Times of Plenty
Posted: Tue Nov 04, 2008 1:55 pm
Are you kidding me? I'm talking to you, Games Industry! How many hours do you think I have free per week to play your games?
Dead Space
Fable 2
Mirrors Edge
Left 4 Dead
Gears 2
LBP
Fallout 3
WOW: Lych King
And there are many more massive games that i haven't listed simply because they're not my thing. My point is, I have genuinely never seen a month in gaming that has looked like this before.
And it just about makes up for the rest of the year. Looking at my shelf, I see GTA4 and Spore. Some very nice indie releases - Braid, World of Goo, and um...some Multiplayer addon to something. Which points to another fascinating observation : I buy the vast majority of my games on Xbox360 now. The PC is still the place for indie, but given a choice with a game coming out on both, id go for the 360 version in almost every case. Big tv, couch, big sound, works first time, no installer, runs at 100% performance with all graphics options switched to full, no drm issues - its a clear winner. The PC has other things going for it - the best mod support, better control in some games types, but it's not enough to compensate for the horrible feeling of your new game running like shit on your pc.
Regarding PC's superiority in certain areas...Mod support, Indie games etc. Let's not get too comfortable. Braid was on xbox 360, and World of Goo was on Wii. Darwinia+ is on its way. Little Big Planet has THE BEST mod support I have ever seen, and that's on ps3. We will always develop our games for PC - it's our native platform - but it's prominance as a gaming platform is changing, and i'm not sure what to.
I'll certainly check out Quantum of Solace at the cinema, but Q4 2008 belongs entirely to video games. This is where it's happening at the moment. Now if only we could start launching video games a bit more evenly throughout the year. I'm not really an expert here, but surely, SURELY, many of those big games in that list are going to sell less well than they should expect, on account of the fact that most gamers don't have £300 to spend on games in one month. There's no way I have the time to play all those games, many are going to be forgotten and picked up at a later date when they're on sale. And if those same games came out once a month i'd buy every one of them on launch day.
Dead Space
Fable 2
Mirrors Edge
Left 4 Dead
Gears 2
LBP
Fallout 3
WOW: Lych King
And there are many more massive games that i haven't listed simply because they're not my thing. My point is, I have genuinely never seen a month in gaming that has looked like this before.
And it just about makes up for the rest of the year. Looking at my shelf, I see GTA4 and Spore. Some very nice indie releases - Braid, World of Goo, and um...some Multiplayer addon to something. Which points to another fascinating observation : I buy the vast majority of my games on Xbox360 now. The PC is still the place for indie, but given a choice with a game coming out on both, id go for the 360 version in almost every case. Big tv, couch, big sound, works first time, no installer, runs at 100% performance with all graphics options switched to full, no drm issues - its a clear winner. The PC has other things going for it - the best mod support, better control in some games types, but it's not enough to compensate for the horrible feeling of your new game running like shit on your pc.
Regarding PC's superiority in certain areas...Mod support, Indie games etc. Let's not get too comfortable. Braid was on xbox 360, and World of Goo was on Wii. Darwinia+ is on its way. Little Big Planet has THE BEST mod support I have ever seen, and that's on ps3. We will always develop our games for PC - it's our native platform - but it's prominance as a gaming platform is changing, and i'm not sure what to.
I'll certainly check out Quantum of Solace at the cinema, but Q4 2008 belongs entirely to video games. This is where it's happening at the moment. Now if only we could start launching video games a bit more evenly throughout the year. I'm not really an expert here, but surely, SURELY, many of those big games in that list are going to sell less well than they should expect, on account of the fact that most gamers don't have £300 to spend on games in one month. There's no way I have the time to play all those games, many are going to be forgotten and picked up at a later date when they're on sale. And if those same games came out once a month i'd buy every one of them on launch day.
