Posts tagged Sony

Yesterday I went into Gamestation. I occasionally like to peruse that shop and pick out bargain games. Also, I went in to trade my games, to get new (not new new, but new to me) games. All that’s mostly irrelevant, my point is coming. Whilst I was in the shop, making idle chat with the (very pretty) girl stood behind the counter, my mind went to the Metal Gear Solid HD remake, so I asked about it. I was told it was out on Friday, but if I wanted it I would have to pre-order.

Apparently, they don’t stock HD remakes except copies for people who pre-order them. In fact, they didn’t even have any advertisements for it. They had advertisements for FF XIII-2, Mass Effect 3 and SSX, amongst others, but not for a game just about to be released. I found this very strange. Do they not make much money from these sorts of games? Is it that the only people likely to buy this sort of game are people likely to already know it’s coming out and anticipating it weeks beforehand?

I will say that I don’t know whether they meant they didn’t stock the game in all their stores, or just in that one. I will admit, it is a small shop, and the space for new games is very much limited to a few select titles, often with the words “Duty” or “Battlefield” in their title. I suppose that in a larger shop they probably will stock some copies, but I think that this shows that HD remakes maybe don’t sell as well as other games. That’s all speculation though.

I have also heard that there is the possibility that next year Game will go down, meaning there would be no games shops on the highstreet here in Britain anymore. That would be a real shame, since I need used games because I can’t afford to buy all my games new. Although I suppose by then I’d hopefully have a job.

Anyhow, Sony, a company you might have heard of, has just announced its 3^rd quarter takings. They made a loss of $2 billion. An entire $2 billion dollar loss, that’s just an insane amount of money. What makes it even more amazing is that this is on revenue of $20 billion. Over a year that makes $80 billion in turnover. That’s more money than the entire budgets of some countries. The fact that someone can make a loss of that much money just astounds me. Apart from that, I don’t have much to say on this story, because I don’t really know much about business.

My last story to comment on is the fact that Ubisoft is about to start some server maintenance on the 7^th. What with a lot of Ubi games having “always on” DRM,  that means people won’t be able to play their games. Games these people have paid hard cash for.  What I am saying is that this is bullshit. I mean seriously, this is exactly the reason why people straight away said that this system wasn’t going to work. I would suggest anyone that has any of these games cracks them so that the can continue to play.

DRM is a bad idea. All you need is a CD key for online play. DRM is going to get hacked, it’s going to be released onto the various torrent sites, and people are going to pirate it. What you have to make sure of is that you have something to offer paying customers. Multiplayer is one thing. Most games won’t work online if pirated, so you’ll need a new version to play online.  What a waste of money it is to have servers running constantly, and developing the programs and whatnot. How do company execs not realise this?

Anyway, that’s enough for this week, I’ll be back next week with a new post.

So Sony’s conference was a bit of a slow burn, where there was a lot of boring bits in between the good stuff. The uncharted gameplay was awesome, and the PS Vita stuff was really impressive. They also showed a pretty cool playstation branded 3D tv, I liked it but I doubt very much that i’ll be buying it. Probably the biggest announcement of the show was that the PS Vita will be launching at the same price as the 3DS. This is a huge announcement and I would imagine nintendo will really want to cut the 3DS price for the PS vita launch. So depending on the launch games I may get a PS Vita. I won’t be buying another console with no good games (I’m looking at you 3DS). I jut hope uncharted and little big planet are both launch games. So all in all after the sony press conference I felt impressed, it did a lot more for me than the microsoft press conference and 2 of my e3 hopes and dreams came true (vita launches under £300 and LBP2 move patch announcement) Nintendo is later today so I’ll see ya then. 

With E3 kicking off tomorrow I thought it’s about time I put together a list of things I hope will happen and thing I think are more likely to happen. I’ll just focus on the big 3 press conferences and I’ll give each point a rating on how likely it’s going to happen. so with that said lets get started.

Nintendo

So Nintendo are going to have a huge press conference with a new console launch, hopefully some games coming for the 3DS and zelda still to come for the wii. Heres what I hope nintendo pull out of the bag:

• Mario 3DS out before the end of the year - I’m sick of having no games to play on my 3DS and the new mario game is something I’m really looking forward to. I think this probably has a good chance of being the big holiday 3DS title so I’ll give it a 4/5 chance of happening.
• An original zelda game for the 3DS - OoT is all well and good but I really want something new. I loved the DS zelda games so I’d like to see what nintendo could do with the new tech on the 3DS. Honestly I doubt we’ll be seeing a new zelda on the 3DS, maybe the next home console. I’ll give this a 2/5 chance of happening
• Zelda Skyward Sword summer release - I really hope game isn’t a holiday release. It’s been pushed back so many times and I really want to play it already, but with no other big holiday wii games I won’t hold my breath. I’ll give it a 2/5 chance oh happening, unlikely but I’ll keep my fingers crossed. 
• New nintedo console having cheep controllers - With all the talk about touchscreen controllers I can’t help but wonder how much extra controllers will cost. One of the main advantages of the wii is that it has some fun multiplayer games but if the controllers are really expensive it’s going to put me off buying the console. I doubt nintendo would be stupid enough to price its controllers too high so I’ll give this a 4/5 chance of being true. 
• New Nintendo console having a good launch line-up - After the lacklustre 3DS launch Nintendo have a lot to prove with there next home console. I want a big mario or zelda game at launch. It’s probably a good chance that they’ll be one big game to launch the new console so i’ll give it a 4/5 chance of happening. 

Microsoft

I really wasn’t impressed with Microsoft last year and they really don’t seem to many big exclusives for the rest of the year so i’m going in with low expectations, hopefully they’ll surprise me. 

• A new Banjo game that doesn’t suck - I know it’s a long shot but who wouldn’t love to see banjo go back to his N64 roots. It’ll never happen and if it did it would probably be for kinect or some bullshit. I’ll give it a 1/5 chance. 
• Not wasting the whole press conference talking about kinect - I know they’re going to talk bout kinect, I just wish they wouldn’t. It doesn’t interest me and I have no intention of getting one (my rooms not big enough anyway). I’ll give it a 0/5 chance of happening, prove me wrong Microsoft. 
• Some more info on Metal Gear Solid: Rising - We heard some info on this last year and while Kojima has said he won’t be at E3, I just hope theres a trailer or something. Probably unlikely but I’ll still give it a 2/5 chance of happening.

Sony

Sony have some major games coming out this holiday season and they have a new handheld coming. Sony have had some good press conferences for the past few years, hopefully this year will be no exception

• Little big planet 2 move update: It’s been a while since LBP2 launched and I’ve been waiting on the move patch for a while now so hopefully we’ll hear something. Media molecule have been tweeting about it for the past few months so this one might just happen. I’ll give it a 3/5 chance.
• Final Fantasy verses 13 gets a release date - The game that has been in development forever, maybe this will be the E3 where it gets a solid release date. Unlikely I know but stranger things have happened, I’ll give it a 2/5
• NGP has a launch price under £300 - This really needs to be true if the NGP has any chance of succeeding and I think sony may have gotten the message about it’s launch prices, so maybe just maybe, this will have a chance of coming true. I’ll give it a 4/5 and I’ll probably be proved horribly wrong.
• Final Fantasy 7 HD remake - Every E3 I hope it’ll happen and this year is no different. It won’t happen but if it does I will have to chance my pants. Make it happen Square and I’ll love you forever and ever. I’ll even pretend FF13 is a good game. I’ll give this a -5/5 chance of happening (Yes of course negative probability makes sense, why even ask that question).

So thats it for my E3 hopes and dreams, maybe some of them will come true. I’ll do a post after each press conference summerising my thoughts but if you want to find out my impressions of the conferences as they happen follow the stars team on twitter @starsmarathon I’ll be watching the conferences live so you can live the disappointment with me. See you next time