Backwards Compatibility: How it hurt Sony, and why it’s still important.

For the uninitiated – “backwards compatibility” is the ability of a new video game console to play the games of the proceeding video game console. For eg., the ability to play your PS1 Final Fantasy game discs on your PS2.

With that outta the way, lemme tell you a story.

I’ve been playing Persona 3 on my Playstation 2 for about 4 years. That’s how I play games. I’m no completionist, when it comes to finishing games, though I do like to purchase complete sets of games. Like most 30-something gamers with full-time jobs, there just isn’t the time to get hung up on finishing games. So I play bits and pieces of as many games as I can. Those games good enough to stick out, I return to over and over again for years until one day, maybe, I get to see the ending.

Persona 3 is one of those games. It’s quirky enough to relate to my tastes, but has gameplay elements deficient enough to require significant breaks in order to complete it. Maybe once a year, I’ll dedicate a weekend to it, and it will be months before I pick it up again.

I’ve played, and finished, most games this way, although, like many gamers, I only finish a tiny minority of the games I start. In fact, I can’t even seem to keep entering all the new games I start into my “backloggery”, let alone hope to ever finish a quarter of them.

Consequently, I have a comparatively enormous collection of games. Obviously there are millions of gamers out there with more games than I have… but many of those folks actively trade their titles in for new games. I don’t. I purchase games with a collectors mentality. (It drives my spouse crazy, though she’s also comparatively tolerant, hence the ongoing success of our relationship.) I buy games that I like to see on my shelf. It’s a vainly difficult concept to explain, but my geek-ego benefits as much from the presence of countless obscure RPG titles with female protagonists, as it does from the distinct absence of anything remotely resembling Madden or Call of Duty.

There is a contradiction in my style of play, however. Although I bounce around from game to game, in most cases, I won’t begin a sequel until I’ve played the pre-requisite games. The Metroid Prime series is a great example. I have had, on my shelf, wrapped in plastic since Xmas 2007, an unopened copy of “Corruption,” the third game in the series. It will remain unopened on my shelf until I can bring myself to finish the two games before it. It’s quite possible I’ll never get to the game. It’s also unlikely that I’ll ever sell the copy, because I like the Metroid series, and I derive the same please from seeing it on my shelf, that I suspect a hockey-card collector experiences from seeing a particular card in their binder. What’s important to the game industry, however, is that I bought the game.

So it’s worthwhile exploring why I bought that game for the Wii, and why I haven’t bought Persona 4 for the PS3, (or a PS3 for that matter.) The first two titles of the Metroid Prime series are GameCube titles, the final title in the series was released on the Wii. I felt justified buying the whole series, knowing that I may never get around to playing it, because in my mind it’s a nice easy intuitive process to play all three on the Wii without having to dig one of my old GameCubes out to have a go.

Persona 3, on the other hand, is a PS2 title. The PS3 does not play PS2 discs, so were I to buy one, I’d have to reconnect the PS2 to start chipping away at the series again.

Many have poo-pooed this “swapping-console” complaint as a non-issue. Modern TV’s have multiple video inputs, they say. It shouldn’t be the hassle it’s made out to be. Hooking up a new console to my setup, however, IS a legitimate hassle. I’ve rigged it so that the cables travel through wholes in the wall, behind cabinets, and in-and-out of drawers. Each change to this setup is a significant hassle. It simply won’t happen. I have three slots in the TV stand, one for each of the major game companies. I have a 360, which plays most of the Xbox back-catalogue. I have a Wii, which plays the GameCube back-catalogue. And I have a PS2, which plays my old PSOne catalogue. Great games like “Legend of Dragoon,” which I’m playing now, in addition to a pile of old Square titles I revisit periodically.

Swapping out the PS2 for a PS3, immediately removes two-consoles worth of games I’ve purchased from my immediately playable library. This complaint has been posed to Sony multiple times, and their response goes something like this: “We’re confident the quality of our new PS3 titles will convince our customers that there’s no need to revisit their old games.”

From a business perspective, I can understand why a bunch of Corporate hacks in the Sony boardroom would decide to remove any disincentive for customers to purchase new games. This is how they view backwards compatibility. However, just because I can understand how they came to that decision, I can’t agree that it makes an ounce of sense. When I purchased both my 360, and Wii consoles, I did so knowing that I’d be able to swap the new console in for the old, and still be able to play all the old games I’d invested in. Yet somehow, this did little to stop me from putting thousands of dollars into each of the two markets. I have shelves of 360 and Wii games to add to my Xbox and GameCube titles. My ability to play the old titles on the new consoles seems to have done little to limit me from buying new games.

And now that we’re reaching the end of the life cycle for all three consoles, (at time of writing, we’re one-week ahead of the Wii U launch) I still haven’t bought a PS3. This is odd, considering that I purchased, (and still own) every major game console since the NES. Looking back on this generation in its entirety, I can confidently say that backwards compatibility remains the only reason I haven’t purchased a PS3.

But aside from the issue of space on the TV stand, why is this so important? in a word, confidence. With the video-game market increasingly moving towards digital distribution, gamers have questions about how their previously purchased games will survive once a hardware generation advances. How Nintendo handles the transfer of digitally-purchased Wii games to the new Wii U console will be telling. Will customers have to pay a transition fee, like Sony customers have had to do in the portable market? In the mind of a gamer, it boils down to this. Can we feel safe piling loads of money into a digital distribution service, only to find out during the next hardware cycle, that all of those games cease to exist? With Sony’s refusal to respect the previous investments their customers made in previous console generations, the outlook here is not good.

So in the future, when asked, “how can I play my PS2 version of Persona 3 on your new console?”

…if Sony’s response remains: “forget Persona 3, we’ve got Persona 4 on the new console,”

…then for gamers like me, they will cease to be an option.

How can you tell a console is dying? Its games start to rock.

And after six long anti-climactic years of bore-you-to-tears, vanilla, family-friendly shovel-ware on the Wii, it’s about freakin’ time.

…that the games started to rock… that is, not that the console died. Admittedly, I’m still not sure if it’s genuinely ironic that consoles ring their death knell the moment game developers begin to master the platform, or if it’s just Alanis Morissette-ironic, but goddamn it would be awesome if there was a way to extend the lifetime of each console another decade beyond the corporations’ cord-pull date. I suppose it is possible, and the growing homebrew scene appears thus-far our only hope, but that’s a topic for another post.

Case in point. Nintendo announces the oddly conceptualized Wii-U, followed by these three game announcements for the Wii.

• The Last Story: slated for release this June
• Xenoblade Chronicles: which Nintendo only released Stateside after the sustained and relentless hounding of North American fans.

and now…

• Pandora’s Tower: not yet announced for North American release, but one which we all hope will require less fan-effort than did Xenoblade.

Will be Interesting to see how long Nintendo continues to facilitate the development of Wii games following the yet un-scheduled launch of the Wii-U –the success of which many industry pundits have already discounted.

If the Wii-U does indeed flop, then it’s perceivable that the Wii’s massive install base will continue to incentivize developers, (and Nintendo for that matter) to continue developing games.

The Wii’s increasingly apparent fugly-factor on HD TV’s, along with the slow-creeping install base of Xbox 360, PS3, and Steam-like PC services are all factors mitigating an extended Wii-lifespan.

Like so many things in the gaming industry, trying to predict definitively what will happen is just stupid. In the meantime, we’ve got three kikkass games to look forward to.

…and of course (not) homebrew. 

Wii's High Online Usage Stats Misleading

A number of articles are beginning to surface, heralding the high spike in online users experienced by the Wii in the last couple months. (here's one such article.)

The stats quoted show the number of unique online users on the Wii has risen to 1.6 million. A number higher than even those put up by the 360's XBOX Live users, at 1.2 million.

Taken at face value, these reports inject a lot of false hope into the hearts of those rooting for the success of Nintendo's David underdog at the expense of the other two goliaths in the market.

A couple of flags go up immediately, however, as soon as these figures are quoted - since no industry-journalists covering this latest stories seem to be analyzing what these "unique" users are doing while "online" with their consoles.

Not one of these writers bothered to point out that the Wii is yet to have produced for it, even one game utilizing online capabilities. Had this question be asked... then certainly someone would have realized that obviously no one among the 1.6 million of these users are actually playing games while they're online.

The number of Xbox Live users spending their online time is much easier to calculate since Microsoft charges for the service. And although I'm certainly not advocating that approach for Nintendo, it has to be remembered that the Wii utilizes a feature called "Wii Connect24." Those familiar with the feature while understand that the Wii not only is the Wii extremely simple to get online, (built-in wireless modem can pick up a variety of signals from your existing network, your neighbour's, etc...) but it's constantly exchanging information and updates with the Nintendo mothership. Hence the name, "Connect24."

So theoretically, it's possible for Nintendo to count as a "unique user," a Wii owner who has never used the Opera web browser, downloaded a virtual console game, or allowed a Mii to travel. However, as long as their Wii is picking up their neighbour's internet connection, their Wii is having a round the clock discussion with Nintendo headquarters.

Just what percentage of Nintendo's online users fall into this category is impossible to determine... but given that there isn't a single online game out yet for the console, it's safe to say that the Wii's online capabilities are not being used for the same thing by "unique users," as those attributed to the Xbox.

Nintendo Set to Repeat Gamecube Connectivity Mistakes

A good Wii news site, "Nintendo-Revolution," through an interview with the Wii's future online provider, "Gamespy," seems to have confirmed that so far, Nintendo is going ahead with their previously-suspected plans of requiring users to input different friends lists and codes for every online game they purchase.

In other words, if you want to play the upcoming Pokemon title online with your friends, not only would you have to input their painfully long console code into your system, but yet another unique game code, specific to their Pokemon game disc, as well.

This may not seem to a major issue to a lot of casual gamers. But imagine you have 15 friends you would like to play online games with. Then lets assume conservatively, that you've got five games you want to play with these friends. First, it's a pain in the ass to have to enter overly long numerical codes for each of those friends' consoles. But now imagine having to enter another unique code for every one of those people again for every game you've got in common. And keep in mind that you have no keyboard with which to accomplish this. Rather, you've got a little Wii-mote, which is slow for data entry at best, and certainly annoying after entering even one or two.

Then add to that, the fact that the remotes are battery munchers... and consider that it would probably take at least one set of batteries just to enter the data required for the scenario above.

Kinda begins to take the fun out of the whole thing. And the gaming community seems to be up in arms over it. And rightfully so, I suppose. There's a lot of people who are really rooting for the Wii. They know it's underpowered overall. But many of them, myself included, understand the important changes Nintendo is pioneering in terms of creativity and innovation in the industry. It's a given that the Wii's online capabilities will be inferior to that of the 360 or PS3... but given that, many are wondering why Nintendo would set themselves up for such an abysmal failure when they're on such a role.

No one wants to be annoyed while playing games. If I was interested in doing data entry in my spare time... I'd spend a good many extra hours at work.

Nintendo put itself in an embarrassing position after taking a "connectivity-over-online" capability with the GameCube. By "connectivity," Nintendo meant the Gamecube's ability to connect physically to either Gameboys, or other Gamecubes. For the most part, gamers laughed at their attempt to pass such a horseshit gimmick off as "online play." Additionaly, very few people were ever enticed into buying more Gameboys just to plug them into their Gamecube.

Nintendo's latest debacle with the unique game codes reeks of this kind of garbage.

They've got until Pokemon's release in June to fix this idiocy. Their best bet, with their current precarious overall position in the market is to spend their time trying to make online play more free for gamers, rather than wasting resources on ways to positively spin and market such a hair-brained plan.

Both Sony and Microsoft have been waiting for Nintendo to throw them a bone... and you can bet this'll be it.

Wii-tarded (couldn't resist)

Best Zinger From GDC

Absolutely no positive verification for this. I simply found it posted on a comment board under Kotaku's report on Miyamoto's keynote address for Nintendo at the GDC yesterday. Thought I'd post it anyway, you know, in the interest of spreading rumours.

So let me paint the picture for you.

As I mentioned in the previous post, Shigeru Miyamoto's keynote speech was so well attended that even Sony's world division president, Phil Harrison was in attendance.

So picture Phil sitting there in the front row, as evidenced by the above picture.

Nintendo of America President, Reggie Fils-Aime is standing off-stage consulting with people, posing for pictures, etc.

A kid in the front row shouts at Reggie "REGGIE! You gotta kick some ass and take some names!"

"Like who?!" Reggie shouted back

"Phil Harrison, FRONT ROW!" The kid says

"I think we already did that" Says Reggie

The nearby crowd laughs, as is appropriate.

Wii Magnetism

Though most attention at the Game Developer's Convention over the last couple of days has been focused on Sony's announcement of their upcoming "Home" interface, a few keen observers have been paying close attention to the wise words of an old master.

Some call him the "Spielberg of Gaming." Others, like myself, think the comparison should be reversed.

Creator of gaming icons, Donkey Kong, Mario, and Link delivered his keynote address yesterday to a packed house. Even Sony Worldwide President, Phil Harrison procured for himself, a front row seat.

To many, his speech may have seemed scattered and vague, as it bounced around various points in the history of the industry. Part of the problem, of course is that it was delivered in Japanese, and all we've heard have been English translations. Speaking in Japanese, of course means that Miyamoto also thinks in Japanese, and as such, his he comes to his points in a manner fundamentally different from the average westerner. As such, many of us have difficulty interpreting his message. Whether it's meant to be the same for everyone is anyone's guess.

For me, Miyamoto issued a veiled warning to the industry. And in a way, I think it was aimed directly for folks like Sony's Phil Harrison, though I'm absolutely positive it bounced right off their noses.

By speaking about the evolution of games, the need for humanity to be a key component in their development, and a continual priority placed on enjoyment... I think Shigs was warning others in the industry not to attempt to *duplicate* humanity, as games like World of Warcraft do, and as Sony's "home" might.

To illustrate this point, Miyamoto spoke about his development tactic of always trying to picture the look one of his games will produce on the face of its player. How many smiles and giggles of glee are emitted from someone attached to a PC playing a reality-simulator for hours on end. How to, will Sony's "home" perform in this respect.

To catch a glimpse of Shigeru's genius, and to see an unintended demonstration of his goal... take a couple minutes to watch this video. (please pardon the 30 second ad preceding it)

Summer Wii Titles Announced at GDC

Reported from Video Game Generation

Not a very promising list in my opinion. Nintendo's titles will be worth putting some cash out for. Majesco's Bust-a-Move Bash could be fantastic, or it could ruin a great franchise. Midway hasn't given anyone a reason to think another Mortal Kombat game would be worth their dough in about a decade.

The new Pokemon is said to be Nintendo's first online game for the Wii, and they better hurry-up with some follow-ups if they plan not to repeat the lackluster competitive performance of the Gamecube.

In any case, as relatively depressing as this list is... Wii owners shouldn't fret too much. It is the summer line-up after all. No console can expect will expect any major blockbusters until the Christmas season.

April 9	Super Paper Mario	Nintendo
April	Prince of Persia Rival Swords	Ubisoft
April	Bust-A-Move Bash	Majesco
April	Bioncle Heroes	Eidos
May 15	Mortal Kombat: Armageddon	Midway
May 29	Mario Party 8	Nintendo
May	Tamagotchi Party On	Namco Bandai
May	Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean at World's End	Disney Interactive
May	Escape from Bug Island	Eidos
May	Spider-Man The Movie 3	Activision
June 11	Big Brain Academy	Nintendo
June 25	Pokémon Battle Revolution	Nintendo
June	Cosmic Family	Ubisoft
Spring	Heatseeker	Codemasters
Q2	Legend of the Dragon American Game Factory
Summer	Shrek the Third	Activision
Summer	Transformers the Game	Activision

and no, you don't have to wait for Yoshi's new title until this summer... you can download it right now if you know where to look.
:: and make sure you turn the music in the sidebar off before you hit the play button ::

B3 - No More!

Well... it was pretty goddamned inevitable.

Hadn't published a non-gaming-related post on this blog in months, so I decided to do what was far too long in coming: change the name and format of the old "Bathroom Breeding Bolsheviks" blog... to what you've got before you now.

So welcome to the new-&-improved game-industry focussed, "Classic Controller!"

Hope you like the new renovations. It reflects far more accurately the content, however, all the old posts are still in the archive on the right sidebar.

Additionally... nothing has happened to the good ol' "Pacific Tribune" so if you're looking for more politically-related content, head on over there.

And as always, the "East-Van Cinephiles" is still operational for all your movie reviewing needs, although admittedly, it's not well maintained.

And if you're reading this as a feed through my FaceBook profile... just click on the "original post" link at the top to see the new layout I'm talking about.

beers!

~ekman

PS. The site address has not changed, as it was never name specific. If you're linked to this blog, I'll leave it up to you whether or not you want to change the name on the link on your own site. I'm easy either way.

Twilight Princess Down, and no Addiction Treatment Required.

Unless I'm in denial that is...

Had two days off this week, and only one goal.

Locked myself in our games room for both days. Finally emerged today, hairy-faced, haggard eyes, and extremely stinky... but I've finally seen the ending of "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess" for the Nintendo Wii.

This didn't all happen over the last couple days mind you. It's the product of just under 4 months of on and off playing. Grand total, I think the Wii logged me at just over 43 hours of game time... so I suppose that's an average of 10 hours per month. Not too shabby.

Of course, I could have put countless more hours into the game. There's tonnes of things I didn't find, quests I didn't finish, and one day I may go back through it all. In all honesty however, when you love games as much as I do, the time you spend on one game tends to translate into time you're not spending playing all the other games you've been salivating over for months. And since I've recently acquired a whole number of playable downloads for the Dreamcast I bought last year off my buddy James... the list of games I've written for myself to get through is getting pretty hefty.

In any case, back to Zelda. I've played some epic adventure RPG's in my life, (the most glaring exception of which is Zelda: Ocarina of Time) and I can easily say that Twilight Princess ranks among the most satisfying. Nothing I say in terms of a review will add on the multitude that have already published, but I will say that it contains within it, all the components of what a classic game should be. Progressive character depth and development, extremely intuitive, enjoyable and addictive gameplay, breath-taking level design and settings (all with a fraction of the horsepower contained within both Microsoft and Sony's consoles) and grand horny honour music. (Horny as in... lots of brass horns... not sexy)

Most important, and contrary to the game featured in my previous post, Zelda is designed to play in a hardcore fashion, or at your leisure. I enjoyed every epic sword battle, and every mind-bending puzzle... but I never experienced the withdrawal so often talked about by World of Warcraft players. When I finally finished the game, (and not without a little help from a third-party game guide) I felt extremely satisfied that I had definitely got my money's worth. I also finished in total agreement with every game reviewer that awarded Nintendo with a 2006 game-of-the-year honour for this this gem. In fact, it's convinced me to download Nintendo's recent Virtual Console addition, Ocarina of time, the only Zelda game considered better than Twilight Princess, and considered by many to be the finest game of all time.

Give it a go... you'll thank me for it.

The Green Gamer's Choice

Some interesting stats on power consumption of each console. And yes... yet another testament to the engineering feat accomplished by Nintendo in their latest console - not so much in terms of pure hardware power, but rather in terms of the physical layout of the internal components, durability, etc...

I'd be very interested to see what a cheaper, re-packaged, downsized version of the Wii would look like should one ever be released. I can certainly see a new version incorporating CD and DVD playing capability, perhaps some expanded internal flash memory capacity... but in terms of the over shape of the package, I can't see a lot that could be improved upon. And that is extremely rare for the the first edition of any video game console.