The Wii now has the lowest user activity since there is no quality titles on the console – which means that even though there is a lot of sold Wiis out there there is still little incentative to develop costly titles for the Wii since no one uses their Wii for long (it can basically be said that people use the until they get fed up of Wii Sports).

At the same time the numbers are turning for Nintendo. They used to sell double as many consoles in Japan as Sony and Microsoft combined. Now things have changed. Japanese people tire easy of technology and the Wii has little, in terms of technology, to offer. Now Sony is outselling Nintendo for the first time… and the tide is rolling! Even Nintendo knows that the Wii is heading towards a bad, bad place!

The selection of titles for the Wii is filled with crappy titles and has less than ten quality titles all together – most of which are first party. No wonder people are leaving their Wii’s to collect dust after finding Wii Sports repetitive. However, Nintendo are readying the followup title on Wii Sports, Wii Sports Resort, which promises more of the same – but will it deliver new life to the Wii – and more importantly: For how long? At the same time they are releasing Wii MotionPlus, finally delivering the one-to-one motion mapping Nintendo promised many years ago with the Wiimote and Nunchuck, that completely failed to deliver!

While Sony and Microsoft continues to lower the prices of their consoles Nintendo has still to do this for the first time – even though the Wii already had the a solid profit margin at launch.  They have already, like Sony and Microsoft, invested a lot in reduction of production cost on the Wii. This means that Nintendo’s margin is gone up way high, while Microsoft and Sony have been bleading. This begs the question: What will Nintendo do now?

The natural idea now would be a serious price cost to spur sales yet again – perhaps combined with the inclusion of both Wii Sports and the new Wii Sports 2 plus two controllers with Motion Plus for a slightly reduced original price! They need to get a version down below that of the Xbox. There is no way they can justify their price anymore – not without a High Definition mod and more quality titles included (they will quickly see how difficult it is to find more than two quality titles for their console)… However, Nintendo has already claimed that no price cuts are coming!

In my opinion Nintendo needs to do two things – and fast! One: Cut the goddamn price, Nintendo! Between 30 – 35% at LEAST and then make some nice bundles with Wii Sports and Wii Sports 2 and make the Wii Motion Plus standard in the Wiimote. Two: Start delivering quality titles NOW! Not just first party, but also third party… Show that you have the game development teams behind you! Oh, and while you are at it… STOP the junk titles from reaching the market! How do you think your customers feel when they buy another “Wii Sports Wannabe Clone” for good money and find it to be worth less than Summer Games for Amiga in monochrome colors?!

What Nintendo needs to understand is that the Wii is not really a console – it is a toy and should be price like it… The controllers are not gaming controllers, but gimmicks for the toy meant to offer a mild imitation of reality… and the graphics are not much better than that of the Amiga – especially on a HD TV!

So, in short… Nintendo – wake up! Lower the price and start paying money to quality assurance for once!

Today’s entertainment in the living room is dominated by consoles, while the personal computers spend more time in first person shooters than they do in Word and Excel combined. Each year several thousands of new titles is made available for the many platforms of the gaming industry. Never before has so many people worked in the gaming industry either, from development, to sales and distribution. It is big business and it keeps on growing…

The question then becomes: What happened to the innovation?

In the beginning the industry wasn’t professional developers with a master degree in computer science and a bachelor degree in marketing and sales, but simply hobbyist having fun with extremely limited systems in their parents basement. There the basis for the current market was made – in the late hours of the night .. on development platforms most developers today wouldn’t be able to cope with. The demands for keeping the game within the small memory limits and the restricted processing power, combined with the long loading times meant that focus had to be present in order to make a good game. They couldn’t really focus as much on graphics as we do today. A nice title screen made up by large pixels and that was it for most titles. The sound side would hurt most ears today so the tunes had to be catchy. The focus then had be GAMEPLAY… The game often had to be simple, but fun and addictive to play!

These days it is difficult to imagine that one could be absolutely lost in the “virtual world” of Maniac Mansion, Pirates! or  Defender of the Crown on the Commodore 64.. or Civilization, Flashback, Monkey Island or Dune 2 on the Amiga.. but people really were! When Wolfenstein came out it was “like being there yourself”. Load the game today and you will feel a bit concerned by that because it looks crap and has an awful feel. However, back then it was a polished feel and a good gameplay. When Doom came out the world of FPS and with it the gaming scene was born, in my opinion. Playing Doom 2 multiplayer over null-modem with your friends was great fun and something else. To be able to compete on this virtual battlefield was intense and easy to pick up, even though skills would differ between individuals and therefore suddenly training mattered.

Now, if we take a look at what the gaming scene is producing today… with its top-professional studios, filled with highly competent and well-educated staff, led by professional story writers, coded by skillfull and professional developers, acting by professional actors and screen artist, sound and music made by professional musicians in top-class recording studios with complete orchestra, graphics done by visualization experts, 3D artists an professional sketch-artists… well, one question quickly pops up: What happened to innovation?

Now you got the means and the staff inside your studio, which is no longer your fathers creepy basement, and you come with this?! Take any title on the market and see how many titles you can find on the same recipe! It is troubling that such a large industry cannot innovate beyond what has already been done. They are simply waiting for new hardware, like the Wii-mote, and then adding a bit of titles for it, not at all concerned with doing the innovation themselves any longer – only the safe bets … which translates to: 90% FPS (like any other in essense with a 1% difference if we really look at it), a few strategy games within already known series, such as Command & Conquer, the same sportsgames in new wrappings without any real changes to gameplay and then the car/racing games… That’s pretty much it!

Now, try to think back to the last time you looked at a game and said: “Wauv, that’s something that has never been done before -this changes everything!”… Well, there were a few times in history worth noting, like with Civilization, Dune 2, UFO: Enemy Unknown, Doom, Quake, Half-Life, Guitar Hero, Counter-Strike, EverQuest… but not recently! It is not like I am living in the past… I simply can’t find the titles!

Well, if the industry can’t make up new genres or new types of gameplay how about combining already known genres in new ways like Savage and Natural Selection did with FPS and Strategy?

Some studios keep pressing the button still and they deserves respect, like BioWare with their ever-increasing innovation in roleplaying games from Baldur’s Gate to Knights of the Old Republic on to the latest edition of Mass Effect. Other studios deserves respect for focusing on excellent gameplay and extraordinary polish in their games, such as Blizzard from the days of WarCraft 2 to Diablo to StarCraft and onto the World of WarCraft. The rest that just fills a place in the gaming industry but doesn’t add innovation or excellent gameplay and just keep on pushing lousy half-finished sequels I can safely say: Perhaps it is time you took a small vacation back to your father’s basement for a few years and re-learned the secret about gameplay!

How did they expect their customers to react when they are essentially taking over the rights of the customer’s PC? … And when customers complain they keep singing that old, worn-out song of piracy problems even though nothing in the ever-booming sales numbers of videogames supports this! Let’s be realistic here. This has nothing to do with piracy and the company already knows this. They are instead fighting a market they have little or no control over and which costs them millions of dollars each month: The second-hand game market. Normally you would not be against the forces of the free market and just be happy that you are in a market that keeps growing with incredible speed in the midths of a major financial crisis… but not in this market! They want to control the customer, their PC and instead lease their products for full price…

Of course when you act that way in the face of your customers you better not mess up and that’s exactly what Epic did with their major title “Gears of War”. Of course EA had already created a great fuss on the market by creating some of the most restricted DRM on the games market ever on their release of their major hope, Spore, which was suppose to take over the success of The Sims. However, they quickly found out that in this digital age gamers will let their voices be heard quickly once you try to screw them like EA did. It didn’t help that the CEO of EA came out and showed the whole world what little understanding of their customers and how much arrogancy EA had at that point. Later on EA put the same titles on Steam – now without the DRM…

Now, there’s no denying that piracy exists to some degree, but since the numbers can never be validated it will always be used as a poor excuse. However, as Valve and others keep reminding us: Pirates are just unsatisfied customers! Why not try to find out at what price mark pirates vanish, like you do with other software in third world countries? Why not offer the choice between a cheaper copy with DRM and the “normal” game for a normal price without DRM – thereby letting customers show their intent with their vallets. Naturally this can only be done if the companies start to make it clearer on the boxes for their games what restrictions actually applies when they sell DRM-ridden titles.

Ubisoft has already had its trouble with DRM and are now searching for new alternatives. They have now released their newest Prince of Persia game for PC without DRM to see how it fares. Naturally it can easy become a quick excuse for Ubisoft: “See… We did it without DRM and we didn’t sell 100 million copies over night! Pirates will never change!”. A poor game will never sell – even without DRM.

At this point in time gamers are fed up with non-functional DRM schemes that only hurts the paying customers. Pirates never feel the poor quality of DRM since their version never contain any, which in itself is the clearest point one can make in this matter. The DRM doesn’t help because every title is out there in a pirated version – WITHOUT DRM – so only the remaining paying customers are being screwed. Lately gamers, together with the EFF, have started speaking out publicly about the many problems in DRM, which are illegally taking away user-granted rights without consent.

Let’s hope that some headroom is finally made. The situation is unacceptable. We all know that DRM is doomed to fail. A perfect solution doesn’t exists and never will. It is clear now that this situation with ever increasing strictness of DRM is a passing period – however, one that is annoying to be living in. In five years time everything will be digitally sold and shipped and at that point those silly schemes will have been replaced by a few centralized, transparent dsitribution solutions, like Steam. God, I wish I had a time machine… and so should many of the game publishing companies! EA and Epic aren’t the last to make a big public scandal on DRM and who knows which company will end up being remembered as the Sony of the gaming world with their version of the XCP copy protection and the following massive lawsuit, followed by a publicity nightmare… I can’t wait

The series then became better and better over time – both graphically but also gameplay wise…. Then Bungie called it quits and what happened? Microsoft wasn’t about to let this great franchise go into history just yet… No, let’s make a spinoff with Halo 3 : ODST… That’s apparently not enough for Microsoft! Let’s make another spinoff with the genre we know doesn’t work on the console, RTS, and call it Halo Wars! Dear god… help them see the error of their ways?!

So, instead of letting Microsoft’s poor managers run around frustrated about getting the next idea for a Halo spinoff out in time let me help you here and now… How about “Halo Pinball”? Naturally you need the younger audience as well, so why not “Halo Pokemon” and naturally “LEGO Halo”. Of course to let Sega think they have a franchise remember to do “Sony does Halo” . In order to better the chances of a movie adaptation how about “Harry Potter and the Mysterious Rings” then?… And what about a personal trainer program with Master Chief called “Halo Fit”? … For the brutal minded you need a combat game and why not go for something people remember? How about “Mortal Kombat: Halo Vs. Sesame Street”? That way you ensure that you both get the young ones in on it and that the Halo team always wins! The last one for today is that you need a racing game in that little franchise of yours… How about “Project Gotham Racing: Halo Kart”?

Well, that should get you through this week of poor spinoff, Microsoft…. Call me next week when you need more ideas!

The best way to illustrate what you get with Apple is using the beach. When you buy a normal bambus PC you get a large, confusing beach, filled with occasional litter and you don’t really know when the Sun will shine. When you invite your friends onto your beach they often can find the way or take a long time getting there – arriving frustrated.

With Apple you get a sandbox filled with the most pretty, delicate sand. The Sun is always shining and there is no litter. Taking a trip to the beach for you becomes a breeze and an enjoyable experience. Then the problem starts. Your friends wants to visit you, but the only way they can get into your sandbox is to buy one themselves – then everything works perfectly.

The second problem comes when you want to buy a grill for bringing on your trip to the beach.  On the normal beach you can just go to any store and buy any grill you want, but not with your sandbox – only one grill is available… and it’s from the same guys who sold you the sandbox and the price is outright ridiculous. The same problem appears when you want to buy a ghettoblaster for playing music on your beach, a parasol for protecting against the sun and it continues making you pay more and more for products for which you have no alternative. No other ghettoblasters is allowed in your sandbox, sorry!

The third problem arrives when you start to get bored with your expensive ghettoblaster and your grill and you want to play something in your sandbox. You go to the Sandbox Store, but find little of the games your friends are playing on the beach. The games you can choose from are expensive, comes out years after the beach guys have enjoyed them for years and no one else are playing them anymore.

The fourth and final problem comes after a while. When you have seen anything there is to see in you little sandbox you want something bigger. You start poking around the corners and suddenly you realize that you are not on a beach, but rather on a small fenced-in pierce of sandbox with high walls around and a artificial sun hovering above. When you want to dig a small hole to build a sandcastle in your sandbox with your expensive sandbox(tm) shovel you can only dig down ten centimeters because the sandbox is no larger than that. Suddenly you realize that this is not a beach, but only a sandbox – and a very expensive one… and then you realize why I don’t go for Apple’s products

The lesson here is simple – Don’t fence me in!

Well, frankly I don’t quite agree! I hate piracy as much as the next guy. No, I don’t find it to be an “okay demonstration against some big business, who is doing you wrong!”. People that pirate are just freeloaders! They do not understand the massive commitment and work it requires to make a game these days – even a poor game (which the market is apparently filled with). I don’t like demos myself. They always leave all kinds of crap on my computer and I hate those regular re-installs. I can, to some degree, understand those people that claim that too many titles these days are utter crap, wasted money, or just not enough bang for the money (like Mirror’s Edge with only 6 hours of gameplay) and therefore try out the pirate version before shelling out good cash. However, guys that use this excuse over and over and never actually buy anything as they keep claiming that there are no good titles: Shut the fuck up! If there were no good titles how come you spend 20 hours plus every week gaming?!… I hate those guys! Stop complaining about game quality when you don’t support good games! Stop complaining about poor performance, too many bugs, poor service when you are using a pirate version, riddled with malware and virusses! Buy good games … it’s that easy!

Games are often good value for money – especially compared to movies, where you get 1,5 – 2,5 hours of entertainment for the approx. same price where the games often deliver 20 – 40 hours of gameplay and a more immersive and often better social experience!

However, the one area where I hate the conclusion of that article is on DRM… I refuse to accept that crappy DRM schemes on my computer! I am not a pirate, i am not a thief… I have 60 plus original titles on my PC alone, not counting my console games… I refuse to receive a copy of a game that denies me much more than the pirate version, which is available for free! Instead offer some free extra stuff and good online parts for us paying customers – NOT CRAPPY DRM-schemes! Hint: they don’t work and they are a nightmare to support! Just give it up and let the market decide! Then it will be easier for the companies to expose the ever growing freeloaders! Yes, I know… companies like EA will still make a lot of poor value titles or easy follow ups on public franchises without any proper content or gameplay, but then don’t buy them … And don’t go for the pirate version of a game you claim is poor!

I hate those double standards… It is easy to shout your moralistic view all over the internet and find a common voice… It is a bit more difficult to live by those beliefs! And believe me when I say that you fucking freeloaders don’t make it anymore easy on those of us that actually pay for good games and don’t pirate! So grow up and smell the free market! Vote with your wallet, not your sorry cry-baby voice!

Now, another reason I personally hate DRM is something that is rarely mentioned in the internet article, but matters a lot for me. I take backup of my games. I hate having to have the physical disc laying around everywhere. In the fully digital distribution age this will not be a problem, but we are not there yet, so it is! Therefore I make backups on my NAS, which is a nice way to access my games when I want to play them. A nice solution, I like to think. The problem is with titles that contain DRM that I have to go to shady sites on the Internet to get noCD patches to get them to work without a DVD in the drive. Why should I be punished for being a faithful customer compared to the pirate? Why shall I be forced onto shady sites to get noCD patches to be able to make backups? How come the industry themselves aren’t offering my this as a faithful, paying customer? There is a reason I complete stopped buying games with DRM… They do not supply me with the options I need. This is a digital age – I should be able to handle my product in a digitally flexible manner!

So, instead of pirating games because you don’t want to pay for the honest work of men and women in the gaming inudstry stop playing games. If you want to change the industry start paying for games, but only those that do it right!

If companies, like EA, doesn’t listen to you then… well… they’ll find out in the one language that company can understand – MONEY!

Nintendo, however, in spite of their great sales is left with a major problem – attachment rate is extremely poor for the Wii… Only first-party titles sells okay – the rest is rubbish … Apart from one third-party developer, Ubisoft, who is apparently doing it right! Since the Wii is the best selling console one should think that developer studios would focus more on this platform, but this has not been the case – apart from a load of showelware… which doesn’t yield good sales for the publisher or a good console-reputation for Nintendo either!

To sum it up: Another formidable christmas season for Nintendo, though they still need third-party developers in the same class as Ubisoft to earn real money on their console over time. Microsoft is boosting their sales and are doing remarkably well. Sony is still crawling around in their low sales trying to spin a good story out of their poor-performing next-gen “wonder” of a console!

Guess one shouldn’t listen to marketing

For Sony the most important focus became to win the HD war that was raging between the two competing formats: HD DVD and Sony backed Blu-Ray. The inclusion of a Blu-Ray drive in the PlayStation 3 was a brilliant move in this war, but made the PlayStation 3 expensive and difficult to manufacture. Combined with the expensive and likewise difficult to produce Cell processor the price of the PlayStation 3 was way higher than that of Microsoft’s Xbox 360, while also lacking the ability to output enough numbers of SKU’s. However, what Sony forgot in this battle was the games. A few exclusives – especially compared to the Xbox 360, have ensured that a lot of faithful Sony fans shifted sides. Game developers also preferred Microsoft’s wellknown Xbox platform for developing, compared to Sony’s new Cell-processor, that required a completely new way of thinking and heavy investements of time from the game studios. The outcome of this strategy was that games was now developed on Xbox and ported (often poorly) to the PlayStation platform afterwards. Adding to the trouble was the fact that backward compatibility was less than Sony had promised – which was a big problem as the PlayStation and especially the PlayStation 2 had a lot of faithful following. All these factors played their part. Suddenly Sony was no longer the sole leader of the console scene, but is still tracking behind Microsoft and especially Nintendo. In this generation Sony wanted to win the HD war and forgot about the games and especially the developers.

Sony didn’t see Nintendo as a competitor. They only focused on graphics – not on gameplay. That was a big mistake. Games often sell on their graphics, but last on their gameplay – only a good gameplay will ensure a classic among games. Nintendo focused on gameplay and an entirely different audience, not the hardcore gamers that both Sony and Microsoft aimed for – but the casual gamer… and won big time! Now they are suffering on two accounts, however. They didn’t get third party developers behind them – and apart from Nintendo’s own titles, which were of good quality, the games that did hit the Wii was showelware. Bad ports and lausy gameplay with no depth whatsoever. The other problem, which is beginning to haunt the Wii is the lack of good graphics. Developers are abandonning the platform because of its limitations and because only Nintendo sells well on the Wii. When gameplay isn’t good people go for graphics – Nintendo can offer none of those at the moment… Even though the Wii is still selling good Nintendo have lost the gaming audience and have only the casual gamer left – which will hurt them a lot in the next generation. Nintendo was too fast in becoming, like Sony in the last generation, arrogant in their success. I think what Nintendo needs these days is a good “Wii-ality Check”

The third party in the console war, Microsoft, has had a rough start with the RROD-problems and became the difference between Sony and Microsoft. Sony betted on the hardware, but Microsoft betted on the software. Both companies did what they have always done best. Naturally both companies spent entire fortunes on spinning both their hardware, their sotware, their platforms and their sales. Sony wasn’t ready for as serious a challenger as Microsoft had suddenly become. Microsoft on the other hand was first out the tube a full year before Sony and Nintendo and got a good headstart. This would later become highly important as this allowed Microsoft to improve their design, cut down production costs, lower prices faster and especially gather a consumer base, which is what developers look for in a platform. This got the third party developers onboard and a few years into the war it is apparent that Microsoft won the third party war with their HD console and are now cutting the prices because they can afford to. Furthermore their game attachment percentage is way higher than Sony and astronomically higher than Nintendo, which is what gaming consoles are all about.

In terms of network playability Microsoft was lightyears ahead of Sony’s PSN with their Live! services and Nintendo has barely to get their console online yet! This is also important for players – because players recruit more players to a platform and help them form their opinion.

Now the war for value is on – Microsoft already have the developers, the titles and the best online service… All with the lowest price point of the three consoles. All these factors mean that Sony is too far behind ensuring that Microsoft is now outselling Sony 2 to 1  – even though they entered the game a year earlier…

Sony might have made the best Blu-Ray player on the market this generation around, but Microsoft won the gaming platform. What Sony is left with is an all too expensive gaming console with too few titles and a good HD player for a format that is about to die before the next generation anyway. Wrong bet, I suppose!

My guess is that Sony is preparing a price cut. They simply cannot let this continue. Every day Microsoft improve their user base compared to Sony’s the developers get another reason to publish games for that platform. What Sony needs to remember is the effect they themselves created with the PlayStation 2. When your friends got a PlayStation 2 that’s what you want as well!

The great question here is what will Sony do if Microsoft keeps cutting the price of the Xbox 360?…