Features// SPOnG's Review of the Year '09: March

Things got so bad with the rumour milling that aforementioned Sony Marketing man Peter Dille was called into action to settle things (“Sony America Wants a PS3 Price Cut?”, 20th Mar 2009). But all he ended up doing was confusing people, suggesting that SCEA actually wanted a price cut but was tied to parent company Sony Corp’s primary goal of staying profitable.

“We’re to focus on a profit objective, and with those marching orders it limits the playbook when it comes to pricing and promotion,” Dille said, before he started going on about ‘value’ and ‘ten year life cycle’ and ‘apples to apples’ and oh-dear-God-nobody-cares.

It wouldn’t have been a month in 2009 without at least one mass media outlet taking an ill-informed dump on the games industry, and March’s fantastic display of scaremongering came from ABC News in the good ol’ US of A. Sicko pervert Anthony Scott Oshea groomed an 11-year-old Houston girl into sending him nude pictures using a web browser.

That web browser happened to be on Oshea’s PS3, which apparently totally justified the headline “Playstation Sex Crimes” (“Geek Lawyers Shocked by PS3’s Messaging Ability”, 13th Mar 2009). Not at all sensationalist, right? Even better was the comment from a Harris County, Texas lawyer that wanted to get the message out that the “PlayStation is like a regular computer.” Fair enough, but, “We didn’t know how much you can do, and we’re geeks.” Really?

While it would take several months yet for Microsoft and Sony to fully jump on the motion control bandwagon that the Wii pioneered, March brought news that PC maker Acer was to start working with Nvidia and Intel to produce a “Wii-like PC” (“Acer to Introduce Wii Clone”, 2nd Mar 2009). The ‘Acer Hornet’ was a sorry looking affair, shamelessly ripping off the Wii Remote but on the upside was capable of 1080p playback. The Inquirer reckoned it was heading for an April launch with 3-4 SKUs priced between $200 and $400. We wonder what happened to that.

In the land of SPOnG, March was busy for previews, as we were able to playtest a variety of games in the awesome Batman: Arkham Asylum, Midnight Club LA’s South Central DLC, Tiger Woods 10 and Grand Slam Tennis which promoted the Wii Motion Plus peripheral, and a first look at RUSE, Ubisoft’s 3D tabletop strategy wargame that’s now due in 2010. We also had a chat with Just Cause 2’s Lead Designer, and saw Atari legend Nolan Bushnell discuss his life at the BAFTAs.

Review-wise, we took a spin with Halo Wars, which was good if not by-the-numbers; Sega’s Wii game of ultra-violence, MadWorld, that was fun before getting repetitive; and GTA Chinatown Wars, which we loved so much we highly recommended a Nintendo DS for it. I don’t remember us doing that before.

Oh, and Wheelman, which was... Well, it had Vin Diesel in it. Is that a good thing? I never know these days.

Finally...

It’s time to round off March with one of the funnier popular stories of the month. When most PR or Corporate people speak you have to watch out for what they say. Because oftentimes, they put their foot in it with an astronomical sense of grandeur, or they end up smack-talking the competition like a school child. Microsoft’s senior regional director for the Entertainment and Devices division in Europe (phew), Neil Thompson, knocked one out of the park by simply not making a blind bit of sense.

Here he is talking about giving the consumer ‘choice’ (“Xbox 360: Microsoft’s Choice Word Confuse”, 3rd Mar 2009). This is the quote in full, see if you can try to understand it first time round.

“Quite often it’s just about having the choice, irrespective of what within the choice they use, they still want to see the choice. That’s how I think about it - so therefore, what an individual piece does to the whole is quite difficult to judge specifically.”

Yes, Neil, just like that comment, really. We had a go and thought he was talking about people liking choice, or something. It’s anyone’s guess, really. We are but puppets in Neil Thompson’s wicked word game, after all.

Maybe April will make more sense.