Kevin Butler: GoW3 Commercial Being Unveiled Today
The beloved Kevin Butler, VP of Information Teasers, revealed the following via twitter. Source
TheKevinButler: I’m not allowed to tell u to watch the PS blog tomorrow. So don’t. (Meaning do) RT @Dann954: You need to do a GoW3 commercial badd (3/8/2010)
This will coincide nicely with the God of War 3 event going on for GDC (Game Developers Conference) that the PS Blog has scheduled for Wednesday this week. Let’s just recap really quickly all of the momentum that is running up towards the release next week of this third and final installment in the Kratos saga:
- Monday – Media embargo lifted from God of War 3 and the first reviews were allowed to be published.
- Tuesday – The official PS tv commercial for GoW3 is going to unveiled via the PS Blog
- Wednesday – The PS Blog God of War 3 meetup event at GDC
- Thursday – More GDC awesomeness will showcase the scale and depth of this title.
All leading up to… Next week’s release!
Stop Bitching about the PS3 Glitch
This is getting truly out of hand. The PSN has been glitching for less than 24 hours and people are saying that this is comparable to the RROD devastation that afflicted early chipsets of the Xbox 360s. How fickle are people that they can’t remember history and what has happened not even a year and half ago now.
*Flashback to December 31st, 2008.*
All was well as children around the world were preparing to watch the new year’s eve celebration as the clock struck midnight. However, fate had a different sort of new years resolution for little Jimmy and the 12 other people around the planet that bought 30gb Microsoft Zunes. Because as the clock stuck midnight, every single 30gb Zune on the entire planet bricked simultaneously. Consequently the tech community freaked out, dubbing the event as the ‘Red Ring of Zune’. It turned out that this was only an internal clock issue and after 24 hours all of the Zunes (all 13 of them worldwide) returned to normal.
Now back to present day. How is this so dissimilar from what is occurring right now with the ‘fat’ PS3s? We’re lucky that our systems didn’t brick. They’re still playable for non-trophy games: ie Valkyria Chronicles, Metal Gear Solid 4, Resistance: Fall of Man, Heavenly Sword. This is the perfect opportunity to go back and play those games. Or better yet, use your system as a blu-ray player, since it is arguably the best one of those on the market. Moral of the story is that people are overreacting about this entirely situation which will more than likely auto-correct itself within a matter of hours.
What’s your take on this ‘ApocalyPS3’ (it pains me to even type that phrase). Is it just fuel for the trolls to go to town on? That’s my own personal opinion. What’s yours? Comment below.
Sony’s official advice on the situation.
UPDATE!
The PS3 is now working again. There are no patches, just turn on your PS3 and it works!
TPR – Rant 3: Third Party Support for the Wii Waining
Pardon some of the background noise in the podcast. I just recorded my thoughts while I was driving down the road, and it actually turned out to be something interesting. Let me know what you think.
-Will
My (awful) GameFly Experience
This is the actual message that I sent to GameFly. From what I’ve heard from everyone, I’m not the only one in this boat. The sad fact of the matter is that originally, when I first signed up, they seemed to expedite their shipping to draw me in. Now that I’ve been a customer for a long time, it feels like I’m on the back burner and they get to me last. Anyways, this is copied and pasted from what I sent to them:
I’d like to take a second just to formally complain about how dreadfully slow your turnaround time is. I have followed all of your guidelines for having at least 10 games in “My GameQ” so that the process can be expedited, however this fails to have any positive effect on my service. I find myself OFTEN waiting about a week before something is shipped out to me once you have received my previous title. Then once it is shipping I have to wait another 2-3 business days until the game is actually in my hands. I have upgraded to a 2-game account because of this delay, but then there are times like currently when I actually have NO games at my house because both of them are either in the mail to you, or you have not processed a new game for me yet. This ends up equating to around 1-2 weeks per month (at least) that are eaten up by lag time on your end. The problem here is that I am paying good money for your company’s inefficiency. Please do something to remedy this situation immediately or I will be forced to take my business elsewhere.
Thanks, Will Powers (long standing client)
http://thepowerreview.com
http://twitter.com/uncyrus
Do you think that this will change anything? Well, I’ll be forced to wait the 2-4 business days to find out, won’t I? /facepalm Customer service at this company is a joke.
The Last Guardian’s sales: Destined for Mediocrity
It pains me to write this article, but there is a purpose behind writing it. Hopefully if I can illuminate this issue, then more people can be aware of it and correct it in this third iteration of the “series” by Team ICO.
Let’s start from the beginning. Fumito Ueda and the rest of Team ICO released ICO for the PS2 in 2001. Despite being an incredibly innovative game in the sense of gameplay, musical scores, graphics, and story, the game largely fell under the radar for the mainstream market. The real shame of the situation is that the game is even to this day still hailed as one of the best exclusives for the PS2 system with a Metacritic average score of 90/100, however the overall sales worldwide hover right around ONLY 700,000 for the lifetime of the game.
Fastforward four years to 2005 when Project Nico (“ni” is two in Japanese) is finally renamed and released as Shadow of the Colossus. This is highly regarded as one of the most beautiful and ingenious games ever released, largely due to that fact that it makes you question all of these moral decisions that you’re acting out in the game. But most importantly, all of this is done without a single word of dialogue. No one argues that this game was a vast improvement from ICO, and that is reflected with the review scores, giving it a Metacritic average of 91/100, but 9 of them are perfect scores! Unfortunately the same fate that befell ICO was destined for SotC as well. It flew under the radar for the majority of mainstream audiences and became a cult classic that sold barely over 940,000 worldwide since its release.
Finally, look at “Project Trico” or The Last Guardian as it has been named as of E3 2009. This is obviously following in the same vein that ICO left off in, mostly as a 3D platformer. (Hopefully it’s not going to be an 8 hour long escort mission again *crosses fingers*) But in the age where titles are selling more than 10 million units on consoles, how can you regard a game that sells under a million units as successful? One of my favorite titles this generation, Valkyria Chronicles has failed to move more than ¾ of a million units, yet I consider it one of the best games of this generation. I fear that The Last Guardian will be a victim of the same fate as its predecessors since they hadn’t sold massively to large audiences. But one thing is important to remember: Sales aren’t a measure of the quality of a game. I can’t reiterate that point enough. Oh wait, I can… I’ll repeat myself. SALES DO NOT MEASURE THE QUALITY OF A GAME! So, do the gaming industry a favor and yourself a favor. Buy this game when it is released so that smaller developers like Team ICO will continue to release games that fall outside of the “conventional norm” of first-person shooters that have flooded (dare I say, polluted) the marketplace.
A last sidenote. The smartest thing that Team ICO could do to not only boost sales of this upcoming game, but also to increase publicity and hype building up to the release would be this: Give the original two games the same treatment that Sony Santa Monica gave God of War. If they re-released ICO and SotC in HD on one blu-ray disc, they would be exposing these games to another generation that otherwise wouldn’t have gotten to experience them because they’ve moved on from the previous cycle of consoles.
*Sales Data taken from VGChartz.com*
Please leave your comments and questions below!
PSN is Down? (11-17-09)
Trying to log into the PSN today I got this strange error message. Maybe the Firmware v.3.10 update that was detailed on the PS Blog yesterday is coming sooner than expected! Who knows, only time will tell.
If that is the case, Sony is trying to combat the Fall Xbox Live update that incorporates Twitter and Facebook by updating their own Firmware on the same day. Looks like the PSN is no longer playing catchup to Xbox Live, but they are rather releasing the same quality updates simultaneously.
God Of War Collection Release Delayed
A mass email was just sent out to everyone who pre-ordered the God Of War Collection via Amazon.com detailing a delay of the product’s release. Here is the text from the email.
Hello from Amazon.com.
We have received new release date information related to your pre-ordered video game in the order you placed on XXX 2009 (Order# XXXX). The release date for the video game listed below has been changed by the publisher, and we want to provide you with a new delivery estimate based on the new release date:
“God of War: Collection”
Release date: November 17 2009
-
Apparently there has been cause to push the titile’s release back another week. Personally it does not bother me, it will simply give me more time to play other titles that I’m backlogged in. But it is a shame, because this is another week longer that I won’t be able to play the God of War 3 demo voucher that is included with the disc! Apparently no one want to release the same week as Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare 2. Can you blame them really?
And the Halo Killer is… Halo?
This is a reaction article for sure, a reaction to me sitting back for the past month and just shaking my head at what “journalists” have been writing. The Halo franchise for sure is the 800-pound guerilla of this console generation, with the third iteration in the series selling over 11 million copies, these are extremely impressive numbers. However, as far as first party exclusives, what else really is Microsoft offering to its fanbase…? Lips? (Fine, I’ll give you Forza)
Microsoft began the bad habit of piggybacking off of the brand name of “Halo” to drum up sales, rather than relying on the critical acclaim that games would receive to create sales for themselves. Instead, by relying simply on brandname and enforcing review embargos, they seem to con customers into buying their products before word can get out about them. This isn’t just an unjustified claim; here are some of the facts surrounding this.
The issues that I have start with the release of Halo Wars in March. While this was not a bad game in the least, actually quite enjoyable, take a quick look at the official TV commercial promoting the game: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWphv8lJeG4) Nowhere in the entire commercial is there any ingame footage, or is there any evidence to show what genre of game this is. Since ALL off the other Halo branded games released up until that point had been first person shooters, why would this one be any different? If you weren’t up to date in what was going on in gaming at the time, then the commercial would have just told you that there was a new Halo game coming out, and your own previous experience would have made you think that it was a FPS. The problem lies in the fact that it’s NOT. That commercial deceived many people into buying a realtime strategy game while they were expecting anything but that. Is this really Microsoft and Ensemble Studio’s fault for the advertising, or is it the responsibility of the gamer to research the product and not to be fooled by false uninformative advertising.
The result of this is the game selling over 1.5 million copies worldwide in 6 months despite only having a Metacritic score of 82! That’s what review embargos will buy you, especially when some of the reviews for the game came in as low as 6.5 from accredited sources!
The next point of contention of course is Halo 3: ODST. This was originally slated to be downloadedable content for the megaseller, Halo 3. However one could only assume that Microsoft needed another big First-Party exclusive title for this year, so they decided to change it into a fullfledged game. That’s fine, but in this transition, somehow the content didn’t mirror the change in packaging. Translation: The content is still that of a $19.99 download, yet retailers are charging a premium of $59.99. Despite all of this, the game still managed to move 2.2 million units on the first day of sales. But who came out on top in all of this? Don’t get me wrong, ODST is a really fun game and I enjoyed playing through the 5 hour long campaign, however there’s no way that this could be justified as more than a “rent” for me. Here’s why!
More than likely the majority of the 2.2 million that purchased this title on day one already owned the previous iteration of the franchise. If you own both titles, then unfortunately, you just repurchased a lot of content that you already owned. The ONLY differences in online play are the three exclusive maps and the new game mode. Personally, I don’t understand why Halo fans aren’t up in arms about this. While ODST is a great package for newcomers to the Halo series, if you are a loyal fan, there’s not reason to purchase this game, mostly because you already have the content. Yet they did, and by the truckload.
So this really comes down to one thing: When are people going to wake up and actually demand a full package game rather than just drinking whatever brand of Halo Koolaid that Microsoft tries to market to you next? Because as the old saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Loyal Halo fans just got fooled twice, I don’t think they’ll stand around and take it a third time, otherwise there is going to be a severe backlash against the brandname. So Bungie, my best advice to you is to bring your A-game AAA game when it comes to Halo Reach coming out in 2010. I’ve already heard word that it will be the “most expansive” Halo to date. Let’s see if they can live up to that hype!
Retailers Struggle to Keep Up with PS3 Slim Demand
With the Holiday season creeping up ever so frequently, the question on everyone’s mind is who is going to come out on top in sales between the three current generation consoles. All three consoles have implemented price cuts recently to try to jumpstart the industry in a lagging worldwide economy. It seems to have worked, especially for the newly remodeled Playstation 3. This console managed to sell over 1.2 million units in its first 3 weeks of being on the market, more than it managed to sell all of last quarter combined!
As a safeguard measure to protect their own inventory stock from depleting too rapidly as the Holidays approach, Amazon.com has begun to limit customers to only purchasing ONE console per household. They are even reflecting this on their banner adds that can be found around the internet. Here is the text taken directly off the PS3 Slim’s product page.
PlayStation 3 120 GB purchase limit policy
As you may know, the PlayStation 3 120 GB is in great demand. In an effort to provide as many customers as possible with the opportunity to purchase PlayStation 3 120 GB, we are limiting the total number of PlayStation 3 120 GB units that can be purchased. As a result, each household may only purchase one PlayStation 3 120 GB unit. See additional policy details here.
This is most likely the first of many retailers to start to impose these restrictions. But this just comes as a shock because of the timing. It is only September, and the Holidays are still 3 months away. However with exclusive titles that the PS3 is launching such as Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, the sales are being propelled earlier than usual this 2009 Holiday!
Please leave your questions and comments below!
Playstation Reality Show “The Tester” Starts Making Cuts
Just to recap, Playstation announced their own reality show they were going to product called The Tester. In this contest, gamers would be pitted against each other in battles of both skill and knowledge competing for a grand prize of a job testing games for Sony. Applicants were asked to submit a video explaining why they wanted to be on this show.
After all of the entries were submitted and run through, Sony has made their first cuts in an effort to narrow down the pool of talent. Starting today producers of this show have begun to call individuals whose videos caught their eye in order to schedule them for followup interviews. If you submitted a video application, cross your fingers in hopes that you will be receiving a call in the next day or so. Good luck, and may the best gamer win!