Episode 25 of the TD Gaming Podcast has been released!
What's in this gaming podcast? We talk about the Spore misinformation which is spreading, Intel working on anti-cheat hardware, Manhunt 2 gets the AO slap and Austin Powers goes FREE on Xbox Live.
A look back at Sonic and we delve into the life of Blizzard Entertainment and what they've accomplished.
Soapbox rant, does video game violence sell games and did Manhunt cross that line?
A listener asks, will Sony's bluray lawsuit hurt Blockbuster if Sony loses to Target Technologies?
If you get a chance, please subscribe to us in itunes and leave us some comments so we can someday become a featured podcast!
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Casual Gaming Returns!
During the latest recording of the TD Gaming Podcast (due out in a few days) the topic arose about gaming going casual again. We touched on it, but it's hard to forget.
Back in the late 70's and early 80's we were all about arcade type quick style games. It was a test of the time, the systems really didn't have the power to wield too much more complexity.
As we moved into the early 90's we moved away from casual style games and side scrollers for a lofty 3D rich environment. We've created consoles with new controls schemes, more buttons (Atari Jaguar had 15 of 'em) and deeper graphical involvement.
We jumped to full motion video, high resolution textures and now we're performing 3D "acting" instead of full motion video. We're now capable of rendering life-like scenes in real time when years ago we used a video camera and encoded it.
Yet, something is changing. Microsoft recently talks about a casual gaming plan where they'll start trying to involve other family members in gaming. A more "family friendly" console--like the Wii.
Why now? Xbox Live Arcade has increased their casual titles, starting with things like Hexic HD, a few card games, pool and eventually Uno. Now we're seeing side scrolling action games, Heavy Weapon from PopCap was a good example of some hot side scrolling action.
Now they're talking about real game releases that are focused at family entertainment? Sony's PS3 is working on PlayStation Home, a very casual type environment.
Sure, many will still contain great graphical advancements but many are going "simple" instead of sticking "complex" with shorter fun game titles. Electronic Arts is opening a Casual Gaming division as well...? What is the world coming to?
It's history repeating itself. First we were happy to have video games, than we were happy to expand the demographic and get a bit more involved. Now, we're wishing for something new and different. As a matter of fact, it's really old and the same. But humans are a short life spanned creature with a shorter attention span and memory.
What's old is new again and we're learning that expanding our future by borrowing from the past isn't always a bad thing.
Game on. Casual style.
Back in the late 70's and early 80's we were all about arcade type quick style games. It was a test of the time, the systems really didn't have the power to wield too much more complexity.
As we moved into the early 90's we moved away from casual style games and side scrollers for a lofty 3D rich environment. We've created consoles with new controls schemes, more buttons (Atari Jaguar had 15 of 'em) and deeper graphical involvement.
We jumped to full motion video, high resolution textures and now we're performing 3D "acting" instead of full motion video. We're now capable of rendering life-like scenes in real time when years ago we used a video camera and encoded it.
Yet, something is changing. Microsoft recently talks about a casual gaming plan where they'll start trying to involve other family members in gaming. A more "family friendly" console--like the Wii.
Why now? Xbox Live Arcade has increased their casual titles, starting with things like Hexic HD, a few card games, pool and eventually Uno. Now we're seeing side scrolling action games, Heavy Weapon from PopCap was a good example of some hot side scrolling action.
Now they're talking about real game releases that are focused at family entertainment? Sony's PS3 is working on PlayStation Home, a very casual type environment.
Sure, many will still contain great graphical advancements but many are going "simple" instead of sticking "complex" with shorter fun game titles. Electronic Arts is opening a Casual Gaming division as well...? What is the world coming to?
It's history repeating itself. First we were happy to have video games, than we were happy to expand the demographic and get a bit more involved. Now, we're wishing for something new and different. As a matter of fact, it's really old and the same. But humans are a short life spanned creature with a shorter attention span and memory.
What's old is new again and we're learning that expanding our future by borrowing from the past isn't always a bad thing.
Game on. Casual style.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
TD Gaming Podcast: Episode 21
TD Gaming Podcast, this weeks theme is game exclusives. How Nintendo rose in the 80's due to game exclusivity and a debate about exclusive games on the "now gen" consoles.
Also in the news, Starcraft 2's been announced, PSP gets phoney, Nintendo's pre-E3 game plans for the summer and Sony's Blu-Ray under fire from patent campers?
This Month In Gaming, Kings Quest 1 for the PCJr. And the history of the third-generation of home consoles and "on the go" mobile gaming.
If you get a chance, please subscribe to us in itunes and leave us some comments so we can someday become a featured podcast!
Also in the news, Starcraft 2's been announced, PSP gets phoney, Nintendo's pre-E3 game plans for the summer and Sony's Blu-Ray under fire from patent campers?
This Month In Gaming, Kings Quest 1 for the PCJr. And the history of the third-generation of home consoles and "on the go" mobile gaming.
If you get a chance, please subscribe to us in itunes and leave us some comments so we can someday become a featured podcast!
Friday, May 25, 2007
TD Gaming Podcast: Episode 20
TD Gaming Podcast, this week we talk about Miyamoto and Bungie's little back-and-forth about who can make who's game. Miyamoto can make a halo game if he wanted while Bungie could make a game about plumbers?
This is the 40th anniversary of the video game, with the birthplace of video games being down the street from TechDiversions! Exciting!
Crackdown doesn't let the gamers into the halo 3 beta promptly, Bungie must handle spin control?
Microsoft lays down the banhammer for gamers and their hacked DVD just in time for the Halo 3 beta. Coincidence? I think not!
Our debate this week: Will the PlayStation 3 fail?
And checkout the history of NES's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the second-generation of video game consoles.
If you get a chance, please subscribe to us in itunes and leave us some comments so we can someday become a featured podcast!
This is the 40th anniversary of the video game, with the birthplace of video games being down the street from TechDiversions! Exciting!
Crackdown doesn't let the gamers into the halo 3 beta promptly, Bungie must handle spin control?
Microsoft lays down the banhammer for gamers and their hacked DVD just in time for the Halo 3 beta. Coincidence? I think not!
Our debate this week: Will the PlayStation 3 fail?
And checkout the history of NES's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the second-generation of video game consoles.
If you get a chance, please subscribe to us in itunes and leave us some comments so we can someday become a featured podcast!
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Miyamoto Could Make Halo If He Wanted?
"I could make Halo. It's not that I couldn't design that game. It's just that I choose not to. One thing about my game design is that I never try to look for what people want and then try to make that game design. I always try to create new experiences that are fun to play."
That's Miyamoto, designer of games like Metroid and Zelda, talking about his abilities to design games like Halo.
He's got a point, right? Considering the titles he's had a hand in designing are some of the ones that put Nintendo on the map. Not much different than Halo and the Xbox right?
The proof is in the pudding, Zelda, Mario, Pikman and so many others. The only rub? He's really only working with a set of four mascots... how many games has Miyamoto worked on that don't leverage prior hit games or characters?
Besides Pikman, most of his latest titles are spin-offs of a Mario like title. What about something new? Halo was a new franchise that rose from nothing to become a very famous FPS.
Some would argue Halo is fun to play (not I, but some) and Halo has two releases. Halo and Halo 2 with Halo 3 on the way. Can we say the same for Mario? From Super Mario through Super Paper Mario, Miyamoto has over 15 years of re-hashing character designs while Halo has but a few games to credit to the "re-hash" concept.
So, Miyamoto could create Halo, sure, but he would rather use Mario in yet another franchise spin-off. But hell, they're usually pretty good games.
source: 1up.com
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
TD Gaming Podcast: Episode 17
TD Gaming Podcast, this week we talk about Nintendo's purchase of Monolith Soft, makers of XenoSaga, we also talk a little about this dry spell in Nintendo Wii production. Alas, we'll cover the state of the gaming industry... who is doing good, who is doing bad and what companies are simply half full cups with slight cracks.
Two new Xbox 360 games lose their exclusiveness!
A look back at Duck Hunt in the History of Gaming for the end of April (yeah, the podcast posted in May, sue me :-) and a historical look at the life of Ken Kutaragi and what he did for Sony and their Entertainment business. Very impressive little resume.
This week in gaming is Top Gear for the SNES and we cover a bit of history on Electronic Arts.
We talk about video game violence and ask the question "are games kill simulators?"
If you get a chance, please subscribe to us in itunes and leave us some comments so we can someday become a featured podcast!
Thanks,
Derrick
Two new Xbox 360 games lose their exclusiveness!
A look back at Duck Hunt in the History of Gaming for the end of April (yeah, the podcast posted in May, sue me :-) and a historical look at the life of Ken Kutaragi and what he did for Sony and their Entertainment business. Very impressive little resume.
This week in gaming is Top Gear for the SNES and we cover a bit of history on Electronic Arts.
We talk about video game violence and ask the question "are games kill simulators?"
If you get a chance, please subscribe to us in itunes and leave us some comments so we can someday become a featured podcast!
Thanks,
Derrick
Nintendo Wii: Can games be cross-platform designed?
A big concern for publishers, it seems, is designing a video game that can handle all the console systems. A dream game for a publisher can be developed for the Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, PC and Nintendo Wii.
However, this is a major struggle from a developers perspective because every system has unique hardware and different specifications. Do you design for the lowest common denominator or do you design for the middle-end and retro-fit the application to all other design platforms?
Consider the memory space and you'll see a major problem area:
Notice the varied memory configurations? A game developers job is never easy, working with the smallest amount of memory possible. Consider a standard software developers memory options for a Windows, Mac or Linux program. Typically they're working with 512MB to 2GB of memory--much more.
You're asking a game developer to pack as much awesomeness into a very small container. Working with smaller memory footprints requires a high level of skill because "sloppy development" isn't an option when working with tiny memory capacities (yes, by todays standard 512MB is "tiny").
How do you, as a developer build a gaming application for 512MB of memory while still allowing it to run on a 64MB footprint? Well, simply put, you can't. You must design your software to run less than the smallest memory footprint, nobody wants to sit on the edge of 64MB of memory and then accidentally use a few too many bytes and cause critical failure.
If you think that's hard, you've also got to look at the two memory designs for the Xbox 360 vs. that of the PlayStation 3. The PlayStation 3 seems to have more memory...512MB compared to the Xbox 360 256MB of memory but this isn't true. The PlayStation 3's memory is "shared" between GPU and CPU, what does that mean?
That means the graphics memory and textures shares the same space as game data, levels and objects. If you have a game with a huge amount of textures and environments you will probably have less physical objects in the world because there isn't enough memory to have both.
The Xbox 360 only has 256MB of memory for the CPU, but the GPU has it's own 256MB of memory. In this design filling memory with game data won't impact graphical data where in the PS3 it can, but developers are smart to keep the balance correct. Many laptops also share memory data with graphic data so this isn't a new concept or a major concern (although in laptops it typically means slower GPU memory pipes).
When designing your game for all systems you must keep a few things straight: how your memory is used and how much memory is used at one time.
The Xbox 360 memory size and the PlayStation 3 memory size can be considered equal (but the designs are different) while the Nintendo Wii is dramatically smaller.
This gives the developer three options:
Typically, option 2 or 3 will be selected as we can see from the released titles across all three systems. In the case of Madden 07, option 2 is probably the decision they made. The product exists on all platforms, looks about the same on the PS3 and Xbox 360 but looks very different on the Nintendo Wii. Why? They have less resources to work with and thus, graphically, the system looks aged and not graphically satisfying.
The fact that Madden 07 looks so bad on the Wii shows that the developers paid close attention to the high end systems and 'simplified' the graphics to work on the lower-end system. I'm sure the graphics could have been better had they focused on that system as the target, but the end result may have been horrible graphics on the two other consoles.
The other major factor, Electronic Arts can afford to build a game like Madden on all platforms simultaneously because they've got a larger budget (we're not even talking about handhelds!).
Smaller game companies will have to select a target platform and hope the port is easier on them especially if they have experienced developers for the other platform in question. If they do not have the experienced team to work on a specific platform they can outsource the work and release the port 6-12 months later (not too unusual).
Sound like a lot of work? Yes! Now, take into consideration the new Wii controller design. Just when you think you've ported a game to the Nintendo Wii and the other two higher end consoles you're looking at a major barrier... making a slick Wii remote gameplay implementation while holding true to the gameplay on all other platforms.
This will result in one of two outcomes:
In a perfect world you're going to want to publish your title on all the consoles simultaneously. This is easier for the consumer to understand when they hear "Madden 07 is released this month" without questioning "what console?"
This isn't always possible, but if it can be roughly the same release date the consumers will be happy (as will the publishers). Having worked out your memory constraint issues, how do you target a game for a simultaneous release when you have to sit down and map out how you'll handle the Wii controller when the 360 and PS3 controllers are fairly similar (barring "tilt" features)?
Thus you have your options: make a good design for the controller or just get the thing to market and hope people like it.
We've seen both implementations on the Nintendo Wii so far, developers that want to implement a slick design and developers that just want it to hit the market (see TMNT for an example of the later).
Hopefully this explains a bit on why certain games are Nintendo Wii only, such as SSX Blur, while other games, like Oblivion, never arrive on the Nintendo Wii.
As systems become more complex and vary in specifications it becomes extremely difficult to support them all at the same time. If it was really that easy we'd have Linux, Windows and Macintosh games all simultaneously released!
Instead you have a handful of Mac games ported a year later, outsourced Linux game releases and a wide variety of Windows games.
You've also got to keep a focused eye on games released on all three platforms. You really want to take a look at the highest end game (PS3) vs. the lowest end game (Wii) and see how drastically different they are. In some cases, the middle of the line (360) will probably be the best selection because that's "the balance" between the two extremes.
This is especially true for smaller development firms because they're wallets aren't as fat and they may cut corners to release on all three systems. Larger firms have more money to spend and may put a unique team or studio working on the Wii release in order to put out a quality product on a similar game schedule.
In my humble opinion, I'll spend more time looking into Wii-only releases because I know they're only focused on perfecting a single platform. I'll also concentrate my searches on games that hit 360 and PS3 only (Assassin's Creed for example) because I know it won't be degraded to cover the least common denominator console (Wii).
However, this is a major struggle from a developers perspective because every system has unique hardware and different specifications. Do you design for the lowest common denominator or do you design for the middle-end and retro-fit the application to all other design platforms?
Consider the memory space and you'll see a major problem area:
- PlayStation 3: 512MB of GDDR3 memory (shared between CPU and GPU).
- Microsoft Xbox 360: 256 XDR memory
- Nintendo Wii: 64 GDDR3 memory
Notice the varied memory configurations? A game developers job is never easy, working with the smallest amount of memory possible. Consider a standard software developers memory options for a Windows, Mac or Linux program. Typically they're working with 512MB to 2GB of memory--much more.
You're asking a game developer to pack as much awesomeness into a very small container. Working with smaller memory footprints requires a high level of skill because "sloppy development" isn't an option when working with tiny memory capacities (yes, by todays standard 512MB is "tiny").
How do you, as a developer build a gaming application for 512MB of memory while still allowing it to run on a 64MB footprint? Well, simply put, you can't. You must design your software to run less than the smallest memory footprint, nobody wants to sit on the edge of 64MB of memory and then accidentally use a few too many bytes and cause critical failure.
If you think that's hard, you've also got to look at the two memory designs for the Xbox 360 vs. that of the PlayStation 3. The PlayStation 3 seems to have more memory...512MB compared to the Xbox 360 256MB of memory but this isn't true. The PlayStation 3's memory is "shared" between GPU and CPU, what does that mean?
That means the graphics memory and textures shares the same space as game data, levels and objects. If you have a game with a huge amount of textures and environments you will probably have less physical objects in the world because there isn't enough memory to have both.
The Xbox 360 only has 256MB of memory for the CPU, but the GPU has it's own 256MB of memory. In this design filling memory with game data won't impact graphical data where in the PS3 it can, but developers are smart to keep the balance correct. Many laptops also share memory data with graphic data so this isn't a new concept or a major concern (although in laptops it typically means slower GPU memory pipes).
When designing your game for all systems you must keep a few things straight: how your memory is used and how much memory is used at one time.
The Xbox 360 memory size and the PlayStation 3 memory size can be considered equal (but the designs are different) while the Nintendo Wii is dramatically smaller.
This gives the developer three options:
- Develop the game for the lowest common denominator
- Develop the PS3 and 360 game, then the Wii "port"
- Don't develop the game for the Wii at all.
Typically, option 2 or 3 will be selected as we can see from the released titles across all three systems. In the case of Madden 07, option 2 is probably the decision they made. The product exists on all platforms, looks about the same on the PS3 and Xbox 360 but looks very different on the Nintendo Wii. Why? They have less resources to work with and thus, graphically, the system looks aged and not graphically satisfying.
The fact that Madden 07 looks so bad on the Wii shows that the developers paid close attention to the high end systems and 'simplified' the graphics to work on the lower-end system. I'm sure the graphics could have been better had they focused on that system as the target, but the end result may have been horrible graphics on the two other consoles.
The other major factor, Electronic Arts can afford to build a game like Madden on all platforms simultaneously because they've got a larger budget (we're not even talking about handhelds!).
Smaller game companies will have to select a target platform and hope the port is easier on them especially if they have experienced developers for the other platform in question. If they do not have the experienced team to work on a specific platform they can outsource the work and release the port 6-12 months later (not too unusual).
Sound like a lot of work? Yes! Now, take into consideration the new Wii controller design. Just when you think you've ported a game to the Nintendo Wii and the other two higher end consoles you're looking at a major barrier... making a slick Wii remote gameplay implementation while holding true to the gameplay on all other platforms.
This will result in one of two outcomes:
- Investing time to perfect the Wii controller (date slips!)
- Half-baked functionality just to keep the project on track
In a perfect world you're going to want to publish your title on all the consoles simultaneously. This is easier for the consumer to understand when they hear "Madden 07 is released this month" without questioning "what console?"
This isn't always possible, but if it can be roughly the same release date the consumers will be happy (as will the publishers). Having worked out your memory constraint issues, how do you target a game for a simultaneous release when you have to sit down and map out how you'll handle the Wii controller when the 360 and PS3 controllers are fairly similar (barring "tilt" features)?
Thus you have your options: make a good design for the controller or just get the thing to market and hope people like it.
We've seen both implementations on the Nintendo Wii so far, developers that want to implement a slick design and developers that just want it to hit the market (see TMNT for an example of the later).
Hopefully this explains a bit on why certain games are Nintendo Wii only, such as SSX Blur, while other games, like Oblivion, never arrive on the Nintendo Wii.
As systems become more complex and vary in specifications it becomes extremely difficult to support them all at the same time. If it was really that easy we'd have Linux, Windows and Macintosh games all simultaneously released!
Instead you have a handful of Mac games ported a year later, outsourced Linux game releases and a wide variety of Windows games.
You've also got to keep a focused eye on games released on all three platforms. You really want to take a look at the highest end game (PS3) vs. the lowest end game (Wii) and see how drastically different they are. In some cases, the middle of the line (360) will probably be the best selection because that's "the balance" between the two extremes.
This is especially true for smaller development firms because they're wallets aren't as fat and they may cut corners to release on all three systems. Larger firms have more money to spend and may put a unique team or studio working on the Wii release in order to put out a quality product on a similar game schedule.
In my humble opinion, I'll spend more time looking into Wii-only releases because I know they're only focused on perfecting a single platform. I'll also concentrate my searches on games that hit 360 and PS3 only (Assassin's Creed for example) because I know it won't be degraded to cover the least common denominator console (Wii).
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