Sony's touted its ten-year plan for the PlayStation 3 often enough that it's clear the company's determined to bestow its current console with the same long lifecycle enjoyed by its predecessor -- but as the PlayStation 2 is an exception in console history, it's a daunting objective.
Sony Computer Entertainment of America product marketing VP Scott Steinberg is charged with making sure all three of Sony's current gaming platforms fulfill the 10-year lifecycle plan, orders that come straight down from the top.
"Our motivations and ambitions, of course, are to continue on all three platforms," Steinberg says as part of an in-depth Gamasutra interview. "The ten-year strategy is ingrained in all of us. [SCEA president and CEO] Jack [Tretton] has brought that to all levels of the organization."
A veteran of Sega during its Genesis era, Steinberg has had an expansive role with Sony since he joined last September to head up both hardware and software marketing.
PlayStation 2 may be already most of the way through its planned decade, but the lifecycle of the PS3 must be considered newly begun if it's to reach its goal -- and the hardware marketplace is unarguably much more competitive now.
In Steinberg's eyes, the PS3's "future-proofing," as well as the balance of its media and gaming capabilities, are what will give the system its legs, as the company plans a "roadmap" of firmware updates and added functionality for the machine.
Steinberg's assertion that part of the PS3's value lies in its potential to expand and evolve echoes CEO Howard Stringer's past statements on his company's newest console: "The price of the PS3 is high, but you're paying for potential," a statement that rankled some gamers who were more interested in immediate returns on their dollars.
Sony would rather update a platform than introduce a new hardware iteration, Steinberg says. "We do not have a planned obsolescence strategy," he says, pointing pointing to the PSP as another example.
"Whether it's Skype or some other peripherals, it's not just a dumb terminal that lies secluded and isn't enhanced with all the recent technologies and opportunities."
Unsurprisingly, he also sees the Blu-ray Disc format as a significant competitive advantage. "Blu-ray is bigger, and Blu-ray games are going to be the biggest games in the industry," he says.
"I think that feeds into [gamers'] choices as well. ...I think there are a lot of great 'a-ha's that consumers are going to find with music, and the movie store. ...You buy it for a gaming machine, but it delivers on a value proposition."
Sony also hopes the past will help usher in the future -- Steinberg sees Sony's ubiquitous PlayStation 2 as something of a Trojan horse.
"Every million units of PS2s we sell in 2008 is just a great opportunity for us to upgrade as they get closer to HD households," he argues. "The HD curve is spectacular, and the conversion is happening, so we see that as a natural marketing campaign."
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
NovaStrike update soon, Trophy details revealed
Did you buy NovaStrike only to find yourself stuck on the first or second level? Fret no longer, as the game's massive update is nearly here. We chatted with Kevin McCann of Tiki Games about what to expect from this near redesign of the game.
"I'm really hoping the update helps a lot of existing owners that are frustrated with the difficulty to enjoy the game," he said. "I've spent a *lot* of time on tuning the difficulty (particularly on RECRUIT and SOLDIER), and brought more folks through to play it, so this should be closer to the mark in being accessible from very casual to hardcore gamers (and believe me - I'm still including a challenging mode for those that want it)."
As far as Trophies go, they've been implemented into the game and will activate when the update becomes available. There are 16 Trophies - 12 bronze and four silver. Among the bronze Trophies are three with secret requirements. Be on the lookout for a full Trophy listing later this week.
The update will be submitted to Sony for approval in the very near future. In fact, it may have already been submitted in the 13 hours since I spoke with McCann. Basically, expect to see it live fairly soon.
Here's the complete list of changes that you'll see in the update:
* Difficulty - Tuned to be easier in existing modes while adding a HARDCORE mode for those that really want a challenge
* Fully Customizable Controls - A secondary control layout that has an alternate control mapping scheme will be included, but you'll also be able to customize the controls to your liking -- you can map weapon selection to face buttons and/or the digital pad, put the afterburner on a trigger, etc.
* Trophies - 16 total Trophies, 12 broze and four silver, will be added
* Player ship - The Scythe will be larger in size
* Fine Aim mode - Those having trouble lining up the Shredder and/or Trembler bomb will be able to hold a button down to slow down the Scythe's turning which this makes lining up on ground targets a lot easier
* Megapacks and repair packs - Will now replenish the capacitor bar for the afterburner
* Slight performance increase - Overall game optimized slightly
Media Molecule reveals UK LittleBigPlanet boxart
In a Threespeech exclusive, Media Molecule and Sony have revealed the official UK boxart for LittleBigPlanet. You can check out the new boxart above and post your thoughts in our comment section.
Spore could be a PS3 exclusive
Today we’re making the case that Spore will launch on next-gen consoles, and that it could be a PS3 exclusive — that Xbox 360 gamers will lose out, and Microsoft’s own policies will be to blame.
We have three mighty convincing reasons to believe this. First is the inexorable tendency for every Will Wright game ever made to show up on every games machine under the sun. Sim City has been ported to no fewer than 30 (thirty) different platforms, and The Sims is getting there. Mr. Wright has repeatedly boasted of the procedural nature of Spore’s code, and how it could be scaled up or down to match any hardware requirements — releasing across as many platforms as possible has always been his intention.
The second reason is more obvious: EA’s long-standing practice of publishing games on as many systems as possible. By EA’s standards, the Spore roll-out at launch is quite conservative: PC, Mac, DS, and mobile phones. Yet there isn’t a doubt in our minds that versions for the 360 and PS3 are on the way — perhaps even Wii and PS2 versions, too (albeit with cutesier names: MySpore, Spore Castaway, etc).
Take those two factors into account, and you can imagine it’s a dead cert that Spore will land on both the PS3 and 360, perhaps in mid ’09. EA may already be tweaking and fiddling with working builds.
Yet Reason #3 hoses down any hope of total cross-platform utopia: Microsoft’s rigid controls over Xbox Live. Microsoft takes a dim view of user-generated content, and a dimmer view of free content. The preferred business model for Xbox Live is official content from official sources, sold at official prices from which Microsoft gets an official cut.
If you don’t like this official policy, then you’re officially entitled to sod right off.
Sony’s attitude is quite different. The Japanese gaming giant is hoping to create a YouTube-style revolution with its latest batch of PS3 software, and LittleBigPlanet is leading the charge (see our piece LittleBigPlanet to Embarrass Xbox Live). Gamers are encouraged to make and share as much as they dare — stupid SingStar performance videos, esoteric Buzz quizzes, Echochrome puzzles, etc.
EA, too, has been fostering this behaviour for years. Sure, the occasional hacker will unleash nude Sims on the web, but as long as the vast majority of gamers are lining up to buy the latest furniture expansion packs, the system works.
The launch of the Spore Creature Creator inevitably led to many cock monsters among the million+ species made by everyday users. Yet every new cock is not a defeat for EA, but a victory — for those cocks are made with Spore. EA is cool with the cocks.
But Microsoft is not. If Microsoft Points aren’t involved, then it’s a waste of time — cocks or not.
Thus we can see two possible scenarios for how Spore could work on the Xbox 360 format. It could go the way of Unreal Tournament 3. Epic wanted full mod support for the 360 version, but months of protracted negotiations were to no avail. PS3 and PC gamers can download user-created levels; 360 gamers cannot. They threw in a split-screen mode and some exclusive goodies as a booby prize, and ‘best of’ DLC packs will surface down the track, but the fact is that UT3 on 360 will never live up to its full potential.
The same would be true for Spore. The whole point of the game is that exploring other planets lets you interact with user-generated creatures — they’re randomly downloaded automatically for each new world you explore. Without access to the life forms made by millions of other players, Spore just wouldn’t be the same.
A second possibility is Nucleus. EA’s new system for selling downloadable content and tracking achievements across all gaming platforms could serve as a back-door to the flood of Spore beasts — cock monsters and all. Spore is confirmed as having Nucleus support; it all comes down to how much leeway Microsoft intends to give to EA’s new money-making apparatus.
Oh, and there’s a third possibility: EA could simply give up. Because if there’s a hobbled 360 version and a fully-functional PS3 version of the same game side-by-side on store shelves, consumers will be inexorably drawn to the product that gives them the most. If the bean counters at EA figure that a 360 version of Spore is doomed to sell poorly, it may never get the green light in the first place.
So there you have it. Microsoft’s rigid attitude towards user-generated content is like the mighty oak tree, impressive at first, but likely to be smashed to kindling by the storm. Sony’s attitude is supple, like the reed, able to bend in the wind, and weather torrents of glistening cocks that fall from the sky.
Note that we’re not saying that Live is a bad service, just that the PlayStation Network gives developers a distinct advantage. And yes, Microsoft could change its ways. But at the rate they’re going, either Spore will be exclusive to the PS3, or it will spank the 360 version raw.
LittleBigPlanet to Embarrass Xbox Live
Is Microsoft’s Xbox Live service better than the PlayStation Network? At one stage in this generation such a question would get little debate: Xbox Live for the win – at least from a user’s perspective. We’d still tend to give a nod in Live’s direction. With all of Microsoft’s extensive PC networking experience behind it, consumers have rallied behind the marketplace (despite its questionable pricing plans: microtransactions our collective arses!) and fallen in love with the social mechanics and achievements.
Sony has been playing catch-up all along. But catching up they have been, with each firmware update the PlayStation Network has become a more robust online alternative, to the point where there is a hint of the cross-media bar in the upcoming Xbox Live re-skin. Now Sony just need some killer software.
For a while there it looked like Home was going to be Sony’s big PSN hope, but a run of delays has seen interest in the product wane. But a new beast has risen to take its place: having just spent a few days goings hands-on with LittleBigPlanet and chatting with Nick Robinson, its Senior Product Manager, we think it could be LittleBigPlanet that really rocks Xbox Live’s boat in this key skirmish of the console war.
For the uninitiated, LittleBigPlanet is one of the bravest software concepts of all time. A side-scrolling platformer on the surface, its beating heart lies in user-creation, with gamers empowered to construct their own levels and freely distribute them across the Net to all other community members. As Nick informed us, the driving mantra during the game’s creation was ‘no cheating.’ Each of the 50 levels constructed in the main experience is developed with exactly the same tool kit provided to users in the creation mode.
In fact, Nick stated that originally they weren’t going to provide any maps at all, just the editing software. But instead the 50 levels were designed and included for the specific purpose of illuminating what can be achieved with the tool kit: they’re instruments of inspiration first, entertainment second. And while Nick informed us that there is already 12 months of planned DLC for the game, it will come in the form of new editing tools – a mini music studio was spoken about but not confirmed – coupled with levels that show off what it can do.
The possibilities in LittleBigPlanet are next to endless. As part of our time with the game, the assembled journalists were each given two hours to construct a map, with everything from skate-boarding simulations to hardcore platformers and cut-scene driven puzzlers spilling out of the nation’s finest critics.
Nick is aware that this leaves the door open to just about anything – he believes that they’ll probably get every Mario Bros. level ever developed day one – and they have strict moderation features to counter spam and indecency. But the truth of it is they are genuinely clueless as to what is going to happen. They really don’t know: they’re going to press the big green button step back and watch what happens. It’s the great unknown, but ultimately Media Molecule, and Sony, are charging headfirst into the unknown with barely contained excitement.
It’s a mentality that parallels the ground-breaking work being done by Will Wright on Spore, and it’s already working. In fact, Nick informed us that other Sony studios – including Guerrilla Games – are chomping at the bit to make their own themed-levels for their games – Sack-Helghast anyone? The game is filled with brilliant features that are sure to facilitate exponential community growth. Like the ability to create props and images that you can hide in your level as Easter eggs which, if discovered, will be delivered as prizes to the gamer for use in their worlds. Or to chain-link multiple levels together, so when you finish one it downloads the next, allowing guilds and clans to develop whole games of their own styling. Not to mention full website support covering things like stat-tracking of your average map rating, and fastest times in race maps. Not to mention that the game supports Trophies.
It’s going to go off. And it’s all facilitated by the freedom Sony gives to developers in the way they use the PSN. Such freedom does not exist on Xbox Live.
We broached the subject of the Xbox 360 with Nick and whether LittleBigPlanet could function as desired on the format: the answer was a disappointed shake of the head. Echoing thoughts we heard from Epic Games Mark Rein last year regarding the issues they faced with wanting mods available for the Xbox 360 version of Unreal Tournament III (which subsequently resulted in a delay), and the frustration shown more recently by the developers of N+, Microsoft’s Draconian – and frequently hypocritical (seems to be ok in Halo 3 and Forza 2) – restrictions on user-generated content is proving to the be Live’s Achilles’ Heel.
Just today the developer of the highest rated XBLA game ever, Braid, suggested he would never work on the system again due to Microsoft's restrictions.
Getting a straight answer out of Microsoft as to what precisely is their problem has been a long trek down a dead-end. On the surface they’re saying it’s a bi-product of Xbox Live being a ‘closed system’, and then there’s been a bit of the old ‘we can’t guarantee the quality, or that the content will be kosher’. But there are more than enough hints to suggest that Microsoft is simply worried that it will devalue the premium content on the Marketplace: as in they will lose money. Or more precisely, will not get as much money. Certainly Bizarre Creations, who were told they couldn’t give Geometry Wars away for free, would agree with this theory. Even Mark Rein has moaned about the need of “convincing Microsoft to let us give some things away for free."
As it stands, LittleBigPlanet is set to embarrass Xbox Live and really challenge Microsoft’s views on user-generated content. The game has a tremendous amount of hype and having played it for hours now, that hype is certainly warranted. It’ll be a trendsetter for sure, and a host of LittleBigPlanet clones will surely appear down the track, all of which will seemingly need to head to the PS3. And LittleBigPlanet is just the first wave in an onslaught of user-driven experiences, including such big hitters as Guitar Hero: World Tour and Spore.
Indeed, if LittleBigPlanet fulfils its potential, appealing to mainstream and gamer alike, then it could very well force Microsoft’s hand by humiliating the revered Xbox Live system. Worse still for Microsoft is this all important question: what other unannounced games have already pledged themselves to the PS3 in order to jump on the user-content bandwagon?
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