From PCWorld.com:
Almost five years after the Nintendo Wii launched, broke sales records, and revolutionized gaming with the introduction of motion-sensitive controllers, the console is slated to get a successor by E3 in June 2011.
Game Informer has "confirmed with multiple sources" that the Wii 2 (I'm hoping it'll be called the Nintendo Revolution; the Wii's pre-release code name) will be capable of HD gaming. Game Informer wasn't certain whether or not the Wii 2 will be powerful enough to compete with rival powerhouses the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, but IGN's sources say it'll be capable of 1080p resolutions, be "significantly more powerful than the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360," and is Nintendo's attempt to "recapture the hardcore market." By that I presume they mean 1996, with the Nintendo 64.
Either way, a more graphics-capable Wii 2 will improve Nintendo's relationships with developers who are understandably tired of creating games that might as well be on the GameCube...
Wii 2 on the Way: Nintendo is Growing Up
Brennon Slattery
Apr 14, 2011
http://www.pcworld.com/article/225300/wii_2_is_on_the_way_nintendo_is_growing_up.html
Showing posts with label PlayStation 3. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PlayStation 3. Show all posts
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Saturday, December 19, 2009
A Nation of Gamers Feels Your Pain, Andy Murray
Robalini's Note: While it's tragic that Andy Murray lost his girlfriend over his videogame addiction, you at least have to admire a guy with his priorities. After all, even Jessica Alba would get boring after a couple hours. But Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 never gets dull...
http://www.sportingnews.com/blog/firstcuts/entry/view/45900/a_nation_of_gamers_feels_your_pain,_andy_murray
A Nation of Gamers Feels Your Pain, Andy Murray
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Chris Littmann
Speaking as a man about town who spent probably six-to-eight hours on Sunday playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's campaign mode, the following story comes as no surprise. Tennis star Andy Murray has split with girlfriend Kim Sears. No, there is no traffic accident, golf club or mistress involved here. He was spending too much time on his PlayStation 3 playing Modern Warfare 2.
Brad Gilbert, Murray’s former coach, has said in the past that Murray spends “seven hours a day” playing video games.
The source told The Sun: “He would spend all his time glued to them. In the end she just got fed up with it. She wanted more out of the relationship.”
However, the player’s agent told the paper that Murray “doesn’t play computer games any more than any other 22 year-old”.
Don't be so judgmental, Kim Sears. COD: MW2 is an immersive game and it's easy to lose track of time. Plus, if you don't stay sharp, that 14-year-old across the street will just keep picking you off with his sniper rifle AND I WILL NOT LOSE TO HIM AGAIN!
http://www.sportingnews.com/blog/firstcuts/entry/view/45900/a_nation_of_gamers_feels_your_pain,_andy_murray
A Nation of Gamers Feels Your Pain, Andy Murray
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Chris Littmann
Speaking as a man about town who spent probably six-to-eight hours on Sunday playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's campaign mode, the following story comes as no surprise. Tennis star Andy Murray has split with girlfriend Kim Sears. No, there is no traffic accident, golf club or mistress involved here. He was spending too much time on his PlayStation 3 playing Modern Warfare 2.
Brad Gilbert, Murray’s former coach, has said in the past that Murray spends “seven hours a day” playing video games.
The source told The Sun: “He would spend all his time glued to them. In the end she just got fed up with it. She wanted more out of the relationship.”
However, the player’s agent told the paper that Murray “doesn’t play computer games any more than any other 22 year-old”.
Don't be so judgmental, Kim Sears. COD: MW2 is an immersive game and it's easy to lose track of time. Plus, if you don't stay sharp, that 14-year-old across the street will just keep picking you off with his sniper rifle AND I WILL NOT LOSE TO HIM AGAIN!
Thursday, December 3, 2009
'Uncharted 2' top the Oct. sales chart
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gamehunters/post/2009/11/uncharted-2-top-the-oct-sales-chart/1
Nov 12, 2009
'Uncharted 2' top the Oct. sales chart
Mike Snider
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves was the top-selling video game of October, according to market tracking firm The NPD Group.
Other top performers: NBA 2K10, which sold 575,000 across all platforms, and Borderlands, with 530,000 total on the Xbox 360 and PS3.
Overall video game sales ($1.07 billion) were down 19% compared to last year ($1.3 billion), however, the month resulted in the third best October in sales on record, behind October 2007 and October 2008, NPD's Anita Frazier said. She forecasts that the industry is on track to sell $20 billion to $21 billion by year-end, which would put it just below last year's total of $21.3 billion.
"The continued economic turmoil, and in particular the troubling unemployment rate, is undoubtedly impacting industry sales," she says. "Our latest Economy Tracker indicated that although consumers' general opinion about the economy is improving, their outlook on their own personal situation is worsening. If consumers' personal outlook continues to erode, they could very well be much more conservative with their holiday shopping this year."
She predicted a strong November with "the excitement already being generated by Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and the incredible buzz around upcoming titles, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and Assassin's Creed II, November is poised to be a strong month for the industry."
The Nintendo Wii regained the top spot as the highest-selling console of the month. Consumers bought 506,900 Wiis, compared to 320,600 PS3s and 249,700 Xbox 360s. Sales of game systems have dropped 10% (in units), compared to the same time period last year, Frazier said. "Recent price cuts helped spur a one to two-month increase in unit sales, and this month's Wii sales reflect that boost, but the other platforms have not sustained the sales momentum post price reduction," she said. "It will be difficult to discern the impact of the price cut into November and December just because those are always the two best months for the industry anyway, and we'd expect to see a sizeable lift in hardware unit sales as a result of seasonality."
Software sales decreased 18% for the month, but only 11% on a units basis, she said." The average retail price of software decreased 8%, which led to the greater dollar sales decline."
Roughly half the sales of No. 2 game Wii Fit Plus came in sales of the edition with a balance board, "which points to a lot of newcomers to the franchise," Frazier said.
For NBA 2K10, October's top game across all platforms, "it was a great launch for the game, outselling last year's NBA 2K9 by 60% in its launch month," Frazier said. "Sales on both the Xbox 360 and PS3 platforms improved substantially over last year."
Even though sales of music games continued to drop -- amounting to $53 million, compared to $137 million in October 2008, Frazier said that "both Rock Band: Beatles and Guitar Hero 5 have the potential to be good gifting items for the holidays, so we should expect to see an uptick in sales over the next two months."
Guitar Hero games sold a total of $12 million in October. "That's really down a lot year-over-year," said Wedbush Morgan Securities' Michael Pachter. Culprit of the lower than expected hardware sales: "that damn recession."
Just missing the top 10: Brütal Legend. The game, says analyst Jesse Divnich of Electronic Entertainment Design and Research. "going to be a slow burner. It reminds me a lot of Jack Black movies. I never seen one in theaters, but for some reason I own all his DVDs. Brütal Legend is a very entertaining game. It's just not a first choice game. It's one you are going to eventually pick up."
NPD's Top 10 Games for October
1) Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (Oct., PlayStation 3) 537,000
2) Wii Fit Plus (Oct., Wii) 441,000
3) Borderlands (Oct., Xbox 360) 418,000
4) Wii Sports Resort (July, Wii) 314,000
5) NBA 2K10 (Oct., Xbox 360) 311,000
6) Halo 3: ODST (Sept., Xbox 360) 271,000
7) NBA 2K10 (Oct., PS3) 213,000
8) Forza Motorsport 3 (Oct., Xbox 360) 175,000
9) Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (Sept, NDS) 169,000
10) FIFA Soccer 10 (Oct., Xbox 360) 156,000
Nov 12, 2009
'Uncharted 2' top the Oct. sales chart
Mike Snider
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves was the top-selling video game of October, according to market tracking firm The NPD Group.
Other top performers: NBA 2K10, which sold 575,000 across all platforms, and Borderlands, with 530,000 total on the Xbox 360 and PS3.
Overall video game sales ($1.07 billion) were down 19% compared to last year ($1.3 billion), however, the month resulted in the third best October in sales on record, behind October 2007 and October 2008, NPD's Anita Frazier said. She forecasts that the industry is on track to sell $20 billion to $21 billion by year-end, which would put it just below last year's total of $21.3 billion.
"The continued economic turmoil, and in particular the troubling unemployment rate, is undoubtedly impacting industry sales," she says. "Our latest Economy Tracker indicated that although consumers' general opinion about the economy is improving, their outlook on their own personal situation is worsening. If consumers' personal outlook continues to erode, they could very well be much more conservative with their holiday shopping this year."
She predicted a strong November with "the excitement already being generated by Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and the incredible buzz around upcoming titles, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and Assassin's Creed II, November is poised to be a strong month for the industry."
The Nintendo Wii regained the top spot as the highest-selling console of the month. Consumers bought 506,900 Wiis, compared to 320,600 PS3s and 249,700 Xbox 360s. Sales of game systems have dropped 10% (in units), compared to the same time period last year, Frazier said. "Recent price cuts helped spur a one to two-month increase in unit sales, and this month's Wii sales reflect that boost, but the other platforms have not sustained the sales momentum post price reduction," she said. "It will be difficult to discern the impact of the price cut into November and December just because those are always the two best months for the industry anyway, and we'd expect to see a sizeable lift in hardware unit sales as a result of seasonality."
Software sales decreased 18% for the month, but only 11% on a units basis, she said." The average retail price of software decreased 8%, which led to the greater dollar sales decline."
Roughly half the sales of No. 2 game Wii Fit Plus came in sales of the edition with a balance board, "which points to a lot of newcomers to the franchise," Frazier said.
For NBA 2K10, October's top game across all platforms, "it was a great launch for the game, outselling last year's NBA 2K9 by 60% in its launch month," Frazier said. "Sales on both the Xbox 360 and PS3 platforms improved substantially over last year."
Even though sales of music games continued to drop -- amounting to $53 million, compared to $137 million in October 2008, Frazier said that "both Rock Band: Beatles and Guitar Hero 5 have the potential to be good gifting items for the holidays, so we should expect to see an uptick in sales over the next two months."
Guitar Hero games sold a total of $12 million in October. "That's really down a lot year-over-year," said Wedbush Morgan Securities' Michael Pachter. Culprit of the lower than expected hardware sales: "that damn recession."
Just missing the top 10: Brütal Legend. The game, says analyst Jesse Divnich of Electronic Entertainment Design and Research. "going to be a slow burner. It reminds me a lot of Jack Black movies. I never seen one in theaters, but for some reason I own all his DVDs. Brütal Legend is a very entertaining game. It's just not a first choice game. It's one you are going to eventually pick up."
NPD's Top 10 Games for October
1) Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (Oct., PlayStation 3) 537,000
2) Wii Fit Plus (Oct., Wii) 441,000
3) Borderlands (Oct., Xbox 360) 418,000
4) Wii Sports Resort (July, Wii) 314,000
5) NBA 2K10 (Oct., Xbox 360) 311,000
6) Halo 3: ODST (Sept., Xbox 360) 271,000
7) NBA 2K10 (Oct., PS3) 213,000
8) Forza Motorsport 3 (Oct., Xbox 360) 175,000
9) Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (Sept, NDS) 169,000
10) FIFA Soccer 10 (Oct., Xbox 360) 156,000
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Nintendo drops Wii price to $199
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10360550-1.htmlSeptember 23, 2009
Nintendo drops Wii price to $199
by John P. Falcone
Nintendo has officially announced that the price of the Wii will drop to $199.99, effective on Sunday. The long-rumored $50 price cut comes in the wake of recent price drops for the PlayStation 3 ($299, with built-in Blu-ray player) and Xbox 360 ($299 for the 120GB version with built-in DVD player and Netflix support), which have boosted sales of the Sony and Microsoft consoles. (To date, the Wii remains the best-selling home game console of the three.)
Other than the price cut, there are no other changes to the current Wii bundle--you're still getting the console, along with the Wiimote and Nunchuk controllers and the bundled Wii Sports game. By contrast, there's at least one rumor that the U.K. will get a Wii package that adds the MotionPlus peripheral and Wii Sports Resort to the mix. Meanwhile, white remains the only color choice in North America (Japanese consumers can choose black as well).
Nintendo also took the opportunity to officially announce the release date for New Super Mario Bros. Wii, which had previously been slated for a vague "fall 2009" window. The multiplayer Super Mario game will hit store shelves on November 15.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Sony slashes price of PlayStation 3 by $100
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-playstation19-2009aug19,0,2690520.story
Sony slashes price of PlayStation 3 by $100 to $299
The Japanese electronics giant, which is seeking to boost sales ahead of the crucial holiday shopping season, also unveils a sleeker, thinner model of the game console.
By Alex Pham and Ben Fritz
August 19, 2009
Sony Corp. slashed $100 off the price of its entry-level PlayStation 3 game console to $299 on Tuesday in an effort to goose sales ahead of the crucial holiday shopping season.
The Japanese electronics giant also unveiled a thinner model of the PS3 that packs a 120-gigabyte hard disk drive. The newer model, 36% smaller and 32% lighter than the 80-gigabyte version, is expected to hit store shelves by Sept. 1. The 160-gigabytye PS3 also took a price cut, and is now $399.
"This is a game-changing moment for us," Peter Dille, Sony's senior vice president of marketing, said in an interview. "There's a lot of pent-up demand for the PS3. It's been a tough economy, and a lot of people have been sitting on the fence waiting for the price cut."
The move was widely anticipated by a number of analysts, who said a price cut could help Sony regain momentum.
"A price cut is long overdue on the PS3," Colin Sebastian at Lazard Capital Markets said. "We expect an uplift in unit sales. But the question longer term for Sony is whether they can sustain market share gains, especially when competing platforms, such as the Xbox 360, lower their prices as well."
Although the PlayStation 2 was the dominant console of the last generation of devices, the PS3 so far has lagged behind Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360, which has sold more than 30 million units worldwide, and Nintendo Co.'s Wii, which has sold more than 50 million consoles. Sony, meanwhile, has sold roughly 24 million PS3s as of June 30.
One of the main reasons has been the PS3's price: Sony launched the PS3 at $599 in November 2006. It lowered the price two years ago to $399, but that was still more than the Xbox 360, whose entry-level model cost $199, and the Wii, priced at $249.
Sony has maintained that the PS3's built-in Blu-ray disc player justifies the expense.
"Even in the tough economy, families have been reluctant to give up their at-home entertainment," Dille said. "For $299, you're getting a game machine, a Blu-ray player and a 120-gig hard drive you can use to download movies. It's a tremendous value."
Many in Hollywood have been eagerly awaiting a PS3 price cut in hopes it would boost sales of high definition Blu-ray discs at a time when the overall DVD market is contracting.
Blu-ray disc sales rose 91% in the first half of the year to $407 million in the U.S., according to the Digital Entertainment Group, an industry trade organization. However, that's still a tiny percentage of overall consumer spending of $9.73 billion on home entertainment in the same time period. The Blu-ray disc sales also did little to alleviate an overall drop of 13.5% in disc purchases.
alex.pham@latimes.com
ben.fritz@latimes.com
Sony slashes price of PlayStation 3 by $100 to $299
The Japanese electronics giant, which is seeking to boost sales ahead of the crucial holiday shopping season, also unveils a sleeker, thinner model of the game console.
By Alex Pham and Ben Fritz
August 19, 2009
Sony Corp. slashed $100 off the price of its entry-level PlayStation 3 game console to $299 on Tuesday in an effort to goose sales ahead of the crucial holiday shopping season.
The Japanese electronics giant also unveiled a thinner model of the PS3 that packs a 120-gigabyte hard disk drive. The newer model, 36% smaller and 32% lighter than the 80-gigabyte version, is expected to hit store shelves by Sept. 1. The 160-gigabytye PS3 also took a price cut, and is now $399.
"This is a game-changing moment for us," Peter Dille, Sony's senior vice president of marketing, said in an interview. "There's a lot of pent-up demand for the PS3. It's been a tough economy, and a lot of people have been sitting on the fence waiting for the price cut."
The move was widely anticipated by a number of analysts, who said a price cut could help Sony regain momentum.
"A price cut is long overdue on the PS3," Colin Sebastian at Lazard Capital Markets said. "We expect an uplift in unit sales. But the question longer term for Sony is whether they can sustain market share gains, especially when competing platforms, such as the Xbox 360, lower their prices as well."
Although the PlayStation 2 was the dominant console of the last generation of devices, the PS3 so far has lagged behind Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360, which has sold more than 30 million units worldwide, and Nintendo Co.'s Wii, which has sold more than 50 million consoles. Sony, meanwhile, has sold roughly 24 million PS3s as of June 30.
One of the main reasons has been the PS3's price: Sony launched the PS3 at $599 in November 2006. It lowered the price two years ago to $399, but that was still more than the Xbox 360, whose entry-level model cost $199, and the Wii, priced at $249.
Sony has maintained that the PS3's built-in Blu-ray disc player justifies the expense.
"Even in the tough economy, families have been reluctant to give up their at-home entertainment," Dille said. "For $299, you're getting a game machine, a Blu-ray player and a 120-gig hard drive you can use to download movies. It's a tremendous value."
Many in Hollywood have been eagerly awaiting a PS3 price cut in hopes it would boost sales of high definition Blu-ray discs at a time when the overall DVD market is contracting.
Blu-ray disc sales rose 91% in the first half of the year to $407 million in the U.S., according to the Digital Entertainment Group, an industry trade organization. However, that's still a tiny percentage of overall consumer spending of $9.73 billion on home entertainment in the same time period. The Blu-ray disc sales also did little to alleviate an overall drop of 13.5% in disc purchases.
alex.pham@latimes.com
ben.fritz@latimes.com
Thursday, April 30, 2009
From 'Wrestler' to 'Warrior'
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gamehunters/post/2009/04/66064167/1
Apr 27, 2009
From 'Wrestler' to 'Warrior': Bethesda lands Mickey Rourke for 'Rogue Warrior'
Oscar-nominated actor Mickey Rourke will lend his vocal talents to Bethesda Softworks as the lead character in upcoming first-person shooter Rogue Warrior, says the publisher in a statement.
The game -- based on a series of books by former Navy SEAL Richard "Demo Dick" Marcinko -- is slated for release this fall.
Rourke will voice the role of Marcinko, the leader of an elite Navy SEAL unit who must disrupt a suspected ballistic missile program in North Korea.
On the game's official Web page, Bethesda says Rogue Warrior will differentiate itself in the crowded FPS arena by introducing a freeform battlefield, where players can freely complete missions any way they choose, " rather than heavily scripted events and tightly contained spaces traditionally used in this genre." Bethesda also says the game will include a Brutal Kill system with 25 fatal attacks.
The game will be available on PC, PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360.
Apr 27, 2009
From 'Wrestler' to 'Warrior': Bethesda lands Mickey Rourke for 'Rogue Warrior'
Oscar-nominated actor Mickey Rourke will lend his vocal talents to Bethesda Softworks as the lead character in upcoming first-person shooter Rogue Warrior, says the publisher in a statement.
The game -- based on a series of books by former Navy SEAL Richard "Demo Dick" Marcinko -- is slated for release this fall.
Rourke will voice the role of Marcinko, the leader of an elite Navy SEAL unit who must disrupt a suspected ballistic missile program in North Korea.
On the game's official Web page, Bethesda says Rogue Warrior will differentiate itself in the crowded FPS arena by introducing a freeform battlefield, where players can freely complete missions any way they choose, " rather than heavily scripted events and tightly contained spaces traditionally used in this genre." Bethesda also says the game will include a Brutal Kill system with 25 fatal attacks.
The game will be available on PC, PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Wii will, Wii will rock you
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/11/MNP714MI95.DTL
Wii will, Wii will rock you
Ryan Kim, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, December 11, 2008
The Nintendo Wii is poised to dominate the holiday season for the third year in a row, an unprecedented trifecta for a gaming console that is proving impervious to the economic recession.
While the gaming industry historically has been able to resist the drag of economic slowdowns, the Wii has managed to soar, thanks to its innovative motion-sensing control scheme and broad appeal among non-gamers. The wonder device continued to fly off shelves even as Nintendo announced it was increasing production for the holiday selling season by 50 percent over last year.
The NPD Group, a consumer research firm, reported Thursday that Nintendo sold 2 million Wiis in November, twice as many as last year. It was a record number for a non-December month and a staggering feat considering that the machine was released in November 2006. The company also sold 1.57 million Nintendo DS portable gaming devices, also impressive for a handheld that has been on the market for four years.
"Everything about the Wii is unprecedented," said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of sales and marketing. "The strategy of making it fun for anyone to play video games, the innovation with the Wii remote and the broad category of titles and the sales levels, it's all unprecedented."
Low price, broad appeal
The tough economic times might actually be lifting Nintendo's sales. The relatively cheap price of the $250 Wii console along with its appeal across an entire family makes it an even more appealing choice for households, said Dunaway.
"Families are looking for inexpensive and fun activities that they can enjoy at home together, and the Wii solves that need," she said.
Overall, the video game industry, aided by the Wii and DS, looks golden heading into the home stretch of holiday sales. According to NPD, the industry last month raked in $2.9 billion in the United States, a 10 percent increase over last November despite having seven fewer post-Thanksgiving shopping days. The industry is still on pace to hit a record $22 billion in sales this year, NPD analyst Anita Frazier predicted.
Thanks to increased production, the Wii frenzy appears to have eased a bit for customers, who in previous holidays were left to camp out at stores or pay a hefty premium online for the device.
Frenetic chase
But the Wii is still a huge seller and dominates gift conversations. And in many cases, the chase for a Wii feels just as frenetic as it did last year.
"Demand for the Wii System is actually the same or higher than at the same time last year," said Marc Owens, the customer experience manager at the Best Buy store in Pleasant Hill. "Positive word of mouth about the benefits of the system has continued to drive demand at sell-out levels for the console."
Online auction site eBay said the most searched product on Black Friday was the Nintendo Wii, of which 3,171 were sold that day. Even on Cyber Monday, Nintendo Wiis were selling for an average of nearly $350, a $100 premium over its list price. In the past 90 days, eBay has sold 125,211 Wiis for about $45 million collectively.
Even non-gamers like it
Ted Pollak, market analyst for Jon Peddie Research and portfolio manager for the Electronic Entertainment Fund, said the Wii has the chance to be the most successful entertainment product ever. He credits Nintendo with expanding the market to include not just hard-core gamers but more women, girls and older players.
"Nintendo came up with a platform that's unique in that it appeals to core gamers and totally untapped gamers," Pollak said.
Two years ago, when the latest generation of hardware fully got under way, analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities projected the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii would walk away with about equal shares of the market. Now, he believes the Wii could sell as much as its other two rivals combined and ultimately eclipse the lifetime sales of the PlayStation 2, which he once thought was untouchable.
The PS2 sold 43.2 million in the United States over its lifetime and peaked at 8.2 million in 2002. The Wii, which has moved 15.4 million units so far, has sold about 8 million through 11 months of this year and is poised to shatter the PS2's annual record with a strong December showing.
"If Nintendo sells 400,000 more units in December, they will have sold more consoles this year than in any other year," Pachter said. "That's mind boggling that the Wii is on pace to be the most successful console of all time."
E-mail Ryan Kim at rkim@sfchronicle.com.
Wii will, Wii will rock you
Ryan Kim, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, December 11, 2008
The Nintendo Wii is poised to dominate the holiday season for the third year in a row, an unprecedented trifecta for a gaming console that is proving impervious to the economic recession.
While the gaming industry historically has been able to resist the drag of economic slowdowns, the Wii has managed to soar, thanks to its innovative motion-sensing control scheme and broad appeal among non-gamers. The wonder device continued to fly off shelves even as Nintendo announced it was increasing production for the holiday selling season by 50 percent over last year.
The NPD Group, a consumer research firm, reported Thursday that Nintendo sold 2 million Wiis in November, twice as many as last year. It was a record number for a non-December month and a staggering feat considering that the machine was released in November 2006. The company also sold 1.57 million Nintendo DS portable gaming devices, also impressive for a handheld that has been on the market for four years.
"Everything about the Wii is unprecedented," said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of sales and marketing. "The strategy of making it fun for anyone to play video games, the innovation with the Wii remote and the broad category of titles and the sales levels, it's all unprecedented."
Low price, broad appeal
The tough economic times might actually be lifting Nintendo's sales. The relatively cheap price of the $250 Wii console along with its appeal across an entire family makes it an even more appealing choice for households, said Dunaway.
"Families are looking for inexpensive and fun activities that they can enjoy at home together, and the Wii solves that need," she said.
Overall, the video game industry, aided by the Wii and DS, looks golden heading into the home stretch of holiday sales. According to NPD, the industry last month raked in $2.9 billion in the United States, a 10 percent increase over last November despite having seven fewer post-Thanksgiving shopping days. The industry is still on pace to hit a record $22 billion in sales this year, NPD analyst Anita Frazier predicted.
Thanks to increased production, the Wii frenzy appears to have eased a bit for customers, who in previous holidays were left to camp out at stores or pay a hefty premium online for the device.
Frenetic chase
But the Wii is still a huge seller and dominates gift conversations. And in many cases, the chase for a Wii feels just as frenetic as it did last year.
"Demand for the Wii System is actually the same or higher than at the same time last year," said Marc Owens, the customer experience manager at the Best Buy store in Pleasant Hill. "Positive word of mouth about the benefits of the system has continued to drive demand at sell-out levels for the console."
Online auction site eBay said the most searched product on Black Friday was the Nintendo Wii, of which 3,171 were sold that day. Even on Cyber Monday, Nintendo Wiis were selling for an average of nearly $350, a $100 premium over its list price. In the past 90 days, eBay has sold 125,211 Wiis for about $45 million collectively.
Even non-gamers like it
Ted Pollak, market analyst for Jon Peddie Research and portfolio manager for the Electronic Entertainment Fund, said the Wii has the chance to be the most successful entertainment product ever. He credits Nintendo with expanding the market to include not just hard-core gamers but more women, girls and older players.
"Nintendo came up with a platform that's unique in that it appeals to core gamers and totally untapped gamers," Pollak said.
Two years ago, when the latest generation of hardware fully got under way, analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities projected the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii would walk away with about equal shares of the market. Now, he believes the Wii could sell as much as its other two rivals combined and ultimately eclipse the lifetime sales of the PlayStation 2, which he once thought was untouchable.
The PS2 sold 43.2 million in the United States over its lifetime and peaked at 8.2 million in 2002. The Wii, which has moved 15.4 million units so far, has sold about 8 million through 11 months of this year and is poised to shatter the PS2's annual record with a strong December showing.
"If Nintendo sells 400,000 more units in December, they will have sold more consoles this year than in any other year," Pachter said. "That's mind boggling that the Wii is on pace to be the most successful console of all time."
E-mail Ryan Kim at rkim@sfchronicle.com.
Sony Set To Launch Online Virtual World
http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/virtualworlds/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212400212
Sony Set To Launch Online Virtual World
Home, PlayStation 3's long-delayed online 3-D social networking service, will debut Thursday.
By Antone Gonsalves, InformationWeek
Dec. 10, 2008
Sony on Wednesday said it would launch its online 3-D social networking service, Home, Dec. 11, ending months of delay in the long-awaited service for users of the company's PlayStation 3 video-game console.
Home is similar to Linden Lab's Second Life in that it lets people create virtual characters, or avatars, to interact in cyberspace. PlayStation 3 users will be able to join the virtual world through a free software download.
Home is the latest online service for the PS3. Sony recently added video downloads to the PlayStation Network, which, according to the company, has 15 million subscribers worldwide. Nevertheless, Sony is seen as behind rival Microsoft, which makes the Xbox 360, in launching online gaming and video-download services.
In addition, Nintendo, which launched its Wii video-game console the same month as Sony launched PS 3, November 2006, has outsold Sony more than 2-to-1. Nintendo has sold 34.5 million units worldwide, compared with Sony's 16.8 million units.
Sony is hoping Home will help take its struggling video games unit to profitability. The unit has lost about $3.8 billion over the last two years, according to BusinessWeek magazine.
While PS3 users will enter Home for free, Sony hopes to make money by charging companies to interact with participants. The first companies to join Home include clothing designer Diesel, furniture designer Ligne Roset, energy drink maker Red Bull, film studio Paramount Pictures, and video content providers Hexus TV and Eurogamer.
Besides offering mini-games, videos, and special events, Home will make it possible for users to create their own social networks and set up meetings in their own virtual apartments or in public gatherings. Home will offer instant messaging, voice, and video communications.
Sony first announced Home in March 2007, saying it would launch the service later that year. The company announced the first delay in October 2007, and again in April 2008. Sony launched a trial of the service to a limited number of PS3 users in August.
Sony Set To Launch Online Virtual World
Home, PlayStation 3's long-delayed online 3-D social networking service, will debut Thursday.
By Antone Gonsalves, InformationWeek
Dec. 10, 2008
Sony on Wednesday said it would launch its online 3-D social networking service, Home, Dec. 11, ending months of delay in the long-awaited service for users of the company's PlayStation 3 video-game console.
Home is similar to Linden Lab's Second Life in that it lets people create virtual characters, or avatars, to interact in cyberspace. PlayStation 3 users will be able to join the virtual world through a free software download.
Home is the latest online service for the PS3. Sony recently added video downloads to the PlayStation Network, which, according to the company, has 15 million subscribers worldwide. Nevertheless, Sony is seen as behind rival Microsoft, which makes the Xbox 360, in launching online gaming and video-download services.
In addition, Nintendo, which launched its Wii video-game console the same month as Sony launched PS 3, November 2006, has outsold Sony more than 2-to-1. Nintendo has sold 34.5 million units worldwide, compared with Sony's 16.8 million units.
Sony is hoping Home will help take its struggling video games unit to profitability. The unit has lost about $3.8 billion over the last two years, according to BusinessWeek magazine.
While PS3 users will enter Home for free, Sony hopes to make money by charging companies to interact with participants. The first companies to join Home include clothing designer Diesel, furniture designer Ligne Roset, energy drink maker Red Bull, film studio Paramount Pictures, and video content providers Hexus TV and Eurogamer.
Besides offering mini-games, videos, and special events, Home will make it possible for users to create their own social networks and set up meetings in their own virtual apartments or in public gatherings. Home will offer instant messaging, voice, and video communications.
Sony first announced Home in March 2007, saying it would launch the service later that year. The company announced the first delay in October 2007, and again in April 2008. Sony launched a trial of the service to a limited number of PS3 users in August.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Star Wars: Episode 3.5?
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1823817,00.html
Thursday, Jul. 17, 2008
Star Wars: Episode 3.5?
By AP/DERRIK J. LANG
Consider it Star Wars III and a Half — complete with a pivotal plot twist.
When LucasArts releases Star Wars: The Force Unleashed on Sept. 16, the video game will serve as George Lucas' official median between 2005's Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith and 1977's Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope. In the game, players become Darth Vader's secret apprentice and use The Force to hunt the remaining Jedi.
Force Unleashed allows gamers use supercharged Force powers to bust through objects, wield a lightsaber, blast lighting bolts and fling around foes. The game will also change the way fans view Episode IV through Episode VI — Return of the Jedi, LucasArts project lead Haden Blackman told The Associated Press at the E3 Business and Media Summit.
"There's a couple of big twists and turns in the story," said Blackman. "One revelation in particular really impacts the rest of the saga as a whole. It goes way beyond filling in gaps. We try to make a bridge on every level. The story has a real implications on Episode IV. In some ways, without the apprentice, Episode IV couldn't happen."
Versions of The Force Unleashed will be available on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, PlayStation Portable, Nintendo DS and PlayStation 2. Blackman and his team worked with Lucas to craft the original saga, which mixes both pre-established elements from the Star Wars universe as well as new characters, locales and details from game developers.
"We pitched a number of different story ideas and concepts to him," said Blackman. "With him, we picked and chose the strongest elements. As we worked on The Force Unleashed, he encouraged us to create new characters as well use existing characters. He told us, 'If you're going to use Vader, that's fine, but here's how you can use him.'"
In the first level, players will plow through the Wookie homeworld of Kashyyyk as Darth Vader. Subsequent levels find players serving as Vader's apprentice and traveling to such locales as a TIE Fighter construction facility, the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, the overgrown planet of Felucia and back to an Empire ravaged Kashyyyk.
"Story-wise, we left some openings for a sequel," said Blackman. "The concept of 'The Force Unleashed' could be taken in any direction. We could potentially do a Force Unleashed game set in a different Star Wars time period with a new storyline. We were definitely cognizant to leave some doors open at the end."
Lucas will premiere the new computer-animated film Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which takes place between Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones and Episode III, on Aug. 10. The film will be pegged to a new weekly animated TV series as well as new Clone Wars video games for both the Nintendo DS and the Wii.
Thursday, Jul. 17, 2008
Star Wars: Episode 3.5?
By AP/DERRIK J. LANG
Consider it Star Wars III and a Half — complete with a pivotal plot twist.
When LucasArts releases Star Wars: The Force Unleashed on Sept. 16, the video game will serve as George Lucas' official median between 2005's Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith and 1977's Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope. In the game, players become Darth Vader's secret apprentice and use The Force to hunt the remaining Jedi.
Force Unleashed allows gamers use supercharged Force powers to bust through objects, wield a lightsaber, blast lighting bolts and fling around foes. The game will also change the way fans view Episode IV through Episode VI — Return of the Jedi, LucasArts project lead Haden Blackman told The Associated Press at the E3 Business and Media Summit.
"There's a couple of big twists and turns in the story," said Blackman. "One revelation in particular really impacts the rest of the saga as a whole. It goes way beyond filling in gaps. We try to make a bridge on every level. The story has a real implications on Episode IV. In some ways, without the apprentice, Episode IV couldn't happen."
Versions of The Force Unleashed will be available on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, PlayStation Portable, Nintendo DS and PlayStation 2. Blackman and his team worked with Lucas to craft the original saga, which mixes both pre-established elements from the Star Wars universe as well as new characters, locales and details from game developers.
"We pitched a number of different story ideas and concepts to him," said Blackman. "With him, we picked and chose the strongest elements. As we worked on The Force Unleashed, he encouraged us to create new characters as well use existing characters. He told us, 'If you're going to use Vader, that's fine, but here's how you can use him.'"
In the first level, players will plow through the Wookie homeworld of Kashyyyk as Darth Vader. Subsequent levels find players serving as Vader's apprentice and traveling to such locales as a TIE Fighter construction facility, the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, the overgrown planet of Felucia and back to an Empire ravaged Kashyyyk.
"Story-wise, we left some openings for a sequel," said Blackman. "The concept of 'The Force Unleashed' could be taken in any direction. We could potentially do a Force Unleashed game set in a different Star Wars time period with a new storyline. We were definitely cognizant to leave some doors open at the end."
Lucas will premiere the new computer-animated film Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which takes place between Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones and Episode III, on Aug. 10. The film will be pegged to a new weekly animated TV series as well as new Clone Wars video games for both the Nintendo DS and the Wii.
Nintendo seizes lead in US console war
http://www.gamepro.com/news.cfm?article_id=205421
Nintendo seizes lead in US console war
by Tracy Erickson 07/17/2008
Our new leader.
Speaking to GamePro today Nintendo proclaimed, "After just 20 months, Wii is the new console leader in the US with nearly 10.9 million units."
NPD sales data backs up the claim. Wii moved 666,700 units in the month of June, which is enough to push it over Xbox 360 as the dominant platform in North America.
Despite a year head start for Xbox 360 and two generations of PlayStation consoles leading the market, Nintendo has rocketed back to the top with Wii.
Even with the help of blockbuster exclusive Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots which sold nearly a million copies last month, PlayStation 3 still took a second seat to Wii with a respectable 405,500 consoles sold.
That figure is nearly double the number of Xbox 360s sold in June - 219,800. Adding salt to Microsoft's wounds is the fact that it almost was beaten by PlayStation 2 with an impressive showing of 188,800 units.
Nintendo's new position in the video game market comes hot off the heels of E3 in Los Angeles this week. The annual trade show saw a slew of new game announcements from the company, as well as competitors Sony and Microsoft.
Nintendo seizes lead in US console war
by Tracy Erickson 07/17/2008
Our new leader.
Speaking to GamePro today Nintendo proclaimed, "After just 20 months, Wii is the new console leader in the US with nearly 10.9 million units."
NPD sales data backs up the claim. Wii moved 666,700 units in the month of June, which is enough to push it over Xbox 360 as the dominant platform in North America.
Despite a year head start for Xbox 360 and two generations of PlayStation consoles leading the market, Nintendo has rocketed back to the top with Wii.
Even with the help of blockbuster exclusive Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots which sold nearly a million copies last month, PlayStation 3 still took a second seat to Wii with a respectable 405,500 consoles sold.
That figure is nearly double the number of Xbox 360s sold in June - 219,800. Adding salt to Microsoft's wounds is the fact that it almost was beaten by PlayStation 2 with an impressive showing of 188,800 units.
Nintendo's new position in the video game market comes hot off the heels of E3 in Los Angeles this week. The annual trade show saw a slew of new game announcements from the company, as well as competitors Sony and Microsoft.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
A Strange City Called Home
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/nyregion/thecity/04gran.html
May 4, 2008
A Strange City Called Home
By DAVE ITZKOFF
IN the opening moments of Grand Theft Auto IV, the latest chapter of the cinematically styled video game franchise, two men are standing at the side of a boat, watching a familiar sight drift into view. Through their eyes, we see a digitized, 21st-century retelling of a scene that greeted numerous generations of new arrivals to an unknown country: the eastern end of a long, narrow island, with a towering metal spire emerging from its belly, and a diminutive green statue beckoning from a tiny point off the island’s southern tip.
We think we know what we are seeing, until one of the game’s characters identifies the land mass for us.
“Liberty City,” he says to his shipmate in a vaguely East European accent. “You ever been?”
And before I even sat down to play the game, I could honestly say that I had.
Liberty City, the pixilated playground where the action of Grand Theft Auto IV occurs, is New York City, and it is not. Like previous installments of the game, which has sold more than 70 million copies in the last decade — abbreviated G.T.A., in the same sanitized way that Kentucky Fried Chicken became KFC — this newest edition (released on Tuesday for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 systems) sets players loose in an environment closely modeled on a real American metropolis, usually at some notorious time in its history.
The environs of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, released in 2002, were inspired by 1980s-era Miami, the pastel-hued setting for crime dramas like “Scarface” and “Miami Vice.” For a 2004 sequel, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the game relocated to three interconnected cities based on Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas, against a 1990s backdrop of gangsta rap and gang violence.
While moving its story forward to the present day, G.T.A. IV largely restricts itself to a single city — one at the height of its prosperity and during an ebb in crime. The game makes no attempt to disguise the fact that it is designed to look, sound and feel like the city I have lived in for nearly all 32 years of my life.
As many others have already noted, Liberty City is a dead ringer for New York: It’s divided into boroughs with distinct populations and architectural styles; it has most of the same suspension bridges and historic landmarks in the places you’d expect to find them; and its streets are always teeming with traffic and unruly pedestrians.
This game is hardly the first to try to replicate some portion of the New York experience — programmers have been trying to do this for decades. But Grand Theft Auto IV is the most contemporary attempt at this experiment, and may be the most realistic made available to a mass audience.
It’s also a game that has an extra layer of resonance for indigenous New Yorkers. With all the knowledge, confidence, predispositions and prejudices we possess, we’re not only better equipped to detect the many references and insider jokes, we may even come out of the game thinking differently about the real-life New York we’ve always known.
For a native New Yorker, the game is both comfortingly routine and eerily disorienting; you find yourself playing because it is a limitless escape and a consequence-free confinement. Liberty City is like nowhere I’ve ever visited, even as it tries with all its heart and soul to remind me of a place with which I’m already intimately acquainted.
MY initiation into Liberty City came a few days before G.T.A. IV went on sale, in the downtown loft offices of the game’s publisher, Rockstar Games. As I tooled around the electronic streets for a few hours under the supervision of two Rockstar employees, I was sometimes playing the game myself, and sometimes watching as someone else played it for me. I generally played by the rules, but for the purposes of this story, I occasionally made use of a special cheat feature to travel through the game in ways that a typical player cannot.
When that boat from the game’s opening scene finally docked at Liberty City, my character, a rugged-looking immigrant named Niko, found himself on the docks of a Dumbo-like neighborhood, in a borough the game calls Broker.
Indeed, much of Liberty City’s map is made up of direct analogues of real New York neighborhoods and locations, often renamed with winking, sophomoric monikers that could have come from Mad magazine: Manhattan is Algonquin and Queens is Dukes; the giant neon Pepsi-Cola sign in Long Island City advertises a beverage called Sprunk; and the MetLife skyscraper on Park Avenue has been replaced with the Getalife Building.
Even if I didn’t recognize this computer-generated tribute to Dumbo from its hilly terrain and its array of converted red-brick factories and dilapidated loft spaces, I might have known it from the disoriented feelings gathering in my gut. In real life, I have hardly spent enough time in Dumbo to know my way around it; if I were abandoned there as part of some urban Outward Bound adventure, I probably couldn’t find the nearest subway station without the help of a G.P.S.
On my television screen, I could see the silhouette of Manhattan on the horizon, but I had no idea how to get there. My digital discomfort was just as palpable as it would be if I were experiencing this world in three dimensions.
Following the game’s directions, I drove my character to the neighborhood that is Liberty City’s equivalent of Brighton Beach, where, true to its inspiration, all the shop signs were in Cyrillic lettering, and the few passers-by could be heard, in snatches, speaking Russian and Ukrainian. Niko, my alter ego, did not yet have his own apartment — for starters, he would have to sleep on someone else’s foldout couch in a ratty tenement with walls covered in graffiti inspired (so I am told) by tags that the game’s designers had seen and photographed in Brooklyn.
There was something amusingly authentic about Niko’s predicament. The game’s British creators seemed to know that given the choice, most players would probably run or drive straight into Manhattan — the version of the city they know from their own travels, or any number of films and television shows — and ignore the other boroughs. Here, as in the real world, entry into the heart of the city would have to be won through patience and hard work.
A few steps outside Niko’s temporary lodging, I found myself in Firefly Island, the game’s answer to Coney Island, complete with a giant Ferris wheel and a rickety wooden roller coaster; both attractions were closed and the area was devoid of pedestrians.
The scene was familiar in more ways than one: it reminded me of The Warriors, a video game that Rockstar created just three years ago, based largely on the 1979 Walter Hill movie of the same name. (You know, the one with the crazy-costumed New York gangs fighting their way from the Bronx to Brooklyn — “Can you dig it?” “Come out and plaa-aaay!”)
THAT game was also nominally set in New York, though I never genuinely felt transported there for one moment. That city seemed a grimy parody of someone else’s grimy parody of the city, one that looked as if our town had been struck by a giant mirror ball full of plutonium.
But I wanted to see more than the few chubby, backpack-toting tourists who were ambling around the Boardwalk. So I had my flesh-and-blood chaperons turn on a hidden feature within their version of the game that allowed me to fly anywhere on the G.T.A. map. And I mean, literally, fly: my virtual self disappeared, and the camera began to hover off the ground, swooping and soaring from the Brooklyn Bridge (er, I mean the Broker Bridge) to the Statue of Happiness, which resembles a wide-eyed Hillary Rodham Clinton hoisting a cup of coffee aloft.
Eventually I touched down in a Times Square that was appropriately cluttered with hypnotic neon advertisements for things I could not really buy, and populated, sparsely, with pedestrians who carried on cellphone conversations, sketched portraits of passers-by and played the saxophone in return for loose change. When I walked into a greasy all-night burger joint, a cashier greeted me with an appropriately indifferent “What?” But when I crossed the street against the light upon exiting, cars actually stopped for me (though they honked their horns).
Having been lulled into believing that I really was in New York, I made the mistake of trying to find my own Alphabet City apartment within the game. I walked down to Chinatown — that took only a few seconds — found what I thought was Houston Street, and made my way to where Avenue A (and my apartment) should have been. But after traversing only a block or two of bodegas and backward-hatted hipsters bobbing their heads to the beats of miniature iPods, I somehow found myself at the southern entrance to Grand Central Terminal.
It was as if some unknown natural disaster had recently touched down and attacked only the portions of New York that I cared for most deeply. My city — at least, the parts of it that I thought of as my city — no longer existed.
So I regrouped and tried to find the high-rise apartment building on East 40th Street where I grew up in the ’70s and ’80s. I started at the United Nations, made my way west through a perfect simulacrum of Tudor City (with another saxophone player performing in the park) and within a few short steps had gone all the way to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Foiled again!
It seemed a perfectly logical and human impulse, to prove to myself that I was somewhere recognizable by finding the one place in it that was most recognizable to me. Yet there was no way that the game could satisfy this impulse: like a comic-book superhero drawn by the legendary artist Jack Kirby, whose characters’ fists grew larger and feet grew smaller as they flew up out of their panels, the proportions of this version of Manhattan were an optical illusion. The parts that everybody would notice were blown up larger than life; the parts that virtually no one would care about were shrunk to nothingness.
Faced with this catastrophic revelation, I turned to a life of crime. I hijacked cars and crashed them into traffic poles; I raced a motorcycle through Central Park and dismounted just before the bike plunged into the lake (my way of letting the boathouse know I won’t be holding my wedding reception there). I jumped off the observation deck of the Empire State Building, just because I could, though I took no pleasure from the sickening scream my character let out, nor the sound of his jacket flapping in the wind, 86 stories to the ground.
At the urging of my human confederates, I even attempted one of Grand Theft Auto’s missions — tasks I was supposed to be completing to progress through the game properly — that required me to shoot my way through a gang of drug smugglers and steal their truckload of contraband. I did as I was instructed, but my heart just wasn’t in it. If I truly believed in Liberty City as a functioning community, how could I open fire on my fellow simulated citizens (even if they shot at me first)? How could I tread all over the social contract in a ripped-off truck full of bootleg prescription medication?
THE answer, of course, is that I couldn’t, and here is where the paradoxical nature of Grand Theft Auto once again rears its head. Unlike the missions, objectives and narrative elements of a traditional video game, which constitute the game itself — the things you’re supposed to be participating in and following along with in order to actually play — these same aspects of G.T.A. are more like sophisticated distractions to keep you from immersing yourself too deeply in its fictional city environment.
Except that the problem with G.T.A. — one that will in no way dissuade me from playing the game until my digits are raw and aching — is that the more fully you are pulled into Liberty City and the more closely you inspect it, the more you are reminded that it isn’t a city at all.
The neighborhoods do not blend into one another so much as sit next to one another. The traffic varies just enough from one area to the next to convince you that a place is inhabited, but eavesdrop on a pedestrian long enough, and you’ll find that he doesn’t eventually go home to his wife and kids — he just keeps walking and talking in a continuous loop.
It’s not the game’s fault that it can’t perfectly replicate the infinite variety of New York. But it sometimes comes so close to pulling off the illusion that it invites you to look for the imperfections.
When my two hours of game time were over, I left the Rockstar Games offices and stepped out into SoHo at midafternoon on one of warmest spring days of the year. The sun worshipers were out in full force, each of them as distinct as snowflakes: guys wearing oversized earphones and baseball caps tilted at every angle, women wearing minimalist skirts and shorts that gave them only the illusion of being clothed. An amorous couple making their way north hardly noticed me as they nearly crosschecked me into a streetside table of $6 sunglasses.
There was so much uniqueness and so much variety that there was no room to move, and I knew I was home.
May 4, 2008
A Strange City Called Home
By DAVE ITZKOFF
IN the opening moments of Grand Theft Auto IV, the latest chapter of the cinematically styled video game franchise, two men are standing at the side of a boat, watching a familiar sight drift into view. Through their eyes, we see a digitized, 21st-century retelling of a scene that greeted numerous generations of new arrivals to an unknown country: the eastern end of a long, narrow island, with a towering metal spire emerging from its belly, and a diminutive green statue beckoning from a tiny point off the island’s southern tip.
We think we know what we are seeing, until one of the game’s characters identifies the land mass for us.
“Liberty City,” he says to his shipmate in a vaguely East European accent. “You ever been?”
And before I even sat down to play the game, I could honestly say that I had.
Liberty City, the pixilated playground where the action of Grand Theft Auto IV occurs, is New York City, and it is not. Like previous installments of the game, which has sold more than 70 million copies in the last decade — abbreviated G.T.A., in the same sanitized way that Kentucky Fried Chicken became KFC — this newest edition (released on Tuesday for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 systems) sets players loose in an environment closely modeled on a real American metropolis, usually at some notorious time in its history.
The environs of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, released in 2002, were inspired by 1980s-era Miami, the pastel-hued setting for crime dramas like “Scarface” and “Miami Vice.” For a 2004 sequel, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the game relocated to three interconnected cities based on Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas, against a 1990s backdrop of gangsta rap and gang violence.
While moving its story forward to the present day, G.T.A. IV largely restricts itself to a single city — one at the height of its prosperity and during an ebb in crime. The game makes no attempt to disguise the fact that it is designed to look, sound and feel like the city I have lived in for nearly all 32 years of my life.
As many others have already noted, Liberty City is a dead ringer for New York: It’s divided into boroughs with distinct populations and architectural styles; it has most of the same suspension bridges and historic landmarks in the places you’d expect to find them; and its streets are always teeming with traffic and unruly pedestrians.
This game is hardly the first to try to replicate some portion of the New York experience — programmers have been trying to do this for decades. But Grand Theft Auto IV is the most contemporary attempt at this experiment, and may be the most realistic made available to a mass audience.
It’s also a game that has an extra layer of resonance for indigenous New Yorkers. With all the knowledge, confidence, predispositions and prejudices we possess, we’re not only better equipped to detect the many references and insider jokes, we may even come out of the game thinking differently about the real-life New York we’ve always known.
For a native New Yorker, the game is both comfortingly routine and eerily disorienting; you find yourself playing because it is a limitless escape and a consequence-free confinement. Liberty City is like nowhere I’ve ever visited, even as it tries with all its heart and soul to remind me of a place with which I’m already intimately acquainted.
MY initiation into Liberty City came a few days before G.T.A. IV went on sale, in the downtown loft offices of the game’s publisher, Rockstar Games. As I tooled around the electronic streets for a few hours under the supervision of two Rockstar employees, I was sometimes playing the game myself, and sometimes watching as someone else played it for me. I generally played by the rules, but for the purposes of this story, I occasionally made use of a special cheat feature to travel through the game in ways that a typical player cannot.
When that boat from the game’s opening scene finally docked at Liberty City, my character, a rugged-looking immigrant named Niko, found himself on the docks of a Dumbo-like neighborhood, in a borough the game calls Broker.
Indeed, much of Liberty City’s map is made up of direct analogues of real New York neighborhoods and locations, often renamed with winking, sophomoric monikers that could have come from Mad magazine: Manhattan is Algonquin and Queens is Dukes; the giant neon Pepsi-Cola sign in Long Island City advertises a beverage called Sprunk; and the MetLife skyscraper on Park Avenue has been replaced with the Getalife Building.
Even if I didn’t recognize this computer-generated tribute to Dumbo from its hilly terrain and its array of converted red-brick factories and dilapidated loft spaces, I might have known it from the disoriented feelings gathering in my gut. In real life, I have hardly spent enough time in Dumbo to know my way around it; if I were abandoned there as part of some urban Outward Bound adventure, I probably couldn’t find the nearest subway station without the help of a G.P.S.
On my television screen, I could see the silhouette of Manhattan on the horizon, but I had no idea how to get there. My digital discomfort was just as palpable as it would be if I were experiencing this world in three dimensions.
Following the game’s directions, I drove my character to the neighborhood that is Liberty City’s equivalent of Brighton Beach, where, true to its inspiration, all the shop signs were in Cyrillic lettering, and the few passers-by could be heard, in snatches, speaking Russian and Ukrainian. Niko, my alter ego, did not yet have his own apartment — for starters, he would have to sleep on someone else’s foldout couch in a ratty tenement with walls covered in graffiti inspired (so I am told) by tags that the game’s designers had seen and photographed in Brooklyn.
There was something amusingly authentic about Niko’s predicament. The game’s British creators seemed to know that given the choice, most players would probably run or drive straight into Manhattan — the version of the city they know from their own travels, or any number of films and television shows — and ignore the other boroughs. Here, as in the real world, entry into the heart of the city would have to be won through patience and hard work.
A few steps outside Niko’s temporary lodging, I found myself in Firefly Island, the game’s answer to Coney Island, complete with a giant Ferris wheel and a rickety wooden roller coaster; both attractions were closed and the area was devoid of pedestrians.
The scene was familiar in more ways than one: it reminded me of The Warriors, a video game that Rockstar created just three years ago, based largely on the 1979 Walter Hill movie of the same name. (You know, the one with the crazy-costumed New York gangs fighting their way from the Bronx to Brooklyn — “Can you dig it?” “Come out and plaa-aaay!”)
THAT game was also nominally set in New York, though I never genuinely felt transported there for one moment. That city seemed a grimy parody of someone else’s grimy parody of the city, one that looked as if our town had been struck by a giant mirror ball full of plutonium.
But I wanted to see more than the few chubby, backpack-toting tourists who were ambling around the Boardwalk. So I had my flesh-and-blood chaperons turn on a hidden feature within their version of the game that allowed me to fly anywhere on the G.T.A. map. And I mean, literally, fly: my virtual self disappeared, and the camera began to hover off the ground, swooping and soaring from the Brooklyn Bridge (er, I mean the Broker Bridge) to the Statue of Happiness, which resembles a wide-eyed Hillary Rodham Clinton hoisting a cup of coffee aloft.
Eventually I touched down in a Times Square that was appropriately cluttered with hypnotic neon advertisements for things I could not really buy, and populated, sparsely, with pedestrians who carried on cellphone conversations, sketched portraits of passers-by and played the saxophone in return for loose change. When I walked into a greasy all-night burger joint, a cashier greeted me with an appropriately indifferent “What?” But when I crossed the street against the light upon exiting, cars actually stopped for me (though they honked their horns).
Having been lulled into believing that I really was in New York, I made the mistake of trying to find my own Alphabet City apartment within the game. I walked down to Chinatown — that took only a few seconds — found what I thought was Houston Street, and made my way to where Avenue A (and my apartment) should have been. But after traversing only a block or two of bodegas and backward-hatted hipsters bobbing their heads to the beats of miniature iPods, I somehow found myself at the southern entrance to Grand Central Terminal.
It was as if some unknown natural disaster had recently touched down and attacked only the portions of New York that I cared for most deeply. My city — at least, the parts of it that I thought of as my city — no longer existed.
So I regrouped and tried to find the high-rise apartment building on East 40th Street where I grew up in the ’70s and ’80s. I started at the United Nations, made my way west through a perfect simulacrum of Tudor City (with another saxophone player performing in the park) and within a few short steps had gone all the way to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Foiled again!
It seemed a perfectly logical and human impulse, to prove to myself that I was somewhere recognizable by finding the one place in it that was most recognizable to me. Yet there was no way that the game could satisfy this impulse: like a comic-book superhero drawn by the legendary artist Jack Kirby, whose characters’ fists grew larger and feet grew smaller as they flew up out of their panels, the proportions of this version of Manhattan were an optical illusion. The parts that everybody would notice were blown up larger than life; the parts that virtually no one would care about were shrunk to nothingness.
Faced with this catastrophic revelation, I turned to a life of crime. I hijacked cars and crashed them into traffic poles; I raced a motorcycle through Central Park and dismounted just before the bike plunged into the lake (my way of letting the boathouse know I won’t be holding my wedding reception there). I jumped off the observation deck of the Empire State Building, just because I could, though I took no pleasure from the sickening scream my character let out, nor the sound of his jacket flapping in the wind, 86 stories to the ground.
At the urging of my human confederates, I even attempted one of Grand Theft Auto’s missions — tasks I was supposed to be completing to progress through the game properly — that required me to shoot my way through a gang of drug smugglers and steal their truckload of contraband. I did as I was instructed, but my heart just wasn’t in it. If I truly believed in Liberty City as a functioning community, how could I open fire on my fellow simulated citizens (even if they shot at me first)? How could I tread all over the social contract in a ripped-off truck full of bootleg prescription medication?
THE answer, of course, is that I couldn’t, and here is where the paradoxical nature of Grand Theft Auto once again rears its head. Unlike the missions, objectives and narrative elements of a traditional video game, which constitute the game itself — the things you’re supposed to be participating in and following along with in order to actually play — these same aspects of G.T.A. are more like sophisticated distractions to keep you from immersing yourself too deeply in its fictional city environment.
Except that the problem with G.T.A. — one that will in no way dissuade me from playing the game until my digits are raw and aching — is that the more fully you are pulled into Liberty City and the more closely you inspect it, the more you are reminded that it isn’t a city at all.
The neighborhoods do not blend into one another so much as sit next to one another. The traffic varies just enough from one area to the next to convince you that a place is inhabited, but eavesdrop on a pedestrian long enough, and you’ll find that he doesn’t eventually go home to his wife and kids — he just keeps walking and talking in a continuous loop.
It’s not the game’s fault that it can’t perfectly replicate the infinite variety of New York. But it sometimes comes so close to pulling off the illusion that it invites you to look for the imperfections.
When my two hours of game time were over, I left the Rockstar Games offices and stepped out into SoHo at midafternoon on one of warmest spring days of the year. The sun worshipers were out in full force, each of them as distinct as snowflakes: guys wearing oversized earphones and baseball caps tilted at every angle, women wearing minimalist skirts and shorts that gave them only the illusion of being clothed. An amorous couple making their way north hardly noticed me as they nearly crosschecked me into a streetside table of $6 sunglasses.
There was so much uniqueness and so much variety that there was no room to move, and I knew I was home.
Friday, May 9, 2008
'Grand Theft Auto IV' is exhilarating adventure
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/marcsaltzman/2008-04-28-grand-theft-auto-iv_N.htm
'Grand Theft Auto IV' is exhilarating adventure
Let's cut right to the chase: Grand Theft Auto IV is not a video game for kids, tweens or even young teenagers. As with its controversial predecessors, the latest in the 70 million unit-selling series is a Mature-rated adventure, created for players 17 years of age and older as it gives you a virtual taste of the criminal underworld. Think of it as an interactive episode of The Sopranos, if you will.
Because of its tremendous following and the fact it's available on both high-definition consoles, the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3, Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto IV will likely be the best-selling game of 2008. It also helps that it's the first game in the series to offer online multiplayer modes. Having spent the better part of 10 days living this dangerous alternate life, rest assured this GTA sequel more than lives up to the hype.
In Grand Theft Auto IV, you play as Niko Bellic, a tough-looking character who arrives in the U.S. from somewhere in Eastern Europe, expecting the streets to be paved with gold. It seems Niko's American cousin, Roman, lied about his extravagant lifestyle: Instead of being wealthy and living in a mansion, Roman is indebted to loan sharks and lives in a cockroach-infested apartment the size of a walk-in closet.
Nevertheless, Niko decides to help Roman with his rundown cabstand and keep thugs off his back until he can figure out how to make money and connections in Liberty City, the same city as 2001's Grand Theft Auto III, modeled after New York City and New Jersey. If you're questioning how Niko could forgive his scheming cousin, you'll discover a few hours into the game that there are other reasons why Niko left his homeland.
Grand Theft Auto games offer "sandbox" play, meaning you can virtually go anywhere and do anything in this fully realized 3-D city with pedestrians, traffic and storefronts. This play from a third-person perspective includes carjacking any vehicle, listening to more than a hundred songs on car radios and playing minigames such as billiards, darts, bowling or arcade games. Niko can go on dates, swim, surf the Internet and buy clothing and weapons.
But it's the seedy missions that unravel the lengthy single-player story. In person or via his cellphone, Niko will be asked to perform missions that include escorting someone, taking out drug dealers, evading police cruisers, racing to one end of the city before someone else, flying a helicopter, retrieving stolen money or looking up an informant's address. In many cases you'll have three offers at once and will be forced to make decisions, which will affect the storyline and your friendships.
Grand Theft Auto IV offers high-definition graphics that trump 2004's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, including impressive lip-synching, non-interactive story sequences that were motion-captured for added realism, varying weather and a new physics engine that models everything authentically. This sequel also adds more hand-to-hand combat and optional in-car GPS to help you better navigate the city.
Without question, though, the biggest new feature is something gamers have been asking about for years: multiplayer modes. In Grand Theft Auto IV, up to 16 gamers can play online in a host of cooperative and competitive games including "Deathmatch" (every person for himself), "Team Deathmatch" and "Cops & Crooks" (a racing game). Because we reviewed the game before launch, however, this online component was disabled.
Xbox 360 gamers will also be able to download bonus missions and other content later this year, via the Xbox Live service.
Controversy is unavoidable with this game. As with past GTA titles you can shoot at cops, drive into pedestrians and request "services" from a prostitute. This sequel is also laced with foul language, plus you can drink and drive and watch pole dancers at a strip club. Again, take heed to the "M" rating.
Aside from a slightly choppy frame rate at times, when the action stutters a bit, and hard-to-read green GPS directions on your map, there is little to complain about with Grand Theft Auto IV. Adult gamers will find a single-player story that can easily last a month, not to mention the ability to hop online and play with friends anywhere, anytime. Expect a lot of bang for your buck in this highly polished sequel.
'Grand Theft Auto IV' is exhilarating adventure
Let's cut right to the chase: Grand Theft Auto IV is not a video game for kids, tweens or even young teenagers. As with its controversial predecessors, the latest in the 70 million unit-selling series is a Mature-rated adventure, created for players 17 years of age and older as it gives you a virtual taste of the criminal underworld. Think of it as an interactive episode of The Sopranos, if you will.
Because of its tremendous following and the fact it's available on both high-definition consoles, the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3, Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto IV will likely be the best-selling game of 2008. It also helps that it's the first game in the series to offer online multiplayer modes. Having spent the better part of 10 days living this dangerous alternate life, rest assured this GTA sequel more than lives up to the hype.
In Grand Theft Auto IV, you play as Niko Bellic, a tough-looking character who arrives in the U.S. from somewhere in Eastern Europe, expecting the streets to be paved with gold. It seems Niko's American cousin, Roman, lied about his extravagant lifestyle: Instead of being wealthy and living in a mansion, Roman is indebted to loan sharks and lives in a cockroach-infested apartment the size of a walk-in closet.
Nevertheless, Niko decides to help Roman with his rundown cabstand and keep thugs off his back until he can figure out how to make money and connections in Liberty City, the same city as 2001's Grand Theft Auto III, modeled after New York City and New Jersey. If you're questioning how Niko could forgive his scheming cousin, you'll discover a few hours into the game that there are other reasons why Niko left his homeland.
Grand Theft Auto games offer "sandbox" play, meaning you can virtually go anywhere and do anything in this fully realized 3-D city with pedestrians, traffic and storefronts. This play from a third-person perspective includes carjacking any vehicle, listening to more than a hundred songs on car radios and playing minigames such as billiards, darts, bowling or arcade games. Niko can go on dates, swim, surf the Internet and buy clothing and weapons.
But it's the seedy missions that unravel the lengthy single-player story. In person or via his cellphone, Niko will be asked to perform missions that include escorting someone, taking out drug dealers, evading police cruisers, racing to one end of the city before someone else, flying a helicopter, retrieving stolen money or looking up an informant's address. In many cases you'll have three offers at once and will be forced to make decisions, which will affect the storyline and your friendships.
Grand Theft Auto IV offers high-definition graphics that trump 2004's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, including impressive lip-synching, non-interactive story sequences that were motion-captured for added realism, varying weather and a new physics engine that models everything authentically. This sequel also adds more hand-to-hand combat and optional in-car GPS to help you better navigate the city.
Without question, though, the biggest new feature is something gamers have been asking about for years: multiplayer modes. In Grand Theft Auto IV, up to 16 gamers can play online in a host of cooperative and competitive games including "Deathmatch" (every person for himself), "Team Deathmatch" and "Cops & Crooks" (a racing game). Because we reviewed the game before launch, however, this online component was disabled.
Xbox 360 gamers will also be able to download bonus missions and other content later this year, via the Xbox Live service.
Controversy is unavoidable with this game. As with past GTA titles you can shoot at cops, drive into pedestrians and request "services" from a prostitute. This sequel is also laced with foul language, plus you can drink and drive and watch pole dancers at a strip club. Again, take heed to the "M" rating.
Aside from a slightly choppy frame rate at times, when the action stutters a bit, and hard-to-read green GPS directions on your map, there is little to complain about with Grand Theft Auto IV. Adult gamers will find a single-player story that can easily last a month, not to mention the ability to hop online and play with friends anywhere, anytime. Expect a lot of bang for your buck in this highly polished sequel.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Console Race: Another Lap For Sony
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/gamesinc/archives/2008/03/console_race_an.html
Console Race: Another Lap For Sony
Matt Vella on March 13
For the second month in a row, sales of Sony’s (SNE) Playstation 3 console system outpaced Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox 360 in the U.S., according to figures released late Mar. 13 by analysts at the NPD Group. Though both companies promptly issued press releases slicing the monthly results in their own favor, the results underscore the tightening race between the two tech giants.
After a 2007 of fits and starts, Sony’s game system seems to finally be on firm footing. The company crowed about the nearly 281,000 PS3 systems it sold, representing 120% sales growth from the year before and a volume 10% higher than Microsoft’s next-generation console for the month. “We believe that Blu-ray becoming the high-def format of choice was the tipping point for many consumers,” said Jack Tretton, president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America, referring to the demise earlier this year of the rival HD-DVD format formerly backed by Microsoft.
For its part, Microsoft issued a release saying supply constraints had held up sales. In Feb., Microsoft sold 254,600 Xbox 360s, up from 230,000 consoles the month before. The company says the so-called Xbox ecosystem – combined sales of game systems, software, and accessories – was worth $332 million, or 39% of the market for next generation systems. Microsoft was also able to sell more games with each of its systems than Sony.
Still, Sony seems to have the wind at its back. In addition to its advanced PS3 console, the company last month sold 243,100 Playstation Portables and an eye-opening 351,800 Playstation 2 units, its previous generation game system. A raft of highly anticipated exclusive titles including sequels to the Metal Gear Solid and Gran Turismo series are due in the next couple of months, which the company hopes will further boost sales. Some analysts have predicted that Sony could pull ahead of Microsoft this year, despite Redmond’s year advance on the Japanese games titan.
As a whole, the games industry continues booming. Year-to-date sales of both hardware and software were up 34% to $1.3 billion from $992 million. “Even following a red-hot 2007, the video games industry shows no signs of letting up,” said Anita Frazier, an NPD analyst. She added that a slate of blockbuster titles yet to be released could push “the industry to achieve another year of record-breaking sales despite difficult economic conditions.”
Console Race: Another Lap For Sony
Matt Vella on March 13
For the second month in a row, sales of Sony’s (SNE) Playstation 3 console system outpaced Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox 360 in the U.S., according to figures released late Mar. 13 by analysts at the NPD Group. Though both companies promptly issued press releases slicing the monthly results in their own favor, the results underscore the tightening race between the two tech giants.
After a 2007 of fits and starts, Sony’s game system seems to finally be on firm footing. The company crowed about the nearly 281,000 PS3 systems it sold, representing 120% sales growth from the year before and a volume 10% higher than Microsoft’s next-generation console for the month. “We believe that Blu-ray becoming the high-def format of choice was the tipping point for many consumers,” said Jack Tretton, president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America, referring to the demise earlier this year of the rival HD-DVD format formerly backed by Microsoft.
For its part, Microsoft issued a release saying supply constraints had held up sales. In Feb., Microsoft sold 254,600 Xbox 360s, up from 230,000 consoles the month before. The company says the so-called Xbox ecosystem – combined sales of game systems, software, and accessories – was worth $332 million, or 39% of the market for next generation systems. Microsoft was also able to sell more games with each of its systems than Sony.
Still, Sony seems to have the wind at its back. In addition to its advanced PS3 console, the company last month sold 243,100 Playstation Portables and an eye-opening 351,800 Playstation 2 units, its previous generation game system. A raft of highly anticipated exclusive titles including sequels to the Metal Gear Solid and Gran Turismo series are due in the next couple of months, which the company hopes will further boost sales. Some analysts have predicted that Sony could pull ahead of Microsoft this year, despite Redmond’s year advance on the Japanese games titan.
As a whole, the games industry continues booming. Year-to-date sales of both hardware and software were up 34% to $1.3 billion from $992 million. “Even following a red-hot 2007, the video games industry shows no signs of letting up,” said Anita Frazier, an NPD analyst. She added that a slate of blockbuster titles yet to be released could push “the industry to achieve another year of record-breaking sales despite difficult economic conditions.”
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Wii and PS3 projected to eclipse XBox 360
http://machinist.salon.com/blog/2008/02/15/ps3_lead
2008.02.15
Wii and PS3 projected to eclipse XBox 360
Some pundits are content to remark upon stuff that's already happened, but a rarefied few of us -- market researchers, they're called -- feel more at home in the future. The future is expansive, it contains possibilities, it lets us let our imaginations run free.
Were you to constrain yourself to the present, for instance, you might have to accept the banal fact of Sony's unrelenting failure in the video game business. Since launching the PlayStation 3 a bit more than a year ago, the company has been consistently outsold by Microsoft's XBox 360 and the Nintendo Wii.
But one market research firm sees a different future for the PS3. The firm, iSuppli, says that by 2011, the PS3's "installed base" -- that is, the number of PS3s owned by people around the world -- will hit 38.4 million units. iSuppli predicts that the Wii, by then, will be in second place, with an installed base of 37.7 million, and XBox will be in last place, with an installed base of 32.3 million.
This scenario, understand, is almost a mirror image of today's market. XBox, which hit the street a full year before PS3 and Wii and has had solid sales, has the biggest installed base; Wii is number two, and PS3 is three.
It's easy to see how the Wii's base might beat XBox's -- in 2007 Nintendo sold 6.3 million Wiis, compared to 4.6 million XBox sales for Microsoft, and that lead seems sure to hold. Indeed iSuppli says the Wii's base will beat the XBox's by the end of 2008.
But PS3? Sony sold 3.97 million last year. Unless millions start buying the console for its Blu-Ray disc-playing capabilities -- which seems unlikely -- it's hard to see why the PS3 would so clearly best the XBox.
But the future, as I say, is alive with possibility.
2008.02.15
Wii and PS3 projected to eclipse XBox 360
Some pundits are content to remark upon stuff that's already happened, but a rarefied few of us -- market researchers, they're called -- feel more at home in the future. The future is expansive, it contains possibilities, it lets us let our imaginations run free.
Were you to constrain yourself to the present, for instance, you might have to accept the banal fact of Sony's unrelenting failure in the video game business. Since launching the PlayStation 3 a bit more than a year ago, the company has been consistently outsold by Microsoft's XBox 360 and the Nintendo Wii.
But one market research firm sees a different future for the PS3. The firm, iSuppli, says that by 2011, the PS3's "installed base" -- that is, the number of PS3s owned by people around the world -- will hit 38.4 million units. iSuppli predicts that the Wii, by then, will be in second place, with an installed base of 37.7 million, and XBox will be in last place, with an installed base of 32.3 million.
This scenario, understand, is almost a mirror image of today's market. XBox, which hit the street a full year before PS3 and Wii and has had solid sales, has the biggest installed base; Wii is number two, and PS3 is three.
It's easy to see how the Wii's base might beat XBox's -- in 2007 Nintendo sold 6.3 million Wiis, compared to 4.6 million XBox sales for Microsoft, and that lead seems sure to hold. Indeed iSuppli says the Wii's base will beat the XBox's by the end of 2008.
But PS3? Sony sold 3.97 million last year. Unless millions start buying the console for its Blu-Ray disc-playing capabilities -- which seems unlikely -- it's hard to see why the PS3 would so clearly best the XBox.
But the future, as I say, is alive with possibility.
Is 2008 the year of the PlayStation 3?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23172933/
Is 2008 the year of the PlayStation 3?
Console still faces uphill battle, despite Blu-ray success and upcoming titles
By Levi Buchanan
MSNBC contributor
Fri., Feb. 15, 2008
While the beleaguered PlayStation 3 still faces an uphill battle, Sony believes the console is spring-loaded for a turnaround.
Why? The success of Blu-ray, an upcoming slate of much-needed exclusive games and new numbers from the NPD Group showing that the console bested Microsoft's Xbox 360 for the first time in January.
(MSNBC is a joint Microsoft - NBC Universal venture.)
Since the system's November 2006 debut, the PlayStation 3 has consistently been humbled by the Nintendo Wii and its chief rival, the Xbox 360. But numbers released Thursday show that the PS3 outsold the Xbox 360 in last month, moving 269,000 units in the U.S. and coming in second only to the Nintendo Wii.
Jack Tretton, Sony Computer Entertainment America's CEO, was upbeat in a email sent to reporters after the release of the NPD data: “Coming off a great holiday sales season we see strong momentum behind PS3 in 2008, and feel confident about the year ahead."
So will 2008 be the breakout year for the PS3? Probably not. The changing tastes of the market are not on Sony’s side, and a twitchy economy doesn’t help the company's chances, either. Plus, one month of besting the Xbox 360 — in a month where none of the systems sold more than 300,000 units — doesn't necessarily signal a turnaround.
Colin Sebastian, an analyst with Lazard Capital Markets, sees January as an aberration due to short Xbox 360 supplies following their successful holiday season.
"There may be a substitution effect there," he says. "It says as much about Xbox 360 supply issues as it does about PS3 sales."
Blu-ray boosted PS3
But the PlayStation 3 isn’t down for the count. The immediate advantage Sony has going into 2008 is something that initially looked like a liability: its Blu-ray DVD player. It was pretty cool to have the cutting-edge player inside every game system, but it also hoisted the price of the PS3 to $600 — at least initially.
"The added cost of Blu-ray to the PS3 hurt it. Consumers didn't see it as a compelling value,” says Sebastian.
But Sony has dropped the price of the PS3 since launch. The base model, which sells for $400, makes it one of the cheapest Blu-ray players on the market.
And even though the PS3’s sales looked anemic in comparison with its competitors — even in comparison with its older sibling, the PlayStation 2 — 3.2 million units sold surely helped Blu-ray in its apparent triumph over HD-DVD.
This week, online DVD-rental site Netflix threw its weight behind the format. And last month, Warner Bros., the largest movie studio in Hollywood, announced it was going exclusively with Blu-ray.
...But high-def hasn't caught on like DVD did
Having HD-DVD on the ropes is a good thing, but high-definition movies have not caught on like DVD did back in 2000. And after several years of the iPod's stratospheric ascendance, consumers are now plenty comfortable downloading their entertainment. For a new generation, physical media is just so yesterday.
Indeed, Apple recently announced the launch of HD movie rentals via its Apple TV box, mirroring something Xbox 360 owners have been able to do for a year. And let's face it — for a large number of consumers, DVD is simply good enough.
This dovetails with another problem Sony had in 2007 — a situation that is unlikely to change this year: The PlayStation 2 was also apparently good enough for many consumers. Last year was a good one for the eight-year-old system, which outsold the PS3 by almost 1.5 million — thanks to a $129 price point and a host of great games, such as "God of War 2."
There are also thousands of PS2 games on shelves, many in the $20 range, making them not only impulse buys, but also more comfortable purchases in an economy that has many consumers minding their bank accounts.
So, where are the exclusives?
Another problem that the PS3 must conquer in 2008? Its lack of exclusive releases. Microsoft’s Xbox 360 had a great 2007, with exclusive titles such as “Halo 3” and “Mass Effect.” Sony needs to step up the number of titles for its new system, period, and the number of games that can’t be played anywhere else as well.
"Exclusive content is one of the hallmarks of the PlayStation brand," says Scott Steinberg, vice president of product marketing at Sony. "And we'll have that in 2008."
The calendar looks good so far. The announced titles on deck for 2008 are Sony's racer "Gran Turismo," the sci-fi shooters "Resistance 2" and "Killzone 2," and the inventive "LittleBigPlanet," an action game that relies on gamer-created content to flourish.
All the anticipated games look fantastic so far, but "LittleBigPlanet" has potential to be a true breakout hit if it catches on via word of mouth, not entirely unlike a Facebook or Second Life. And speaking of Second Life, Sony will also debut "Home," its 3D virtual world community for both the PS3 and the PlayStation Portable in 2008.
Will 'Metal Gear,' 'Final Fantasy' be the ticket?
The PS3 will also be supported by Konami's anticipated "Metal Gear Solid 4" and Square Enix's "Final Fantasy XIII" — as long as these games remain PS3 exclusives.
Because games now cost tens of millions of dollars to develop, and the Xbox 360 has sold almost 10 million consoles in America alone, many publishers have converted former PS3 exclusives to multiplatform games, such as Capcom's "Devil May Cry 4" and Ubisoft's "Assassin's Creed."
What’s more, these games repeatedly sell better on the Xbox 360. "Assassin's Creed" sold only 377,000 copies on the PS3 last November, compared with 980,000 on the Xbox 360.
It's all about differentiation
The PS3 was also dealt a blow when decided to make its much-anticipated “Grand Theft Auto 4” for the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. What’s more, Microsoft also secured exclusive bonus content for the Xbox 360 version of the game.
To really win this console war, Sony needs to figure out a way to differentiate the titles that go multiplatform, like “Grand Theft Auto IV.”
"If these games look like Xbox 360 games or are not as fun as Wii games, that's a problem," says Sebastian.
Will Blu-Ray keep exclusives on the platform?
Sony counters that the success of Blu-ray will help keep exclusives on the PS3 and provide that needed differentiation.
"The industry is moving toward large blockbusters that only fit on Blu-ray," says Steinberg, referring to the 50GB of storage available on a Blu-ray disc. (The Xbox 360 uses regular DVDs that store only 9GB.)
Size matters, but is the market really moving toward physically bigger games? With the graphically inferior Nintendo Wii as the uncontested winner of last year’s console slugfest, the unscientific data would seem to indicate that bigger isn’t always better.
"(Sony) probably miscalculated in terms of where the market was going. Sony moved up-market," says Sebastian. "The market has moved a little bit more casual."
In an attempt to capture this casual trend, Sony has its PlayStation Network, a place where gamers can download smaller games, such as the upcoming "echochrome," a puzzle game that looks like an M.C. Escher illustration.
These games should sell to a dedicated Sony fanbase, but it's doubtful that Sony (or Microsoft, for that matter) can wrest the casual narrative away from Nintendo at this point. The only thing that could possibly nudge the needle is another price drop, which Sebastian thinks is in the works for 2008. But Microsoft could immediately neutralize that salvo with an expected (and much overdue) price drop of its own for the Xbox 360.
This is now Nintendo's game to lose, and they show no signs of relinquishing the table — especially with the anticipated release of "Super Smash Bros. Brawl" next month, a title more hyped than last year's best-selling "Super Mario Galaxy."
The contest is for second place right now. And Microsoft just has too much of a head start on Sony to make 2008 a reversal of fortune, leaving Sony again holding the bronze over a console that was supposed to deliver the gold.
Is 2008 the year of the PlayStation 3?
Console still faces uphill battle, despite Blu-ray success and upcoming titles
By Levi Buchanan
MSNBC contributor
Fri., Feb. 15, 2008
While the beleaguered PlayStation 3 still faces an uphill battle, Sony believes the console is spring-loaded for a turnaround.
Why? The success of Blu-ray, an upcoming slate of much-needed exclusive games and new numbers from the NPD Group showing that the console bested Microsoft's Xbox 360 for the first time in January.
(MSNBC is a joint Microsoft - NBC Universal venture.)
Since the system's November 2006 debut, the PlayStation 3 has consistently been humbled by the Nintendo Wii and its chief rival, the Xbox 360. But numbers released Thursday show that the PS3 outsold the Xbox 360 in last month, moving 269,000 units in the U.S. and coming in second only to the Nintendo Wii.
Jack Tretton, Sony Computer Entertainment America's CEO, was upbeat in a email sent to reporters after the release of the NPD data: “Coming off a great holiday sales season we see strong momentum behind PS3 in 2008, and feel confident about the year ahead."
So will 2008 be the breakout year for the PS3? Probably not. The changing tastes of the market are not on Sony’s side, and a twitchy economy doesn’t help the company's chances, either. Plus, one month of besting the Xbox 360 — in a month where none of the systems sold more than 300,000 units — doesn't necessarily signal a turnaround.
Colin Sebastian, an analyst with Lazard Capital Markets, sees January as an aberration due to short Xbox 360 supplies following their successful holiday season.
"There may be a substitution effect there," he says. "It says as much about Xbox 360 supply issues as it does about PS3 sales."
Blu-ray boosted PS3
But the PlayStation 3 isn’t down for the count. The immediate advantage Sony has going into 2008 is something that initially looked like a liability: its Blu-ray DVD player. It was pretty cool to have the cutting-edge player inside every game system, but it also hoisted the price of the PS3 to $600 — at least initially.
"The added cost of Blu-ray to the PS3 hurt it. Consumers didn't see it as a compelling value,” says Sebastian.
But Sony has dropped the price of the PS3 since launch. The base model, which sells for $400, makes it one of the cheapest Blu-ray players on the market.
And even though the PS3’s sales looked anemic in comparison with its competitors — even in comparison with its older sibling, the PlayStation 2 — 3.2 million units sold surely helped Blu-ray in its apparent triumph over HD-DVD.
This week, online DVD-rental site Netflix threw its weight behind the format. And last month, Warner Bros., the largest movie studio in Hollywood, announced it was going exclusively with Blu-ray.
...But high-def hasn't caught on like DVD did
Having HD-DVD on the ropes is a good thing, but high-definition movies have not caught on like DVD did back in 2000. And after several years of the iPod's stratospheric ascendance, consumers are now plenty comfortable downloading their entertainment. For a new generation, physical media is just so yesterday.
Indeed, Apple recently announced the launch of HD movie rentals via its Apple TV box, mirroring something Xbox 360 owners have been able to do for a year. And let's face it — for a large number of consumers, DVD is simply good enough.
This dovetails with another problem Sony had in 2007 — a situation that is unlikely to change this year: The PlayStation 2 was also apparently good enough for many consumers. Last year was a good one for the eight-year-old system, which outsold the PS3 by almost 1.5 million — thanks to a $129 price point and a host of great games, such as "God of War 2."
There are also thousands of PS2 games on shelves, many in the $20 range, making them not only impulse buys, but also more comfortable purchases in an economy that has many consumers minding their bank accounts.
So, where are the exclusives?
Another problem that the PS3 must conquer in 2008? Its lack of exclusive releases. Microsoft’s Xbox 360 had a great 2007, with exclusive titles such as “Halo 3” and “Mass Effect.” Sony needs to step up the number of titles for its new system, period, and the number of games that can’t be played anywhere else as well.
"Exclusive content is one of the hallmarks of the PlayStation brand," says Scott Steinberg, vice president of product marketing at Sony. "And we'll have that in 2008."
The calendar looks good so far. The announced titles on deck for 2008 are Sony's racer "Gran Turismo," the sci-fi shooters "Resistance 2" and "Killzone 2," and the inventive "LittleBigPlanet," an action game that relies on gamer-created content to flourish.
All the anticipated games look fantastic so far, but "LittleBigPlanet" has potential to be a true breakout hit if it catches on via word of mouth, not entirely unlike a Facebook or Second Life. And speaking of Second Life, Sony will also debut "Home," its 3D virtual world community for both the PS3 and the PlayStation Portable in 2008.
Will 'Metal Gear,' 'Final Fantasy' be the ticket?
The PS3 will also be supported by Konami's anticipated "Metal Gear Solid 4" and Square Enix's "Final Fantasy XIII" — as long as these games remain PS3 exclusives.
Because games now cost tens of millions of dollars to develop, and the Xbox 360 has sold almost 10 million consoles in America alone, many publishers have converted former PS3 exclusives to multiplatform games, such as Capcom's "Devil May Cry 4" and Ubisoft's "Assassin's Creed."
What’s more, these games repeatedly sell better on the Xbox 360. "Assassin's Creed" sold only 377,000 copies on the PS3 last November, compared with 980,000 on the Xbox 360.
It's all about differentiation
The PS3 was also dealt a blow when decided to make its much-anticipated “Grand Theft Auto 4” for the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. What’s more, Microsoft also secured exclusive bonus content for the Xbox 360 version of the game.
To really win this console war, Sony needs to figure out a way to differentiate the titles that go multiplatform, like “Grand Theft Auto IV.”
"If these games look like Xbox 360 games or are not as fun as Wii games, that's a problem," says Sebastian.
Will Blu-Ray keep exclusives on the platform?
Sony counters that the success of Blu-ray will help keep exclusives on the PS3 and provide that needed differentiation.
"The industry is moving toward large blockbusters that only fit on Blu-ray," says Steinberg, referring to the 50GB of storage available on a Blu-ray disc. (The Xbox 360 uses regular DVDs that store only 9GB.)
Size matters, but is the market really moving toward physically bigger games? With the graphically inferior Nintendo Wii as the uncontested winner of last year’s console slugfest, the unscientific data would seem to indicate that bigger isn’t always better.
"(Sony) probably miscalculated in terms of where the market was going. Sony moved up-market," says Sebastian. "The market has moved a little bit more casual."
In an attempt to capture this casual trend, Sony has its PlayStation Network, a place where gamers can download smaller games, such as the upcoming "echochrome," a puzzle game that looks like an M.C. Escher illustration.
These games should sell to a dedicated Sony fanbase, but it's doubtful that Sony (or Microsoft, for that matter) can wrest the casual narrative away from Nintendo at this point. The only thing that could possibly nudge the needle is another price drop, which Sebastian thinks is in the works for 2008. But Microsoft could immediately neutralize that salvo with an expected (and much overdue) price drop of its own for the Xbox 360.
This is now Nintendo's game to lose, and they show no signs of relinquishing the table — especially with the anticipated release of "Super Smash Bros. Brawl" next month, a title more hyped than last year's best-selling "Super Mario Galaxy."
The contest is for second place right now. And Microsoft just has too much of a head start on Sony to make 2008 a reversal of fortune, leaving Sony again holding the bronze over a console that was supposed to deliver the gold.
Electronic Arts Offers $2 Billion for Take-Two
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/technology/25game-web.html
February 25, 2008
Electronic Arts Offers $2 Billion for Take-Two
By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN and SETH SCHIESEL
Electronic Arts, the video gaming giant, made an unsolicited $2 billion bid on Sunday for rival Take-Two Interactive, publisher of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, a deal that would further a wave of consolidation in the rapidly growing industry.
Electronic Arts, which publishes hit games like the Madden N.F.L. and Need for Speed series, offered to pay $26 a share for Take-Two, a 50 percent premium over its share price of $17.36 on Friday. The offer was made publicly after a series of private offers to Take-Two were rejected by its board.
Electronic Arts approached Take Two with a $26-a-share offer on Feb. 19, up from $25 share it initially offered on Feb. 15.
The timing of the bid appears to be an attempt to acquire Take-Two before it releases what is widely expected to be the top-selling game of 2008, the fourth installment of the crime thriller Grand Theft Auto. The Grand Theft Auto franchise, Take-Two’s crown jewel, has sold more than 60 million copies since Grand Theft Auto III took the game industry by storm in 2001.
Through its Rockstar subsidiary, Take-Two is scheduled to release the game on April 29 for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3 consoles. If it lives up to consumers’ expectations, the game is expected to sell 10 million copies or more by the end of the year, which would almost certainly make Take-Two more expensive.
Electronic Art’s dominance has been strongly challenged by Activision. Not only has Activision had a recent string of hits, notably Guitar Hero, it also recently agreed to buy Vivendi’s game division to form a company called Activision Blizzard.
At the same time, E.A. has endured a growing chorus of criticism from some investors who say the company has lost its creative and innovative edge.
There is little doubt that E.A. remains the juggernaut of the video game industry. But it has come to rely heavily on sequels.
A merger with Take-Two would be a union of two vastly different companies. E.A. has a reputation for steady growth and fiscal discipline, while Take-Two is known as a mercurial one-hit wonder.
Electronic Arts said it was making its offer public to “bring its proposal to the attention of all Take-Two shareholders.” In a telephone interview on Sunday, Electronic Arts’ chief executive, John Riccitiello, said, “It is an enormous premium,” suggesting that rather than consider the offer hostile, “We think of ourselves as a ‘white knight.’ ”
Take-Two was far less generous. In a statement, Strauss Zelnick, the company’s chairman, said, “Electronic Arts’ proposal provides insufficient value to our shareholders and comes at absolutely the wrong time given the crucial initiatives under way at the company,” referring to the new Grand Theft Auto and other products.
Mr. Riccitiello said, however, he believed that Take-Two’s stock price already reflected an expectation among investors that Grand Theft Auto IV would be a success, and that Take-Two would become less valuable to E.A. after the game’s introduction than it was now.
Mr. Riccitiello said his offer’s timing reflected a desire to integrate Take-Two’s operations with E.A.’s before the all-important holiday shopping season. He said he had formed a relationship in recent years with Sam Houser, one of Rockstar’s founders, but added that he had avoided contacting Mr. Houser while pursuing his negotiations with Mr. Zelnick.
Mr. Zelnick said that Take-Two had offered to initiate discussions with Electronic Arts on April 30, the the day after Grand Theft Auto IV was scheduled for release. “We believe this offer demonstrated our commitment to pursuing all avenues to maximize stockholder value, while we believe that E.A.’s refusal to entertain this path is evidence of their desire to acquire Take-Two at a significant discount,” he said.Mr. Riccitiello refused to speculate about what steps he would take next, but it is possible that Electronic Arts could pursue a proxy contest to oust the board.
Over the next several weeks, Mr. Riccitiello’s main challenge will be to persuade investors to accept the deal and convince employees that Electronic Arts will respect the creative autonomy of Take-Two’s various development teams. Over the last decade, E.A. has acquired many high-profile game studios, including Westwood (the Command & Conquer series), Bullfrog Productions (Populous) and Origin Systems (Ultima), which essentially dissolved after Electronic Arts tried to direct and homogenize their creative output.
Any deal for Take-Two would be largely empty if Take-Two teams like Rockstar and Ken Levine’s group at 2K Boston, which recently released the acclaimed game BioShock, were to depart rather than work for E.A.
Mr. Riccitiello seems aware of the danger and is taking steps to convince the game industry of E.A.’s newfound respect for creative talent. At a well-received speech at an industry conference in Las Vegas earlier this month Mr. Riccitiello promised that in future deals, Electronic Arts would avoid killing the creative golden goose as it has in the past.
Matt Richtel contributed reporting.
February 25, 2008
Electronic Arts Offers $2 Billion for Take-Two
By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN and SETH SCHIESEL
Electronic Arts, the video gaming giant, made an unsolicited $2 billion bid on Sunday for rival Take-Two Interactive, publisher of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, a deal that would further a wave of consolidation in the rapidly growing industry.
Electronic Arts, which publishes hit games like the Madden N.F.L. and Need for Speed series, offered to pay $26 a share for Take-Two, a 50 percent premium over its share price of $17.36 on Friday. The offer was made publicly after a series of private offers to Take-Two were rejected by its board.
Electronic Arts approached Take Two with a $26-a-share offer on Feb. 19, up from $25 share it initially offered on Feb. 15.
The timing of the bid appears to be an attempt to acquire Take-Two before it releases what is widely expected to be the top-selling game of 2008, the fourth installment of the crime thriller Grand Theft Auto. The Grand Theft Auto franchise, Take-Two’s crown jewel, has sold more than 60 million copies since Grand Theft Auto III took the game industry by storm in 2001.
Through its Rockstar subsidiary, Take-Two is scheduled to release the game on April 29 for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3 consoles. If it lives up to consumers’ expectations, the game is expected to sell 10 million copies or more by the end of the year, which would almost certainly make Take-Two more expensive.
Electronic Art’s dominance has been strongly challenged by Activision. Not only has Activision had a recent string of hits, notably Guitar Hero, it also recently agreed to buy Vivendi’s game division to form a company called Activision Blizzard.
At the same time, E.A. has endured a growing chorus of criticism from some investors who say the company has lost its creative and innovative edge.
There is little doubt that E.A. remains the juggernaut of the video game industry. But it has come to rely heavily on sequels.
A merger with Take-Two would be a union of two vastly different companies. E.A. has a reputation for steady growth and fiscal discipline, while Take-Two is known as a mercurial one-hit wonder.
Electronic Arts said it was making its offer public to “bring its proposal to the attention of all Take-Two shareholders.” In a telephone interview on Sunday, Electronic Arts’ chief executive, John Riccitiello, said, “It is an enormous premium,” suggesting that rather than consider the offer hostile, “We think of ourselves as a ‘white knight.’ ”
Take-Two was far less generous. In a statement, Strauss Zelnick, the company’s chairman, said, “Electronic Arts’ proposal provides insufficient value to our shareholders and comes at absolutely the wrong time given the crucial initiatives under way at the company,” referring to the new Grand Theft Auto and other products.
Mr. Riccitiello said, however, he believed that Take-Two’s stock price already reflected an expectation among investors that Grand Theft Auto IV would be a success, and that Take-Two would become less valuable to E.A. after the game’s introduction than it was now.
Mr. Riccitiello said his offer’s timing reflected a desire to integrate Take-Two’s operations with E.A.’s before the all-important holiday shopping season. He said he had formed a relationship in recent years with Sam Houser, one of Rockstar’s founders, but added that he had avoided contacting Mr. Houser while pursuing his negotiations with Mr. Zelnick.
Mr. Zelnick said that Take-Two had offered to initiate discussions with Electronic Arts on April 30, the the day after Grand Theft Auto IV was scheduled for release. “We believe this offer demonstrated our commitment to pursuing all avenues to maximize stockholder value, while we believe that E.A.’s refusal to entertain this path is evidence of their desire to acquire Take-Two at a significant discount,” he said.Mr. Riccitiello refused to speculate about what steps he would take next, but it is possible that Electronic Arts could pursue a proxy contest to oust the board.
Over the next several weeks, Mr. Riccitiello’s main challenge will be to persuade investors to accept the deal and convince employees that Electronic Arts will respect the creative autonomy of Take-Two’s various development teams. Over the last decade, E.A. has acquired many high-profile game studios, including Westwood (the Command & Conquer series), Bullfrog Productions (Populous) and Origin Systems (Ultima), which essentially dissolved after Electronic Arts tried to direct and homogenize their creative output.
Any deal for Take-Two would be largely empty if Take-Two teams like Rockstar and Ken Levine’s group at 2K Boston, which recently released the acclaimed game BioShock, were to depart rather than work for E.A.
Mr. Riccitiello seems aware of the danger and is taking steps to convince the game industry of E.A.’s newfound respect for creative talent. At a well-received speech at an industry conference in Las Vegas earlier this month Mr. Riccitiello promised that in future deals, Electronic Arts would avoid killing the creative golden goose as it has in the past.
Matt Richtel contributed reporting.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Arcade Games Make A Comeback
http://videogames.yahoo.com/feature/arcade-games-make-a-comeback/1187268
Arcade Games Make A Comeback
Feb 15, 2008
When David Ellis was in high school, he, like millions of other teenagers, became mesmerized by videogames. That was back in the 1980s, however, when the most popular place to play a videogame was in an arcade.
These days, Ellis, who is today a game designer for North Carolina-based Vicious Cycle Software, is at the forefront of a very retro trend: installing those grand old game playing consoles at home. He bought his first game console, Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator, in 1997. Since then, Ellis has snapped up more than a dozen and has even written a book, The Official Price Guide To Classic Video Games. "I like the older games because they are so much more creative than what is in the arcades now. Today, everything is a fighting or shooting or driving game," he says.
Home entertainment today is squarely focused on the kinds of high-definition graphics offered up by systems such as the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. The graphics and speed of those machines can't be matched by the arcade games of 30 years ago. But many people miss the thrill of arcade games--of getting swallowed up by the monstrous machines and immersed in the abstract graphics.
"These old-school games might not have the best graphics," says videogame industry analyst Billy Pidgeon of IDC. "But the game mechanics are sound, and the game play is a lot better than many of today's new titles. That game play lets the players hold on to their youth."
The golden age of arcade games, collectors generally agree, lasted from around the 1978 to the mid-1980s. Despite their size, arcade machines had only a dash of electronics--little more than a few circuit boards and a reasonably sized CRT monitor to show the action. The vivid and bigger-than-life artwork featured on the sides of the machines was never matched by what was on the screen--but it sparked the imagination and competitive juices of waves of teenagers.
"A big part of the appeal is nostalgia," says Rick Kirby, president of Betson Enterprise, in Carlstadt, N.J. For 70 years, Betson has been a major supplier of coin-op machines, including pinball, jukeboxes and of course videogame arcade machines to commercial businesses. More recently, Kirby says, he's seeing orders for machines from individuals, many of whom look to get a machine that reminds them of their youth. "The last few years, we've seen an all-time high in sales of machines for home use."
That nostalgia and passion for arcade games was even chronicled in last year's documentary film King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, which focused on a cross-country duel between game rivals Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell as each competed to become the 2007 Guinness World Records holder for the high score in "Donkey Kong."
While Donkey Kong may have been one of the stars of a film, according to Kirby, there isn't as much interest in the great ape as there is another character from the early days: Ms. Pac-Man. At first merely an unauthorized sequel to "Pac-Man," this game became a bigger hit. Debuting in 1982, it scored points for girls' rights to play in the arcade. Today, restored "Ms. Pac-Man" machines are among Betson's top sellers.
"The combo 'Ms. Pac-Man' and 'Galaga' machine is certainly one of our most popular games," says Kirby. Original versions of classic arcade machines can be found for sale on sites including eBay for only a few hundred dollars.
Enthusiasm for arcade-style games isn't limited to teenage boys-turned-grownups. "The buyers of these machines are families, husbands and wives who grew up playing the games in the arcades and today want them for their game rooms," Kirby notes.
Collectors, such as the likes of Ellis, however, still revel in the vintage machines--even if they come encrusted with decades worth of spilled soda, old gum and scratches from the thousands of winners--and losers--of the past. "These were the games I grew up with, and I want the vintage machines," says Ellis. There is, he concedes, a downside to the classics: "The originals can break down, and collectors have to repair them."
As a result, many buyers today are snapping up modern versions of the classic machines. Those machines are pricier--often topping $2,500--but in many cases they can play up to 80 game titles. Having one machine--instead of say, 80--is a far more realistic option in most homes. And worrying about breakdowns becomes less problematic. "The modern machines are more reliable," says Kirby. "That is what we're seeing from many buyers. They want the game they remember, but they don't want to have to make it work."
Whether it is a modern version or an original from the 1980s, Ellis says that these games offer something that today's games on the PlayStation fail to deliver. "I can get the quick fix from these arcade machines. I can play for 10 minutes and have my gaming urge satisfied."
Arcade Games Make A Comeback
Feb 15, 2008
When David Ellis was in high school, he, like millions of other teenagers, became mesmerized by videogames. That was back in the 1980s, however, when the most popular place to play a videogame was in an arcade.
These days, Ellis, who is today a game designer for North Carolina-based Vicious Cycle Software, is at the forefront of a very retro trend: installing those grand old game playing consoles at home. He bought his first game console, Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator, in 1997. Since then, Ellis has snapped up more than a dozen and has even written a book, The Official Price Guide To Classic Video Games. "I like the older games because they are so much more creative than what is in the arcades now. Today, everything is a fighting or shooting or driving game," he says.
Home entertainment today is squarely focused on the kinds of high-definition graphics offered up by systems such as the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. The graphics and speed of those machines can't be matched by the arcade games of 30 years ago. But many people miss the thrill of arcade games--of getting swallowed up by the monstrous machines and immersed in the abstract graphics.
"These old-school games might not have the best graphics," says videogame industry analyst Billy Pidgeon of IDC. "But the game mechanics are sound, and the game play is a lot better than many of today's new titles. That game play lets the players hold on to their youth."
The golden age of arcade games, collectors generally agree, lasted from around the 1978 to the mid-1980s. Despite their size, arcade machines had only a dash of electronics--little more than a few circuit boards and a reasonably sized CRT monitor to show the action. The vivid and bigger-than-life artwork featured on the sides of the machines was never matched by what was on the screen--but it sparked the imagination and competitive juices of waves of teenagers.
"A big part of the appeal is nostalgia," says Rick Kirby, president of Betson Enterprise, in Carlstadt, N.J. For 70 years, Betson has been a major supplier of coin-op machines, including pinball, jukeboxes and of course videogame arcade machines to commercial businesses. More recently, Kirby says, he's seeing orders for machines from individuals, many of whom look to get a machine that reminds them of their youth. "The last few years, we've seen an all-time high in sales of machines for home use."
That nostalgia and passion for arcade games was even chronicled in last year's documentary film King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, which focused on a cross-country duel between game rivals Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell as each competed to become the 2007 Guinness World Records holder for the high score in "Donkey Kong."
While Donkey Kong may have been one of the stars of a film, according to Kirby, there isn't as much interest in the great ape as there is another character from the early days: Ms. Pac-Man. At first merely an unauthorized sequel to "Pac-Man," this game became a bigger hit. Debuting in 1982, it scored points for girls' rights to play in the arcade. Today, restored "Ms. Pac-Man" machines are among Betson's top sellers.
"The combo 'Ms. Pac-Man' and 'Galaga' machine is certainly one of our most popular games," says Kirby. Original versions of classic arcade machines can be found for sale on sites including eBay for only a few hundred dollars.
Enthusiasm for arcade-style games isn't limited to teenage boys-turned-grownups. "The buyers of these machines are families, husbands and wives who grew up playing the games in the arcades and today want them for their game rooms," Kirby notes.
Collectors, such as the likes of Ellis, however, still revel in the vintage machines--even if they come encrusted with decades worth of spilled soda, old gum and scratches from the thousands of winners--and losers--of the past. "These were the games I grew up with, and I want the vintage machines," says Ellis. There is, he concedes, a downside to the classics: "The originals can break down, and collectors have to repair them."
As a result, many buyers today are snapping up modern versions of the classic machines. Those machines are pricier--often topping $2,500--but in many cases they can play up to 80 game titles. Having one machine--instead of say, 80--is a far more realistic option in most homes. And worrying about breakdowns becomes less problematic. "The modern machines are more reliable," says Kirby. "That is what we're seeing from many buyers. They want the game they remember, but they don't want to have to make it work."
Whether it is a modern version or an original from the 1980s, Ellis says that these games offer something that today's games on the PlayStation fail to deliver. "I can get the quick fix from these arcade machines. I can play for 10 minutes and have my gaming urge satisfied."
Wii to Displace Xbox 360 by End of 2008
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,142531-c,gameconsoles/article.html
Wii to Displace Xbox 360 by End of 2008
Nintendo's Wii game console will displace Microsoft's Xbox 360 as the new-generation game machine, according to market research firm iSuppli.
Dan Nystedt, IDG News Service
Friday, February 15, 2008
Nintendo's popular Wii game console will displace Microsoft's Xbox 360 as the new-generation game machine, iSuppli said Thursday.
The market researcher forecasted that the global installed base of Wii game consoles will rise to 30.2 million units in 2008, up from 18 million in 2007, putting it ahead of the Xbox 360's projected 25.7 million units.
The Wii is already riding a wave of popularity that saw it win the greatest growth among new game consoles last year, according to iSuppli figures. There were only 3.2 million units in people's homes at the end of 2006, jumping to 18 million at the end of last year. The Xbox 360 retained its lead as the console in most homes last year by edging out the Wii with 18.2 million units, while the PlayStation 3 lagged rivals with 10.3 million, up from 1.8 million per year earlier.
iSuppli did not include older game consoles or handhelds in their report.
The market researcher chalks up Nintendo's success to a strategy of offering a lower-cost game console targeted at everyday people, rather than an expensive console with the latest graphics aimed at video game lovers. The main difference between the Wii and its rivals is the wireless controller and sensors that detect hand motion and speed. The innovation puts motion into gaming, because users swing the Wii controller to hit virtual baseballs and golf balls on their TV screens, go bowling and fight in boxing.
The Wii currently sells for $249.99 in the U.S., according to electronic retailer Best Buy's Web site, while the Xbox 360 costs $349.99 and the PlayStation 3 $399.99.
Wii to Displace Xbox 360 by End of 2008
Nintendo's Wii game console will displace Microsoft's Xbox 360 as the new-generation game machine, according to market research firm iSuppli.
Dan Nystedt, IDG News Service
Friday, February 15, 2008
Nintendo's popular Wii game console will displace Microsoft's Xbox 360 as the new-generation game machine, iSuppli said Thursday.
The market researcher forecasted that the global installed base of Wii game consoles will rise to 30.2 million units in 2008, up from 18 million in 2007, putting it ahead of the Xbox 360's projected 25.7 million units.
The Wii is already riding a wave of popularity that saw it win the greatest growth among new game consoles last year, according to iSuppli figures. There were only 3.2 million units in people's homes at the end of 2006, jumping to 18 million at the end of last year. The Xbox 360 retained its lead as the console in most homes last year by edging out the Wii with 18.2 million units, while the PlayStation 3 lagged rivals with 10.3 million, up from 1.8 million per year earlier.
iSuppli did not include older game consoles or handhelds in their report.
The market researcher chalks up Nintendo's success to a strategy of offering a lower-cost game console targeted at everyday people, rather than an expensive console with the latest graphics aimed at video game lovers. The main difference between the Wii and its rivals is the wireless controller and sensors that detect hand motion and speed. The innovation puts motion into gaming, because users swing the Wii controller to hit virtual baseballs and golf balls on their TV screens, go bowling and fight in boxing.
The Wii currently sells for $249.99 in the U.S., according to electronic retailer Best Buy's Web site, while the Xbox 360 costs $349.99 and the PlayStation 3 $399.99.
Wal-Mart dumps HD DVDs to back Blu-ray
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080215/tc_nm/walmart_dvd_dc
Wal-Mart dumps HD DVDs to back Blu-ray
By Franklin Paul
2-15-8
Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) has decided to exclusively sell high-definition DVDs in the Blu-Ray format, dealing what could be a crippling blow to the rival HD DVD technology backed by Toshiba Corp (6502.T).
The move by the world's largest retailer, announced on Friday, caps a disappointing week for HD DVD supporters, who also saw consumer electronics chain Best Buy Co Inc (BBY.N) and online video rental company Netflix Inc (NFLX.O) defect to the Blu-ray camp.
In a statement on its Web site, Wal-Mart said that over the next few months it will phase out sales of HD DVD systems and discs. By June, it will sell only products in the Blu-ray format which was developed by Sony Corp (6758.T).
"We've listened to our customers, who are showing a clear preference toward Blu-ray products and movies with their purchases," said Gary Severson, a Wal-Mart senior vice president.
The move affects 4,000 Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores in the United States, as well as related online sites. The stores will continue to sell traditional DVD players and movies.
The so-called format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray has been a thorn in the side of retailers, which have had to commit shelf space to devices from both camps even as they field complaints from frustrated and confused customers.
Next-generation DVDs and players, boasting better picture quality and more capacity, were expected to help revive the $24 billion global home DVD market. But Hollywood studios had initially split their alliances between the two camps, meaning only certain films would play on a consumer's DVD machine.
Like the Betamax-VHS battle in the 1980s, having two DVD standards has dampened sales of both and put retailers in a conundrum of having to either choose sides or sell products that have a chance of becoming obsolete very quickly.
The balance of power, however, tipped toward the Sony camp in January after Time Warner Inc's (TWX.N) Warner Bros studio said it would only release high-definition DVDs in Blu-ray format. With that, studios behind some three-quarters of DVDs are backing Blu-ray, although some release in both formats.
Blu-ray also has support from News Corp's (NWSa.N) 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Co (DIS.N) and Lions Gate Entertainment Corp (LGF.N). Sony's PlayStation 3 game console can also play Blu-ray films.
"So if you bought the HD player like me, I'd retire it to the bedroom, kid's playroom, or give it to your parents to play their John Wayne standard def movies, and make space for a BD player for your awesome Hi Def experience," Wal-Mart's movie and gaming blogger, Susan Chronister, wrote in a posting.
To be sure, Toshiba has secured agreements with studios including NBC Universal's Universal Pictures, Viacom Inc's(VIAb.N) Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc (DWA.N).
Microsoft Corp's (MSFT.O) Xbox 360 also currently works only with HD DVD. However, Microsoft said in January it could consider supporting Blu-ray technology at consumers' behest.
Toshiba could not be reached to comment on Wal-Mart's move.
Earlier on Friday, the Hollywood Reporter quoted unidentified industry sources as saying Toshiba was widely expected to pull the plug on HD DVD in the coming weeks.
Toshiba spokeswoman Junko Furuta said none of what was reported in the magazine had been decided. She declined to comment further, saying: "We cannot comment on speculation."
(Reporting by Franklin Paul; additional reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka in Tokyo; editing by Phil Berlowitz and Gerald E. McCormick)
Wal-Mart dumps HD DVDs to back Blu-ray
By Franklin Paul
2-15-8
Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) has decided to exclusively sell high-definition DVDs in the Blu-Ray format, dealing what could be a crippling blow to the rival HD DVD technology backed by Toshiba Corp (6502.T).
The move by the world's largest retailer, announced on Friday, caps a disappointing week for HD DVD supporters, who also saw consumer electronics chain Best Buy Co Inc (BBY.N) and online video rental company Netflix Inc (NFLX.O) defect to the Blu-ray camp.
In a statement on its Web site, Wal-Mart said that over the next few months it will phase out sales of HD DVD systems and discs. By June, it will sell only products in the Blu-ray format which was developed by Sony Corp (6758.T).
"We've listened to our customers, who are showing a clear preference toward Blu-ray products and movies with their purchases," said Gary Severson, a Wal-Mart senior vice president.
The move affects 4,000 Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores in the United States, as well as related online sites. The stores will continue to sell traditional DVD players and movies.
The so-called format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray has been a thorn in the side of retailers, which have had to commit shelf space to devices from both camps even as they field complaints from frustrated and confused customers.
Next-generation DVDs and players, boasting better picture quality and more capacity, were expected to help revive the $24 billion global home DVD market. But Hollywood studios had initially split their alliances between the two camps, meaning only certain films would play on a consumer's DVD machine.
Like the Betamax-VHS battle in the 1980s, having two DVD standards has dampened sales of both and put retailers in a conundrum of having to either choose sides or sell products that have a chance of becoming obsolete very quickly.
The balance of power, however, tipped toward the Sony camp in January after Time Warner Inc's (TWX.N) Warner Bros studio said it would only release high-definition DVDs in Blu-ray format. With that, studios behind some three-quarters of DVDs are backing Blu-ray, although some release in both formats.
Blu-ray also has support from News Corp's (NWSa.N) 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Co (DIS.N) and Lions Gate Entertainment Corp (LGF.N). Sony's PlayStation 3 game console can also play Blu-ray films.
"So if you bought the HD player like me, I'd retire it to the bedroom, kid's playroom, or give it to your parents to play their John Wayne standard def movies, and make space for a BD player for your awesome Hi Def experience," Wal-Mart's movie and gaming blogger, Susan Chronister, wrote in a posting.
To be sure, Toshiba has secured agreements with studios including NBC Universal's Universal Pictures, Viacom Inc's(VIAb.N) Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc (DWA.N).
Microsoft Corp's (MSFT.O) Xbox 360 also currently works only with HD DVD. However, Microsoft said in January it could consider supporting Blu-ray technology at consumers' behest.
Toshiba could not be reached to comment on Wal-Mart's move.
Earlier on Friday, the Hollywood Reporter quoted unidentified industry sources as saying Toshiba was widely expected to pull the plug on HD DVD in the coming weeks.
Toshiba spokeswoman Junko Furuta said none of what was reported in the magazine had been decided. She declined to comment further, saying: "We cannot comment on speculation."
(Reporting by Franklin Paul; additional reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka in Tokyo; editing by Phil Berlowitz and Gerald E. McCormick)
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Wii edges up to Xbox 360 in total market share
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/340775_consoles23.html
Wii edges up to Xbox 360 in total market share
Holiday season a pivotal phase
Friday, November 23, 2007
By TODD BISHOP
P-I REPORTER
In the battle for supremacy in the video-game world, Nintendo Co.'s Wii has now matched the Xbox 360 in total market share, despite the Microsoft Corp. console's one-year head start.
But the Xbox 360 is still maintaining a sizable lead over the console that might be considered its more direct competitor, Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3.
That's the statistical backdrop as the competition enters a pivotal phase -- Friday's start of the holiday shopping season. A large portion of video-game console sales are traditionally made in November and December.
This holiday season will provide clues to how the market will shake out in the long run, now that the Xbox 360 and PS3 are in better supply, and prices have come down somewhat.
"You'll be able to see who's gaining traction and losing traction," said Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities. However, Pachter predicted that the 2008 holidays will be even more competitive if the Wii is in better supply and if prices of all three consoles drop further.
The Wii, which sells for $250 and features a motion-sensitive controller, sold 13.2 million units worldwide as of September, Nintendo said. Microsoft reported that the Xbox 360 -- in models priced from $280 to $450 -- had sold 13.4 million units at the time. Then, in October, U.S. sales of the Wii exceeded Xbox 360 sales, according to the NPD Group. Combined with the Nintendo console's strength in the Japanese market, that effectively would bring the two into a dead heat in cumulative sales.
The PlayStation 3, which sells for $400 and $500, has sold 5.6 million units worldwide, a company spokesman said. Sony's PlayStation 2 dominated the previous console generation.
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P-I reporter Todd Bishop can be reached at 206-448-8221 or toddbishop@seattlepi.com. Read his Microsoft blog at blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft.
Wii edges up to Xbox 360 in total market share
Holiday season a pivotal phase
Friday, November 23, 2007
By TODD BISHOP
P-I REPORTER
In the battle for supremacy in the video-game world, Nintendo Co.'s Wii has now matched the Xbox 360 in total market share, despite the Microsoft Corp. console's one-year head start.
But the Xbox 360 is still maintaining a sizable lead over the console that might be considered its more direct competitor, Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3.
That's the statistical backdrop as the competition enters a pivotal phase -- Friday's start of the holiday shopping season. A large portion of video-game console sales are traditionally made in November and December.
This holiday season will provide clues to how the market will shake out in the long run, now that the Xbox 360 and PS3 are in better supply, and prices have come down somewhat.
"You'll be able to see who's gaining traction and losing traction," said Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities. However, Pachter predicted that the 2008 holidays will be even more competitive if the Wii is in better supply and if prices of all three consoles drop further.
The Wii, which sells for $250 and features a motion-sensitive controller, sold 13.2 million units worldwide as of September, Nintendo said. Microsoft reported that the Xbox 360 -- in models priced from $280 to $450 -- had sold 13.4 million units at the time. Then, in October, U.S. sales of the Wii exceeded Xbox 360 sales, according to the NPD Group. Combined with the Nintendo console's strength in the Japanese market, that effectively would bring the two into a dead heat in cumulative sales.
The PlayStation 3, which sells for $400 and $500, has sold 5.6 million units worldwide, a company spokesman said. Sony's PlayStation 2 dominated the previous console generation.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
P-I reporter Todd Bishop can be reached at 206-448-8221 or toddbishop@seattlepi.com. Read his Microsoft blog at blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft.
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