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• Games Cost Money: Sony Cans The Getaway and Eight Days

  While the salad days of the Playstation 2 are at an end for Sony, things have been looking up for the entrenched corporate monster in 2008. Little Big Planet continues to wow, Gran Turismo 5: Prologue had a healthy release in April for a game that’s little more than a demo, and the buzz surrounding Metal Gear Solid 4’s impending release is loud enough to even drown out some of that Grand Theft Auto fervor that’s been going on. The stigma surrounding the Playstation 3 – that it’s an expensive, ugly machine without many games to play on it – is slowly starting to fade, and it has everything to do with some truly exciting exclusive software. So it’s disheartening to hear that two games being developed by Sony’s own London Studio have been cancelled. Eight Days, a Michael Bay-tinged action game that fused car chases with shootouts in the American southwest, and The Getaway, a sequel to London Studio’s successful PS2 Brit-crime drama series, have both been given the axe “due to the redistribution of resources and budget.” While I’m the first to exclaim my love for the big-budget blockbuster games coming out on the 360, PS3, and PC these days, the truth is that, for at least the short-term future, they may not be an economically feasible pursuit for most developers. Read More... Posted Jun 05 2008, 11:00 AM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, little big planet, next-gen, xbox 360, metal gear solid, sony, gran turismo, Playstation, halo, the getaway, eight days

• Along Came a Gamer: James Patterson and Authors in Games

  James Patterson, mystery novelist/televisionist/filmist/Readers-Digestist, is rich. Crazy rich. The man’s writing makes so much money that my brain starts bleeding when I try to envision the raw numbers turned into cash. I can’t say much about his work - I’m just not much of a mystery guy. My only experience with Patterson’s output is restricted to films starring Ashley Judd and even those I can only hazily recall (much as it is with all movies watched on TNT at 2am.) Recently, Patterson set his sights on the rich narrative soil of videogames and is already enjoying a modicum of success with his PC title Women’s Murder Club: Death in Scarlet, a game based on the popular novel/television franchise. He certainly seems to have a keen sense of the form’s potential. In an interview with Next-Gen, Patterson said, "There's all sorts of content for games. To me, games are most interesting as they break the rules. The casual games business is just starting to open up. I'm not big on imitations. I like it when it's fresh and wide. It's a blank screen, man, you can put anything on it." Laudable attitudes about gaming aside, though, I’m always hesitant to embrace a prose writer’s jump to writing games. As I mentioned earlier, good writing is scarce in games, so you’d think that an accomplished prose writer would be a boon in a title’s development. But, as I also mentioned, the linearity of long and short form fiction isn’t particularly well-suited to a medium that requires variability; a reader will get to the end of the story no matter what but a player has to have control of how they get there. Read More... Posted May 28 2008, 02:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, next-gen, infocom, michael Crichton, james patterson, jay rubin, Jericho, hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy, douglas adams, lost odyssey, timeline, haruki murakami, women’s murder club

• Capcom to Date, By the Numbers

  Late spring is always an interesting time to watch videogame publishers. With the close of the fiscal year, companies sit their investors and the media down to talk about how things have been going, what people are playing, and, most excitingly, what’s on the horizon. They also occasionally drop information that is ripe for trivia. For example, Capcom, the publisher you may remember as the one I have an unhealthy relationship with, released a list of all-time series sales numbers for the company. The usual suspects like Street Fighter and Mega Man are all over the list but, surprisingly, neither of those series take the top spot. Capcom’s best-selling series over the past twenty-five years has been Resident Evil, with over fifty games released world-wide and 34.5 million sold. Mark that down for quiz night. Hit the jump for the top ten. Read More... Posted May 27 2008, 12:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, street fighter, next-gen, devil may cry, resident evil, capcom, final fight, mega man, dino crisis, disney, monster hunter, onimusha, ghosts 'n goblins

• Pre-NPD Tuesday: Michael Pachter Drops It Like It’s Hot

  For the uninitiated, the National Purchase Diary Group is the market research firm that has turned tracking videogame sales into something of a cult spectator sport. For gaming afficianados and journalists from a number of disparate outlets, the NPD’s monthly sales data for the videogame industry is the true frontline of the “console wars”. If you think I’m exaggerating the interest in such things, just check out this thread over at the infamous gaming forum, NeoGAF. That’s a forty-three page discussion about sales data for a single month. Read More... Posted May 13 2008, 01:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, playstation 3, nintendo ds, michael pachter, next-gen, npd, xbox 360, neogaf