New Gaming Console Being Delayed
It appears that the Ouya is going to be a bit delayed.
This is good news though, as it is being delayed because the console developers have more cash to spend on it, $15m more to be precise.
Ouya already raised around $7m on Kickstarter, and now, when it should be taking its last steps towards completion, it has had almost twice as much more injected into it by lovely venture capitalists.
We were expecting the console in early June, but that has slid back to 25 June. The time and money will in part be used to solve an issue with sticky buttons, something that usually only happens once consumers have taken some hardware home with them.
The money comes from venture capital firms and other companies including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), Nvidia, Shasta Ventures, and Occam Partners. KPCB’s general partner Bing Gordon will join the Ouya board of directors as a result.
“We want Ouya to be here for a long time to come,” said Julie Uhrman, Ouya founder and CEO.
“The message is clear: people want Ouya. We first heard this from Kickstarter backers who provided more than $8 million to help us build Ouya, then from over 12,000 developers who have registered to make an Ouya game, next from retailers who are carrying Ouya online and soon on store shelves, and now from top pioneering investors.”
Gordon is in charge of digital investments at KPCB and is a veteran of the games industry, having started at Electronic Arts in 1982.
“Ouya’s open source platform creates a new world of opportunity for established and emerging independent game creators and gamers alike,” he said.
“There are some types of games that can only be experienced on a TV, and Ouya is squarely focused on bringing back the living room gaming experience. Ouya will allow game developers to unleash their most creative ideas and satisfy gamers craving a new kind of experience.”
Ouya consoles should start arriving in living rooms on 25 June. If you want one, you are going to have to come up with around $100 dollars, plus another $50 dollars if you want two controllers.
Courtesy-TheInq
Will The Xbox 720 Lack Quality Launch Titles?
Some well-known industry analysts are suggesting that Microsoft could be behind as much as six months on software development for the Xbox Next. According to these sources, a combination of events have put Microsoft in this position, but it seems that some titles that were being developed internally have been canned. The situation led to Microsoft seeking to secure exclusives from 3rd party sources to fill in the gaps.
We first suggested a link between EA and Microsoft on some sort of an exclusive deal back when they were not a part of the Sony press conference earlier this year. Now, we find that they have a deal of some sort for the new Respawn title, which will apparently be exclusive to the Xbox 360 and Xbox Next. That’s not all, as it is expected that Microsoft has more exclusives to announce. What the question is really about is whether these are true exclusives or are just timed exclusives that we will see on the PS3/PS4 at some point in the future.
Even if Microsoft’s internal exclusives lack for the Xbox Next at launch, we expect them to catch up; we don’t see a big gap developing, but we know that Microsoft has solid properties to use on the Xbox Next and they will get those titles developed and out. No worries: it is going to be similar to all console launches where the software lacks when the system is released.
Courtesy-Fud
Ubisoft’s Watchdogs Coming In November
Ubisoft has confirmed that Watch Dogs will arrive on November 19th in North America and November 22nd in Europe. The game is been confirmed for the Xbox 360, Xbox Next, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PC, and Wii U. The release date for the PlayStation 4 version is expected to coincide with the release date of the PlayStation 4 console, so depending on its release date, the release of the PS4 version could be adjusted. (This apparently applies to the Xbox Next, as well.)
We are also being told that the PS3 version of the game will include an additional 60 minutes of exclusive game play. We are not sure if this game play will also be available for those that purchase the PS4 version, but we suspect that it will.
Four special edition versions of the game will be offered. It is not yet clear whether or not they will offer each of these special editions for each of the platforms. More details are expected to follow in the days ahead, but these look like some very nice special editions of the game, with some very nice extras being thrown in.
Courtesy-Fud
Can A Price Drop Save The Wii-U?
The NPD Group will report its US video game retail data this Thursday, and in a preview note Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter commented that he’s expecting Nintendo to post yet another weak month of Wii U sales. For the Wii U’s fifth month on the market, he’s forecasting that Nintendo sold just 55,000 units, which would represent a 17 percent decline month-over-month. Moreover, Pachter’s expecting this slide to continue for Wii U, even if Nintendo chooses to implement a price cut.
“The only key hardware device to under-perform our expectations was the Wii U,” Pachter said of last month’s numbers, “and its fortunes appear unlikely to improve for several months, even if Nintendo decides to drop price, as there are an insufficient number of core titles that are generating interest in the console. We think that core gamers are far more likely to turn their attention to the PS4 (due in the holiday season) and the next Xbox, which we believe will be unveiled before E3 and have a launch alongside that of the PS4, and believe that the long-term appeal of the Wii U will be severely limited by the perception that the PS4 and next Xbox will be much more powerful with greater online integration and multimedia functionality.”
And if the pricing on the PS4 and next Xbox is reasonable, it could really put Wii U in a bind, Pachter added: “Should the new consoles from Sony and Microsoft be price competitive, we think that Wii U sales may continue to stagnate.” In fact, Pachter believes that next-gen consoles are likely to be subsidized and will therefore look even more affordable to consumers.
“We think that the next-generation consoles will perform a wide range of multimedia functions. We should learn more in the coming months, but we expect the next Xbox to have an IPTV tuner that will allow an MSO to deliver services over the Internet outside of the MSO’s regulated geographic boundaries. If we are right, any of Microsoft’s MSO partners will have an incentive to subsidize the purchase of the next Xbox in exchange for a long-term service commitment (similar to the cell phone model). If the subsidies are steep, it is likely that the next Xbox will appear more affordable to many consumers than currently anticipated, and it may capture market share faster than many expect. We don’t expect Sony to sit idly by watching, and believe that the PS4 will follow Microsoft’s lead in short order, suggesting to us that next-generation consoles could have lower starting prices than any in history,” he said.
As for March retail game sales overall, Pachter expects the numbers to be up slightly (just one percent) thanks to big AAA releases like Gears of War: Judgment, Tomb Raider and BioShock Infinite.
Courtesy-GI.biz
Do Violent FPS Have A Psychological Appeal?
As anyone who has accidentally walked into a room full of children can tell you, they’re good at asking the kinds of questions that just keep drilling down. “Why is the sky blue? So why does blue light get scattered more? Then why is the sky red at sunset? Where are you going?”
And although I don’t recommend it, if you were to sit one of these little buggers down with a quarterly earnings reports from EA or Activision, they might soon start asking “Why are violent video games so much more popular than other games?” It’s a tricky question to answer without falling down the why hole. Because shooting stuff is fun. Why is it fun? Because people like military themes where they can be the hero. Okay, but why is that? Because players like feeling ridiculously powerful and enormous guns let them do that. But why is that appealing? Why, why, why?
Well, some psychologists are trying to tease apart the reasons why violence sells without throwing their hands up and shouting “Just because! And I’m not even your real dad!” Researchers Scott Rigby and Richard Ryan describe how they think that the design of violent games – especially shooters – naturally does a pretty good job of satisfying some very basic psychological needs. But not in the way you may be thinking.
In their book, Glued to Games: How Video Games Draw Us In and Hold Us Spellbound, Rigby and Ryan describe “self-determination theory,” a fairly well established framework that aims to describe why people pursue certain voluntary activities. In part, self-determination theory says that people are motivated to engage in activities to the extent that they satisfy three psychological needs:
- 1. Competence – progressing in skill and power.
- 2. Autonomy – being able to choose from multiple, meaningful options.
- 3. Relatedness – feeling important to others.
What does this have to do with violent shooters? Rigby, Ryan, and their colleagues argue that many of the design principles of good shooters also happen to follow well worn paths to satisfying these three psychological needs. Let’s take a closer look.
Competence is communicated by immediate and unambiguous positive feedback in response to your actions – you see opponents stagger, see blood fly off them, and ultimately see them collapse. The beloved headshot is particularly effective in this regard. Scott Rigby notes, “I’ll often put up a slide with a great screenshot of a headshot, and it always elicits smiles. The smiles here aren’t because everyone is sadistic – they are because this is a moment of mastery satisfaction that all gamers can relate to. The blood may not be the value component, but really is just a traditional way dense informational feedback on mastery is provided.” Information about competence in shooters is also thrown at you in the form of scoreboards, rankings, weapon unlocks, and eventually the outcome of every (relatively short) match.
Autonomy, the second motivator in self-determination theory, is also well served by the design of most popular shooters. Having the option to choose many different paths through a level satisfies autonomy, as does choosing between different classes, different loadouts, or different tactics. In a lot of games you can even choose between different modes, modifiers, or maps, allowing you to satisfy the need to play a game how you please. And if that’s not enough, custom character or weapon skins or models also fit in here.
Finally, relatedness is most obviously important in multiplayer games where you can feel like part of a successful (or, perhaps more likely of pickup games, incompetent) team bound together by opposition to a common foe. To the extent that shooters communicate your contributions in the forms of scores, points, server-wide notifications, or MVP awards, relatedness will be satisfied – to say nothing of what you can get out of text and voice chat. But even most modern shooters have single player campaigns that somewhat mimic this and put you in the role of someone important to those around you.
Of course, none of these motivators is unique to shooters. They show up in good game design across all genres and themes. But violent shooters usually hit on all three, and Rigby and Ryan believe that’s there’s a big overlap between what makes an effective shooter and what satisfies multiple facets of all three of these psychological needs. So while RPGs might nail autonomy, platformers may demand competence, and MMOs may allow the most relatedness, violent shooters fire on all three cylinders.
“[Violent games] are fun not because of the blood and gore,” write Rigby and Ryan, “but because games of war and combat offer so many opportunities to feel autonomy, competence, and the relatedness of camaraderie rolled up into an epic heroic experience.” But, that all said, do shooters satisfy all these motivators so well because they’re violent?
It’s an important question, and Ryan, Rigby, and their colleague Andrew Przybylski published a 2009 study in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin that addresses it. Part of their research involved a clever experiment where they modified Half-Life 2 to create a high-violence version of the game’s multiplayer and a low-violence version. The high violence version is pretty much what you’d expect. The low violence one, though, was created by changing the bullet-spewing guns into “tag” tools that players would use to zap opponents. Once tagged, foes would freeze and float up into the air for a second before being harmlessly teleported to a “penalty box” where they would wait to respawn into the game. So the main difference – arguably the only difference – between the two groups was how much violence there was in the game. Everything else was the same: the level layouts, the controls, and all the other stuff that satisfied competence and autonomy (unfortunately they didn’t examine relatedness). Only the violence was teased out of the equation
What did they find? Well, a lot of things. But one interesting finding was that the games in either condition were found enjoyable and both games satisfied the basic psychological needs of competence and autonomy. Even whether or not a person was naturally aggressive and normally enjoyed violent games didn’t matter once you accounted for competence and autonomy.
To me, this is vastly interesting and argues for alternatives to the go-to trope of violence and gore if you’re looking to draw people to games. It’s not the bloodshed as much as it is feeling like you’re able to make what you want happen on-screen. It’s not fetishising guns and explosions as much as it is the ability to use tactics and choose among meaningful options on the road to victory. It’s not the military themes as much as it is feeling like you’re an important part of a team.
Sure, war and military heroism are themes and experiences worthy of exploration, but there are other options that can be just as effective. Gamers may be happy to just keep buying the same game over and over again without understanding a thing about self determination theory, and publishers may only want to greenlight games that look like smash hits from the past without caring about mechanisms for satisfying psychological needs, but developers who think about these things and play around with them can definitely do something both great and different.
Courtesy-GI.biz
Does The Gaming Industry Have Room For The Ouya?
Ouya, the open Android-based console designed by Yves Behar, is being shipped to its Kickstarter backers today, and the company officially announced this week at GDC that it will hit retailers in the US, UK and Canada on June 4. Ouya is promising “hundreds” of titles for the June 4 release and the $99 console will be available at Amazon, Best Buy, GAME, GameStop, Target, and the store on OUYA.tv. Additional controllers will be sold for $49.99. And for digital purchases, consumers will be able to get pre-paid cards with redeemable codes at retail if they wish.
The company said that over 8,000 game developers worldwide are currently developing games, including both up-and-comers and more well known game makers like Square Enix, Double Fine Productions, Tripwire Interactive, Vlambeer, Phil Fish’s Polytron Corporation, and Kim Swift’s Airtight Games. “The majority of devs so far are experienced devs who’ve never built an Android game before. About 1 out of 5 have never even built a game before,” Ouya CEO Julie Uhrman said that at the GDC unveiling. She boasted that Ouya “already has more titles a couple months before launch than any console has ever launched with.”
The Ouya hardware itself is even smaller than we had previously thought (think Rubik’s Cube or smaller), and its sleek design and brushed aluminum is pleasing to the eye. Uhrman, however, stressed the controller more than anything else. “What we spent the most amount of time on is the controller. We really want this to be our love letter to gamers,” she said, adding that Ouya focused on the ergonomics, the weight, the feel, and wanted it to be a precise, accurate controller. “This is one of the pieces of Ouya that evolved a lot based on early supporter feedback,” she continued.
Apparently, the feedback led to numerous changes on the controller in terms of button placement, and the style of d-pad. The team found out that many preferred a cross-style d-pad than a disc because it’s superior for fighting games. Also, the engineers retooled the tension of the analogs and the design of shoulder buttons. And Ouya even made the responsiveness and speed of the center touch pad customizable. In this journalist’s hands, it felt comfortable and familiar while playing a few titles.
After showing off the hardware, Uhrman dived into the user interface of Ouya. The whole UI is incredibly streamlined, with four categories and an apps-like layout. The four categories are Play, Discover, Make, and Manage (which is for settings). Play is simply where anything you’ve downloaded – games or music or video apps – will be placed. Discover is the store, and it’s been designed to encourage people to “find the best games.” For example, sub-selections in Discover include featured channels like Go Retro, Hear Me, Genres, and Sandbox. The plan is to offer more descriptive names for games within genres.
“The way games get exposed in the genre list is based on what we call the O-rank, which is our fun algorithm. It’s how we rank great games. A lot of app platforms today use downloads as a metric or they use revenue as a metric and we don’t think that’s a good way to say if it’s a good game,” Uhrman said. “You could download a game and never play it again. And with the free-to-try model, revenue isn’t necessarily the best model either. What is [a good metric] is what proves that the game is fun, and that’s engagement. So things like how long you have played a game, how many times you’ve played that game over a certain period of time. How quickly from the time you boot up Ouya, which is an always-on device, do you play that game… It’s those types of engagement metrics that we think prove it’s a fun game.”
Another interesting area within Discover is Sandbox, which offers developers an opportunity to put builds up and ask people to thumb it up. The idea is for great games to get out of the Sandbox and be searchable and merchandized. It encourages developers to market their games and promote them to fans. Once you get out of Sandbox you know the people next to you have great quality games, Uhrman explained.
The Make channel is an area that appears to still be in flux. Uhrman said the goal is to serve two audiences, gamers and developers, equally. While Make is a place where a developer can upload early builds, over time it’ll be a place for devs to communicate with fans. “We also can grow it to be, what if you want to make a game, here’s how to market a game, etc. We’ll look to devs and gamers for feedback on how to evolve the section,” Uhrman said.
A console that’s as open as Ouya should have a fairly simple submission process for developers right? Uhrman confirmed that it’s not overly complicated and should be something most can complete within an hour. “It’s something we thought a lot about given that we’re an open platform… but we wanted to make sure that there are good quality games, at least to the extent that it was optimized to the television and for the controller. So the guidelines isn’t necessarily a quality review, but it checks if there’s malware, does it break or freeze often, does it use our controller schema in the right way, we need to make sure there’s no IP infringement, no pornography, does it elicit real-world violence, you are who you say you are kind of thing – that’s the review. We try to keep it under an hour. Developers can choose to go live immediately or they can choose a certain time,” she detailed.
Curiously, there’s been no partnership reached with the ESRB to rate the games in North America. Right now, the games will be self-rated by devs and community reviewed. Given that Ouya is being sold in mainstream retail, however, we do have to wonder if this will pose potential problems for the company in an atmosphere where some people are still pointing fingers at violent video games. “We’ll take it as it comes; right now we want to expose great content from any type of developer and we do have the thumbs-up/like feature or the report if this is abuse on the system,” responded Uhrman, adding that “We basically say that we can change the rules at any time and we can reject the game for any reason that doesn’t fit our content guidelines – we want everybody on Ouya to have a great experience.”
Ratings aside, one of the big questions surrounding Ouya is whether or not it can truly carve out a market for itself in the console space as industry veterans Sony and Microsoft prepare to launch their respective next-generation systems. The games we saw on Ouya are not graphically intense and are very indie in nature. Can Ouya handle high fidelity triple-A releases? Or does it even need to in order to get noticed?
Ouya does has a partnership with OnLive, so that’s one way to get triple-A games. “That’s one solution. We also support 1080p, hi-def… and we have a USB port so someone can add an external hard drive, so for games that are heavy you could absolutely use that. We have a max download size of 1.2GB for the first download, but as a developer if you want to add and send additional content from your servers you can,” Uhrman said.
“Traditional games take longer to develop, and we have some of those in development that we’re really excited about. Ouya is not about the number of polygons on the screen,” Uhrman acknowledged. “That’s not where we went. We wanted to have innovative and creative exclusive content, and we’re already starting to see that.”
Exclusive content plus a very appealing $99 price point is what could make the system an easy impulse buy for many gamers Uhrman believes. Moreover, Uhrman noted that most core gamers tend to purchase more than one console, so Ouya is likely to be something they’ll want to buy even if they are getting a PS4.
“Ouya offers something different; every gamer has a different expectation depending upon the platform and we believe we’re going to have innovative, creative games and exclusive games to Ouya… And the barrier to entry at just $99 where every game is free-to-try, I think opens up the opportunity for a number of gamers, even core gamers. Core gamers on average own more than one console. We don’t really think it’s an either/or situation. We’re offering something different – I think they’re going to want Ouya too,” she said.
A number of traditional consoles in the past have launched selling at a loss. Since Ouya is built with off the shelf components, it may be easier to contain costs, but Uhrman wouldn’t confirm that each unit is sold at a profit. “We’re really comfortable with our business model,” is all she would say.
That said, if things go the way Uhrman would like, this is only the beginning. Ouya will continue to evolve its software and hardware, and the hardware is likely to get refreshed quickly.
“We’re like any other software platform that iterates and grows over time, and we’ll have a hardware refresh rate more similar to a mobile refresh rate than a console refresh rate because we want to take advantage of the best chips out there and falling commodity prices. We will certainly make sure that there’s enough content that’s optimized for that chip and we don’t push on higher prices to the consumer,” she said.
Does that mean some Ouyas in future will not be compatible with certain games? Uhrman is looking to avoid that scenario. “We have a plan where all content will be compatible with future Ouya systems; we don’t want to fragment our own market for developers, and we always want gamers to have a great experience,” she commented.
Ouya will be interesting to watch. It’s a bold move for the industry and everything we’ve seen so far is completely unconventional. Whether or not that will pay dividends in the long-run is hard to judge at this point in time. “The market is calling us the ‘un-console’ and we like doing things the ‘un-way’,” Uhrman remarked.
Courtesy-GI.biz
Will Crytek Acquire The Darksiders Franchise?
When Crytek opened its new Crytek USA studio, it picked up a number of the staff from Vigil when THQ hit bottom. Now, it looks like those former Vigil studio members might be lucky enough to see Crytek acquire the Darksiders franchise that these folks poured their hearts and souls into.
Crytek is apparently looking to buy the rights to the Darksiders franchise. This is not to make a new Darksiders game, but is in the spirit that the people who created the game might as well own the IP if someone if going to get it.
Former Vigil boss, David Adams, now the head of Crytek USA, went to Twitter to announce the news that Crytek would be bidding to acquire the franchise because the IP belongs at home with is creators, according to the Twitter posting.
While it is far from assured that Crytek will acquire it, the courts and the legal wrangling will determine how it shakes out. Still, it is nice thing to see that some of the former Vigil crew could end up with the IP being under the roof where they work again. It does not get anywhere close to a new Darksiders game, but it would be nice for the Vigil folks to have something good come their way.
Courtesy-Fud
Bioshock Infinite Finally Headed To The Mac
Mac owners will get to play the upcoming release of BioShock Infinite, thanks to Aspyr Media. Aspyr will be handling the Mac conversion, as well as the marketing of the Mac version of the game.
While the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC versions of BioShock Infinite will arrive on March 26th, the Mac conversion does not have a specific release date beyond its planned arrival at some point this summer.
The news really isn’t that surprising, as BioShock Infinite looks to be one of the biggest titles to be released this year; and, of course, Aspyr should do well with a Mac conversion of the game.
Courtesy-Fud
Will Multiplayer Games Drive The Mobile Platform?
Video game research firm EEDAR, which already has a proprietary database of over 100 million internally researched data points from more than 90,000 physical, digital, mobile, and social game products, is gearing up for the launch of a new service to assist mobile and social developers. EEDAR said that its new suite of mobile. Tablet and social products will aim “to improve sales potential and game quality for titles utilizing in-app monetization.”
EEDAR said that one of the most important things a developer can do is to optimize a game before launch. “EEDAR is able to provide an assessment at any point during the development cycle and accurately project key performance measurements of the final product, in addition to a qualitative assessment that provides feedback from the perspective of a professional game critic and consumers,” the company said about its new product suite.
Jesse Divnich, VP of Insights at EEDAR, to get an overview of the key takeaways from the firm’s research on the mobile and social markets. Divnich stressed that developers must be prepared with their in-game monetization strategy for retention and boosting conversion rates before a title is released into an app store.
“When the mobile game market was emerging, developers could optimize key monetization features after a game’s launch. The onboarding acquisition process had a long tail. Today, due to competition and larger consumer awareness, the time to peak engagement is rapidly shortening,” he noted.
“Facebook/Social games are a perfect example. Games like Farmville took nearly a year before they reached their peak users. It gave Zynga ample enough time to adjust game features to increase engagement monetization rates. Now, Social games are peaking within weeks and this idea of always being in ‘beta’ quickly shows its weaknesses when you are onboarding the majority of your lifetime users in only a few weeks,” he continued. “The mobile market is beginning to reach that point. Mobile games are making more headlines, consumers are becoming aware of hit titles faster. Simply put, consumers are engaging mobile games closer to a game’s release date and sleeper hits are becoming less prevalent.”
Even getting highlighted by Apple doesn’t mean what it used to. Developers can squander a great opportunity if they don’t make an effort to optimize. “Being featured by Apple no longer means weeks or months on the top charts. At most you have seven days and if your title is not fully optimized, you will leave money on the table,” Divnich added. “Going forward, developers must ensure they’re launching with maximum optimization, both from an artistic and scientific perspective. This means dedicating more resources to pre-launch analytics and qualitative testing.”
So what are some other notable mistakes developers are making? Well, mimicry certainly isn’t helping. Just because something works in one game doesn’t mean it can be successfully “borrowed” for a different game.
“There are still a large chunk of developers that are still too short-sighted. Clash of Clans has been a top seller for a few months and nearly 50 percent of the concepts and vertical slices that come across my desk in some way or another have an 80 percent overlap of Clash of Clans’ engagement loop. After we perform our assessments, some developers are disappointed to learn their retention, conversion, and monetization rates potential are a fraction of the results Clash of Clans has produced,” observed Divnich.
Even if your game is successful at the start, retention is a real problem, as it’s hard to create a game that has legs. “Competition within the mobile markets is at its fiercest, and every week there are at least seven high-quality releases trying to fight for our attention. The increase in competition, media coverage, and consumer awareness has driven down retention rates, for some genres, to dangerously low levels,” Divnich explained.
The key, he said, is to drive connectivity with a very attractive multiplayer component. “Right now, the tried and true method for improving retention has been multiplayer and social features. The correlation between retention rates and the inclusion of multiplayer and social features is ridiculously high,” Divnich noted. “We do issue caution, however. Just because games with strong multiplayer and social support sell well doesn’t mean slapping on a multiplayer component will automatically make your game a success.”
“We’ve seen this trend occur in the traditional HD gaming space. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare created a multiplayer frenzy and everyone thought by cuffing on a multiplayer component their game, too, would be a success. While it helped for some, those that tacked it on were met with lukewarm or disappointing reception. We still encourage our developers to implement new ways of approaching multiplayer and social features, but how they are implemented is key to improving retention rates,” he continued.
While the mobile/tablet space is getting all the attention these days, and social gaming on Facebook has seen sharp declines, that doesn’t mean developers should automatically ignore the social space. There can be opportunities there as well, especially if developers optimize their titles.
“The social platform is still viable and profitable for many developers,” Divnich remarked. “Two years ago developers were fanatic about releasing on the social platform, but they oversaturated the market. There was too much choice in a market, there were no switching barriers for consumers, and there existed too many rip-offs of the standard Farmville or Bejeweled engagement loop. Additionally, Facebook couldn’t keep up with the demand for innovation. Being a platform where consumers violently resist change (e.g. Timeline), it’s difficult to support new tools and back-end features for developers without changing the whole experience altogether.”
“Developers can still be profitable on social platforms, but we certainly approach that space more cautiously,” he concluded.
Courtesy-GI.biz
Nintendo Loses In Court
A federal jury found that video game company Nintendo infringed an inventor’s 3-D display technology patent with its handheld 3DS video game system. The jury awarded the inventor, Seijiro Tomita, $30.2 million in compensatory damages.
The technology involved provided 3-D images without the need for 3-D glasses. Last month Tomita’s attorney, Joe Diamante, told the jury in U.S. District Court in Manhattan that Nintendo used technology that Tomita developed for its 3DS. Tomita worked for Sony.
Nintendo said that 3DS doesn’t use key aspects of Tomita’s patent and added that a 2003 meeting with Nintendo officials that Tomita cited in his argument was merely one of several the company held with vendors selling 3-D display technology. Lindvall declined to comment following the verdict. Nintendo officials were not immediately available for comment.
Courtesy-Fud
Is the PlayStation Vita 3G Being Dropped?
Several Sony stores in the US have discounted the 3G PlayStation Vita by $100, with some branches asserting that it’s because the 3G machine is due to be discontinued.
A news story at Joystiq discovered the price cut, which extends to many but not all of the Sony stores in the US. Wi-Fi only models have not been discounted.
Sony employees from Denver, Las Vegas and New Jersey told Joystiq that the model is being taken off the market, but others were uncertain. Nobody was able to say whether the model would be replaced by a 4G machine or if we’d only see Wi-Fi only Vitas in the future.
The 3G package, which includes an 8GB memory card and a PSN voucher now costs $199.97 and comes with a data plan contract – which would seem to run contrary to any discontinuation rumours. However, if a 4G Vita is in the works, continuing data plan deals with networks would make more sense.
Sony has been contacted for clarification on the story and whether any price cut will become global.
Courtesy-GI.biz
Will Valve’s Steam-Box Be OPEN?
Steam Box prototypes will be in the wild for customer testing in the next three to four months, according to Gabe Newell. Valve has given up on pretending that it’s not interested in the hardware game; its ambitions are now pretty clear, and somewhat wider than we expected. Where once the concept of a Steam Box was thought to be simply a minimum set of specs for PC manufacturers to follow in order to get a “Steam Powered” sticker on their boxes, now Newell talks openly about the nitty gritty of hardware challenges like heat and noise management, or building bio-metric sensors into the custom controller for the console.
A great many people are hugely excited about the Steam Box. I’m one of them, I confess – I think it’ll be just the thing to ease me back into PC gaming, which is where my roots as a gamer lie, but from which I’ve become increasingly (if unwillingly) estranged. However, I think there are some tough questions and unhappy realities about the Steam Box – whatever final form it may take – that still need to be addressed, especially by the most outspoken proponents of the system.
The crux of the problem is this – Valve’s console is already being lauded as a chariot of openness, a triumph for all those who love things that are Open as opposed to Closed, even if some of them aren’t very good at defining what those terms actually mean. The box will presumably run either Windows or some Linux variant, and if you want to, you’ll presumably be able to leave the Steam environment and pop back to the desktop of that OS and run whatever games or other software you want. (That’s the assumption, anyway; we shall see.) That’s certainly Open compared to, say, a PlayStation 4 or an iPad, which won’t run anything Sony or Apple respectively don’t want you to run.
However, there are other facets to this which look less convincing. For a start, while Steam is an amazing distribution platform that has massively boosted the appeal and reach of PC gaming, in many ways it’s just as much a walled garden as any of the consoles. Indeed, when I wrote a column recently calling on Sony to lower the barrier for indie studios and small firms wishing to publish PSN games (something they seem intent on doing with PS4), many people pointed out that Steam can actually be an even tougher place to publish a game than PSN – and with the advent of a PS4 based on PC architecture and seemingly more open than ever to self-publishing, that contrast may become rather stark. It’s already a stark contrast with the iOS App Store and Google Play, which both place only the smallest of barriers in front of creators who want to put their games in front of consumers.
As such, the question I’m asking myself is this; to an average consumer, who doesn’t really want to dig around in another OS that sits behind the “console” interface, is Valve’s proposed console really all that different to what Sony are suggesting? It seems to me that while Valve and Sony have started out on very different ideological and technological ground (and as such, are bringing along vocal supporters who originate in diametrically opposed viewpoints), they’ve converged significantly towards a midpoint. Sony, a company whose consoles have been totally closed ecosystems that were extremely difficult to publish on, has made huge strides towards welcoming self-publishing and liberalising its pricing and business models. Valve, a company with its roots in the open free-for-all of PC distribution, has gradually erected taller and taller walls around its garden and will, in the final analysis, build something that’s rather more like a games console than most PC gaming fans are comfortable admitting.
That’s fine, of course. If anything, it’s a triumph for common sense. The companies that used to build totally closed systems are recognising the immense benefits of more open platforms and loosening the reins accordingly. Companies who were ideologically wedded to the concept of openness, meanwhile, are recognizing that a certain degree of gatekeeping helps to ward off malware, fraud, viruses and a host of other damaging software. Perhaps the best thing about Steam, from a personal perspective, is that I trust implicitly that both it and the software it hosts will not damage my computer, which is a very major step for PC gaming but not one that could be taken without first stepping back a little bit from the concept of “openness”.
What I’m trying to challenge here, I think, is the notion that whatever Valve does with the Steam Box is necessarily going to ride roughshod over next-gen console efforts. I simply don’t think that’s a given. The Steam Box will have advantages – a huge catalogue of games being the most obvious – but it’s simply wrong to assume that it’s going to be waving some extraordinary flag of democratization and leading the charge against a closed console market. It’s just going to be another walled garden among several walled gardens – the good news being that the walls this generation are going to be much, much lower than they’ve ever been before. It goes without saying, though, that Xbox and PlayStation are much stronger brands with the consumer market than Steam or Valve, so there’s an uphill struggle to be fought in that regard.
From both a consumer and developer standpoint, though, this all looks rather positive. Assuming that the leaks about Xbox 3 are correct, we’re talking about three consoles backed by serious, heavy-hitting companies, each based on PC architecture that’s pretty straightforward to develop for, and in the case of Valve and Sony at least, each courting the notion of openness and self-publishing. That level of competition is very, very healthy indeed – so much for the notion that the console market is moribund and set for an early grave. Consoles are changing and adapting to new conditions; not extinction but evolution. It’s great to see Valve being a part of that process and helping to knock down the utterly artificial barrier between PC and console gaming, which have always had far more commonalities than differences.
Developers, publishers and others involved in the industry simply need to be careful about how they conceptualize this shift. There is going to be a lot of fanboy nonsense written and spoken in the coming months about Valve turning up to “smash” the consoles, or about how “Open” is going to obliterate “Closed”. Valve isn’t smashing consoles; it’s building one. Open isn’t obliterating Closed; all the major players from both sides of that ill-defined fence are cherry-picking the best bits of both models to create an environment that makes sense for a modern, digital world. It’s going to be a topsy-turvy few years – I still can’t quite get over being told by several indie developers that they find it easier to publish on Sony’s consoles than on the PC via Steam, and I expect to have plenty more such preconceptions and notions being overturned in years to come. The only real certainty about the ongoing digital transition is that it still holds a great many surprises and turnabouts.
Courtesy-GI.biz
Will Next-Gen Console Games See A Price Increase?
With the PlayStation 4 unveiled and rumors swirling that Microsoft is preparing to announce a new Xbox in April, next-gen is all the buzz right now. These are massive investments from the respective platform holders, and under the old “razor and blades” model the hope is to make back much of the money on software. And since some of that software is going to cost a good deal more to develop (although not as much as some think, says Hermen Hulst) should consumers be worried that $69.99 will become the new standard AAA game price?
The consensus seems to be that $59.99 should be able to hold, but some big budget titles like Call of Duty and others could get away with higher.
Sony Computer Entertainment America boss Jack Tretton told AllThingsD that PS4 will support a variety of prices from $0.99 to the $60 range (of course, “range” could imply $69.99). But the bottom line is that in this digital era, a variety of content will lead to all kinds of pricing. And as EEDAR’s Jesse Divnich pointed out to us, publishers can maintain the $59.99 price but bring in much more revenue with additional DLC.
“The $59.99 price point in the United States for next-generation games are unlikely to change. As we’ve seen through the years, however, revenue per game has increased gradually as publishers have been able to capitalize on additional in-game and digital content,” he said. “With publishers focusing on fewer, yet bigger and longer lasting titles, I’d expect publishers to keep the $59.99 price point intact, but expand on their digital offerings with more in-game content and expansion packs.”
He added, “And I don’t think this is a scenario where publishers ship a ‘base’ product and gauge on digital offerings. We believe these digital offerings, like they are today, will expand upon the player experience and offer even more value than they do today.”
David Cole of DFC Intelligence agrees. While he thinks the “super AAA” games may test out the $70 price, most content will come in much lower than that. “I think we will see an incredibly wide range of prices. Premium games command premium prices. Think Skylanders, Collector’s editions, Guitar Hero and Wii Fit in their day. What gets squeezed is the stuff in the middle that must compete with high-end development on one hand and low cost/low price games on the other,” he pointed out. “So you have fewer big budget titles but those will have even bigger budgets and that will be cost passed on to the consumer. Of course, very few games will be able to do this.”
Even if there is a slight bump on AAA game pricing, the average selling price (ASP) will beging coming down as the cycle advances, according to IDC Research manager Lewis Ward.
“While there will always be collector’s and limited edition console game discs that cost $80 or more, I’m not projecting that the PS4 or next-gen Xbox will raise the typical ‘AAA’ game disc to $70. 7th gen disc ASPs have trended down a couple dollars per year since 2006-2007. 8th generation discs will come in closer to $60 – which we’re already seeing with Wii U – and then start trending down a few dollars per year. So there will probably be a ~$10 gap in pricing between 7th and 8th gen discs, but due to ASP slippage over time, the overall console discs ASP through 2016 should remain in the low to mid-$40s range,” Ward explained.
An ASP in the mid-$40s is palatable for many hardcore gamers, but the console business is still going to have to face the fact that mobile, tablets, and free-to-play are changing the gaming landscape and the business of games. With PS4 supposedly being more open than any console before it, hopefully developers will being able to offer more free-to-play games and titles at more attractive prices.
Courtesy-GI.biz
Will The Real PS4 Debut At E3?
The fact that Sony didn’t show the actual PlayStation 4 hardware at the press conference yesterday has met with more than a little wonder. The company did show off the new DualShock 4 controller, but didn’t show even a mock-up of the final PS4 console, and this has made many question Sony’s decision to announce the PS4 at all.
Sony will apparently debut the actual PS4 hardware in June at E3, according to a number of sites on the Internet. This seems to be logical, because if Sony doesn’t have it finished by then they have little hope in producing enough to make the launch for this holiday season.
The delay of the actual hardware showing as well as lack of pricing details has presented an interesting dilemma for retailers that are anxious to start taking pre-orders. GameStop, for example, has announced that PowerUp Rewards members can join what they are calling the “PS4 First to Know List,” which will give members the latest information on the PS4 and PS4 related titles as well as the all-important pre-order details when they become available. While getting on the list does not guarantee you a PS4, it does at least make sure that you should be in the loop when the retailer expects to start taking pre-orders for the PS4.
Courtesy-Fud
Is Sony’s XBL-Like Feature Wise For The PS4?
Sony will be ending the free online lunch with the launch of the PlayStation 4. As we have been suspecting for a long time, Sony will be moving to a subscription model just like Microsoft with Xbox Live Gold.
According to our sources, just like Microsoft’s Xbox Live, PlayStation 4 users will be locked out of the majority of the good stuff without a subscription. The subscription service is expected to be called PlayStation World, according to our sources. Like Xbox Live, it is suspected that updates to both the console and PS4 games will be free.
What is not clear about Sony’s new strategy is if similar to Microsoft, it will restrict access to third party services like Netflix behind this subscription model; or whether Sony will stick to just the online features that are directly related to the console, such as online play and perhaps the compatibility streaming that has been talked about.
Courtesy-Fud
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