PS3 Motion Controller
Nintendo has the Wiimote. Microsoft has Project Natal. Sony has a prototype. Looking like a small baton with a ping pong ball attached to the end, PS3’s motion controller works in conjunction with the PlayStation Eye to track the movement of the controller which could be a stand-in for a tennis racket, pistol or flashlight. A motion controller in each hand lets the user dual-wield. Imagine a Zelda game where you’re Link, blocking attacks with a shield while striking with your sword. Still at the tech demo stage, this has a lot of promise and I’m hoping Sony can stick to their Spring 2010 launch date.

PSP Go
Showing that Nintendo isn’t the only company that can make their portable device more portable, Sony showed off the PSP Go. Half the size of the PSP, this sleek and sexy handheld slides open like a cell phone. With built-in wifi and Bluetooth capabilities, the PSP Go goes beyond games allowing for better access to and storage of videos, music and pictures. Full PSP games can even be downloaded to the Go, bypassing physical media. The only question is will the $249 entry price be too high, especially since Nintendo’s DSi is only $169.

The Last Guardian
When the “games as art” argument rears its head, two games come to the forefront: Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. It’s no wonder that the company behind them, Team Ico, would have created the beautiful and mysterious The Last Guardian revealed today. The trailer shows a young boy hunted by knights in an eerie ruin who is befriended by a giant griffin. Haunting and poignant, this game is set for a 2010 release.

New Super Mario Bros. for the Wii
Can there be anything new about Mario? After all, the last New Super Mario Bros. was a 2006 DS title and the venerable plumber has been hanging around since 1981’s Donkey Kong. With that said, Nintendo has something interesting here — they’ve taken the core 2D platform design and turned it into a 4-player co-op game. Or at least co-op in spirit — I’m thinking this game will be the new Gauntlet, where screwing over fellow players is almost as much fun as working together.

Wii Sports Resort combined with Wii MotionPlus
Nintendo’s Wii captured people’s imagination with a motion-sensitve controller which made you feel like you were actually swinging a baseball bat or throwing a punch instead of pulling the strings on a computer-generated puppet. MotionPlus (a new attachment for the Wiimote) ups the realism by allowing faster and more sensitive motion-tracking. As shown in the Wii Sports Resort trailer, this means archery, golf, water skiing and a host of other sports have now reached the next level of immersion. Can the ultimate lightsaber game be too far behind?

Metroid: Other M for the Wii
There was major fail at this year’s briefings, with the consoles attempting to reach out to hardcore gamers and girls not realizing that hardcore gaming knows no gender restrictions. With delicious irony, Nintendo’s best received title was the hardcore Metroid: Other M featuring the badass (and female) Samus. Nintendo plus Team Ninja equals stunning 3D environments, awesome boss battles and fast and furious (and edgy) gameplay.

It’s refreshing that Microsoft has kicked off the show with an impressive E3 Briefing. Here are the three biggest announcements Microsoft revealed today for their Xbox 360.

The Beatles: Rock Band
We knew this was coming on 9.09.09 (number nine, number nine, number nine) and we could have guessed at the track list, but did anyone see vocal harmonies coming? Support for up to three vocalists shows that unlike recent Guitar Hero releases, this isn’t just Rock Band with a Beatles skin. This is a multiplatform release, but the biggest surprise Microsoft pulled off was putting the two surviving Beatles onstage during the announcement. Paul and Ringo may have had an awkward two minutes in the E3 spotlight, but unless Nintendo or Sony have Elvis waiting in the wings, it would be hard to surpass this level of star power.

Social Notworking
I hope you like your couch, because Microsoft is planning to keep you on it. Announced today was integration for social networking giants Facebook and Twitter. Redesigned for your television, it will be easier to keep track of friends, share pictures and highlight your gaming excellence all through your Xbox. As if that isn’t enough, Microsoft is bringing Last.FM to Xbox Live subscribers letting them create and share playlists.

Project Natal
This morning people were talking about Xbox Fluid which morphed into Project Natal during the briefing. I can only assume the pregnant Trixie 360 created this natal fluid confusion. Anyway, Project Natal is Microsoft’s answer to the Wiimote. Bypassing controllers completely, Microsoft showed off the Project Natal concept which uses a camera for facial recognition and body movement tracking while a microphone picks up your voice. Examples shown included miming steering a car to play a racing game, unleashing a martial arts barrage to defeat an on-screen opponent and shouting trivia answers at the screen to win a multiplayer game. Potentially the biggest game-changer, Project Natal also faces the potential of being another gimmick like the EyeToy — or worse — the new Power Glove.

Image courtesy of MobyGames.com

Most game companies use Twitter to hype new releases or to keep a conversation going about recently released games.

LucasArts has been using Twitter to ask trivia questions like, “When Zak gets his first assignment – what must he seek?,” “You know what’s great? Making vichyssois. What ingredient does Guybrush add to his?,” and “In Fate of Atlantis, how do you get around Biff the Doorman?”

Classic gamers will recognize that these trivia questions stretch back to the early days of LucasArts — back when they were known for their adventure games and not their exploitation of the Star Wars Universe.

To say that LucasArts has turned their backs on their adventure roots is an understatement. They basically lost interest in making adventure games — even going so far as to shrug off the rights to Sam and Max (and I’m glad Telltale picked them up). This is notable because at one point every LucasArts game was honor-bound to have a Max (a hyperkinetic rabbity thing) cameo or easter egg appearance.

So isn’t it weird that one of LucasArts’ public faces is referencing games their website barely acknowledge?

Maybe not — just yesterday LucasArts revealed that their upcoming Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings game would contain the classic Indiana Jones game Fate of Atlantis as an unlockable. As expected, fan reaction has been huge and there’s a good chance that many of Staff of Kings’ sales will be token payments for a port of the classic game.

My thought is that this is part of something bigger. Call it wishful thinking, but I can see LucasArts opening the back catalog and releasing classic games onto the Wii and DS (at the very least). They could easily do this even with their reduced development staff and they’d be guaranteed sales.

Like I said, this is an educated guess, but it seems like something must be driving @lucasartsgames to flood twitter with questions about Loom, Monkey Island, and The Dig.

Recently it was noted that, yes, even Sony will be throwing their hat into this strange “new” world as they gear up to release the Home environment for their PS3 console. But with the ever increasing popularity of this media and all of the new features, what does Activeworlds, the once leader of virtual environments, think?

Or are they thinking at all?

As I read about Sony’s Home environment, and watched the subsequent video promoting this new environment, my unorthodox mind immediately made the connection where seemingly nobody else has, in that I saw this as not something to run on a PS3, but saw just the software aspects and its relation to other incarnations on PC (Second Life, There, and Activeworlds). As this came to mind, it immediately dawned on me “What better way to put this into perspective, than to simply ask a company that was part of the forefront of this type of software since the beginnings?”

So I wrote seven questions that I thought were relevant to the situation and decided to try and interview just such a company using them. What follows is my interview with Martin from the company Activeworlds, Inc who many people would know was one of the major players in this media from 1995 onward to about 2001 when they seemingly dropped off the map. Rest assured this company is indeed still in operation, if not as popular as in its heyday.

How would the once leader of this media form propose to catch up to these newcomers and would they be willing to meet the challenge as we see this new form of interaction blossoming all around? Let’s take a look…

GameCouch: I understand that in 1995 – 2001 Activeworlds was in the forefront of this technology and concept. While it is understood that Home is running on the specialized technology of the PS3, the features contained for it are still very advanced over current implementations for the PC market. Are there any plans to mimic or surpass that type of quality and make a bid for the market again with AWI?

Martin: Activeworlds is always improving, and while it may take awhile to get the graphics capabilities of the PS3, it goes without saying that we will eventually get there. It’s unlikely that we’ll beat PS3 to the punch, even with their release date scheduled for fall of this year.

The PS3 is essentially a giant graphics chip wrapped around a blu-ray DVD player and somewhere inside there’s a CPU handling input. It’s probably equivalent to 4 nVidia 8800 GTXs running in parallel, it’s an amazing piece of hardware. It also costs half the price of that many video cards, and each time it’s sold SONY loses money. Eventually the prices of those cards will come down, but the MSRP of the PS3 will remain similar to what it is now due to its customized hardware. What I’m getting at is that SONY has an enormous bank, which it is using to do battle with Nintendo and Microsoft. There are other huge businesses out there with just as much available bank and in some cases more, and we’re talking with them.

That being said, it’s also true that while AWI has a long history, with world builds dating back to 1995, and has experience in creating stable, secure, and functional building environments using this same engine. Leaping to something customized isn’t exactly easy. I don’t know what the plans for such things as physics, radiosity lighting, soft shadows, and z-buffering look like. Activeworlds is focused on writing the best engine for other companies and communities to purchase and modify on their own for the least amount of money.

William’s take: I wasn’t referring to the hardware PS3 Home was running on, or the history of Sony or how much they are or aren’t making from each sale. I was referring to the features contained in the software and if there are any types of plans in AWI to focus on utilizing the latest hardware for PCs in order to offer something close to what Home or similar types of competition may offer for the PC market – one such feature is outlined in the next question.

GC: The Avatar customization process in Second Life, There and PS3 Home are much different than what is offered in the AW system, in that the entire customization process is completely dynamic. Are there any plans to mimic this type of control in customization for the citizens of AW in future implementations?

Martin: Second Life has brought avatar generation to the forefront of the debate. It’s time Activeworlds shifted the focus back to building. Meaning, Second Life avatars look good, but they only represent the fickle attitudes of users who want to look ‘good’. It’s VR, and looks are basically irrelevant. My Second Life character isn’t even capable of having the size of my spare tire, it’s a false image. Of course, that is a given when looking at the furries in SL or the robots in AWI.

AWI is halfway there with clothes customization, it’s not yet there with manipulating vertices and stretching or shrinking faces. However, we’re getting there. Our current thrust is rendering avatars in a .x format. It’s an offspring of DirectX, and most of the current 3D programs can export bone-oriented animations (or what we call sequences) to .x format. This includes, Maya, 3DStudio, and Blender. Blender is free. Activeworlds currently has two Universes with customizable clothing and assets. This means that you can both change your pants, and give your avatar a sword, or a shield, or a party hat or all three.

William’s take: I believe the users themselves brought avatar customization to the forefront, and not the companies that offered it to them. The vertex stretching and shrinking surfaces are a common thing in newer systems and while not a single user has complained that they have too much customization options available (it’s actually incredibly popular), they have however asked about the lack thereof with AW based technology. Simply put, users expect to have that amount of control over how they look in a virtual world – and not have the same handful of avatars to choose from. This is very important to the demographic that uses the systems, as a large part of this customization is free to the end user. So I will have to take your answer as a flat “We are ignoring this completely while changing the subject to something we already know we can do” as noted with this statement alone:

It’s time Activeworlds shifted the focus back to building. Meaning, Second Life avatars look good, but they only represent the fickle attitudes of users who want to look ‘good’. It’s VR, and looks are basically irrelevant.

Have you guys even taken a look at the demographic at all concerning this? It’s overwhelming that this statement is absolutely incorrect on all counts.

GC: One of the things that seems to play a large part in these new systems is the concept of Dynamic Marketing, meaning not sticking to simple billboard or obvious advertising. This would include clothing labels, product placement, brand name products for use in world (Panasonic Televisions, etc). Do you believe this is concept has a future to offset the upfront costs to the user and if so, would AWI propose to include such things in their own system?

Martin: I can’t talk about this.

GC: In the newer systems being offered, whether it be for PC or a specialized system, there is a definite inclusion for a higher level of physics in the environment. Does the inclusion of higher levels of physics play a part in the near future of AW? – Fluid Dynamics, Cloth Simulation, Vehicle Dynamics, Avatar Movement, etc.

Martin: Physics are nice, but there’s a price. For example, if you dive into the SecondLife architecture documentation, you’ll quickly realize why SL requires such an enormous amount of server power. Each and every frame is calculated by the servers, combining the avatar positioning and movements with the objects in frame for anyone viewable, which is then combined and calculated server-side, and then a frame is calculated for everyone in view, that frame is sent back to the clients which then draw it. It’s an incredibly inefficient approach, but they have physics. The entire AW Universe runs on 3 servers, one uni, one world, and one hosting the downloadable 3D model/texture/avatar/sound data. Second Life has to buy a new box for every 3 new citizens. This is why a private “Island” costs $1600 to start with their system. It’s also why a Second Life Universe system costs $2,500,000 to begin – and why nobody is buying one. If a business or educational entity like Harvard were to do MUVEES in the Second Life environment.. First, they can’t because schools don’t have the bandwidth to handle SL, lots of schools come to us asking if we require a T1 per classroom, because that’s what SL has spec’d out for them. All that information required for physics needs a huge amount of bandwidth, as every single frame drawn requires the avatar’s positioning, actions, and then a frame-download for each client. Second, after than 2.5 million dollar investment, a company or institution will have to buy an enormous amount of servers to handle their user load. If someone like MGM Studios was to make a site for some upcoming sci-fi movie, that site would eventually cost 5 million dollars. The vast majority of that expense is physics. It’s easy to point at look at physics SDK kits and say “Hey, why not this” but in doing so, one would not be considering the eventual ramifications of implementing it. With 50 viewers, the efficiency of such engines quickly breaks down. A box falls down some stairs, and with some degree of accuracy for the person who kicked it. 50 people are watching this. Great, but what happens if one of those people watching dives under that box? The box has an affected path, which must be updated for all 50 viewers, and this happens every single frame. Online is not Half-Life2, it’s a much different beast, and you’ll notice that games such as Half-Life2 have limits on the amount of players per game – typically dependent on server power and bandwidth.

William’s take: I fail to understand how any of that answer actually had anything to do with the question. In one sentence you describe how inefficient the Second Life server structure is and in the next you attribute all of the things you just outlined as why it is inefficient to being the fault of Physics implementation.

GC: If AWI could have any features from the PS3 Home environment for a PC version, what would they be?

Martin: Being free? We have everything else other than the lighting. I suppose the object preview window is nice, but that wouldn’t take our programmers more than a week to implement. I’ll bring it up.

William’s take: Are you serious? Saying that Activeworlds has everything that the PS3 Home does except lighting is a wholly incorrect statement, one which I am sure the readers of the article will point out. *sigh*

GC: In systems like Second Life, There and even the PS3 Home environment, the ability to chat via VoIP seems included – though the inclusion is transparent to the user as a built in ability with some iconic indication over the avatar to denote that they are speaking, and the voice chat is not including the users of the entire world as one chat space (people in range can hear you, and you have the option to exclude persons and moderate). While currently AW includes VoIP, the way it does so is not transparent to the user – will this be something to be worked on in coming releases of the AW system?

Martin: VoIP is something we’ve done, and until more users are willing to put on headsets, after buying them of course, I think where were are now is where we’ll be until a market demands it. How many people own Bluetooth headsets – today? I don’t. I don’t know anyone who does. Do you? Does the SONY system require the purchase of a headset? If so, how is that cost not offloaded to the customer? If AWI were to offer a Bluetooth headset and receiver for 29.95 would you buy one?

That’s the difference between console players and AWI’s user base. It’s assumed that the Bluetooth headset offered by SONY works with all the games it’s compatible with, and on the flip side all the systems the AWI headset would work with is AWI. Unless you already have a device with jacks into your computer and handles Bluetooth voice traffic which the AWI browser listens for and broadcasts to the rest of the users. If you can think of a reason why AWI should eat this cost, I’m all ears.

William’s take: I didn’t ask about Bluetooth headsets. The question was about whether the VoIP system would be more transparent within the environment with possibly an icon over the speaker person’s head indicating he/she is speaking via VoIP. This is transparent, while the current approach is more like running Skype side by side with the AW browser. It doesn’t feel like it is included, merely tacked onto the current browser as a last minute thing. Secondly – I never asked about specialized hardware just for AW use. A standard microphone headset works just fine now, so nothing more would be needed to use the VoIP if it were made more transparent (icon over the head indicating the user is talking, etc), or if there were better options included for the user to moderate the VoIP and whom he/she wishes to hear.

GC: Can AWI authorize some screen shots of the future of the technology for this article? Such would raise some definite eyebrows and again possibly get some more coverage for the company. Screen shots of the common stuff in AW wouldn’t really count as we are looking for the future of this market, so see if Rick and JP will allow some more media to be “leaked” for this just as Sony has “leaked” screen shots and a video for Home.

Martin: This is a horrifically crappy rendition of our new avatar engine – it’s not even real because the girl is green-screened and I took that out with Adobe After Effects and swapped in a different world background, but the sequence is accurate, and the engine is rapidly coming together. Not only that, it’s video which is three weeks old, and our programmers work at lightning speed.

The thing is, the engine has to support both this new system and the old system. But for amusement let’s say AWI decided one day to switch to an entirely new engine, which made every single thing obsolete and unusable and inaccessible, but waved a few pictures in front of our world owners you think they’d be happy about that? Oh, hey, guys and gals, 4.2 is coming September 1, and you have to rebuild everything. No, there’s no import, you have to rebuild everything. For real. No, serious. Way.

William’s take: Switching to an entirely new engine does not make everything obsolete. The inability to include the code telling the engine by which the legacy formats would work are what would do that.

So there we have it. A handful of questions for a company who proclaims itself the 3D Internet. What I have managed to gather from this interview both horrifies me and confuses me to no end, with assertions that looks are irrelevant in virtual reality, physics are completely out of range, using a new 3D engine would force everyone to start from scratch with the building… and on and on.

But there is a small glimmer of hope in this industry. There will be some advancements coming from the camp of Activeworlds (most notably in the looks department, which after this interview is shocking). But that also leaves me to wonder about players such as Second Life and There, although I must admit that if an interview with Activeworlds turned out like this, (and in all seriousness this was literally cut and paste from emails back and forth – notice the many parts where I nearly pleaded for them to not answer so badly), then what should I expect should I land an interview with Linden Labs or whomever currently owns There.com?

It’s very clear that while the Virtual Environment is making a comeback, it is still far from its potential. Second Life is opening more branches across the country to facilitate what it deems is a decentralized network (which it really isn’t) and There.com looks to be trying to cash in with its technology for the short term (Virtual Laguna Beach). And while they both seem to enjoy throwing vast amounts of money into media and public relations, this approach can not cover the fact they neither could possibly be the real Metaverse they both love to tell the real world they are or will eventually be (if only investors and businesses infuse just a few million more dollars into their environment).

As far as I am concerned, the PS3 Home network in all of its graphical power is nothing more than a last minute hop onto the bandwagon by Sony in order to catch a wave of social environments and appeal to what they think is “cool” and “innovative” to its demographic, much like the SixAxis controller throw in after the Wiimote announcement from Nintendo. Whether or not it is successful isn’t the issue here; rather I believe we should all look at the big picture here and wonder what exactly the real Metaverse will look like after all of the high profile players in this market burn out as a result of not seeing the overall picture.

And that, I would imagine, is the final realization. That something so great as a true Metaverse instead gets torn to shreds by venture capitalists and boards of directors who know absolutely nothing about this media paradigm shift, other than how to turn a quick buck at the expense of something great.

There will be a Metaverse, and I imagine it will be absolutely grand in its implementation. Right now all I see are companies planning for the short term, and that is how a truly great idea gets destroyed.

The Tin Age of Gaming

by William Burns III

“It’s the games themselves-not the graphics, not the music, not the pure processing power-that make the fun.” (Nintendo Power 78, p. 23)

I would like to believe that I am a connoisseur of sorts regarding video games. I first cut my teeth on a Commodore 64, moved to Atari, later Nintendo (NES, SNES, N64 and now Wii), Sega (Master System, Genesis, 32x, Saturn, Dreamcast), PlayStation 1 and 2, and even for a time owned an Xbox. I’ve had my share of gaming (including PC and Mac). Since the early years, and increasingly throughout and up until the present day, something has been outright disturbing me about the video game industry.

When I began with a Commodore 64 (and later a 128), there was instilled within me an outrageous satisfaction that the very code I had spent a ridiculous number of hours manually typing into this electronic device had finally produced a crude form of entertainment. Albeit 2-bit gaming at its best, Circus Capers was not a marvel in design nor programming. What it was and this is where I differentiate, is that it kept me occupied for many days during its creation and many more afterward as I played the game. It was a simple concept; bounce a stick figure around and don’t let it hit the ground, and yet it held my imagination far longer than a majority of games produced today.

Something terribly wrong has happened since then.

I was later introduced to my beloved Atari 2600, and with this new box in my household I was no longer required to enter the code into the machine by hand in order to reap the rewards of playing the game. Although the Commodore did have cartridges and tape storage, 15 minutes loading time for a 64K game was beyond the realm of my patience. Plug a premade cartridge into the machine and instantly you had a game to play, it was brilliant! I used to play games like Demon Attack, Yars’ Revenge, Donkey Kong, Frogger, Freeway, Asteroids and Tanks for hours (and admittedly I still do).

Then came Atari 7800 – Rock On! Better graphics than before! To say I was pleased would be like saying an anime fan merely “enjoys” a convention. And so the process began again, adding games to my ever expanding library, better graphics, but essentially the same games. Pac-Man was on the Atari 2600, but he never looked so good on the raw power of the 7800!

And then it happened. The Video Game Crash. Suddenly budgets for new games were being cut, companies were going under by the hour, publishers were looking for ways to diversify their offerings outside of the video game industry in order to survive. While many places went under, those that survived these dark ages continued on and reinvented themselves.

In those dark ages as a child, I spent my days playing my Atari and ColecoVision to pass the time. And at some point, there were rumors of a new system coming for Christmas… oh how my heart jumped and my palms did sweat in anticipation of what would be the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Coming from using a Commodore 64 to a time where the Atari 7800 was king of the mountain was enough strain on my poor child heart, so it was a complete wonder that I did not have a stroke when I found a Nintendo Entertainment System under the Christmas tree. And I thought the Atari 7800 was awe inspiring! There I was playing a video game that suddenly had numerous concepts that I was previously unaware a video game was capable of; Multiple levels, Multitudes of Power Ups, and a Storyline!

Holy crap! A real storyline!? (Yes, “Sorry, but the princess is in another castle” does in fact constitute a story, however weak)

Which leads me to Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis, both far more capable and superior than their previous incarnations. And the game library for each was equally challenging and creative in design. Games such as Super Mario Kart, Sonic 1 & 2, Rock and Roll Racing, Gradius III, Shadowrun, Final Fantasy (insert number here), and more kept me awake into the wee hours of the night. With better graphics than the previous hardware, the game industry was rolling along again but not as hot as it once was. Truly none of the new companies of the late 80s and 90s had done their homework before debuting their machines.

This was clearly seen with TurboGrafx-16, Neo-Geo, 3DO and so forth. Sega Saturn was originally to be a 2D hardware system (which it excelled at) but on the heels of PlayStation was suddenly strapped to a crude 3D engine at the last minute in order to compete in the graphics department. Neo-Geo was simply awe inspiring when it came to graphics because it was a near perfect arcade translation of its games (though the price was outrageous), and even the great Atari was somehow sucked into this war with its debut of the Jaguar, (which you must trust me I’ve argued with Adam Poots at Atari about what led to that and why Atari is just barely denting the market today). What I am describing here is something we see as a common folly of even recent times; where graphics and eye candy far outweigh the importance of the innovation of game design itself.

Think about this for a moment. Why is it that games which can be described in a single sentence have the staying power of 20-50 years, while massive multimedia productions costing tens of millions of dollars or more are second hat in about a year?

Everyone knows what Pac-Man is, and is happy to play it even today. All of those old classics have insane replay value, and I believe this is the holy grail of the video game industry – one which a majority of the industry has completely forgotten. It’s true that games like the Final Fantasy franchise have a strong presence in the industry, but it’s still Final Fantasy (insert number here). And while such games as Asteroids, Super Mario Brothers, and so forth are still being repeatedly revisited – when was the last time you felt the need to replay Super Mario 64? How is it that the original Donkey Kong has more replay than its sequels?

Herein lays the problem, and one that the game industry continually manages to fall into time and again. They have all managed to forget their roots, and as a result, are subject to mediocre games with a short shelf life and replay value. Sure, games like Halo 3 will be a huge success and I’m currently playing Final Fantasy XII on PS2, but when these are done I no longer feel compelled to pick them up again – and even with Halo 3 and the ability for online play, it’s a one trick pony. The shelf life of one year is simply unacceptable for a video game when compared to the classics I used to play (and still do to this day).

So I’ve outlined at least part of what is bothering me about the industry, and now I will try to convey the other part.

What we now see in our current state is that three major systems have emerged. Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360 and, of course, the PlayStation 3. Being that Nintendo has been through this situation before (first and second video game crash) they were smart to step back and focus on gameplay and not hardware power like the competition. When a company like Nintendo steps back from producing a system with far superior graphics in exchange for focus on gameplay and price point – you would think that other companies would be paying attention.

Consistently increasing hardware capabilities, graphics capacity and so forth does not mean it will be better. One need only look at 3DO, Neo-Geo and Jaguar for proof of that. So why are these companies hell-bent on following this proven path of ruin again?

Sony is in deep trouble right now. Let’s face it, folks. From Blu-ray discs to ridiculously expensive components and shortages of units, Sony has outright bet the farm with PS3 hoping gamers won’t call their bluff. The price tag is too high, and the games are outrageous to produce – and while it is visually stunning, graphics alone do not make a good game.

Sony as a company has managed to go the route of 3DO. Yes, I just saw that light bulb go off over your head. The “all in one entertainment unit” that was supposed to be 3DO died due to complications, as well as price point and lack of compelling content. So too we see Sony and PS3 attempting the same route – just with better hardware. Do any of these companies understand the concept of not repeating history? Sony also seems to be hell-bent on repeating history with the Blu-ray format, which for all intents and purposes happens to be the new Betamax while HD-DVD would be the new VHS. This time around, I’m not entirely sure anyone cares any more.

Sony may have a mild success with their Broadband Cell Processor system, but it certainly could not hope to recoup their losses.

So does this leave Microsoft off the hook? Of course not! One thing that differs though is that with their online capabilities they have reintroduced us to our classic games, downloadable and playable at home. Obviously somebody at Microsoft understands the idea that these classic games have infinitely more replay value than their multi-million dollar counterparts, but does this actually solve the underlying problem? For the most part, the answer to this is a resounding “No.” Essentially reselling classic games only masks the underlying problem, but at the very least it buys them some needed breathing room while attempting to figure out how to return their newer games to the ability to have a shelf life of many years.

And so we in turn are left with Nintendo and their Wii system. The Wiimote is essentially a redesigned Power Glove concept, right down to the sensor bar, and even Nintendo has the classic gaming strategy in their arsenal for a backup plan. We see now that through a process of emulation, game companies are dusting off their old games and attempting to breathe new life into them – all while making some more money. Nintendo will undoubtedly be offering us their old NES, SNES and maybe even their N64 library over their online network, downloadable for a price and playable. So, they too are seeing this problem as well and are opting to take the route of buying some time.

The question I see here, and one that we as gamers should be clearly asking, is why are we paying $200-$300 for a game system when we will be spending a majority of our time playing games on it that a $10 NES or SNES from a garage sale can just as simply accomplish? There are surely emulators online that you can download for free, and while trading the ROMs themselves is considered illegal, rest assured such happens with great abundance. One only need to look at the PSP (PlayStation Portable) to understand that Emulation is running rampant – and I will admit freely that I am running an NES, SNES, and Genesis emulator on my PSP with a library of games for them as ROMs, which is due to the wholly unimpressive game selection available for the gaming device I paid $250 for. I paid amazing money for a handheld system, and one way or the other I am going to use it.

But again, I actually own said games for those systems and they are sitting in a box.

An NES game measures about 256k in size, and the emulator is free. So why pay $250 for a game machine, $1,000 for a new television, and $50 a month for a broadband connection and then pay $1 or whatever per game? Emulation is what will drive these next generation consoles, and it is emulation that was born out of rebel programmers trading ROM files to play these very same games on home computers. Unfortunately, we all know what happens when companies get their hands on these things…

And yet, here we are gladly paying for these classic games again. The reason being is that there is obviously a massive void in gaming leaving us without any game with the replay value that we once enjoyed. Unfortunately for us as gamers, I believe this is like rewarding game companies for bad behavior, and as long as we continue to reward them for this, the problem will only get worse.

Now, you’ll have to excuse me. I have a marathon game of Gauntlet II to get back to…

Editor’s note: VR5 worked with Jamie in bringing VNES to the Active Worlds environment.

You have to take into account, of course, the two basic types of gamers: the casual gamers and the hardcore gamers. For the casual gamers, the PC and the Wii are both ideal. For hardcore gamers, the thought of spending thousands on consoles and accessories seems remarkably backwards. Keep in mind that casual games are beyond the scope of this editorial. Most casual games are either played online (Flash, vNES) or downloaded for free (PopCap, Free Lunch Design, Real).

1. You’re not getting anything from Japan.
Sad as that fact may be, thanks to Japanese culture, the chances of getting a big Japanese game (for example, Sonic The Hedgehog) are remarkably slim. Since Sega is no longer in the hardware field, you’d think that the PC would be a logical extension to their publishing platforms. It really isn’t. In Japan, computer games are associated with a genre of games known as Dating Simulators (Dating Sims). “Playing a computer game” in Japan is almost completely associated with those games now.

2. The cost of consoles are killing the market.
Given that this generation of consoles and handhelds (sans PSP) all contain hardware that conventional PCs do not, it seems like a rather counterintuitive idea to publish a game for a system that is starting to lose the purpose it once had. Computers are now headed towards becoming systems that only deal with the internet. With Google Office and Windows Live Office, it seems more and more that the conventional wisdom of storing a program on a computer is no longer feasible.

3. Software piracy is becoming an issue.
Windows makes it very easy to copy a CD and give it to a friend. Doing that is arguably easier than doing the same for a console game. Digital Rights Management is alienating the users, and there is a real lack of a smart way to keep software piracy from happening while keeping users from getting angry.

4. Keyboards are the only inherent value of PCs.
There are a distinct few genres that are good for PCs. Communication Games (The Sims), First Person Shooters, Massively Multiplayer Online Games (generally RPGs, think Everquest) and Casual Games. Most other games can be accomplished more efficiently without dealing with keyboards. Back when I used to design Casual Games for Playground Media (poorly thought out business plan, more on that later) the keyboard and all of the keys seemed superfluous. Most games can be implemented in a more intuitive way with a controller than with a keyboard.

5. The idea of selling computer software is becoming dated.
With this global economy and excessively fast network of computers, the thought of putting on pants, walking to the car, driving to some software store, wasting gas money, dealing with a bored and often incompetent clerk (dealing with people in general), dodging lines, checking out, driving back home, and installing it no longer seems to be a logical operation. Why buy a piece of software at a store and take up 45 minutes when you can just download it in 5? At the risk of circular reasoning, the lack of ability to do this (despite becoming less of an issue now) may have something to do with the rampant software piracy issue facing the industry today.