The Gaming Vault » Microsoft

Project Milo back on, apparently

Jens Erik Vaaler — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 23:24:01 +0000

The development and potential release of Peter Molyneux’s Kinect project Milo & Kate can best be described as something of a clusterhump. First it would see release, then it wouldn’t, then no one knew, and now it appeares to be on again.

Last week at the TEDGlobal Conference in Oxford, Peter Molyneux said Microsoft wasn’t planning on releasing Milo & Kate. Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg said two weeks before “right now, it’s not a game”. Eurogamer spoke to Greenberg again last night, and there’s still a chance Project Milo will be released.

“You can see that it’s definitely not just a tech demo,” Xbox product director Aaron Greenberg told Eurogamer in an interview.

“They’re building something that’s pretty unique and compelling. We leave it up to Peter and his team to determine what that game is and when it would come to market. All we’ve said is that at this point in time it’s not coming this holiday. But as you can see it’s definitely quite a bit more than just a tech demo.”

From what I could tell from the complete interview, the final fate of the game is up to Peter Molyneux.

Kinect gets priced at £129 and $149, 4GB Arcade announced

Kyle Gaddo — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 18:34:58 +0000

Microsoft confirmed the Kinect price points in the major release territories: $149 in the US, £129 for Kinect in the UK, and €149 in mainland Europe.

Microsoft has also confirmed a new Arcade console, with a Slim design and 4 GB of internal flash memory.

A Holiday Bundle with the new Arcade console, Kinect, and Kinect Adventures will be available later this year for $300 US (and if you pre-order through Amazon, you get exclusive DLC goodies, like new Kinect Adventures levels and avatar items).

“Kinect for Xbox 360 offers fantastic new ways to be entertained for the whole family,” said Xbox Europe boss, Chris Lewis.

“With full body, voice and multiplayer play straight out of the box, Kinect is a unique way for everyone to enjoy controller-free fun and entertainment.”

Kinect bundled with Kinect Adventures by itself will cost £130.

Microsoft announced today that “more than” 15 games will be available for Kinect at launch, including Kinectimals, Kinect Adventures, and Kinect Joy Ride. Kinect games will retail for £40 in the UK and $50 stateside.

The new Arcade console will cost $200 in the US and comes out on August 3rd.

You know the great thing about all this? With everyone scrambling to get the new consoles with built in wireless, retailers and consumers are going to start dropping the price on consoles and accessories (like the overpriced wireless adapter) to sell get them out of the store. Rad.

Kinect gets the ban-hammer in China

Michael O'Connor — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:24:26 +0000

According to a recent story over on GamaSutra Microsoft has confirmed that Kinect won’t be seeing release in China. It’s received a dutiful ban-hammer from the country’s Ministry of Culture.

Microsoft’s China COO Michel Van Der Bel has explained that the technology has fallen victim of a government notice from June 2000, in which the Ministry of Culture banned gaming equipment. Some Nintendo consoles are on sale in the region, but both the 360 and PS3 are banned in the region.

Van Der Bel has stated that Microsoft intends to cooperate with the law.

Milo might never see release

Jens Erik Vaaler — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 18:29:06 +0000

Were you one of the few wondering where the hell Milo and Kate was during this year’s E3? Me too, because Milo should have been there, if only for us to keep an eye out for what will undoubtedly become the real life version of SkyNet.

Yet now it seems Milo will never come to any sort of fruition beyond being a mere tech demo. Xbox chief Aaron Greenberg told ABC TV’s Good Game (first clip, at 00:41) that Milo won’t be released as a game:

“Milo, he’s safe and sound back in England. No… the Milo Project is something that Lionhead Studios in their labs had developed. Last year we unveiled the Project Natal technology, we showed a bunch of technology demos as part of that.

“And obviously [Milo] is a technology demo that continues to exist, but right now it’s not a game that we’re planning to bring to market.”

So, they’re not releasing it as a game, which it never was in the first place. Yet Peter Molyneux’ confirmed a re-reveal of Milo and Kate at his Human Systems talk at TEDGlobal next month. According to the schedule, Molyneux is a “Game Changer”, rather than a “Game Director”. So… At what point did he change anything about video games?

Then what is it, Microsoft? Because Molyneux spent most of last year’s E3 gushing about it, so we need to know at least something.

What You Missed: E3 2010 Day One Wrap-Up

Joe Pomerening — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 07:34:09 +0000

First off, let me say WOW. E3 2010 is off to a great start and the TGV staff has been hard at work in the summer heat of LA keeping you up to date with new details the minute they’re spoken into a microphone. Our crew has been manning the liveblogs as well as providing frequent updates to the site with the latest updates, and we’ve all had a blast doing so.

We’ve heard some amazing news from a bunch of awesome developers, and got an extensive look at Microsoft’s newest motion-controlled project, Kinect, formerly known as Natal. We also got some impressive updates from Electronic Arts and Ubisoft, who’ve both announced some amazing games that I can’t wait to get my hands on.

Let’s take a few moments to look back at the first day of the 16th annual Electronic Entertainment Expo.

Kicking off the day, Microsoft took the stage and made some amazing announcements. First and foremost, the motion-detection controller we’ve been hearing about for so long was officially dubbed “Kinect“, losing the previous codename “Natal”. Microsoft spent the majority of their stage time today showcasing Kinect and it’s capabilities.

Personally, I think Kinect is a pretty impressive system. From what we saw today, it looks like it’s going to be pretty open, and will integrate with nearly all aspects of your Xbox 360 experience. Not only does it detect your motion with pretty impressive accuracy, but it also recognizes voice commands, so you don’t even have to wave your arms around to navigate through menus!

We got to see a lot of impressive uses for Kinect, including a fully functional media player where you navigate using your hands, as well as some gameplay. We also saw what looks like some pretty impressive communications uses, as well, including video chat.

One of the features of Kinect that I found to be the most impressive, if not the simplest, is the fact that it has total facial recognition for instantly signing into your Xbox Live account by doing nothing other than standing in front of your TV and waving your hand. This same feature was also demoed at least year’s E3, as well, but seeing it in action is pretty impressive. We should also be expecting to be able to have multiple people step in front of their TV and log in simultaneously for multiplayer gaming.

Now, when I said earlier that Microsoft spent most of their time talking about Kinect, I wasn’t kidding. They really milked it, but I feel that they made good use of their time. They showed off a lot of the abilities of the device, including some pretty impressive accuracy with controlling various types of games.

One problem that we all noticed, however, was that some of the games they demonstrated showed off some serious lag issues. Some of the games seemed to react almost instantly, while others had about a 3/4 second delay in response time. Since they used the same equipment for the demos that had no lag, this is not a hardware issue, and means Kinect is (currently) slow to respond and you will have some lag that will severely impact your ability to play certain genres of games (don’t expect to play any hardcore fighters).

But what about the games that had no lag? This could be attributed to a number of things. Maybe the lighting was better during certain demos, which allowed Kinect to get more accurate readings. Maybe some of the games will have precognitive reactions to your movements (the Star Wars demo really proved that this is going to be the case with some titles). All I know is that this is definitely an issue that may make or break the system.

Now, what about the games that Microsoft talked about today? We did manage to get a few tidbits of other, non-Kinect news during their briefing today. The Call of Duty series gets yet another addition, in the form of Call of Duty: Black Ops. The demo they showed off looked pretty impressive, graphically. My biggest gripe, however, is that the gameplay looks mostly the same as the last few Call of Duty games. Visually stunning, but stale gameplay. Of course, I’ll have to play it for myself before I can officially judge it. And when will I get to play it? Good question. Call of Duty Black Ops is going to be released November 9th, 2010.

Another impressive announcement is an addition to yet another classic series. Metal Gear Solid gets another sequel in the form of Metal Gear Solid: Rising. In Rising, you play as Raiden. You probably remember hating Raiden before. Not anymore. The game features an awesome mechanic which allows you to use your sword to slice nearly anything in half. What constitutes as “nearly anything”? People, brick pillars, vehicles, robots, and even watermelons. The trailer shows the game’s pretty groundbreaking mechanic for slicing things. You can rip through nearly anything like a hot knife through butter. Multiple times, if you wish, and wherever you want on the thing you’re cutting. If you want to nick somebody’s hand off, you can remove just their hand if you want. The gameplay looks amazing, and I don’t care if I’m playing as Raiden. This is one that I really want to get my hands on. I don’t believe we have an official release date for Metal Gear Solid: Rising just yet. Whatever the release date, it isn’t soon enough.

Crytek also showed off something that I’m not quite sure what to make of quite yet. Right now, the project is called Codename: Kingdoms. The announcement was made with a very short trailer, showcasing what appear to be three gladiators after a battle. No gameplay was shown, or any other details as to what Codename: Kingdoms actually is. Coming from Crytek, we can at least rest easy knowing that whatever this is, it will probably be pretty awesome.

We also got to see some new footage from Halo: Reach. Now, we’ve already seen plenty of multiplayer footage from this game prior to E3, however today we got our first look at the campaign. It’s hard to tell what, exactly, is going on, but we do know that you play as a Spartan of some sort, and you’re fighting the Covenant. We didn’t see any use of the jetpacks, or any “new” features at all, really. You’ve got your typical assault rifle and grenades, and you run and gun.

One thing worth mentioning, however, is that it appears that you now have the ability to do special kills against enemies, where you can perform some sort of melee attacks against them. Not sure if this is done as a pre-rendered type of scene of if you’ll be able to interact with these kills in any way, but it looks pretty impressive, regardless.

ESPN also made a big announcement at Microsoft’s briefing, showcasing what looks like a special channel for the 360, giving you access to tons of sports-related data including news and videos. Best of all, it’s Kinect-enabled, meaning that you’ll be able to navigate this with your body.

One of Microsoft’s biggest announcement today was the unveiling of a brand new model of the Xbox 360. Following in the footsteps of Sony’s Playstation series of consoles, Microsoft is now going to start selling a Xbox 360 Slim model. The new design looks pretty sexy, and some rumors are floating about that the new design is RRoD-proof. As many 360-owners know, the console gets hot. Very hot. So hot that the soldering on the heat sink of the CPU will actually melt and disconnect, causing heat damage to the hardware (due largely in part to the CPU being located so close to the HDD, but that’s nerd-talk). The rumors are stating that the Slim model will have ample spacing between the CPU and the HDD, as well as an enormous heat sink, which should prevent those god-awful Red Rings of Death.

The Slim also boasts built-in Wifi, so you no longer have to pay an extortionate amount for a Wifi adapter for your 360. It ships with a 250 GB HDD, so you’ve got plenty of space for game saves and media.

As Herman Lilleng wrote earlier, the announcement was done in a “Half Apple, Half Oprah” style. “Half Apple” because the announcement confirmed that the product is shipping today, and should be available in stores near you within the week. “Half Oprah” because everybody who attended the Microsoft briefing got one totally free. Best of all, though, the Slim will sell for $299. That’s right, it’s the same price as the current line. Totally awesome move on Microsoft’s part.

That just about covers it for Microsoft’s announcements. A few hours after Microsoft left the stage, Electronic Arts came onboard with a few announcements of their own.

First off, EA announced EA Live Broadcast, which is a new service that will broadcast your online gaming to “thousands of spectators”, turning any gamer into a celebrity. They showcased this feature with an MMA game, and really pressed hard on the “This is you” aspect of turning yourself into a celebrity. To be honest, I’m not sure how well this will take off. It looks like it’s got tons of potential, and goes pretty in-depth, but something like this, in today’s gaming culture, seems like one of those things that’s riding a very fine line between huge success and massive failure. Competitive gaming in the western world isn’t like that of Asia. In Korea, StarCraft matches are broadcast on national television. Here in the states, the best way to take part in spectating competitive gaming is to watch a low-resolution webcast, and it really only appeals to a niche audience. EA’s gonna have to really step things up if they want this to take off, and I have some high hopes that it does take off, because I would love to see competitive gaming make a comeback in the US.

EA also made an announcement for Sims 3 appearing on consoles. Not a huge announcement, really. Doesn’t look like we’ll be seeing a whole lot of new features to the game.

One of EA’s best announcements for the day, however, was showing off Crysis 2. Not only is this awesome game getting a sequel, but it’s going to be in full 3D, as well. This title could very well be the foundation for conventional 3D gaming as we know it. Expect this to be ground-breaking.

Wrapping up the evening was Ubisoft, who spent a little bit of time showing off some of their latest works, as well. They started things off by showing us Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, which showed off some multiplayer aspects of the game, as well as some new abilities, such as stealing and using weapons from your enemies, as well as some improvement to existing gameplay mechanics.

One of the most important announcements was from Tetsuya Mizuguchi. You may know him as the guy who created a somewhat obscure and little-known (these days) game called Rez. If you’ve never played Rez, you have severely missed out on what many may consider to be the grandfather of rythym games. The game being announced appears to be a spiritual successor to Rez, and is being called Child of Eden. From the trailer, it appears that you will likely be using Kinect controls to play through the game. I seriously hope that this doesn’t turn into a Kinect-exclusive title, because if Child of Eden turns out to be anything like Rez was, you will definitely want to play with a controller.

Next Ubisoft showed us Shawn White Skateboarding, which doesn’t appear to be like any skating game we’ve ever seen. You have your realistic skateboarding games like Skate, and then you have your unrealistic skateboarding games like the entire Tony Hawk series. Shawn White Skateboarding takes Tony Hawk to school and takes unreality to the next level. The game appears to play similarly to Da Blob, in which you need to bring color to an otherwise colorless world. Also included are environment-changing mechanics which will alter your skate park as you’re playing. Definitely not meant to be taken as a serious skateboarding game by any means, but this looks undoubtedly fun.

Ubisoft also showed us some trailers for other games they’re working on. One of which is Project Dust, which obviously is a working title for a game that I can’t quite put a finger on. The trailer showed off realtime renderings of the game in actual gameplay, but didn’t seem to show (or at least make it obvious) how the game plays. What we see are a group of people with some sort of mystical people, and some force turning the Earth against them. Judging from the graphics (the character models looked like they had a somewhat low poly-count), it looks like this may play similar to an RTS of sorts. We’ll definitely be finding out more about this interesting looking title.

Next up, which was my personal favorite announcement from Ubisoft, was Rayman Origins. Being a huge fan of Rayman, I’ve been rather depressed with Ubisoft’s recent milking of the series, with the Raving Rabids games, and even before that with Rayman Arena. I’m totally stoked that we’re finally getting another real Rayman game. Rayman Origins is a 2D platformer that has a really awesome art style. I really can’t wait to get my hands on this. While it wasn’t confirmed, it appears that it will feature co-op play, as the gameplay scenes showed Rayman fighting enemies alongside Globox.

Lastly, Ubisoft showed off ManiaPlanet, which looks like a series of tools designed to allow gamers to create custom worlds for various genres of video games. They seem to be focusing on the sandbox crowd here, and it looks like it’ll be pretty fun. This is another one of those things that I think may only appeal to a niche audience, but I think it’ll definitely be fun to try out, regardless. The creativity of random people never ceases to amaze me, so it’ll be interesting to see what the players will be able to come up with.

Well, that about covers most of the big news from Day One of E3 2010! It’s been an awesome day, and we’ll be at the event for Day Two, as well! Stay tuned, because we’re far from done! We’ll be keeping you posted with all the latest updates from the convention center!

E3 2010: Microsoft press conference, impressions and opinions

Jens Erik Vaaler — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 23:59:28 +0000

We here at The Gaming Vault thought we’d give a quick run-down of our first impressions and opinions on the conference. The press conference was dominated by Microsoft’s upcoming motion peripheral Kinect, and most of the press conference was delegated to showing off upcoming Kinect games and various Kinect features.

Of the hardcore variety, Microsoft showed off a handful of titles we were all expecting: Call of Duty: Black Ops, Metal Gear Solid Rising, Halo: Reach, Fable 3 and Gears of War 3. All the games looks pretty good, but Halo: Reach in particular caught my attention. The transition from CGI cut-scene to actual gameplay looked seamless, and the inclusion of space battles has really got my attention.

Gears of War 3 looked bloody as ever, and Fable 3 was shown merely in cut-scene form, but it appears to be shaping up nicely. Some details about a revolution and British humour was revealed, as well as some hints towards ship to ship battles, as well as the ability to combine magic spells.

Yet out of all the hardcore games shown off, nothing really stood out. Rising seems fun, and all the games looked pretty amazing. There was a certain lack of hardcore flair, if you will, considering the real focus of the press conference.

Like I said before, Kinect (which I keep calling “Kinectic”, for some reason). Microsoft spent too much time on casual games. While a lot of games analysts keep track of E3, most of the people watching the conferences at home are hardcore gamers:

“Kii-nect Sports, the Adventure thingy, Ubisofts odd training game, etc. all did pretty much nothing for me. Even the more involved stuff like Forza, I don’t really want to run in place, jump and walk around in my living room when I’m gaming,” Herman mentioned once the press conference was over, “Fable, Halo, Gears of War, and motion controlled mini game collections. Welcome to 2005″.

We were all in agreement that while Kinect probably will be fun for the uninitiated, casual gamer, it really isn’t something for the more hardcore crowd. This is where Microsoft has really disappointed us. ”

Joe also noticed some lag during the Kinect playthroughs happening on-stage: “The lag in the Kinect seems awful. Looks like it fluctuates between instant reaction to about 3/4 of a second delay. Will be pretty awful for a “real” racing game. I think the idea of rendering your character as a heatmap or whatever that was is nothing short of lazy. I hope that was unfinished.” Bastiaan noticed it as well: “Saw lag, embarassing. Yoga game even seemed to predict movements before they happened”.

Much like the Nintendo press conference two years ago, Microsoft’s conference this year was all about the casual gamer, and a company’s quest to expand themselves into other markets. The addition of ESPN is probably a welcome feature for some, but probably not something a lot of people who follow E3 care about. I for one couldn’t care less that I could watch sports on my Xbox if I lived in the US.

Overall, our impressions of the Microsoft press conference comes to a resounding “Eh…” They had a few hardcore titles that looked interesting, but really nothing to write home about. The only new thing shown off was Crytek’s new exclusive Xbox 360 title, the only new exclusive Xbox title we were shown that we didn’t already know of. And the XBox 360 Slim looks like someone used a pair of vice grips on an Alienware PC. Yes, it’s shiny, but it looks absolutely horrible.

E3 2010: ESPN coming to Xbox Live

Jens Erik Vaaler — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 18:20:15 +0000

Microsoft’s still shooting for the Xbox becoming the ultimate living room entertainment platform, and during Microsoft’s E3 press conference, the sports channel ESPN was announced for Xbox Live. It’s probably America exclusive, so sorry my fellow Europeans.

This deal is an exclusive partnership between ESPN and Microsoft, offering live and on demand sports events – Football, Basketball, NBA, MLB, Soccer (European Football) – the works. This is a killer deal. Xbox Kinect allow you to control the games you watch via voice command and gestures.

The sports you want, when you want it. In America…

E3 2010: Codename Kingdoms by Crytek for Xbox 360

Jens Erik Vaaler — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 18:00:21 +0000

New exclusive Crytek game shown off during Microsoft’s E3 press conference:

Codename Kingdoms

It appears to be a game about gladiators, and it’s an exclusive partnership with Crytek. During the video shown off for Codename Kingdoms it was difficult to tell if the people in the trailers were CG or actual people with a visual filter draped over them.

Video Games | Kingdoms | E3 2010: Debut Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

This could very well be the best looking game of 2011, and we’re very excited to see what it will all entail once the game hits.

E3 2010: Call of Duty: Black Ops release date confirmed

Jens Erik Vaaler — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 17:43:06 +0000

Call of Duty: Black Ops is now confirmed for 11/09/10 by Microsoft’s Don Mattrick during Microsoft’s E3 press conference. The game looks incredible, running on what appears to be a modified Modern Warfare engine.

Microsoft and Acitivision have made an exclusive multi year agreement. All COD Map Pakc and Add-ons will launch first on Xbox going forward 3 years. PS3 and PC owners will have to wait for the map packs. Strange how Microsoft is ignoring the PC when it was technically the platform they started with before the Xbox took off.

E310: Xbox 360 Media Briefing Live Blog

Alex Donaldson — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 14:46:16 +0000

We’re live at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2010 covering all the breaking news and all the exciting developments – and we’re Live today at the Microsoft Xbox 360 E3 2010 Media Briefing, where Project Natal will be elaborated on Rareware will be reborn and Gears of War 3 will be properly revealed. At least, we think so – they’re just our guesses!

Check out our LiveBlog below, and get involved by sending us messages and comments!

Xbox 360 E310 Media Briefing

Microsoft’s Project Natal officially named “Kinect”

Kyle Gaddo — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 05:45:11 +0000

Well, it’s official. Project Natal is now known as “Kinect.”

An Italian ad leaked it, USA Today confirmed it, and went on to talk about some of the games that Kinect would have, and here we are bringing you the news.

The following list of games has been confirmed for Kinect:

Kinectimals: It lets you train and play with 20 different virtual cats, including a lion, cheetah and tiger. Me-ow~

Joyride, a racing game, lets players use their hands to hold an imaginary steering wheel — pull your hands toward you and push back out for an acceleration boost — and their bodies to execute jumps and tricks. You’ll probably look ridiculous playing this.

Kinect Sports: has boxing, bowling, beach volleyball, track and field, soccer and table tennis, and is very reminiscent of Wii Sports.

Kinect Adventures includes a river-raft time trial and obstacle course, playable by up to four players. On the raft, playing as a duo, you and a partner must lean one way or another to steer. Jumping helps the raft reach special areas for extra points. This game will help you look dorky with your friends.

Dance Central will have you dancing. Brought to you by MTV Games.

There’s also a Star Wars game in development. The Kinect event shows a battle against Darth Vader where you can use a lightsaber and Force powers.

Marc Whitten namedrops Nintendo by saying they got the motion control bug into everyone.

“They have done some amazing things and brought new people to the category. This is fundamentally different. It’s (about) my body being the controller (and) being able to communicate with just my voice to the system.”

That Star Wars game sounds pretty rad, but unless everything else turns out excellent, it’ll just be more Wii games without a Wii controller to waggle around.

Pre-E3 Rumor #36734: Harmonix working on a Natal dance title

Kyle Gaddo — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 05:58:22 +0000

Well, the internet world is abuzz with rumors regarding E3. And who can say what’s what?

But according to Game Informer, it looks like Harmonix is licensing a bunch of “dance” songs to help fuel the rumor that they’re developing a dance title for Microsoft’s Natal.

All the licensed songs seem a bit out of place for Rock Band 3, but it’s possible that they could end up being downloadable content as well.

The songs selected may have something to do with the whole keyboard fiasco with the Green Day: Rock Band demo, especially with the whole synth aspect.

I guess we’ll find out after E3.

Yes, I know this is days old. No, I don’t care. I wanna talk about it now.

Allard and Bach leave Microsoft

Jens Erik Vaaler — Tue, 25 May 2010 18:54:34 +0000

Microsoft is currently undergoing a “massive shakeup” in their Entertainment & Devices Devision, resulting in the departure of president Robbie Bach.

According to Kotaku, J. Allard, one of the “top men behind the Xbox and Xbox 360″, is also leaving Microsoft alongside Bach. Bach has been working with Microsoft for 22 years, and is retiring from the company to spend more time with his family, and devote time to non-profit organisations. Allard will remain on in an advisory role.

Bach, Allard and Ed Fries were instrumental in bringing Microsoft into the videogame business. Back and Allard were the ones to introduce the Xbox 360 to the general gaming public at E3 2005.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will stay in his position. Don Mattrick, who leads Microsoft’s interactive entertainment business, and Andy Lees, who leads Microsoft’s mobile communications business will report directly to Ballmer starting July.

Swedish retailers reveal Project Natal pricing?

Herman S. Lilleng — Mon, 17 May 2010 08:34:16 +0000

Three game retailers in Sweden have all made a listing for Project Natal, with the preliminary pricing of 1499kr. The three are cdon, Webhallen and Game.

While this price converts to around 200$, it’s important to note that the usual way of pricing here in Scandinavia is to add a zero to the dollar price. So a 60$ game will usually cost 600kr. This means that if this price is accurate, the most likely price would be 150$.

The price seems awfully high, which makes it suspicious. for 200kr more you can buy an Xbox 360 Arcade bundle on the same sites. What lends it more credence though, is that all three sites are independent of each other, yet lists the same price. So unless one had it first and the others copied it, then they seem to have a common source.

One of the retailers lists it as coming out in fall 2010, while another has October 2010, which is the current rumor. Two of them have a disclaimer that all info is preliminary.

What do you think? Early leak, or just a grab for preorders?

Could motion controls cause a market crash?

Jens Erik Vaaler — Tue, 11 May 2010 17:43:29 +0000

I read a lot of articles on gaming in order to gain inspiration and quite possibly pick up some tips on how to improve my own writing. And a lot of these articles inspire me to do things like the Evening Topic series, but this turned out a little longer than I first intended. I love discussing video games, and I love hearing other people’s opinions, so if you agree or disagree, feel free to have your say in the comments.

Earlier this week I logged onto GamesRadar to see if I could find anything interesting and came across this article: “Could motion controls cause a game market crash?”. To summarize, Associate Editor Matthew Keast is expressing his concerns about the current me-too attitude of developers and publishers alike when it comes to motion controls. The Wii store shelves are flooded with crap shovelware games, because it’s easy to simply throw out a half-assed game in order to make a quick buck (I’m paraphrasing of course). Keast’s concern lies with the fact that Sony and Microsoft are joining the fray with their own motion control peripherals, which, for now, don’t seem to have a lot of great games being developed for them.

In 1983 the US video game market crashed because there was no quality control. No one, except those reading game magazines, knew which games were good and which were bad, so the market slowly became saturated with bad games and new ways to play them. Eventually, no one but the core audiences continued purchasing games because of it. Could the same happen today? In some ways I’d like to say no, but Keast brings up a valid point: what happens when Microsoft and Sony lower their standards because the free flowing cash of casual gamers become too big a temptation? The switch from a default gamepad to a very nonstandard way of controlling video games is a lot to take in, even for experienced developers.

An article in this month’s Edge Magazine discusses many of the same points I have broached here. It too points to the fact that new control schemes will result in a lot of simple and easy games during the peripheral’s launch stage, because developers need to test the waters, so to speak. This is especially true for Natal, which foregos the traditional gamepad completely, though from what I understand Microsoft will combine the two in the future.

The article also discusses Move’s similarities to the Wii’s motion controls:

“Move offers many publishers a quicker and cheaper route to market than Natal. However, this is likely to have a knock-on effect on innovation and originality of content. Publishers will understandably be seeking to port existing games from the Wii or to add motion control features to existing franchises. Again, without an accurate understanding of exactly how many Move-enabled PS3s will be active in the market it is hard for publishers to make big bets on the technology at launch. As a result I expect thirdparty Move content to play safe and be fairly basic in design”

And I think that last point is a bit of a clincher. The Wii comes with motion controls built in, meaning Nintendo can at least accurately know how many Wiis are in active use. Microsoft and Sony have no guarantees how many people will actually buy Natal or the PS Move, let alone use them. Personally, as a core gamer, I have no interest in Natal, at least not at the moment. Milo and Kate is certainly an interesting project, but making it come to perfect fruition will be difficult.

Milo and Kate, a neat proof of concept, but not really a “game”

Yet there’s also the PS2 argument to consider. When the PS2 was at the top of the market, it too had its fair share of casual games crudding up its library. But what we have to remember is the fact that the PS2 had great third-party support. At the time of writing, great third party games aren’t the Wii’s strongest suit. Mature rated games also sold great on the PS2, because it was still considered a “hardcore” gaming platform. With the Wii, however, an M rating seems to be something akin to a death sentence, even if a lot of core gamers still enjoy using the console. Madworld sold about 125.000 units as of August 2009, and SEGA opted out of pursuing more M rated games for the Wii. Yet there’s always a long tail connected to such games when the price drops.

It’s a very vicious cycle, when you think about it. Gamers are decrying the Wii’s lack of third-party support, while the third-party supporters are decrying the lack of sales. Yes, there’s a boatload of bad Wii games out there, but there are a lot of truly great Wii games too, games like No More Heroes, Red Steel 2, Super Mario Galaxy, the Metroid Prime Trilogy, Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles to name a few. Capcom is still a staunch supporter of the Wii, and Nintendo, despite recently announcing Wii Party, know how to create great games for their given platform.

Project Natal and the PS Move probably won’t have the same problem with an M rating, as the Xbox 360 and PS3 didn’t market themselves as “family platforms” from the beginning. The Wii wanted to redefine how we play games, and who plays games, which it has for better or worse. When Madworld was released for the Wii, it caused major uproar because it wasn’t “family friendly”. The PS3 and Xbox 360 haven’t got those same limitations.

Family friendly? Sure! Fun for the core crowd? Probably not

Yet this could also make or break their upcoming motion peripherals. Of the two peripherals currently nearing launch, only the PS3 seems to be close to motion controls both the core and the casual gamer can use. For now I can’t picture the core gamer using Project Natal as anything but an exercise tool or a fun little time waster.

Will we see a lot of shovelware for Project Natal and PlayStation Move? Possibly. Sony is rolling ahead with “Wii Sports HARDCOOORE!!!! Edition” and SOCOM, already a very niche series on its own, and Project Natal renders the bottoms of Avatar shoes (Bam! There it is!) and let’s you play a 3D Breakout clone. With Natal the obvious question is how the hell do you “do” games other than casual games? Shooters, platformers and action games in general won’t really work. And the PlayStation move is hardly anything but a glorified Wiimote with a light bulb, but with more powerful hardware backing it.

I have nothing against motion controls, but the current flux of poorly designed video games is too big to ignore. And with the coming Waggle War (thanks, Game Overthinker), I’m worried we might be seeing even more of them. Obviously core gamers will still buy and play video games, and while the market might not crash, it could also end up being more hindered than helped by the Waggle War.

The Gaming Vault » Microsoft

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