Console Wars II

[Wiglaf]

I'm sure even you agree the amount of games getting scores of 9.0+ is a little silly when most of the games become doorstops in a few months. Who really will play Bioshock for longer than a month? I am pretty clearly right about this.

[El_Cid]

Originally posted by Asher

Dear Asher, I own more platforms than you do(I suspect), just no next-gen consoles, for the reasons I often give.

You can't be serious?

I've basically owned every home gaming platform since the dawn of man. It's my thing. I don't have a Saturn or SegaCD, but I do have Atari 2600, NES, SNES, N64, GC, Wii, Genesis, Dreamcast, Playstation, Playstation 2, Playstation 3, Xbox, Xbox 360, Windows, Linux, MacOS X...I'm probably leaving some out. Granted, most of those older platforms are back "home" in Calgary in a basement still...

lol ok i don't own as many systems as you do(nice selection by the way ), but like you it's been my thing through nearly all of my life(possibly the first industry mainframes existed when i was born, but no home gaming systems).

But where we obviously differ is in our opinion on just how far gaming has come and what succesfull mass comercialization has meant for game design and end product.

@everyone, Nice to see a good discusion on the review system in todays market

Granted i'm not a huge fan of shooting fps games, and this is certainly part of what colours my opinion on AAA console gaming currently. Thank god for the PS2(which I still don't own yet - my next platform buy) as at least the japanese do try to make other types of game fairly often. I've been dissapointed by xbox offerings in this department(Kotor one of the few exceptions).

And wiglaf's remark is right, I'm not making a console vs PC argument, I think any distinction between those platforms and 'quality' gaming is about 5 years out of date/too late.

But that in itself is part of the problem of the current(and future) consolcentric AAA gaming industry.......I would argue.

The only publication of recent years I think has provided a 'real' balanced review system is the Games(tm) magazine(although I didn't always agree e.g. they loved Oblivion) we get here in the uk. Still since they were taken over by another company last year i've noticed a move in the general direction of the now industry standard hype machine. But they do still give lowish marks pretty much every issue where deserved(5/10 being their average).

I just think now with the way the industry is, how it makes it games and why it makes them, I can no longer trust what reviews are telling me.
Sure I can use them as pointers, and why I find sites like metacritic useful - the best you can do is look for a concensus, and hope you dont have another 10hour doorstop on your hands.

Imho gaming should be way more than this - it was shaping up to be, but now the marketing+money is doing it its way, and the end result is I go fire up Civ/Xcom/Elite/Daggerfall/MoM etc while the 'new' product quickly gets shelved or sold on.
It's a shame, I feel we've missed a huge opportunity to make really awesome games(in all senses, not just graphical). That's all.

[UnOrthOdOx]

Originally posted by Wiglaf
Start naming games from 2-3 years ago you still "play to death."

Mercenaries (ps2) My go-to for no-thought required fun. Probably soon to be replaced by Mercs 2. And I typically dislike shooters.
Gladius (ps2) Third playthrough. Just like that game.
Guild Wars (PC, but admittedly expansions, I still play the old areas as well as the new) Though a little less as the baby has made it more difficult to be on the PC.
Contra (NES) Another no-thought required fun game. Still.

My boys:
Pokemon BLUE. The original, plain jane, huge brick gameboy blue ('96?, though they're trying to find a used copy of the remake) Also Saphire, but no idea how old that is.
Sly cooper (original) Fun as hell game, and I don't typically like platform games.
Whatever Dragonball Z fighting game that is... (I'll occasionally kick their ass at it too, despite not liking fighters)
Eye Toy Play. Lately, they're using it to make 'movies' instead of play the games. Gotta find em a better means of doing that...

Of those...I don't know how many would have scored over 9. Probably Guild Wars, Contra, Pokemon, and Sly Cooper

Likely not the DBZ game as it's not a great fighter, but a good DBZ themed game. Probably 7ish, IMO

Likewise, Mercs isn't the best shooter/sandbox/whatever and has definate flaws, but I just find the whole concept too fun. 8ish, IMO

Gladius is a nitch game, has flaws, is SLOW, and likely scored crappy as a result too. 6-7ish IMO.

eye toy is a gimmick. but a good one for the younger kids. And this movie thing, they're getting rather decent at it...

[Asher]

Electronics Arts (EA) sales by platform, last quarter:

Xbox 360 - $218 million
PlayStation 2 - $73 million
Nintendo Wii - $59 million
Nintendo DS - $47 million
PlayStation Portable - $21 million
PlayStation 3 - $17 million

Year over year changes:
360 sales up $52 million
ps2 sales down $194 million
DS up $33 million
PSP down $43 million

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16152

Activision's numbers:

[Asher]

More activision numbers:

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Kataphraktoi


Ah, and in years to come, they will be eclipsed by more ''great games'' and will lie forgotten, next to their 2\3\4\5\6th version, which is equally great of course

Of course game mags cant mention the industry is spinning its wheels and truly great games mostly exist in the past on both console and PC. That would just depress the spirits of their customers and dampen game(and magazine ) sales

I'd reply but alas Kuci and Asher have already covered it adequately.

[El_Cid]

Shock horror - if you put enough of your budget into marketing your junk, enough of the 'great unwashed' will buy it, a bit like junk food or sports wear with a fashionable label made by slave labour in the third world

Now does this have anything to do with making good games, stuff that will be remembered in 5 years time? No.

Infact it can be argued that by putting 25-50% of your budget into marketing this will actualy have a negative impact on the quality of your games, but you will certainly sell a lot more of your product.

And this has become vital to survive in todays games industry where they cost so much to make. I know i'm not the only one who can see the problem with this approach.

And for me the store shelves full of this AAA product now rarely catches my interest as i've been dupped/conned/lied to too many times. It's just hardly about trying to make great games anymore - it's all about selling.

Are EA and Activision still thought of as quality game makers anymore? ok if you like sport titles EA could be....but those labels just seem like hollow shells of what they used to stand for imho. Infact who are the great names in the AAA games industry these days? Blizzard etc? who else do you really trust 90% of the time to come out with a great game?

Sure they can all shift tens of thousands of units, but that has more to do with their control of the supply chain rather than being down to making awesome games, and if you market enough people will buy anything.

[DrSpike]

Oh joy we're back on the marketing point. Your argument only gets close to making sense if people are tricked through the evil of teh marketing into buying games that aren't good, with lasting appeal.

And as has been pointed out above by several posters this isn't the case. Instead of addressing those arguments you just post the same tired stuff again. It's worse than arguing with Asher.

[UnOrthOdOx]

Oh, there's a point. It's called "buying your gross", and it's a marketing strategy that's been used in both movies and gaming industries.

For whatever reason the movie/game just simply is not working out how you want. Rather than spending millions going back and fixing whats wrong (refilming/reprograming). You cut your losses, put out a sub-standard product, and market the hell out of it so folks buy it. The goal often becomes to break even, rather than make money, in such circumstances.

This marketing has become much less effective of late, however. Especially with movies. In large part due to the proliferation of cell phones, and the internet. It used to be it would take a week or two for word to get out the next super cool hyped movie really sucked. Thus, the industry still made it's money on the huge opening weekend. Now, that has been cut down to a DAY. Huge dropoffs are seen next-day if a movie is really crappy.

I imagine the gaming industry has a similar relationship with the dropoff of sales on hyped products that are sub-standard, but I don't have any numbers on the gaming industry to speak with authority on that subject.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Asher
Electronics Arts (EA) sales by platform, last quarter:

Xbox 360 - $218 million
PlayStation 2 - $73 million
Nintendo Wii - $59 million
Nintendo DS - $47 million
PlayStation Portable - $21 million
PlayStation 3 - $17 million

Year over year changes:
360 sales up $52 million
ps2 sales down $194 million
DS up $33 million
PSP down $43 million

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16152

Activision's numbers:

Where are the EA PC numbers? As publishers of the Sims series, they cant be insignificant.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Oh joy we're back on the marketing point. Your argument only gets close to making sense if people are tricked through the evil of teh marketing into buying games that aren't good, with lasting appeal.

And as has been pointed out above by several posters this isn't the case. Instead of addressing those arguments you just post the same tired stuff again. It's worse than arguing with Asher.

Im not sure its a question of console marketing getting folks to buy junk (although I would bear in mind lots of game buying decision makers are not "consenting adults" theyre kids whose tastes are still being formed - utilitiy curves fixed and exogenous really may not apply) so much as the difficulty of finding good marketing channels for PC games, and for more innovative games in general. The loss of shelf space at retailers is an issue, as a quality non-discounter retailer can do a lot to let people know about a game, and give valuable market info. The loss of shelf space is what largely consigned war games to a niche, one thats it extremely difficult to climb out of. Im not sure how much the net has really helped in this regard.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Wiglaf
Who really will play Bioshock for longer than a month? I am pretty clearly right about this.

Bioshock has plot. Its natural to play through a story oriented game once and move on. Sand box games people play on and on for years.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by lord of the mark



Im not sure its a question of console marketing getting folks to buy junk

On the contrary - that was precisely what I was responding to.

Originally posted by El Cid



Shock horror - if you put enough of your budget into marketing your junk, enough of the 'great unwashed' will buy it, a bit like junk food or sports wear with a fashionable label made by slave labour in the third world

[Wiglaf]

Most gamers are kids dependent on their parents. It doesn't take much to get a kid excited about a game, just a few positive reviews (and a lot of magazines have conflicting interests) and a large marketing budget.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by DrSpike


On the contrary - that was precisely what I was responding to.

Well yeah, but i was trying to take into a direction more relevant to the gaming marketplace.

Again, Im not sure that advertising does help lead to the sale of junk software, though given that a new console game costs $60, its rather less of an impulse purchase than a bag of corn chips, and so is likely at least a bit more thought out (hint at economics of information, relationship of salience to rationality, etc - and I suspect point of purchase is more importan than ads per se. There are probably exceptions, of course.

As for slave labor, thats as likely to be used for budget clothes as for fashion clothes, and is really unrelated to the issue of advertising induced demand.