TheCallidusCollection Blog

A Unified Console for A Perfect World

January 11th, 2008

The ongoing battle between Sony’s Blu-Ray and Toshiba’s HD-DVD in the next-gen video disk format war has gotten me thinking recently about the state of the video game console market. As the home theatre industry moves closer and closer to settling on what looks like it will be a victorious Blu-Ray format, I believe that it is also time that the video game industry makes a similar move towards format consolidation. Recently, God of War lead man David Jaffe has been the loudest in trumpeting the benefits of a single unified game console format. For once, I actually find my self agreeing with him, which sort of frightens me. Moving to a single console game platform would be in the best interests of consumers, publishers, and the industry as a whole moving forward.

As the video game industry has grown and the technology continued to progress, game production budgets have exploded. The effect of the astronomically increasing production costs associated with game development have all but made the once-common platform exclusive game virtually extinct. Those games that do become console-exclusive typically wind up costing the console manufacturer millions in exclusivity fees and marketing agreements, they wind up costing the publisher sales totals due to the limited scope of the consumer base, and they ultimately allow fewer people access to some really great games for lack of owning the “correct” console.

We have seen undeniably that all three of the major players in the video game console market have their niche.

Microsoft, as would be expected from a software company, is the king of the interface. The Xbox 360 interface is far and away better than anything found on the Playstation 3 or Wii. The dashboard is intuitive, the marketplace has a sensible organization and flow, the method of seamlessly joining friends in their online games is nearly perfectly done. The Microsoft hardware, however, leaves much to be desired – again to be expected from a company that is mainly a software company. Repairs of the 360’s ongoing Red Ring of Death problem alone have already cost Microsoft over $1 billion US – yes, that BILLION, with a B. To say nothing about other hardware issues the system has had (faulty controllers, faulty wireless headsets, the fact that the console sounds like a jet engine when turned on).

Sony is nearly the exact opposite of Microsoft, which we should expect from a company known primarily for their hardware production. The Playstation 3 has had an unbelievably low failure rate - the last number I heard was something like 0.3%, which is simply astounding for a hardware unit packed with that much emerging tech. The interface for the PS3, however, leaves MUCH to be desired. The Xross Media Bar (XMB) that is used as the console navigation system on both the PS3 and PSP is clunky and unintuitive at best, finding something in the Sony online marketplace is like sifting for Gold in a riverbed, and the online connectivity system is nowhere near as polished as that found on Microsoft’s box.

Nintendo has always been the king of the first-party game titles. Their console hardware, while always extremely reliable, has been vastly under-powered compared to its competitors in each of the past three console generations. Yet people keep coming back for the Marios, the Zeldas, the Metroids, etc. The Wii has sold like hotcakes, yet among the hardcore gaming crowd, excitement over the system is dwindling quickly. The only software titles that are having much success at retail for the console are Nintendo’s own big time franchises and some of the mini-game collections and gimmicky games targeted at the casual gamer crowd.

A unified console platform could unite the best of all three worlds – the interface expertise of Microsoft, the hardware expertise of Sony, and the innovation and first-party titles from Nintendo. Publishers would have the security of knowing that their game releases would be available to all gamers and vice versa. Retailers would be able to carry a wider variety of games because they would not have to devote floor space to at least three different versions of each title along with the hardware and accessories for each different console. The unified format would also help in allowing gaming to reach further into the mainstream entertainment market by removing the consumer confusion that goes hand-in-hand with any multi-format electronics battle.

The hardware development costs could be split among the major console hardware manufacturers with the profits from the platform licensing rights divided among them as well. Given that virtually all game console hardware is sold at a loss in order to make the profits on the platform licensing for the software, this is a win-win situation for hardware developers as well. With only one licensing fee for software developers to pay on a unified console, the cost of that fee could be increased, allowing the hardware companies to continue to profit from the licensing without each having to eat the MASSIVE hardware development and production costs on their own.

Having said all of that, unlike Jaffe, I don’t believe it will ever happen… because unlike Jaffe, I am a realist. In the real world, companies like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo will not play nice together. All three have been the big kid in the sandbox at one point or another and all three continue to believe that their rightful spot is as that big kid in the sandbox. A unified console format, no matter how much sense it makes to the market and the industry will simply not happen because of the egos involved. And that’s a shame.

Posted in Games | 128 Comments »

For Whom the Bell Tolls…

September 10th, 2007

It was bound to happen… this weekend it finally did. My Xbox 360 succumbed to the dreaded Red Rings of Death. Apparently the intense game of Uno I was playing at the time was too much for it to handle.

I’ve dealt with Micro$oft’s 360 warranty repair once before when our Xbox 360 at the store went Red and the process was quite smooth - it should be, since Micro$oft is getting a ton of practice at RMAing these things. Nevertheless, the prospect of being sans 360 for the next two to three weeks is not something I look forward to.

I’m contemplating just purchasing a new console (one of the new Premiums with HDMI output) and then doing a console swap and returning mine the next day in the box for the new one. The drawback there is that in order to play any of the XBLA games that I have purchased up to this point I will need to be connected to Xbox Live, since those games are tethered to my system’s MAC address for any offline play. Yet another one of my many annoyances with this fad of downloadable content. I paid for the game, don’t tell me when and where I can play the damned thing.

Micro$oft never ceases to amaze me. It seems like the only thing that they have proven that they can do consistently is develop products that have some sort of critical and chronic inherent failure that produces a “_________ of Death.”

I guess all those half-retarded monosyllabic Halo-playing business students that infested my old college campus were right about one thing - It doesn’t matter what sort of garbage you produce, if you market the hell out of it it will probably be a hit.

Posted in Games | 3 Comments »

Overwhelmingly Underwhelmed By E3

July 12th, 2007

After watching a steady stream of media coverage on this year’s revamped E3, I have to say I am pretty underwhelmed by the major announcements from all three major hardware players (Micro$oft, Sony, Nintendo). When the most exciting thing to come out of all three camps was Nintendo’s announcement of a Wii Zapper, things are decidedly lackluster.

Micro$oft
Micro$oft kicked off the week by holding their press conference the night before E3 actually started. Joe West of VoodooExtreme comments on the M$ conference: “So much horn tooting, but that’s to be expected. If you believed everything MS had said you’d think they were the second coming of Jesus.” I have no problem with horn-tooting, especially at an event that is now geared towards media and other developers; but for the love of god, please give us some actual content. The Micro$oft conference was filled with rehashed trailers of titles that we have all seen before, with the exception of Resident Evil 5. They did announce a slew of Xbox Live Arcade titles, most of which are ports of retro games (Golden Axe, Sonic, Tetris Smash, etc). Given the fact that nearly all of the classic arcade ports to XBLA have suffered extreme control sloppiness to this point (MK3, TMNT Arcade, SF2, etc), I’m much less excited about these titles than I would have been otherwise. I was rather intrigued by the announcement of several quality portable titles coming to XBLA - including Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo and Puzzle Quest.
M$ also announced a new peripheral - the SceneIt. In an effort to keep this blog PG, I’ll refrain from detailing my first thoughts other than to say that given it’s phallic design I thought that this must be the Trance Vibe for a 360 port of Rez. What the heck were they thinking?

All of us who have been waiting with bated breath for more variety in the 360 lineup can breathe easily… Call of Duty 4 is coming! *sigh* Let me get this straight… 360 is on the verge of being on store shelves for three years now and we have THREE Call of Duty games, but not a SINGLE decent RPG. Good Game M$… I wonder why you are being soundly whooped in Japan. What, do you have a team of monkeys working on your Japanese strategy? At least they have had Blue Dragon for almost a year over there. I hate M$ more with every passing day.

File under “See Last Paragraph” category - we were also shown footage of PGR4. Because 360 didn’t have any racing titles yet. So that’s good news.

I have to laugh at the Micro$oft hype machine… Halo, the Star Wars of our generation? LOL… yeah, I don’t remember seeing any popped-collar frat boy douche bags at Star Wars. The Beer Pong of our generation, maybe.

Nintendo
The three big unveilings from Nintendo revolved around new control devices for the Wii - the Zapper, Wii Wheel and the Wii Balance Board. The Zapper looked like it might be a good thing, but really, it doesn’t seem to do much that the Wiimote doesn’t already do - you point at your target and click. The Wii Balance Board looked extremely glitchy and completely absurd. Watching Miyamoto and Reggie lean from side to side attempting to block soccer balls with their characters’ heads was quite simply even more painful than being forced to sit and watch real soccer. The competition between the two to see who could block the most balls lasted about 60 seconds and by the end of it Reggie looked both bored and uncomfortable. The Wii Wheel was, well, a steering wheel. Pretty run of the mill there, although it did coincide with the announcement of the inevitable Wii version of Mario Kart, which should be more party-fun for the Wii.

The big software announcements from Nintendo were mainly official release dates for titles we already knew about - Super Mario Galaxy (Nov. 12), Super Smash Brothers Brawl (Dec. 3), and Mario Kart (Q1 2008). Not that this isn’t good information to have, but it really lacked in the *breaking news/big announcement* feel. The gameplay demo of the Zelda DS title looked intriguing, however.

Sony
Out of all the press conferences from the big three, the Sony one featured the most quality gameplay footage… something very atypical from what we have seen from them in the past. Sony is usually out there spouting numbers and tech specs that nobody really cares about. Not this year.

The big announcement from Sony was the official announcement of the PSP redesign. I was stunned by the lack of redesign in the redesign. It seems like they changed things that didn’t really need changing and didn’t change the main things that needed fixing/adding. That’s not to say that the changes in the PSP v2 are not good things - a little bit lighter, a little bit longer battery life, a slightly faster UMD drive, and a video-out jack - I’m just saying that it falls WAY, WAY, WAY short of expectations. There is no internal memory, there is no analog stick redesign, there is no d-pad redesign, there is no better ergonomic shell design, there is no built in clamshell to protect the screen. Let’s just say that I’m extremely glad I did not sit around waiting for this redesign to pick up my PSP.

The Hideo Kojima presentation was pretty cool. MGS4 was confirmed as not only a PS3 exclusive, but also the final game in the MGS series. The gameplay footage looked sexy. Lots of other gameplay footage shown for things like Wipeout HD, Haze, SOCOM: Confrontation.

All in all, this year’s E3 has so far packed a whimper rather than a whallup. Perhaps they should have brought back the booth babes, at least then there would be more fun things to ogle.

Posted in Games | No Comments »

The Collector’s Curse

June 27th, 2007

It doesn’t really matter what one collects - be it beer cans, cars, toys, books, video games, or third-world countries - the act of collecting is mainly about pride… with a heaping side of obsession. Inevitably, one’s collecting habit grows into its own living, breathing monster… with the collector spending more time collecting than actually enjoying the collection. I think this phenomenon is probably more prevalent among video game collectors. This is largely due to the nature of the object of our obsession.

Video games, especially games of today, are designed to be immersive experiences that span hours upon hours of gameplay. Many games don’t even truly hit their stride until several hours in… and don’t even get me started on the time requirements of my favorite genre - RPGs.

As a collector, I am constantly adding games to my collection: games I remember fondly from my childhood, games that were must-play titles for a system, games that were just too good of a deal and/or find to pass up. As I write this, my current game collection count is 578 titles, spanning 19 game systems. Of these 578, I cringe every time I think about the percentage of them that I have never even tried.

I have talked to people who have collections two, three, and four times the size of mine. Really, mine is still pretty small in the grand scheme of things, and the fact that I only collect complete games will probably continue to limit the size of my collection in terms of raw numbers. But even at 578 games, if I were to spend just two hours sampling each title, I would be gaming for over 48 full 24-hour days.

Such is life’s lot for video game collectors. As the collection grows and grows, the number of unplayed games grows with it, until it reaches daunting levels. The collection becomes less about the collectible and more of an outward reflection of whatever the psychological stigma is that we have personally attached to it - be it a harkening back to our youth, an obsession with possessing the biggest and the best XYZ on the block, or what have you. And once that metamorphosis occurs, the collecting becomes about the collection and we spend more time collecting than enjoying.

Some of us will mask that fact by claiming that it has become the thrill of the hunt involved in collecting that drives us. However, in today’s age of eBay, Craig’s List, GameTZ, and any other number of world shrinking avenues, the thrill and challenge of the hunt has devolved into something akin to playing Madden on Rookie difficulty.

And yet, here we sit. Still as devoted and determined to grow our collections.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go search eBay.

Posted in Games | No Comments »

The Burning Crusade > The Bubonic Plague

January 16th, 2007

Today is the day that over 8 million people around the world have been waiting for for over a year. Today, of course, is launch day for The Burning Crusade - the first expansion pack for the mega-hit online multi-player game World of Warcraft. January 16, 2007 - a date that will live in tech employer infamy.

The good people at About.com estimate that 20 million people died in Europe’s Black Plague of the mid-14th century (and yes, the historian in me wants to kick my own ass for having used About.com as a reference… but I digress). Now imagine that just under half of those people all kicked the bucket on the same day and that is the impact that the launch of this game will have on people M.I.A. from their jobs today.

A recent report on GameSpot notes that 0.1% of the world’s population currently subscribe to and play World of Warcraft. In the technology industry, I’m sure that percentage is close to 50%. Imagine the lost production in the workforce today - between people calling in sick to play their new expansion, people coming in late from having gone out at midnight to buy the expansion and played till 4am, and the people who crawled out of bed and came to work after the previous scenario only to sit at their desk and type blogs about the game… hmm.

Those of us in the technology industry should have banded together and demanded that today be a paid company holiday. Let’s be honest. Most of us techies who don’t work for the government did not get anything out of yesterday’s holiday (which was MLK day apparently - which I only found out about when I came home and discovered that the post office had not delivered me my eBay game purchases). Not only is today the launch of Burning Crusade - a day that most of us will be calling in to work for anyway - but today is a two-fer… it is also the anniversary of the start of Prohibition in the U.S. One of those other failed experiments… much like the concept of work.

So… in celebration to all of you who called in sick today to stay home and dwell in that glorious glorious realm of Azeroth I raise my Irish coffee to you in envy as I sit at my desk. Know that I am with you all in spirit(s).

Posted in Games | 2 Comments »

I Rant, Therefore I Am.

January 11th, 2007

Welcome to the first post of The Callidus Collection blog. How fortunate you are to be here. Before I begin, I must apologize to Dennis Miller for stealing his title for this blog post… although I prefer to think of it as more of an homage than an outright theft, so I’m going to just go with it.

I had the unfortunate displeasure of viewing one of the worst movies in the history of the world this week, a displeasure that was made even more displeasureable because the movie had real potential. Judging from the response this movie is getting in online and critic circles, I will probably get flamed for this. The movie in question is Children of Men.

I became relatively excited to see this movie when I discovered a flood of praise for it this past weekend while surfing Digg.com. After watching the preview I was intrigued. The premise had real promise.

Without giving anything away, the plot is thus: We are about 20 years in the future. For some unknown reason, women have become unable to become pregnant. There has not been a child born in the world for 18 years. Because of this, much of the world has fallen into either chaos or totalitarianism. Then the main character (Clive Owen) discovers that one woman has become pregnant somehow.

Ok, I lied. That was giving something away. In fact, it was giving everything away because that’s really all there is to this movie. And sadly, all of that was relayed to us in the preview. I could have saved myself $8 and two hours of illogical suck had i just watched the preview and left it at that.

The film takes place in England, which has degenerated into totalitarianism in the wake of the babyless crisis. Ok, plausible… most likely probable. Then we discover that the English government’s Homeland Security forces are brutally rounding up illegal aliens en masse and either exterminating them or deporting them. This is really the central plotline to the film, which is unfortunate because it is completely illogical.

If humans were suddenly unable to procreate and the global population growth instantly became permanently negative, people would become one of the most valuable commodities a government could possess. Without a population base to supply the workforce, the society and hence the government cannot function. Totalitarian governments would not be rounding up immigrants for extermination and expulsion; rather, they would be trying to obtain as much immigration to their nation as possible in an attempt to keep their economies and societies afloat just a little longer.

With such a glaring flaw in the basis of the film’s premise, it quickly became obvious that the movie was about nothing more than propaganda for today’s political culture–yet another sad example of filmmakers beating viewers over their collective heads with their political viewpoints rather than providing us with a plausible plotline.

Posted in Movies | 2 Comments »

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