Sony Wins E3, Microsoft Has A Sad

Let's count the ways that Sony just pantsed Microsoft in front of everyone at E3.
1) Microsoft is offering the XBox One at $499.

Is that a crazy price? First of all, while it's a high price, it's not a historically high price. The way I check to see if a console price is reasonable is by comparing it to the NES (one of the most successful consoles of all time) and adjusting for inflation.

In 1985, Nintendo sold the NES for $199. That would be approximately $417 in today's money.

The XBox One works out to about $237 in 1985 money. Still a little high, but not excessive. Sony is offering the PS4 at $399. That's $189 in 1985 money. I know, I know, "Wow, $399 is less than $499? Who would have thought!"

That's not the point, though. My point is that the X1 isn't as outrageously priced as it would appear on the surface.

That being said, Sony wins this battle emphatically. Getting consumers to pay $100 more for a system that appears similar is going to be a tough sell.

2) Sony's games look better.

Sony's development studios are just plain better than Microsoft's. Microsoft took great pains to point out the first-party games they were releasing on the X1, and they even pointed out that they made overtures to other smaller developers. Project Spark is certainly an interesting concept, and Halo 5 will sell piles of copies. Titanfall will also be a hit.

Once again, though, Sony's development studios have demonstrated time and again that they beat Microsoft's on quality and consistency. Their games are more plentiful and, in my opinion, just plain better. Your mileage may vary.

3) Used games are allowed on the PS4.

This is the key that's sending lots of goodwill in Sony's direction. Now Microsoft has to explain a convoluted used game process, along with family plans, accounts and activation fees. Sony just has to say, "Buy the game. It'll worked, used or not."

This is a big, big deal. All it takes are a few misinformed customers who try and resell their X1 games to Gamestop to make them swear off of Microsoft forever.

Microsoft's response is that it's up to each publisher to decide if they want to allow used games, and that's even worse. So, if EA allows reselling but Activision doesn't, now the consumer has to know that up front. If they don't, they're in for a rude awakening. Confusion is never, ever, ever a good thing.

Sony learned this lesson with the PSPGo. They learned that if a DRM system is not in the consumer's best interests, the consumer will reject it. Wisely, they jettisoned it and never went back. Microsoft watched the PSPGo happening and said, "We want in on that."

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So now we have to revise the ceiling for the PS4. The sky is absolutely the limit. It has the price, the simplicity and the games to soundly defeat the X1. The basement is PS1-level, which is still mighty good.

Microsoft's ceiling is probably the same as the original XBox: A system that has a dedicated following, but wasn't as successful as it could have been. It's basement? PSPGo-level failure with a hasty redesign and price drop.

Microsoft @ E3 2012: All That Needs To Be Said

More Natal Goodies

There's a lot of cool tech at CES right now, and one of the coolest is Project Natal.  According to this article in Joystiq, they've gotten it to do some incredible stuff:

Rather than programming by hand a way for the built-in computer in Natal to detect the thousands of ways the human body can move, they fed it thousands of shots of people in various poses. They also gave it mocapped video, which already had body points pinpointed. The resulting "brain," which is still under serious development, pinpoints about 30 body parts automatically and creates a wireform human figure 30 times a second.

Swoon.  This sort of stuff gets me all excited.  What will game designers do with this?

Now, here's where I get REALLY excited:  Most major studios may not come up with really awesome ideas.  They'll be too busy shoehorning Natal into Madden, Call of Duty, Duty of Madden, and the like.  Where I get excited is thinking about what indie developers on XBox Live will do with Natal.  Once they get their hands on the SDK, all bets are off.  It's an exciting time to be a gamer, folks.

The Gaming Landscape 2000 to 2009 Part 3: Microsoft, Or The Terrifying Large Corporate Behemoth That Could

In 2000, there were three players in the console race:  Sony, Sega, and Nintendo. They were all established companies, they'd all been in the game for a bit, and they were all Japanese. That's how the industry had worked for 15 years, and there seemed to be no reason to change it. True, Sega was a little shaky, but the Dreamcast was a good machine and things were looking up all around.

When Microsoft threw their hat into the ring with their XBox, derisive snorts from the playerati were all over the place. How could Microsoft, a software company, make usable hardware? How could they whip together a game studio that could compete with the stables that Sega, Nintendo and Sony had developed? When they first released their giant controller, howls of laughter pealed across the internet. Surely Microsoft would be out of the gaming business within two years, three years tops.

However, there were a few things that people forgot.  Microsoft had already unified software developers with the DirectX platform. The basic underpinnings of a console were already there:  It just need a computer to run on, and that's what the XBox was. Second, Microsoft had been making hardware for years, with the Sidewinder game pads being the de facto standard for PC gaming for a while and Microsoft keyboards and mice being solid equipment. Therefore, it wasn't a huge stretch to make something a little more complex. Lastly, Microsoft has money. Gobs and gobs of the stuff. If they want to be successful at something, they will be.

The success started with Halo. Halo isn't exactly a great shooter. In fact, it pales in comparison to some of the other shooters that were gracing the PC, like the No One Lives Forever series, Half-Life, Counterstrike, the Thief series, and the Medal of Honor games.  However, it did a few things very well:  Unique, realistic-handling vehicles, good physics and easy-to-set-up online multiplayer.  The first two things could have been done easily on the PC, and they have.  The third was what really revolutionized console gaming.  The Dreamcast had done online gaming over dialup speeds, but what Microsoft did changed things.

The weird thing is that PC makers had been trying (and failing) to make a unified place for online gaming for years. They tried with Kali, Battlenet, Steam, and GameSpy, among others. None were really sufficient, so gamers had to make due with expensive private servers and different usernames. It was all right, and it wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but this was the next step. It took Microsoft to accomplish what no other company could, and that's what changed gaming.

Their competitors reacted in different ways. Sega gave up. Sony tried decentralizing multiplayer gaming. Nintendo tried sidestepping the issue and avoiding it. However, it was inevitable. The people had spoken, and they liked this brave new multiplayer world, where you didn't have to make sure that the servers were working before connecting, didn't have to download 50 custom sound files in order to connect to a server, and were able to keep track of your friends in one place. The die was cast. Nintendo was even begrudgingly forced to admit their mistake and try and include some semblance of online multiplayer in their next console.

One area of concern for Microsoft is their inability to break into Japan's market. So far, they've only sold 3 millions units in Japan of the original XBox and the 360. However, that's not a huge deal. The Japanese are big spenders, but Japan's gaming market is also shrinking. They're not as big a deal as they used to be, and if Microsoft decided that they were just going to forget about Japan, they wouldn't have any appreciable profit loss. The cost of shipping and marketing in Japan is probably negating any net gain that they would have gotten from selling their consoles, but Microsoft is stubborn and will probably keep plugging away until they've broken the market there.

Either way, Microsoft has accomplished something pretty startling in the space of 10 years. They went from industry laughingstock to innovator. They've done it by cannibalizing the PC market, but the PC market was on its way out anyway. It'll be interesting to see what the next 10 years hold for them.

Game Changing News

Microsoft is looking to pick up EA!  Of course, this is all rumor and speculation at this point, but think of what that would mean.  Imagine a world where EA holds the only NFL license, and Microsoft owns EA.  MADDEN COULD POSSIBLY ONLY COME OUT FOR MICROSOFT SYSTEMS.  Rock Band, Dead Space, Bioware games (The Old Republic!), Spore, The SIMS!

If that happens, I guess the balance of power in the gaming industry will shift totally over to Microsoft.  What would Sony do?  Sony has it's own exclusives, but without EA, what's their endgame?  Nintendo would still be fine, since their system sells on the power of their own games, but Sony could be taken completely out of the picture.

This is a game changer, folks.  I'm keeping my eyes on this one.

They Just Don't Learn (XBox 360)

Microsoft finally lowered the price on their Elites! Yay for them! They're clearing out the Pros so that there will only be two models, the Arcade and the Elite, with the high end sitting at $299! This is fantastic news for everyone-

Via Joystiq

Oh.  So now there's a SUPER Elite that they're talking about. I follow. THAT point of entry looks to be at about $450. Instead of a price drop, it turns out to be, in consumers eyes, a price INCREASE. How do you figure? Well, consider this: Right now, in order to get the best possible PS3, it's $299. You have the absolute best system that they offer. In order to get the best possible XBox 360, it's $299. After this bomb drops, in order to get the best possible 360, you'll be paying $450, and for what? A bigger hard drive?

(What got into these console makers that they started making multiple and increasingly confusing SKUs during this console generation? They never did this before. Sega wasn't even this stupid, and they made some extremely questionable decisions.)

You know, when we worked at Best Buy, they talked about different segments of the population that you could market to. Some were more reliable than others. Best Buy's sweet spot was the squishy middle ground of soccer moms and wealthy 50+ guys. Those were the people who spent the most, per capita, and were more likely to stay loyal in the long run. The ones who were least likely to stay loyal in the long run were the 20-35 year old male. They were just looking for the latest and greatest and would go wherever they could get it, whether it was online or at a store. They really weren't Best Buy's target because they knew that those people weren't going to stick around. Best Buy, so far, is the most successful electronics retailer in the world.

What does this mean? Well, there isn't really ANY loyalty in the console race. One generation, Nintendo will be on top. Then Sony. Now Nintendo again, although a lot of people like Microsoft. People keep switching around. Why?

BECAUSE THE TARGET MARKET IS FICKLE 20-35 YEAR OLDS. They're the ones who check specs and actually care about larger hard drive sizes. You can't count on this demographic forever, since they grow up and have families and can't be bothered to put in the time and effort needed to keep up with the constantly changing consoles. The demographic you can COUNT on is the middle range, the 30-55 year old group who has families and has brand loyalty. Plus, just as a point of comparison, looking at those numbers, how long to you have people from 20 to 35? 15 years. How long does the second demographic last? 25 years. It makes sense to target the second group.

Crap like this is why the console race is getting wacky and Nintendo keeps curb-stomping the competition month after month. They picked the most loyal demographic and they're serving them. They don't have to worry about the 20-35 year old male. They'll get them on the way, but they won't focus on the young male because the young male will get distracted by the next bright shiny that comes along with a new 250 GB hard drive that does absolutely nothing for gameplay.

Natal Idea

I did just have a cool idea for a Natal game:  A simulation much like EndWar.  Consider: You sit in front of the TV ordering your units with voice commands, grabbing parts of the interface and shifting them around, pinpointing airstrikes, calling your generals and having them issue reports, and things like that.  I could see it work.

Like I say, it's not that Natal has NO good ideas attached to it.  There is an awful lot you can do, but will it grab a wide audience and, above all, will it be fun?

Virtual Reality and Natal

When I was in 4th grade, the local newspaper had a section where they would ask kids what they thought of newsworthy events. In one of their segments, they asked kids what they thought the future held for video games. I got in the newspaper for blathering something about virtual reality. I was pretty proud of my answer, and everyone at the time thought virtual reality was the key to future gaming.

A couple of years later, I went to visit New York City and was walking around at Pier 17. They had a virtual reality game up where you could strap on a helmet and try and shoot someone in full 3D. I wanted to play, but my mom wouldn't let me at the time. It looked too violent for her tastes. It didn't take much to realize that this was the Future of Gaming and that Videogames As We Know Them were done.

So, what happened? A couple of things, really. First, VR is expensive. Second, wearing a giant helmet isn't fun, and can be rather headache-inducing. Third, and most importantly, moving around when you're playing a video game is fun at first, but then it's kind of tiring.

This brings me, in a roundabout way, to Natal. Gaming journalists are falling all over themselves to talk about how Natal is a gamechanger. I'll be honest, I don't see it. Now, to be fair, I also didn't see why you would need a touchscreen on a handheld, so I'm usually wrong on these things. But hear me out, please.

Stop for a second and ask how you can use Natal to play games. You can wave your arms around or move your legs. So, what genres can you play with that? Sports games, like tennis, maybe baseball. Rail shooters. Maybe you can draw on the screen, like Yoshi Touch 'N Go. Not a bad selection, but here's the separate question: How do you move?

I don't mean move your avatar onscreen with Natal. WIth that, you can move left and right. You can duck. You can wave your arms. But how will your character move across the screen? How will he move forward? How will he back up? Will you draw a path? Will there be buttons on screen that you touch? You think that waving your hands with a Wiimote is a pain, but imagine having to keep your hands in the air to play a simple platform game. Sound like fun yet?

Guys like Jonny Lee think that Natal will create new genres. That's great, but what are they? Name me some genres that could benefit from this. Name me some game styles that will be better when you have to move your whole body. Dance Dance Revolution? Guitar Hero without the guitar?

Another big issue: This technology is basically some of the same stuff as the EyeToy. Sure, it's far more sophisticated, and has a lot of features that the EyeToy didn't have, like facial recognition, but it's the same principle in play. In the interest of comparing apples to apples, the Playstation 2 sold 140 million units. The EyeToy sold 10 million. That means that 1 in every 14 PS2 owners thought that the EyeToy was a valuable purchase. That's a great number, right?

Consider, then, that the current install base of the 360 is 30 million. By applying the "1 in 14" metric, only about 2 million 360 owners will purchase Natal. That's 10 times less that the owners of Wii Fit. Now, Natal isn't aimed specifically at current owners, but we don't know the cost of ownership for Natal. How much will it be? Will most users also want the standard controller? Will they need it in order to make characters move in a proper way? Also, consider that people bought their 360s precisely because they DIDN'T want to move around and act like morons in front of the TV and then you start seeing that there are a lot more issues here than meets the eye.

Bear in mind that install base means everything. Companies stopped making games for the Gamecube because there were so few sold. Companies are starting to fall off the PS3 wagon because there are so few sold. They're starting to make more games for the Balance Board because of its install base of nearly 20 million. Will a company really push their chips to the middle of the table for a fancy piece of tech that forces them to rethink all of their game-making strategies in exchange for a meager install base?

I could be wrong about all of this. In face, I hope I am because it will force other companies to continue innovating. Natal is really interesting, no doubt. I'm really excited to see it in person and see it in a real-world setting. But does it have legs? Is it going to change gaming? If you're a consumer, is it really worth investing money into? There's no way of knowing for certain, but count me as a huge skeptic.

(E3) Console Conference Rundown

Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony all made their pitches to the gaming public within the last couple of days.  How did each one fare?

Microsoft's show was an intriguing one.  They demonstrated what's possible with Project Natal: controller-less gaming in HD.  I mention the HD part of it because whatever Nintendo does going forward, that's still the trump card for both major competitors.  I suspect that once Project Natal starts getting demoed, it'll gain traction among the casual crowd.  It's just too cool not to, frankly.

While Halo isn't really my thing, Halo: ODST looks good, Alan Wake was demoed, Metal Gear Solid was showed off, and Final Fantasy XIII has a firmer release date.  All-around, some good things shown off.  While the games weren't revolutionary, I would give Microsoft's show an B, if only for Natal.  It has the potential to revolutionize gaming or to be a giant flop, but at least they're trying for something new instead of mimicking the wand technology.

Nintendo's show was all about the games, and they delivered.  After a lackluster 2008, Nintendo came roaring back with several big reveals for the Wii.  New Super Mario Bros. this year, Metroid: Another M, Sin & Punishment 2, and, above all, Super Mario Galaxy 2.  That alone made me wet my pants.  I don't know about you, but when I saw that the "big Mario reveal" was New Super Mario Bros., I was a little disappointed.  I liked NSMB all right, but it wasn't what I was hoping for.  Galaxy 2 made my day.

That was just the Wii side.  The DS has more great stuff coming out this year yet, like Spirit Tracks and Mario & Luigi.  If games are what make a system, the Wii and DS are ready to go.  I will admit to disappointment at not seeing a new Kid Icarus or Kirby game, but what they gave us was more than enough.  Definitely an A.

That brings us to Sony.  I was expecting to be thoroughly bored during the Sony conference and not to see a lot of exciting new stuff.  I was wrong.  ModNation Racers has a cool, LittleBigPlanet vibe to it.  Assassin's Creed II looks awesome.  God of War III looks nice.  Sony had a lot of leaks before the show, so things like the PSP Go! and the new Metal Gear Solid game were already out there.  Of course they demoed Final Fantasy XIII, but the shocker was the announcement of the online-only, PS3 exclusive Final Fantasy XIV.  Didn't see that coming.

Of course, Sony has its own attempt at motion controls as well.  I thought that they would try and ape the success that Nintendo has had with the Wii, and the tech looks good.  The problem comes down to price, once again.  How can Sony compete when they're telling customers to shell out upwards of $500 for the system, these wands and games as well?  It's crazy talk.

Still, Sony's conference deserves kudos for acknowledging the leaks and providing things that we didn't expect.  As much as it pains me to say it, Sony's conference was as good as Nintendo's.  The only thing missing was a price drop. Grade A stuff.

(E3) Project Natal Looks Cool

With E3 upon us, I thought I'd give my thoughts on what we're seeing so far.

First, if I were Nintendo, I would be a little nervous about Project Natal.  It's a cool new platform for games.  No controller?  Sounds neat.

However, it's important to remember specifically why Nintendo is ahead.  Let's say you get a 360, then you get Natal.  How much money are you spending?  We don't know yet, but let's guess that it's about $350.  Let's say you buy a Wii and get the Wii Play bundle.  You're sitting at $300 AND you can play every game in the Nintendo library with the equipment you have.  Not so with Natal.  Not every game is Natal-ready.  Heck, pick up two MotionPlus addons and you're at about $350 WITH a pile of extra games.  I really wish Microsoft the best, and I'm excited to see what Natal will bring to the table.  Still, I don't see it supplanting the Wii anytime soon.

However, let's chew on these numbers for a moment.  In the last generation, the PS2 was the clear winner with 140 million units sold, with the XBox sitting at 30 mil and the Gamecube pulling up the rear with 20.  (To put that in perspective, the PS3, which is widely considered a misttep by Sony, has ALREADY sold more units than the Gamecube did.)  In other words, the PS2 sold over 4.5 times the units of its nearest competitor, and 2.8 times the units of both other consoles combined.

The Wii has so far sold 50 million units, but the 360 is sitting at about 30 mil and the PS3 at 20 million.  The Wii has a strong lead, but it's not insurmountable.  I think Nintendo knows it, so we'll see what they bring to the table tomorrow.  I'll be watching.

It better not be Wii Music 2, or me and Nintendo are done professionally.

So, Which System Should I Get Next

I have a Wii, a DS and a PC. I'm trying to decide on my next system, and there's benefits and drawbacks to my options. I turn to my readers, the ↓C Krew, to help me pick which would be the best fit for me. My three options are the PS2, the XBox 360, and the PS3.

PS2:

Benefits: Cheap quality games. Has MLB the Show on it. Lots of RPGs.

Drawbacks: No new games coming out. Doesn't display in widescreen, rendering my HDTV pretty much useless.

XBox 360:

Benefits: Great graphics that will show off my TV. Getting Final Fantasy XIII. Viva Pinata for my wife.

Drawbacks: High hardware failures. Not enough games that I want.

PS3:

Benefits: Great graphics that will show off my TV. Has MLB the Show. Cool content like PixelJunk Eden, Flower and Noby Noby Boy, as well as the upcoming Katamari Damacy remake.

Drawbacks: Price. Also, price. Not enough games to justify exobitant price. Also is very expensive. Some games have mandatory installs.

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I'm leaning toward a PS2, but the whole widescreen thing really bothers me. It's painful to play Gamecube games on my TV for that reason. What say you, ↓Cers?

UPDATE: I'm changing the poll on the right side to reflect this question. Have at it!