The Negative Edge News Report 09.06.06
Posted by Tommy Coloma on 09.06.2006
Sim City DS, in-game advertising, Nintendo happy meals, MMORPGs on consoles, Phantasy Star Universe, and more!
I have some interviews that I have to prepare for so some of the excess baggage that I usually throw around had to be dropped this week. I hope that this tides you over until next week.
Japanese software sales for the week of August 21 - 27
Last week was supposed to be the last time that I was going to throw in Japan's top 10 list but I noticed that this week ALL of the entries happened to be Nintendo DS games. As far as I can remember this is the first time the DS has effectively shut out the competition like this.
1. Final Fantasy III (NDS, Square Enix) - 503,051 units
2. New Super Mario Bros. (NDS, Nintendo) - 65,556 [2,901,264] units
3. Rune Factory: Shin Bokujou Monogatari (NDS, Marvelous) - 42,210 units
4. Kahashima Ryuuta Kyouju Kanshuu: Motto Nouo Kitaeru Otona DS Training (NDS, Nintendo) - 41,784 [3,073,195] units
5. Shaberu! DS Oryouri Navi (NDS, Nintendo) - 37,326 [384,045] units
6. Tamagotchi no Puchi Puchi Omisecchi Gohi-Kini (NDS, Namco Bandai) - 30,504 [430,934] units
7. Mario Basket 3-on-3 (NDS, Nintendo) - 30,355 [233,762] units
8. Oide yo Doubutsu no Mori [Animal Crossing: Wild World] (NDS, Nintendo) - 30,023 [3,149,130] units
9. Kawashima Ryuuta Kyouju Kanshuu: Nouwo Kitaeru Otona no DS Training (NDS, Nintendo) - 22,866 [2,736,150 ] units
10. Eigoga Nigatena Otona no DS Training: Eigo Duke (NDS, Nintendo) - 17,465 [1,401,669] units
At the rate they were going it was inevitable. What do you think is going through the competition's minds right about now?
Sim City on the go
According to Famitsu (via Spong), Sim City 3000 will be coming to the DS in Japan this winter. No release estimates are available for other regions.
Sim City should be a great fit on the DS. Ever spend two or three days building up a city only to cause five or six natural disasters one after another just to see whether or not it could cope? You can have so much fun with these games by being EVIL...
Sony says no HDMI cable for you!
Sony has announced that the high-end version of the PS3 will not come packed with an HDMI cable.
This isn't really a surprise to me. It makes perfect business sense. No matter what Sony does, the initial PS3 shipment will sell out [note: I'm willing to bet that a third to a half of all sales in America will go directly to Ebay]. Why add an HDMI cable right now when sales are guaranteed? Besides, an added HDMI cable as a "special" pack-in could be a great selling point during the slow months of the year.
EA will now be making even more money from their games
EA announced that they have made a deal with Massive Inc. and IGA Worldwide Inc. that will allow them to stream advertisements in its games. The next version of Need for Speed as well as Battlefield 2142 will be among the first games to see these streamed ads in action.
I see a lot of people complaining about this but as far as I'm concerned as long as the ads look natural (as opposed to looking forced and blatant) and as long as the stream does not cause lag I wouldn't mind seeing ads in my games. How cool would it be to be playing a first person shooter, shooting someone in the head, and seeing that person's brains all over the latest movie poster?
Nintendo Happy Meals
Until the 21st of September, McDonalds will be giving out Nintendo related toys in their Happy Meals. Check out this page at Kotaku to take a look at what you can pick up while supplies last.
I'm in my mid-twenties and I'm still a little giddy about this. Here's a tip - in most places you can get the toys without purchasing the happy meal. I'll probably pick up the Mario ball and the hammer. I have no idea what the hammer does but looks cool.
Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express (Beta) is now available
A beta version of Microsoft's XNA Game Studio Express is now available. You can get it here.
XNA Game Studio Express enables individuals and small teams to more easily create video games using new, optimized cross-platform gaming libraries for Windows and Xbox 360. This beta release targets the development of games for Windows. The final version of XNA Game Studio Express will be available this holiday season and will enable development of games which target Windows and upon purchase of a XNA Creators Club subscription, the Xbox 360 as well.
I'll probably wait until Microsoft gets the bugs out and releases a non-beta version. Flash/ActionScript is good enough for me right now since I am only really interested in making 2D games.
Why MMORPGs and consoles don't mix well
Eurogamer recently posted an interesting interview with Paul Sams, Blizzard's chief operating officer. In it, he talks about the challenges of bringing MMORPGs to consoles -
"One really big challenge is that one of the key features of a massively multiplayer game, especially WOW, is consistent and regular content updates. They require hard drive space, and there's a finite amount of that on each of those platforms."
Then there are the strict certification processes put in place by the platform holders. At Blizzard, Sams explains, they build content updates on PC, give them a thorough going over on a test server, and then release them. "There's no certification process outside of Blizzard's internal process. When you introduce Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo, you introduce a whole new certification process."
Which can be a bit of a bloody nightmare, presumably... "It can be. What if we have something that needs to be dealt with promptly, a bug that's causing crashes? On PC, we make it, we test it, we deploy it. On console, we could be waiting for days, because you've got to submit and test it. And if they don't like something, we've got to go back to the drawing board."
One would think that the big three would be bending over backwards to get Blizzard to support their respective systems. Then again, would it really be a good idea to have World of Warcraft on a console? I don't think that other game makers would really want to compete with Blizzard at this point in time.
Phantasy Star Universe News
I'll admit it. I was a very big fan of Phantasy Star Online. I started out on the Dreamcast and bought both the GameCube and Xbox versions on release day. Naturally, I'm interested in all things Phantasy Star Universe.
First the bad news -
Numerous problems have marred the online portion of PSU since the game went live last week. Some of these problems include the following:
- Instances of body swapping.
- As of the 2nd, there were already 100,000 registered accounts. Unfortunately, only about 20,000 players could get on at a time due to server issues.
- Character corruption.
- Item duplication problems.
Now the good news -
According to The Magic Box, PSU scored a 9, 9, 8, 9 in Famitsu. It is not clear whether or not the score is based on the RPG portion or the online portion or both.
This is a pretty good score for Famitsu. Too bad we don't know which part of the game the reviewers were focusing on.
Sega just made an announcement concerning the recent problems players have been experiencing -
"On September 3rd, we halted server operations. This report (@Sept 5, 11pm JST) concerns the reopening of the Network servers.
As previously announced, we will be reopening the game servers for Phantasy Star Universe tomorrow evening (Sept. 6). As also noted previously, almost immediately after the servers were opened, there were reports of network stability issues, and as the population increased, we saw a congruent increase in character data failure reports. We have verified the server and character errors, and through an extended overhaul of the network system, have hopefully rectified it.
We then came to determine how best to proceed into the future. Unfortunately, the possibility of the introduction of game balance issues (*If people exploited the errors before the rollback data was saved) has forced us to enact a complete initialization of the Network data. In effect, we will have to wipe all characters, equipment, items, partner cards, and etc. prior to reinitializing the system.
Furthermore, as noted in the server stoppage and server testing announcements, adjustments in any and all scopes of server and character data may be enacted in the process of maintaining the integrity and playability of the game.
We apologize again for any inconvenience this may cause. We have been attacking the network problems with full force and we ask for your cooperation and support once the servers reopen. For further information, please refer to the previous announcements regarding the server stoppage."
A translation of the previous announcement can be found at pso-world.com here.
I'm just glad that Sega is experiencing these problems right now BEFORE the game gets to America. It's also great that they are taking measures to make sure that the playing field is level this time around. It's too bad that those who have already purchased the game and registered are basically acting as beta testers for the rest of the month. It's also unfortunate that characters that they are working on are subject to rollbacks and/or complete wipes. I've had plenty of experience having my characters corrupted and having to restart from scratch and I can tell you that it is a very unpleasant experience.
I guess this picture references how the main character in Kingdom Hearts 2 shows "unconventional" emotions toward certain characters at the end of the game. Anyone care to enlighten me?
