Playing the long game

Way back in the mists of time i bought a little game by the name of V Rally 3 and instantly fell in love. The game opened with a rip roaring music video that made me a fan of British rock band "A", but that is another post for another time.

The main reason I loved V Rally 3, besides the intro Music and the usual reasons of car handling and graphical/audio fidelity, was the extensive career mode that allowed you to compete year in and year out at both top level WRC events as well as the 1600 FWD series that supported it.

Personally i always preferred to play the FWD junior series, mainly because i wasn't good enough to handle the monster four wheel drive cars, but in a way that made the career mode feel even more real.

There are many drivers out there, hell, there are many sportsmen in general who fall short when they enter the top level of their field. There's no shame in it, not everyone is cut out for WRC. In my case i certainly wasn't, but the game allowed me to fail and retreat to the safety of the junior series where i dominated as the big fish in my own private small pond.

Maybe it was the fact that i tricked myself into feeling better about dominating the lesser event schedule, but to me V Rally never made you feel insignificant for not being successful at the top level. FWD junior rally was challenging, and every year your teams car performance varied adding an extra layer to what was already deep game play. Unfortunately other driving games don't seem able to give me that same warm fuzzy feeling.

When you play GT5 you never feel like you really achieved anything until you compete in the bigger events. Winning the Sunday Cup doesn't mean anything any more, especially when you know you have a 24 hour race series to attend later on in the game. Games like F1 give you little choice but to compete at the top level, and unless you're successful you will likely get little out of the experience.

Thankfully the latest WRC game features a career mode similar to the one found in V Rally 3. You build a career starting in the minor leagues and working up to the top tier 4WD beasts we all know and love. I can only hope that if you fail at the top level the game still makes you feel like you achieved something when you win a Junior championship.

Maybe i just want someone to make V Rally 4...

PSN - The Fallout

Twenty four days since hackers found their way into the PSN servers, bringing the network crashing down around them, the Japanese electronics giant has finally restored it's online services to a majority of users. The big question though, is whether Sony's image has suffered to the point that they may never recover (in the games market at least).

It's not the first time that a major console has had it's online features suspended. Microsoft had to take Xbox Live offline for 24 hours in 2008 in preparation for the "New Xbox Experience" and also suffered outages just prior to Christmas 2007. The big difference between these outages and the one recently suffered by the PSN however is, in the case of Microsoft, the problem was quickly remedied and didn't come off the back of a bunch of hackers getting hold of users personal information.

The damage to Sony and the Playstation's reputation should not be underestimated. Although the PSN is free for all to use, those who use it expect their details to be secure. If you can't put your trust in a consoles security how can you bring yourself to own it? Worse still is that people's credit card information may have been compromised and while all this news came out, Sony appeared to be dilly dallying over what to do.

The Welcome Back program that Sony announced on their blog is commendable. A free month of Playstation Plus will be an interesting experience for those of us who are yet to subscribe to it, While those who have will get two months gratis. A free film weekend is planned at some point, and although you question what they have to lose in terms of revenue when you see the 5 games available to users in the UK, the fact remains that you will get two of these for free.

Infamous
Little Big Planet
Ratchet and Clank Future:Quest for Booty (Super Stardust HD in Germany and United States)
Wipeout HD Fury
Dead Nation.

Whether or not these games appeal to the people that have been so inconvenienced by the PSN outage remains to be seen. Infamous and LBP are likely already owned by a majority of PS3 owners, so that effectively takes the selection down to two of three games. But hey, they're free!

Putting this Welcome Back program to one side for the time being though, This could hardly have come at a worse time for Sony. Nintendo recently announced the existence of a new console under development which appears to be aimed at regaining the hardcore audience they effectively lost when they released the Wii in 2006. Xbox 360 held a free online weekend just as the PSN outages bit, showing that they had a secure and reliable network and giving everyone a free taste of it just at the right time. It's my belief that Microsoft's console has had the premiere online gaming network for some time now due to the level of investment they can afford it. Sony may have sat back to begin with since the PSN was until recently free for all. They can hardly afford to do so now. At this point any perceived complacency from Sony by the gaming community could completely kill off the Playstation brand with the hardcore community.

There's one other question that this raises. Has this all caused so much trouble for Sony that they would consider burying the Playstation name altogether and start anew with their next console? I doubt it somehow. Even with all the negative mainstream news stories circulating about their machine, i think Sony realise they have a brand in the Playstation that will sell purely on name recognition alone.

Given all of the bad publicity Sony has had for the past three weeks it seems unlikely, perhaps even perverse that the number of PS3's sold during the PSN debacle should have increased rather than fallen. All publicity is good publicity it seems. Maybe the world doesn't care about online gaming, but they should still care about who can get hold of their details...

The PSN debacle continues...

Mark next Tuesday down in your diaries people, it's the day Sony hopes to restore some of the PSN's functionality according to a new statement from the Playstation Blog. As a registered PSN user myself, I'm anxious to find out what details have been stolen by the hackers. Thankfully, due to my general mistrust of games console software security i never registered a credit card with the service.

On the subject of the PSN debacle, the thought occurred to me today that when you can buy pre paid cards in any store that sells consoles why would you want to register a credit card to your account instead? Is it Convenience? Laziness perhaps? I understand if you live miles from the nearest games outlet, or if you find out about a new downloadable title that you can't wait until Monday to download, but at the same time is it really that big a deal if you can't play a new game immediately?

When i decided to download a title from the PSN recently i was faced with a question. Should I register my card and get it now, or wait until the following evening so that I could buy a £20 PSN card with all the extra security that it brings. Today I'm thankful that I was patient enough to wait, and very sympathetic to those who weren't.

Of course, it's Sony who are ultimately culpable for the data thefts here, and it will be Sony who will foot the bill for any losses incurred by members of the PSN. But it's sensible for all of us to remember that when any of us register a card for a service it's us that take the risk, at least in the short term. I think Game will be shifting a lot more of those pre paid cards from now on...

Can the last waggler please turn off the console on their way out...

When the rumours of Nintendo's new console began to circulate, it was interesting to note that the one thing missing from the list of design concepts and technical details was the mention of any form of movement control. In fact the only details released about the next gen Nintendo's controller was that it would include a touch screen that could stream game content in real time.

Bearing in mind that the actual technical details of Project Cafe are all rumours at this point, and that the company have only gone so far as to confirm the existence of a new machine, it has to be made clear that this is mostly guess work on my part, but that notwithstanding here's my take on what this all means.

Movement based control is dead in the water.

Bye bye waggle, Don't let the door hit you on the arse on the way out...

Okay, it's true that Xbox and Playstation are still supporting the concept, but look at how many games out there for the Sony and Microsoft machines actually need either Kinect or PS Move in order to be played. Now compare that to the number or titles where move control is just a fancy extra thrown in because the developer could.

The move away from move based game control isn't really surprising when you think about it either. Nintendo stopped making a big thing out of the Wii Motion controller a long time ago, most of their major releases use very little of the Wii Motion controller's potential in their game play, instead relying on the old button and d-pad combo. Eurocom's version of Goldeneye, released last year, eschewed motion control altogether and actually came packaged with a Gamecube controller for better all round game play.

It's clear that Xbox and Playstation developed their take on move control as a direct response to Wii's domination of the family console market. That domination was originally because of the innovative controller that came with Nintendo's souped up Gamecube 2.0 along with some clever marketing towards families on the Japanese company's part. Now that Nintendo seem to be abandoning the move market in favour of something a little more current generation the big question must be asked - Why should Sony or Microsoft try to compete in the move market any more?

I'll be honest, i can't think of a decent reason.

Nintendo confirm new console in the works

Nintendo confirmed rumours of a new console under development today with a short statement which read as follows.

"We will show a playable model of the new system and announce more specifications at the E3 Expo, which will be held June 7-9, 2011, in Los Angeles,"

No further details were confirmed other than the existence of the new console. I guess we'll all have to wait until June.

PSN Outages continue

Sony have reportedly suspended the PSN due to a security issue concerning a hacker group known only as Anonymous.

Senior Director of Corporate Communications Patrick Seybold released the following statement regarding the outages:

"An external intrusion on our system has affected our PlayStation Network and Qriocity services. In order to conduct a thorough investigation and to verify the smooth and secure operation of our network services going forward, we turned off PlayStation Network & Qriocity services on the evening of Wednesday, April 20th.

Providing quality entertainment services to our customers and partners is our utmost priority. We are doing all we can to resolve this situation quickly, and we once again thank you for your patience. We will continue to update you promptly as we have additional information to share."

In a second statement Mr Seybold apologised for the continued outages and explained that network rebuilds are being undertaken:

"We sincerely regret that PlayStation Network and Qriocity services have been suspended, and we are working around the clock to bring them both back online. Our efforts to resolve this matter involve re-building our system to further strengthen our network infrastructure. Though this task is time-consuming, we decided it was worth the time necessary to provide the system with additional security. We thank you for your patience to date and ask for a little more while we move towards completion of this project. We will continue to give you updates as they become available."

Bloody Hackers...

Project Cafe - Nintendo's new console?

On Friday 15th April, French site 01.net claimed to have unconfirmed details on Nintendo's next console, codenamed Project Cafe. The rumours were then published by Develop and later by IGN. Now, a week later, IGN.com claim to have further information regarding the new console. Let's take a look.

First of all we should tackle the most important thing to get right on any console, the controller.

Image courtesy of IGN entertainment

As many of you will see from this image, the new controller is expected to be very similar in form to the Gamecube handset with the addition of extra shoulder buttons and a 6" screen. In regards to the screen, it'll be a touch-screen and will be able to stream entire games directly from the console. One question that this touch-screen led me to asking - will you be able to play DS or even 3DS games on the system?

IGN sources with knowledge of the project claimed that depending on production costs the new console would retail anywhere between $350 and $400 and will be manufactured by Taiwanese company Foxconn starting in October. If Nintendo were willing to take a hit on their profit margins however the price could be further reduced. Release of the new hardware could be any time from late October onwards depending on Nintendo's desire to build a stockpile or not.

More likely is that Nintendo choose to wait until 2012, building up stock while also giving developers more time to deliver a range of titles for the new console.

At last it looks like Nintendo are joining the next generation. The internals of the new machine will be based on a new version of AMD's R700 GPU which should be able to outdo the PS3's NVIDIA 7800GTX-based processor. Project Cafe will, like the Xbox 360, have a custom triple-core IBM Power PC chip set, the difference being that it will have faster clocking speeds. Given the potential power of the system and the fact that each controller has an in built screen it's been suggested that you could actually have multiple players on the same console, each playing their own "virtualized" console.

Lovers of HD will be pleased to hear that the new platform will support 1080p output and should be more than capable of stereoscopic 3D as well, unlike the 3DS it's not been decided if this will be a set feature of Project Cafe games though.

One of the rumours that IGN reported on that really interested me was that the new machine could possibly resemble a modern version of the SNES, but will that be the US version or the European design? the EU version was a console that i always loved the look of. In terms of size the new console will be of similar proportions to the original Xbox 360.

The last piece of information reported by IGN is that a potential name for the console could be "Stream". Personally i'm not struck on the name but then i wasn't the biggest fan of "Wii" when that was announced. To be honest i'm still not.

There are a few gaps in this information that need to be cleared up of course, how much storage capacity will the hard drive have? Will there be a hard drive at all? Will the new system use DVD, Blu Ray or a proprietary storage format? It's still early days for Project Cafe/Stream/Wii 2, but it'll be interesting to see how this develops.