The Gaming Landscape 2000 to 2009 Part 7: What Will The Next Ten Years Hold?

There are lots of predictions floating around about the next ten years of gaming.  Yoichi Wada of Square Enix just said that "In ten years' time a lot of what we call 'console games' won't exist."  There's talk that gaming will move to "the cloud," and the whole nature of the industry will change.  What's true and what's false?  What will happen and won't?

Digital distribution will not become the norm.  As much as companies would like it to be, it won't ever take off the way they would like.  I'll have more on this in a different article.

3-D gaming will be the only reason to get a 3-D TV, but it won't catch on until the end of the decade.  Everyone just upgraded to HDTVs and aren't going to shell out even more money for a 3-D TV, and they aren't going to be buying 3-D TV to watch The King of Queens reruns, that's for sure.

There will be a completely unheard-of genre that will take the world by storm.  Just like music games became huge last decade because of improved technologies, a new genre will arrive next decade due to the new motion controls and 3-D gaming.

All three companies that are standing at the beginning of this decade will be in the game during the end of the decade.  Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo all have too much money and too much at stake to back out at any point.  Sony's been to the peak and wants to go back.  Microsoft wants inroads into the living room.  Video games are all Nintendo does.  No one's going anywhere.

Microsoft will recognize its need for a stronger first-party lineup after the PS3 passes it by early next decade, and will make overtures to a big studio.  They already thought about acquiring EA, even though they didn't do it.  They'll try again.

Consoles aren't going anywhere, but it will be a while until Sony and Microsoft release a new one.  Nintendo will put one out early next decade, though, and put the screws to both companies in the HD market.

Nintendo will go through another bust cycle, but it won't be the Wii's fault.

Nintendo will radically redo Zelda at some point next decade, and not just by adding Super Guide.

Microsoft will stop trying with Japan and let nature take its course.  They've sunk so much money into Japan for such a little return that it's not worth it anymore, especially with the shrinking market in Japan.

Miyamoto will retire, and there will be much sadness.  However, Yoshiaki Koizumi will step in and nothing will change.

Sony will stick to the ten-year plan and be rewarded at the end with either a victory in the console race or a tie with Nintendo.

Natal will be a game-changer, but traditional controls aren't going anywhere.

Call of Duty and Guitar Hero will see diminishing returns.  By the end of the decade, they'll be non-starters.

EA's patience with new IPs will be rewarded, but not until there's more corporate bloodletting.

If the 00's were the start of the indie developer, the 10's will be the decade of the indie.

Single-player games on the PC will be even fewer by the end of the decade.  MMOs will start migrating to the consoles, but they won't be there by the end of the decade.

Diablo III will be excellent, but it won't arrive until 2012.  I can't believe there's even debate about the quality of it.

Blizzard will refocus on new IPs and will struggle for it.

We'll see a new No One Lives Forever game.  Maybe that's just wishful thinking.

The Old Republic will be the next big MMO.  World of Warcraft will still stick around, just like Everquest and Ultima Online have.

Someone, somewhere will finally revisit X-Com.  It's been far too long to let it lie fallow.  It will disappoint the hardcore fans.

Finally, the more things change, the more things stay the same.  We're not going to be jacking into the matrix by the end of the decade, and we won't have everything streamed to us in a set-top box.  We'll still be putting discs into machines and sitting on the couch with controllers.  Granted, it'll be a space couch, and we'll be wearing hovershoes while connecting to the overmind, but some things simply won't change.

The Gaming Landscape 2000 to 2009 Part 6: The Decade of the Music Game

We've already talked about the importance of Guitar Hero.  It sold tons of copies and created a large pile of spinoffs, copiers, and detractors.  However, in talking about Guitar Hero, we're touching on something very interesting about this decade: In the zeroes, music games really went supernova.  Dance Dance Revolution launched in 1998, but didn't really make it into homes until this decade, where it sold in huge numbers.  DDR became part of the cultural lexicon so much that even people who hadn't played it knew what it was.  So what caused music games to become so popular so quickly when they hadn't been a big deal before?

The answer comes down to the music in games.  Video game music was very similar for a long time.  Even the best music still sounded a little chippy:

Granted, a lot of these songs were great, and there's no denying that they did wonders with what they had, but chiptunes don't hold a lot of significance for people other than gamers.  It's really hard to show someone who's not familiar with gaming how great a chiptune is because they don't understand how difficult it is to make them sound good.  Most systems had ho-hum sound chips that could do a little bit of digitized audio, but the sound was still garbled and not-quite-right.

It wasn't until the PS1 that we finally had CD-quality audio available for the first time.  However, most of the tracks were still chiptunes, albeit excellent ones.  Even some of the best soundtracks on the PS1 were still MIDI tracks with a lot more flexibility.  Sure, they could put in realistic-sounding instruments and more layers, but it was still MIDI with all the limitations inherent in MIDI.

What changed in the zeroes?  One, compression technology improved, meaning that a song could be compressed and still sound good.  Two, disc capacity took a huge leap from 800 MB on a standard CD to 4.7 GB on a DVD.  Space was no longer at a premium on a disc, so you could actually fit real, actual tracks on a disc.  With those technological improvements, we started seeing a genre that heretofore was impossible to achieve with any success become very, very possible as well as very, very profitable.

Of course, this opened the door for Guitar Hero and its imitators, but what can't be understated is the effect that Guitar Hero had on the industry as a whole.  It's hard to remember now, but at the dawn of the decade Activision was a failed brand that floundered a bit.  Before Guitar Hero, Activision's acquisitions were mostly mid-major studios like Neversoft, Infinity Ward, and Vicarious Visions.  They were positioning themselves to become a player, but hadn't taken the next leap.  After 2005 (when Guitar Hero launched) they started merging and changing, eventually becoming the behemoth we know and tolerate now.

Now, correlation doesn't always equal causality, and Infinity Ward certainly had a lot to do with Activision's rise to prominence.  Still, instead of having one major tentpole franchise (Call of Duty), Activision had TWO that could be exploited which allowed them to play with the likes of Vivendi, acquire Blizzard, and become a money-printing, price-hiking machine.  In other words, Activision is where it is because of music gaming.

So what do the next 10 years hold?  What will change?  What shiny new technology is going to change things forever?  There's no way to be certain, but we'll make some educated guesses in the next article in this series.

I Know Sometimes I Rag On Kotaku Readers...

I know sometimes I rag on Kotaku readers, but in this case I have to hand it to them for a job well-done.  This article just came up, which talks about Nintendo's commanding lead among female gamers.  I knew I had to read the comments on this one, since I thought I could pull out some choice comments to mock.  Instead, I ran across this exchange, which happened after someone talked about Nintendo widening their fanbase:

Slagathorian:
I imagine that if they put in some theatre production in football, it would also widen their fanbase. I imagine if the Resident Evil movies had an angst filled teenage love story, it would widen the fanbase.
The number one goal should not be to "widen" fanbase at the cost of alienating their existing fanbase.

That was what I expected the comments to be filled with, but here was the rebuttal:

shouryuuken:
*shrugs* its not like nintendo has stopped making their classic franchise games. this gen has seen some fine examples if not some of the best of what theyve been doing for the past 20 years.
i see no crime in only adding to their portfolio, even if the new additions are aimed at a different audience.
your complaint would be the same as kids complaining about cartoon network debuting adult swim because the cartoons werent aimed at them.
its a business, not a hobby.

Good work, folks.  It's about time that people start realizing that they're NOT abandoning their bread-and-butter audience, but trying to get a bigger base that will ensure their survival into the 21st century and beyond.  I have nothing else to add.

I have got to stop messing around with the site

Every time I do it messes up my tracking numbers, and then I have to put back in my Google Analytics codes, and then there's a period of a week where I wonder if they're in right.  Next time I try and mess with my site, just slap my hand gently but firmly and say "no."

Review: New Super Mario Bros. Wii

Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo

By now, you pretty much know if you like 2-D Mario games or not. They've been around for over 25 years, and most every game has you stepping on enemies and/or killing them with fire in order to rescue Princess Peach from the clutches of Bowser. It's a simple formula that's paid dividends for years.
Mario made a successful detour into 3-D while other iconic characters failed (hello, Sonic), but the success of 2006's New Super Mario Bros. for the DS convinced Nintendo to return to his 2-D roots once again for New Super Mario Bros. Wii. It's Mario's first 2-D console outing since 1990's Super Mario World for the Super Nintendo, so he's long overdue. Was the return trip to the Mushroom Kingdom worth the wait, or is a trip that should have been skipped?

It's-a Me

I had a few complaints about the DS version of New Super Mario Bros:

1. I finished the game on the same day that I purchased it.
2. Going through the levels and getting every Star Coin didn't seem to add anything to gameplay. It was just so much busywork.
3. Some of the later levels were just hard for the sake of being hard. They would throw in random enemy attacks, and it was just unfair.
4. The boss battles were nothing to write home about. You just fought different versions of Bowser Jr. until he finally stopped attacking you.
5. Finally, in order to get to some of the worlds you had to take really roundabout ways to get there. You had to beat some of the world bosses with a mini-mushroom in order to unlock worlds 4 and 6, and mini-mushrooms were hard to come by.

In other words, I still liked the DS version, but we had a strained relationship.

It pleases me to say that New Super Mario Bros. Wii has cleaned up almost all of the defects of its predecessor. It has more levels that are more involved than the original and display much more imagination than the DS game. While it appeared that Nintendo's B-Team was working on the DS game, the success of the DS game convinced Nintendo to use their A-Team to make the Wii version, and it shows.

Two, getting the Star Coins unlocks levels that are reminiscent of Super Mario World's Star World in a good way. You actually feel like digging around for the Star Coins because there's a tangible reward.

Third, when the game gets difficult, it's still fair. You always know why you died and what it takes to get past that point. There will be times where you scrape through a level and legitimately feel a sense of accomplishment, not frustration over stupid decisions made by the level designer.

Fourth, the Koopalings are back. While their battles aren't amazing, they're definitely better than the drab Bowser Jr. fights of the DS game. On top of that, the final battle with Bowser even made this jaded gamer's jaw drop a little bit.

Fifth, there are no worlds that you can't get to without a little elbow grease. You should see every world on your first playthrough without having to resort to weird tactics, although there are several levels within them that can be rather difficult to find. Once you find the solution, it's head-slappingly easy to understand, but you never feel like getting there was overly esoteric.

Whoo-Hoo

In fact, just about everything in New Super Mario Bros. Wii is aces. Some have referred to it as Super Mario Bros. 5, and that's an apt description. Everything about it screams quality, from the tight, intuitive level design to the bopping, bouncing music that accompanies your journey. The controls handle like a dream, as you would expect from a Mario game. Yoshi is back, and he handles just like you would expect. The graphics are crisp and clean, looking exactly like a traditional Mario game updated for the 21st century. Everything is exactly what you would want in a new sidescrolling Mario game.

But is that a good thing? Some may complain, "The fact that everything is exactly the way you would expect means that they didn't really try." While there is a bit of deja vu throughout, there aren't a whole lot of places where you roll your eyes and say, "I've seen that before." There are intelligent nods to your skills, but most everything is something new yet familiar. If you played a Mario game back in the day and enjoyed it, playing New Super Mario Bros. Wii will put a smile on your face.

Some have also complained about Super Guide, the revolutionary new way that Nintendo plans on opening up games for inexperienced players. Basically, Super Guide can play through a level for you, allowing you to complete levels that are giving you problems and help inexperienced players to reach the end of the game. Some feel that it makes things too easy. I mean, if a game can play itself, that what's the point?

Super Guide doesn't really work like that. If you die more than eight times in a level, a green block will appear above your head at your starting point. If you hit it, it'll ask if you want to use Super Guide. If you don't, don't hit the block. Simple as that.

In fact, the game will give you a medal if you never die enough for Super Guide to come up. It's a clever way of rewarding experienced players and giving them a badge of honor of sorts. It's unobtrusive, and can be safely ignored if you don't want it. If you do want it, it's there. It's a great way for Nintendo to crank up the difficulty while still allowing everyone a seat at the table.

Oh Noooooooo

That's not to say there aren't problems. For one, while the music is nice, I would much rather have heard more traditional Mario themes than the newer New Super Mario Bros. theme. That's a little nitpicky, but one thing that separated a game like Super Mario Galaxy from previous entries in the 3-D series was the use of music from the original Mario games. If you're aiming for updated nostalgia, as Nintendo was clearly trying to do here, that music alone calls back better memories, and it would have been nice to hear more of it.

Another addition was the much-ballyhooed multiplayer, which allows four players to be onscreen at the same time. With the wrong group of people, this can be frustrating and limiting. It sucks when you're the only person who knows how to play and you end up carrying each and every level. A player that's more talented than others may find themselves having to wait for other players to catch up before proceeding, or having to bail out other players repeatedly. However, with the right group of people, this can be an extremely entertaining mode. Having someone hold off enemies while you go for a Star Coin can be really fun, and having someone to help you try out a new tactic is great. More often than not, though, the multiplayer is more frustration than anything else.

Let's-a Go

Most everyone who has seen New Super Mario Bros. Wii has made a judgement one way or the other. If you decided you don't want to play it, this review probably won't change your mind. But I have to ask, if you don't want to play it, why not? I mean, it recalls the older Mario games in the best possible way. It's challenging without being overly difficult. Super Guide only bothers the weaker players, and great features from previous games, like airships and keeping a stockpile of powerups, have come back.

There's a reason why New Super Mario Bros. sold a ton of copies on the DS, and New Super Mario Bros. Wii will continue tearing up sales charts: It's fun for everyone. If you're still on the fence about New Super Mario Bros. Wii, get off the fence and get it.

Final Grade: A-

121

I did it.  Pics forthcoming.  After 72 hours and 12 minutes, I just can't believe it.

118 Stars As Luigi

I'm getting achingly close here, people.  Just two more left to go, and they're both Cosmic Races (ugh).  Wish me luck.