As the console war continues to escalate Sony are really sticking it to the competition….. better late than never. Since announcing the price cut and the new slim version of the PS3 they have shifted over 1 million units worldwide.
Microsoft were quick to announce their own price cut to keep the Xbox 360 in line with the PS3 at $299, although the Xbox 360 lacks Blu-ray. Now Nintendo have announced a price cut for the Wii amidst falling sales. They have knocked $50 off the lightweight console making it $199.99.
In a clear sign that the gloves are well and truly off just hours after the announcement from Nintendo, Sony revealed plans for a new motion controller for the PS3. It will have two motion sensors, a gyroscope and an accelerometer. This will bring Wii style functionality to the PS3 and it is due to be released in Spring 2010. They actually announced it back at E3 but now it has a release date and this was obviously intended to take the shine off the Wii price cut. Here’s the demo from E3 in case you missed it.
In the UK Nintendo have refused to pass along the price drop. They are offering the console for the same price of £199 but offering an extra game. Great! So it is actually now more expensive in the UK than it was on release and more expensive here than anywhere else in the world. Nintendo are not winning me over.
Just been playing a Nintendo DS game called Hysteria Hospital: Emergency Ward which I’m reviewing and it was really pretty poor. Like a Flash browser game except they want $20 for it. It’s something I’ve noticed in general about Nintendo lately, they’ve thrown the whole idea of quality control out of the window. This game had the Nintendo Seal of Quality on the back of the box, just like all the shovelware Wii games they churn out. Didn’t that used to mean something? Actually no, they always churned out more than their fair share of total crap you just tend to forget the bad ones.
I’ve never been much of a fan of Nintendo and in the past they had games like Mario Kart which is undeniably awesome but now I could count the number of decent Wii and DS games on one hand and most of them are repackaged classics or multi format releases. The top selling game on the DS is Nintendogs and on the Wii it’s Wii Sports. Not exactly inspiring stuff. Anyway not sure what my point is just some aimless Nintendo moaning
Is the Wii console really a good thing? I’ve been reviewing lots of Wii games recently and despite all the blabbing about the funky peripherals and potentially interesting ways to use them the majority of games for the Wii are seriously sub-standard and completely fail to use the Wii remote in any interesting way.
The Nintendo crusade to get everyone playing the Wii has rendered it hopelessly mainstream and the result is an awful lot of mediocre or flat out rubbish titles. Then you get titles like EA Sports Active which isn’t even a game. It’s a personal fitness trainer and, like Wii Fit, it is undeniably a good idea if you want to draw in an audience traditionally uninterested in gaming.
The contrast between gamers who tend to flog their Wii’s off after a few months when the novelty wears off and non-gamers who can’t seem to get enough Wii action is striking. The thing is that mainstream market is much bigger than the niche hardcore gaming market that Sony and Microsoft are scrapping over. Nintendo have cleverly managed to release the technically least impressive device with the largest profit margin for hardware and a novelty controller and they’ve captured the mainstream market.
There are still reasons for gamers to own a Wii but you have to choose carefully. Novelty titles and retro games are the best titles on offer, recently I enjoyed Let’s Tap and Punch-Out!!
There is no getting away from the fact that Nintendo have allowed an awful lot of rubbish to be released and personally I find it dispiriting and worrying for the industry that a lot of terrible titles on the Wii sell more than awesome titles on other platforms simply because the audience is larger and less discerning.
First up I made the dreadful mistake of actually paying out some of my own cash to buy Damnation. I was sucked in by the promise by of a vertical shooter with steam punk styling but it turned out to be sucky in extremus. The giant breasticles of Yakecan could not elevate this, in fact just look at that stupid outfit, I’m kind of insulted that those ridiculous breasts are supposed to appeal to me. Jesus grow up, the number of artists in the games industry who dress up big breasted women in really stupid outfits even a fashion designer would balk at is still way too high. Then again it may have been a cheap ploy to distract you from the dull gameplay and terrible voice acting.
The game itself was billed as “revolutionary” although advertising rules seem to state that everything must be described as revolutionary nowadays whether it is a boring car which looks like every other car on the road, some balm soaked toilet paper or in this case a shooter so ordinary that if you cut it open and sawed into the bones you’d find the word ordinary all the way through like a stick of seaside rock. Here’s my Damnation review. Damn you Damnation!
By contrast I also got slightly addicted to a free strategy game which is like a warped version of fantasy chess. Yeah I know that doesn’t sound appealing. Ok just check out the Zatikon review and you’ll see what I mean.
Damnation may have been disappointing but it still had playable portions. Unlike the foul pestilent Wii turd The Destiny of Zorro. There does seem to be a special kind of dire reserved for the Wii. Pirates vs Ninjas Dodgeball was marginally better but don’t get excited.
Oh yeah and there was also Star Trek DAC which offered some basic and relatively inoffensive space battle.
Let’s hope next weeks games are a bit more inspiring than this bunch.
I still get a thrill when free games come pouring through my letterbox but there is a downside to reviewing games. Actually there are a few reasons that it occasionally sucks. First off sometimes the games you get sent are total turkeys. In April I got sent a bumper load of turkeys. My first review for Boom Town was Stormrise and despite having the Creative Assembly (Australia) name on it, the game was a real-time strategy disaster for the PS3.
I also got sent Gobliiins 4 an inane, antiquated point and click adventure for the PC which was painfully bad. If you’ve been reading the blog you’ll know my opinion on point and click adventures.
As if they weren’t bad enough another game that landed on my doormat was CID the Dummy for the Wii.
I always feel a bit bad for criticising games, I know how it feels from the development side and a bad review can be seriously dispiriting if you’ve worked on a project for months or even years. The thing is you have to be honest, I always try to imagine how I would feel if I actually spent money on the game in question and having bought several terrible games over the years it never fails to piss me off.
You also have to actually play through the game in order to give it a proper review and that can be hard going. It takes willpower to keep playing something you are really hating but then that’s another thing that stirs up the vitriol.
Even when you are playing a game you enjoy, the pressure to hurry up and finish it can be annoying. You’ll find yourself thinking about what you are going to say instead of just enjoying the game. At the end of the day it comes down to opinion, there is no real evaluative standard that can be applied across the board.
Just been playing a Nintendo DS game called 
Is the Wii console really a good thing? I’ve been reviewing lots of Wii games recently and despite all the blabbing about the funky peripherals and potentially interesting ways to use them the majority of games for the Wii are seriously sub-standard and completely fail to use the Wii remote in any interesting way.
First up I made the dreadful mistake of actually paying out some of my own cash to buy Damnation. I was sucked in by the promise by of a vertical shooter with steam punk styling but it turned out to be sucky in extremus. The giant breasticles of Yakecan could not elevate this, in fact just look at that stupid outfit, I’m kind of insulted that those ridiculous breasts are supposed to appeal to me. Jesus grow up, the number of artists in the games industry who dress up big breasted women in really stupid outfits even a fashion designer would balk at is still way too high. Then again it may have been a cheap ploy to distract you from the dull gameplay and terrible voice acting.
I still get a thrill when free games come pouring through my letterbox but there is a downside to reviewing games. Actually there are a few reasons that it occasionally sucks. First off sometimes the games you get sent are total turkeys. In April I got sent a bumper load of turkeys. My first review for Boom Town was 