Sony's last best effort to doom the PS3: super-expensive games?

Good lord. After all this, Sony couldn't possibly do anything more to handicap the PlayStation 3, could they?

Oh wait: How about hinting at $80 games:

PSM: Can we expect PS3 games to be priced in the same range as Xbox 360 titles?

KH: Generally Speaking, over the past twelve years or so, there has been a consumer expectation that disc-based games are maybe $59 on the high end to $39 on the low end. So, what I can say now is, I think it would be a bit of a stretch to think that we could suddenly turn around and say "PS3 Games now $99.99." I don't think consumers expect software pricing to suddenly double. So, the quick answer is that we want to make it as affordable as possible, knowing that there is a set consumer expectation for what software has cost for the past twelve years. That's kind of the best answer I can give you. So, if it becomes a bit higher than $59, don't ding me, but, again, I don't expect it to be $100.

Here's the proper answer: "Our games will be priced to be competitive with the Xbox 360. That is, $60 for premium titles, $50 for in-house games, and $40 for budget titles." If they can't get something so simple, so obvious, correct, what can they get right? (Hat tip: Kotaku.)

Biggest dancer nerd ever

Check out this amazing video of some dude busting out these amazing dance moves on Pump It Up, a Dance Dance Revolution knockoff. I think he's actually hitting the right spots on the game mat even while he's going nuts. (Hat tip: Kotaku.)

Sony wants to sell Blu-ray, we want to play video games: A primer

Sam Kennedy, 1up's editor, has a long blog post about Sony's disarray and the possibility that the PlayStation3 will tank. It's a good post, and he works out a lot of stuff that's in his mind. But it also shows how narrowly the video game press has been looking at the console wars.

When he gets to talking about the price, Kennedy writes "It also seems like there's a bit too much riding on Blu-Ray," and later adds that "it's almost as if Sony are completely banking on brand loyalty and Blu-Ray." Whoa, wait a sec: He's just getting around to figuring this out now? Of course there's too much riding on Blu-ray. Blu-ray is the sole reason Sony is stumbling so badly.

This started to become clear in January, when Next Generation ran a story on Sony's plans for PS3:

This play [including Blu-ray] potentially represents Sony's most important move in its entire history. Imagine; a royalty for Sony on every single DVD sold between 2006 and 2012 or thereabouts. ... Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities says, "A lot of people in the games media are missing the picture here. This isn't about Sony versus Microsoft. This is about Sony versus Toshiba. Everything Sony does regarding PlayStation 3 is colored by that fact."

Then in February, Merril Lynch put out a widely publicized report that estimated each PS3 cost Sony $800 to manufacture. The big story there was that each Blu-ray drive added $350 -- basically the price of an Xbox 360!! -- to the cost of making a PS3. As I wrote at the time,

Still, it's a big bet and sort of an inexplicable one. Sony is miles ahead of Microsoft in the current generation. The Xbox 360 has had a disastrous launch, and barely made a dent in the PS3 hype. Subtract the $350 for the Blu-Ray drive, and Sony would only be spending $450 per unit -- then with a $399 price tag Sony basically wouldn't be taking a loss given accessory sales, or could easily afford the loss to include a hard drive and still undercut Microsoft with a $299 price. Either the mother ship badly wants Blu-Ray to win, or they're a little too scared of Microsoft.

It turned out to be the former: As a New York Times article (no longer available free) about the next-generation DVD war started to make clear, Sony was basically betting the company on Blu-ray. For anyone familiar with Sony's recent failures with proprietary technology, this did not inspire hope. I wrote:

I'm worried -- and all gaming fans should be -- that Sony has chosen the PS3 to make its last great proprietary stand. Sony had to back down on its original DVD format and join a rival group. The 90s explosion of cheap, high-quality electronics from elsewhere in Asia made Sony's brand-name edge moot. The company missed out on a whole new generation of consumer electronics when Apple succeeded with the iPod and iTunes. The flat-panel TV boom has made Sharp and Samsung as prominent as Sony. The PSP's proprietary UMD format is fizzling.
...
In a typically astute New Yorker column about Sony's proprietary vanity, James Surowiecki wrote: "Ultimately, Sony doesn’t have much choice: it will either change or continue to come up short." The Blu-Ray bet shows Sony is not yet ready to change. This might be the final time the company has a choice in the matter.

In March, 1up's Jeremy Parish wrote critically of Sony's PlayStation 3 bumbling, but didn't mention the Blu-ray factor. Shortly after, Sony announced the obvious: that PS3 was delayed until November. Right around then, Hollywood Reporter ran a story about the failure of Sony's proprietary UMD movies (the discs that run on the PSP); coming on the heels of a similar Variety story, this didn't inspire confidence in Blu-ray, a far more important proprietary Sony format.

In April, a European Sony official supposedly slipped and said the PlayStation 3 would launch at 499 to 599 euros, which translates to roughly $600 to $750. Sony backtracked, but I said at the time that it didn't matter; there was no way the price would top $499. I was wrong about that, but because of this:

So Sony has to take one of two bets. Either consumers will flock to a $600-$700 machine, or Blu-ray will win the DVD format war and eventually make up for the huge loss Sony will take on each PS3. No company worth its marketing VPs would take the first bet. And only a company so obsessed with past proprietary victories that it ignores a decade of consumer electronics trends would take the second bet.

I didn't think the Blu-ray problem would override their sense as a consumer technology company. But it did.

Then came E3, and the announcement that the PS3 would cost $500 and $600. Kennedy writes, "Is the PlayStation brand worth $200 (or $400) more to people? ... really, a lot of this comes down to the games. .... People are looking for: A. games that are exclusive to the PS3 (come on Sony, start talking about stuff like Soul Calibur 4 or World of Warcraft!), B. games that look or play $200 better." (emphasis added) The real problem with the $600 price tag is that, because of Blu-ray, there aren't going to be games that look $200 better. That is, the price difference between PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 has nothing to do with video games:

At least at first, the PS3 games probably won't look so much better that people think "ah, that's why I paid $600." People won't think that because they're not paying $600 for movie-quality graphics. They're paying $300 or $350 for graphics that might be a bit better than Xbox 360's, and $250-$300 for a Blu-ray player. That's something video game buyers haven't had to contemplate before.

Kennedy's prescription is for Sony "to make PlayStation cool again." But that would mean they'd have to start thinking about the system as a game machine. Or a game machine and a home entertainment hub. Or that plus a new way to easily and cheaply download music, TV, and movies to the living room. Or whatever.

But Sony as a whole isn't thinking about the PlayStation 3 in any of those ways. If they were, they'd have a coherent plan and timetable and vision and not be stumbling from announcement to announcement, having to defend the $600 price tag in increasingly ludicrous ways. Sony is thinking about the PS3 as a means to win the next DVD format war. It's time to stop asking Sony whether they're scared of the 360 and Wii, or why the PS3 costs $600. Or rather, it's time to stop asking those questions free of context. It's time to start asking: Why are you betting so much of the company's future on a possibly unnecessary format war, and why are you holding the PlayStation 3 hostage to this decision?

Let's play Princess Tomato in Salad Kingdom!!!

Game Revolution has a hilarious list up of the 50 worst game names of all time. (Hat tip: Kotaku.) My faves:
Sticky Balls
70's Robot Anime Geppy-X: The Super Boosted Armor (that's a Japanese game, if you couldn't figure it out)
Ninja Hamster
Divine Divinity
Rosco McQueen: Firefighter Extreme
No One Can Stop Mr. Domino
Nuts & Milk

And we wonder why so many video game companies go out of business.

Game stocks tank; nobody does anything about it

The New York Times reports that in the last month and a half, video game companies have lost $6 billion in market capitalization, a 25 percent decrease. The story talks about the problems with a transition to newer consoles, and the rising cost of game development, and everything else we've been hearing since the Xbox 360 came out. What's annoying is that, other than a quick nod to a distant future of full game downloads, nobody in the article talks about doing anything other than waiting for the new systems to come out and hoping for another boom.

The great problem for video game companies is that they rely almost exclusively on one revenue stream: selling video games. That sounds reasonable -- they're video game companies, after all -- but it's a narrow business model that's probably unsustainable. Movie box office returns and TV ratings get a lot of press, but the movie and TV companies make most of their money from licensing, syndication, DVD sales -- not from ticket sales or people watching a show on first broadcast. Video games need to start finding other ways to make money.

The most obvious thing to do is put every old game online and make it downloadable to the 360 and PlayStation 3, when that gets released. Make a video game iTunes, and start earning some money from the back catalog. Nintendo is planning to do this with the Wii's Virtual Console, but Microsoft and Sony should make deals to host as many non-Nintendo old-school games as possible. The development costs shouldn't be scary since it's all online, and it's otherwise pure profit. The games are already there, just sitting in their old cartridges gathering dust and making no money for anyone. Put them online, and watch the royalty checks come in.

Stay tuned for the next poorly written episode

Clive Thompson has a column up at Wired about the potential for episodic video games. He says TV is a better model for video games than movies, for a host of reasons.

I think he's right for the most part. It's much easier to digest a five-hour game than a 40-hour one. Developers can improve graphics and physics as they go along, rather than waiting until the whole thing is perfect. Gameplay can change from episode to episode.

But in terms of story, episodic games won't see the benefits of serial narrative until the writing and acting drastically improve. Thompson writes:

Dickens soon discovered that he could now do innovative things with his story. His characters' personalities could be developed not through single, central scenes, but through a dozen glimpses over a long stretch of time. Serial narrative also changed the way audiences relate to characters. When we focus on movie characters for two solid hours, they become epic heroes; when we encounter TV characters every week for years on end, they become old friends. There's an intimacy to episodic stories, and it's all the more intensified in a game because you literally go through hell with these folks.

The problem is that in most video games, characters' personalities aren't developed at all. And when they are, it's via cliched dialogue or plot points. I haven't played Half Life 2 and Episode 1 -- which he says feature "Alyx, one of the spunkiest and best-acted virtual characters I've ever seen" -- but except maybe for Psychonauts, I've never played a video game that came close to giving me a character whom I wanted to keep spending time with, like I do with Vince Chase or Homer or Borat.

Because they don't have as high costs or the pressure of a release date, episodic games would be a great way for developers to experiment with improving the writing and narrative. But the nature and structure of episodic content won't automatically solve the underlying problems.

Played any of the PlayStation 1 games lately?

Next Generation has a good story up on whether backward compatibility -- the ability to play an old console's games on a newer machine -- matters, or whether it's just a good PR move that helps reassure parents dropping hundreds on a new system (and placate hardcore gamers).

I've criticized Microsoft in the past for its limited backward compatibility on the Xbox 360, but the truth is it really doesn't matter that much in the end. I don't think most people go back to several-year-old games that often. I know I don't.

At some point, Microsoft and Sony should focus on getting all their old games online rather than on the backward compatibility. PlayStation 2 and Xbox games are still too big too host online, but they should start figuring out how to solve that problem. Nintendo's Virtual Console is going to be great for Wii because the games are right there on the Wii; it may seem like a small matter, but going back to your closet and finding the old games and putting in the discs probably is more a barrier than we think to replaying old games. It'll be even better for Nintendo because of the revenue it'll bring in, especially once enough games are up for a long tail effect to kick in.

That's what Microsoft and Sony need for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Having lots of old Greatest Hits titles available and playable is nice, but the future is having inexpensive access to everything at one time.

Break your new game laws, before they disappear

So Louisiana has enacted a law prohibiting the sale or rental of violent video games to minors. At this point they clearly aren't even trying; the law is so obviously unconstitutional that this is just posturing.

The law prohibits the sale or rental of a game if:

(1) The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the video or computer game, taken as a whole, appeals to the minor's morbid interest in violence. (2) The game depicts violence in a manner patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community with respect to what is suitable for minors. (3) The game, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.

Every similar law has been found unconstitutional because violent content is not considered obscenity by the courts, and therefore is protected speech under the First Amendment. Most laws try to get around this by claiming that violent games cause harm to the community; this argument falls flat because the courts have repeatedly found studies purporting to link violent games and violent behavior are worthless. But the Louisiana law doesn't even bother making this claim! Nor does it deal with sexually explicit games, which could be restricted under the First Amendment (though most video games would not be explicit enough to be restricted, a law restricting sexually explicit games is not on its face unconstitutional).

Also including that third part of the test (if the game lacks literary or artistic merit) is a further mistake, since every single court ruling striking down video game laws has clearly established that this is not a valid test for restricting video game sales. Here's one:

"If the First Amendment is versatile enough to "shield (the) painting of Jackson Pollock, music of Arnold Schoenberg, or Jabberwocky verse of Lewis Carroll,' - we see no reason why the pictures, graphic design, concept art, sounds, music, stories, and narrative present in video games are not entitled to a similar protection. The mere fact that they appear in a novel medium is of no legal consequence."

For more on why these laws are doomed to fail, see this essay and these posts.

Stupid game glitches!

1up has a good little piece up about why do the same problems persist from game to game, system to system, generation to generation. They talk to game developers to see why artificial intelligence stays weak and the game slows down or gets choppy.

Nintendo's polish

1up has a feature up on the Wii, with interviews and top 5 reasons why Wii will/won't succeed. One thing that really comes through in the interviews, as with all the recent interviews with Nintendo folks, is how polished and ready the company is.

Sony is very publicly flailing about and seems to have nearly lost control of the PlayStation 3; each new delay of Blu-ray players and on-the-fly decision like the PS3 motion-sensing controller makes you wonder if they have any real business plan at all. But Nintendo has a clear vision and a clear plan, and they're very good at articulating both and following through.

That creates a positive snowball effect. The built-in speaker in the Wii controller and the always-on function -- the system will be connected to the Internet and can download stuff even while it's turned off -- aren't really big deals, but because Nintendo has successfully planted its storyline even minor things like these can be turned into notable examples of its innovation, polish, and grand plan.

I want it I want it I want it

Check out this awesome Guitar Hero controller. I can see Prince playing with this one.

And speaking of Guitar Hero, GameSpot has video of Guitar Hero II up. New songs previewed: Van Halen's You Really Got Me cover; Who Was in My Room Last Night by Butthole Surfers; John the Fisherman by Primus; and YYZ by Rush. None of those particularly excites me, but I didn't love a lot of the songs in the original game. I'm sure there'll be plenty to like in the final lineup.

He's a DDR wizard...

There has to be a twist. A DDR wizard, got such a supple ... uh ... dance step. (Hat tip: Kotaku)