AdAge quote on WiiU from Nov 19, 2012

Since the WiiU launched in the US on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, lots of people are paying attention though it won't get the same attention as say a new iPhone or iPad launch.  Still, it's a big deal in the games industry and a very big deal for Nintendo.  To that end, AdAge spoke to a bunch of analysts on the subject, and I was one.

The Wii U launches with 23 games, and while Nintendo franchise and kid-friendly games such as "Mario" and "Nintendo Land" figure prominently, Nintendo is offering more M-rated games for the first time. Titles such as "Assassin's Creed III," "Call of Duty: Black Ops II," "Batman Arkham City" and even an original first-person shooter called "ZombiU" from Ubisoft lend plenty of violence and gore to the launch title lineup. "That tells you that they want those hardcore gamers too," said Jeremy Miller, analyst with DFC Intelligence. "They're saying we're not just a kids and family platform."

Later the reporter for AdAge asked me about software pricing, which is a big issue for the WiiU:

"Part of the problem is that while $60 may be worth the same or less than $50 in 1997, or even $50 in 2004, people don't care about that. They just know there are a lot of other options for gaming that are a lot cheaper," Mr. Miller said, referring to the influx of casual gaming on tablets and smartphones since the original Wii launch.

Black Ops 2 villain trailer

Yesterday Activision released a new trailer for Black Ops 2, revealing the villain.  Have a watch:

Some observations:

1) The narrator general guy you see in the beginning...I can't recall who that actor is but I recognize him so my first thought is "there is something familiar about this that I can't quite put my finger on."  So I guess I'm a little intrigued by that as an opener.

2) Villain is portrayed as the leader of the 99%...so that's topical and mainstream media/consumers have a general awareness of that. Also does not sell me on the game but again it's something familiar.

3) From the co-writer of The Dark Knight Rises?  Well...yeah I think many many "core" and "mainstream" and "casual" gamers have a good awareness of that movie and I think many of them can't wait to see it.  Ok...so now they are trying to hit up on that in the week the actual movie comes out.  That's a smart move from a marketing perspective even if vocal core online trolls will flame Activision for it.  They are already flaming Activision for everything even when a good % of them will buy the next Call of Duty anyway.  So, go for it Activision...tie your game to The Dark Knight Rises somehow.  You've got the cash and the balls, no one is going to stop you.  And if David S. Goyer actually improved the game's writing, it's hard to argue against that.

4) Music for the game by Trent Reznor?  Well...he's possibly my favorite musical mind in history and pretty much everything he's done I like.  In the trailer there is some piano music that very much reminds me of his musical work in NIN as well as other movie/game soundtracks he's composed for.  I can't argue with this either as I have huge respect for him and I suppose it may contribute to the tone of the game.   So that could be another good thing that could make the game better.

5) Notice the press quotes are from USA Today and Forbes.  These are major mainstream and business print/online outlets, not pure gamer press or big gaming sites like Gamespot or IGN.

6) And then at the end they've got the call to action with the pre-order offer...do it now and get Nuketown map free.

So, what does this all mean?  It means Activision is going for the big numbers again (obviously) and they recognize they have to keep pushing craftier, Batmany-tie-in-anyway-anyhowy-even-if-people-will-call-it-cheapier, Trent Reznorier, mainstreamier, pre-orderier -- you get the idea.  But notice this trailer is not incredibly controversial like the Hitman Trailer from E3.  Whether you like Call of Duty anymore or not, the trailer has a tight narrative, shows only in-game footage, has nothing really cringe-worthy in the voiceover (not all trailers can claim that) and has an actual tone of desperation and treachery.

Finally, it's still got the BWWWAAAAAHHH only as if someone imagined how Trent Reznor might make it sound.

Nimblebit vs. Zynga

First, the background, and let me quote Industrygamers:

Last week, Zynga launched Dream Heights on the Canadian version Apple App Store.  NimbleBit, developer of the iOS hit Tiny Tower, noticed that the game looked really familiar.  In response, NimbleBit’s Ian Marsh posted the following image via Twitter yesterday.

Second, some thoughts:
One way to think about Zynga's game, given the assumption it is the exact same gameplay just with different art direction, is what does it cost to play?  If I want to get a certain amount of enjoyment out of it in a certain amount of time, how much would I have to spend? Then ask the same for Tiny Tower. Then one game might be a better "value" to the group of consumers who are actually willing to spend. Or maybe they are exactly the same? Sure, many people don't spend any money on these games but a small % of users of these types of games do indeed pay, and some pay a lot.

If someone could show the "value curves" for each game are roughly the same, then the next question might be "Where do you want your money to go? Zynga or Nimblebit?


Third, a legal opinion, also posted on Industrygamers which I paraphrase:

What Zynga did was legal.  And the Nimblebit crew knows it.

Finally, closing thoughts:

Nimblebit's 3 man crew's best recourse is based on the following assumptions:

1) They appear to be more creative than Zynga's 2,789 (or however many) people are allowed to be, at least for this game.
2) They also appear to be much, much more, ahem, nimble  
3) They have vastly smaller overhead than Zynga
4) This (https://s3.amazonaws.com/nbpromo/dearzynga.jpg) was brilliant at creating more awareness of Tiny Tower. Not everyone appreciates its sardonic nature, but it helps put Nimblebit on more people's radar and screams "David vs. Goliath"...and most people will root for the underdog, especially given Zynga's reputation.

So...Nimblebit: just keep doing what you do best as I'm sure you've already concluded. 

Angry Birds: the 9th key to Success

Today on IndustryGamers there was an article about the 8 reasons it was a success. While all the reasons were valid, the biggest missing reason had to do with the game itself: how they made it addictive. Yes, it is fun to destroy wood/glass/etc. structures with flying birds, but the key to making it playable, i.e. accessible, was that it reloaded so easily.

If you didn't like how your level was going, you could reload it at any time by hitting the reload button in the upper right at any time.  There was no long pause or animation or other sequence to get in the way of retrying it.  Given the trial and error nature of the game, this was essential.  Other games could learn from this. The biggest offender was a "core" game called Too Human:

Every time you died a Valkyrie would come down from the sky and take your body up to Valhalla.  The sequence was just long enough to make deaths very frustrating as it took a while to get back into the action.  And in an action type game such as Too Human, that was really, really annoying.

3D stereoscopic gaming is still the meh

Some recent comments from EA CEO John Riccitiello about 3D stereoscopic gaming reflect on what I, and many other people have thought about the subject since CES 2010:

"Frankly, we have not seen a big uptake for 3D gaming. We haven't seen a big uptake for 3D televisions in the home, at least not yet. And we're not here trying to drive the market, we're here to react to what consumers are looking for."

 And I still agree with this sentiment.  3D stereoscopic gaming is terrible. Watching 3D movies at home on a TV is terrible. Watching 3D movies in the theater is terrible.  Yeah, Avatar was a good implementation of 3D...I guess.  And I have an Avatar BluRay that is not 3D. I like it so much better than the 3D version I saw in a store once.  When new movies come out in 3D, I immediately decide not to see it, even if I really like the trailer/concept of the film, unless I can find it in 2D.

So to everyone at the 2010 3D gaming summit who was talking about how gamers would flock to 3D gaming and that marketing would convince them to like wearing glasses, I am one core gamer who is not buying into it. And I don't think I'm the only one...

And by the way, it's not just the glasses. It's the 3D. I'd rather watch TV in 2D, play my games in 2D, see my films in 2D.

kthxbai

E3 2011: Sony's booth

E3 2011 wrapped up yesterday afternoon in Los Angeles.  I was there all three days and in between various meetings I managed to see a fair amount of product.  In no particular order, some reactions and some photos:

1) Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft had essentially the exact same booths as each had last year.  Last year (and maybe the year before?) I was able to get a tour of Sony booth and get hands on time with most of the games.

2) Played the PSVita...or as i like to call it "the Vitamin."  In fairness to Sony, I liked it a lot.  Now it just needs the content so it doesn't repeat

3) Played Uncharted 3.  It is a must buy.

That's all for now. More later...

Homefront: It grew on me. Seriously.

So I finally got around to finishing Homefront. And yes, it didn't take very long at all. General word is that the SP campaign is around 4 to 5 hours or so for most players, making on average a bit shorter than Modern Warfare 2 or Black Ops. There has been a lot of talk about this and I won't wade too much into that suffice to say that I agreed it felt kind of short.  But I thought the last two Call of Duty games were kind of short.

But the more important point is that the game did grow on me.  Yes, I was a bit harsh on it in my previous post, and I still think those points are valid, but I have to admit I enjoyed the SP campaign.  It got much better at the end, even though I still thought the voice acting and writing was generally not as good as it could or should have been, but even with that there were moments that I really liked.  For example, near the end, the Hopper character says something like (and I am paraphrasing): "I can't believe you're not dead. That's like the 5th thing you've fallen off of and lived!"  In context I found that very amusing and some much needed comic relief.  So +1 to the writer.  But anyway, I got used to the slightly dated but still very acceptable graphics and in a way grew to like it.  I still felt the run speed was too slow.  I got an interesting opinion from someone saying I didn't know what I was talking about on that one, but I stand by my point.

The last mission was actually pretty good, but it ended so abruptly and it actually left me wanting more.  Perhaps even a sequel.  See, there is so much possibility with the setting.  A few years ago I was in San Francisco for a very sunny and beautiful Memorial Day weekend. My wife and I walked all over and had a great time.  Like any game designer at heart I kept thinking, "How cool would it be to set an urban war game in a hilly city like this?"  It made me think back to my Day of Defeat days designing my map dod_switch just because of the hills.

But anyway, I think the premise and setting have a lot of room for sequels.  With some improvements to the gameplay and writing/acting, I think Homefront could become a real franchise with a loyal following.

Also, Homefront wasn't exactly a launch failure.  According to today's directional data from NPD, Homefront was the top selling game in the US in March after Nintendo's Pokemon Black/White games.  That ain't bad.

Wii 2 announcement speculation

Recently much-a-do-about-stuffing has surfaced around Wii 2. Many posts on IndustryGamers of late have taken up the discussion.  Even my colleague David Cole of DFC Intelligence got in on the comments.  In the discussion Arvind Bhatia at Sterne Agee was very clear he thinks Nintendo should launch its next console for this holiday to protect market share.  True, Nintendo could certainly use a big shot in the arm.  Obviously I am biased in that I share in David Cole's opinion but I do think Jesse Divnich at EEDAR does also make the very logical point that the Wii was announced 18 months before its Nov 2006 launch at E3 2005.  We could likely see a parallel announcement here or some time after E3, and maybe E3 will be that big price cut some are calling for.  In any event, I don't think Wii unit sales will fall off a completely off a cliff this year even if they are down from last year.  There is a lot of focus on year-over-year comparisons and unfortunately NPD no longer releases hardware unit sales data to the general public. But aside from the general wind in the air we can infer where March Wii numbers ended up.  Thankfully we have a record of NPD's Wii number for March 2010 of 558k units.  Today Microsoft was kind enough to announce Xbox 360 US sales for March at 433k units.  So the Wii's March 2011 number must have been south of 433k which is a considerable decline year-over-year.  In that sense you could say the sky continues to fall on the Wii.  On the other hand, the Wii is still selling and given it's "less core" or "more casual" or however-you-want-to-say-it focus makes me think it will indeed still sell fairly well come holiday 2011, especially if there is that rumored price cut coming.

But here's the interesting question about a Wii 2 launch for 2011: what about 3rd party?  The first reaction to that question might be "what about it?  Third party support on Nintendo consoles have generally been poor anyway."  While true that the Wii has not been the gold mine for typical 3rd parties (excluding brands like Activision's Guitar Hero in its big years or Ubisoft's Just Dance) that one would hope the massive install base would foster like it had for 3rd party on the PS2 (like Electronic Arts in the first half of the last decade), a Wii 2 release for holiday 2011 would signal that Nintendo is punting on 3rd party support even more than it did on Wii.  That is unless 3rd parties have known about it for a while now and have been super secret in not letting news of it leak.  Normally you would think a 1st party would give some heads up to its 3rd party "partners" they have a new system coming 3rd party can support the lineup at launch.  The 3DS had decent 3rd party support for launch with the best stuff coming from outside Nintendo.  As of today Amazon's rank order of the 5 most popular 3DS launch titles is listed below:
1. Super Street Fighter IV 3D - Capcom
2. Pilotwings Resort - Nintendo
3. Ghost Recon Shadow Wars - Ubisoft
4. LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars - LucasArts
5. Ridge Racer 3D - Namco

The #1 game was 3rd party, as were 4 of the top 5.  So I just don't see Nintendo completely punting on 3rd party for the Wii 2.  And given we haven't heard any leaks about a Wii 2 until now, I tend to think 3rd parties don't know much of anything about Wii 2 specs and couldn't have much of anything ready for the it come this fall.  So that leaves a few possible conclusions:

1. Nintendo is launching the Wii 2 this fall and is punting on 3rd party because they won't be able to get anything of substance ready for it in time.

2. Nintendo is launching the Wii 2 this fall but it will really be a Wii HD and the game development won't be much different than it is for the current Wii except maybe it supports some kind of hard drive or larger flash memory and possibly has higher resolution output.  That's more of a Wii 1.5 or addon and wouldn't that be like Sega 32x?  Wait, how did that go?

3. Nintendo will launch the Wii 2 after this fall, likely for holiday 2012.

The safe bet is on 3, but maybe Nintendo knows something we don't. After all, despite the complaints they receive about 3rd party performance on their systems, you can't argue with the success of the Wii and DS over the years.

Homefront

Here is my initial impression of Homefront based on playing about half an hour of the SP campaign. Making games is hard and I hate to be too critical of Kaos and THQ for their efforts but Homefront has problems. The recent Medal of Honor game also had problems, but I actually enjoyed that. I'm afraid I'm not enjoying this game as much as that which is sad because I like the premise.  Still, I do think I may end up liking better than my initial first impression because I've heard it gets better later.  So in other words I'm willing to give it a chance. That said, let's get into this game...

1) The intro movie is basically what we saw at around E3 last year. Good premise. It's basically recycled Red Dawn with a modern spin of North Korea instead of USSR being the invaders. On this I'm sold and since E3 I have been quietly excited about Homefront. Then I played the game...

2) The first thing I notice is that the graphics and art design feel dated. The lighting at night feels...like a late era Xbox or early Xbox 360 game. Someone of more technical knowledge can confirm or refute this. Maybe my cataracts and eyeball arthritis are acting up again or my kid slipped the cat's ear medicine into my coffee this morning. I'm playing the 360 version. No clue of the PS3 version is any better or worse in the graphics department.  Interestingly, I've been reading actual reviews from real games journalists such as in the current issue of OXM saying "the visuals are laudable" which I am not sure how to interpret.  Put it this way, IGN got it right imo when its review read "Homefront isn’t ugly by any stretch of the imagination, but it looks rather bad if you place it next to the likes of graphics-pushing titles such as Killzone 3 or Crysis 2."  I would definitely agree, but it's also not  quite on par with Modern Warfare 2 or Black Ops.  Still, this doesn't kill the game by any means but it just kind of stands out since shooters are known to be pushers of high end technical graphical achievement.  I've received some emails about this regarding Borderlands and how Gearbox copped out by changing that game to cell shaded art style.  But the art in that game worked very well and complimented the thin story's humorous tone which worked well.  In Homefront the graphics don't stand out but they're not so terrible as to ruin the experience.  There. I've said it 3 different ways about the adequateness of the graphics.


[spoiler alert]
3) The initial tone is heavy handed. I give Kaos points for making it consistent at least. There is no stupid attempt at inappropriate humor (more on that later) in the middle of a sequence where a 4 or 5 year old crying and screaming boy watches the NK army execute his parents...and then he goes to grab their bodies to see if they are alive. It's supposed to be heartbreaking and make you angry, which I guess it does... But the problem is that even moments like this somehow feel recycled. It's like they want to force you to feel a certain way. I know it's just a game, but something about the opening just doesn't work. This is a vague criticism and I will say no more other than it made me angry at Kaos and the writer for putting in there in the first place. Sorry for the vagueness but if you play it you will probably understand...or completely disagree. Yoo make the call.

4) Too often control is taken away from the player or movement is artificially restricted so a "story" moment of dialog can be done. I admit that many, many games do this including some great games but the use of it here just did not work. Why? It's because the writing and voice acting were disappointing. The story concept is fine...no problems there...but the actual dialog such as "I'm getting too old for this shit" and other cliches stuck out too much. (Was that supposed to be a funny line? Cause I laughed at how cliched it felt.) Again, this would not be the first game to have bad or less than good writing and not all good story based SP games have good writing. I liked the first Far Cry but hated the writing and dialog. But in this game the combination of weak acting and weak writing with taking control away from the player at times to deliver it all was not fun. I wanted to skip through any dialog moment as fast as possible. Conversely, a game like Uncharted 2 is much better in this department, or a game like Borderlands which has barely any story has much better "little" moments. (Ahem...Mikey where's my $2 royalty check for plugging your game?)

Very early on in the game there is a point where you walk through a "safe house" type area. I think this area was shown at E3 last year or around then. You can walk, but you can't run. It feels like you are moving in molasses as you walk around to generally lifeless characters who deliver more dialog moments. A Bioware game this is not, but this brief section was not enjoyable. It actually made me care less about the characters.

5) The actual character models, along with the art design, feel dated. The animations feel dated. Further there are many graphical bugs with character models and collision detection.Often characters will take cover against a wall and except the bounding box or something is off and the character is partly inside the wall. Or a dead enemy on top of a broken wall falls down through the wall in a Red Dead Redemption on PS3 buggy type of way. Again, this is not the first game to have such problems, but along with everything else it just sorta piled on to the mass of issues.

6) As for gameplay, it did not do anything really interesting. You can use a robotic car called "GOLIATH" that drives around on its own mowing down enemies. You have a the ability to target pre-assigned (read: scripted) enemy trucks and locations to blow up with the robot car's rockets. Except this seemed buggy in that I could not get it to fire when I wanted once I thought something was targeted. It did not make me feel powerful or a badass. I suppose this was my fault for not knowing how to do it, but seriously if I have to think that hard for a weapon like this then it's a problem. I don't recall being confused in Halo or Call of Duty games about how to use something. It might have been because I was too lazy to figure it out.  But the reason I was lazy was because I had a hard time holding my interest because of issues #1 thru #5 on my little list so far.

But the big problem with the SP campaign is that it feels like a corridor shooter with semi-big chambers where you kill continually spawning enemies until either you destroy XYZ objective or a certain amount of time goes by. That's not all bad but so far it seems like it is all there is. I really should play the whole campaign before I pass too much judgement on the game. As I said I hear there is a cool sequence in the second half...

7) Bottom line...it's the combination of dated gameplay, dated graphics and weak writing/voice acting that made me not care and not get into the game as much as I wanted to.  And I'm saying this after playing the first 30 to 45 minutes of the game. They want you to feel like you are a ragtag group of rebels taking on a superior invading force and through sacrifice and pure will of effort you will overcome the bad guys in that true American can-do spirit! But it just doesn't come together...at least not yet. Honestly, it feels like they wanted to make an updated Red Dawn type movie more than a game.


However...


I'm still willing to give this game a chance because my gut is telling me I may actually get used to it and enjoy it.  More to come on this one...

GDC 2011

I will be moderating a panel at GDC again, and again the event will be hosted by LiveGamer. You can read about it at the Live Gamer blog. According to the image below from LG's site the event is called "Beyond Credit: Localized Payment Strategies for Global Business."

Details from LG's site as well:

Europe is a key market for game developers. However, due to the difficulties in reaching the many individual markets, European customers have been largely underserved. One major challenge is understanding the diverse payment options for digital content and how these options vary by country. The content providers that understand and tackle payment issues country-by-country are the ones likely to be most successful in Europe.

Live Gamer GDC Session: Beyond Credit: Localized payment strategies for a global business

During this session, key findings will be shared that highlight which payment methods drive the most revenue in Europe for online game publishers. Best practices, success and failures and how to best set up a global-local payments strategy will be discussed.

When: Thursday March 3rd
Where: Moscone Center 1:30pm PT (RM 309)
Presented by David Cole, DFC Intelligence, Analyst
Moderator: Jeremy Miller, DFC Intelligence, Analyst
Panelists:
- Nima Pourshasb, Live Gamer, VP Corporate Development
- Carsten van Husen, Gameforge 4D, CEO
- Ralf Wenzel, Skrill Holdings, COO
- Linus Menden, Big Point, Head of Finance