Unfettered Blather: "Top 10 annoying things about next gen"

Unfettered Blather has a post on the "Top 10 annoying things about next gen".

From a position of absolutely no authority whatsoever, I thought I'd comment.

10. - Still waiting for Next Gen to arrive
When the X-Box 360 hit the market I thought “It’s here! It’s here!” Boy was I excited. With the last generation of the console wars clearly won by Sony I was ready to see how the new competition was going to shape up. So far it hasn’t shaped up at all. Microsoft has their team on the field and the other two teams are still in training camp.

I'm not sure I get this detail underneath the gripe -- the comment sounds like it's actually for #9 below. I would agree the next-gen didn't show for the first few to several months after the Xbox 360 launch, but games like Oblivion, Dead Rising, Lost Planet, Gears of War (maybe; not sure it's a killer app in any way from what's been shown), Viva Pinata, etc. are changing that.

What do people expect for "Next Gen"? "Games that look and play better than previous gen"? Dead Rising. Bang. Done. Or do they mean "Games that play fundamentally differently and change the game play paradigm"? is that even a fair criteria?

9. - Letting Microsoft define the Next Gen market
Microsoft has a ten mile head start in a fifty mile marathon. That means there is still plenty of time to overtake them, but that’s still one hell of a lead. No matter how you look at it, Microsoft has essentially placed the next generation on their terms. Everyone else has to play catch up.

Yeppers. As much as Sony wants to say this is a non-issue (which they need to stop saying, because it's seriously shaking their credibility), a year lead, more solid portfolio (with a larger sencond-gen holiday portfolio than Sony will have of first-gen), and greater market and mindshare (a la MTV, Wal-Mart/Best Buy kiosks and advertising) puts Microsoft seriously ahead.

Add to this Sony's serious PS3 hardware shortage and apparent plan to self-cannibalize sales with the rumored, cheaper silver slimline PS2, and equally rumored (but more officially denied) PSP price drop.

(Note to Sony: The only game company that's been able to offer multiple hardware offerings, avoid self-cannibalization, and turn sharp quarter-over-quarter profit is Nintendo.)

8. - Stupid name changes
With Nintendo’s revolutionary ideas, revolutionary control, and an approach to the console market that leverages their position as a smaller, more flexible, and more innovative company they had the perfect name for their console. Instead they decide to change the name to something that will inspire pee jokes for the next ten years. Brilliant, just brilliant! The best part is realizing the person who came up with the name “Wii” probably makes more money than I do.

No argument here. Possibly my biggest disappointment of the "Next-Gen wars" (though Nintendo is now calling the Wii "New-Gen").

Oh, and I think he should have said "will inspire pii jokes".

7. - $60 games
With Microsoft facing little competition, they can charge whatever they want. Gamers have been complaining about the high cost of games for awhile, and raising prices doesn’t seem like a smart move to me. After all, it doesn’t matter how much a game costs because the price is pretty much fixed upon release, so the amount of copies sold means everything. Even so, the next gen market is still small so Microsoft needs to get the most for each game it can. Besides, it’s not like anyone else is out there fighting them. Expect this trend to continue till after Christmas when all the consoles are released and retail hits their usual yearly sales slump.

OK, so there's a bit of convoluted misinfo here (unintentional, I'm sure).

First, Microsoft first-party games (at least until Gears of War) are still at $50, so they're not trying to "get the most for each game it can" (beyond what they already do). Also, not really sure what "the price is pretty much fixed upon release" means, since it's not -- the Manufacturer Suggested Price (MSP) is not mandated (legally), and that's why companies like Fry's often make Xbox 360 games $10-$20 "loss-leaders" the weekend they release. Besides, games prices are tailing faster than historically, making them more accessible more quickly.

Speaking of historical (and playing a bit of a devil's advocate), keep in mind game prices have stayed pretty constant over the last 20 years (unlike movie ticket prices, probably the closest parallel). And you can't use reduced costs in publishing or music as a parallel, because those things are getting less complicated to create, with more accessible distribution channels, increasing profit even while reducing per-SKU MSP.

Now, what I don't like is paying $60 bucks because I'm covering the games advertising, not production (ahem, Electronic Arts). We're ostensibly doing this on Gears of War (Microsoft), since Mark Rein said Epic Games "only" spent $8-10M to develop first-party published Gears (but keep in mind it's first-party published; not developed, like Rare's steaming pile of Perfect Dark Zero).

6. - Microsoft’s Multiple Personality Disorder
Probably not Microsoft’s fault really, but it is fun watching titles getting released on the X-Box 360, the X-Box, and PC all at the same time. I need the 360 why?

Because the the 360 does things the Xbox can't (or can't well). Like Xbox Live Arcade (the first gen version can't hold a candle). Xbox Live Marketplace. The newly released Vision camera. And Xbox 1 games (on the backwards compatibility list) done right look better on the Xbox 360.

And, yeah, Activision did gamers a huge disservice at the Xbox 360 launch with Xbox ports to the 360 that looked crappier than the Xbox versions, but that's changed. LEGO Star Wars II is a much prettier game on the 360. Oblivion is playable without a high-end PC. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance looks like it will be far slicker on the Xbox 360 than Xbox.

And with Live Anywhere, Microsoft is offering the same product to different interests. Sure, I'm a PC and console gamer, but there's a huge "either-or" demographic.

5. - Who needs backwards compatibility anyway?
It was the mini-trend we hardly knew. Once we saw the PS2 could play Playstation games it seemed like we had a sure thing on our hands, especially with Microsoft being the kings of backwards compatibility with Windows. Alas, it seems all for naught. A major selling point for alot of these consoles would be the ability to still play all your own games, but for whatever reason the development teams just couldn’t figure it out. I still wonder if the 360’s compatibility problems are as bad as people make it out to be, but gamers are clearly not satisfied, and Sony’s mewlings aren’t building any confidence.

So, "but for whatever reason the development teams just couldn’t figure it out" is bit unfair. The core GPU architecture changed (from nVidia to ATI). The fact that folks are able to get games to play through emulation is pretty big from a technical perspective, and Microsoft's "Emulation Ninjas" are probably far less recognized
than they should be.

Yes, there are problems. Fable and Ninja Gaiden suffer horribly. Halo 2, Stubbs the Zombie, and Black are great. Sure, I think Microsoft maybe woke up a little late to the game for focusing on the "importance" of this to gamers, so they should have either been proactive, or eschewed it altogether. And stuck with either
decision.

But, there are around 300 Xbox 1 games playable on Xbox 360. That's huge.

And Sony? Allegedly behind teh 8-ball on their backwards compatibility, there may be reduced emulated functionality, delayed or deferred functionality, or a mini, embedded PS2 physically inside the PS3, taking up all that nice, needed, cooling cavity space. We'll see how that works out.

4. - Chasing Nintendo
You can’t just ignore changes in the industry, but it sure is fun watching these two megacorporations scrambling to keep up with Nintendo’s ideas. Of course it’s one thing to respond to change, it’s entirely different to come up with new innovations of your own. Nintendo is playing smarter this generation, will they keep it up?

Nintendo is playing riskier this generation -- and I, for one, hope it pays off. I don't know that they're playing smarter. Innovative, yes. Wiill people enjoy it for long gaming periods? Is the physical bar implementation (that you need to mount to your TV, and won't work for my projector screen) going to give the fidelity you need, and not be an eyesore on your expensive plasma? Will the decision to not include the promised DVD playback feature reduce the perception of value-add?

Will the price point (which makes Nintendo money, as opposed to the other console guys) let consumers know the Wii is "valuable", but be low enough to keep them from paying $50 (or $150) more to buy an Xbox 360?

I'm going to write more about Nintendo in a separate, dedicated post, because I think what they're doing is pretty significant.

As far as innovation, will Microsoft's/GestureTek, Inc.'s SDK and gesture sensing technology for the Xbox Live Vision Camera (and the library of VGC tools available to Xbox developers) breed Wii-like innovation, without the restriction of the physical bars taped to the TV?

3. - Cost between consoles and computers vanishing
$60 games? Expensive peripherals? Consoles being released at a $600 price point? Anyone notice that desktop computers just continue to go down in price despite becoming ever more powerful? Consoles still have a lot of advantages over PC’s, but the most powerful incentive of console games is weakening.

Fair questions, bu tI have not found a sub-$1,000 gaming PC that makes me want to give up the experience optimized for a console. Also, there's the "either-or" demographic thing I mentioned for #6.

2. - Dual price SKU nonsense
“You can buy our system or you can spend $100 less to get a castrated system. Wow! Are we a great company or what?”

No argument here. I think Microsoft could have made the 360 a bigger deal if developers and content providers were able to count on a hard drive being there. I fully expect this to bite them even more down the road.

1. - Sony’s Alternate Reality
No matter how you spin it, we still just want a game console first. Go push your format war somewhere else.

Again, no argument, though I'll go a bit further and say I think Sony has potentially made a company-costing timing mistake.

Delays in format approval outside of Sony control. High additional cost. Bigger loss per box (which may have had the side effect or been a directive for reduced PS3 shipments this fall).

And 1x Blu-Ray speed in the PS3 or 12x DVD-9 speed and optimized disc seek on the Xbox 360? I'll go with Option B.

So there's my two-cents -- with no disrespect at all toward Jason "Botswana" Cox over at Unfettered Blather -- I'm grateful for him giving me such a thoughtful, complete springboard opportunity.