You’ve seen the Sony commercials in the last year. Ever since the slim and the price drop Sony seems to have found its sense of humor it lost years ago back in the PS2 days. Their slew of “It Only Does Everything” ads have been entertaining and very funny thanks in part to the style and the spokesman they tasked to be the voice of the company Kevin Butler (actor Jerry Lambert) breaking the fourth wall and talking to us the gamer/consumer about a variety of things.
Now that the PlayStation Move is official it only makes sense that they would task Jerry to do his bit for promoting the new product … by making fun of the other guys. In the ad, Kevin, now anointed as the VP of Realistic Movements comes back from the future (November 2010) to report on how well the Move is doing and things are going well. He continues by dropping these gems throughout the commercial.
While waving his arms like a T-Rex, he says , “Because real boxers don’t hit like this.”
On the topic of the controller he says, “It’s also got what we in the future call buttons, which turn out to be pretty important to those handful of millions of people who enjoy playing shooters, platformers, well, anything that doesn’t involve” … and here comes the dig, “catching a big red ball.”
And this one well it might be a dig at both the Wii and the Natal, “C’mon, who wants to pretend their hand is a gun. What is this, third grade? Pew, pew, pew.”
Hilarious? Yes. Asking for a fight from the other two console makers? Hell yes. As a bonus marketing push they have created a Twitter account so you can follow the fictitious Jerry online. It’s some good old fashioned mudslinging that’s more subtle than a political ad but just as effective without ever saying the names of their competition.
As to whether or not Microsoft or Nintendo will respond remains to be seen. If anyone was going to step into the ring first it’s a god bet it will be Microsoft but since we have yet to see a single TV ad for Natal we’re not sure if or when this will happen.
The merits of the three systems are pretty much clear at this point in their existence but with the new motion control peripherals being launched for PS3 and Xbox 360 a new area of competition has been created. And from the looks of things we’re giving round 1 of this battle to Sony. Looking forward to round 2.
It has been said from time to time that the videogame industry was one of those recession proof industries because in times when people are down and out they seek solace in escapist entertainment/activities like movies, videogames, drinking and drunk videogame movie watching.
We’ve certainly seen our share of profit drops and layoffs in the last year to prove that it’s not an entirely recession proof industry after all but truth be told the industry is still doing better than say .. the automobile industry.
So the big news that top online entertainment media company IGN fired a lot of people from the top down in many departments wasn’t so much a surprise but the reasoning sure was.
We’re they going out of business? No
Were they involved in a debacle that involved consoles crashing into TV’s? No
Were they perhaps part of the fat cat banker/investment crew that drove our economy into the ground? No?
So what then?
They have been doing well in the last year but figured in order to continue to do so meant they had to fire people. What?
Company head honcho Roy Bahat issued this statement in a press release so secret it’s been leaked all over the internet …
“We’re doing this to reduce costs. While we’ve been doing well — we’re profitable and our audience continues to grow — we’re still feeling the effects of the economy, and we need to make sure we can invest where there is opportunity.“ The memo went on to add as a further punch in the face to the dedicated employees who have helped them succeed, “We’ve had to reduce the size of our organization and are eliminating roles today in every part of the company. We are making every effort to be compassionate and fair to the people whose roles we’ve eliminated.”
Translation: We want to keep making money without paying the people who got us here so have a nice life and good luck finding work when there are no jobs and everybody and their uncle would kill to get a gig working with videogames.
Listen, we all understand how this works. Times are tough and you have to cut costs. But for a corporation to outright say that you’re going to fire people to cut costs instead of cutting costs first, it just seem a bit absurd. Maybe IGN did try to cut costs (like stop spending money on Jessica Chobot’s video pieces) but that has not been communicated to anyone. The memo even revealed that despite their 40% growth– #1 in games and men’s lifestyle — they have to get rid of “colleagues who played an important role getting us to where we are.” Nice reward for helping make your company a success.
It’s not often, at least these days that a company grows 40% in a down economy and then fires people. Our hearts go out to all our unemployed brethren who have been let go and hope you find success in your future endeavors.
We’ve all seen the sweet bundles Microsoft has been serving up since the COD:MW2 special edition. It was the ultimate “I Want That” console. Now spring is hear and we’ve got the FF13 special edition console and next month Splinter Cell comes out with another special edition bundle. In each instance the console comes with a 250 gig hard drive. So of course the question becomes ….
“Why can’t I get that separately like the 100 gig one?”
Well if you believe the rumor mill then hope springs eternal as of March 23. Unfortunately Microsoft refuses to confirm this rumor. In fact the word from Aaron Greenberg last month in a Joystiq interview was this,
“We did it with the Modern Warfare bundle, which, as people know, was a huge success, completely sold out. We’re excited to bring it back with the limited edition Final Fantasy bundle.” But that whole limited edition element is “part of what makes it special,” he said.
To get directly to the point — “We’re always evaluating but for now we feel like the 120 is serving us very well as the standard offering, and then having the 250 as a limited edition is a good balance.”
250 gigs? You want it then you have to buy this!
Well gee Aaron that’s a bit unfair isn’t it? Special editions make them balanced? C’mon Greenberg! Especially when you consider the truckload of content Xbox live now offers and will continue to do so. It’s not entirely inconceivable that a gamer could fill that hard drive with full games (rather than own the disc version) movies, demos, TV shows and music. So for Microsoft to say that the only way you can get this is to buy one of these special edition console is in a word — stupid.
So to you Microsoft — WTF!
By the way, you may come across alleged versions of a 250 gig on some random sites but they’re bunk. Add to that you have a company that won’t allow you to say go out and buy a Western Digital 500 G external hard drive and use that for your console and well, once again, it’s stupid. In a culture of consumerism wouldn’t it make sense to make it available so that you can then offer more stuff for people to then add to their monster hard drives? With that much space why you wouldn’t think twice about downloading GTA or Fable. But alas for now we’ll either have to shell out and extra 100 for a whole new console or be happy with the 120 gig.
All this hullabaloo this past week at this past week’s GDC and the big announcement of the PlayStation Move had he thinking back to when motion control was a fantastical dream. Take a trip with me in the Hot Tub Time machine back to 1983 when those wacky kids went to this thing called the “arcade.” There amidst the clank of quarters and the blips and beeps was beckoning the call of sci-fi nerds everywhere was the coolest game ever — Star Wars. The game cabinet was huge and you had to sit in it. Inside you were transported into the cockpit of an X-wing you got the blast the beejeezus out of tie fighters in an all out battle to destroy the Death Star. What made this game so cool was that the game used 3D vector graphics to create the visualizations on the screen.
If you’ve never heard the term basically it’s a style of graphics that use shapes, points, lines and curves to represent images. Back then, if you were sitting in the Star Wars machine it was the closest thing you got to full immersion gaming. Add to that was a Star Wars game. There was also a stand up cabinet but it was so not the same.
FPS Action and Celebrity Voices
step into some hella fun
So the game boiled down to three levels and featured the digitized version of the key cast members (Hamil, Guinness, Ford and James Earl Jones). Jumping into the X-wing you to fend off Tie-Fighters and Darth Vader, get to the surface of the Death Star then finally make your run in the trench to fire the day-saving photon shot. If you got through that you would start over only this time it would be harder. Wash, rinse, repeat. Simple but fun and really well put together. The cool part about the first part was you didn’t have to kill all the enemy ships. You just had to survive the dogfight. Once you made your killer shot you got a a really cool explosion of colors and a big bucket of points.
Later on there were some console ports Atari 2600, Atari 5200, the Atari 8-bit family, ColecoVision and Commodore 64 (even NES) but they all paled in comparison to the cabinet thrill ride you got in the arcade. Let the quarter sucking begin.
Sony people in the house wave your Move in the air!!
So everybody sitting around at GDC and then Sony starts their presentation ….
Tough year … blah blah, great games Heavy Rain, Uncharted 2 blah blah ….Mag blah blah … God Of War 3 system seller million unit release blah blah blah… more stuff coming at E3 blah blah …. and then we finally get the big announcement ….
The PlayStation …. Move?
All that buzz about it being called the Arc well that was just the rumor mill at high speed. It’s being called the PlayStation Move System — as it was pitched during the presentation “from the tiniest twitch to the strongest punch, it’s ahead of it’s time” The folks at GDC got a chance to try out this new peripheral first hand and reports are so far so good. Forget kicking balls and painting things, this motion controller had actual games to show off and not just any games, they brought PlayStation staple, SOCOM to the party.
In the contest of show me your stuff, Sony didn’t just blow people’s minds — they kicked Microsoft’s ass.
kicking balls? Puleeze -- we so got that beat
Here’s the breakdown
It sort of looks like a Wiimote except for the weird glowy ball (changes colors too) but make no mistake — this aint no Wii
The controller has less buttons and is more streamlined
It charges using a USB connection just like it’s big brother controller — battery sucking? Not
The main controller and it’s nunchuck counterpart (known as the subcontroller) are not tethered by a wire.
The colored ball — that’s your motion detector.
The report from those who played SOCOM say the functionality blows the Wiimote/nunchuck combo out of the water. What would normally be a clunky interface is now a seamless transition with weapon and movements nicely paired out.
Depth sensing — if you don’t know what that is well then you haven’t had a chance to not experience that with the Wii. The Move pupports that the glowing sphere at the end of the controller along with the PlayStation Eye camera work together to solve that issue.
If you’re wondering — those are actual games that you’ll be able to use this new peripheral with. Along with games like cheating golfer tour (Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11) and Little Big Planet (retrofitted). Granted the promotional video is replete with cheese and then some but this goes so far beyond what Natal showed us last summer.
Natal offers no controller at all but here’s the question — where’s your stuff?
PlayStation Move has
An estimated fall launch possibly ahead of Natal
A rumored starter package price of $100 (depending on if you already own a PS3 and what you’re planning to buy)
Titles that already look cooler than anything we’ve seen on Natal.
The path has now been paved. Come this holiday season the Wii will not be the only game in town and tapping into that casual gamer market when you already have the hardcore gamers as part of your core audience will be a lot easier for Sony and Microsoft. For Sony to use GDC to drop their Move bomb was a bold and absolutely brilliant move. These are the folks who you want to sell this system too more than anyone else because they’ll be the ones making games for it.
Tough act to follow? Without a doubt. So Microsoft — show us what you got.
