August 2009
Monthly Archive
Life Inside The Box31 Aug 2009 12:00 am
Life Inside the Box – 057 – I push it back.
This week, Brian, Kyle, Stephen, and Kevin have a roundtable discussion on DLC, including the upcoming release for Castle Crashers, the less-than-stellar launch of Mass Effect’s latest DLC pack, and the effects of the shifting DLC release model, spearheaded by games such as Borderlands. They then enter a heated debate of the mentality behind and causes of boycotting products, namely the recently released Shadow Complex for the Xbox 360. The show rounds out with Stephen finally revealing how he really feels about Peter Molyneux, and his reaction to major events in Fable II.
Life Inside the Box – 057 – I push it back. [71:49m]:
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Weekend Deals: 8/28–8/30
LITB Gaming News – Maxis faces layoffs, EA confirms.
Joystiq reports that Maxis is facing layoffs, EA confirmed to them in the report.
There’s speculation over the exact reason of the layoffs. While Spore and the third Sims game were million sellers in their own right, much like how Iwata viewed the success of a few potential long-term sellers that ended up floundering (though million sellers as well) because they were intended to be the hits, rather than just hits.
I wrote about this a while back, but now we’re seeing exactly how wide the spectrum of long-term games not performing as well as hoped are factoring into the rest of the industry. All titles, not just the casual titles not just the hardcore titles, are expected to perform to the best of their abilities now. Even though Spore’s inability to set the world on fire hasn’t been confirmed as the main reason for cutbacks at Maxis, has Spore become the hit you and the rest of gamers everywhere thought it would be roughly one year ago from now? – The Ben
Editorial& News26 Aug 2009 09:57 am
LITB Gaming News – Retro Expos balance the industry with conventions that look to the eras gone by.
With video game industry expositions always being about the latest and most hyped products of the upcoming years, the other kind of video game expo while not as famous as their razzle-dazzle kin can produce just as much excitement for the fans who feel more inclined to the eras of gaming’s past.
One such expo of the gone by generations is the Retro Gaming Expo in Portland, Oregon. While not the only retro gaming expo out there, it’s design and events are what you’d expect from this genre of convention, with each expo having it’s own unique events and twists that make them worth checking out.
The Retro Gaming Expo for instance may not have a tournament featuring the first person shooters you see at most game-related conventions, but instead offers a ten-man Saturn Bomberman tournament and a Nintendo World Championship competition as well. The competition may not have the same glitz as Video Game Armageddon had in The Wizard, but the same concept of competing through three different NES games for points against other gamers is still intact.
These expos are always interesting to see just how far gaming has come in the last half century, not just to see how technology has progressed, but how things can still keep their “fun value” years, even decades after release. The next modern gaming convention may have Gears of War 2 or the next Call of Duty competition going on. But there’s a chance that ten years from now the only game you’ll constantly see appearing in retro gaming tournaments won’t be titles such as those, but Saturn Bomberman getting the most attention from attendees when it’s a ten-man bomb-fest. – The Ben
Life Inside The Box24 Aug 2009 12:00 am
Life Inside the Box – 056 – Don’t Mess With Slim
This week, Brian, Kyle, and Kevin get together and once again discuss the newest happenings in the world of Team Fortress 2. They then move on to commend the efforts of the latest company to self-publish their formerly digital distribution-only title. Also featured this week is a lengthy discourse on advertisement and fiscal models in video game development, and a mention of the latest attempt to make Peter Molyneux’s Fable series relevant to the gaming world. Lastly, This week’s E3 elevator pitch comes from Max Schaefer of Runic Games to tell us about their new game Torchlight!.
Life Inside the Box – 056 – Don't Mess With Slim [61:11m]:
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Weekend Deals: 8/21–8/23
LITB Gaming News – Not buying a game due to beliefs?
Here’s an interesting bit of debate that’s been going on at NeoGaf recently. With the release of Shadow Complex on XBLA and the hype surrounding due to the actual game being pretty damn awesome, there’s some rumbling over the fact that the development team behind the title Chair Entertainment and Orson Scott Card worked on the game together (with Card admitting he didn’t really do much day to day work on the game, he still collaborated with the group) and the game is just the beginning in a grander scheme of things related to the universe Shadow Complex resides in.
The debate is mainly due to the fact that through buying the game, the gamer is not only giving money to the developers, but Card as well, which doesn’t sit well with some people who boycott any of his works due to conflicting views on matters such as marriage for any and all genders.
Gay Gamer.net has an article about this ordeal as well, and while the game itself is getting rave reviews from gamers all around the world at the moment, if this debate starts getting traction and picked up by more than just a few hobbyist gaming news sites, then the controversy could end up garnering more fame for the game than the merits of the game itself. – The Ben
LITB Gaming News – Slim PS3 confirmed by Sony at Gamescom
Rumored for months now, via whispers, leaked photos, tours of production facilities putting the damn things together…the PS3 Slim is finally announced by Kaz Hirai at Gamescom:
Kaz Hirai: “Today is the day we introduce the PS3 Slim, available in stores from the first week of September.”
32% smaller, 36% lighter, 34% less power consumption, it will be available for 299 euros, 299 dollars and 29,980 yen.
120GB HDD
That’s the basic info that Kaz gave out about the machine, but it should be enough to define it.
Going by the history of Sony’s Console life cycles, it would be only natural that a revised PS3 would be announced for this time frame. The Slim PS2 was released in 2004 right? That was only around four years after the release of the system. Of course, by that point in the PS2’s life cycle it had already handily beat the competition and was THE console to develop for, make exclusives for, and generally for most of the mainstream audience at the time gaming WAS the PS2, just as gaming was the NES and the Atari in their respective reigning times.
It’ll be interesting to see how this sells, not only because Sony’s not in first place this generation, but that it’s not even the lead platform in comparison to the 360. The Slim PS2 was a success because the mass market was already accepting of the platform and made the console even more accessible. The next step on our journey through this gaming generation be an interesting ride at least. – The Ben
Life Inside The Box17 Aug 2009 12:00 am
Life Inside the Box – 055 – Much ado about nothing.
This week, Brian, Kyle, Stephen, and Kevin dish about the latest TF2 update, and make a few predictions for the future. This week also features the July NPD numbers, as well as a discussion of digital distribution, and the role companies like Best Buy will have in shaping that particular market. The guys also discuss the announced cancellation of a controversial game, and the proliferation of Xbox Live throughout the tech scene.
Life Inside the Box – 055 – Much ado about nothing. [49:19m]:
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Deals14 Aug 2009 12:07 pm
Weekend Deals: 8/14–8/16
LITB Gaming News – NPD Sales Results. A Very Mario Christmas in July.
Hot off the presses of…well NeoGaf the NPD sales results for this past July are in!
Data care of NPD Group
PlayStation 2 108K
PlayStation 3 121.8K
PSP 122.8K
Xbox 360 202.9K
Wii 252.5K
Nintendo DS 538.9K
Wii SPORTS RESORT W/ WII MOTION PLUS WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA July-09 508.2K
NCAA FOOTBALL 10 360 ELECTRONIC ARTS July-09 376.5K
NCAA FOOTBALL 10 PS3 ELECTRONIC ARTS July-09 237.4K
WII FIT W/ BALANCE BOARD* WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA May-08 164.3K
MARIO KART W/ WHEEL WII NINTENDO OF AMERICA April-08 156.6K
MARIO KART DS NDS NINTENDO OF AMERICA November-05 132.2K
POKEMON PLATINUM VERSION NDS NINTENDO OF AMERICA March-09 116.4K
FIGHT NIGHT ROUND 4 360 ELECTRONIC ARTS June-09 116.4K
NEW SUPER MARIO BROS NDS NINTENDO OF AMERICA May-06 101.8K
EA SPORTS ACTIVE BUNDLE WII ELECTRONIC ARTS May-09 96.8K
Now of course everyone’s going to start off their take on the news with “PRICE CUT ALREADY NINTENDO GAWD!” and at this point a price could would do wonders. But in all honesty what the Wii needs from the past few years of results would appear to be nothing more than a hefty helping of MORE MARIO.
I’m not even saying that sarcastically, look at the legs on those Mario titles mutha LOOK AT DEM LEGS ON DAT MUSTACHED DAME. Ever since New Super Mario Bros. first came out and proved to be a success gaming journalists started a “Give us Super Mario Bros. 2″ rallying cry. As the years went by and the game managed to outsell it’s console brethren such as Galaxy the journalists still wondered why there was no sequel. When the sequel (yes, it is a new entry, not an enhanced remake some thought it would be) was announced for the Wii the rallying cry became a rallying whine. Even though the game probably won’t be critically acclaimed by any means, if it does everything those three on the chart are doing right, chances are it’ll stay there right along with them for a while. Which is more than you can say about Super Mario Galaxy 2, much as it pains me to admit that.
So yeah those NPD sales results, drops for everyone in certain areas. Oh and before I end this I’ll just post this little quote from NPD’s Anita Frazier concerning one specific genre:
Of all genres, the music/dance genre has suffered the greatest declines this year, with nearly $390 million less revenues than the same time period last year.
What do you think, is that statement destined to become more accurate than not as we enter the upcoming Big Spending Months, or will The Beatles: Rock Band and Guitar Hero 5 soften that decline for the music genre? – The Ben
LITB Gaming News – GRIN closes up shop.
What were merely rumors the last few days have now been confirmed with the developers of GRAW 1 & 2, the Bionic Commando reboot and Bionic Commando: Rearmed and Terminator: Salvation confirming the news that their status as an active developer has ceased via a message posted on their website.
The cause of the development studio’s closure is of course monetary related, as they say that at more than one publisher has been delaying their payments to the team, causing a financial situation fatal to the company’s vitality. None of those publishers have been identified, but considering that Capcom had expected sales of Bionic Commando to be around one million by the time it’s hype died down (the real number of units in the hands of gamers was well under that pipe-dream number), they would probably be one of the few at the top of the list responsible for withholding payments more likely than not. – The Ben
Life Inside The Box10 Aug 2009 12:00 am
Life Inside the Box – 054 – Apple’s Crash Course to Gaming.
This week, Brian, Kyle, Stephen, and Kevin dish about Halo, the folly of analyzing sales numbers, and German culture. Also included this week is a lengthy discussion of Apple’s newest (rumored) attempt to break into the gaming market, as well as an in-depth analysis of what causes today’s games to cost as much as they do.
Life Inside the Box – 054 – Apple's Crash Course to Gaming. [87:13m]:
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Deals07 Aug 2009 11:37 am
Weekend Deals: 8/07–8/09
By Brian Perry
The weekend has come around and it’s time to play, so here’s your weekly guide to what’s on sale at your favorite downloadable services.
Impulse - This week’s Impulse buys:
[blippr]Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood[/blippr] $34.99
[blippr]Spectromancer[/blippr] $9.95
[blippr]Time of Shadows[/blippr] $35.99
[blippr]GEOM[/blippr] $9.95
Steam - Weekend Deals:
[blippr] Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood[/blippr] 25% off $5.24
[blippr]The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director’s Cut[/blippr] 30% off $27.99
[blippr]Prototype[/blippr] 20% off $39.99
[blippr]TrackMania Forever[/blippr] 50% off $19.99
The absolute, autonomous, freewheeling, grassroots, nonaligned, nonpartisan, sovereign, unconstrained, uncontrolled, unregimented games pack 29.99
Including (but not limited to):
[blippr]World of Goo[/blippr]
[blippr]Crayon Physics Deluxe[/blippr]
[blippr]Braid[/blippr]
[blippr]AudioSurf[/blippr]
Good Old Games –
Enlight Software Catalog ~30% off Bundle $25.00
Including:
[blippr]Capitalism Plus[/blippr]
[blippr]Capitalism 2[/blippr]
[blippr]Seven Kingdoms: Ancient Adversaries[/blippr]
[blippr]Seven Kingdoms 2: The Fryhtan Wars[/blippr]
[blippr]Warlords Battlecry 3[/blippr]
Direct2Drive
Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood 30% off $34.95
Prototype 10$ off $39.95
Tales of Monkey Island $29.95 Use Code: 09AC621D2C125556483138B1A6834B06
Gamers Gate
Tibor Tales of Kind Vampire 50% off. $9.95
Imperium Romanum 50% off. $9.95
The Club 50% off. $9.95
XBLA
R-Type Dimensions 800 msp
Editorial05 Aug 2009 04:13 pm
LITB Gaming Thoughts – One of the best things to come from all the recent game delays…
…would have to be that finally, finally this year I won’t have to see another “Is this the BEST year in gaming EVER??!!” article at the end of December. These articles pop up like clock work at the end of every year on gaming sites, with each basically boiling down to “BOY A LOTTA NEW GAMES SURE CAME OUT THIS YEAR HUH?!”, which is something that doesn’t need to be expanded into a three page news piece.
The thing about “Best Year in Gaming EVER!” to me is that a lot of the time, I won’t get to play every game or even most of the games on these lists until the next year or even a few years later. One of the best things about the used games business is that while some titles may still be costly considering their age, they can end up being more satisfying than the latest sixty dollar big budget release the store has posters littering their doors and walls with have. As a lot of those new sixty dollar games age and are relegated to the same “Used Games” bins as the last generation games are, those last gen games will inevitably disappear from the mainstream game stores all together.
So this holiday, if you finished your backlog and the big name titles that do make it out this year, check out a bunch of Golden Oldies that made those “Best year in gaming ever?!” lists from years past. They may not have achievements, but they’ll most likely cost less than the newest version of Madden does.- The Ben
Editorial& News04 Aug 2009 06:06 pm
LITB Gaming News – Two/Three Million Sellers are failures now.
This is the kind of gaming generation we live in. Gamespot reports from a recent interview with Iwata during Nintendo’s Q1 Results report, that among some expected tidbits of information from him (no Wii price cut yet, next console ain’t coming for a long time) was his acceptance that last Holiday’s lineup for the Wii was, in their eyes at least a bit of a floundered opportunity. Notably the fact that Wii Music and Animal Crossing (the two games the company heralded the 2008 Holiday season with) while two and three million sellers respectively, just didn’t join the ranks of some their other games this generation in terms of sales. When you compare those two games to Wii Fit and Mario Kart Wii which sold 21 million and 17 million units respectively, then yeah what used to be impressive numbers just don’t seem that great at a glance.
But this is something the whole industry is dealing with this generation, the phenomenon of gaming being at it’s peak for so many, that the games that do surprisingly well at retail seem worse now by comparison.
Lemme move away from Nintendo and focus on some third party examples on other consoles just to show that this isn’t unique to any specific area. Call of Duty: World at War sold eleven million copies by this past June. That’s eleven million copies of what some would call just a “yearly sequel” in the grand scheme of things, gamers bought the last iteration, they’ll buy the next iteration, just another entry for the books. Look back to just a a generation or two ago and see how different things were when it came to defining a title’s success through sales. A lot of the games we remember these days as classics everybody had to have played seem like mere “semi-successes” if you don’t take into account that the market was smaller back in the early 90’s.
But then even when the Playstation came to bring genres like RPGs to the masses it was a phenomenon when Final Fantasy VII sold as much as it did. FF7 just broke the 10 million mark in copies of the original game sold thanks to the PSN release and the constant 10th year anniversary marketing Square keeps up with. Just 10 million copies. It was finally able to reach a milestone that certain games these days, the ones that find themselves in the right place, at the right time, with all the right qualifications, can pass in just under a year.
So I guess where I’m getting with this is, in the end, what’s going to happen to those games currently in development that we’re all waiting for if they only sell two or three million copies? Psychonauts is remembered for being a slow cooker on the sales spectrum, never even getting to the one million mark. Here Tim Schafer says as of 2007 Psychonauts managed to sell 700,000 units. Even last generation you could make a good case for the title not being a total flop sales wise, 700,000 is a hella lotta people when you think about it.
But this gen, where games are expected to sell in the millions like parents expect their kids to at least get higher than a “C” on their report cards, what’s gonna happen to the games that can’t even cross that milestone, let alone being able to sit at the big kid’s table with Call of Duty 5, Guitar Hero 4, Mario Kart 5, and all the other big fish? – The Ben
Editorial03 Aug 2009 08:27 am
Can the Industry back away from the 60$ price point?
By Brian Perry
Originating out of a discussion on neogaf about game graphics and rising prices Eat Sleep Play Founder Dave Jaffe took the discussion to his twitter feed and put words to a fear of publishers and gamers alike. Can the video game industry back down from the 59.99 price point?
[...]Be nice to be able to make our version of mid range movies now that we can make our indies. But at the moment, there is no room for games like THE PROPOSAL, THE HANGOVER, or TAKEN. That’s not 100% true (L4D) but if new game@39.99@retail was a real deal, that would rock! But most gamers see new game@$39.99 and question the quality and stay away
As it stands now the industry standard is for AAA games to be at the premium price point, and games that may be of questionable quality either start at a discount, or quickly fall there as retailers clear shelf space for newer titles. There is one example of a franchise dropping it’s price point to good effect, ESPN NFL Football. Unfortunately that attempt was preempted by EA sports acquisition of an exclusivity contract with the NFL, canceling the series.
On the other side of the argument should publishers lower the price point, or instead raise it; as Activision has done with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in the European market?
While many gamers would love to see their hobby become cheaper, and it’s possible that sales would increase, it is unlikely that we will see it happen this gaming generation.
Life Inside The Box03 Aug 2009 12:00 am
Life Inside the Box – 053 – Twos Company
With most of the gang away, Brian and Stephen team up for this weeks show. As usual it’s what you been playing, then its straight into the news where they discuss EA’s lack of judgment when promoting Dante’s Inferno, as well as the Dead Space Movie, and Microsoft’s new pricing for the Community/Indie games marketplace. This week’s Elevator pitch is for Alpha Protocol, with Obsidian Entertainment’s, Avia Roberts.
Life Inside the Box – 053 – Two's Company [49:54m]:
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LITB Game News – Hey guys let’s totally take a quote out of context and use it as a news headline.
Okay, so the MercuryNews does an interview with Miyamoto, one of the questions asked is that of distribution. As is being reported his answer was one of hesitant optimism. The full quote from being on Digital Distribution in Nintendo’s eyes being:
“Personally, I’m one of those guys who, even if I have all the songs from iTunes, I want the CD as well. I feel more reassured with that physical media. Entertainment is something that will not just become digital. If I look at Wii MotionPlus, this is something that you’re not doing via digital distribution. The thing for us is we really don’t see the future of video games being merely confined to digital distribution or moving solely or even to a majority of our products being distributed that way.”
So what are some of the news sites doing with this fact? giving their own interpretations of course. What was that word in the title in the news story I just posted? Denounces digital distribution? No he didn’t denounce digital distribution damn it. Denouncing it would be him totally poo-pooing the concept and saying “The only kind of people who embrace digital downloading are basement dwelling Role Playing Gamers” but that’s not what he said. He gave his opinion, and chose the more neutral answer to the question. I understand the title of the news article is more eye catching to the gamer searching for a good bit of news to read on the weekend but it’s a gross exaggeration of his answer! – The Ben
$29.98