• 13Dec 09

  Addendum to a year old post.

  A year ago, I talked about how Namco needs to step away from the Soul Calibur franchise and figure out what they want to do with the story. At the time, I blamed a lot of Namco's woes with storytelling on the inclusion of Anime characters and Star Wars characters as well as the fact that there's only so many times you can eternally retell the same story.

  Gamefly sent me Tekken 6 a while back. I've been playing through it and I take back what I said.

  Namco needs to just fire it's entire storytelling department.

  I could go on and on about the entire story but I'll just say that this wasn't written so much as somebody just made a mess with a pen while other people interpreted the doodlings. I realize that Tekken stopped telling a story after the third one but this one also really scrapes the bottom of the barrel. From the concept of "Jin decides to have the Mishima Zaibatsu attack the entire world" (It's a large corporation but c'mon now.) to the individual character endings which have hit a new level of asinine to .....Azrael, this whole thing sets a new standard of awful in storytelling.

  I realize that fighting games aren't supporsed to have a deep story but, when you FORCE us to go through your scenario campaign mode, you should probably put a little creative thought into the adventures of Captain Lars Boring and his robotsex toy, Alisa.

  Also, here's a list of commandments that Namco will have to follow if Namco expects me to buy another Tekken game.

  Thou Shalt make an easy mode that people without fighting game experience can beat. This is not necessarily for me but has been a common complaint with 5 and 6 as well as Soul Calibur 3 and 4. I can see how, if one of those were my first experience with fighting games, I'd write off the entire series.

  Thou Shalt Not make a final boss that has projectile weapons. None of the other characters have them and it becomes irritating to have to dodge this sort of thing from across the screen with no method of retaliation.

  Thou Shalt Not make a final boss with a disproportionate hit box. If you want to make a critter that big with that kind of reach, then you give him an equivalent hit box. If I have to get so close to him that his massive arm obscures my character, that just leads to a lot of cheap hits.

  Thou Shalt make your sidestepping more fluid. Right now, the controller continually has the issue of interpreting sidestepping as crouching/jumping which usually leads to death. You have a good sidestep in Soul Calibur. Why is the Tekken one so bad?

  Thou Shalt playtest your game with people from outside the project. It is difficult to believe that none of your playtesters haven't said something about having everyone fight the Apprentice in SC4 or the Scenario Campaign in Tekken 6 being required. I'd go into the online portion of Tekken 6 or the glitched save system in Soul Calibur 3 orother notable bugs but enough people know about the crappiness of those items that I don't need to bring out the laundry list.

  As it stands, Soul Calibur used to be a "Week 1" purchase if I couldn't get it on the first day. Tekken wasn't quite up there but it was still something that I consistently bought. At this point, Soul Calibur is now down to a "rent first" and I don't know if I'll even do that for the inevitable Tekken 7. I don't know what the answer is. Perhaps the company needs the same type of overhaul that investors are claiming is needed at Take 2. I just know that, when you add the willful destruction of the Time Crisis brand, the blatent rip-off attempts at DLC,and the other failures with franchises like Warhammer, Namco has started to become a brand that I see as something to be avoided instead of embraced. (I never got into Ace Combat so no comment on that series.)

  • Posted Dec 13, 2009 12:10 pm GMT
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• 31Oct 09

  A look at the current statistics for the console wars and a rant.

  Inspired by the usual fanboyism that was shown in articles such as

  http://www.gamespot.com/news/6238454.html?tag=latestheadlines;title;1 ('The Wii has stalled' - Iwata)

  I decided to take a closer look at these statistics. Here is the post that I made based on my findings.

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  While it's good of Iwata to be upfront about the Wii's problems, the numbers in this article are misleading.

  In 2008, Microsoft sold 6,038,426 360s. This year, they sold (as of last Friday) 6,284,305 360s. This represents a net gain of 4.07%.

  By comparison, Nintendo sold 15,207,338 Wiis last year and 11,696,415 Wiis this year. This represents a net loss of 23.09%.

  So, if you just look at percentages, people can say that the Wii era is ending but, when you look at actual numbers, the Wii still is the best-selling console on the market. Obviously, Nintendo has to take action because, if their sales keep dropping by roughly a quarter of their previous year sales, they won't be the top-seller for long. (Yes, I realize that there are still two months in 2009 but, at this rate, it's doubtful that they will equal last year's sales while the 360 and PS3's net gain over last year will simply keep growing.)

  For those of you who are wondering, the PS3 sold 6,924,318 consoles last year and 6,956,659 consoles this year which resulted in a stagnant .47% increase. Once again, that gain will grow as the rest of 2009 sales come in but the PS3 market isn't growing at a very fast clip.

  If you look at marketshare, the figures favor Sony a little more as, from 2008-2009) the companies went from (percentage-wise):
  Microsoft: 21.44 to 25.20
  Nintendo: 53.98 to 46.90
  Sony: 24.58 to 27.90

  So, the other companies are gaining on Nintendo's marketshare but they haven't exceeded it yet.

  Finally, looking at the top selling games for this week, globally, Wii Sports holds onto the top spot with 348,954 units sold. Sony's in the number two and three spot with Pro Evolution Soccer 2010 at 347,030 units sold (360 version sold 113, 014 units) and Uncharted 2 selling 340,770 units. Microsoft's top-selling game is Borderlands at 299,283 units sold (PS3 version sold 93905 units).

  Looking at the totals for this week as well as past weeks, it would seem that Sony and Microsoft games make very rapid sale booms for their top games and then they drop off the charts very quickly while Nintendo games maintain a steady flow. Out of the current sales charts, Sony and Microsoft don't have a game that's been in the top 50 for more than a month and a half while several of Nintendo's games have been in the top 50 for years such as Wii Sports and Mario Kart DS. (As I'm including handhelds in the longevity analysis, I will say that the PSP continues to disappoint in both longevity and sales of it's software. I find this disheartening as I don't own a DS but I do own a PSP.)

  Bottom line: For those who seem to take great glee in this story, it's a little early to plan for the Wii's funeral.

  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Normally, I wouldn't go to all this trouble to find statistics from more than one source but, sometimes, the anti-Wii bias in the industry as well as from the "hardcore" gamers really irks me. I admit that the Wii has problems.

  1) The Wii's control scheme isn't suited for everything. I doubt that many people use their Guitar Hero controller to play Halo or Street Fighter.

  2) Despite what many gamers like to claim in an effort to not appear shallow, the reality is that graphics are a prime factor in both game reviews as well as the minds of gamers. Proof of this can be found in game sales within any single console where the pretty games will often outsellgames with substance. The Wii simply doesn't have the horsepower to keep up.

  3) The Wii really doesn't have any strength in the online market. Yes, I know Conduit fans will point towards their game but that's barely a blip. The Wii is built as a single-player game system and as a party system, not as a system with a robust online community. (Although, given that the rampant griefing in games like L4D have caused me to play those games exclusively with friends, I sometimes wonder how much an advantage it is to be able to play PUGs.)

  4) Shovelware. It is a fact that the Wii has the highest percentage of shovelware of any console. While Wii games will stay in the top 50 for years if they're a hit, those hits are offset by the sheer amount of garbage (as well as titles that are hardcore but don't really have a chance because the "hardcore" gamer audience is too busy denouncing the Wii to give them a shot).

  However, this really doesn't justify the elitest attitude of the "hardcore" gaming audience. All that this attitude does is help guarantee another game crash that will easily surpass the '83 game crash in both size and scope.

  Gaming continues to become more and more expensive to develop for. While releasing titles on XBLA and PSN help defray those costs and DLC has been a massive help in paying for those costs (especially when companies like Namco make you pay for content that is already on the disc), these measures are still only stopgaps. The market is continuing to approach a critical mass point where they have to raise prices or expand the market. Given that the gain from raising prices is offset by piracy or people just waiting until they can get the game cheaper, this strategy will only really be effective once we switch to a download-only format. Even then, piracy will continue to offset price gains.

  So the only real hope of the industry avoiding the crash is by expanding the target audience. Whether it was by accident or whether it was from Nintendo's experience with the "hardcore" abandoning the Gamecube or whether it was Nintendo's plan all along, Nintendo has twigged onto this fact. Just like the Sims brought in many "casuals" to the PC gaming audience (which the industry has since frittered away with DRM and other schemes to wage war on the very cash cow that pays for their existence) and Sony's advertising campaign for the PS1 brought many "casuals" into the console market, Nintendo has also managed to bring people into the console market who would have never touched a controller.

  Yet the "hardcore" blindly insist that this is a bad thing. It's like they would rather see the industry crash than to see it "tainted by outsiders". Thus, these fanatics and idiotstake glee in any article, whether it is biased or not, that reports bad news for Nintendo. It's enough to make me hope that Nintendo does go out of business just to watch theinitially jubilant "hardcore" audience swiftly turn somber as the industry implodes on itself, leaving only a burned-out shell of itself that sells only downloadable games at twice their current price from a few big soulless corporations who do nothing but reiterate the same generic shooter or JRPG ad nauseum.

  Alternatively, if the consoles of all of the "hardcore" were to fail and destroy whatever game was in their console at the time due to a problem that wasn't covered in the warranty and is somehow legally inadmissable, that would be funny too.

  Anyway, I've done enough ranting about the state of the gaming industry/audience today and not enough time playing the actual games. I'm going to go now and change that.

  • Posted Oct 31, 2009 11:59 am GMT
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• 30Sep 09

  Demoralizing

  It is demoralizing when the higher-ups at your job ask you to update/write down all your processes with a weak rationale to cover for the fact that you're soon going to be replaced by less expensive labor.

  It becomes somewhat more demoralizing when, knowing this, you do it anyway.

  You really start hitting bottom when you realize that, a few years ago in previous jobs that presented the same situation, youhad the backbone to refuse tocontribute to the outsourcing of your own job.While it never really made a difference in the ultimate outcome, you felt like you had at leaststood your ground.

  • Posted Sep 30, 2009 12:46 pm GMT
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