Sony at E3 2012 - Page 2

Because the PS2 was 6 years old doesn't really mean the PS3 is long in the tooth. The PS3 has such upgradability that it keeps it mostly up-to-date. For example, 3D compatibility was just a patch.

The 2600 hardware is not what caused the crash. The crappy software for the 2600 is. There was no control at all over what was released. The 5200 was terrible hardware, and by the time the 7800 was released, it was too late.

Your right toad, as I said it's two fold. Too much on the market competing, while at the same time too much crap also out there fracturing the market further.

How many just released games have you played the last few months? Didn't you just get around to Dead Island? Did you buy it discounted or used? Has there been anything since Jan that has been a must purchase?

I'm just saying it's all of that. And that's a developer and publisher issue, not a hardware issue. There's currently great games out there that don't sell, because they're lost in the shuffle of bad carbon copies. And most of those are released very close to one another very late Aug through very early Jan, in a 5 month period. There's nothing in the hardware keeping devs and publisher from making good games, marketing them correctly, and selling tons of copies, when there's little slated for competition. TM was originally set in October to go up against Rage, Spiderman EOT, NBK2K12, DeadRising 2 OTR, Ace Combat 5, Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One, Batman: Arkham City, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception (Nov 1st). That's just 4 weeks of October and the mentionable releases! Why was Sony shooting to release a IP reboot of a 10 year old franchise in that month??

I'd argue that when ones does so, they have one of the broadest markets to do so if they can match the word of mouth with the hype machine.

I'm also thinking publishers are cranky that they can no longer milk the unusually large PS2 and Xbox user bases, with quick, cheap games that were easier to make. Unfortunately, going forward, there's no place for that model unless you build PSN / XBL games and that forces profit sharing and network quirks that the publishers obviously loath.

True, but how much crap was floating around the first two years of xbox? Of PS3 (remember lair?) How much is now?

The problem is the market is not expanding like it was, while the used market and demographics are driving game prices down. At the same time COD is a 3 billion dollar franchise, development is at all time costs and publisher and devs can't afford to be creative AND fail. (Ninja theory went bankrupt twice!)

Ultimately I think the issues are software, but the reason we get the software we do is multifold. A reboot on hardware isn't going to fix those underlying issues one bit.

Activision is going to have their IW COD ready to go next gen on a "next gen engine" and EA will have something too. Something might not knock them off, but they are behemoth franchises now along the lines of madden, if they haven't surpassed it. It's hard to see them not influencing next gen the same, at least until they "screw up". GTA4 screwed up, got perfect 10's, a vast following, and has sold two separate IP's on it's developer coattails.

Heck, the whole GFX reboot thing is moot when you realize that COD is running on a 10 year old PC engine and sub next gen texture resolution, physics code, ai, animation, ect. But it does 60FPS! Everyone knows that! And people didn't care. Meanwhile EA has only finally ironed out it's Madden issues that have turned off a ton of Madden players this gen.

It's the software and the costs associated with developing it and the industry mindset. A new console won't fix it, it might make things even worse by driving up costs.

It's why the industry is practically begging for both new consoles to be PC's in a box with a Sony/MS brand logo on them. They're desperate for a very cheap development options. That cost is whats running the industry to the edge, forcing nickle and dime models, online passes, ect. But they don't or won't raise game prices for their AAA, big budget titles which are historically cheap and have been kept cheap due to a offset growing market.

Tyrant, in those two posts you completely nalied it. Probably the most accurate posts I've seen yet in regards to next gen hardware.

It's not completely related, but that's why Portal (and especially Portal II) was so good. It was something new. And it would not have been any better on a new console.

Jaffe has angered a few, calling that the industry focus on videogames as art is hurting the industry quite a bit. He's not arguing they can't be, or they can't have these epic story lines, but that games who make it about that first, and about gaming second, are hurting the industry.

A example he uses is Batman AC (haven't played it yet) where the game forces you to be bound and slowly move around and have no access to anything in the world until the story progresses. A restrictive gameplay element that does nothing and tried too much to force a person into the perspective of the portagonist that is literally the personal playing. Breaking the videogame 4th wall, in the attempt to make it more cinematic, and seem more important. When in reality it's restrictive. I think he'd say why not set up a situation where you become bound, but then have to play some sort of game to get free, instead of forcefully walk and do nothing as the story unfolds.

I think there's an argument in there that the same thing is and always has been happening with GFX and new hardware. It's why the PC industry ultimately crashed, and why it's now seeing a resurgence, now that new delivery methods, pricing models, and game types/scopes are being offered. Not everyone on PC needs to be the next Doom/Halflife/Warcraft anymore.

ID games are good examples, RAGE/Doom/Wolf ect have always been praised as great tech demos, but horrible games. And who wants to waste time on a boring game, with mediocre gameplay when there's other stuff out there?

GFX, and ultimately new hardware ain't going to help ID create something revolutionary. COD MW could probably have run on PS2 or Xbox with even more diminished GFX, and still been widely popular because of it's fast paced gameplay. Goldeneye, while GFX intensive for the Nintendo 64, wouldn't win any awards. It was about bringing new gameplay to console gamers. Conversely, it's this gen release didn't even make a peep in the news it seems.

Exactly. Which is why so many of us are prognosticating the doom of big-budget titles. We'll see the big multi-million sellers like CoD and Assassin's Creed and the like, but not much else. Everything else will be downloadable games and mobile games.

But that won't stop publishers from blaming "aging" consoles for their slowing sales. They're always on the hunt for boogeymen that explain declining growth. Piracy, used games, aging hardware, etc., etc. The real problem is that they're a slash-and-burn industry and once they've drained the market, there's nothing left for them to sell. But then they blame everything and everyone else but themselves.

Regardless, that won't keep them from pressuring Sony and MS to release new hardware. Just because publishers are wrong doesn't mean they won't keep up the pressure, ushering in an unnecessary series of hardware upgrades in the process.


I'm hopeful that the current publisher model is self-defeating and will soon cannibalize itself. Many of the most talented people in games development have already moved into self-publishing models (iOS, Steam, etc). And if the Kickstarter bubble doesn't burst anytime soon, that could also be a great outlet for talent without the need for the bloated publisher system. And even if the whole Kickstarter thing goes bust, I expect that the model itself will outlast that particular site. I hope this trend toward self-funding and self-publishing continues.

As long as publishers keep chasing the pipedream of bigger and bigger profits (which are already running dry), and as long as developers continue finding better and more profitable ways to self publish, there will soon be no need for those big-budget behemoths. Good riddance.

The best games that come out are publisher-funded. I got on board the whole indie train back when it revved up. I'm not impressed. We're not talking about the 1970's movie industry here. We are mostly talking about people repurposing 16-bit designs with novel graphics and easy difficulties. Braid was nothing special, Limbo was a joke. Flower was nonsense. iOS games are mostly even worse. These places are not doing the sort of work that iD did with Wolf 3D/Doom/Quake. They're not pushing the medium forward.

I know that publishers release a lot of boring and terrible games, but you're not going to see Batman Arkham City, Bayonetta, Forza 4, Skyrim, Dark Souls, etc., on iOS from 3-man shops. Super Mario 3D Land simply embarrasses all those indie platformers. It's not even close. I still value these types of high-quality games, and view these indie efforts as mostly inferior.

There are exceptions of course, like the people who made The Witcher 2 kind of self-published their title. But that's one game and they have the benefit of a self-built distribution network. Not every game developer can be Valve or CDPR.

I agree that the games that most interest me are big-budget titles. I don't see how games like L.A. Noire and Heavy Rain (whatever their faults; pace, confidenceman) are going to be produced under the indie model. I liked Flower a lot, but I don't want all games to be like that (and I doubt they could have self-funded that game anyway).

Each of those games you name is a sequel (or in Bayonetta's case both an homage to old Sega games and a spiritual successor to DMC). So it's a big stretch to say they're "pushing the medium forward." They're simply iterating on highly conventional, well established formulas.

All the risk and inventiveness has disappeared from big-budget titles. They've gotten too expensive and the chances of making your money back are slim to none. So no one's willing (or able) to "push the medium forward." All the invention and innovation is happening in the so-called "indie" space.

Publisher are too big and suck up too much of a game's production budget. The development itself costs relatively little compared to everything else that now goes into production and marketing. And developers have themselves become incredibly vulnerable in those publisher relationships. They take on all the financial risk. They lose their jobs and their promised bonuses while publishers walk away with a pocketful of cash.

That's no kind of efficiency, and that's certainly not an environment where real creativity can happen. The longer this generation goes on, the more we see how conventional games have become. When we're not blinded by our own susceptibility to constantly improving visuals, we see just how stale big-budget game design has gotten. I enjoy a popcorn flick as much as the next guy. But I don't expect CoD to be life-changing or awe-inspiring or creative. It's just something to do.

The big payoff to having such a long and financially disastrous console generation is that we now have a flourishing development scene working outside of the traditional publisher system.


I absolutely disagree. This is gaming's version of '70s era Hollywood. We're emerging from the restrictions and conventions of the old "Classical Hollywood" system and seeing people looking backward for true innovation and invention, just as Spielberg, Scorsese, Coppola, et al. did in the '70s. It's a great time to be a gamer, and I hope the next generation makes that even truer. The '70s independent film movement was all about repurposing old generic conventions. Those 70s' era filmmakers all turned to the '40s era serial films, the '20s era swashbuckling pirate film, the '40s era film noir genre, the '30s/40s era gangster epic, and so on. That's what's happening in independent game development, too.

Just as those 70s era "maverick" filmmakers turned back to a time before the studio system ruined Hollywood, so too are current "maverick" game designers looking back to a time before the bloated publishers "ruined" the gaming industry. Of course, it's worth remembering that those same "maverick" filmmakers led everyone down the path toward stale new conventions and bloated effects budgets. The film industry is due for another rebirth, but that's another story...

There's nothing wrong with sequels. I've been hearing that sequels are killing the industry since about 1994. Hasn't happened yet. Super Mario Bros. 3 was a sequel and blew the genre open. Then Nintendo did it again with World. And then basically made the perfect platformer with another sequel (Yoshi's Island). Sequels are where (good) developers take the stuff they learned making the first game and apply it to the next. There's a big difference between Bayonetta and COD whatever. Let me know when some indie developer makes a better action game. I certainly haven't seen it.

I said it before - the fact that this crappy generation will never end is what is holding back games. The 32-bit genre kind of sucked too, but at least we moved on from that pretty quickly, developers applied lessons learned to new hardware with more potential, and we had an unending series of amazing games.


I'll keep on picking on Limbo because I was horrified by that game. We are not talking about "true innovation and invention." It took a 30 year old genre (platforming), and attached some nice graphics and extremely poor mechanics to it. Limbo could have come out in 1993 and been described as mediocre-to-bad. Except it came out in 2010 and was hugely praised. This is a regression. It is gaming going backwards, not forward.

I just beat Bastion too. Same deal.

I was looking at some video game award nomination list, and complete crap like Tiny Tower and Jetpack Joyride was nominated as "best handheld game" alongside Super Mario 3D Land. I don't even think the people setting these conversations even like video games.

Not sure why Sony insists in having their press conference so late in the day. Why not go first when your audience is fresh and rested, rather than tired and cranky? I would rather have happy journalists taking notes over cranky ones, because E3 is worth months of free publicity afterward.

As for the industry at large, the same problems are happening now as were happening during last console gen: too many games on the market competing for customers. The popular stuff sells, and everything else struggles. Unfortunately some of the forgotten games are really good and the popular ones (sometimes) not so much. The cycle hasn't changed much, but the pie has gotten bigger this gen so every problem is magnified.

Same reason they do all day maintenance of their US network during the day (and during a week where most kids have hs spring break)... They're on Japan time and don't give a frak.

I love sequels, too. I'm just saying they're generally not pushing the medium forward (look at what's happened to Assassin's Creed). But I'd argue that Nintendo's top franchises often do constantly reinvent themselves. Sometimes radically. But generally speaking, sequels only offer slight tweaks to proven formulas. There's nothing wrong with that at the individual game level, but when you look at the industry as a whole, it means there's a huge creative rut.


Well, actually, Bayonetta is an independently made game. Platinum Games is an independent studio, and they've made IMO two of the best action games this generation: Bayonetta and Vanquish. The former is a reskinned (but nevertheless top-notch) DMC game. And Vanquish is the most underrated, underappreciated, and, yes, innovative action game this gen. They may have had a short-term publishing agreement with Sega, but they called the creative shots. Which also means they work with a pretty constrained budget. But constraint is what leads to creativity ("necessity is the mother of invention," they say).

The industry as a whole is always in a creative rut. It's like that with every industry.

Back in the early 1990's, it felt like every third game was a Sonic-clone "animal with an attitude." In the late 1990's everyone jumped on the RPG bandwagon after FF7. In the early 2000's it was open-world games after GTA3. Now, every game has a multiplayer component with XP leveling. Look at cell phones before iPhone, etc. There's always a few leaders and everyone else following behind.

Bayonetta/Vanquish were developed by a team of professional, experienced people. It's quite a stretch to say they are in the same category as Jonathan Blow or whomever, and that is who is generally referred to when people talk of "indie" games. I'm fine with professional, experienced, talented people making great new games. My complaint was solely with this idea that these mediocre 16-bit retreads are being heralded as a new era of gaming.

Since January, I have played the following games: AC Revelations (new), El Shaddai (new), Rayman Origins (new), FF XIII-2 (new), BF3 (new), Deus Ex (Goozex), Rage (new), Journey (new), Trine 2 (new), Start the Party 2 (new), Bulletstorm (Goozex), Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One (Goozex), Motorstorm RC (new), SSX (new), and Dead Island (new).

For most of the ones I purchased new, they were on sale. The exception to those would be AC Revelations and BF3. I paid full price for this.

Ahh, I meant release day and date. Was just making the point that it's getting harder to buy games during their release window, and many are putting off purchases until they're discounted.

i hope sony announces that they'll be getting the exclusive dlc for gta 5. it's the least they could do after failing to deliver agent.

I would make the argument that the reason I don't buy games during their release window is because I still haven't finished the games I have. And you know how quickly I consume games. I bought BF3, Dark Souls, Portal 2, Resistance 3, and Skyrim during the release window. I'm sure I'm not like most people though. Many, like you, you are content to spend months on a particular game (e.g. Dark Souls and Twisted Metal).

In addition to the games I listed in my post above, I also have Star Wars:TFU2, Batman Arkham City, NFS:Hot Pursuit, 3D Dot Game Heroes, Mass Effect 2, Shadow of the Colossus/Ico, the Sly Cooper Collection, and others that I haven't even been able to begin.

I forget what the argument was......but I suppose my point is that I've never felt there was a shortage of good games to play that aren't COD clones (which I've never played for more than 10 hours of).

That was my point as well, along with the point that there is also a flood of expensive to produce shovelware that doesn't make any money (that no one buys because of the flood of good stuff).

And that Dev's complaining that they need new hardware are just making excuses for why the shovelware isn't selling, when market saturation is more to blame or poor support is to blame.

Other argument was that those games all tend to release around the same 4 month window. Which in term gives us backlogs and makes us wait to purchase new or used.

Then I agree with everything you're saying!

:hugs:

To Next Gen or not Next gen, that is the question.

With a new generation of gaming we always see the old giants get replaced by new titans. (Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty, Batman Arkham, Mass Effect, Uncharted, Gears...) Do we need next gen? If we want to see a bunch of new IPs take off then yes. During the first 2 years of a systems life any high quality game will become a hit, heck even average games find an audience. The last set of new IPs are getting stale and it is time for a new set to take over.

Nintendo seems to be the only company that avoids this problem. Why is that? Because their games are fun. Even the Wii with it's almost non existant third party support lived on because you can always count on the first party lineup being awesome.

Go back and play the original Super Mario Bros, it is still every bit as fun to play as it was then, that is saying something. (Try to do the same with Goldeneye, GTA3 ext... the magic isn't there anymore) Super Mario 64 still holds up as does Sunshine, heck almost every Nintendo made game stands up to the test of time.


This really does need it's own topic, because it really is an interesting topic to explore with no true right or wrong side.

What are the chances we see price drops on PS3 and Vita this E3? I'm interested in another PS3 and missed the GameStop sale last week by a few hours. And I'm also interested in a Vita.

PS3 is pretty likely (and another revision is possible as well) Vita won't happen due to company pride.

Yep.

Sony's sure to drop the PS3 below the $200 mark (to $199).

The Vita should follow suit, but who knows? Sony may just try more pack-ins instead.

I'll take a pack-in, if it's a game I would've bought otherwise.

I don't think they'll announce PS4 quite yet.
2k and 4k TVs are just on the horizon, and the Vita is essentially the guinea pig for "systems without a disk" -- although PS3 has had a ton of full releases lately too.