Wow, it's been a really long time since I've posted here, and that last one I just pasted from my other blog.  So to get everyone up to speed, I just got a Wii from my girlfriend for our anniversary (I know she's amazing).  Anyways, I have a bit of a dilemma when it comes to the system though, in that I don't really know what games I'll be getting for it now or in the near future.

The problem is that I don't much care for mini games, which seem to be the heart and soul of the Wii right now.  I tend to prefer more traditional games and genres, such as action/adventure and RPGs.  I also own a 360, so most of the games I'm looking forward to in these genres will be on that platform, simply due to the better horsepower.  Of course, I picked up Zelda and I'm looking forward to Metroid.  But I don't really expect to be playing many games in those genres on the Wii.

So there's my dilemma.  I'm looking for games that aren't in the traditional genres for the Wii, but I don't much care for most of the non-traditional genres.  Right now, I'm most optimistic about strategy/sim titles, as I've always enjoyed those on the PC, but there don't seem to be many big ones that have been announced so far.  There's MySims, which may be ok, but I'm a little pessimistic about anything that comes out of EA, especially spinoffs.  Then there's supposedly an Animal Crossing game down the line, but it doesn't even have an official title yet.  And there are a few Fire Emblem titles, which are always fun, but if you've played one game in that series you've pretty much played them all.

So what about it?  Anyone have an idea about any Wii games coming out that might interest me? 

This is a copy of an article that I originally posted here.

One of the most basic rules of economics is that of supply and demand. Essentially, the value of a product fluctuates based upon a ratio of how scarce a product is and how much demand this is for the product. One of the main points of supply and demand is the the price will always return to an equilibrium. If supply falls then price will increase. Increased price reduces demand, which in turn reduces the price, etc... Although they don't realize it yet, the current console makers have their economics all wrong, yes even Nintendo. It may not be hurting them much at the moment, but things like this have a way of catching up with you when you're least prepared.

In the last decade the laws of supply and demand have turned the music industry on its head. Just today came reports that CD sales are down an astonishing 20% from last year. The reason music sales have suffered so much is that with digital media, supply is, for all intents and purposes, infinite. If it costs you $50,000 to record an album, it costs you $50,000 regardless of if you sell only 1 album or 10 million albums. The problem is that when you plug infinite supply into a supply/demand equation, no matter what your demand is, the ratio becomes zero. So how do you make any money off of a product with a price of $0.00? There has been a lot of discussion about how this effects business models. Some of my favorite publications are The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson, and Techdirt's series on The Economics of Scarcity. It's still a relatively new area of study, but some ideas are starting to come to the forefront.

One of the keys is that you have to connect the product with infinite supply with a product that is scarce. Take the iTunes Store for instance. Despite its massive sales, Apple makes almost nothing off of the iTunes Store. They have to charge something in order to pay the record labels' bill, but beyond that songs are sold almost at cost. But the songs sold on iTS wouldn't be worth much more than what they're currently sold for anyways because they're a product with infinite supply. However, the iPod is scarce, not just in terms of materials, but also in terms of it's design. By connecting the iTS to the iPod, Apple is able to make much better profits on the iPod than competitors can on their MP3 players. The cheap, but abundant songs, increase the value of the already expensive, but scarce iPod.

This is also Google's business model. Search results are in infinite supply, but have almost no marketable value on their own. However, those search results bring peoples' attention, which is scarce and can be sold to advertisers for profit. This concept isn't limited to digital goods either. By now Starbucks is notorious for their "$5 latte". Everyone knows that it doesn't cost $5 to make that latte. In fact, it probably costs less than most people think, because coffee is not that scarce of a good. But it doesn't matter how much the coffee costs because Starbucks isn't really selling coffee anyways. They're selling something much more scarce, much more valuable, and something people will gladly pay out the nose for: convenience. Ever notice how Starbucks are seemingly everywhere you go? The location is the real product and that's what your really paying for when you plop down your $4.99.

Which brings me to gaming. For a long time, console makers have subsidized their profits with game with game sales. This is something anyone with any connection to the industry should be familiar with. Microsoft, for example, sells every Xbox 360 at a loss of about $126, according to some estimates. Then it charges game makers approximately 11.5% of their revenue to sell games for the system in order to make back their losses and then some. This almost makes sense because disk based media is still semi-scarce, but I'll come back to that later.

However, Microsoft sells other games over Xbox Live. Xbox Live Marketplace is made up of small games sold only as downloads for $5, $10, and $15 as well as other downloadable content. Sony and Nintendo both have similar systems with similar prices, but let's stick with Microsoft for the example. At GDC, Microsoft announced that Xbox Live users had activated (read purchased) more than 5 billion Microsoft Points, or $40 million at a rate of 80 points per dollar, and had a total of 6 million users. While these numbers initially sound impressive, this translates to only $6.67 per Xbox Live user. How could Microsoft increase their revenue from Xbox Live? They could raise their prices, but that would decrease demand and they would end up right back where they started.

However, with digital content supply is infinite. It would cost Microsoft nothing but bandwidth and server costs to distribute it all to all 6 million Xbox Live users. So if Microsoft radically drops prices they can increase demand until this content is being distributed to nearly all Xbox 360 owners. Their revenues over Xbox Live Marketplace would probably either stay the same or drop even further, but that doesn't matter because there's another effect from making this content free and/or very cheap. Currently Microsoft sells the Xbox 360 at $400 because that's what they've determined it's worth to their customers. However, an Xbox 360 with access to thousands of pieces of free digital games and content would be worth quite a bit more. The value of the product with infinite supply enhances the value of the product with limited supply. How much more, I can't say. Perhaps $50, perhaps only $20, but certainly more than the $6.67 per unit that Microsoft is currently making. By radically decreasing the price of their online content, Microsoft can raise their revenues while simultaneously making their product more attractive to customers. Additionally, Microsoft decreases its risk in the process. Before they had to sell about 10 games before they recouped their losses. If they can raise the value of the Xbox 360 and therefore the price then they don't need to sell as many games before they bring their product out of the red.

Even Nintendo, who supposedly sells their systems for a profit could benefit by changing their economics. In fact, they're in an even better position than Microsoft since most titles sold on the Virtual Console have long since recouped their initial investment and Nintendo owns or controls the rights to many of them. By making their titles free, or significantly cheaper, they could raise the price of their console, again making it more attractive to customers, increasing their profits, and lowering their risk.

Earlier I mentioned how standard disk based games are only semi-scarce. My meaning is that, while their digital content can infinitely copied and transferred over the internet, the technology has not yet reached a point where transferring 9gb or more of data is feasible in most parts of the world. Technology does not stand still though, and this is something that will not last. Indeed, it is already starting to happen. While we have not yet seen full retail titles released in large numbers, smaller titles, like Gran Tourismo HD and Oblivion's expansion pack The Shivering Isles, are being already being released online only to console audiences. As more and more of this content makes it to online distribution, it makes less and less sense to continue subsidizing hardware, the scarce product, with software, the abundant product.

I'm not even suggesting that software has to be free. Earlier this week, Forbes published an article breaking down the price of a game and where the revenue went. For a game with a $60 retail price, approximately 43%, or $26, goes to covering manufacturing costs, retail profits, and subsidizing console hardware. With digital distribution, if we stop subsidizing hardware with software, nearly all of that $26 in costs can be eliminated. Developers and publishers would sacrifice none of their profits, consumers get cheaper games, and console makers can make profits on selling their hardware.

The economics of the console games business have been backwards for so long now that people just accept it as reality. In what other business can a product sell 24 million units, but post a $4 billion loss, and still be considered a relative success? The fate of the music industry should serve as a warning for the video game industry. Without proper economics behind their business models, companies will be eaten alive by the disruptive forces of the internet combined with the free market. The time to act is now, while digital distribution for games is still in its infancy. Companies who wait for it to mature can expect to be swept aside.

Wow, Eternal Sonata is looking absolutely beautiful.  With titles like this, Blue Dragon, Fable 2, Lost Odyssey, and Mass Effect, the 360 could well be shaping up to be this generation's system for RPG lovers.

I've entered the editor's challenge contest on firingsquad.com. Go here to see my entry. Registration is required to vote for it, but it's free.

My last post may have been a bit... harsh. I'm not trying to give the impression that I hate Nintendo or the Wii. I've always loved Nintendo. Of the six platforms I currently own (Xbox 360, PC, DS, Gamecube, NES, SNES), four are Nintendo platforms. Once the Wii has a few games under its belt, I'll probably buy one of those too.

My post was more just out of general frustration of all of the ohh-ing and ahh-ing I keep hearing about the Wii, and to a lesser extent the DS. I keep hearing about how stale games are, how it's all just the same and how the Wii is the savior of the industry and will set everything right. But where were all these people when games like Psychonauts and Oddworld and Darwinia were languishing on shelves? They talk about how great it is that the DS is bringing back the adventure genre, but how many of them even noticed Dreamfall or Indigo Prophecy. My point was, these people don't want original or innovative games. Original and innovative games have been around for years and nobody bought them.

WarioWare's been around for 2 and a half years now. There's certainly nothing original about Mario Party 8. Twilight Princess is the exact same formula as every Zelda game since Ocarina of Time. Everyone's just high on all the marketing that Nintendo's been throwing at them and I feel like I'm the only person who can see through it. Like I said, they're still great games. The Wii will still be a great platform, although not for the reasons that everyone seems to think. But they're not giving us anything new and meanwhile the next Psychonauts is sitting on a shelf somewhere unsold.

Ever since the introduction of the Wii, it seems like the age old debate of graphics vs gameplay has cropped up with new vigor. On one side you have people claiming that graphics have reached their pinnacle. "There is no meaningful improvement to games that better graphics can bring anymore", they triumphantly claim. On the other side you have… well actually you don't have many arguments coming from the other side anymore. There are a few holdouts, but they seem massively outnumbered by those converted by the success of the DS and the seemingly inevitable success of the Wii. To be honest, this state of affairs saddens me. I have to confess that I've always fallen on the "graphics matter" side of the debate. I've been playing video games for some 17 years now, shorter than some but still longer than many. I've played them because I enjoyed them for what they were and as improvements were made in graphics and new genres evolved I enjoyed them even more. However, it seems like the new trend is to reject the roots of the industry. People say that games are stagnating. I've lost count of how many times I've heard the phrase, "It's the same thing only prettier". People want something new, something fresh, and they're pretty certain that they're going to get it from the DS and the Wii. Sorry, but I'm not falling for it. The DS, as far as I'm concerned, is a ruse. I love my DS. It's a great platform, but not for the reasons everyone seems to think it is. People love to applaud it for its magnificent innovation, but what is really new about it? Here's a brief look at my collection, which reads like a best selling list of DS titles: -New Super Mario Brothers (a 2D platformer) -Final Fantasy III (a remake of a NES RPG) -Brain Age (a quiz game, and a very basic one at that) -Animal Crossing (a port of a GC title) -Mario Kart DS (a remake of an N64 kart racer) -Advance Wars DS (essentially a port of a GBA game) -Hotel Dusk (a point and click adventure game) To be sure, these are all fantastic games. However, I don't exactly see a lot of innovation there (originality maybe in a few, but that's not the same thing). As for the Wii, I have to admit I haven't played one yet. You can't demo them and I don't know anyone who has one, so my only option would be to buy one myself. But I don't really see a compelling reason to plop down $300 plus tax for a system and a game. From where I sit, I break the available Wii games down into 3 categories: mini games, Twilight Princess, and crap. That last one includes licensed crap, ported crap, and just plain old crap. I don't really want any kind. As for Twilight Princess, I know it's an excellent game, but I already own a Gamecube. Does the Wii remote really add $250 worth of value to this game? Does it add any value at all? This, of course, leaves the mini games which seem to be making everyone who owns a Wii all atwitter. My problem with these is the first part of the word: mini (short for miniature). I don't want miniature games. There's no story, no alternate world, no substance. There's barely even a game, which is why they always cram 50 of them onto a disk. I want real, full sized games. I want something that makes me feel like a hero, not something that makes me feel like I'm making goofy gestures in my living room. Of course why should I care if someone makes a few mini games. If it were as simple as that, I would have no problem at all. I would happily play my RPGs and not bother. But with all this hype around the Wii, with everyone buying into the marketing that it's giving you something different, I'm not certain that it is as simple as that. There are only so many developers with so many resources. So what happens is we get companies like Ubisoft porting everything they can over to the Wii while pushing back release dates on titles like Assassin's Creed. How long before Shooters, or RPGs, or Action games go the way of the Point & Click Adventure just so they can be replaced by Mario Party 23. Perhaps, I'm being a little too pessimistic. I sure hope so. I still think way too many people are drinking the Kool-aide without thinking about just where it could be leading us.

It’s not uncommon these days for agame company to put a high priority on keeping the story line of a game secret. This is, of course, entirely understandable. In a lot of games, the primary thing pushing you forward is the desire to discover the next piece of the storyline. Game trailers have become surprisingly similar to movie trailers, giving you the rudimentary elements of the plot without exposing any of the big details. However, for all this effort to avoid any major spoilers, there’s often one area that goes completely over looked. I’m talking about the gameplay here. Most often games are advertised and demoed showing the gameplay near the climax of the game. For a basic action or puzzle game this might not be such a big deal. Many games these days are taking on RPG elements though, where leveling/powering up is an integral part of the game. For me, part of the fun of RPG’s and other games that involve leveling up has always been that discovery of just what you’re capable of when you get to that next level, the “oh wow, that’s awesome” moment. When trailers or demos reveal these moments too soon, they detract a certain amount of joy from when you play the actual game. It was the Crackdown demo (which is fantastic by the way) that started me thinking about this subject. I absolutely loved the demo, and there’s no doubt now that I’ll be buying the game. However, the demo has an accelerated leveling adjustment that makes it entirely possible to max out any one of your stats during the course of the demo. This leaves me wondering if there will really be anything left for me to discover (at least when it comes to leveling up) in the course of the actual game.

This Sunday I decided to finally buckle down and finish the main story arc of Oblivion. 8 hours and a rather disappointing ending later, I finally did. Oblivion was a great game that consumed some 75+ hours of my life. However, after it was all said and done, I was left with only one thought. For all its attention to detail, the world of Oblivion still doesn't feel like a living, breathing world.

Oblivion is a massively detailed game. There are hundreds of plants, seeds, and fungi that you can pick to produce every potion you can imagine. There are nearly infinite combinations of enchantments and spells. There are hundreds of caves, dungeons, and ruins that exist for no other purpose than to provide you with something to explore should you feel like it.

The problem is, all of these details are rather insignificant in how they affect the gameplay. How much of a difference does it make to have 100 meaningless dungeons instead of just 50 meaningless dungeons?

f it were only a matter of having more detail, I would have no problem with it. However, all of this attention to detail really serves to highlight the areas that they seem to have missed. The chief culprit here, is something that has plagued RPGs ever since their early days, and that's simple continuity of the game world.

The siege of Kvatch is one of the first events in the game and leaves the entire town of Kvatch in ruins. However, years and years later in the game nobody has so much as tried to even clean up some of the rubble in Kvatch. Even worse, nobody in the city has even moved from the spot you left them at the end of the seige. In a game that places so much emphasis on making the NPC's feel alive, this is a pretty glaring error. Similarly, months after a fire in one of the Mage's guilds, nobody has bothered to put it out (not to mention that there are no signs of damage on the exterior of the building).

Here's another example. NPC's in Oblivion have sophisticated AI that gives them the ability to carry on conversations in the streets regarding current events in order to make it feel like the entire world doesn't just revolve around you. However, even after completing the Mage's guild quests and becoming the Arch mage of the guild, the guard in front of the guild still greats me with "you must be the guild's newest recruit" every time I pass him.

I know it seems like I'm nit-picking here. It's a massive undertaking to make sure every little detail fits in a game like Oblivion. However, something like rebuilding Kvatch, or recognizing the status of the character should take a heck of a lot of priority over building an extra random dungeon or placing another species of herb.

Every year in January, I like to take a look at which games I'm anticipating for the coming year. So without further ado, here are a few of the titles I'm looking forward to in the next 12 months.

Assassin's Creed:

Sands of Time was one of my favorite games of last gen. However, the sequels seemed to focus too much on the details and take the series away from the things that made it great. Assassin's Creed looks to take the core gameplay from Sands of Time and expand it in some fresh directions.

Mass Effect:

KOTOR and Jade Empire were both did excellent jobs of creating worlds with rich storylines to draw the player in. However, the technical limitations of last gen consoles left a lot up to the imagination. I can't wait to see what Bioware is capable with current gen hardware.

Crackdown:

The sandbox genre has always had a lot of potential. The stuborn focus of the game industry on Hip Hop themes has kept me away though. Whenever developers expand the genre into new settings, like with Mercenaries, I'm immediately interested.

Blue Dragon:

Any game that can get Japanese gamers buying Xbox 360s has my attention.

Alan Wake:

The details on this game have been enigmatic at best. It was one of the first next gen games announced and we still know almost nothing about it. The visuals look impressive, to say the least though.

Other games I'm looking forward to that don't require much elaboration:

Halo 3
Spore

What's everyone else looking forward to in the coming months?

I guess I've kind of neglected this space for a little too long now.  It's been a bit of a strange holliday season for me.  I totally missed out on all the fuss surrounding the Wii and the PS3.  I kept up on it and all, but I haven't even thought twice about trying to pick one up.  I'm not sure if I'm just a little jaded about the whole thing or if my current games have just been keeping me too occupied to notice much.

Even on the systems I have though, I hven't really been playing the big games much.  I plowed through Gears of War in about a week and haven't touched it since.  FF XII has been sitting at my girlfriend's place for about a month now, and I've yet to get further than 10 hours into the game.  Instead, I've been playing a lot more lower profile games.  Viva Pinata, Railroads, Defcon, and Space Rangers 2, have collectively eaten up a couple hundred hours of my time since early Oct.  I've also been playing a lot of downloadable demos, and lately I've been trying out the beta of the Galactic Civ 2 expansion.

Not the I really mind all this, it just feels a little weird.  I've always been one to follow the hype.  It was part of what made gaming fun for me, always anticipating the next big thing.  I just feel a little detached from the community at the moment.

That's all I've got for now.  See you in another couple of months.