The morning Inbox tries to sort fact from fiction in terms of Xbox One sales, as the argument over Oddworld: New ‘N’ Tasty pricing continues.
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Shoot for the past
Very happy to hear the positive reaction to the Doom reboot, even if we haven’t really seen anything on it yet. After the excellent Wolfenstein: The New Order I’ve begun to think that despite the dominance of first person shooters nowadays they have all basically morphed into the same game just with very minor variations.
Doom is nothing like modern shooters, and neither are things like GoldenEye, Perfect Dark, Turok, No One Live Forever, and Metroid Prime. I’d really like to see modern takes on these games and others. These all managed the mix between single-player and multiplayer a lot better than many modern titles, they had much more imaginative weapons, and they all had very different settings.
Not one of these are modern military, you’ve got modern spy movie, near future sci-fi, comic book dinosaur weirdness, 60s campy spy movie, and far future sci-fi. Even if they don’t make official sequels surely newer games can try and be as imaginative?
Rocko
The middle trilogy
I know this isn’t much of a revelation, but I decided to get Resident Evil 6 out again yesterday, to see if I could bring myself to finish it and… well, I couldn’t. It’s just awful. A terrible game and an absolutely abysmal Resident Evil. In fact I struggle to see how it counts as a Resident Evil game, especially if you remember what they used to be like. Linear, predictable, mindlessly action-based… it’s just awful.
Resident Evil 4 was praised for shaking up the formula but I wonder now if the future games go back to being real survival horror will 4, 5, and 6 be seen as the ginger stepchild of the series? The equivalent of the Star Wars prequels if the new Disney movies are good?
I’m not sure I care either way as long as they’re good but I just can’t see them pretending the action games didn’t happen and go full horror. Is there any hint as to what the new game will be or when it’ll be annouced. Maybe the Tokyo Game Show?
GC: We haven’t heard any believable rumours about Resident Evil 7. It’s a long time since anything significant has been announced at the Tokyo Game Show, but we guess it’s not impossible.
The passion
Bit late on this I’m afraid (I’ve been on holiday) but it was interesting to see just how unenthusiastic everyone was about the smartphone Hot Topic. Even the people that were recommending games seemed to go out of their way to mention that they were only distractions or supplements to playing ‘real’ console games.
This has become my only hope nowadays that smartphone gaming won’t completely takeover and destroy console, and particularly portable gaming. Despite things like Angry Birds having billions of downloads I’ve just never met anyone that was in anyway passionate about smartphone games. I mean how could you be? They’re purposefully made to be disposable and shallow.
My hope is that smartphones are simply the fast food of gaming and although they’re hugely popular with the masses they in no way mean that a proper restaurant will go out of business. Although they do a lot, so I guess that’s another industry that has a strong parallel with gaming.
Ishi
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Early days
I tried to find some rough total sales for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 but it’s pretty much impossible to get a reliable figure for either. From what I can tell though the PlayStation 4 is outselling the Xbox from anything up to 2-1.
Whatever the actual numbers are it’s a great lead. But people seem to be acting like Microsoft have dropped the ball altogether and their console is a failure.
For starters we’re only in the very early stages of the generation, so it’s impossible to know how successful either will be in a few years time. But even though it’s only sold maybe half as well as the PlayStation 4 it’s still apparently 80% more successful than the Xbox 360 was at launch. Over 6 million units (or more, who knows) is hardly a failure.
So the Xbox One has done very well really. The PlayStation 4 has done incredibly well. I’d say in the long run we’ll get a relatively even race, maybe not as even as this generation though. The PlayStation 4 will probably come out ahead but it’ll all depend on killer exclusives.
Overall though with an 80% increase over the start of the last generation we’re clearly a billion miles away from any kind of industry crash or Microsoft throwing in the towel like some people have stated over the last year.
@PjDonnelli
GC: The 80% increase is only notable if sales continue at that pace. Many consoles claim a significant lead on their predecessors, which quickly peters out after a few months. In terms of worldwide sales the ration is around 2:1 in favour of the PlayStation 4, at approximately 9 million to 5 million – with the Wii U on around 7 million. In the US though the gap is trivially narrow, while on the Continent there already seems little chance the Xbox One will ever catch up (if you also take into account their attitude towards the Xbox 360).
Where there is warranted concern about the Xbox One it’s in the fact that Microsoft has already hit a number of panic buttons and yet it seems to have made little difference. But, as you imply, that means all emphasis must now be on high quality, exclusive games. And that kind of focus can only end up being good for gamers in general, and Xbox One owners in particular.
Personal happiness
RE: The Bishop. I’m really glad you’re enjoying Oddworld: New ‘N’ Tasty. Although I’m more than a little disappointed with your comments towards other readers who also shared an opinion on the game.
Like the other readers I was surprised at the price point chosen for the game. It’s a large amount for a digital-only remake of a PS one game. The £11.99 point chosen by the likes of Child Of Light and Valiant Hearts would of been a much better price to entice curious buyers who may well sit it out now until it’s on sale.
You also say if gamers don’t by this one game they are no longer allowed to complain about boring sequels? But this is a remake and therefore is not even an original game. Maybe buying this game is actually telling developers that gamers are happy to pick up remakes with shiner graphics? I’m finding gamers are becoming more elitist now than ever, usually using the boring argument of Assassin’s Creed and Call Of Duty to back them up.
If you’re happy with the purchase then enjoy the game and tell others how great it is and what they are missing out on, rather than insulting readers’ opinions, which are just as justified. I look forward to playing it at the weekend, hopefully I’ll manage to get further in it than I did as a young kid.
JB316
Personal cost
I would just like to apologise to any readers who felt offended by my letter about Oddworld: New ‘N’ Tasty. That was not my intention, but I do feel very strongly that my central point was valid. Many gamers will complain very loudly about the lack of variety and originality in gaming, but my concern is that when push comes to shove they very rarely seem to support it when it actually happens.
The sales charts clearly show that originality does not sell and that it is the predictable and unambitious sequels which sell and the innovative and inventive ones which are ignored.
But what really upsets me is the excuses many gamers give for why they didn’t not buy a more unusual game. Price is a usual one and comes down to them literally not wanting to put their money where their mouth is. If you’re going to penny pinch over a game being £5 or so more expensive then you’d hoped then frankly you might as well give up on gaming right now.
These smaller companies aren’t some giant like EA or Ubisoft who can subsidise their games with their sure fire hits. A game like Oddworld is do or die for an indie developer: if it doesn’t sell they’ll go bust, and not only will you hear nothing more from them but it’ll also put other indies off from trying something similar again.
Supporting creativity in the games industry does come with sacrifices, and if you can’t even stretch to the cost of a pint for a game that’s trying to do things differently then, well… that explains a lot about the state of the games industry at the moment.
The Bishop
Last hurrah
After playing the Destiny Beta on my old, faithful Xbox 360 I have been very impressed. The aesthetics of it all are great and coupled with a lot of upgrades it looks to have a lot of longevity. I’m not quite sure how the main story campaign is going to work though. Bungie say the game could last 10 years… but surely there is no way they could string a defined campaign out for more than a few 10s of hours?
That aside, for me where the game truly came alive was in the strike mission. Me and two random allies forged an intense battle for 30+ minutes to arrive at and then defeat ‘the devil’. It was really great and a lot of fun – and like so many people have said it is Halo and Borderlands combined (all the good bits) in the combat. At times tense, at times exciting. The tempo is good, the artificial intelligence is good, the setting is good. Everything about it is enjoyable and I can’t wait to see the final game.
Furthermore, this has cemented my intentions to ‘upgrade’ to the latest console gen. However, graphics aside, it makes you wonder why games of this ambition were only released on the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 now in their death throws, if the kit could achieve this kind of excellence the whole time! Obviously Activision’s massive support helped, but it is staggering to me the old hardware is capable of running this game so well.
Brando M83
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Coin-op hero
Arcades were a big part of my early gaming years. I’ve been playing games ever since the early 80s and difference between the arcades and what you could play at home was massive all through the 80s and 90s.
At home my Spectrum 48K with eight colours and static screens was never going to compare well against what was at the arcades with their great graphics, colours and sounds. (Even later when I got a Speccy 128K+2 and then an Amiga 500+ there was still no comparison to the arcades.)
Whenever I was on holiday I would always try and find the local arcades, and one memory that sticks out was playing Crime Fighters at a tiny bar in Malta in 1989. It’s a side-scrolling multiplayer beat ‘em-up. I replayed its sequel Vendetta at last year’s Play Expo in Manchester, a great game with some real over the top Tom and Jerry style violence. Great stuff!
When the fair came to town I always made straight for the arcades with a pocket full of 10p and 20p coins. I much preferred the arcades to the rides back then.
A game that I used to play to death was Double Dragon. I sent an email to GC back in the Teletext days about completing the game at my local chippie on one 20p coin. To be fair I did spam the overpowered elbow move, and it was the version without the sliding blocks on the last level, but – even if it’s just in my head, I was a local hero for a day!
It was all about side-scrolling beat ‘em-ups for me back in the day. I don’t know if they were easier to make but there were loads of them all around during the late 80s and early 90s. To highlight a few like Splatterhouse, POW: Prisoner Of War, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Simpsons, Golden Axe, Final Fight. and the others I’ve mentioned above. Such great games, all with great memories of where I was when I played them. Some of them I played on ferries when going on holiday, some at the local fair and others on days out to Blackpool and similar places.
I used to worry about growing up and wondering about how I was going to still play games when I got ‘too old for them’ As a nipper I even used to imagine that I’d be this ancient 80-year-old man still going to arcades to play games, and feeling totally out of place. I never thought that other gamers would grow old too and still keep playing – I thought I’d be the only one who’d refused to ‘grow up’ and find a more suitable pastime!
Thankfully I didn’t grow up and computer games are still a big part of how I like to spend my time. I don’t get as much time on them as I’d like, what with family and work and all that stuff, but I get on one of our home consoles when I can. I don’t know the exact time when the quality of gaming at home overtook arcades and made them obsolete, but I was a good few years ago. Arcades were a massive part of mine and probably a lot of other GC readers formative years but don’t despair – they haven’t gone away, think of it like this: there’s now an arcade in everyone’s home.
skipsville 1977 (gamertag)/dadisawesome77 (NN ID)
Inbox also-rans
I do wish someone would explain to Square Enix that the terrible names are basically ensuring that Final Fantasy is never mainstream. I mean, what is Dissidia and Type-0 meant to mean to the average person? Other than ‘weird niche game that clearly isn’t for me because I’m not part of the crowd that can even understand what its name means’.
Spencer
RE: arcades. Just go to Barry Island…
Neil
This week’s Hot Topic
The subject for this weekend’s Inbox was suggested by reader Joe90, who asks what’s the most famous video game franchise you’ve never played?
In the style of TV show I’ve Never Seen Star Wars, what well-known game have you never played and why? Is there a long-running series that you’ve never played a single example of and how have you managed to avoid it for so long?
Have you purposefully ignored the game because you don’t think you’d like it? Is it because you’ve never owned the necessary console or is there some other more complicated reason? Have you played any other similar games and what do you think of them? Do you regret not playing the game in question and are there any games that you’ve also not played for a long time, but did eventually get around to?
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