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

Posted 28 Dec 2009 09:06 by
The Japanese Wii manufacturer also made waves by participating in some corpora-smack talk, which is most unusual for the company. It follows Sony’s North American CEO, Jack Tretton, sniping that Nintendo “owns the closet” while Sony ‘owns the living room.’ Using some internal research, Nintendo argued the case that 87% of Wii consoles are connected to “the largest TV in the household, which is set in the centre of the living room” (“Nintendo’s Iwata: Wii Out of the Closet”, 30th Apr 2009).

This of course, gave company president Satoru Iwata to take an uncharacteristic swipe back at Sony, concluding “our consoles are not only out of the closet, they are also in the middle of the house.” Iwata also claims that Nintendo is responsible for the use of consoles on the Internet. Talk about fighting words.

Sony was also taking a psychological battering in general console use, let alone Internet adoption (but not usage, it has that one down pat). US ratings and statistics company, Nielsen, had published a new report calculating usage minutes across all consoles in 2008, and although the PlayStation 2 remained the most used console of the previous year, the study found that PS3 owners used their console for 8.1% of the available time, while Xbox 360 owners used theirs for 17.4% of the time.

Despite the implication that the PS3 doesn’t get as much use as the Xbox 360, the report also mentioned that, “PlayStation 3 console users clearly use their consoles as a group more than any other console type we track.” (“PlayStation 3 Use Down - Xbox 360 Up”, 8th Apr 2009). So, small victories eh?

Sony still found energy to stand its ground though. It had recently announced MAG, a squad-based online first person shooter that can host up to 256 players in any one game. And SCEA’s director of hardware marketing, John Koller, took the opportunity to shove the Xbox 360 around a bit, saying that MAG can only be done on a PS3 (“Sony: MAG Not Possible on Xbox 360”, 3rd Apr 2009).

“If you look at that competitively, it’s something that’s only possible on PS3. The processor speed, the ability of PS3 to showcase 256 players at any given time, and their actions,” Koller said, possibly with a gleeful grin.

SCEA’s VP of Marketing, Peter Dille, also did the rounds in April to emphasise the fact that, no, there will not be any PlayStation 3 price cuts - “This is our new fiscal year; we just finished our last one” (“Absolutely NO PlayStation 3 Price Cuts... Yet”, 22nd Apr 2009). Ever the linguist however, Dille just had to continue his onslaught.

Some points were fine, if a little harsh; “There’s a lot of downloadable content on Live Arcade. A lot of it is older, kind of rehashed... Flower or flOw before that, these were games that were made specifically for the PS3” and “Last year we grew the PS3 base 40 percent”...

But then he got into the whole ‘value’ schtick again. “We joke about it, but if we could go door-to-door and talk to every consumer and explain to them [what's inside the PS3], invariably they’d kind of, “Well, gosh! Why would I buy something else?”... It becomes the value inherent in the device even at its $399 price point.”

Dille also seemed to like the use of the apparently made-up word, “overindexing.”

Alongside a brand new Assassin’s Creed II trailer which proved quite popular with the gaming populace, SPOnG entertained readers with only one review this month, in The Godfather II - we found it a rather excellent improvement on the last game, and we called it “the thinking man’s Grand Theft Auto.”

We also saw plenty of upcoming games, with previews for Mini Ninjas, Rag Doll Kung Fu, Fallout 3’s Broken Steel DLC, Overlord II, Rogue Warrior and Wet serving all kinds of gaming palette. Interviews with Rogue Warrior’s Sean Griffiths and Wet’s Ashraf Ismail proved popular as well - as they should, they were rather nice chaps.

Finally...

Some good news for Microsoft in Japan for our round-off story for April, because Lord knows they deserve some luck over there. General Manager of the Home and Entertainment Division, Takashi Sensui, celebrated one million Xbox 360 sales at a Japanese event (“Xbox 360: Onslaught on Competitor’s Home Land”, 21st Apr 2009).

Launching a “Thank You” campaign, Microsoft announced a giveaway of 1,000,000 Microsoft Points across Gamertags and a free dashboard theme for all. Third parties were in attendance of the event including Capcom, Namco Bandai and SEGA, and Square Enix announced a couple of games to boot.

It looked, at least for a time, that Microsoft would have something of a shred of a fighting chance in Japan. It’s a shame it ultimately didn’t work out.
<< prev    1 -2-

Read More Like This


Comments

Posting of new comments is now locked for this page.