Hasta La Gadget!

If you believe the hype, then Sony will be revealing the next PlayStation in just a few short weeks at a February 20 event. The announcement of a new console is all well and good, but once the party’s over and the reveal has been made, Sony then faces the difficult task of making the next PlayStation successful in the new generation. It’s something of a blank slate – the other competitors in the console space are releasing new machines as well, so the platform wars can begin anew. Sony did a lot of good things with the PS3, but in order to make the PS4 a smashing success, it’s going to need to ramp it up in a few areas.

First and foremost, Sony needs to get even more serious about securing exclusive games for the PS4. Throughout the entire generation, Sony has offered some excellent exclusives to PS3 players. Microsoft had some good exclusives for the Xbox 360 throughout most of the console’s life, but these days it seems that the company would rather make timed-exclusive DLC deals. That’s all well and good, but timed-exclusive DLC is a poor substitute for exclusive full games. Sony not only needs to make sure the PS4 has a solid exclusive games library, but it also needs to kick it up a bit.

In the next generation, Sony can’t be stingy with its money – it needs to go out there, find good titles, and then plop down the cash needed to make those games exclusive to PS4. If it can offer a large number of exclusive games, that will drive consumers to the console, especially when its still in the early days after launch.

To give you an example, I have a friend who recently went out and bought a PS3 so he could play the US release of Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. It’s hard for gamers to resist the lure of a really awesome-looking game, which is why I’m willing to bet he isn’t the only one who bought a PS3 for Ni No Kuni. Good games that players can’t find anywhere else will always pull in more consumers than fancy technical specs, despite what the technophiles of the world will tell you.

That being said, Sony needs to get better at recognizing when a franchise doesn’t need any new releases. God of War: Ascension seems to be the God of War title no one was asking for, while a number of Ratchet and Clank games released this generation have been a far cry from the Ratchet and Clank games of the PS2 era. Instead of putting money into franchises that could use a rest, Sony could take that money and invest it in exclusive titles from promising third-parties, or it could even take a risk and develop some new franchises of its own. The temptation to keep milking a franchise with a loyal fanbase is definitely great, but by releasing title after title, you end up alienating gamers who have fond memories with the series. Unfortunately, many of those gamers aren’t going to come back when you’ve finally figured out how to bring something new and exciting to the franchise.

I think Sony should look to Japan more often in the next generation, too. We’ve got a lot of interest in Japanese games at the moment – Persona, Ni No Kuni, Xenoblade, Pandora’s Tower, The Last Story – all of them have been popping up left and right here in North America. They’ve all been getting attention as well. Sony has an advantage over Microsoft in this case, as Japanese developers aren’t making too many games for the Xbox 360. Until Microsoft learns how to effectively tackle the Japanese market, that will remain to be the case, leaving Sony with a flood of unique and interesting titles for its own console.

Why not publish more promising Japanese titles with the intention of bringing them to western markets in the next generation? There seems to be a belief that western gamers aren’t all that interested in Japanese video games, but I think this generation proved that’s more a misconception than anything else.

Sony also needs to pay more attention to indies in the next generation. PSN is already a great place to find indie games, but it seems to be more or less on par with the offerings over on XBLA. It needs to be better with the PS4. Indie games exploded this year, and Sony needs to take a bigger slice of that pie for itself. It needs to make a PSN where it can try new and different things, unlike the by-the-books nature of Xbox Live. Granted, Sony is already doing better than Microsoft in the online market area, but I’d like to see it take even more risks with PSN in the future.

Above all else, though, Sony needs to admit when things just aren’t working out. When you launch something like Move or PS Vita and it doesn’t do much else other than fester, the correct course of action is not to pretend everything is okay and let it fester some more. Move is a cool peripheral, and as far as the other motion control peripherals go, I think it has the Wii remote and Kinect beat. However, that doesn’t matter much when there aren’t any games for it. The same is true of the PS Vita – here we’ve got some excellent portable hardware, and it’s not doing anything but collecting dust because no one’s buying it and no one’s making games for it.

Staying the course doesn’t help in cases like these. If something isn’t working with the PS4, Sony can’t just leave that problem hanging there and hope it gets better on the promise of cool things to come. It needs to get creative and shake things up a bit. I’m not entirely sure how you fix the problems with the Vita, but I’m positive that Sony’s current way of handling these issues isn’t working. Let’s not allow that to happen with the PlayStation 4.

PlayStation 4: What Sony must do is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week there’s no hiding the fact that the public remains uncertain that they’ve been convinced by BlackBerry 10 after its first launch event. The company known until this week as RIM has re-branded itself as BlackBerry as they should have done long ago, this also creating an unacceptable amount of confusion for the consumer at large. Now we’ve got a “new” operating system on a couple of “new” smartphones created by a company with a “new” name – investors certainly must be praying for some additional tricks to be pulled out of the company’s sleeve quickly.

The pricing of the all-touch smartphone BlackBerry has revealed this week as the BlackBerry Z10 has a price point of $199 – that’s in general and not solidified as subsidized or off-contract. Several carriers in the USA and many abroad have let it be known that they are ready for BlackBerry 10 action without precisely targeting timeframes or pricing on their units, with many questions about how much business users will be paying both initially and through the course of time for their BlackBerry 10 machines and service.

When you experience a launch event for a brand new rebirth of an operating system complete with two new hero devices for that OS, you see one of two things. The first is a clean “this is what we have and this is why you want it” showing that depends on the quality of the products and their solid presentation of their total package – BlackBerry did not do this. The second way of presenting a new era in your company is to bring in a collection of videos that do not reveal new information while you show the products you’ve got here and there between odd announcements about new staff members and special offers for “early adopters”. This is what BlackBerry did.

BlackBerry did not inspire confidence in the public to the degree that they needed to, and the products they showed this week were not as groundbreaking as the position RIM has been in recently required. While BlackBerry has a chance to ride BlackBerry 10 out for a few seasons more, the products and services we’ve seen so far cannot be the full extent of the company’s offerings. BlackBerry needs to show something wholly unique and they need to do it soon.

BlackBerry 10 = BleakFuture is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The Steve Jobs biopic, JOBS, made its debut this past weekend at the Sundance Film Festival (with a theatrical release on April 19), and the reviews have begun pouring in. While many critics praised Kutcher and Gad for a job well done in their roles as Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, respectively, they were quick to criticize a few inaccurate details in the film. For instance, we saw the first clip from the film a few days ago, and Steve Wozniak said himself that the scene was “totally wrong,” and it’s actually not what happened at all during the early days of Apple. In the long run, though, does it really matter? In the Hollywood industry where the truth doesn’t always entirely make it through anyway, should we really be upset that a narrative non-fiction film isn’t 100% accurate?

In the one-minute clip, Jobs and Wozniak are in a heated debate about the operating system that Wozniak created. While Jobs is certain that the OS will be a big hit with the general public, Wozniak isn’t so sure and needs convincing. Apparently, though, the Woz himself denied that he was ever skeptical about his creation, and he actually had full confidence in the operating system. All hell broke loose at this point for Apple fans.

Many argue that there’s no excuse for the production team to bend the truth of the history of Apple and its founders. Because both Jobs and Wozniak have a biography and an autobiography, respectively, fans argue that there’s no reason for the movie to include made up bits, since resources are readily available. For instance, in Steve Jobs’ biography, author Walter Isaacson interviewed Jobs over 40 times, as well as interviewing over 100 different family members, friends, and colleagues in order to get an accurate account of the man behind the company. Because of that, many fans argue that there’s no reason that the team behind JOBS had to steer away from the truth.

Sure, in the grand scheme of things, the movie gives a mostly-accurate account of the history of the company and the founders who created it, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise that some of the factual details are either missing or a little off, and it shouldn’t be big deal either. It’s just a movie, folks. Movies are meant to be entertaining and fun to watch. In other words, it’s not a documentary, where there’s a word-for-word account of what happened. Remember The Social Network? It’s another non-fiction film that shows off the conception of Facebook, and while it gave viewers a vague idea of how the social networking giant got started, all of the drinking, drugs, and parties actually never happened in real life; but it was still fun to watch. If the movie ended up being an exact representation of how Facebook got started, it would honestly be boring as hell — just Zuckerberg in his dorm room sitting at his desk coding for hours on end. Who seriously wants to watch that?

In other words, it’s completely okay to make up scenes in order to make the movie more dramatic and fast-paced, or whatever style the director is going for. I agree, though, that there is a line, but screen writers these days are smart enough not to cross it. And by crossing the line, I mean putting in explosions, car chases, and pretty ladies in a film about the history of Apple — now THAT would be ridiculous. But so what if Wozniak was skeptical about his operating system in the movie when that really wasn’t the case. It shouldn’t change how you enjoy the movie. Plus, this is only one clip — one minute from a 122-minute film. We shouldn’t even be criticizing something that we’ve only seen 0.8% of anyway.

However, this isn’t the only Steve Jobs biopic that will be coming out. If you recall, Sony Pictures is also working on a movie about the history of Apple and its fearless founders, only this time, Wozniak himself is involved, along with Aaron Sorkin, who is one of the greatest screenwriters of our time. While this Sony version may be a little more accurate than JOBS, though — thanks to the Woz’s help — I’ll be surprised if it’s any more accurate than JOBS. Sorkin was the one who penned The Social Network, and he’s always been one to credit the fact that non-fiction films and documentaries are two completely different beasts.

In any case, if you really want to know what the early years of Apple were like, I hope you would be smart enough to not rely on a couple of Hollywood movie to accurately inform you about the company’s history. You’re better off reading Jobs’ and Wozniak’s respective books, “Steve Jobs” and “iWoz”. Both give a clearer picture of what Apple was like in the early days, and they better reflect the relationship that the dynamic duo had back in the late 70s and 80s. Happy reading!

JOBS may not be entirely accurate, but does it matter? is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

I know I might hear some complaints from Nintendo fans for this, but I have to ask: is the Super Mario and Legend of Zelda love about the quality of the games or the nostalgia?

As I’ve said here before, I’ve been playing games as long as I can remember. And as an owner of the Nintendo Entertainment System, SNES, Nintendo 64, GameCube, Wii, and Wii U, I’ve played just about every first-party game Nintendo has ever launched. For years, Nintendo games have been entertaining me.

[Image credit: Andrew Becraft]

Still, I can’t help but shrug whenever the company announces a new Mario game or, as it did today, updates to its Legend of Zelda line. And yet, as I looked around the Web for the reactions to the news of an updated Wind Waker and a new Legend of Zelda title designed specifically for the Wii U, I was shocked by what I found.

Nearly everywhere I looked, people were expressing their excitement for the new title, and that Wind Waker was to be updated with HD graphics. Around the world, people seemed to be anxious to see the titles at E3, and couldn’t wait to finally get their hands on them. It wasn’t the standard, run-of-the-mill excitement, either; it was as if the greatest news in the history of gaming had just been passed down.

Of course, I expect such a reaction from the Nintendo faithful. For decades now, Nintendo’s fans have remained loyal to their favorite company, and anything short of outright excitement wouldn’t be enough for those folks.

“Is all the excitement more to do with nostalgia than quality?”

But I’m not quite sure the Legend of Zelda and the Super Mario franchise truly deserve all the hype. I can’t help but wonder if all of the excitement has more to do with the past and nostalgia than the actual quality of the titles.

Those who make the quality argument certainly have the numbers on their side. According to data from Metacritic, there hasn’t been a single Legend of Zelda console game launched in over the last decade that hasn’t scored in the 90s (out of 100). And although New Super Mario Bros. U could only muster an 84 on Metacritic, its predecessors scored well into the 90s.

Nintendo supporters would say that such scores prove that the excitement surrounding new titles is justified. After all, if the franchises are delivering such great experiences, why wouldn’t we be excited for the future?

But perhaps those numbers tell a different story. For the most part, reviewers are of the age that grew up playing Nintendo games. And I, like so many others of my generation, tend to give Nintendo’s first-party titles some passes because, well, we remember the good ol’ days. There’s something special about Link and Mario, and saving the world with those characters. We have a deep-seated love for them that will not – and cannot – go away.

Perhaps that’s why we tend to forgive the fact that we’re playing basically the same game every few years. Although Nintendo has done a good job of bringing some new mechanics to the titles, for the most part, a Mario game is a Mario game, regardless of whether you played it 15 years ago or today. The same is true with Zelda.

If the titles weren’t Mario and Zelda, would we have viewed them as favorably? Some might say no. Others, of course, wouldn’t believe that a Nintendo game would get any special treatment.

But perhaps it’s something to consider. Nintendo’s flagship franchises have affected an entire generation unlike any other game to other generations. And that could – could – be playing a role in our feelings towards the Zelda news.

What do you think?

Is Mario, Zelda Love About Quality or Nostalgia? is written by Don Reisinger & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Today’s Nintendo Direct livestream shows that the company is taking the future of its new console very seriously. There was a bit of worry there, since Nintendo is somewhat famous for botching big launches, but after a couple of months of letting the Wii U‘s launch titles support the system, Nintendo came out with guns blazing today. Wii U owners have a lot of new games and features to look forward to, with Nintendo proving that it isn’t simply going to sit back and let its famous name move units.

Let’s recap just a few of the games that were revealed during the livestream. Nintendo will be releasing an HD remake of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker later this year, and even though a handful of fans probably scoffed at such a re-released, the company also said that it has an all new Zelda game in development for the console. We’ve also heard of a new Mario adventure to look forward to, along with a new Mario Kart release, both of which will be showcased at E3. We saw an exciting gameplay trailer from The Wonderful 101, Xenoblade Chronicles developer Monolift Soft has a new game in development, and Nintendo and Atlus are joining forces to bring us Shin Megami Tensei x Fire Emblem (which sounds totally awesome).

There were more than those titles announced for the Wii U, but you get the idea – as far as new games go, Nintendo hit it out of the park today. The Nintendo Direct livestream didn’t stop at just new games, however, with Nintendo also revealing new features for the console, like a version of Virtual Console made specifically for the Wii U, and the ability to access MiiVerse on your phone. If you’re a Wii U owner, I have a feeling that your purchase was validated today.

Keep in mind that the Wii U is only a couple months old. At this point in the lifespan of the 3DS, there wasn’t all that much to look forward to. Gamers had Super Mario 3D Land and ports like Star Fox 64 3D and Ocarina of Time 3D on the way, but that was mostly it as far as notable first-party titles from the big N. While the 3DS is doing great these days and has a number of excellent games to offer players, the first few months of the handheld’s life weren’t very exciting.

Contrast that with the Wii U environment at present moment, and it almost seems like Nintendo has done a 180. Nintendo has wasted no time getting up in front of the camera and showing off games that get players excited. Remember when Nintendo had just launched the 3DS and Reggie Fils-Aime was making the rounds to talk about what an excellent game Steel Diver was? There was none of that nonsense today, with Iwata introducing a strong lineup of games that players will want to own.

For a while there, it seems that Nintendo was simply counting on the company’s name to sell handhelds and consoles. Release the console, make promises of a new Mario game, and it’ll sell like hotcakes. We did hear some Mario news today, sure, but there were also a number of good looking third-party titles that have nothing to do with the plumber. The Wii U will live or die by its third-party support, and I was pleased as punch to see so many third-party titles show up in Iwata’s presentation.

If Nintendo can get that kind of support to stick around, then it has nothing to worry about when Microsoft and Sony launch their next consoles. Make no mistake, though, Nintendo is going to be at a disadvantage when those new consoles launch, but instead of just letting the Wii U fester while the name brings in sales, Nintendo is going all in. This attention is just what the Wii U will need to flourish, so here’s hoping that this strong start continues and ultimately turns into a strong life. Keep it up, Nintendo, and your legions of fans will shower you in money.

Nintendo proves it’s serious about Wii U’s future is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.