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Sony and Microsoft Working on Next-Generation Hardware

By
VTV Staff
– October 20, 2011Posted in: News

Sources familiar with the matter have told Developer-Online that Sony and Microsoft are currently developing their next-generation of hardware.

One of their sources claims that Sony has their studios working on several internal projects for the PlayStation 4, although that same source didn’t cite which studio was tasked for the job. We also shouldn’t expect to hear anything about the PlayStation 4 for quite some time for the following few years will be focused on the PlayStation 3 and PS Vita.

Another source claimed that  Microsoft and partners are currently working towards a 2013 launch for the next-generation Xbox with multiple sources including chip manufactures and middleware firms point towards a E3 2013 unveiling.

Source: Develop-Online PS4 Article

Source: Develop-Online Xbox 360 Article

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The Imperial March: Can’t Buy Nintendo’s Love

By
Tony Odett
– August 2, 2011Posted in: Blogs

 

Welcome to The Imperial March. This weekly column is takes a wide-angle perspective on gaming industry issues. Note that these opinions reflect only those of the Emperor himself, and are not those of his Majesty’s kind hosts at Vagary.tv.

 

Nintendo doesn’t love you.

I am sorry to be the one to tell you this. Life is a harsh mistress. I mean, there is no Santa Claus. You do not always get what you want. And any lucky streak relating to rabbit feet, horse shoes or wishbones is a total myth. So when I tell you Nintendo does not love you, you really should thank me. I am just dispelling another one of the great illusions from your childhood.

Nintendo never loved you, frankly. You were a customer, a source of revenue, and Nintendo was a corporation beholden to its shareholders. Its goal was very simple: make as much money as possible. And you, in your innocence, thought that Nintendo was making all of these games to entertain you in your youth. Your introduction to gaming was through that green fellow with a floppy hat, and a fat man in overalls with a mustache 1850 would be proud of. The games were simple, and yet offered tremendous depth and replayability. The company itself never released many games (a quick look back at the lineups for any of Nintendo’s consoles after the NES will show that there were not all that many options, and certainly not many quality options). But you were poor, and the few games you had were plenty.

 

And then you grew up. The company continued to release a couple of quality games a year, but you were older now. You had more money, and chicks dug you (or dudes… let’s not accuse the Emperor of sexism).  And you wanted more games. But while you were growing older, and wanting more, Nintendo stayed the same.

Even Dawson feels the lack of love

Nintendo’s core customer has never been the core gamer. They have always targeted the casual gamer first.  This is why the NES controller had so few buttons on it. This is why launch titles were always rated E, and were widely recognized brands. This is why the company focuses on gimmicks like motion control and touch screens: they were easier for any idiot to pick up and play. Do you honestly think that Wii Fit and that silly board was aimed at core gamers?

A core gamer is not satisfied by one, or two, or five quality releases a year. We have an appetite for more. The Emperor bought 38 games in 2010, and played many more than that. I need more to conqueror, and Nintendo has proven that they are unwilling to satisfy me.

Nintendo did not fail you. Their strategy with the Wii has been the same one they have been rolling along with for years. Wipe the tears off of your face. They are not beholden to you.  This is more of a friends-with-benefits situation, and it is over now.  They never put a ring on it. Nintendo did everything they could to make sure they never knew who you were, from their ridiculous friend code system, to DLC being tied not to an account, but to a specific piece of hardware. You are a serial number, tied to a piece of electronics, a mere “piece of meat.”

This is how a heart breaks

Now, this is not to say that Nintendo’s products are of some sort of inferior quality. The Imperial point is that Nintendo releases their products for a very specific market, and you are no longer a part of that market. Well, maybe you are, but given that you are reading an editorial on a gaming website, odds are you are slightly more informed and interested than the average foot soldier.

The problem Nintendo has is that they have been stringing the poor core gamers along. “Of course we love you,” they say, as they show a trailer of a game that releases in 2012. Nintendo made a fantastic showing this year at E3, but everything they showed was in preparation for the Wii U, dropping sometime next year (unlike Nintendo’s stock prices, which dropped as soon as their press conference was over). The hard core star of E3 2010 was the new Zelda, Skyward Sword. It’s so new in fact, that it still has no release date, more than a year later. Nintendo does not need to admit the obvious (that they could care less about the core gamers, because most of their sales come from other markets). But they should stop asserting that they are behaving to the contrary.

Nintendo just dropped the price of the 3DS by a third (as of mid-August). Their sales in the past quarter were half was they were in the same quarter last year. And the company just announced profit expectations for the year would be lowered by 82%. With Nintendo’s current console generation in its death throes (do you cremate a Wii or bury it?), and the 3DS severely under-performing (either that, or Nintendo now believes that selling a system at a loss is the best was to make money), the company is riding out the storm until the Wii U arrives to save the day.  If it can.

But please, do not delude yourself. Nintendo is making grandiose claims about 3rd party support that it has never fulfilled in the past. With a drastically different input system from the 360/PS3/PC crowd, and no recent history of 3rd party success and support on Nintendo systems, publishers are going to give an effort on Nintendo’s console that is parenthetical at best.

And, of course, remember that Nintendo does not love you. Iwata and Reggie will whisper their sweet nothings in your ear, and try to whisk you back to their place for a long night of Wii-Uing (I don’t think it’s like planking… what do I do to you to do a Wii U?). But remember: Nintendo does not want to make the commitment that you as a core gamer require, and deserve. They’re just looking for something casual.

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Awesome PlayStation 4 Concept Design

By
Gregory Hutto
– July 21, 2011Posted in: News

With buzz going around about Sony gearing up to announce the PlayStation 4 next year, some people have been getting a bit ahead of themselves — like conceptual artist, Joseph Dumary. He’s created his very own concept for the PlayStation 4, and it looks pretty awesome!

The design was featured on the Website Yanko Design via CNET.

It boasts many cool features, like a 1.5TB harddrive, 4x1080p resolution output, and the ability to connect to six televisions at once. The may be a bit unnecessary, but some other interesting features are included as well. For example, the console is made out of 60% recycled material, and it sports a rechargeable battery with a zero-watt standby mode with an “Eco Restart” for resuming saved games.

Check it out!

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BioShock Makes No Wii U Plans

By
Gregory Hutto
– July 12, 2011Posted in: News

In an extensive interview with IGN, Ken Levine of Irrational Studios went into great depth about what BioShock Infinite will be. After this year’s E3, it may be the most anticipated title for many gamers out there. That said, many gamers also eagerly await to hear more about the future of Wii U, as Nintendo has already announced EA’s support and titles like Batman: Arkham City, Assassin’s Creed and Ghost Recon.

However, it seems that BioShock may not be one of this newly supported third-party releases. When asked about future platforms, Levine seemed to be quite hopeful in his speculation for the platforms BioShock may find itself. He states that he’d like to see BioShock on many platforms, like the Kinect, if there is a way to do it organically and in a way that doesn’t “require more work or labor, or feels less organic or gimmicky.” When asked about Wii U, he had this to say:

“Just to be clear, there are no plans. I’m not saying it can’t happen, but we have no plans to do any games for that platform”

Ken then goes on to imply that motion games and the like are not what intrigues him about Nintendo’s new platform. What does excite him, however, is the idea of not having to make sacrifices and being able to game when convenient.

“There are some things, as a core gamer, as a guy who likes lying in bed playing… I’ve always had to sacrifice that core gaming experience when I lie in bed playing games. We’re now getting to a place with Vita and what Nintendo’s doing where that’s not necessarily going to be the case, where you can play full-on hardcore games in bed with the lights out while your wife’s asleep.”

Many gamers were excited to hear that BioShock would make its way to PlayStation Vita, and with its own story to boot, but it may be a while before Nintendo finds a home for this beloved franchise. It’s worth note that Levine also didn’t discredit that it may come to the Wii U, either.

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E3 Preview: Metal Gear Solid 3D Snake Eater

By
Ryan Kenward
– June 13, 2011Posted in: Nintendo 3DS/DSi/DS, Previews

The Nintendo 3DS continued to show its impressive upcoming software at this years E3; amongst the list of greats was Metal Gear Solid 3D: Snake Eater.  As you may imagine, the 3D is a clever play on Metal Gear Solid 3.  This is indeed the same Metal Gear you played years back on the PS2, only now in full 3D along with some other bells and whistles.  A neat feature is the ability to create your own camouflage patterns by taking a picture of a texture with the cameras on your 3DS.  As you will see in the screen shots, the game does look beautiful and it felt very true to the series.  The only problem that we encountered, and the only problem you were probably concerned with were the controls.  Alas, the 3DS – despite being a multi-input system lacks a second analog stick that would have really made MGS3D miles better.  Players will need to use the X, B, A, Y buttons to control their aim.  Unfortunately, this does not feel at all intuitive as we’ve all grown beyond the days of single analog sticks.  It seems bold that Konami went with this control scheme, but knowing the devotion people have to the series and also knowing how beautiful the game looks; we highly doubt that this game will have a hard time flying off of the shelves.  In the few minutes I had my hands on the title, I didn’t really get too accustomed to the controls; but I did make improvements and it is fairly likely that I would have adapted within a few more minutes of play.  One last note to mention is MGS3D will utilize the gyroscopes built into the 3DS when attempting to navigate obstacles that require balance.  With all that said, regardless of the control flaws – we are looking forward to getting our hands on the full version of the game!

You can find Metal Gear Solid 3D on shelves this holiday season!

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The Girls of E3

By
Ryan Kenward
– June 11, 2011Posted in: Blogs, E3 2011

Regardless how you feel about booth babes, it is clear that the girls are here to stay.  Here are a few pictures of those that could be seen around the show floor at E3 2011. Enjoy!

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E3 Preview: Rocksmith

By
Gregory Hutto
– June 9, 2011Posted in: E3 2010 Blog, Event Blogs, PlayStation 3, Previews, Xbox 360

Think music games are dead? Well, the guys at Ubisoft just won’t let it die, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Maybe the problem isn’t that music games are flooding the market, but that innovation-less music games are flooding the market. For better or worse, Ubisoft is taking a stab at the genre with Rocksmith.

What sets Rocksmith apart from other music games is that any real guitar can be the instrument. Others have tried this, but latency has been an issue. Ubisoft feels as though they’ve overcome this obstacle, but it may just be that they fine-tuned the process. During my playthrough, I found that the more stacatto my notes were (short), the more latency was noticable. However, notes that were mere fluid and legato registered much better with the game.

Rocksmith has notes coming at you like Rock Band, but with multiple strings, they’ve decided to identify each string with a color. Playing at first with multiple strings can be extremely overwhelming — even for veteran guitar players like myself — but with practice comes association.

Rocksmith takes the load off a bit by making the game scale to the player’s skill as the song progesses. The more the player does correctly, the more notes they as presented with to play. Conversely, doing poorly forces the game to ask less of the player by displaying less notes. When I started doing well, I felt like the game was going to scale-up the difficulty, but it took a bit of time.

I didn’t know the songs I played too well, but the ones I saw on the tracklist looked really good. Unfortunately, the songs I wanted to play most weren’t ready yet, but expect to see some fantastic music — possibly even better than the tracklisting for Rockband 3 (or at least in my opinion).

What also sets the game apart from others is the post-processing effects. As stated by the team, “pedals are expensive”. In Rocksmith, there are tons of modeling pedals, amps and more. Really, the limit to the sounds the player could create in Rocksmith is likely far more boundless than what most guitar players can reasonably afford. Though, the game also does its best to recreate tons from songs as they are in studio recordings as well.

Again, it’s really hard to say how it’s going to play at this point, as it’s quite clear that it’s still in the development cycle. Not too many songs are finished, and many things really need some tweaking. If anything, this demo was far more a tech demo than something that is supposed to represent the final build. With that in mind, though, the game does show a lot of promise for both musicians that want to learn songs interactively and have tangible scores, and players who want to learn guitar from zero to hero.

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Diaries Of A First Time E3-Goer: Day 2

By
Gregory Hutto
– June 9, 2011Posted in: Blogs, E3 2010 Blog, Event Blogs, Staff Blogs, Vagary.TV

Day 2 of E3 was very intense. I felt extremely successful the day before, and I wanted to one-up myself. I tried to see as much as I possible could, and that meant tons of walking and standing around with a backpack that was much too heavy.

For the second day, I went to grab my free breakfast (haven’t paid for a single meal, drink or booze!) and took off on foot to E3. While the rest of the Vagary.TV team went to see Sega, I took to getting some previews done. It may seem like the site doesn’t have a whole ton of content for the time we’ve been here, but our luck on the Internet has been sporadic.

However, the biggest factor for getting out comprehensive content is time. Getting from point A to B and taking it all in is massively over-whelming. Don’t get me wrong, I love every minute of it, but it is work. Only three of us are here, but I have full faith that we’ll have content that is fresh, well-developed and plentiful for as busy and taxed as we are.

Anyhow, after throwing up some content, I hit up some appointments. Here is an example of a few of them:

Square Enix — Some of the guys checked out some Square products, but I was solely concerned with Final Fantasy XIII-2. I was impressed that they actually let me play it, as a lot of the AAA titles are merely demonstrations. In all honesty, I didn’t really think it was all that different from XIII. Though, unlike most of the people I talk to, I loved XIII. I certainly see its faults, but as I’ve said before, I can respect their innovations. The demo was about 10 minutes long, and I didn’t really get an opportunity to understand just how Square was going to make this game better in “every aspect”. With that in mind, I scheduled an interview to follow-up my already posted preview.

Rocksmith – In-between things, I saw that Rocksmith was doing some previewing inside a tour bus. I stood in line, and the line seemed to be moving very slowly. In the line with me was a programmer from InfinitiWard. It was strange standing next to someone of that caliber on pretty much an even keel, and I did get the opportunity to talk to him about his job. While I’m not all that much of  Call of Duty fan, it was still interesting to hear him talk about his job, the industry and even his thoughts on the game that we were about to see together. I also saw some guys from Disney Interactive who created animation software that was used to render animations for Disney Movies — that latest being Tangled. When I got in, I found that the game was pretty decent, but I didn’t have a lot of time to really make certain that it functioned as well as it claimed. It didn’t have too many tracks available, but I did get a sneak peak at the tracklisting that is currently embargoed. Again, stay tuned for that preview as well.

Bethesda — I took some time to learn a bit about some hardware and check into getting press kits from various companies. The team had an appointment with Bethesda to see a private showing of Skyrim, but I was late. Though, it still worked out. I got to see Prey 2 instead, a game that I hadn’t really put any thought into, and it really caught my attention. It’s like Star Wars Bounty Hunter meets Mass Effect’s Omega. I will be having a preview up soon enough, so it’s really something worth checking out.

505 Games — To take a load off the Vagary.TV crew, I took on taking a look at 505′s line-up to finish the day. To be honest, their games were a bit underwhelming as a whole, but that’s not to say there weren’t some gems. I started with a look at Backbreaker, previously released on the iPhone, and it can be best descibed as a series of tackling football mini-games that are reminscent of practice drills. I am sure it works well on iPhone, but as an XBL/PSN title, it may be a bit under-whelming. Perhaps if it was in an EA Madden game, it’d not feel so narrow. However, the guy demoing the game was quite kind, and it gets to the point where faking interest to an undectable degree feels necessary. After all, just because the product may not fully be realized, it doesn’t mean that they didn’t put their best efforts into the product. I did a preview on 505′s Top Gun: Hardlock, and it’s looking quite promising. Finding that many games don’t stand on their own for an entire preview, I’ve decided that at the end of E3, I’ll be posting a conglomerate of mini-previews here on Vagary.TV.

All in all, this day proved to be the most difficult. I really wanted to see as much as I possibly could, but it was absolutely exhausting. I was more than ready for bed. It was only on day two that it finally occurred to me that I was indeed working. As I’ve asserted time and time again, it’s a great opportunity that I fully appreciate, but more than that, it’s a learning opportunity that I know will mean a lot for my professional growth.

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Nintendo Wii U – Hands on Video

By
Ryan Kenward
– June 9, 2011Posted in: Nintendo Wii/WiiU, Previews

We had a chance to play with the Wii U at E3 this year, here is what we saw!

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E3 Preview: Top Gun: Hardlock

By
Gregory Hutto
– June 9, 2011Posted in: Blogs, E3 2010 Blog, Event Blogs, News, PS3, Xbox 360

For the first time in quite a while, there may be an arcade flight dogfighting game that I may enjoy. Courtesy of 505 Games comes Top Gun, based after the movie staring Tom Cruise of 1986. This game takes place 25 years later and features an entire voiced story campaign along the way.

While I didn’t hear too much about the story itself — save that it would feature similar “bromance” themes — I did get an opportunity to play the game. It’s quite thrilling to fly around in the original F14 Tomcat from the movie, but the final feature will have more crafts available. The game functions largely like most dogfighters, though, it’s upper-hand comes in its easy and intuitive controllability.

Unlike many similar games, tracking down enemy crafts feels natural, and there isn’t a lot of time trying to weave around enemies as they seem to always be behind you, no matter how hard you try to get them in your sights. This is achieved by having an intuitive two-stick design — on the right stick; forward to boost, back to stall, and all the in-betweens to juke. In line with being able to track enemies better comes the hardlock function. When the player tracks an enemy long enough, taking pot shots along the way, a prompt for the ‘x’ button appears that puts the gunplay first as the craft pilots itself.

When the player is in hardlock, the camera becomes focused on the enemy, and the players reticule becomes paramount in targeting. By positioning the aim correctly, the player may lock on to the enemy and get a missile kill. To do this successfully, the player must appropriately react to analog-stick QTEs that appear on-screen.

If the player fails at this, the hardlock may be turned around onto the player. If this happens, players must dodge potshots themselves and hop not to be missile locked. This feature proves to be quite satisfying, and is said to get more difficult and sensitive as the game progresses.

The simple, yet satisfying gameplay is set to an absolutely beautiful enviornment. Headstrong’s in-house engine provides dynamic lighting and scenery, as well as a breathtakingly beautiful sunsets that change the sky as the battle goes on. Even though the build I saw was impressively presented, I was told that it was still being improved and had some improvements already finished that weren’t seen on the E3 build.

Top Gun: Hardlock was a lot of fun for the few minutes that I played it. The game was simple enough to pick up and play, while remaining be a satisfying challenge. It’s clear that the game itself is well-executed, but what will make or break the game is it’s longevity as a fun experience. With a campaign said to be 20 hours, the game must prove to be dynamic and challenging.

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