Ian is out today fighting his way through the Mad Gears. I’ll be filling in with a couple tidbits and a rant. (Ian sez: I’ll return tomorrow, from somewhere that isn’t a waiting room.)
Yesterday, Newsweek ran an interview with Nintendo overlord Reginald Fils-Aime, who confirms that Metroid Prime 3 will not be released in June and will come out… well he doesn’t say when. Citing quality control, Fils-Aime claims that Nintendo wants Metroid Prime 3 to be a critical and financial success and that it will come out when Nintendo believes it can reach those lofty goals (meaning 2008).
What is the Xbox 360 missing that the other consoles have? A functional console you say? No, motion sensing controllers, silly. Peter Moore told Game Informer in a recent interview how he admired Nintendo “bringing back fun” to gaming, adding:
"…but we’ve got a few tricks up our sleeve … It’s not something that we’re going to be shy about, and it’s not something that we’re not painfully aware of that needs to be changed by this holiday. That has been the strategy all along, and we’ll be making some more announcements in the coming month or two."
Early speculation is that the 360 will be adding a motion-sensing controller, but as the CVG article points out, the trick could be the introduction of fun games that don’t involve shooting mutants in the head, mashing buttons to simulate sex or volleyball platforms that are so exploitive they make Russ Meyer blush.
The Wii has made great strides in attracting casual gamers with its entertaining, yet edgeless, games like Warioware and Wii Sports. Yes, Wii Play sucks donkey cock, but at least you can give it to your 6 year-old.
Motion-sensing is great, but if Microsoft is going to emulate Nintendo’s style I much rather they focus on entertaining games like Viva Pinata (as the article points out) rather than squeeze out an unnecessary motion-sensing controller. Actually, they should copy Nintendo and make a reliable system. And no, I’m not going to stop harping on it.
Did you know there was a site for Women Gamers? Either did I and surprisingly its discusses gaming topics beyond shopping and unicorns. The appropriately named Womangamers.com is running a contest to send two lucky young ladies to National Computer Camp, which is just like Space Camp, but with a less believable plot.
To be eligible for the scholarship, applicants must submit and essay explaining:
"What will video games of the future be like and if you were in charge of designing a game, what would it be like?"
Submissions need to be submitted by April 27, 2007. Winners will be announced May 4, 2007, and the winners’ dreams of a world where video game designers view women as individuals instead of sex objects will be crushed sometime this summer.
Finally, Joystiq is running a story about Sony Entertainment head Phil Harrison, who at this point pretty much the Glass Joe of the gaming world.
The story recounts a blog entry from Edge magazine’s Paul Rose, who witnessed Harrison’s latest misstep. According to the blog, Harrison who was attending a Marillion (no idea) concert (he’s friends with the band), offered up a PS3 for auction. After the band started the bidding at €100, Harrison not liking the lukewarm response jumped on stage, ranted about the PS3’s greatness and then upped the price to €600 (the store price) because its great value. Well as anyone living in the civilized world could imagine, the crowd didn’t react all that well and there were no bidders. Harrison in response became frantic to the point where people became embarrassed for him. After what must have been an eternity of awkwardness, someone shelled out the €600, with the promise he would have it signed, by the band.
Now, I’ve mentioned this before, but after this latest PR disaster at what point does Sony smarten-up? Shouldn’t Sony be focused on things like promoting the fact that its machine is more powerful and much less fragile than the 360? Instead of taking dumps on the Wii, the Worldwide consumer and anyone who criticizes them, wouldn’t Sony be wise to just close its big dumb mouth and just show us the value of its big expensive product. Maybe, just maybe, then Sony could spend focus more on the loss of its exclusive titles rather than defending its latest gaffe, which was in response to a previous gaffe.
Better yet, maybe its time they close Phil Harrison’s big dumb mouth because he seems to be the source of most of these screw-ups. If someone a year ago recounted the various Sony PR fuck-ups of the past 12 months, I’d think they were writing one of those awful gaming web-comics or they were an Microsoft employee.
At some point people will come around to the PS3 ($100 price decrease), but the fact is that Sony could be winning the lastest console war if they weren’t such morons about it. They have a powerful machine that appears to have worked the kinks out and offers something to gamers the Wii and 360 does not. Instead of working with that, Sony has to focus its PR machine on picking up the elephant shit its employees leave behind after every single interview. Its madness.
That’s all for today.