Headline RePLAY – 7.10.12

Today on Headline RePLAY: The games that Nintendo’s legendary designer wants to see made, Sony and Microsoft’s “biggest mistake” and Penny Arcade is selling out to its audience.

It’s not a sign of active development, but Shigeru Miyamoto wants to see Metroid and Star Fox games on the Wii U.

“With Metroid it’s very easy to imagine some interesting implementation for Wii U,” Miyamoto told IGN. “I think that having another screen with the gyro built in really gives you a lot of interesting opportunities for development, and we can bring a lot of our games to life in a completely unique way with that.

“I feel like the possibilities of the GamePad for Metroid could be really fantastic,” he continued. “There’s certainly a lot that you could do there for that game.”

What franchise does Miyamoto really want to “personally” see on the Wii U? Star Fox.  

|Source: IGN

The “biggest mistake” that Sony and Microsoft ever made was making the current console generation “way too long”, says Square-Enix.

“We have Sony and Microsoft talking about this generation lasting 7, 8, 9, or even 10 years and it’s the biggest mistake they’ve ever made,” Square-Enix worldwide technology director Julien Merceron told GamesIndustry International.

 

“This generation has been way too long, and I say this because you have a lot of developers that work on a new platform, and perhaps will not succeed, so they will wait for the next generation, and will jump on that platform,” he explained. “You could not do that with this generation though. So these developers went elsewhere to see if the grass was greener.

But the current-gen was still ongoing, and there were no other consoles to move to, so developers found other platforms.

“They found web browsers, they found iOS, they found other things and a lot of them won’t come back to hardware platforms,” said Merceron. “So you could look at it that thanks to Microsoft and Sony and the length of this generation, it helped the emergence of other platforms and helped them get strong before the next hardware comes out.”

Merceron believes that Sony and Microsoft need to tackle the next console generation in a “different way.”

“I agree that they will have to look at the market in a different way,” said Merceron. “I think they understand what is happening these days and I think they understand that the current generation has actually been too long.”

|Source: GamesIndustry International

Now for something totally different: Penny Arcade wants crowdfunding to remove ads from their site, and is asking the public for $250,000 via Kickstarter to do it.

The “Penny Arcade Sells Out” project is based on the simple premise that as long as the $250,000 annual goal is met, the “leaderboard” ad is removed from the site. For the price of $525,000, all ads would be removed.

The project reads:

Would scouring ads from Penny Arcade, with everything that entails, be something you’d be willing to reach into your pocket for? The more we considered it, the more we agreed it might just be. Not only would you no longer have to look at advertising when browsing Penny Arcade, but not having ads would create a chain reaction that would lead to a bunch of other interesting stuff. Without the almighty “pageview” to consider, why not populate the RSS with full comics and posts? Why not enable and even courage apps, first and third party, for people to read it however they damn well please?

|Source: Kickstarter

Headline RePLAY – 6.19.12

Today on Headline RePLAY: StarCraft: Ghost isn’t returning from the dead anytime soon, StarCraft II on consoles and Seth Killian announces his departure from Capcom.

Fans that are hanging onto hope that Blizzard will revisit StarCraft: Ghost should consider their odds, as Blizzard says the chances of that happening are as likely as the making of Lost Vikings 3.

“There are no plans,” StarCraft II lead designer Dustin Browder told Kotaku bluntly. “I’m not saying we won’t ever, but I’ll tell you what I do know: There are no meetings going on. There is no team. No one talks about doing it.”

“It doesn’t mean that in two years from now, we won’t have those meetings, the team won’t be formed,” Browder hedged, “but there is literally nothing happening around that game right now that would indicate that there’s any likelihood that it will happen. It’s just as likely we’ll do that again as Lost Vikings 3 or whatever. There’s just no guarantees one way or the other, but nothing is happening.

“We are super huge fans of consoles. We love console gaming as players. I wasn’t really party to [the decision to put Ghost on hold] but I know it was a difficult decision.”

StarCraft: Ghost protagonist Nova is making a return in StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, however.

|Source: Kotaku

For StarCraft to return to consoles, it would have to be an “awesome experience” and be an entirely new game, says StarCraft II’s lead designer.

“If I can control a cursor on the television with my head on the touchscreen, that might be able to work,” lead designer Dustin Browder told Kotaku. “[But] because of the hotkey scenario, it’s not like players actually play StarCraft with the mouse only—they play with the mouse and keyboard…  We obviously allow new users to play mouse-only and that’s really fun, but when you get serious about the game you do move into the mouse and keyboard space.”

And while there are no teams “exploring” console versions of StarCraft II, Browder confessed to considering the possibilities and described what it would take to make one.

“So [a console StarCraft] would have to be just an awesome experience,” said Browder. “As an alternative, we’d have to redesign the game for that UI which could be something we can do down the road, but that wouldn’t be a port anymore. That would be a much more serious endeavor with lots of design time and lots of work poured into it.”

It would take new interfaces, new units and new controls—likely be a new game.  “Whatever it takes to make it feel really tight, really clean,” said the lead designer.

“We haven’t seen the system that we felt we could easily do it,” he said. “And that’s not to say that someday we won’t make a really special effort to get it done, cause it certainly would be exciting. We’re just not there yet.”

|Source: Kotaku

Seth “S-Kill” Killian, Capcom USA’s strategic marketing director of online and community and co-founder of the annual EVO fighting game championships, announced his departure from Capcom today; his final day is Friday, June 22nd.

Aside from Capcom producer Yoshinori Ono, Killian is known for his involvement with the Capcom fanbase and being the “face” of Capcom’s fighting games.

Killian didn’t reveal where he’s heading next, but did say he has chosen a “new path” which will let him “embrace a new dream.”

|Source: Capcom-Unity

Headline RePLAY – 5.4.12

Today on Headline RePLAY: Another industry insider predicts the decline of console gaming, the first details of The Elder Scrolls Online and Shigeru Miyamoto’s opinion on the PS Vita.

Former EA executive John Schappert. joins the increasing list of industry insiders that believes that “traditional” console gaming is on its way out.  

“Traditional gaming is under a little bit of pressure,” said Schappert. “If those businesses are not ready and want to live in the traditional world, they can. It’s just there’s only going to be a few big games a year. If you’re one of those games, more power to you. If you’re not, it’s going to be tough.”

Schappert reiterates a common theme amongst critics of the publisher-led console model: skyrocketing budgets and the high cost of failure. “Big console games take years to make. They need massive budgets and you have to hope the bet you started three years ago pays out. If it doesn’t, it’s a game changer for you. And not in a good way.”

He acknowledged that there still is a market for big budget console titles, but noted that it only targets core audiences at the expense of casual players. “Traditional games have become more core. They require an expensive console, use a controller which laymen are afraid of, and their interfaces are not always the easiest to use.

“People are buying fewer games and playing them longer. A lot of players are stretched for time—they don’t have two hours, they have fifteen minutes and don’t want to spend money.”

|Source: MCV

Early details on The Elder Scrolls Online have been released, and by all accounts it sounds like it will be a traditional fantasy MMO with some differences to reflect its source material.

Here is a list of highlights based on information gathered by NeoGAF:

• A third-person perspective vs. the series’ traditional first-person.
• Combat:
• Uses a hotbar to activate skills.
• Not real-time due to latency.
• Only a limited number of skills can be used at any given time, but can be switched out.
• Stamina bar to sprint, block, interrupt and break stun effects.
• Like Guild Wars 2 abilities can be comboed together by allied players (i.e. a rogue covers the ground in oil and a mage sets it on fire)
• Graphics run on the Hero Engine, which is used by MMOs like Star Wars: The Old Republic and RIFT.  
• No player housing, NPC romances or marriage.
• Inclusion of public dungeons that can accommodate players from the entire server.
• Three factions:  
• Ebonheart Pact: The Nords, Dunmer, and Argonians.
• Aldmeri Dominion: Altmer, Bosmer, and Khajit.
• Daggerfall Covenant: Bretons, Redguard, and Orcs.  
• Three faction PvP to take over and hold the Imperial City.
• Can have up to 100 vs. 100 player battles.
• The most accomplished PvP player in the player’s faction becomes emperor when the capitol is captured.  

For more information, check out the NeoGAF forums via the source link below.

|Source: NeoGAF

Nintendo’s legendary developer, Shigeru Miyamoto, couldn’t help but jab at Sony’s PS Vita for its scarce lineup of games despite praising the handheld on its technical merits.  

“It’s obviously a high-spec machine, and you can do lots of things with it,” Miyamoto told Edge. “But I don’t really see the combination of software and hardware that really makes a very strong product.”

Miyamoto admits the Nintendo 3DS suffered at launch for similar reasons. “When we launched the 3DS hardware we didn’t have Super Mario 3D Land, we didn’t have Mario Kart 7, we didn’t have Kid Icarus: Uprising. We were striving to have all of these ready for the launch, but we weren’t able to deliver them at that time.

“We were kind of hoping that people would, nevertheless, buy into the product, find the 3DS hardware promising, but looking back we have to say we realize the key software was missing when we launched the hardware.”

After the 3DS’ unprecedented price cut last August and many game releases later, Nintendo’s new handheld has been Japan’s best-selling hardware every single week.

|Source: Edge

Headline RePLAY – 4.19.12

Today on Headline RePLAY: Subscriptions for Star Wars: The Old Republic may be on the decline, videogame consoles are electric vampires and Dragon’s Crown gets another publisher.

When a report was released alleging that Star Wars: The Old Republic was not performing as well as EA expected, analysts are now suggesting that player subscriptions for the MMO are starting to decline.

According to an estimate by analyst group Cowen and Company, subscriber numbers peaked at 1.7 million in February, but they predict that by the end of the fiscal year in March 2013 subscriptions will drop to around 1.25 million based on server statistics from TorStatus.net.

“We believe that the apparent decline in subscribers is most likely due to a lack of ‘end-game’ content for the title, meaning that players who hit the level cap have few compelling options in terms of ongoing game play,” explained Cowen analyst Doug Creutz. “While the game got off to a good start, the relatively light amount of end-game content does appear to be taking a toll.

“We believe EA is attempting to address the end-game content issue, including a recent major game update,” he added, “but momentum appears to have stalled and we believe it is prudent to adopt a more conservative forecast on subscribers at this time.”

|Source: Gamasutra

There were reasons why our parents always harped on us about leaving the gaming console on when we weren’t playing them, expensive reasons. In 2010, idle consoles consumed 10.8 TWh of energy, the equivalent of $1.24 billion in electricity costs, according to a Carnegie Mellon University study.

The research found that a total 1 percent of U.S. residential energy consumption in 2010 was spent just on consoles, an almost 50 percent increase from three years ago.

To counter increasing energy costs, the study also includes power-saving suggestions to console developers. “We demonstrate that the most effective energy-saving modification is incorporation of a default auto power down feature, which could reduce electricity consumption of game consoles by 75 percent (10 TWh reduction of electricity in 2010),” the study recommends, “saving consumers over $1 billion annually in electricity bills.”

However, some developers are already one step ahead with features like the Xbox 360’s auto-standby, which puts the console on standby if it’s left idle for more than one hour. Sony’s PlayStation 3 has power-management software, but it’s off by default and users have to manually update it.  

|Source: CNET

News on Dragon’s Crown continues to trickle in and the latest development is a big one: Atlus is taking over publishing duties in Japan and North America.

Details are scarce, but according to PlayStation Blog, members of Atlus’ internal development team is now involved with the project as producer(s), particularly people that worked on the Persona series.

Sadly, the change in publishers means that Dragon’s Crown’s release has been delayed to 2013.

|Source: PlayStation Blog