The Negative Edge News Report 08.02.06
Posted by Tommy Coloma on 08.02.2006
More Sims, Blizzard saves the day, Street Fighter II on XBL, plus info on the last Halo game ever!
I finally got my computer up and running. I'm happy but at the same time I'm extremely tired since I spent the whole weekend putting everything together, restoring settings, and backing up over 300 gigs worth of video editing and programming projects. I can't wait for the weekend!
In a press release that it put out last week, EA announced that the newest expansion for its Sims franchise will be The Sims 2 Pets. The game will be released as an expansion for the PC and as a standalone game for the PS2, GameCube, GBA, PSP, and DS. All flavors will be released on October 17 except for the PSP version which drops some time in November. All versions will give the player the ability to have pets (obviously), create their own pets, train their pets, and unlock special pet accessories. In addition, there will be several features that can only be found on specific versions of the game -
Unique to the PC
* Friends for a Lifetime: Your Sims' pets are members of the family and share all of life's great moments – whether it's kids training puppies, teens playing fetch in the park, adults watching TV with their cats, or elders enjoying a sunny day in the park with their long-time companion!
* Create a designer breed: Your Sims pets have genetics, allowing you to create the latest designer pet, including popular hybrid breeds like the Labradoodle, Puggle and Schnoodle! Like what you've created? Register them to appear in Create-A-Pet as a unique pedigree!
* Bring Home the Bacon: Sims aren't the only ones with careers anymore! Skilled pets can earn a living from three career tracks - Show Business, Security, and Service – and work their way up through five job levels.
Unique to the PS2, GameCube, and PSP
* Stroll the Central Town Park: Take your Sims and their pet for a romp at any of the nearby park areas, or head to the Central Town Park which is a favorite of pet owners. While there, watch your pet play well with others while your Sim can meet others and socialize with fellow animal lovers.
* Shop ‘til you drop: Visit the adjoining Town Center, a great gathering spot for Sims that evolves over time. Once you've seen the latest styles and decided on a purchase, deck your pet out in the latest clothing and accessories around. From geek to chic and cool to casual, your Sim can customize their pet's look with one stop in the Town Center. It's sure to be the coolest pet in town!
Unique to the DS
* Manage a Pet Care Center: Pamper, preen, and nurse all the neighborhood pets at your new Pet Care Center that you create and customize.
* How Much Is That Doggie in the Window? In a pet store that you own and operate, you can help other Sims pick out the perfect pet. Earn extra Simoleans by selling the pet products that include the latest pet fashions and accessories!
I have no doubt that this game will sell well. My niece and nephew both got portable systems for Christmas last year and the first games that they got for themselves were Sims games. I still see them playing those games whenever they visit. I wonder if this franchise is in any danger of "Tony Hawk syndrome" - the one in which a new version is released all the time to the point where each subsequent release gets more and more "meh" reactions from fans.
Blizzard Hates Cheaters
According to a forum post by a Blizzard employee, around 59,000 World of Warcraft accounts were banned in June. Those that were banned were "participating in activities that directly violated World of Warcraft's Terms of Use, including the use of third-party programs to farm gold and items." The employee, who goes by the handle Eyonix, stated that many of the closures came as a "direct result of tips reported to our GMs in-game or emailed to hacks@blizzard.com."
A company that actually follows up on tips and complaints from players? That is truly amazing!
Working Designs' Successor
Victor Ireland, the president of the now dead publisher Working Designs, recently set up a web site (www.gaijinworks.com) for what appears to be his next project. As of this writing, the site only contains a logo with "GAIJINWORKS" written in the middle along with an email address at the bottom. Around the time when Working Designs went under, Ireland hinted that he would like to help to bring Japanese 360 RPGs to the US. This new web site indicates that that is still his intention as it contains relevant meta tags such as "xbox 360," "anime," "import games," and "localization."
The first question that popped into my head was "how many Japanese Xbox 360 RPGs actually exist and/or are being developed?" With so few of them on the horizon (as far as I can tell), won't most of them be picked up by big companies over here anyway? I would love to see this project succeed if it does in fact turn out to be a localization company. I just hope that there are enough good Japanese 360 games that they can get their hands on.
Street Fighter II' Hyper Fighting on Xbox Live! for $10
Unless the game has been pushed back again, 360 owners should now be able to download and play Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting. Normally, I would be excited about this. As I said 2 weeks ago, I am a pretty big fan of 2D fighting games. The only reason that I bought the first Xbox was to play Capcom Vs. SNK 2. In fact, I bought it on the day that it was released. Even though I no longer have an Xbox, I still own Capcom vs. SNK 2, Street Fighter Anniversary Collection, and Capcom Fighting Evolution. I even bought the region-free Japanese version of Street Fighter Anniversary Collection weeks before it was released in the US. I am a clearly into all things Street Fighter. So, what is keeping a hardcore Street Fighter fan such as myself from buying another 360 today just so that I can enjoy some online SF2 goodness? Of course it's got to be the shitty d-pad Microsoft decided to use on their controllers. I still remember the horribleness of playing DOA 4 using it. How much harder will it be to do fireballs and uppercuts? I'll even go so far as to say that the 360 d-pad is even worse than the Dreamcast's d-pad. Yes, there is the DOA 4 stick, but that thing is hard to find and it really doesn't compare to a good custom stick. I'm sure that it'll be even harder to find after today. How hard would it have been for Microsoft to ask Sega to release a 360 version of their Saturn pad? They already have a USB version for the PC. All they needed to do was add a Guide button and make it 360 compatible. Likewise, how hard would it have been for them to convince Hori to recirculate the DOA 4 stick in time for the Street Fighter 2 release? They could even have used this as an opportunity to sell physical goods along with downloadable games for Microsoft points. Imagine downloading the game and at the same time ordering a fighting game worthy controller. So many possibilities...
Sony Brings Itself Out Of The Red
IGN reports that Sony's overall net income for the quarter ending on June 30, 2006 was $281.7 million. This is a far cry from the $63.7 million in losses the company suffered last year. Sony execs say that digital camera sales and better exchange rates were what helped them to earn a profit this year. Apparently, these earnings came despite $233.7 million in losses caused by Sony's game division -
Despite the rosy bottom line, Sony's game division caused massive damage to the company's overall profit. Sony Computer Entertainment dropped from 172.8 billion yen ($1.5 billion US) to 122.5 billion yen ($1.1 billion US). The group's operating loss sunk to 26.8 billion yen ($233.7 million US) from last year's loss of only 5.9 billion yen ($51.5 million US).
Expect to see "massive damage" being thrown about over the next couple of years, especially if Sony does badly in the console wars. I don't think that they will ever be able to live those words down. On a more serious note, what if Sega had other profitable divisions that were able to absorb their video game losses? Would our pocketbooks be able to withstand the massive damage caused by a 4-way system war?
No 360 Sopranos
THQ announced that it has cancelled the 360 version of The Sopranos. The main reason for the cancellation was that the Sopranos for the Xbox 360 was supposed to be "a truly next-generation experience, but with the team split between systems it wasn't able to give the game the attention it deserved."
Was the "next-generation experience" that THQ had in mind just better graphics and sound, or were they actually trying to add new gameplay elements that could not be implemented in the PS2 version due to hardware restrictions? Hmmm...
More Wii First-Person Shooters On The Way?
According to an article at IGN, the president of Gearbox Software, Randy Pitchford, has announced that his company is "enthusiastically supporting the Wii." Though he has not revealed any details about which games are in development, a leaked Ubisoft release calendar indicated that a Brothers in Arms game will be released in the future.
Lets see. Now we have science fiction/futuristic (Metroid), World War II (Brothers in Arms), and contemporary (Red Steel) first person shooters. At least there will be some variety.
Later in the article, Pichford also talks about what he thinks about the Wii -
"The strengths of the Nintendo Wii include the price, the unique interface, the sure-bet library of games based on the great Nintendo properties and the promise back catalogue of classic games from Nintendo and others that they have partnered with," he said. "The weaknesses of the system include its lower relative power when compared to other next-gen consoles and the unique interface requiring more dedicated focus specifically for the platform (which makes it more difficult to amortize larger AAA budgets across more customers from multiple platforms)."
That type of thinking isn't good for both Nintendo and gamers in general. Will the future of gaming consist of virtually identical games on both the PS3 and Xbox 360 and every once in a while a specialized Wii version?
Only "Minor Cosmetic Differences" Between PS3 and 360 Games?
In an interview with GI Online, technical director Magnus Hogdahl had some interesting comments about the differences gamers will see between the PS3 and 360 versions of "The Darkness" -
So far the two versions look pretty much the same – quite unsurprisingly, since we use the same shader source code and content for both platforms. They will be identical gameplay-wise. There will only be very minor cosmetic differences, such as the PS3 will have better quality video for the in-game TVs and on the Xbox 360 we have a bit more room for textures in memory.
Does this mean that we only need one ultra-super-powerful next-gen system? If only exclusives didn't exist...
Will Kojima Design Snake's Stage In Super Smash Brothers Brawl?
Chris Hoffman, a writer for Nintendo Power, seems to think so -
"if you want to talk about something big, how about the news Hideo Kojima, Snake's creator, is designing Snake's level in Brawl? Snake's inclusion means we're not only getting one of the best characters in gaming, but one of the best developers as well."
It'll be interesting to see another developer's take on Smash Brothers stage design.
Halo 3 Is The Last Game In The Series
Spong is reporting that "a Microsoft source close to the management of the entire Xbox 360 project" said that "as far as things stand, Halo 3 is the last game and it's more than just 'a thing to say.'" Marty O'Donnell, a Halo art director, seemed to confirm this source's claims in a recent interview -
We all want Halo to be the great ending to an epic trilogy. We look at what Peter Jackson did with the Lord of the Rings films - which each film bettering the previous one and that is what we are aiming for."
What do you think? Do Microsoft and Bungie have the balls to call it quits on the franchise that single handedly kept the Xbox from being this generation's Jaguar?
Pirates Still Demand Customer Support
Ars Technica pointed out in a recent article that within a few hours of Ritual Entertainment's release of SiN Episodes Emergence, the game was pirated and put on the Internet. While it was obvious that the game had been pirated, the extent of this piracy became more apparent thanks to the way software bugs are handled. After problems are found, they are patched through Steam. These bug fixes are done in the background and are only available to people who have paid for the game. Once people started to call in complaining about the bugs that should have been patched automatically, it became apparent which callers had pirated the software. According to Mark Russell, Ritual's quality assurance manager, "customer support requests from users who had pirated the content outnumbered requests from legitimate users by a ratio of five to one."
Is this why I have to wait ten to twenty minutes to speak to a representative every time I call in for software-related problems?
E3 Is Dead?
There is too much crap floating around on this subject. I don't feel like messing with it so I'll just copy and paste all the interesting things that I've gathered -
MCV quotes a 'senior industry insider' who sums up the situation well: "Costs have been getting out of hand. We're talking double digit millions for some of us. But that's not just floorspace, of course - it's build, parties, hotels, flights. Security, particularly, has become a massive cost."
Sources say that two major factors have led to the decision to transition the show to a more "closed-door" event. Both, coincidentally, were major reasons for COMDEX shutting down: cost and access. If you've never been to E3, let me describe it like this: long lines, truckloads of people, video games everywhere, and really fancy "booths" (where booth sometimes means basketball court-sized display area). As with COMDEX, the major players are reportedly tired of how much it costs to put on the dog and pony show. Turns out it costs millions of dollars to put the sparkle into an E3 blingfest.
Now in theory, these shows are primarily geared towards connecting businesspeople. To that end, E3 was (again, in theory) only open to industry folks and journalists. In recent years, however, the number of people attending have skyrocketed, in part because E3 registration was a moderately open process. The show was getting huge, and just as with COMDEX, the show-within-a-show was born. What I mean by that is that it was no longer enough to go to the show. To talk to someone who actually knew what they were talking about, you'd need an appointment. To see something really special, really worth writing about, you'd need to meet behind closed doors. To find out anything of interest about something that wasn't on a placard, you needed to get in with the right people. With COMDEX the practice started to get ridiculous; major players officially skipped the show but set up camp in Vegas hotels and had their sideshows for a fraction of the cost.
Possibly more influential is the fact that E3 is viewed by some people as being the Sony-Microsoft-Nintendo show, which it is not supposed to be. Smaller players have complained about this before, but really, that's just the nature of a tradeshow. Not everyone can be Wil Wheaton, can they?
In all seriousness, the days of the big consumer technology trade shows are indeed passing. At the end of the day, the reason is very simple: ten years ago, you needed a big trade show to generate buzz and hype. It used to be that COMDEX was a special event because so much new stuff was unveiled, and this was the only way to see it. Now, however, information comes down the pipe faster than ever, and companies are wondering if there's really any benefit to spending the big money on displays only to share the floor with other competitors looking to out-wow attendees. It was a media circus for the days when you needed a circus to attract media attention. I don't think anyone would say that consumer electronics is lacking for attention these days.
You can also check out the ESA's official announcement here.
I still feel that the gaming industry needs a big event every once in a while (like every 2 or 3 years or so). Being at a live event, watching video of a live event, and/or reading and viewing pictures that detail a live event are much more exciting than just reading a press release.
Deal Of The Week
Connect your Xbox 360 to the Internet without wires for only $25!
One of the things that really annoyed me when I first got an Xbox 360 was the fact that the official wireless adapter cost me over $100 ($99.99 + tax). Thankfully, a much cheaper alternative is available on eBay. Logitech's Play Link, which originally sold for $100 over a year ago, can now be found in abundance on eBay for about $25 shipped. Just click here to see for yourself. You can also read a review of the Play Link here.
That's it for this week. Right now I have about a weeks worth of work that I have to do in 2 days thanks to that stupid computer failure that I had last week. See ya next week.
