2004 was, by any account, the year of American game design. Top 5 games, anyone? -Half-Life 2
-Doom 3
-World of Warcraft
-GTA San Andreas
-Halo 2In 2005, however, the Tokyo Game Show has demonstrated that the Japanese not only retain the title for originality (4 of the above 5 are sequels, and the exception uses an established franchise, while the Japanese have recently given us Katamari Damacy and Lumines), but they've got a firm hold on innovation in the industry, and they're going to use it to their advantage.Microsoft has admitted time and again that they lost huge on introducing the Xbox to Japan. Their Western answer to the question? Sign Japanese developers for the 360 and hope for the best. It seems like a rational idea, but they're forgetting that to succeed in Japan, you have to be a little crazy. Pokemon at the time was a ridiculous idea. It's saved Nintendo over the last 5 years after the Japanese poor performance of the Gamecube and the forever-long wait for Revolution, and it will continue to as the PSP gains market share. But at TGS, Nintendo made the Americans realize where they went wrong.They told the world that Revolution's controller would change the way we play games. Then a piss-poor performance at E3 turned the Nintendo camp into a ghost town while Sony and Microsoft wowed the world with pretty visuals and guaranteed-hit games. Still no controller. Finally, they unveiled the controller. It looks like a remote:Click!And it makes you go, WTF mate? A one-handed controller? This is what we've waited for? And then you take a look at the spec sheet, where it's got lightgun functionality and 10-directional (roll/pitch/yaw/position) sensitivity, and you get some action like you see in this video: Click! And only once you watch that video do you realize: holy hell, Nintendo got it right. There's an old saying in the industry that goes "Never underestimate Nintendo," and they proved it right after a justified several years of pessimism. Microsoft and Sony have every right to be confident in their next generation. After all, who could deny Halo 3 and Metal Gear Solid 4? Side story on MGS4: Talk about a Japanese monopoly on originality. Hideo Kojima's famously been off his rocker for years, but as far as pure storylines go, 4 takes the cake. Snake is old. I mean, white-hair old. Yet, the game is essentially MGS3, with MGS1/2 characters, set in an urban environment. It sounds truly amazing.Back to MS and Sony. Their reliance on established sequels, while it has been good for business for the last several years, has gotten too American of a business approach, and you can't export American gaming to Japan. They just don't buy it. Nintendo, on the other hand, has an all-new appeal to casual gamers. While J Allard (MS) explains how a $400 360 and Xbox Live subscription is going to give casual gamers unprecedented access to Checkers online, and Ken Kutaragi (Sony) thinks casual gamers are subhuman, one of these two execs are going to lose once Nintendo redefines what it means to play like a casual gamer. All of this time, it turns out, the experiments of WarioWare and tilt sensors have worked phenomenally in their favor and suddenly, Revolution is going to be the new easily-accessible system. Fear not, disenchanted girlfriends who hate Halo. This new system will be fun, understandable, and not hard to play. At all. In fact, it'll be damn close to realistic. You'll be able to do Harry Potter's wand movements or actually swing a baseball bat. Meanwhile, Sony and MS have been caught red-handed following the most boring business plan money can buy. Sometimes, those crazy Japanese work in mysterious ways. But at the end of the day, they've got a fantastic grip on what's fun to play.
-Doom 3
-World of Warcraft
-GTA San Andreas
-Halo 2In 2005, however, the Tokyo Game Show has demonstrated that the Japanese not only retain the title for originality (4 of the above 5 are sequels, and the exception uses an established franchise, while the Japanese have recently given us Katamari Damacy and Lumines), but they've got a firm hold on innovation in the industry, and they're going to use it to their advantage.Microsoft has admitted time and again that they lost huge on introducing the Xbox to Japan. Their Western answer to the question? Sign Japanese developers for the 360 and hope for the best. It seems like a rational idea, but they're forgetting that to succeed in Japan, you have to be a little crazy. Pokemon at the time was a ridiculous idea. It's saved Nintendo over the last 5 years after the Japanese poor performance of the Gamecube and the forever-long wait for Revolution, and it will continue to as the PSP gains market share. But at TGS, Nintendo made the Americans realize where they went wrong.They told the world that Revolution's controller would change the way we play games. Then a piss-poor performance at E3 turned the Nintendo camp into a ghost town while Sony and Microsoft wowed the world with pretty visuals and guaranteed-hit games. Still no controller. Finally, they unveiled the controller. It looks like a remote:Click!And it makes you go, WTF mate? A one-handed controller? This is what we've waited for? And then you take a look at the spec sheet, where it's got lightgun functionality and 10-directional (roll/pitch/yaw/position) sensitivity, and you get some action like you see in this video: Click! And only once you watch that video do you realize: holy hell, Nintendo got it right. There's an old saying in the industry that goes "Never underestimate Nintendo," and they proved it right after a justified several years of pessimism. Microsoft and Sony have every right to be confident in their next generation. After all, who could deny Halo 3 and Metal Gear Solid 4? Side story on MGS4: Talk about a Japanese monopoly on originality. Hideo Kojima's famously been off his rocker for years, but as far as pure storylines go, 4 takes the cake. Snake is old. I mean, white-hair old. Yet, the game is essentially MGS3, with MGS1/2 characters, set in an urban environment. It sounds truly amazing.Back to MS and Sony. Their reliance on established sequels, while it has been good for business for the last several years, has gotten too American of a business approach, and you can't export American gaming to Japan. They just don't buy it. Nintendo, on the other hand, has an all-new appeal to casual gamers. While J Allard (MS) explains how a $400 360 and Xbox Live subscription is going to give casual gamers unprecedented access to Checkers online, and Ken Kutaragi (Sony) thinks casual gamers are subhuman, one of these two execs are going to lose once Nintendo redefines what it means to play like a casual gamer. All of this time, it turns out, the experiments of WarioWare and tilt sensors have worked phenomenally in their favor and suddenly, Revolution is going to be the new easily-accessible system. Fear not, disenchanted girlfriends who hate Halo. This new system will be fun, understandable, and not hard to play. At all. In fact, it'll be damn close to realistic. You'll be able to do Harry Potter's wand movements or actually swing a baseball bat. Meanwhile, Sony and MS have been caught red-handed following the most boring business plan money can buy. Sometimes, those crazy Japanese work in mysterious ways. But at the end of the day, they've got a fantastic grip on what's fun to play.
