Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays – did you get what you wanted this year?
Let us know what you got from your loved ones.
We have a few fun reward tiers – our most hardcore fans will definitely want an MP3 of one of the crew or any of the crew recording a voice mail or answer machine outgoing message, or the entire podcast bantering for a few moments. There’s also the requisite T-shirt, which will have the awesome Gaming Podcast logo.
Bethesda Softworks vice president of marketing Pete Hines is critzing publishers and developers who shoehorn multiplayer into their games that doing such a thing is “a waste of time” and advises, “Just drop it, don’t bother…it’ll make for a worse game.”
In an interview with Next Gen BIZ, Hines states that using online multiplayer as a tool to prevent used game trade-ins and rental simply doesn’t work, and robs developers of valuable man-hours.
Hines stated:
“(People ask us) for a game like Skyrim or Prey 2, why doesn’t it have multiplayer? Well, our question is always the opposite when we talk to a developer. If you’re doing multiplayer, why are you doing multiplayer? What are you trying to accomplish?
“If you’re doing it just to check a box or because every other publisher says you’ve got to have multiplayer, then just drop it, don’t bother, it’s a waste of time, a giant distraction and it’ll make for a worse overall game.
“We want the best game possible. If that’s a singleplayer game that’s 15 to 20 hours, then make that! Don’t waste your time on features that don’t make the game better.”
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Prey 2 are two Bethesda properties that will lack multiplayer, but one of the tools to encourage games to keep both games will be downlodable content and, even more important, good communications with the game communities and nurturing the fandom for both games.
Once upon a time, Activision Blizzards CEO Bobby Kotick kicked a few franchises to the curb: Riddick and Ghostbusters. No doubt, this was a result of the Activision and Blizzard merger requiring some resources to the merged together while others were cut from the lineup. Phil Harrison, the new big suit at Atari/Infogrames has raised these little birds from the ashes with a dream to build them into 100-million dollar franchises.
While Bobby Kotick said the titles, “don’t have the potential to be exploited every year on every platform with clear sequel potential and have the potential to become $100 million dollar franchises,” Phil Harrision sees it as a personal challenge to prove him wrong.
“What Bobby, perhaps unhelpfully said, was that those games were franchises which wouldn’t make $100m of revenue and generate sequels. If that’s his benchmark, then fine — and we’d love to aspire to the same benchmarks. But you know what? I would love to turn Ghostbusters into a $100m franchise, just to prove him wrong.” (1up)
In many ways, this is the difference in attitudes from a large firm compared to a smaller firm with strong goals and a vision for success. Activision Blizzard is big now, perhaps the biggest publisher in the industry, they can’t be bothered with minuscule 80-million dollar franchises. Others, like Atari, strive to take a title from nothing to something of greatness. Granted, Atari’s failed in a lot of franchises, but with their new ex-Sony executive behind the helm things could turn around and this might be the first step.
Most of the best game franchises in existance today started from nothing but a dream. Big publishers don’t have time to dream, they’re too busy making money off the fanboys of their current franchises.
Sony’s been putting a lot of effort (read: money) into the PlayStation 3 product line with very little impact in the market. They’ve got this “10 year plan” but haven’t really executed a strong plan for their first two years of said plan. Sony’s plan seems to be “outlive the competition’s technology” while all of its competition stomps on their sales and market share with older and a bit “outdated” products.
Thus far there have been five spins of the PlayStation 3 hardware with price cuts only coming as a result of a “fire sale” of old hardware revisions. Sony, like many, believes the Nintendo Wii isn’t a direct competitor in their space; the outstanding sales of the Wii probably haven’t impacted the PlayStation 3 sales too much. The Xbox 360, however, has definitely cut them deep in all regions of sales.
Microsoft has built some unexpected momentum in Japan with Square-Enix making them a few console seller titles and the price cuts in Europe boosted sales over 200% all while the US continues to buy into the 360 hardware despite its most obvious red-ringing flaws. Microsoft has great partnerships with some fabulous companies, Bungie and Epic for instance, to build them exclusives that move even more 360 units.
Motorstorm is one of the PlayStation 3’s best games, selling over 3-million copies. While, as of January 2008, Halo 3 sold 8.1 million units for the Xbox 360. Now, Metal Gear Solid 4 has sold roughly 3.94 million copies since August of 2008 yet unsubstantiated rumors exist stating MGS4 could make its way to the 360. Combined awesome titles for the PlayStation 3 may not even exceed one of the competitors best selling products; where is the PS3 excitement?
I did get what I wanted, because I love money.