You will agree that one of my favorite topics here on the blog is the PS3's backward compatbility or better the missing backward compatibility. Being a big fan of PS2 titles and appreciating the upscaling and smoothing features of the early models, there is no better way to play PS2 games than on a PS3.
Ok, according to Sony this is all history now and forever, but as you should never say never I am looking forward to the day when Sony releases a new firmware with a built-in PS2 emulator, software-only of course.
According to a David Reeves interview done by heise.de at the Games Convention last week, Sony is actually working on something like this, even though I can not fully support David Reeves explanation. According to Reeves, the new SingStar PS2-PS3 compatibility is based on a PS2 software emulation that actually runs the PS2 SingStar on a PS3. The starnage thing about this is, so far my understanding of this new features is more like a compatibility within the PS3 SingStar and not a software emulator.
Now, David Reeves should know the facts better than I but honestly, the whole thing sounds a little strange to me. Reeves continues saying, that Sony is considering other software titles to be emulated on the PS3.
Anyway, however this is going to work in the end, it proofs one thing: opposite to what has been reported in the past, PS2 compatibility is not dead at all and there are still folks at SCE working on such a feature. Good to hear.
There are countries in the world without an own games convention, Germany though will eventually have two next year. After a very successful GC 2008 (more than 200.000 visitors over the last 4 days) Leipzig Messe officially announced the GC 2009 taking place between August 19th and 23rd.
Everything could be fine now, unfortunately the BIU, the Bundesverband Interaktive Unterhaltungssoftware, representing the various game producers and resellers in Germany decided to move to new shores, namely to Cologne from 2009 on. The new convention will be called GamesCom.
With no official statement from BIU regarding the latest announcement we can just speculate what's going to happen now. Worst case is of course that some of the exhibitor decide to go to Leipzig, while the rest will choose the GamesCom as the venue.
Not really being to dogmatic when it comes to my preferred location, I am really locking forward to see both parties coming to a common agreement that is benefitial for all of us, the consumers as well as the industry as a whole. As successful as the video games industry actually is these days it just can not afford to confuse people with such weird decisions. Those folks should keep in mind that a convention as such is not the product, but just the venue.
Update 2008/08/25: BIU is obviously not too surprised about the announcement of the Leipzig Messe to continue with the Games Convention in 2009, but they obviously are not changing their mind. How could they as there are already signed contracts with Messe Köln and the industry majors.
Based on an article on heise.de, the GamesCom, which is the short form for Games Community, is of course based on the successful concept of the Games Convention, but due to the fact that the venue is very close to the Cologne city center you can also expect many sponsered gaming areas all around the city. Further more, Messe Köln is not going increase prices, which was one of the expectations of both, the visitors and the exhibitors while moving to the west of Germany.
As much as I can understand Leipzig's will to fight and Leipzig Messe even wants to move to the North American market, but I guess this is not going to lead to anything other than a confused community and as always it is good to know when you lost a fight.
Update 2008/08/25: Just in case anybody thought that there is a real chance for the Games Convention next year: Sony just confirmed that they are only showcasing in Cologne and not in Leipzig. And guess what the other big names will do?
Writing this post is becoming harder than I initially thought. First my sholder issue, then after writing the first version of the post, my laptop decided it was necessary to do a restart after doing some software updates. I basically ignored the restart dialog to often :( Anyway, here is post 2.0, hopefully better than ever ...
The benefit of going to a industry fair like the Games Convention instead of collecting those pieces of information piece by piece is pretty simple: you can experience the current state of the industry, in this case the video game industry, in a very condensed manner. Immediately compare what's cooking and what the respective strategies are. So here are my 2 cents on what I found during those 7 hours of instense market research ;-)
PC gaming is becoming marginal
Instead of following the latest industry trends, PC gaming is more and more becoming a niche market. No casual gamer would go for a PC (if we ignore things like browser games for a moment) instead of a console, just because it is far to complicated to use. At the GC this year, PC gaming has been separated from the mainstream console gaming physically as well as from the overall apperance. While any of the console makers and publishers tried to present their products in a colorful way, the color for PC gaming is obviously BLACK.
Rather then addressing the average gamer with their products, those companies are more or less addressing the geeks with their very specific needs. The result is a very hardware rathe than content centric market. Sure, we all "love" the console wars and lve to argue about the specs of the various products on the market, but this is just a small aspect of what I call console gaming. The main focus is on the content, i.e. the games. In the PC world, there are only so many games that are used within the community, the rest of the time, people are focused on tweaking their computers, buying the latest accessories and moding their hardware in many different ways. Adding to this comments form various publishers during the last couple of month, it looks like that dedicated PC games become the minority.
We don't need you anymore
Any idea why Nintendo decided not to be present at this years Games Convention? Sure, last years show wasn't impressive either, but why would you as the market leader decide not to showcase your stuff? If we take economical aspects out of the decision making process, my conlusion is pretty simple: they just feel they have the wrong audience here in Leipzig. If this is actually the case, I can only say how arrogant.
Anybody checking out the Leipzig crowd these days can see with his/her own eyes that video gaming has become a product for the masses. It's no longer the 15 year old, skinny boy that you would normaly expect at such an event, you have families, older guys, and most important girls all over the place. Don't get me wrong, this is still a male domain aforemost, but due to the success of casual gaming and the overall success of video games, video gaming has become an entertainment industry compareable to music and video.
Having that said, I think it is kind of strange to see the market leader ignoring this venue completely. On the other side, what would have been the announcements or what kind of great new stuff Nintendo would have been able to show us? Is Nintendo becoming slow and content because of their latest successes? We don't know, but not showing up in Leipzig was definitely a statement.
Guitar Hero to the Max
Another observation that was obvious for anyone with still intact acustic organ, the Guitar Hero phenomenon is finally at its peak and let's just hope that we will soon see a decline in this genre. Personally as much as I liked Guitar hero in the first place, the level how he industry is currently milking this cow is just bores me. It seems to me that the bigger the better is the nam of the game these days and I am just waiting to see titles like Big Band which feature a sax, a trumpet, keyboards, basically all the various intruments you can find on this planet.
My guess, similar to those WiiFit boards that are hardly used more than once, games like Rock Band or Guitar Hero World Tour will only played a couple of times as you hardly find the time or place to play with 4 people. Anyway, why complaining, it fuels the industry and earns the money for doing other games instead. Ok folks, go and get those Rock Bands and World Tours.
The Big LittleBigPlanet
As usual, Sony had a very diverse, and scenic appearance at GC this year. Like in the years before you had many different areas covering either some of the blockbusters like LittleBigPlanet, all games over 18 years, PSP games, PSN tiles and social games like SingStar as well as Buzz. It's always great to see this mixture of hard core gamers in combination with casual gamers in one location.
And while you had a chance to play titles like Killzone 2 or Resistance: Retribution, you were able to actually talk to the folks behind the game, as various executive or assistant producers were presenting their respective games on the show floor and not just behind closed doors. Target group research at its best. They could immmediately see what works in the hectic place place this. Sony, well done. As usual I must say.
And what about the other?
Coming from last year's rather questionable performance Microsoft even went one step down. Just imagine having just a main stage with rather questionable performances and a couple of fish tanks positioned around the area were you can try out various music games which you now get from Microsoft too. Wowww. 4 years after SingStar you can actually get Lips from Microsoft now. Let me make a bet here: there will be no Lips 2. One of the reason why Microsoft really sucks in this area is because that they don't show any kind of persistance when it comes to those games. For those who think that SingStar was an easy success for Sony, keep in mind that it took more than just releasing SingStar and wait for the market to buy 13 million copies.
Anyway, if you are interested in playing some of the "other" titles you had a hard time finding those. Being a paying Xbox Live customers you could actually play some titles in a little area behind the stage. For all others, sorry. Btw, did I mention that everything was colored in a brand consistent green and orange?
And what about the games?
Finally coming to the most important aspect of the Games Convention, let me give you my personal ranking of what I saw and played during those 7 hours.
1. LittleBigPlanet
I was more than curious what the game feels like after all the hype around it. Does the concept of LBP really work out as intended? Sony Computer Entertainment let the crowd play one complete level of the final game as well as getting a short tutorial of the all so important create part of the game.
To make a long story short, this game really rocks. I have never played a coop multiplayer before that has all the features of a platformng game as well as the competitiveness as LittleBigPlanet. What really makes this platform game different are the overall look as well as the addition of a real physics engine. And guess what, this game is one of the best casual games I have seen so far. It doesn't have the simplicity of most casual games at the same time not making it impossible for newcomers to get into it immediately.
The create part of LBP is definitely not for everyone. It is for sure more compley than the play part, but still easy to use. As basically all the levels that come with the game are built using the same engine, you'll get a very powerful editor including hunderts of dfferent objects and tols to be used within your own level. Just think of it as a hugh Lego box where you do almost everything you can think of. The good thing about the editor is the fact that you can start small and grow over time.
After experiencing the game myself I see the potential of this new franchise and I just hope that the consumers can really imagine what LBP feels like. In order to gt this part right, Sony is spending quite some efforts in the marketing arena just to make sure that the market is prepared for this new experience. If that works out well, LBP is for sure the hardware seller Sony wants it to be and you can expect a lot of followers in the near future. Welcome to Game 3.0
2. Killzone 2
Another hype ttile coming from Sony is Killzone 2 for PS3. Yeah, the inital trailer was a target render and we will most probably get something that doesn't look exactly like the initial trailer. But honestly, who cares? Killzone 2 is one of the best looking shooters I have ever played. And it's not that typical Unreal Engine look we all no from Gears of War or UT3, which looks artifical and so much like a computer game. Killzone just looks so real and great that it is sometimes hard to focus on the actual gameplay. At least in the beginning.
3. Resistance 2 and Motorstorm 2
I have draw here. Couldn't really decide which one I would like more. Resistance 2 is definitely going to be a great shooter. But don't expect it to be the visual killer like Killzone 2. It's clearly more focused on the action part and more of the mature version of Ratchet & Clank than anything else. R2 will be a hugh success for sure, but don't expect it to be the innovator.
Motorstorm 2, very similar to Resistance 2, is the typical second iteration of a franchise: bigger, better, simply more of what worked already well the first time. The new playground pretty much works as intended and it's up to be seen what other features will be included into the game. As we all know, splt screen support is just one of the new add-ons.
4. The various PSP titles
Not sure about the real success of PSP software titles these days, but expect some new great titles to arrive soon: Resistance: Retribution, Loco Roco 2 and Patapon 2 are definitely 3 great titles for our little handheld. Resistance for PSP just looks gorgeous like God of War on PSP and the controls are just perfect given the limitations of the PSP. Loco Roco 2 is not just more of what we already got in the first part, no i actually introduces a lot of new stuff and it will for sure tie me to my PSP as much as the first part did. Patapon 2 on the other side is definitely a refinement of the first part which had its issues if you ask me. Expect the 2nd part to be more convenient and approachable.
Remember, how David Reeves started off the press conference on Wednesday with a song from Bob Dylan?
Writers and critics to prohezize with your pen and keep your eyes wide the chance won't come again and don't speak to soon for the wheels still in spin and there's no tellin' who that it's namin' for the losers now will be later to win for the times they are a-chanin'
I guess that really summerizes what we have seen from Sony this year at Games Convention. What they showcased is a very convincing and compelling set of products which I've hardly seen with any of the competitors. And this is all in the vicinity of the next couple of month. With Heavy Rain we already saw one of the big titles of next years season and I am sure there are many others we don't even know of, both on PSN and Blu-ray.
Suffering from a bad shoulder joint since Thursday I didn't find the right time to actually right down my impressions from this years Games Convention. In order to share with you at least the visual aspects upfront, here are the a few of the pictures I took. This will be soon followed by a full fledged post with some of the highlights. Nevertheless, Sony Computer Entertainment had by far the most impressive appearance this year.
As already mentioned, I will be around at GC in Leipzig tomorrow and as I registered for one of the Sacred 2 gaming slots I will be at the Deep Silver booth A02 in Hall 3. No idea if this place is crowded or not, but I will be there from 11:45 on wearing most likely some short pants, a blue polo shirt and some black sneakers. I am most probably one of the older guys there ;-)
With the Sony press conference being over, Sony presented a solid lineup, nothing too exciting, but at least something for everybody. So what are those BIG SECRET announcements:
We gonna see a new already speculated PSP-3000 with a built-in mic and a better screen. Not sure if this is going to make it with the PSP, but I guess it's anyway, more of a hardware revision then anything else.
A new upgraded PS3 will be available with 160GB disk space and EUR 70 spendable for all kinds of downloadable content. Actually a pretty good deal for both, Sony as well as the consumer.
We also learned about various streaming content and music & video download services, with a roadmap next year at the same time. I said it before and will say it again here: it is nice to hear that Sony is finally getting their act together, but for how long is Apples iTunes out now? It was June 15th, 2004! Taking for granted that there are a couple of legal hurdles to overcome, but it doesn't take 4 years longer.
Then there is a new attachable keyboard for the DualShock 3 controller which should be ready when Home will be launched here in Europe. Just wondering if this is the reason for the several delays ;-) One of the cool features of the keyboard are dedicated function keys for your friends list and message box and you can enable a touchpad mode to simulate a mouse by using the whole keypad as a unconventional touchpad. Will be interesting to see how this works in reality. Btw, the keypad uses Bluetooth as the wireless technology and the USB port of the Dualshock as a power source.
One of the nice little side notes is the new compatibility between SingStar for PS2 and PS3. With a new patch that will be available soon, you are now able to copy your old SingStar for PS2 songs to your hard disk and use them inside SingStar for PS3. That's what I call customer service. At least we get parts of the backward compatibility back now.
For all the csaual gamer in the house is a new title called EyePet which obviously seems to be a kind of Tamagotchi 2.0, with PLAYSTATION Eye support. Looks like the Wii get a serious competitor these days.
Last but not least - taraaaaaa - Heavy Rain has been presented, or at least a nice little trailer, which leaves most of the game in dust but heats up the speculations long enough for the game to appear sometime in 2009, which I somehow can't really believe.
As I mentioned in the beginning, nothing too exciting, but some solid new product announcements, which hopefully don't take ages to finally appear on retail level.
One of the differences in backwark compatibility between the 360 and the PS3 is the fact that while the 360 has a dedicated emulation for every supported title, the PS3 BC is more or less a generic emulation that works with a PS2 title or doesn't. While this is a good thing in case of new titles like Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters, it can be a frustrating thing in case of other games.
While playing one of the titles of my favourite Playstation series of all time, Ratchet & Clank 2, I am already 30 minutes into the game being on the fith level, planet Endako, activating one of the Electrolyzer mini games just to find the game looked in a loop without any way to proceed other than reseting the whole thing. As there is no other wway to get around this puzzle, the game is pretty much over from that point on as you need to finish this planet in order to progress within the game.
As the game doesn't support a cheat at this point I guess the only way to get around this is to play up to this point with your PS2, save and swap the save game to the PS3. Anyway, this is one of the drawbacks of a not 100% backward compatibility. Add to this the no longer maintained list backward compatibles games (it basically disappeared since the 40GB model is on the market) I am kind of frustrated by this. Even the unofficial BC list doesn't mention this issues, only the dropping frame rate.
P.S. I just checked the US backward compatibility list and guess what, this is what it says: "At a specific point during gameplay, the title hangs." I guess I found it ;-) Shold be worth a trophy ;-)
After several month I am finaly on vacation now ;-) With just three days to go I am looking forward to this years Games Convention in Leipzig. Sony just released the list of showcases this year, which is quite a lineup.
PS3
SingStar Vol. 2 / SingStore
BUZZ!: Quiz TV / MyBuzz
LittleBigPlanet
Gran Turismo 5 Prologue
Siren Blood Curse
MotorStorm: Pacific Rift
Killzone 2
Resistance 2
SOCOM: Confrontation
Home
PlayTV
PSN
PixelJunk Eden
The Last Guy
Rag Doll Kung Fu
Ratchet & Clank: Quest for Booty
Pain: Amusement Park
WipEout HD
Warhawk: Falling Star
PSP
echochrome
Everybody´s Golf 2
ATV Offroad Fury Pro
Secret Agent Clank
BUZZ!: Master Quiz
Loco Roco 2
Resistance: Retribution
Some of those titles are well known to many of you, some them have been already playable or at least showcased at last year's Games Convention, like WipEout HD. Anyway, many of them are have their first public appearance in Europe, like Killzone 2, Motorstorm: Pacific Rift or Loco Roco 2 for PSP. Can wait to play those.
Beside those already known titles I am looking forward to this years press conference on August, 20th, 5pm at the Playstation booth. We are suppose to see many new top secret titles, all of them not yet announced.
As mentioned before, I will be at GC on Thursday trying to get as much of those games as possible.
P.S. Check out some very first pics from the various GC locations.
Not too much, I guess. No good games* to look forward to this month, no big announcements, no nothing. But wait, Games Convention is just around the corner and as we all know, SCEE is suppose to announce a hell of a lot new stuff. Let's see what's in the hat. Do you remember PlayTV from last year? It's August 2008 and we have still no PlayTV. Kind of stupid if you ask me. Anyway, GC 2008 is hopefully adding some of the stuff everyone was missing from E308.
In the absence of some new original games I am currently checking out my PS2 collection. Anybody heard of Rygar? Kind of poor man's God of War if you will ;-) No, serious, I really liked the game when it came out and it is stil kind of fun to play. And honestly, it has something in common with GoW. The background story shares a lot of the main characters with GoW.
But did I say no new games this month? Well, not completely. I actually got Siren: Blood Curse from the US PSN store and guess what, the game is actually very nice. Since the first installment of the series on PS2 I am a big big fan of the the look and feel of Siren or Forbidden Siren how it is called in Japan. The realistic TV kind of look is so unique and adding the Japanese style to it, makes this game look very scary. My expectations regarding the game were very high to say at least. If you remember right, Siren I was basically not playale at all if you ask me. Anybody surviving more than 5 minutes into the game must be either a zombie or one of the developers.
To make a long story short, I really like the game. Don't get me wrong, the game has its issues when it comes to controls and the fine tuning, but the game works as it is right now and it is good to see another exclusive horror game on Playstation. What's really weired about the game is the fact that it has been announced as an episodic game with 12 episodes. But when Sony finally released the 9GB game on the PSN you got all the episodes at once. What kind of strange concept is this? Add to this the fact that each episode starts with a summary of the last episodes and ends with a trailer of the next episode. So, basically the game was designed to be released by let's say one episode a week and you got the whole story in one purchase. Someone on the product management level must have screwed up things a bit I guess, but there is one way to fix this on your end: just play one episode at the time ;-) I am serious.
So far I reached episode 6 and the game really delivers to it's promises. Sony finally put all the various pieces that we've seen so far in one of the last 2 Siren games first time in a working game. Well, third times is a charm ;-) It's up to you guys if you wanna go for the PSN version or wait a couple more weeks for the Blu-ray version, anyway, you'll make the right choice.
P.S. Without a better picture at hand I chose one that I recently took ;-) No deeper meaning.
* There is actually Ratchet & Clank that's suppose to come out this month. But I am not 100% sure. At least for Europe.
First to all, I have to thank John Carmack for his latest statements regarding the advanced storage capacity of the PS3 / Blu-ray vs. the 360s DVD which makes it kind of hard for id to release their next major game, Rage, with the same visual quality on all platforms. As it looks right now, id Software has to compromise the texture quality on the 360 specifically in order not to deliver the game on too many DVDs in the end.
What John calls the only advantage (I'll get back to this later) is actually not so much a finacial issue in my mind but really a useability issue in a sense that you have to switch your game discs right within the game just to put back the start disc next time you gonna startup the game. This is very much a PSone old-school technique that havn't been seen so many times on the last generation consoles. There are only a few games out there on PS2 that really require 2 or more discs and most of them just supported various game modes on each of them not requiring the player to change disc during game play.
To be honest, I was a little reluctant myself when I first thought about the necessity to have a Blu-ray size storage capacity for games. Remember, one of the biggest things these days are procedural graphics requiring more data processing than digital assets, but obviously this is not fully true. The move to HD at least quadruples the size of the digital assets needed for an average game these days, making it hard for some games already to fit on a DL DVD. Add to that the localization that is required in areas like Europe and you'll end up with something that will eventually blast the DVD off.
Now I can hear people saying: "... and what about digital downloads?" Well, that's true in general, but check out yourself what a tedious task it still is today to download a PS3 game like Siren 3 with its over 9GB. Even with a reasonable 16MB broadband connection. No way that this is going to be mass market ready within the next 24 month. Not talking about switching between games back and forth. What works for movie rentals is definitely not appropriate right now for larger games.
Ok, as promised we come back to John Carmack and some of the statements he made during his keynote speech. Here is actually a good interview that reiterates some of those topics and specifically touches a lot of the console related statements.
As much as I like to hear his statements regarding the required disc space for this generation games, all the stuff he mentions re. the PS3 vs. 360 comparision have all been said and heard before and are by no means new. All of that stuff has been debunked already and to me it really sounds strange to hear how a geek like him just reiterates those old stereotypes and just ignores some of the latests development trends.
Many of the 1st party Playstation developers have already proven what the Cell is capable of and its just boring to hear John talking about how easy it is to develop for the 360 vs. the PS3. Even though if this actually is the case, where is the point. Doing the exact same task on PS3 and 360 might of course see the 360 in the lead when it comes to the development time only, but that's not the point. The massive parallel architecture of the PS3 suggest a more fine-grained parallelism that ultimately gives you a computational advantage that outweights the design overhead. In other words, you will not get the 360 up to this level even if you want to. This is where the comparision ends.
But let's see maybe he will change his mind in the future. Maybe at the point when he hits the limits of the 360 he will make the same statements he now made regarding the storage size, in terms of the rest of the hardware. Who knows.
You will agree that one of my favorite topics here on the blog is the PS3's backward compatbility or better the missing backward compatibility. Being a big fan of PS2 titles and appreciating the upscaling and smoothing features of the early models, there is no better way to play PS2 games than on a PS3.
Then there is a new attachable keyboard for the DualShock 3 controller which should be ready when Home will be launched here in Europe. Just wondering if this is the reason for the several delays ;-) One of the cool features of the keyboard are dedicated function keys for your friends list and message box and you can enable a touchpad mode to simulate a mouse by using the whole keypad as a unconventional touchpad. Will be interesting to see how this works in reality. Btw, the keypad uses Bluetooth as the wireless technology and the USB port of the Dualshock as a power source.
