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Kotaku outlines differences between PlayStation Home and Second Life
There has been plenty of speculation on PlayStation Home and how it compares and contrasts with Second Life as a virtual world. Heck, the creative director spoke about it months ago stating that Second Life players would probably not find much of interest in PS Home. Well, Kotaku has stepped in to explore just that subject.For those not wanting to get too down and dirty with the full tale, Second Life has much more personal customization. Everything from outfits to dance moves to land masses can be user-generated and added to the world. On the other hand, PlayStation Home allows for minimal add-ons, focusing on creating rich, stable environments - even if that means sacrificing little things like avatar diversity. But with much more content promised, PS Home may well become a better contender for virtual world time.
Take-Two Interactive considering subs and microtransactions for top titles
Subscriptions have been the bread and butter of MMOs since the days of Ultima Online, but subs may be coming to some popular standalone PC titles from Take-Two Interactive, presumably the Grand Theft Auto franchise and BioShock. Brian Crecente of Kotaku reports that "at the BMO Capital Markets conference, Take-Two head honcho Strauss Zelnick seemed very up on the idea of downloadable content, micro-transactions and even... subscriptions." This falls in line with their business model of periodically offering downloadable content to either extend the storyline of a game, or to simply offer varied gameplay experiences. Downloadable content and microtransactions could solve some of the issues game publishers have with their titles being re-sold, allowing them to have a continuous revenue stream, and perhaps dissuading many consumers from reselling that game in the first place. Regular content refreshes could ensure that these games don't go stale and end up relegated to a dusty bookshelf. Zelnick implied that this business model, should it come to be, would likely only affect Take-Two's biggest titles. This implies changes to the business models for Grand Theft Auto and BioShock, although the words "Midnight Club Online" also seem apt. But do you feel that adding the trappings of the MMO business model, namely subs and microtransactions, would enhance your experience with a standalone title, both as a gamer and as a consumer? Are more MMO-like PC games a good thing, or are you more of an MMO purist?
7-Eleven to have Wrath midnight release
In somewhat unusual news, 7-Eleven seems to be moving into the video game sales business in some capacity. I've noticed that 7-Eleven had sold a couple select games like Madden in the past, but I never thought much of it. I assumed they just had some deal with the distributor for that particular game.However, that's not actually the case. Their Madden sales turned out to be quite the success, and their demographic is rather gamer heavy. Man, who would have thought a 24-hour convenience store would attract a lot of young gamers? My mind is boggled. As of this season, 7-Eleven has begun offering pre-orders of select major upcoming releases (such as Wrath of the Lich King) at their locations. All of their offerings will have midnight releases at the 24/7 chain, so your next midnight release party might just take place between a Slurpee machine and a beef jerky rack. I have a feeling they won't be holding any costume contests.Oh, if you're curious, 7-Eleven says Wrath in November, too. Man, I could actually go for a Slurpee right now. AFK.[ via Kotaku ]
Rumor: Heavenly Sword 2 canceled; Ninja Theory 'bitter' with Sony
Sony Europe has allegedly canceled the Sony Cambridge-helmed Heavenly Sword 2, while the first game's developer, Ninja Theory, has been said to be generally unhappy with the company. Kotaku reports an "inside UK source" said the game was killed after months in development because it was no longer commercially viable. Meanwhile, Ninja Theory, which has offices in the same building as HS2 developer Sony Cambridge, is apparently moving out following "increasingly bitter" treatment by Sony. We've contacted both Ninja Theory and Sony for comment. If true, we'll never underestimate Sony Europe's game culling ability again. Update: Sony informs it will not comment on the Heavenly Sword 2 rumor. Ninja Theory's official statement is after the break.
One gamer's descent into powerleveling
At the end of last year, the Australian version of gaming blog Kotaku put up a series on the lengths to which one gamer went to experience World of Warcraft. He had already made the decision to quit the game, and decided to give it one last go via a power-leveled character. The series details the research put into the decision, and chronicles his experiences as he watches his new avatar ascend the ranks from the sidelines.What's especially interesting is his final conclusion about the whole experience. When all is said and done, the anonymous author walks away from his powerleveled character barely having made it through his mid-60s. There might be a life lesson in the whole thing, and the series is well worth considering if you've ever considered such a service.
"Free-To-Play" model pulls in a dollar per user in the west
One dollar per user per month may not sound like a huge revenue for any game, but when you start thinking in the terms of the user base of games like Habbo Hotel, Club Penguin and RuneScape you start to realize how much a dollar is really worth.Lightspeed, a venture capital firm, recently did a few calculations to come up with the figures of how much revenue is generated by a single user in today's most successful free-to-play, microtransaction supported MMOs. What they came up with is a pretty interesting look at how much a "successful" MMO will make. For example, Habbo Hotel pulls in around $1.30 on average for each of their active users per month, while RuneScape pulls in 84 cents per active user per month.The one figure that stood out from the pack was Second Life, which pulled in 9 dollars per user per month thanks to things like land ownership and the premium subscription that land owners have to buy to be able to own property. Even with Second Life in the mix, it's interesting to see that these types of MMOs don't make much per user, yet still can pull in great amounts of revenue by entertaining huge player bases.[Via Kotaku]
Funcom apologizes for involuntary breast reductions
We'll have to be completely honest with you; ever since Jorgen Tharaldsen's famous proclamation,"You'll see titties," the topic of Age of Conan and its famously epic mammaries is one that comes up rather frequently around the Massively offices. What can we say, we're admirers of the female form... also, we like boob jokes. In any case, we were rather distressed to hear of some Age of Conan players complaining that their in-game counterparts were lacking a certain lactoid luster.It might seem like a frivolous complaint, but from the images provided by a forum user named Gust, it's become evident that the change in chesticle size is actually significant. And Funcom is taking the complaint seriously, saying in part, "Funcom can confirm that some of the female models in the game have had the size of their breasts changed. This is due to an unintended change in data that was introduced in an earlier patch, data which controls the so-called morph values associated with character models and the size of their respective body parts. We are working on a fix for this and your breasts should be back to normal soon." It's sporting of them admit their mistake, and hopefully they'll have it fixed as quickly as many of the other bugs they've had since launch.[Via Kotaku]
How accurate are your favorite video game analysts?
Man, being a video game analyst must be a sweet job. You can put out all sorts of crazy predictions and no one will ever call you on it if you end up being wrong, right? Well, yes, right, until today, because today Kotaku has completed a massive project to rank the truthiness of predictions from some of the most prominent video game industry analysts out there.The results show that even the best prognosticators out there aren't all that infallible -- Michael Pachter, Jeetil Patel and Mitshuhiro Osawa all top out the scale at 60% correct. That might not sound so good, but it looks absolutely glowing when compared to Billy Pidgeon's dismal 10% truthfulness rating (with 20% still to be determined). Want to avoid his ignominious fate? Just be like Piers Harding-Rolls and predict stuff so far into the future no one can tell how accurate your calls are until you've moved on to used car sales or something.The full piece takes an interesting look behind the scenes in analyst-land and provides some good reasons to be cautious of all those stories with headlines that start with "Analyst predicts ..." Do yourself a favor, take a few minutes and give it a read.
Jack Thompson: Mass Effect controversy 'ridiculous'
Perhaps the most well-versed individual on gaming controversy (by merit of instigating many of them), Jack Thompson has found a way to make the Mass Effect Fox News report more ridiculous by defending the game. Unfortunately, weather.com has not updated the current temperature in Hell, but we'll let you know when we find out.Responding to the latest press release, Kotaku's Brian Crecente asked Thompson what he thought about the Mass Effect story. Thompson responded, "The guy who shot his mouth off about it had no idea what the Hell he was talking about." (We assume he meant conservative columnist Kevin McCullough and isn't confusing Fox News guest Cooper Lawrence's gender.) Thompson later added, "This contrived controversy is absolutely ridiculous."To catch you up to speed: just after McCullough apologized for writing about Mass Effect's "virtual orgasmic rape," Fox News' Live Desk with Martha MacCollum ran a similar, ignorant segment on the "Sexbox" (so clever) title that pitted Geoff Keighley against a child care author who openly admitted she never played the game. Publisher Electronic Arts demanded a correction, Fox countered, and Lawrence apologized after gamers review-bombed her book on Amazon.
Promotional Consideration: Quote-based strategy II
Promotional Consideration is a weekly feature about the Nintendo DS advertisements you usually flip past, change the channel on, or just tune out.Since we bemoaned Advance Wars: Days of Ruin's lacking marketing push last week, Nintendo has kept us holed up in our bomb shelter, walls trembling and lights flickering as wave after wave of advertisements, massive shells blasted from Leo Burnett's distant dreadnoughts, pound the smoking city above.Here's every salvo we've been hit with in just the past week: an official web site launch (with new media) media-heavy previews and several interviews with Nintendo's localization team two promotional emails sent out to Nintendo's online newsletter subscribers a launch event held earlier today at the Nintendo World Store (New York City) television commercials on both network and cable channels a two-page ad running in at least three video game magazines -- GamePro, Game Informer, and Electronic Gaming Monthly We stand, crumbs of concrete falling from our hair, corrected. As we promised in our last installment, we're taking a look at that two-page magazine ad for Days of Ruin, a print piece which features flattering quotes from three online video game sites.
Promotional Consideration: Quote-based strategy
Promotional Consideration is a weekly feature about the Nintendo DS advertisements you usually flip past, change the channel on, or just tune out.Given the anticipation for Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, at least among hardcore gamers, it's surprising that Nintendo hasn't launched an advertising offensive by now -- bombing strongholds with print ads, ambushing our television sets with commercials, and running its usual propaganda campaign.But with less than two weeks away from Days of Ruin's release, we've yet to find the game advertised in any of the magazines we've cracked open, and the only commercial we've seen so far is the poorly thought-out one embedded past the post break.%Gallery-8563%
Square-Enix's creatively-named Virtual World
The acerbic lads at Kotaku bring the snark once again with their announcement of an announcement over Square-Enix's upcoming virtual world called Virtual World ... virtual world. There, I couldn't resist.The post's comparison to Second Life, however, is slightly off-the-mark, as SL doesn't run on ad revenues, while Sony's Home certainly will. Similarly, Virtual World will feature ads for Square-Enix games, and given that Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon will be a Wii title, there could be other Wii titles on display as well. Besides the ability to have tea with a Chocobo, will there be any reason for people to want to enter Virtual World? And besides, everybody knows Chocobos like Gysahl Greens anyway -- I mean, duh.
Sony denies Home release date
Although Kotaku is claiming that Home would be released on October 11th, Sony has a few things to say against that. A Sony spokesperson told GI.biz that the list on Kotaku is "not an official release schedule. None of the dates on the list have been confirmed at this time." "I don't know where Kotaku have taken them from or why they're claiming 'SCEE have clarified dates' as we haven't sent them anything, and neither have our Central office." The popular gaming blog is famous for revealing Home to the masses, but has also misled readers with an inaccurate portrayal of what the PSP redesign would be. More details on Sony's PSN service will be forthcoming at TGS, but considering the fairly sparse support that the Home beta has received, we predict that the service will need a lot more time to develop into something truly worthwhile.
Sony denies European launch list
Sony Europe is denying that Kotaku was given a list of European release dates for numerous titles, including the "tentative" launch of Home on Oct. 11. A Euro rep for Sony tells GI.biz regarding the release dates, "I don't know where Kotaku have taken them from or why they're claiming 'SCEE have clarified dates' as we haven't sent them anything, and neither have our Central office." As there is no link for the list on Kotaku, it would mean they received the information first hand. This would not be the first time Kotaku received high-level Sony information early from an inside source.Sony would only confirm the Heavenly Sword (Sept. 14) and Warhawk (Sept. 21) release dates for Europe, which were already known. Release dates for games like Ratchet and Clank on Nov. 7 are in line with the typical European delay. The Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (Dec. 5) and Gran Turismo 5 Prologue (Dec. '07) dates, if true, give a strong indication that they'd be out in the States a few weeks earlier. We're sure to find out if these dates hold up soon enough. Sony is planning to make their Home announcements at the Tokyo Game Show which runs Sept. 20-23.
Slim PSP rumor cut down with another rumor
We cast a huge shadow of doubt over Kotaku's supposed findings of a slimmer PSP. We know it's happening ... we just don't know when, or how. Rumor Reporter has seen its fair share of video game rumors -- and has for the most part, thoroughly debunked them, Mythbusters-style. They've earned their credibility, and we find that their redesigned PSP concept makes a lot more sense:"My undisclosed sources tell me that Kotaku's report is mainly factually inaccurate ... [but a] new slimmer PSP is indeed in the works." The redesign, according to Rumor Reporter, supposedly has a slot loader replacing the UMD drive. The entire system will have "an even 'cleaner' look, much like the DS Lite." The system will feature the same sized screen (something Sony has been adamant about), but will have a "sidekick-esque" flip-screen, reducing the overall size of the system.This "probable" rumor concludes with the same prediction that Kotaku made: the redesigned system will cost consumers the same price as the current model. However, unlike Kotaku, Rumor Reporter is stating that the system will only have 4GB of memory, as opposed to 8GB. With E3 only a few weeks away, we'll see which one of these redesign rumors are the most accurate.
PSP Slim details leaked?
We're sure that a PSP remake is coming ... but when? Kotaku, in a "rumor" from "several sources close to Sony," suggests that a thinner PSP will be unveiled at E3 next month. The system will supposedly feature a new LED screen that delivers a crisp image in a new, thinner size. Due to new screen technology, battery life will also increase, up four-fold. Amongst other features is a faster UMD drive, 8GB of internal flash memory, and a revamped D-Pad. All of this is supposed to come in at a surprising cost: only $170, the same cost of the system now.Sound too good to be true? Maybe. We contacted Dave Karraker from SCEA and he commented: "This is pure rumor and speculation, for which we don't comment."We honestly find many of these details to be much too extravagant, especially at such a low price. (How much money would Sony lose on each system sold? 8GB of memory alone would make the $170 price much too costly for the manufacturer.) We'll have to wait until E3 to see if Kotaku's bold claims have any weight to them.
Thompson sues Kotaku owner over comments, suit dismissed
[Update: The Kotaku suit has been dismissed by Federal District Court Judge Paul Huck, GamePolitics.com is now reporting. Apparently, Thompson "failed to follow the proper federal court procedure for amending a complaint." Thompson says he'll try it again though, so please, read on.]The smoldering battle between Florida lawyer Jack Thompson and the gaming press has been taken to a new level. In a tersely worded post yesterday on Kotaku, Brian Crecente revealed that Thompson has added a complaint against Kotaku owner Gawker Media to a March 13 suit against the Florida Bar.The childishly-worded complaint (He actually makes a "NOT!" joke on page 27) focuses on a few Kotaku commenters (which Thompson mistakenly refers to as "bloggers") that allegedly said Thompson "should be shot ... struck with a baseball bat, shot in the face by an irate gamer, [and] castrated and his testicles stuffed down his throat," among other things. To be fair, those are some strong, hateful words, and threats like these are not necessarily protected by the first amendment. Still, Gawker or Kotaku probably can't be held liable for them -- a federal judge ruled in June 2006 that "bloggers cannot be hit with libel suits on the basis of anonymous postings on their Web sites."Perhaps knowing this, Thompson goes a different route in his complaint by alleging Kotaku is part of a "civil conspiracy ... to deprive Thompson of his various basic constitutional rights" and that the site is "attempt[ing] to intimidate a citizen for the exercise of his constitutional rights." Mark Methenitis goes into detail on what exactly is legally wrong with this overreach over at his Law of the Game blog. All we'll add is that we're sickened by this obvious attempt at legal intimidation and we support our blogging brothers at Gawker all the way.
How did various media outlets report the FTC gaming report?
Here's some light weekend reading about politics, the media and gaming. Earlier this week the U.S. Federal Trade Commission released a report about the gaming industry. The real fun for industry folk was seeing how all the various media outlets would report the news and what their headlines would be. Below is the list, shamelessly ripped-off from Dennis McCauley over at GamePolitics, of various media outlets and their take on the report: FTC says content curbs fall short - L.A. Times Report says the young buy violent games and movies - NY Times FTC: self-regulation of violent content working - Beta News Children still see ads for violent content - Advertising Age FTC scolds marketers about violent content - AdWeek FTC: violence still marketed to youths - Hollywood Reporter Report: Violence still aimed at kids - Variety FTC violence marketing report show general compliance - Broadcasting & Cable FTC Report: Violence Still a Problem in Marketing - TV Week FTC: game industry self-policing improving - GameSpot FTC: M-rated games still marketed to minors - Next Generation FTC: games are better regulated than music, movies - Ars Technica FTC report: mixed reviews on industry's ability to self-regulate - Joystiq FTC: game industry stricter than movies, music - Kotaku FTC report praises, spanks video game industry - GamePolitics As McCauley asks in his headline accompanying the list above, "Were these media outlets reading the same report?" The various headlines make us think of the classic question: If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to see it, does it make a sound? Some say yes, some say no, some say it explodes into various pieces, some say the Earth Mother picked it back up, some say there is no tree. The various headlines and the stores with them is a good read on the diversity of voice in the media -- especially when it comes to gaming.
Do gamers want adult games?
Kotaku has a story about a PSP mahjong game that has some ... saucy imagery in it. It isn't an adult game persay, but it got me thinking: do gamers want adult games? In this month's EGM, they predict that 20 years in the future, gamers won't be playing adult titles on anything but the PC. While this seems like a believable prediction, is our society so puritanical that we can't accept adult gaming in the mainstream? On the flip-side of the argument, one could point out that the popularity of adult movies has exponentially grown the past few years, and this may have a trickle effect to gaming. Also, gaming has yet to wriggle free of its "just for kids" perception. Once today's gamers are adults, doesn't it seem like the potential for adult games having success would be much higher? Will today's God of War sex mini-game be tomorrow's XXX portable gaming pornucopia? Is the concept of adult gaming appealing to you, or gamers as a whole? Let us know in the comments!
Price drop causes 300 percent sales increase?
Sony recently dropped the price of PSP down to $170 in an effort to revitalize the ailing PSP market. Did it work? According to Kotaku, the plan has worked quite spectacularly: "In the the first two days following the PSP's price drop there was a 300 percent increase in the number of the portables sold."Unfortunately, Kotaku hasn't provided a source for their information, and without specific numbers to work with, the authenticity of such a claim becomes a lot shakier. However, we'll play the optimist: with both system and games reaching mass market affordability, PSP is bound to bounce back in the handheld wars.More surprisingly, it appears as though the UMD is not dead. Apparently, UMD movie sales were actually up 35 percent from 2005 to 2006. "That jump in sales enticed Target to bring the format back to their stores."These are interesting developments for PSP, especially if true. The handheld wars are certainly getting far more interesting, now that Sony's recommitted to the fight.
