Archive for June 2nd, 2006
Sony: Market Share Is “Not That Important”
With damage control in full effect, the company’s European honcho David Reeves is playing it safe. He says Sony’s next-gen goal is not conquering the industry. No no, forty percent is just fine. This console war is about growing.
The name of the game is not market share, it’s how fast we can grow the industry—our ambition is to grow 15 per cent a year on hardware and software if we can. We want to try and double digital entertainment in the next five to six years. Whether we have 40, 50, or 60 per cent market share is not that important.
The bar just officially dropped.
More Here [Kikizo]
Sony Rocks Ozzfest
Electronics giant and rock groupie Sony is touring with this year’s Ozzfest. The 2006 tour will mark the end of Ozzy’s de rigeur appearances (though the event will continue next year). What better way to say good-bye to the bat-eating and ant-snorting Ozzy than with Sony PR? The company’s PlayStation bus won’t be headlining, but will provide metal-heads with an Eye Toy area, PSP demos and hot Gran Turismo action. Ozzy and the gang kick off festivities on June 29th in Seattle and wrap things up on August 13th in West Palm Beach. Rock on!
More Here [Siliconera]
Buncha Japanese Industry Folkin on Next-Gen War
Ninty blog Go Nintendo has a round-up of insider’s opinions on pretty much the Wii. Here are the insights:
Irem’s Kazuma Kujo—”Most interesting thing is that these two systems (PS3 & Wii) are launching near-simultaneously.” He hypothesizes that developers will only truly succeed in making good games if they focus on one system, and that it will be very exciting to see who decides to focus on which system.
Capcom/Clover’s Atsushi Inaba—”This upcoming console race is far different from any console race before it.”
Chikako Yamakura, producer for Ganbarion—She is excited about the WiiConnect service for the Nintendo Wii, and says “even if I weren’t making games for it, I’d be most excited about the Wii.”
Noritaka Funamizu, executive director of Craft and Meister—”(The Wii) has some potential none of us can imagine yet.”
Yoshiki Okamoto, of Game Republic—”I asked a lot of my friends their opinions of the next generation of games, and the responses were all over the place. It’s going to be interesting. Lots and lots of people were lined up for the Wii. People were waiting four hours!! If you ask me, if you make people wait in line for four hours, you better give them something to do for four hours. That, or just have some more on display.”
Tecmo’s Tomonobu Itagaki—”The Wii is truly interesting. People were talking about it. A person asked me to make a Beach Volleyball game for it, one that takes advantage of the motion controls. I wondered. Would this man really play it? Dead or Alive Extreme 2 will offer players more than 100 hours of game time, so I suppose they might need something to take a break with. I will consider.”
Akimi Watanabe, producer at Flight Plan—The Wii will be a valuable training-ground for developers who seriously “need to learn new ideas.”
Level-5’s Akihiro Hino—”WIIII for Wii!!
Go Nintendo goes on to report that Sega’s Takumi Yoshinaga, producer of Feel the Magic, suprisingly said nothing about the Wii, but talked up the Xbox 360 and PS3. It would’ve been nice if the site had insights on the PS3 and Xbox 360 as well, but then it wouldn’t be Go Nintendo, but Go Sony or Go Microsoft.
Found It Here [Go Nintendo]
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GTA Creator Talks GTA
British Gaming Blog cornered Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto creator Mike Dailly, beat an interview out of him and drove off in his sedan. The series became a monster smash for Rockstar, but in turn became synonymous with game violence. Would that have happened if Dailly’d helmed his blade runnery GTA 3? The creator had this to say:
No, I think ‘my’ GTA wouldn’t have been quite so ‘mass-market’, which is good and bad. I think mine might have been a little more fun, but would never have sold the way GTA 3 and the rest of them had. After GTA 2, I’d envisaged a top down ‘blade runner’, glowing signs, but full 3D this time, with lots of effects and destruction. But I think they made the right choice as its helped open gaming to a whole new breed.
For better or worse, for better or worse.
Read His Thoughts on The Console War [BGB]
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Msoft <3’s Backwards Compatibility, Really!!
Ignore the tattooed man in the interview. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Despite Peter Moore’s assertations that gamers don’t care about backwards compatibility, Microsoft has reiterated their support of old Xbox games.
Msoft Marketeer John Porcaro reports that he went and spoke to the BC team and were told that Msoft is in the testing phase of another batch update which should hit in a few weeks. The list will include at least a dozen titles, JP reports.
What I find most interesting about the post is the fact that it somehow manages to never mention the fact that BC has become a hot topic is because Peter Moore shot his mouth off about it.
Hello, he’s the guy running things. Oh, and according to our survey 40 percent of those who voted think it’s very important, while only 13 percent either never use BC or think it’s not important at all.
Backwards Compatibility Update Coming Soon [GameScore Blog]
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Related: Poll: Backwards Compatability, Do You Care?
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Video: A Sad Day In the Life of Mario
It’s not often that you see a live-action Mario movie that features knife play and open-head wounds that wraps up with a touching, soul-killing song.
Brian C: I liked the mushroom bit. And the Luigi thing. That was funny. Yeah. Funny.
Brian A: I liked it too. That was really great. And mario trying to pick up Peach at a bus stop.
Brian A: Fab.
Brian C: Yeah
Brian C: It was funny
Brian C: Yeah
Brian A: Yeah
Today in Joystiq: June 2, 2006
Joystiquery
Joystiq readers are environmentally friendly
News
$40 XBL Vision camera ,UNO bundle, and more
Super Mario dominates Japan sales charts
Video Games Live hits Philly tomorrow
Amp’d scores mobile Dirge deal
Disney, Shanda bring online content to China
Penny Arcade creating ESRB ad campaign
Iwata tackles Virtual Console prices, Wii Connect24
PlayStation PR chief jumps ship
Minnesota targets minors in new gaming law; ESA to file suit
South Park Republican defends video games in WSJ op-ed
Legendary computer scientist Alan Kotok has died
Oblivion patch coming next week for PC, 360
Rumors & Speculation
New report concludes Xboy to drop in 2008
Culture
“Mac users aren’t really into games”
Carnival of Gamers #15: roll up, roll up!
Net neutrality: one Spartan takes on Congress
Behind-the-scenes with Ctrl+Alt+Del’s Tim Buckley
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Rent Games in Japan Tommorrow!
On June 3, samurai RPG maker Koei will out its first Rentanet video store at a Taito game center in Kanagawa Prefecture. Unlike in the West, there are no Japanese rental franchises. At Koei’s stores, new games will rent for 2,800 yen (US $24.50) for five days. If anything, this proves that arcades are far from dead. At least in Japan.
More Here [Famitsu]
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Final Chance to Win the DS Lite Brain Pack
This is it, the final day of our first of six DS Lite prize pack giveaways. So far about 1,400 people have entered the contest and most of them are right. Remember, every week you enter the contest you are entered into the grand prize. You have until midnight EST to enter tonight. Check back Saturday to see who won.
Kotaku’s Summer of Prizes [Kotaku]
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The Credibility Budget
Gamedev website Gamasutra has a feature up that puts into words a concept I’ve been struggling to explain for years. The author modestly calls it “Ken Perlin’s Law”, but I venture that his own term, “credibility budget”, is far more catchy:
Ken Perlin’s Law: The cost of an event in an interactive story should be directly proportional to its improbability.
[...] What is the unit of cost of an improbable event in a story? Its credibility. That’s what gets spent when something improbable happens. And in fact, every story, interactive or non-interactive, book, movie, television, or computer game, has a credibility budget. The story itself can only tolerate a certain amount of improbability before the credibility budget is exhausted, and the story is ruined.
The author goes on to point out that unlike in books and movies, where credibility is the sole domain of the creator, video games put the responsibility into both creator and player’s hands. If either one of us overdraws the credibility budget, the narration collapses, and the story is “broken”.
Grand Theft Auto is used as an example of a game with a well-managed credibility budget. The world is open, but solid. The player is not allowed to break the story, but rarely feels as if he is being railroaded, either.
So this is my official notice. The term “credibility budget” is to be entered into geek phraseology immediately. I will brook no arguments.
The Designer’s Notebook: Introducing Ken Perlin’s Law [Gamasutra]
Sponsors Thanks
The locals said there wasn’t gold in them there hills. We didn’t believe them and neither did our sponsors. All week, we dug and panned under the blazing sun until we found those shiny nuggets. Thank you Rockstar Games, Evian, Hershey’s, Mobizzo and Mini for not beating us up and taking our loot.
Interested in mining advertising with Kotaku? Find out more here.
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Penny Arcade on PSPorn
Penny Arcade’s latest comic is about Fox news and their ability to squeeze controversy out of even the most innocuous of events. This time around Fox targeted the Playstation Portable and its ability to capture the wild porn that, apparently, is floating around us everyday in the air. Even better, the Penny Arcade comic was inspired by our very own Eliza’s take on the whole issue. We await a big fat royalty check Tycho.
The same as it ever was [Penny Arcade]
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What Are You Playing This Weekend?
Despite some comments I made earlier today, I have yet to really spend any time with Half-Life 2: Episode One. I got about as far as climbing into a rusty Winnebago with Alyx and then having Dog hurtle me over a canyon into the ruins of the Citadel before I ended up quitting, not for lack of interest, but because my fatigued eyeballs felt like they were about to pop out of my face. I think I also saw a new enemy. So that’s the way this gaming weekend is shaping up for me.
How about you guys? Half-Life 2: Episode One is probably the big title this week, but there was also the new Hitman and the curiously misspelt Scurge. What are your hot new gaming purchases and which ones will you procrastinate mopping the kitchen floor over? Let us know in the comments.
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Related: Half-Life 2: Episode One: Zero Hour
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Behind-the-scenes with Ctrl+Alt+Del’s Tim Buckley [update 1]
While we’re on the subject, is it just us or does Tim Buckley bear kind of a resemblance to Elliott Smith?
Also be sure to check out Scott Johnson’s Diary of a Cartoonist, who has been showing off behind-the-scenes work since early March.
Here is the YouTube video:
[update 1: Not a tablet PC, got it. Added a link to Scott's behind-the-scenes, and played down the whole Elliott Smith thing ... since that's more or less just me ... I'll get through this, with some help from Johnny Walker Red.]
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Behind the Music: Guitar Hero
It’s a story as old as time. Young dude with funny hair gets his first guitar, becomes a rockin’ guitar hero, starts doing loads of coke and ends up drawing a fake beard on his face. This pseudo docu-drama won’t be hitting theaters in this life. It should, ’cause I’d totally watch it. These guys live rock ‘n’ roll, breathe rock ‘n’ roll and piss rock ‘n’ roll.
(So does Crecente.)
More Here [Brad Sucks] Thanks, Packrat Show!
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Phantasy Star Shirt
To celebrate the launch of Phantasy Star Universe in Japan, Sega is selling a limited edition T-shirt which, judging by the childish design, was created with the help of Acme Label Maker 2000. Fortunately, you can only buy it in Japan.
Phantasy Star Universe Shirt [GameBrink]
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Related: Phantasy Star Universe Coming to 360
Free Phantasy Star Shirt
To celebrate the launch of Phantasy Star Universe in Japan, Sega is selling a limited edition T-shirt which, judging by the childish design, was created with the help of Acme Label Maker 2000. Fortunately, you can only buy it in Japan.
Phantasy Star Universe Shirt [GameBrink]
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Related: Phantasy Star Universe Coming to 360
Oblivion patch coming next week for PC, 360
Filed under: PC, Microsoft Xbox 360, RPGs
According to 1up, Bethesda will be releasing a patch for Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion next week, for both the PC and Xbox 360 versions. PC users will get the patch via normal outlets, while Xbox 360 owners will get their patch via Xbox Live and other, unspecficied means (chief of PR Peter Hines mentioned looking into bundling the update with the Official Xbox Magazine).
I, for one, am extremely happy to get the patch soon, having stopped playing the game entirely due to frustration the “disappearing body” of the Cheydinhal Reccomendation or the “disappearing alchemist” (Melisande) when trying to rid one’s self of vampirism. Any other glitches that you hope Bethesda quickly remedies?
See Also:
List of known Oblivion glitches
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Gitaroo Man Lives! Preview
The E3 content just keeps on trickling out! Kikizo has posted up their hands-on E3 preview of that other guitar game, Gitaroo Man Lives!, a remake of Gitaroo Man for the PSP.
What’s changed between the two games? Not much, actually. There will be as many as six new tracks to play. the game will also have some new multiplayer modes, including an expanded versus mode and a co-operative duet mode.
They aren’t very pleased about the controls, pointing out that the PSP’s nub is not particularly good for tracing the winding worm of notes overlaying the screen. That nub can be a pain even in games that don’t require such specific input… let’s hope this is just a programmable sensitivity issue and not a gimping of the controller.
Hands-On: Giaroo Man Lives! [Kikizo]
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Legendary computer scientist Alan Kotok has died
Alan Kotok, a pioneer that helped create the first video game, SpaceWar! on the PDP-1, and helped invent the joystick, this site’s namesake, passed away peacefully in his sleep over the U.S. Memorial Day weekend.
His help in creating Spacewar! was invaluable, although not necessarily conventional. In one memorable incident, Alan forced Steve Russel (the main author of Spacewar!) to get his act together by calling up the maker of the PDP-1 to get some math routines required to write movement code for the game. Once he’d received the code he slammed down the tape on Steve’s desk (who was widely known by the nickname “slug”) and said “Here you are Russel. Now what’s your excuse?” Steve got the point and went on to finish Spacewar!
Had Alan not taken the initiative like he did, the entire history of video games could have turned out differently. A man called Nolan Bushnell was later inspired by Spacewar! to try and make video games accessible to everyone: he eventually went on to found a little company called Atari. There’s nothing to say that games wouldn’t be as popular as they are today had Alan not given Steve Russel the kick up the arse he needed, but it certainly makes you think.
Another of Kotok’s achievements was working with John McCarthy of Stanford to create the first computer program that could credibly play chess. The program, which could look at 1100 positions per second, took part in an international competition with a USSR chess program in 1966. The match took nine months to complete!
Alan is survived by his three children and one grandchild. His wife, Judie, passed away last year. Rest in peace, Alan.
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