy Tactics: The Lion War.
I’m may punt this one and give them a Gentlemen’s C, such as you did. However, they are getting it on the strength of the PlayStation 2. The damn thing is still selling hundreds of thousands of units a month. Such a thing is almost inconceivable, especially given all the other options on the market.
The PSP, as you’ve noted is doing respectable business. The UMD side of things may be a disgrace, but there is no denying that a number of quality games have been released on the system this past year. Unfortunately, many of the games I wanted are niche strategy-based RPGs such as: Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness; Jeanne D’Arc; and the aforementioned Final FantasyTactics. The PSP Lite reboot also failed to impress. I don’t know what I was expecting, but the slightly slimmer and lighter remodel just doesn’t light my world on fire like the DS Lite redesign.
The PS3 has, again, been an unmitigated disaster. I’ve lost count of the number of SKUs made available, and I’ve essentially lost any interest I once had in the system. After Sony removed backwards compatibility from whatever units had it, I looked at my 20+ PS2 games and thought: garbage. I know getting a slimline PS2 and a PS3 is cheaper than a 60GB PS3, but I don’t want two systems. I just want the one.
Things aren’t all bad, there are a few exclusive games that have recently been released to decent reviews. Ratchet & Clank, Uncharted, even Heavenly Sword are all posting positive reviews and are games you can’t get anyplace else. Historically, now is the time for a new console to be getting its triple-A content, but with Microsoft already on second-gen software and the Wii a cultural phenomenon, does Sony have the gas to do something positive with the PS3?
On top of the dearth of software, stiff competition, and sluggish sales, Sony has another problem they can’t seem to get a handle on: their corporate mouthpieces. Not a week goes by where some Sony higher up doesn’t spout some crap that corresponds so poorly to reality. Seriously, the guy doing PR for Saddam Hussein back when Army G.I.s and Marines were driving through the streets of Baghdad said more sane things that Sony higher-ups. The perceived corporate arrogance and disconnect from reality is one of those issues that cannot be easily remedied by a price-cut or good games. If people do not have faith in the corporation, they won’t have faith in their products.
Couple the corporate problems with utterly abyssmal marketing, and you’ve got a perfect storm of failure for the once-mighty Sony. Between the cartoon squirrels-as-racial caricatures to the “dude get your own” campaigns for the PSP to the…I don’t even know what the hell those creepy doll commercials were supposed to be and the PS3 with tentacles, Sony doesn’t seem to know how to sell their very expensive product.
So, a “C” is being generous, to say the least.
Homework: Pull your collective head out of your ass, Sony. The PlayStation3 is a huge win on paper. The 60 GB probably should have been the horse you bet on though. You’ve created market confusion with the multiple SKUs and changing the hardware specs have created situations like the one with Unreal Tournament III where user created maps have to be imported via a memory card slot that doesn’t exist on any of the units you’re selling anymore.
Sit down, put a muzzle on your execs, get a competent ad agency, maybe drop the price a little more, and keep pumping out the games. The PlayStation 2 didn’t hit its stride until Metal Gear Solid 2 and Final Fantasy X were released, and there is no reason to think the same won’t happen when Metal Gear Solid 4 and Final Fantasy XIII are released.
The problem, Sony, is that this is your game to lose.
Okay Vermouth, I think that about wraps it up. While we’ve acknowledgedthat no two men can crown a definitive winner for any game year, I think our picks are solid. Between our short-lists and recommendations, I don’t think there is a bad game to be had in the bunch, and they represent a solid cross-section of games on the market.
2008 already looks to pale in comparison.
-Head881.
