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The Little Console That Could
With all eyes on the PS2 launch in Japan, you'd be forgiven for thinking there was little, in comparison, worth commenting on in Europe. If not for the lovely guys and gals at Sony this could well have been the case, but it seems that taking care of the most important hardware launch in the industry's history has taken up but only a part of their time. What's really interesting publishers in Europe at the moment is that at last Sony has introduced a new royalty scheme that allows them to sell games for as low as £9.99 ($16). Previously the lowest official sales price was the Platinum range's psychologically much weightier £19.99 ($32). Surprisingly, this new royalty scheme extends to both the existing console and the Playstation 2. The scheme actually includes a five-band structure to cater for pretty much any type of product.. Sony has indicated that it expects the lowest band price to be used for music, utility and education titles (or, if you want to be cynical, shovelware by any other name). It seems likely that some publishers are going to see things rather differently though, as Codemasters have already announced that they are to release their well-regarded Music title at the new super-low price. Take 2 have also been quick off the mark, announcing that they will be releasing Grudge Warriors and Evo's Space Adventures: two brand new (and therefore presumably not very good) titles at a penny less than £10. The fact that the new bargain basement price critically restricts the number of units that can be produced at any one time will, Sony hopes, mean that most publishers will keep things as they are. Many, however, are already mooting that a move to £20-£25 as standard would be more to their liking. As well as launching a new ubër-console and revolutionizing the price of software, Sony also found time to drop some heavy hints about a re-designed Playstation. Although they refuse to comment publicly, the rumor is that the original Playstation will have it's appearance re-designed so that it will appeal more to a younger 5-12 year old demographic. The idea being that the two consoles can then be sold side by side with no customer confusion - the new ten pound price range handily making it easy for companies to produce lots of simple edutainment and game titles. As nice as it is to see a hardware manufacturer planning so well for the future, one really does have to wonder whether the marketing dullards at Nintendo and Sega now have any chance at all. With leading publishers talking about cutting down the length of games to ensure they get finished on time (see Bruno Bonell's rather depressing comments, as reported last issue), and rumors of Sega getting bought out by Microsoft, could this be the end of another era in gaming? Can the time when none of the major hardware manufactuers actually make games be all that far away? The scary thing is, that has almost become a rhetorical question. Movies are from Mars, Games are from Venus
As mentioned in the previous issue of EuroSpeak ELSPA (European Leisure Software Publishers Association) have been getting all hot under the collar about a recent Channel 4 documentary about games violence. The award-winning UK show "Dispatches" has come under heavy fire for it's simplistic approach to the subject, as followed by every tabloid newspaper and TV show around the world. Falling just short of claiming that Adolf Hitler was a big Mortal Kombat fan, the show makers apparently turned down the chance to interview anyone from ELSPA or the British Video Standards Council. Depressing as it is to see the general media still treating video games as some sort of social evil (no doubt these people still refer to all games as "Space Invaders", just like my gran), it seems that parents are of a rather different opinion. According to data revealed by PC Data a pleasing 57% of customers disagree with the concept that playing violent games is likely to make people become violent. When the same question was asked of movies and TV, only 52% felt the same way. So there we have it: Murder She Wrote is 5% more likely to drive people to violence than a game of Soldier of Fortune. Elephants, and Games Players, Never Forget
Paragon Publishing, one of the UK's half dozen or so magazine publishers that aren't Future, recently announced what they modestly describe as "the ultimate games chart of all time." The so-called Millennium Games Awards were voted in by over 5000 readers of their print magazines and visitors to the totalgames.net Web site. The rather unexpected results make for interesting reading. Curiously there's only two PC-only titles in the whole top 50, even though many of these votes were taken online, and even the multi-format Quake II only managed to make it to number 17. id gets a double slap in the face by the fact that the top rated game of all time is actually rival FPS GoldenEye 007 on the N64. Elsewhere the readers have plumped for the more expected mix of the tragically cool, but not actually all that great, with over-hyped titles such as Metal Gear Solid and Silent Hill reaching much higher than any seasoned vet would allow them. Nevertheless, and despite somewhat faltering support for more recent Miyamoto classics such as Zelda and Super Mario 64, it does seem as if the general public has rather longer memories than many in the business would expect. How else do you explain Street Fighter II on the SNES, Out Run, and Sonic the Hedgehog on the Master System (!) scoring so high? Anyway, here's the full top ten, and the rest of the results are presumably on Paragon's Web site.
David Jenkins (david.jenkins@dial.pipex.com) is a Web editor working at gameplay.com in London, England. He has previously worked as a freelance writer on a number of prominent industry publications and has also been involved in the organization of the Develop! and Online Games conferences. Thus far he has collected 103 Pokémon; Rodney is still his favorite. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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