Activision Threatens the PS3

I just read a news brief over at GameInformer.com, that said that Activision "might have to stop supporting Sony." Nothing has been decided as of now, and they won't pull support for games coming out this year, but its not good news for the Playstation crew.

Activision's CEO Bobby Kotick was the source of the comments. With the words coming from the highest echelons of the company, you know these rumors are serious. He said that the PS3 is very costly to develop for, and that they just aren't getting a big enough return on their investments. The 360 and Wii, he said, make for much higher profits, and it sounds like they are easier to develop for.

This is certainly not the start of problems for Sony, and it won't be the end either. The PS3 has consistently sold worse than XBox 360 and Wii since its launch, so the installed base of PS3 users is far smaller than for the other systems. Which in turn means that fewer copies of software are sold for the system, the problem for Kotick and Activision.

If Activision does pull out, Sony will be losing some big franchises and some top developers. The biggest losses will no doubt be the Call of Duty franchise and the Guitar Hero franchise, both of which sell millions of copies every year. But PS3 will also lose the Tony Hawk series, the James Bond games from Treyarch, and the talents of Raven Software (Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, Wolfenstein, Singularity) and Radical Entertainment (Prototype) among others.

As a 360 owner, I have to say I have mixed feelings about this news. When I hear bad news about PS3, it always makes me feel somewhat validated, that I made the right choice when buying my console. But I also feel bad for all those PS3 owners that wouldn't be getting the quality games they love. As a fan of gaming in general, I think it'd be bad to lose out on these versions.

But I'm skeptical that this split will every actually happen. Activision may not get as high a return on PS3 versions, but they do still get a return on their big franchises, like Call of Duty. At the most, I think they might not do Sony releases for the smaller, lesser-known titles.

And there's the possibility that PS3 will start selling better, so they won't need to worry about failing Activision. With God of War 3 coming out this year, I expect sales will see another spike. I doubt they will ever catch up to 360, but Kratos will help.

Either way, PS3 needs to pick up the pace. The "10-year cycle" only works if developers keep supporting the systems.

- Scott

Racing Games Have Evolved

I'm not a huge fan when it comes to racing games. I own a couple racers for all of my systems, but the type of racing games I have aren't typical. I'm the guy who plays F-Zero, Mario Kart, Podracing, that kind of thing. The old arcade racing games didn't keep my interest.

The last racing game that I owned that featured plain old cars was Cruisin USA for 64, and I have to say I found it boring. So I passed up most of the racing games during the GameCube generation, and hadn't played any yet on the new-gen systems.

But I just finished the career mode on Need for Speed Carbon, and having finally played an updated racer, I feel like a changed man. I won't say that NFS Carbon is perfect, it has its share of problems. But I was expecting a halfway decent game that would hold my attention for maybe 2-3 hours. I bought it for the multiplayer. But after spending about 40-50 hours with the game, most of that in single player, I have to admit that Carbon is a great game.

I'll post a review soon with the full run-down, but these are the new features that impressed me most. First of all, the career. The game actually featured a "Fast and Furious" style story, and though it won't win any awards for best video game story, it was enough that I always wanted to keep playing, to uncover the next bit of story.

The gameplay centered around winning races in specific areas of the city, so that I could "steal control" of those areas away from the local racing gangs. It was a nice approach, in that I knew how much I still had to do, I had a logical reason for having all of these races, and I had the conquering mentality to keep me motivated. It'd be late at night, but I'd always want to beat just 1 more race, to take over 1 more territory. And to give some freedom to the game, I was allowed to conquer most of the races in whatever order I wanted (within an area at least). If I didn't feel like drifting that night, I could just do all of the circuit races, and drift later.

That's another great aspect of the game: the many types of racing it offers. There are the standard circuit races, sprints, and checkpoints, like any racing game. But I had never tried drifting before, so that was a blast (after I figured out the rules & stopped embarrassing myself). It also featured a Speedtrap mode, where your score was based on your speed at certain checkpoints. And it featured the Canyon Duels, which were the most frustrating or the most entertaining, depending on the race (more on those later).
The Free Roam mode also surprised me. I hadn't expected the game to be an open-world sandbox, and while you couldn't get out of the car, you could drive all over the entire city, cause trouble, and start huge crazy cop chases. It felt a little like GTA-lite, and I mean that as a compliment. Too bad the achievements for the cop chases are so hard to get.

And finally, I was wowed by the massive range of options for customizing my cars. I know I'm behind the curve on this one, and I knew that all racing games nowdays featured customization, but I never dreamed of how much. I've unlocked about a dozen styles of paint, which come in thousands of colors and shades, for hundreds of aftermarket modifcations, and a limitless combination of vinyls and designs. The performance tuning is probably more realistic in simulation racers, like Gran Turismo, but the visual-tweaking in this game kept me giddily happy, and made me very attached to my little tuners and exotics.

So racers have definitely matured since I last gave them a shot. Even though I'm playing a 3-year old game, I am thoroughly impressed by it. I guess I found a new genre to get sucked into. Now if only the new games would still feature offline multiplayer...

- Scott

Grende Games Launch

This is the official launch date of my new blog, Grende Games.

But while it might be the first day for the new blog, this is the sequel of sorts to my old blog, Game-Lady, which I will no longer be updating. The name was meant to be clever, and was inspired by a nickname from one of my gamer friends, but the title no longer seems as relevant.

I would also like to aspire to some higher production qualities with this new blog, including finer-tuned graphics, more frequent updates, and some nice side features and updates.

So check back here soon as I update the site with all of the old content from Game-Lady.

NOTE: I will be re-publishing most of my old posts from Game-Lady on here, under their original posting date. So if it seems strange that there are dozens of posts BEFORE the launch post, that is why.

Thanks for tuning in.

- Scott