Why the Sony Vita Is Struggling

After a strong start, the Playstation Vita has struggled as of late. It's tempting to just point and laugh at Sony, but that's not really fair, since the Vita is a great piece of hardware with lots of cool features. Something is going wrong, though, and Sony needs to fix it.

I really don't see that happening.

Handheld games live and die on three things: affordability, battery life and the game library. If a handheld has all three, it will thrive. If it has two out of three, it will succeed. If it has one or none, it's dead.

Let's run a comparison between past handhelds and get a feel for if this holds true. Side note: When comparing battery life, we're comparing between systems of the same generation. 'X' means that the system has that function, while 'O' means that it does not.

System	Affordability	Battery Life	Library
Atari Lynx	O	O	O
Game Boy	X	X	O
Game Gear	X	O	O
TurboExpress	O	O	O
Game Boy Color	X	X	O
Game Boy Advance	X	X	X
N-Gage	O	O	O
Sony PSP	O	O	X
DS	X	X	X

So far, the axiom has held true: Whomever has the most affordable handheld with the best battery life and library wins. Let's stack this up with the 3DS. When the 3DS launched, here's how things looked:

System	Affordability	Battery Life	Library
3DS	O	O	O

Now, of course, things have changed. The affordability of the system has increased greatly, and the library has increased as well. The 3DS still loses the battery life war to iOS and Android, but among dedicated gaming handhelds it wins.

System	Affordability	Battery Life	Library
3DS	X	X	X

The 3DS failed at launch. Now it's succeeding, even thriving.

Compare this to the Vita. It's more expensive than the 3DS. It has worse battery life, and the library is lackluster. The refrain among Vita gamers is "just wait!"

"Just wait! There are a ton of great games on the way! The Vita is going to be so good!" Be that as it may, as things stand right now there's a paucity of games for it. I'm not just talking about regular games, either. I'm talking about games that get people talking.

Sony is still searching for that elusive system-selling mascot. Uncharted comes close, but it's story-driven. There are only so many side stories and backstories you can tell about Nathan Drake before you run out of space in one man's life. Unless you start making games in the Uncharted universe delving into, say, Sully's past, you really can't load up on Uncharted.

(By the way, I would totally play a game based on Sully's past. Put it in the 60's with Cold War intrigue? Yes. I would play it.)

So right now, The Vita looks like this:

System	Affordability	Battery Life	Library
Vita	O	O	O

It loses the affordability battle. It loses the battery life battle, and it loses the library battle. You tell me: How is Sony going to pull out of this?

Nintendo pulled out of its 3DS nosedive by drastically lowering the price and releasing some of the games that it promised at launch. Sony could do the same if it chose, but now they're in the unenviable position of losing money on its console division and its handheld division. On the horizon, there are a few games ready to launch for the Vita, but none that are ready to capture the hearts of millions. Games like Gravity Rush may look good, but the vast majority of people have never heard of them and won't have any idea what they are.

I'm not banging on Sony, mind you. My stance on them has softened considerably in the last few years. It's always good to have another handheld around to push Nintendo a bit, as well. Still, I'm hard-pressed to find a way that Sony can fix up the Vita enough to make it viable in the long-term.

A New Goal

There were a lot of crap games for the NES. We remember all of the good ones: Zelda, Mario, Mega Man, and the like. We don't remember a lot of the crappy ones, and there were a lot of crappy ones. All told, the NES had about 700+ games released for it, so there's bound to junk in there.

And I'm going to play them all.

I don't mean that I'm going to play them all in a "Mwa-ha-ha, I will play all of you puny games!" I mean, I am going to play every NES game ever made, from A-Z, and report back.

Here are the rules:

• I will use emulators and ROMs. If you have any ethical quandaries about emulators and ROMs, then you find me a working NES and every single game ever made, even Bible Adventures, and then we'll talk.
• Every game will be played for 20 minutes, no more, no less. This is because I'm not going to sit and play a horribly crappy game for hours on end, and rare is the NES game that slowly reveals its mysteries over hours of play. If an NES game sucks, you know it sucks right off the bat, honestly.
• The games will be graded by three grades: Ugh, Meh, and Yay. Those should be self-explanatory.

We'll be making articles of these, hopefully one every week.

"But what makes you think that this feature will last? You started doing the GOG.com Replay and stopped!"

Yes, that's true. That's because GOG games are very substantial. In order to make an honest-to-God review of each game, it's a tremendous time commitment. I don't have that kind of time. With these? Heck, I can knock out ten in a day if I have an afternoon to myself.

The first two games will be 10-Yard Fight and 1942. I'll have an article up at some point.

6 Complaints About the Wii U (And Why They're Wrong)

Nintendo is discussing the Wii U lately, and the hardcore gamers are scoffing at it. They're scoffing at the rumored system specs, Nintendo's declining sales and the "gimmicky" tablet controller. You name it, they're scoffing at it.

Let's sum up what the naysayers are saying:

"The Wii U is only going to be a little more powerful than current-gen systems, so it's going to be obsolete right away. No one's going to want a system with just one tablet controller, and they're going to end up getting trounced and having to go third-party. And good riddance! Their games are great, but their hardware is garbage."

Let's go one-by-one and see if we can't defuse this.

"The Wii U is only going to be slightly more powerful than the current-gen."

First of all, we don't know how powerful the Wii U is going to be. Best estimates say that it's going to be about 1.5 times more powerful than the PS3 or 360, and the next Playstation or XBox is going to be 5-6 times more powerful than their current iterations.

However, we can ask this question: Where are games going to go next? What do they need that power for?

"You need to improve graphics!"

Why? It's not enough to see the pores on Batman's face? What more can you improve? Sure, you can get to photorealism eventually, but cranking up the power in a system gets diminishing returns.

When the Super Nintendo was around, photorealism was a dream. In the  Playstation/N64 era everything looked glitchy and ham-fisted. The PS2/XBox/Gamecube era brought us closer. Now, we're at the point where we can make realistic fire, realistic water, characters who you can tell are lying by watching their eyes, sweeping, panoramic vistas of frozen worlds, dynamically shifting sands, and more. That's with the current generation of hardware, mind you.

So what's going to be so different with a system that's six times more powerful than the PS3 and one that's merely one-and-a-half times more powerful?

You could say that it's time to turn our attention to AI, but that's not a graphics function. Besides, AI has improved to the point where it's functional enough, providing the illusion of intelligence in games. Enemies use squad tactics, flush you out with grenades, hunt you down by your last known position, use suppressing fire and attempt to flank you.

What more do we want from AI? The ability to make us an in-game mimosa? To tell us about their hopes and dreams before we drive a 7.62mm bullet through their craniums? Come on. For the vast majority of games, the AI is good enough with only incremental improvements available.

"But HD is getting more detailed, and consoles need to keep pace!"

Yes, HD technology is improving. Resolutions higher than 1080p are right around the corner, and it looks incredible.

Here's the rub: We are almost at 75% HDTV adoption across all households. As of the end of 2011, 69% of all households now own at least one HDTV. Are people who just dropped $1000 on a TV going to dump their TVs for 2K, 4K or 8K resolutions? Nintendo would be outrunning the market for 1% of all TV users, and there are still households that don't even own an HDTV yet.

In other words, a system that runs at 1080p isn't going to be obsolete any time soon, and it doesn't make any sense for them to act any differently.

"No one's going to want a system that can only use one tablet controller!"

Correct. We don't really know how many tablets that the Wii U will use, and we don't know how expensive the tablets will be if you want another one. I think Nintendo is aware of how important it is to have multiple tablets, and I'm sure they'll get that working.

However, neither of those are reasons to totally discount the tablet controller out of hand. I really should't have to break down the reasons that a tablet is going to be awesome, but allow me to just bring up one reason: Sports games.

Years ago, me and my friends would play MLB The Show. I loved it, but the problem was that it was easy for him to see which pitch I was about to throw and where. I would have to wiggle the control stick so that the ball icon would fade, and then move the control stick into the corner so that I would feel the controller rumble, which would let me know that I was approaching the edge of the strike zone. Of course, you can hear a controller rumble, so he would know that I was aiming my pitch at the edge of the strike zone and could adjust his batting with that in mind.

Let's throw the tablet in. With your own screen, you can figure out where you want the pitch to go and throw it, all without letting the batter know where it's going. Bang. Problem solved.

Draw up a basketball play on your touchscreen. Pick your football plays in Madden. Adjust the individual AI of your teammates right from the controller. Those are the possibilities for just ONE genre of games. Imagine what it can do for other genres.

Mark my words: In three years, give or take, Sony and Microsoft will come out with their own makeshift tablet solution. It's just that good of an idea.

"Nintendo's going to get killed this generation."

Why? Because they have the best idea? Because they're the first to market with something that's barely been tried in the gaming world? Or because you have a personal prejudice against what they're trying to do?

We've already discussed why tablets and smartphones aren't going to destroy gaming. We've already explained why the Wii U tablet controller is going to be completely innovative. We've already discussed that people will come to Nintendo as long as there are games to play.

Do you have any real reason why Nintendo is going to get killed aside from that? No? Good. Then that means we can tear the next complaint to shreds.

"Nintendo has to go third-party like Sega did because their hardware is awful but people still want to play their games."

This is usually included with a corollary like, "I would play Zelda if it was on the PS3," or "I would buy Mario if I could play it on my Android tablet. Take my money, Nintendo."

By comparison, Sega went third-party because they were horribly mismanaged. The Saturn was dropped by Sega almost right after launch, and the Dreamcast, while a tremendous system, was easily pirated and suffered from the poor decisions made during the Genesis/Saturn years. No part of the hardware division was 100% healthy at any point in Sega's history.

Compare this to Nintendo. They've had rousing success after rousing success. The Gamecube, while a poor seller, still made a profit. Their handheld division has raked in cash for over two decades. The Wii is one of the most successful consoles ever.

So they're not going third-party. Ever. Last year, they had a record loss, the highest loss they've ever had. They would have to lose money at that record rate for ten years straight in order to burn through all their cash. That's highly unlikely.

Nintendo's hardware is also not "awful." We've explained why. Nintendo doesn't outrun the market, it creates the market. They make solid machines that work and work and work. People still fire up their Super Nintendo systems 20 years after launch. You can throw a GameCube against a wall, turn it on and play Wind Waker.

Compare this with Sony and Microsoft. Bear in mind, I love the PS2 and PS3. I harbor no ill will toward them. But let's look at a list of technical problems with Sony's machines:

• PS2:
  Disk read errors
  A weird architecture that forced developers to offload instructions to the PS1 processor and practically rewrite all of their games
  Redesigns that destroyed system features, like the hard drive required for Final Fantasy XI
• PS3:
  The removal of downwards compatibility
  The removal of OtherOS
  The insane initial cost of the system
  The PSN hack
  The crazy architecture that makes it difficult for developers, even good ones like Valve

Now let's look at Microsoft's machines:

• XBox:
  An enormous controller that looked ridiculous and was hard to use
  Power bricks that could start on fire or cause electrical shock
• 360:
  Red-ring-of-death errors that would destroy your machine

And what about Nintendo's machines?

• NES:
  Pins that could get bent and lose contact with the games
• SNES:
  Umm
• N64:
  Hold on, one sec
• Gamecube:
  Come on you guys, let me think
• Game Boy:
  Oh! Blurry screen.
• Game Boy Advance:
  Dark screen. But they fixed that.
• DS:
  There was, um...
• Wii:
  OK, seriously you guys
• 3DS:
  Will you at least stop for a second so I can think

By any objective measure, Nintendo's hardware is rock-solid. Their technical specifications are right in line with what people want at that time, and they've proven time and again that they know what they're doing.

So, yeah, Nintendo's going to be OK. Their current systems are just fine, and the Wii U is going to be successful. Anyone who says otherwise is burying their head in the sand.

Junior Seau and the End of the NFL As We Know It

Junior Seau, former 10-time All Pro linebacker for the San Diego Chargers, died yesterday of a gunshot wound to the chest. Police are investigating it as a suicide.

We don't have enough information to determine if this was similar to the death of Dave Duerson, the former All-Pro safety who shot himself in the chest so that science could examine his brain for CTE, but the similarities are, at least on the surface, a little eerie. After all, most people who commit suicide try and shoot themselves in the head. The chest is an odd target, especially with a pistol.

What will we find when Seau’s autopsy is made public? Will we find evidence of CTE, the same as with Duerson? Either way, the toll that the NFL takes on its players is getting to the point where it simply cannot be ignored.

This reminds me of pro wrestling, in a way. Remember recently when Chris Benoit, a guy who everyone said was a class act and model citizen, suddenly murdered his family and committed suicide? When they did an autopsy, they found the brain of an 80-year-old. I mean, take a look at this page and see how many pro wrestlers died at a young age and of what: Heart attack, drug overdose, suicide, heart attack, drug overdose, and on and on.

The thing is that football is supposed to be more professional than pro wrestling. It's supposed to be somehow more sophisticated and balletic, even though deep down we know it isn't. We know that these are seriously strong men who are colliding into each other at full force with the intent to "pop" or "send a message" to the ball carrier.

Yet, at the same time, we want to kid ourselves that the game can somehow be made "safer." Roger Goodell will hand out suspensions for bounty programs and fines for "bad apples" like James Harrison and we'll keep trying to tell ourselves that concussion awareness, better training and an improved focus on player safety can fix these problems for good.

However, looking around at the game as it stands, can you see it lasting for much longer?

Think of it like this: Let's say that from here on out, all new players are totally safe from concussions and CTE. Wonderful!

However, what about players who played in the 60's? 70's? 80's? 90's? 00's? They're still around, and they're going to have problems for the rest of their lives. Even if all current players are safe, we’re still going to be hearing about concussions and concussion-related symptoms for at least the next twenty to thirty years, if not longer.

There are some cases where baseball, basketball or soccer players die young. Ken Caminiti died at 42, Len Bias died at 21 and Fabrice Muamba very nearly died on the pitch a few months ago. However, Caminiti was an admitted steroid user, Bias took cocaine, and Muamba had an unknown heart condition. There are extenuating circumstances in these instances. By and large, players who finish up their careers in other sports go on to have long lives with their wits intact. Former baseball and basketball players have their wits about them enough that they can own teams and run them successfully. Are there any football players who played in the trenches that can say the same?

So the question becomes: Are parents going to want to let their children play a game where some of its notable stars have their lives destroyed afterwards? Why would you play a game where you have no future after you're done playing, especially when there's so much more money to be made in baseball, basketball and soccer?

It doesn’t matter what football does at this point. It doesn’t matter if they wrap the players in bubble wrap, put bumpers on the sidelines and cover the field in down pillows. It doesn’t matter if they change to one-hand touch or outlaw any form of contact other than hearty handshakes. The damage has already been done.

I don’t agree with Gregg Easterbrook, writer of Tuesday Morning Quarterback, on much anymore. However, I will agree with him on this point: There is no axiom that states that football must remain popular, and sadly, I think we're looking at the last ten great years of football. The pipeline will be empty of great players, and people will move to different sports.

I certainly don’t feel comfortable watching it anymore myself. It’s kind of like watching dogfighting: The dogs have implicit trust in their owners to treat them right, and the owners abuse that trust by putting them in dangerous situations. Football players for years have been misled about the extent of damage that the game can cause, and players such as Jamal Anderson and Don Majkowski are suing the NFL over it.

Consider the case of Jamal Anderson. In 1998 he carried the ball for a then-record 410 times and caught 27 passes during the regular season. I want you to add it up: At least 437 times in a span of 17 weeks he was hit hard in an attempt to bring him down, and then another 80 times during the playoffs. That’s not counting broken tackles, blitz pickups, or any other contact he may have sustained. If Anderson only broke 5 tackles a game (which is an underestimation) and picked up the blitz once per game (also an underestimation), it’s not inconceivable that Anderson was hit 631 times, give or take, within a span of five months of his life. That’s not including practices.

Yet Anderson kept playing. Why? Because he didn’t want to let his teammates down, didn’t want to let the fans down and didn’t want to let his coaches down. At no point did anyone step in and say, “Look, Jamal is great, but we’re hurting him. He needs to rest this week. If he wants to play, let’s make sure he’s aware of the risks before he plays.”

“That’s absurd,” you may say. “He’s a football player. That’s how they play. It’s what they do. They leave it all on the field.”

It’s true, every player knows that football destroys your body. They’re glad to do it. It’s a sport of glory and honor, where your teammates are your brothers and your family. You’re war buddies, getting injured together, getting into scrapes together, and doing everything you can to win the battle. Every player knows the toll that the sport will take on your knees, hips, shoulders, and back. They know that it cripples the players that play it, but they expect that after it’s all over they can move on and use the one part of their body that hasn’t been damaged: Their brain.

As far back as 1994, the NFL was conducting research into the problems with concussions. At the time, they said that there were no problems. All was copacetic, concussions had no long-term effects, and players could keep on bashing their brains in against other players with no consequences. The science was found to be faulty and the doctors discredited. Yet, the NFL did nothing. They didn’t warn players of the danger and pooh-poohed the risks to coaches and the media.

Now we turn to the case of Junior Seau. Over 19 years, he notched 1,849 tackles, or a little under 100 per year. However, on every single play, a defensive player either hits or gets hit, sometimes repeatedly. On every snap of the ball, he gave his all as he pummeled his opponent, and some of those hits landed on his head. He didn’t complain, he just kept hitting. After all, why would he stop? If he stopped, the ballcarrier would get away. He trusted that this coaches, teammates and the league itself would look out for his best interests.

A year after his playing career was finished, Seau, a man who by most accounts was a decent man, well-liked, honest and humble, was arrested for domestic violence, then ran his car off a cliff. Then, two years later, he shot himself in the chest, finally ending his life. Someone should have looked out for his mind while he was sacrificing his body for the sport. No one did.

5 Complaints About the Wii (And Why They're Wrong)

Today we're deconstructing the criticism of the Wii. We've defended the Wii in the past, but we'll do it again because a lot of this bears repeating. Here's a sample conglomerate of all the current Wii criticism:

"The Wii was the most underpowered system, and since Nintendo wimped out on system specs all they got were the casual users. Now that the casuals have all moved to smartphones and tablets, no one is buying their system and no hardcore gamers will ever buy Nintendo products again because Nintendo embraced the casuals."

Let's go through these criticisms one by one.

"The Wii was too underpowered!"

In comparison with the XBox 360 and the Playstation 3, the Wii was definitely underpowered. That is a correct statement on face value, but no one stops and asks why the Wii was underpowered in the first place. It wasn't underpowered because Nintendo was stupid or wanted to turn its back on the casuals. It was underpowered because it just plain made sense at the time.

HDTV adoption took a while. A recently as 2010, only half of all households had HDTVs. No matter how amazing your videogame system's graphics are, it's going to look like garbage on an SDTV. Why would Nintendo go crazy and spend so much money on something that 50% of all people aren't going to see?

That's another factor that gets forgotten: Money. The cost to make an HD system was prohibitive when Nintendo launched the Wii, as evidenced by the PS3's high price point of $599. Microsoft sold the 360 for far less, but lost money on it for years. Nintendo had no desire to lose money, and they've always avoiding doing so on their hardware. For that reason, they didn't follow in lockstep with the rest of the console makers.

It was the right call, too. Nintendo turned in record profits year after year while Sony's gaming devision floundered and is in serious danger. Microsoft lost a bit of money of the 360, but they have enough to spare that it wasn't a big deal.

"Well, why didn't they release an HD version a few years ago?"

Why would they? Once again, only half of all TVs were HD. Just because Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan says to do something doesn't mean you should.

Besides, the Wii has succeeded precisely because it's simple. Us techies may understand the difference between a PS3 60GB unit with downwards compatibility and a PS3 Slim with a 160GB hard drive, but most people have no clue. While other systems came in a variety of flavors, the Wii has always been just the Wii.

That's helpful for consumers, and throwing a Wii-HD into the mix creates more hassles and confusion, something Nintendo is explicitly trying to avoid.

"All of this shows that Nintendo only wants casual gamers!"

Casual gamers is such a perjorative term and I hate it, but whatever.

The most successful tech companies in the world have become successful because they've expanded their reach beyond the niche that was already aware of them. To name a few:

• Microsoft escaped from the business-software ghetto and became a juggernaut of immense proportions by marketing Windows 95 to home users.

• Facebook escaped the college-only social network scene and made billions by making Facebook easy to use for all users.

• Apple escaped certain death by marketing their products to an audience that didn't know they wanted an iPod until they bought one.

And so on. Nintendo actively sought "casual gamers" because that's what a good business does: They found a need and filled it.

Along the way, Nintendo released games that showed that they hadn't forgotten the hardcore crowd: Punch-Out, Xenoblade Chronicles, Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2, Zelda: Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword, and on and on.

People have always been complaining that Nintendo is a "kiddie" company or leaves the hardcore gamers alone, and I think Nintendo couldn't give a crap. The purpose of a business is to make money, and Nintendo has a big pile of money they can point to that says they're doing the right thing.

"The casuals have moved away from Nintendo, though. Nintendo posted their biggest loss ever. That proves that the Wii was a bad choice for them."

When has any videogame system ever sold like gangbusters right up until the moment that it was replaced? Every system suffers a tail-off period before it's replaced.

Did the Wii tail off faster than Nintendo hoped? Yes. I will agree that Nintendo may have waited about a year too long to replace the Wii with something else, because six-year-old technology isn't the kind of thing that brings all the boys to the yard.

That doesn't mean that all users have moved to smartphones and tablets, though. Like we said when explaining why the 3DS is fine, they're replacing their PCs with smartphones and tablets, not their videogame systems. The market is still there, waiting patiently to be awoken.

"No hardcore gamers will ever buy another Nintendo product again after the way they were treated by the Wii."

Bull.

Gamers are fickle. They go where the games are. They have no brand loyalty in the long-term. If gamers had brand loyalty, the Playstation would never have succeeded and Sega would be making the Dreamcast 2 now.

If the Wii U is cool and the games are fun, the hardcore will come back. Then they'll start whining about Nintendo again and promise to never buy another Nintendo system, then turn around and buy another Nintendo product when they have something cool again. It's inevitable.

And how will the Wii U turn out? We'll answer that in the next article.

New Super Mario Bros. 2 + Nintendo + Digital Distribution = What Exactly?

I've been wanting to weigh in on Nintendo's recent decision to start doing digital distribution starting with New Super Mario Bros. 2. Short answer: I like it, with a caveat.


Despite what it may appear, I don't actually hate digital distribution. I have tons of articles where I praise Steam and GOG to the rafters. Digital distribution is both convenient and means that you don't have to change out physical media constantly. Steam and GOG both add an extra tick in the "Pros" section by including frequent sales into the mix.

Most companies want the switch because of the dastardly scourge of used-game sales, and because they have far more control over the price once the game is being sold. After all, if the only copies of Game X sell for $50, that means that everyone who wants it has to buy it for $50! Cue "We're In The Money!"

However, that's not good for consumers, and if Nintendo goes that route, it's going to be a mess. So here's what I truly hope Nintendo has done: I hope against hope that Nintendo has looked at the bad examples of the PSPGo, Origin and others and the good examples of Steam and GOG and emulated the good examples more closely.

For example, I'm sure Nintendo plans on selling New Super Mario Bros. 2 at retail for $40. Are they going to sell it on the eShop for $40, or are they going to sell it for $30 or less? After all, by selling it direct to consumers, they're cutting out manufacturing of the cases and cartridges, as well as shipping. While servers aren't cheap, they already have the underlying setup for the eShop in place. Asking for Nintendo to sell New Super Mario Bros. 2 for less than retail isn't far-fetched.

That's really the only concern I have. As far as transferring games from one unit to another, I'm sure they'll have that functionality in place the same as they did with the DSi to 3DS transfers.

Now, it's conceivable that Nintendo could totally botch this. They could sell New Super Mario Bros. 2 for $40 in the eShop, the servers could be unable to handle the deluge of requests and Nintendo could be wholly lacking in support after the fact. It doesn't seem like a likely scenario, but if this doomsday scene comes to pass I reserve the right to change my opinion.