Weekend Reading: When am I going to get to play b3yond?

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With this new generation of consoles now all released, there are going to be a whole host of new expectations awaiting them. Sony has given us raw power, Nintendo has given us a new way to play, and Microsoft has given us a truly solid overall console. Now with these tools, it’s up to the publishers: Sega, Atari, EA, Ubisoft, and all the others, to give us a library of games to play. In this new generation, I don’t want it to be more of the same: Madden, Final Fantasy, Halo, etc. Rather, I’m looking for a whole new experience, something that truly is “playing beyond” my normal experience. Within this article, I’ll go into my expectations for each console over the next couple of years.

Nintendo and its Wii/DS: I really do have to applaud Nintendo for the work that they’ve been doing by going in a different direction with gameplay, while still creating games that appeal to those who aren’t looking for a lot of innovation in their games. Their “Touch Generations” label gives a whole new experience to gameplay, by providing something that’s fun, addicting, and easy enough for anyone to play. Just look at Elite Beat Agents, it takes a new twist to the music genre by providing a unique play experience that is truly unique to the DS. At the same time, though, there are games lie Twilight Princess and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance for the Wii, where the game play is enhanced by having the Wiimote, but it doesn’t make it all that much of a new experience.

The Wii offers a lot for developers and publishers to put out really unique games that we won’t see anywhere else. Sure, games like Katamari Damacy won’t be able to work on the system, but it seems as though there will be enough games like Rayman, Elebits, and Cooking Mama to keep the Wii very fresh, although not with many killer apps. Nonetheless, I think the Wii will have a large enough library of innovative games that will be enough to sustain themselves in the market.

There also exists a great likelihood that there won’t be very many good ports for the Wii, with the controls feeling really tacked on and gimmicky. My biggest concern about the Wii is that there is no room on the Wii for RPGs. In my opinion, it would be just too damn boring to play a traditional RPG on the Wiimote. Sure, I could tilt it on its side, but I see that as being a great waste of the controller, unless they include certain movements as macros. This is going to hurt Nintendo greatly, I think, and they’ll be facing an uphill battle to major success 3-4 years down the road.

Sony and its PS3/PSP: First, to address the PSP: I expect nothing from it, except to go crawl in a hole and die. Moving on. From Sony’s giant black behemoth, I am looking towards this system truly being the one for RPGs. Sony has had one of the most prevalent ties to the RPG market over everyone else, that I can’t really fathom the 360 taking that audience away from them. Most of the highly anticipated games on PS3 are RPGs: White Knight Story and Final Fantasy XIII, for example. The PS3’s library will probably look similar current one, with a lot of RPGs, a decent amount of action games, and a hell of a lot of multi-platform games that will suck. Overall, their game library is going to be fairly unimpressive, but I think offering PS1 games on the Playstation Store at a price that’s cheaper than SNES games is a definite attraction for me, actually. I hope that they’ll be able to develop it into something that can rival Xbox Live, but they’ll need to hire someone really innovative to manage the Playstation Store, which I hope Sony will be smart enough to do.

As for the Blu-Ray player in the PS3, I’d like to think that it won’t adversely affect the system, but I’m having a harder and harder time arguing that to myself. My feeling is that it’ll provide the opportunity for a lot more content to be put into the game, but I have a feeling that the space is going to just be used for more cutscenes or be filled up with pointless items. What would be nice is if they filled it up with extra features, like interviews with the staff, like how the concept of the game came about, inspiration for certain scenes, etc.

Sony won’t go out of business or anything from the PS3, there’s no way. I mean, look at Sony’s arrogance that they’ve been showing, there’s no way that they’ll go out of the console business, but it’s impossible for them to take the lead in the foreseeable future. They’d have to develop a huge line of killer apps. I expect Sony to take 3rd place in this race for the next couple of years, and then overtaking the Wii in the last year or two of the system’s life.

Microsoft and its 360: Now, I have not been a fan of Microsoft and the Xbox since it launched. I mean, I refused to look at anything Microsoft in the news for a while. At this point, though, I really see the 360 becoming the next PS2. What changed my mind wasn’t playing Gears of War, though. Rather, it was when I played a demo of Lost Planet the other day. The game really blew me away in terms of its innovative play style. Like the PS2 being carried along by strong RPGs, I think the 360 will be carried along by a long string of good 3rd person action games, like Lost Planet and Gears of War. Over time, I’m sure the market will become saturated with those games, much like FPS games have been, but by that time, there will be other games that will come out for the 360 that will be just fine.

Their Marketplace is actually in the worst shape, I feel. The games they have on there aren’t “must haves,” unlike the Virtual Console and Playstation Store, which can offer games like Earthbound and Vagrant Story to their audiences. Downloadable content like movies and TV shows isn’t exactly a bad idea, but I don’t think I’ll want to be paying for it. I’m looking at the XNA development kit to really take off after a while, with some innovative games available for downloading and critiquing, so that it might end up being a recruitment arena for developers and publishers, picking up designers and programmers in hopes of bringing out a really innovative game. Zune compatibility will be nice, but I don’t know if the Zune is worth it yet, since I haven’t gotten my hands on it to play around with and see it in person.

In the end, I think Microsoft is going to have a hard time screwing up their position. Really, if they manage to put some thought into their acquisition process and actively pursue exclusive titles, they’ll really pull ahead. Their initial launch really screwed them over, though, leaving a sour taste in some gamers’ mouths, but they’re really working to improve that image, and if the console drops in price right after the new year (or right before Christmas), they’ll probably be looking at another million units sold, above and beyond their goal (which, at this point, I actually expect them to meet). I’ll expect Microsoft to be living high and mighty in first place this generation.


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