Microsoft acted as patron for games such as this until it became easier to just throw moneyhats at Activision for timed-exclusivity of CoD map packs!

Sony Follows Microsoft to the Bottom in the Exclusive Content Racket

The fifteenth day of the eleventh month has come and gone, and with its passing has ushered in the beginning of a new console generation [no, we do not count the Wii U]. With a new console generation comes new console strategies – Microsoft has already revealed their hand with a reliance on television and NFL licenses, and now the pieces of Sony’s console strategy are also starting to come together, and the results are not entirely to one’s liking.

In order to effectively differentiate a new piece of hardware the vendor thereof must be able to depict it as being capable of functioning in ways that competing devices cannot, and the easiest way to do this is to secure some exclusive content that cannot be accessed on any other platform. Throughout the last generation Sony appeared to favour utilising company resources in order to secure wholly exclusive titles for the PS3, while Microsoft for their part quickly dispensed with acquiring entire titles outright in favour of purchasing exclusivity [or timed-exclusivity] of select chunks of content. The effect that this approach has is to effectively compromise the gaming experience that owners of the competing platform are able to have with the titles that they paid sixty dollars for, while at the same time doing very little to positively differentiate the character of one’s own gaming platform. Sony also did this last generation, but only [seemingly] as an afterthought.

This time around Sony appears to have gone after exclusive content in a very concerted fashion. The PS4 version of Assassin’s Creed 4 is set to feature sixty minutes of platform exclusive gameplay, with Ubisoft’s Watchdogs also in line to receive some manner of unspecified exclusive content. Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes is also set to receive an exclusive mission which will see players take on the role of the PS1 iteration of Solid Snake in all his low resolution polygonal glory, while the PS4 release of Diablo III will see the introduction of all new mechanics. Meanwhile, PS4 owners will be granted first access to beta testing for both The Elder Scrolls: Online and Bungie’s Destiny. In all there are twenty publishers/developers who have signed on to deliver exclusive content to the PS4.

While one finds it morally indefensible to deprive someone who has paid full price of the content that is due them, that alone is not reason enough for consternation [they are Xbots after all]. Rather, it is because this approach only subtracts value for a competitor, rather than creating anything of positive value for one’s self – in short, it involves spending money in a way which will not produce anything of value for gaming.

A more regular roster of Japanese releases may ease the burden of the JRT.

Sony Supports the Localisation of Japanese Content

Sony are currently standing at the dawn of a whole new console generation with the launch of their PS4, while at the same time also supporting a hendheld system that is not doing so well in the sales department. On top of that their PS3 is still a going concern at a time when Sony will be looking to transfer the bulk of their support to the PS4. All of these platforms require content and bribing publishers for exclusive mission packs does not look to be capable of picking up all the slack, which is why it is most important that Sony be able to fully leverage the content that already exists for their platforms.

It is with this in mind that Sony established what they refer to as the third-party production team, a group dedicated to maximising the amount of regional content that is able to be localised into foreign markets. When individual gamers harangue Sony staff with their release-begging it is often intuitive to think that their wishes are being consigned to the waste paper basket of no fucks given, yet according to Sony’s Adam Boyes third-party productions director, Giovanni Corsi, has been monitoring social media and Sony blogs in order to compile a list of Japanese content that Western gamers would like to see given a local release – a list that is topped by the PSP releases of Final Fantasy Type-0 and the newest Suikoden title, along with the PS3 release of Yakuza 5, and a possible port of the Dreamcast’s Shenmue games.

“When we started the third-party production team, it was born out of necessity. We had a lot of publishers and a lot of content that had come out for various platforms and various territories that weren’t necessarily coming to our territory, platforms we’d love to see them on.

The key is to bring people that are fans of certain content great stuff. So if people are fans of Japanese content, you can imagine that’s a place we’re putting a lot of effort into. People who are fans of the Vita, you can imagine we’re putting lots of effort into that.”

The obvious candidate for Sony’s localisation efforts is Final Fantasy: Type-0, as the series already has a fanbase which numbers in the millions. The Vita may not be doing so well right now, but a PSN release of Final Fantasy: Type-0 might well provide the push that many PS4 owners need to pick up a Vita for subsequent use in remote play. It would make a lot of sense for this to be one of the titles that the third-party production team is working on, especially considering that Shuhei Yoshida tacitly suggested earlier in the year that something was being done on this front. At any rate, one considers a team dedicated to the localisation of Japanese content to be a thoroughly worthwhile endeavour, and something which stands to positively differentiate Sony from their rivals.

BAN THIS SICK FILTH!

Australia Requires a Molyneux Set of Ratings Guidlines

Upon the implementation of Australia’s very first R18+ rating for video games the celebrations were decidedly short-lived, as it quickly became evident that the misogyny-obsessed and utterly incompetent Gillard government had implemented some utterly arcane and borderline unworkable guidelines when it came to the depiction of female sexuality. Until now one of the most absurd casualties of these heavy-handed guidelines was Atelier Totori Plus, an anime-based game that had been determined appropriate for children under the previous ratings regime, yet earned an R18+ rating for sexual violence under the new botched legislation. Well, as it turns out Fable: Anniversary [the HD remake of Fable] is the newest game to be added to this absurd list.

While one finds it utterly delightful that Fable has been determined as being unsuitable for children of any age, it has nevertheless been designated as such on the most appallingly nonsensical grounds. One curio present in the Australian ratings system with respect to depictions of fornication and drug use, is that they are held to be many times more disagreeable in instances where their occurrence results in a reward for the player. Thus, if a Grand Theft Auto player avails themselves of the services of women of negotiable affections, only to have their health replenished, then this is something that is frowned on by Australia’s dour ratings guidelines.

It is the Grand Theft Auto scenario which appears to have been applied to Fable, only the sex in question consists in its entirety of the screen fading to black, while the player reward is nothing more than the birth of an in-game heir! Yes, that is right, Julia Gillard and her hopeless, bumbling thralls have succeeded in classifying the actual biological purpose of engaging in sexual intercourse as being objectionable contraband – to the extent that a more gratuitous sex scene could have been included in the game while incurring less of a ratings-penalty, provided that the game did not reward the player with the biological fruit of his loins. The original Australian rating of Fable was ‘M’ [the equivalent of America's 'T' rating], the HD re-release of Fable: Anniversary has been rated R18+ for “Sexual activity related to incentives and rewards” because idiocy. Sometimes one truly despairs.

“Wada you mean I’m fired?”

Yoichi Wada Steps Down As Square Enix President

This week a veil of terror and misery has lifted from the Japanese software development industry, and yet the ramifications of this past week still fail to seem real. Square Enix president pariah, Yoichi Wada, has been forced to step down off the back of a stunning yearly loss, predicated upon the weak sales of console software. Square Enix had previously forecast themselves as making a thirty-seven million dollar profit, following on from a sixty-four million dollar profit during the previous fiscal year – yet they have this week been forced to downgrade their financial outlook to a $138,000,000 loss.

Square Enix had previously forecast the sale of 14.9 million units of console software, yet only ended up selling 8.75 million games. This is not surprising considering that their only major console releases for the period were: Tomb Raider, Hitman: Absolution, and Sleeping Dogs. It is currently unknown whether the titles in question were expected to cover the losses generated by the Japanese arm of Square Enix, or whether they actually drove some of the company’s losses themselves – but either way, they have been labelled by Square Enix as failures. Tomb Raider sold 3.4 million copies, Hitman: Absolution sold 3.6 million copies, and Sleeping Dogs sold 1.75 million copies.

It is clear that each of these products uniformly sold to the absolute upper-limits of any sound-minded estimation that could have been made of their potential, so it is quite difficult to understand the basis upon which Square Enix made their original predictions. One rather hopes that the real reason for this sharp decline is the ongoing development of Final Fantasy XIV, because otherwise it is evidence of some truly stunning incompetence, and betrays a publisher that is unable to live within its means.

Supposing for the minute that the games in question actually drove Square Enix’s losses, then it is quite difficult to imagine how that could have happened – though one imagines that inflated marketing budgets may have had something to do with it. At what point does having Lara Croft’s visage splashed across the side of the bus transcend indulgence, and become sheer lunacy? One would hate to think that the real reason for the West missing out on Final Fantasy: Type-0 and Bravely Default was that Square Enix were unwilling to commit to their imagined marketing costs.

Square Enix has revealed this week that they have sold a swathe of their free-to-play games to the well-capitalised start-up company, Sleepy Giant Entertainment, though it is uncertain whether this marks the end of their involvement in this form of software production, or whether they have simply divested themselves of their free-to-play portfolio to inject some liquidity into the company. It may be tempting to think of the ouster of Yoichi Wada as an opportunity for the company to return to form, yet one would do well to temper their expectations. A company culture, once trampled, is a difficult thing to repair, and we may even now be witnessing Square Enix’s descent into a death-roll.

Remember Reggie’s claims of a console for core gamers?

No Unreal Engine 4 or Frostbite 3 For Wii U

More bad news for Nintendo’s modest, little console, the Wii U, this week, as the developers of the game engines which will power the next generation of gaming scoffed at the suggestion that their middleware be ported to Wii U. Earlier in the week DICE executive producer, Patrick Bach, shot down the possibility of Frostbite 3 appearing on Wii U, stating:

“The biggest problem we have right now is we don’t want to back down from what we see as our low spec machines. We right now don’t have support for the Wii U in the Frostbite engine. The reason for that is it takes development time. We could probably make a Wii U game in theory. But to make the most out of the Wii U, that’s a different game because of the different peripherals. We want to utilize all the power of each console. It’s about, where do you put your focus? And the Wii U is not a part of our focus right now.”

Similarly, GDC saw Mark Rein host a Q&A in relation to Epic’s new engine: Unreal Engine 4. When asked whether Unreal Engine 4 would be supporting the Wii U, Rein’s initial response was to laugh derisively, causing the rest of the room to respond in kind. Levity expended, Rein clarified:

“I just laugh at the question… Unreal Engine 4, we’re not Playstation 3, Xbox 360, or Wii U. It’s next-gen technology. That’s what we’re aiming for.”

The week’s events have not only confirmed that the CryEngine 3 is set to be the only high profile next-gen capable engine to support the Wii U, but also that Wii U third party support will at best mirror the Wii, and at worst the Game Cube [if that]. Wii U owners have been foolishly clinging to the magical assumption that games intended for the PS4 and Durango will somehow be able to scale down to the Wii U, well, let us put paid to that wrong-headed notion. This week it has been confirmed that the engine which will in all probability be the most popular middleware of the eighth console generation will not support Wii U, while also discovering that the engine powering most [if not all] next-gen EA titles will not be compatible with Wii U. It is looking increasingly likely that any third party software released for the Wii U will have to be designed specifically for the system, as most middleware ecosystems simply will not bridge the generational divide. It is perhaps not surprising that Nintendo were so quick to support Unity; the engine powering most Kickstarter projects.

Would that Hollywood would just stay out of my damn games.

No Place For Hayter?

This week’s GDC was also an occasion for Hideo Kojima to open up about the Metal Gear projects that he has in the pipeline. It was revealed that the previously announced Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes is but a mere prologue to the next Metal Gear proper, and that the next Metal Gear proper is set to be the previously announced The Phantom Pain – now relegated as the subtitle of Metal Gear Solid V.

Fanbase trolling is nothing new for Kojima, but there are starker changes afoot which look to turn the franchise on its head. The Metal Gear Solid V games will mark the first time that the series has used an open-world game design. This is a drastic departure for the series, but also one which makes a lot of sense given the type of games that the Metal Gear team are known for creating – provided that the larger environments do not compromise the quality of the games, of course.

Kojima also released some far less welcome news however, and that was that series mainstay, David Hayter, was not offered the opportunity to reprise the role of Snake. There is presently a lot of chatter online suggesting that cardboard personality, Kiefer Sutherland, has been roped in to play both Snake and series newcomer Ismael. If true, then it is both terrible and infuriating that Kojima would opt to replace iconic voice talent simply to tap into Sutherland’s faded Hollywood street cred. Kojima rationalises the decision as such:

“I can say, yes, it will be a new person. I can’t say who it is yet. What we’re trying to accomplish here is recreate the Metal Gear series. It’s a new type of Metal Gear game, and we want to have this reflected in the voice actor as well.”

Kojima’s talk of renewal might play well to the layman, but it is also a lie. The Japanese actor for Snake is set to reprise his role, making this a Hayter-specific decision. Thus, it would seem most intuitive to suggest that the iconic Western voice of Snake has been junked in favour of the thin veneer of Hollywood glitz, and worse than that, Kojima will probably be applauded for this move based on no other reason than that of name recognition.