Fixed, console systems are a transition phase betwix Arcade games and PC games, while not exceeling in neither. All console classics can be played on a superior PC provided you can emulate it, and while Arcade games can be played on PC too, the pay-to-credit social enviromnent of Arcades is absent from the premises, unless you LARP.
That's one of my greatest hopes. Another video game crash (too bad we missed the 30 year anniversary), that resets the industry and brings sanity back into game development. But knowing how things are know, I think we'd mostly see more Goat simulators, DayZ clones and stuff like Papers Please rather than good games.
I went this over in another post a month ago or so so I cba to reiterate my opinion more elaborately, but pretentious indygames and pointless sandbox games don't require any game design finesse and are ultimately pointless or lacking in actual gameplay. I want games like Thief&Deus Ex on PC and Radiant Silvergun&Klonoa on consoles like back in the 90s, almost none of the indy shit that's flooding Steam looks competently designed.
I love Wes Anderson, in fact he might be one of my favorite directors and has directed one of my favorite movies and every one of them oozes his very specific charm, but I didn't particularly think Grand Budapest was one of his best, especially because it was somewhat overplayed by the actors and overstated (epitomized by the many needless cameos of "star actors" that seemed out of place). Enjoyed Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, Darjeeling Limited, Moonrise Kingdom and Life Aquatic a lot more. If you haven't seen them and liked this so much you probably should.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-06-25-how-no-mans-sky-stole-the-show-at-e3
Shuhei Yoshida pays tribute to Phil Spencer
"He's a reasonably smart guy, compared to some other people who used to say some unbelievable things."
After blundering so badly a year ago, when it unveiled Xbox One and then had to backpedal on a lot of the system's original ideas within weeks, Microsoft was a lot humbler at E3 last month, paying tribute to its rivals and focusing on the games.
It's a message, and a tone, that was surely familiar to Sony worldwide studios boss Shuhei Yoshida. After all, it's the same one Sony adopted when it unveiled PlayStation 4 at the start of 2013, and the company has ridden that humility all the way back to the top.
"It was very interesting," Yoshida says at E3, reflecting on Microsoft's showing. "The attitude was great, like from Phil Spencer. I read and listened to his interviews, and he's a reasonably smart guy, compared to some other people who used to say some unbelievable things."
Some of those unbelievable things, of course, came from the mouth of the departed Don Mattrick in the heated days following Xbox One's announcement. In many ways Microsoft has been playing catch-up ever since, with a change in management following a change in policies that climaxed, most recently, with the removal of the expensive Kinect peripheral from the core Xbox One bundle.
"I read some articles - and I think Eurogamer was one of them - that were disappointed by what they did, and some welcomed what they did," Yoshida said. (That's not quite right - we suggested Microsoft was making the best of a bad situation.)
Shu's on the other foot now.
"Some media people totally believed they should have done it earlier, but some other media people thought it was a unique selling point. Personally, I was expecting that at some point in the future they'd unbundle Kinect, but I wasn't expecting it this early.
"My interpretation was the management change had really helped them to reset and re-sync everything. And since then they've been consistent."
Microsoft may well have been given the hurry-up by the rate at which the PS4 has outsold Xbox One. In the US Sony's console has done so for five months straight, while in the UK Watch Dogs sold twice as many copies on PS4 as it did on Xbox One. But Yoshida is adamant that nobody at Sony saw quite this result coming.
"No, no, no!" he says animatedly. "We were planning, last fiscal year, to sell five million units. That was our expectation. But we did more than seven million - and that was beyond our expectations.
"There are shortages in many markets, and there have been complaints. Cameras are sold out, and we are still catching up with demand. It's amazing. Of course we didn't have much anticipation in terms of number of units that Xbox One would sell, but I understand they're doing very well as well. Because PS4 is doing so well, the gap seems to be widening."
For Yoshida, though, the real winner is the gamer.
"I took a few interviews this morning by Japanese media," he says. All of them said to me, 'In US and Europe, the console games are running and kicking and lots of investment's being made from third parties and great games are being shown.' That amazed them, and I think it was really great for us.
"Competition really pushes everyone, Microsoft and us, to do better," Yoshida concludes. "I think in the end the consumers will win."
PS4 fails to boost Japan console market
Doing great here. There, not so much.
The PlayStation 4 has failed to make a significant impact in Japan.
Unlike in western markets, where the PS4 has been a hit (it's the fastest-selling console in UK history), in Japan it's struggling.
Japanese magazine publisher Enterbrain released a report on the Japanese console game industry and found revenue remained static for the first half of 2014 compared to the first half of 2013 - despite the launch of the PS4 in Japan in February.
Japanese game industry consultant Dr. Serkan Toto said Enterbrain's figures revealed Japan's console market for the first half of the year was worth 1722.6m yen (£983m). In the first half of 2013 that figure was 1720.2m yen (£982m).
According to Media Create figures, the PS4 sold just over 8000 units 23-29 June 2014 - just 500 more than the PlayStation 3. That week the PS4 version of Ubisoft's open world hacking game Watch Dogs was the second best-selling game in Japan, shifting 63,000 copies.
During that period the Wii U shifted 10,000 units, the Vita sold 22,000 and the 3DS sold 27,800.
The PS4 has sold 620,000 units in Japan since going on sale in February. The Wii U is 1.8m lifetime to date, the Vita is 2.8m and the 3DS is 15.7m.
As Dr. Toto points out, in contrast to console games, the Japanese smartphone game market is projected to grow handsomely in the next few years.
Sony is considering an Early Access-type program
"It's something on the top of my mind every day."
Sony is looking into adding an Early Access type of deal on its platforms.
Dust 514 had a paid beta on PS3 back in 2012, suggesting there is an infrastructure for this sort of thing on consoles.
When asked about such a program at E3, SCEA's vice president of developer relations Adam Boyes told Gamasutra, "That's one of the massive conversations we have internally."
"At what point does [a game meet standards of release]?" he pondered. "We still at some point ensure that we're being mindful of the consumer. We don't want somebody to stumble across that title and expect a full product, and have a negative experience."
While Boyes seemed wary of releasing unfinished products, the man responsible for bringing so many indie titles to Sony was still intrigued at this alternative way of helping out fledgling developers. "I want to help bootstrap people," he said. "To help them out. Like supporting the underdog for a sports team."
He also noted that there are different types of gamers and many of them don't mind playing unfinished games (especially at a lower price, as Early Access titles tend to be). "There are different types of people. There [are] people who always back games, enjoy Kickstarters, try things that they know aren't finished but are willing to help make better," Boyes explained. "I remember playing Rust and laughing hysterically. And there were some things that weren't finished, but I had a ton of fun."
The Forest became the top-selling game on Steam despite only being in alpha form.
The question then is when should games be allowed on the marketplace? When they're fun? When they're polished enough that a developer is comfortable with them attaining a Metacritic score? Or when they're simply a good idea in need of playtesting like DayZ - whose developer warned players that its Early Access installment would be "a recipe for disappointment"?
"We're working through that right now," said Boyes. "We're figuring out what's okay. We obviously have our tech requirement checklist that people have to adhere to. So we're internally discussing, 'what does that list look like this? What are the caveats?' Stuff like this. So it's still a project that a lot of minds are considering. No details yet, but it's something on the top of my mind every day."
So what do you, dear readers, think of Early Access-type programs coming to PlayStation? Would you be excited to get in on the ground floor, or be weary of testing an unfinished product? On that note, enjoy the Destiny beta next week!
