Living LIVE News Report 07.19.10

Posted by Trace Aber on 07.19.2010

Videos of the new James Bond and Clash of the Titans games, Michael Pachter has the solution to the slumping game industry, the Kinect Experience Tour may be heading your way, a review of Ophidian Wars: Opac's Journey and much more!



Welcome everyone to another issue of the Living LIVE News Report, and as always, I'm your host for the evening, Trace Aber. This week we talk about separate subscription fees for online games, the Kinect Experience tour, delaying Destination Arcade, as well check out a few videos. Oh, and there's more talk about Bobby Kotick wanting money – go figure. Finally, in the indie games we have reviews of Ophidian Wars: Opac's Journey and the 2010 DreamBuildPlayer winner Lumi!

Kotick is at it Again
Despite being called a "prick" by Tim Schafer last week, Kotick is still trying to get every penny possible out of players. A recent analysis by Michael Pachter has determined that the only way for the gaming industry to rebound is to have players pay a fee for each individual game. He included some numbers, such as 12 million Modern Warfare 2 players who log in about 10 hours a week. And he believes this is why people aren't going out and buying new games – because people have the audacity to play their old games! Pachter suggested that Activision make the first move, which prompted everyone's favorite Activision employee, Bobby Kotick, to say "We've heard that 60 per cent of [Microsoft's] subscribers are principally on Live because of Call of Duty. We don't really participate financially in that income stream. We would really like to be able to provide much more value to those millions of players playing on Live, but it's not our network."



This could develop into a very interesting story, especially if the rumors that Black Ops would be one of the first titles to feature this additional fee prove true. People on PSN are not going to want to start randomly paying for online multiplayer and LIVE subscribers are not going to want to pay an additional fee to play online, especially with each game needing its own separate fee. The fact that they actually think this will fly suggests that Pachter should probably get a new job. While this strategy would work in a perfect world, where people have tons of money to be spending on video games and online subscriptions and blindly pay for anything, it simply won't in today's market. I'm no market analyst or anything, but I don't understand how charging an additional monthly fee to your most popular games would help. If anything, it's going to turn me off to the game. It's the same reason I don't pick up MMOs – I don't need another monthly bill for something that's supposed to help me escape from the real world. As dumb as this idea is, I see it being implemented down the road. I guess it's up to the consumers to prove them wrong…then again a $15 map pack sold huge so who knows?

James Bond 007: Blood Stone Debut Trailer

Video Games | James Bond 007: Blood Stone | Debut Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Your Destination Has Been Delayed
People who read this article last week will remember the story I posted about Destination Arcade getting released, and they may also notice that this week there was absolutely no Destination Arcade on their 360. For whatever reason, Microsoft pushed back the new interface to this week, to coincide with the kick-off to their yearly Summer of Arcade special. There will be another interface redesign in November, though this one will affect the entire LIVE service, as opposed to just the arcade games. Nothing major expected in this redesign, just putting things side by side instead of vertical.

Even though we have to wait a few extra days for Destination Arcade, I don't think it's a big deal one way or the other. While I'm sure most of the delay is for marketing purposes, perhaps this gave them extra time to work out a few quirks and tighten things up. I'm still excited, though I read somewhere that it's possible that DA will only be available for download the first week. I don't know if that still holds true, but I'd like to know what the logic behind that would be.

Clash of the Titans Trailer

Video Games | Clash of the Titans | Going Gold Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Experience Kinect and Join in on the Disappointment
Readers of my column may think I hate Kinect, but really I'm just disappointed. When Kinect (then known as Natal) was first announced, I really thought Microsoft had something going that could potentially change the game as we know it. Instead, well, we got Kinect. But, for those of you who still aren't sure about the peripheral, Microsoft is giving you a chance to test it out with the "Kinect Experience Mobile Tour" over the next 14 weeks. Kinect Sports, Kinectimals, Kinect Joy Ride, Kinect Adventures and Dance Central will all be playable. Below is the full list of tour dates – if any of my readers happen to go to any of these be sure to let me know how it goes.

East Coast
July 17–18 Manhattan, NY Macy's
July 20–22 East Falmouth, MA Barnstable County Fair
July 24–25 Manhattan, NY Seaport-Lower Manhattan Entertainment Area
July 28–Aug. 1 Washington, DC Six Flags America
Aug. 4–6 Canton, OH Football Hall of Fame – Rib Burnoff
Aug. 7–8 Canton, OH Football Hall of Fame Festival Weekend
Aug. 11–15 Chicago, IL Air Show/Navy Pier
Aug. 19–21 Detroit, MI Woodward Dream Cruise – Auto Festival
Aug. 26–30 St. Paul, MN Minnesota State Fair
Aug. 30–Oct. 24 Tampa, FL Westfield Citrus Park Shopping Mall
Sept. 3–6 Indianapolis, IN Rib America Festival
Sept. 10–13 Nashville, TN Tennessee State Fair
Sept. 15–16 Atlanta, GA Atlantic Station – Entertainment Plaza
Sept. 18–19 Atlanta, GA Atlanta Arts Festival
Sept. 23–26 Charlotte, NC Festival in the Park
Oct. 1–2 Orlando, FL Disney Wine and Dine Marathon
Oct. 8–10 Valdosta, GA Wild Adventures Theme Park
Oct. 14–17 Dallas, TX Texas State Fair
Oct. 21–24 Shreveport, LA Louisiana State Fair

West Coast
July 15–Aug. 22 Minneapolis, MN Mall of America
July 25–26 San Diego, CA Youth Surf Cup – Soccer
July 28–Aug. 1 Sacramento, CA California State Fair
Aug. 6–8 Portland, OR Bite of Oregon Food Festival
Aug.10–11 Seattle, WA Woodland Park Zoo
Aug. 13–15 Seattle, WA Taste of Edmonds – Food Festival
Aug. 19–22 Vancouver, BC Summerfest
Aug. 27–Sept. 1 Pueblo, CO Colorado State Fair
Sept. 3–6 Denver, CO Elitch Gardens
Sept. 9–12 Albuquerque, NM New Mexico State Fair
Sept. 16–19 Salt Lake City, UT Utah State Fair
Sept. 24–26 Los Angeles, CA Universal City Walk
Oct. 1–3 San Diego, CA Miramar Air Fest
Oct. 7–11 San Francisco, CA Fleet Week – Military Ship and Air Festival
Oct. 15–17 Phoenix, AZ Arizona State Fair
Oct. 20–24 Las Vegas, NV PBR World Finals


The Digital Downloads
This week saw the release of two anticipated arcade titles, the first one being the game based off the hit TV show The Deadliest Warrior, which can be purchased for 800MP. Early reports on the game range from horrible to decent, which is a shame. DeathSpank, noted for having a Diablo feel to it, can be purchased for 1200MP and has been getting pretty good reviews. Conan was released in Games on Demand for $19.99, though you can go to your local bargain bin and get it for $10. It's not a bad little title, to be honest. NBA Street Homecourt was also released for $19.99.

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The Indie Spotlight
Before we begin this week, I'd like to thank Zikomo Fields, creator of the indie game I reviewed last week called Leximo, who sent me an e-mail in regards to my complaints about his game. He also was kind enough to send me the full version of the game, so expect a review of that up on the site this week. Here's his e-mail;

My name is Zikomo Fields and I am the founder of Ninth Planet Games. You are absolutely right there should be more hints and I'll fix that in an update that should go live next week. Anyhow you can spell words by pressing either trigger. The prompt for the tutorial should be right above the difficulties selector. If it's not there than that is indeed a bug. Otherwise I do realize that it's in an awkward spot but I ran out of screen real estate.

Ophidian Wars: Opac's Journey (80MP)
Opac has been given a relatively simple mission – find six hidden relics and reach the surface. See, Opac is stuck in this network of caves, but luckily for him he has some sweet platforming skills and those six relics give him brand new abilities to conquer the cave.


He also conquers dick mushrooms

Opac's Journey is a platformer that is more about platforming than defeating enemies (at least based in the demo), but thankfully the platforming is done really well. Opac has a decent jump but sometimes will need to make much larger jumps than he can perform on his own – so he has to jump on a geyser for air. Some of these jumps require careful timing, but they're never so hard it becomes frustrating. As you explore the cave you will get lost, but that's what caves are all about. In the demo I was able to pick up two relics, one that allowed me to glide and another one that let me look in all four directions. The latter came in handy as sometimes you don't know if you're going to be jumping down to another platform or to a bottomless pit. There are "cores" positioned around the cave that give you advice (since they're your elders, or something) and also act as checkpoints. It appears as though there's no life system, but for a game like this it's probably for the best seeing as how they're no defined levels from what I can tell. You explore the cave, collect the relics, collect roots to upgrade your relics, and go through doors to other parts of the cave. All while jamming to some bitching tunes.

Opac's Journey is well worth the buck you'll spend as the mechanics are solid and the controls are good. A lot of indie platformers have loose controls or frustrating jumps to make, but Opac manages to find a perfect balance and it really improves your experience. Some may be turned off by the apparent lack of enemies, but if there's more to this game than just jumping. You have plenty of stuff to collect and upgrade and the levels are designed well - definitely worth checking out.
Rating: 7.5

Lumi (400MP)
The Lumi were pretty peaceful creatures who enjoyed talking in a weird language and generally being colorful beings. That is, until one day when the entire universe was sunk into darkness for reasons unknown. Fortunately for Lumi, it has powers that are magnetic and pretty damn useful for lighting things up. Looks like everything's going to be alright.


And adorable

Your main method of travel is by jumping into red and blue spheres, which the Lumi can attach itself to by holding the right and left triggers (a trigger for each color). From there the sphere begins to spin and you can launch yourself into another sphere until you get where you need to go. At first this is a bit frustrating, but thankfully developer Kydos was pretty lenient with how close you need to be for the attaching to work. Throughout each of the game's ten levels you must collect fireflies, which are scattered throughout the level. Once you've collected enough, Lumi must throw them on light trees, which when filled, emit a burst of light and brings the Lumi out of the clutches of darkness. Graphically, the game is beautiful and the music fits the mood perfectly.

Lumi could be an arcade title and I wouldn't know any better. It's beautifully polished and has a unique gameplay mechanism that is really quite fun once you get the hang of it. The price may be a turn off for some people, but it's worth it once you get a hang of the controls. Definitely check this one out as it won the 2010 DreamBuildPlay contest that Microsoft does each year and is quite fun.
Rating: 8.5

Question of the Week
As it turned out, Bobby Kotick pisses a lot of people off as we had quite a few responses this week. I asked whether or not Activision (and other companies) deserve some of Microsoft's revenue from LIVE, which was reported to be making the company over a billion dollars. Here's what you had to say…

lol: Zero. Why should they, when they're not spending any of the money on the costs associated with online gaming's back end? Does Activision host the matchmaking servers? Of course not, so why should they be paid for doing it?

Before addressing this, I should post the response to this comment, and then lol's response

Guest#4510: Actually, since Modern Warfare 1 and 2 both use client-side hosting methods whereby users themselves act as servers, it costs very little for Microsoft to maintain modern warfare 2 online.

lol: Users don't act as matchmaking servers and don't store the leaderboards client-side. There's a whole lot to the online setup behind the scenes at Xbox Live that Microsoft does, and does well. If you doubt that, play an online game on the PS3 from a company like Namco.

I'm not going to claim to know how the LIVE infrastructure works (never interested me), but I do imagine that Microsoft has put quite a bit of work into making everything run smoothly. Though not perfect, there is a noticeable difference with the experience over the PSN (though perhaps with Plus they hope to lessen the gap) and Kotick is crazy to think that people don't take notice. What is he going to do – give PS3 exclusive rights if Microsoft doesn't give Activision a cut and lose out on all of those sales? Regardless of how much it takes Microsoft to keep Modern Warfare 2 running, the idea of Activision getting money of that system is ridiculous.

Guest#0056: Bobby Kotick should shut the hell up. We don't know how much of that Live money is being used to maintain servers for five year old games that Microsoft is still obliged to support, how much is being paid out as royalties to developers on Arcade or how much is being invested into more server space and faster connections for the future. Look at the PSN - costs have become so high for Sony and there are so many online players on the service that they're now introducing Playstation Plus to try and create a revenue stream for their service.

This is the same argument used for banks - people assume that if banks earn billions of dollars each year they should slash fees or pay out more money to investors. Most of the time this is not true - good banks have to keep money on hand in case a major business goes bust and leaves them with a bad loan, or in case a growing business needs to access funds or capital. They also need a percentage to cover any cash withdrawals that customers may make on a daily basis.

Here's my solution - let Activision set up and charge for their own servers if they want a cut of online revenue. Let's see how much it costs them, how much time and effort they have to invest to maintain the network and how much profit they make. I bet they'll come crawling back to Live before the year's end.

Finally, I have never played a COD game and currently don't own a single Activision title, so it isn't a "dealbreaker" for me.

I'd like to see Activision try something like this, just to see how it works out. I don't know if it's possible with the consoles, but Kotick seems like the kind of man to give it a shot. Though I shudder to think of the fees you'd have to pay when Kotick gets to name the price.

Bobby Kocktease: Is not one of the main selling points of CODMW2 that you are able to play online. Therefore should Mircosoft not be charging Activision more for that privilege?

This works both ways. Bobby K is going to kill COD anyway (if he hasn't already).

el_pieablo: Kotick would try to get blood out of a game playing stone!

If activision want a piece of the microsoft subscriptions fees then maybe they should pay microsoft money for their games to be on the 360 then?

Both of you make similar, but great points. Without those online components, people wouldn't think twice about Modern Warfare 2, because, let's be honest, the single player campaign is decent at best and wouldn't drive those sales. Without LIVE or PSN, Call of Duty is nothing…so why try to ruin that for a few extra bucks? Within the first month 4.7 million copies of the game were sold for the 360 while only 1.87 million were sold of the PS3. Yeah, don't bite the hand that feeds, Kotick.

Seeing as how Kotick is still harping about this, this week's question is more of a follow up. You know the drill – answer and I'll post it in next week's column!

Do you think Pachter's idea of charging a separate fee for each online title will help the industry or damage it beyond repair? And when will Kotick finally lose his mind and actually attempt this?

Signing Out
That does it for me this week. Be sure to check back next week as we discuss all of the latest Xbox 360 news, including releases, rumors and reviews! Also, don't forget to bookmark 411Mania! And a note to all of the Indie Game developers out there – if you have an upcoming title that's going to be released soon drop me a line at [e-mail] and let me know. I'll write a full review of your game to be posted on 411Mania.com, which is a great way to get your game promoted!

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