Shop Safe: Drop Toys, Buy More Video Games?

That's what Kathleen Buczko, mother of three, plans to do this year to get around all the toy recalls and safety concerns aired in recent stories about companies like Mattel destroying hundreds of thousands of hazardous toys and recalling tens of millions more.

The effects of lead exposure in children, from an August 16, 2007 McClatchy article on U.S. business culpability in the Chinese toy recall.

According to BMO Capital Markets analyst Gerrick Johnson in an L.A. Times article today, video games are poised to benefit from this year's toy scare.

Game makers' sales are forecast to climb 19% or more, according to Wedbush Morgan Securities, fueled by lower prices for consoles, a plethora of must-have games such as "Super Mario Galaxy" and the popularity of Nintendo Co.'s Wii and hand-held DS consoles, which appeal to a broad age range. At the same time, retail toy sales are expected to decline by 2%, to $23 billion, said Gerrick Johnson, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets.

"There's definitely money leaving that sector," he said. "It's logical to assume that video games might be viewed by some parents as an alternative."

NPD's Anita Frazier is less bullish about game sales being driven by toy recalls, noting that most toy sales are driven by kids younger than the "kick-in" age of 8 or 9.

I'm with Frazier. Other than whatever's happening with a few "edutainment" hybrids from companies like Jumpstart, I don't think video game sales are outpacing the rest of the economy this year 4-to-1 because of the toy scare. Not even contributing a little. This is about the next phase in the shift of electronic games into the same space currently reserved for media like TV and movies.

Which, if I'm right, is very cool given all the huffing and puffing about "games as art." By contrast, comic books and graphic novels may have finally "arrived" in terms of public recognition as legitimate aesthetic vehicles, but they're both still marginal in terms of audience size. Games on the other hand are progressively pervasive, with franchises like Halo and Guitar Hero selling tens of millions of copies (not to mention glittering newcomers like Wii Sport and Wii Play) and propelling the economics alone past movie (and soon enough, DVD and rental) numbers. I don't want to say games have arrived, but they're sure as heck in the process of arriving.

If anything, this year's sales numbers look more like a standing trade-up (toys for games) than some temporary, reactionary compromise.

In any case, I'm just glad we're moving past the point where we think of video games as merely toys.

Grapevine: GameSpot Editor Sacked Due to Negative Review?

"If it's true," the only three words you need to care about before reading further, but according to gossip site Kotaku, GameSpot's executive editor Jeff Gerstmann was pink-slipped at some point in the last 24-48 hours, with the scuttlebutt fingering his 6.0 score of Eidos's Kane & Lynch.

Kane & Lynch is an action game about a "flawed" mercenary and a medicated psychopath on a "violent and chaotic arc of redemption and revenge," i.e. "shooter spree" for the PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. I mentioned it back in October after WomenGamers.com took umbrage with -- I had to agree -- a pretty disappointingly gender-exploitive ad campaign that preceded the game's debut. Other than that, I haven't played the game.

Gerstmann's 6.0 carried a "fair" tag on GameSpot's scale, i.e. slightly above average, and reasonably well north of "bad."

Kotaku's running this pic on its site, showing the quite prominent Kane & Lynch "skin" GameSpot was running as part of its K&L advertisement deal

According to Shacknews in this posting, which cites "reports" (but to be fair, doesn't source them) Eidos reacted to the review by threatening to pull a substantial ad contract. Shacknews says it "can confidently confirm via its own sources that Gerstmann was indeed fired yesterday from his position at GameSpot." Note that's a claim that the firing happened, not the reasons for it.

Anyway, I don't know Gerstmann personally, and as a rule, I don't read GameSpot for its reviews, but regardless, his firing deserves critical examination, especially with ugly rumors like these circulating. Hey, it's even possible the anonymous rumormongers are just Gerstmann supporters sowing the seeds of discontent. In a he-said, she-said, you can never be too skeptical.

But if the sponsors were directly or indirectly "manufacturing consent" via payola...again, don't assume that's true, but if it somehow turns out to be, keep your pitchforks handy.

UPDATE (11/30 11:59 a.m. CST): Just spotted this Joystiq post which notes that:

Jeff has confirmed his firing to us via e-mail, but says he's "not really able to comment on the specifics of my termination." He added that he's "looking forward to getting back out there and figuring out what's next."

UPDATE (11/30 1:18 p.m. CST): Here's Gerstmann's GameSpot video review of Kane & Lynch, which has been pulled from GameSpot's website, and which some are speculating may have had something to do with Gerstmann's termination.

My take: First, Gerstmann's tone, while entirely relaxed and not really rancorous, doesn't match his 6.0 "fair" (from the video review, it sure doesn't sound like an "above average" game to me).

Second, he occasionally rambles in a way that might confuse or lose casual readers. I'm thinking the part where he's dismissing the game's story ("because they [the in-game criminal organization] think that he [Kane] screwed them over and all this other stuff") and a bit later when he's trying to describe the cover mechanic (but doesn't, really, if you listen carefully) as well as the dismissal of the A.I. with "they get stuck on cars and run in circles and do all kinds of dumb stuff."

I can sympathize with Gerstmann's disdain, since he's referring to tired game design cliches that therefore have a tendency to sound like game review cliches, but you still have to spell things out clearly (no sloppy summarizing) which in this case would've worked by simply sticking with specific points and excising abstract, dismissive phrases like "all kinds of dumb stuff."

UPDATE (11/30 6:26 p.m. CST): Joystiq contacted Eidos PR and passed along the following from Cnet representative Sarah Cain.

While reiterating that CNET does not discuss personal employee matters with the press, Cain said directly that "we do not terminate employees based on external pressure from advertisers." When asked specifically about whether any such pressure was even attempted on Eidos' part, Cain had no comment.

MTV's Rock Band Rocks Me Like a Hurricane

My fingers feels like worn pencil nubs, my back's slumping like a cheap tent in a typhoon, my eyes feel like shriveled grapes, I'm still wearing yesterday's clothes, and my right calf is quivering like over-spun taffy from thumping a bass drum pedal, which, you guessed it, probably means I've been playing Harmonix's Rock Band. Last night, this morning, this afternoon, and again tonight. (I know. Woe is me.)

I know, there's such pressing other news, like Konami speechifying about Metal Gear Solid 4 needing to sell one million copies on its first sales day, another academic study suggesting violent games may increase your tendency to behave badly, and a gossip-fueled class action lawsuit against Microsoft which claims Halo 3 is, get this, not Xbox 360 compatible. All I'm going to say about that last is if this guy doesn't have an open and shut scientific case, I hope they make him pay for Microsoft's legal costs. (Talk about the tail desperately trying to wag the dog.)

Anyway, all I'm paying attention to at the moment, to be totally frank, is news about Rock Band, the first "band in a box" video game ever that really is every bit as impressive as most have been saying.

See our in-house video coverage of Rock Band.

Addiction, thy name is Rock Band.

MTV says the game's "flying off shelves." No one knows yet just what that means compared with Guitar Hero 3's first week sales of $115 million. $170 for Rock Band (versus $100 for Guitar Hero 3) arguably pushes the game out of the sub-$100 impulse buy category, even if it comes with a relatively high quality microphone, a sturdy four-pads-and-a-bass-pedal drum kit, and in my opinion, a superior guitar (save for the cushy strum lever) for the difference.

What else do we know about game sales? Only that EA's CEO John Riccitiello said today that "Hundreds of thousands (of copies) sold through over the Thanksgiving weekend...Literally every box we made."

Hundreds of thousands? To match Guitar Hero 3's $115 million, EA would've had to sell roughly 675,000 copies in the first week alone. I'm guessing, though I could be wrong, that they're nowhere near that figure, because hey, it's 70 bucks more than the more broadly cross-platform Guitar Hero 3, a brand new not-widely-known franchise, and to really enjoy it, you need two or more people playing together locally. (The song's are fabulous, but they're clearly targeted toward group play, i.e. more Weezer and Garbage, less Eric Johnson and Stevie Ray Vaughn, if that makes sense.)

But to be perfectly honest, I'm having a lot more fun with Rock Band than Guitar Hero 3 at this point, if only because it's got my wife dragging me away from whatever I'm doing to play a video game with her.

Guitar Hero 3 Virtuoso Sells Soul to Devil?

It's not fair, it's just not fair. I've never seen anything like this, so assuming it's the real deal, ladies and gentlemen, I present for your viewing pleasure Guitar Hero 3's "Cliffs of Dover" by Eric Johnson, performed on a PlayStation 2 in expert mode by a gent calling himself wuLFe79 who manages inexpicably to tap out 100% with full combos. (And he claims the song's too easy!)

Take a bow, fella, or take several. I'm officially jealous for life.

And if that wasn't enough, your brain will probably explode just trying to keep up visually with wuLFe79 and a friend as they attempt to break an astonishing 1,000,000 points co-oping "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," pulling off runs so blisteringly inhuman I'm still not sure I'm seeing what I think I'm seeing. (Warning, some audible celebratory swearing in this video!)

Listen to the crazy-fast strumming sounds alone, as well as the slapping sounds their finger make rolling the buttons to keep up with the arpeggios.

In. Freaking. Sanity.

I'm Ready to Kill My Guitar Hero III Controller

You know those old rock videos where the bands smash the holy living you-know-what out of their musical kit? I'm about to see how well Activision's Guitar Hero 3 for the PlayStation 3 models that in real life.

That's because after hours spent plugging and unplugging, poking, prodding, tugging, and occasionally outright wailing on my PS3's Guitar Hero 3 controller's strum button, I've had it. I'm throwing in the towel. I simply cannot get this thing to work right.

It's the strum button, which -- for those of you who've never played a GH game -- is like a little three-inch lever you can pull up or push down to sort of crudely emulate dragging your hands across the strings of the real thing as you tap buttons in rhythmic sequence on the fretboard.

On mine, the strum lever's somehow stuck in the down position (even though physically it's not) which means that when I turn on my PS3, the opening menu automatically scrolls to the bottom, where it remains locked unless you hammer the bejesus out of the lever, and then it only pops up the menu for a second or two.

If I use a regular PS3 controller and get into the game, then transfer control back to the GH3 guitar, the cursor just cycles endlessly from top to bottom like a stuck key on a keyboard. I've hit every button a hundred times hoping to "unstick" something, but so far, no luck.

Yes, the controller syncs just fine. Yes, the neck is plugged in snug as a bug. Yes, I've repeatedly followed the sync instructions included with the game to the letter.

So I'd like to hand Activision money for a new controller, except that you can't buy one standalone for some weird, inexplicable reason (what, did they not expect the game to fly off shelves?). There's ding number one (for not making extras available at launch, whether for faulty controller replacement or just to let gamers play head-to-head or cooperative locally). We're at this point supposed to wait until some undesignated point in (early?) 2008 for standalone controllers, which, with the holidays and family jam sessions beckoning, really bums me out.

Ding number two? Anecdotal evidence that the Xbox 360 and PS3 controllers flake out over time because the detachable necks have shaky electrical contacts. The connection's a bit like Intel's socket 775, where the pins are in the body of the instrument and what you're sliding in to make the connection is just a bunch of flat circular leads. Too bad they couldn't ship the controllers in longer boxes pre-assembled (without the detachable neck) or have used a more traditional plug-in solution where the prongs actually slid into something.

Ding number three is more of a cosmetic beef about the PS3 version requiring a silly USB RF dongle. I can only assume the cost of employing RF must have been cheaper than putting Bluetooth in the guitar itself, because as a former computer systems engineer, I can't come up with a single technical reason not to use the PS3's integrated Bluetooth option. Kind of defeats the whole purpose of having Bluetooth at all in a $500-$600 piece of hardware, no?

Back to the store I go to trade up for a new version, in hopes of procuring something that actually works the way it's supposed to.

UPDATE (11/28, 4:16 p.m. CST): Just got back from my local game store, where I snagged a new copy of GH3 for the PS3 (thank you least-popular-so-it's-in-stock-version!) got it back home, plugged it in, synced up, and presto, the strum bar works fine-o! But now the yellow button on the fret board is totally dead-o. Yep, DOA, dead on arrival, no chance of finger-hammering resuscitation. So here I go, back in the car again to add a little extra carbon to the atmosphere, all for the sake of Foghat and Aerosmith and Guns 'n Roses.

Darn you Activision.

UPDATE (11/28, 6:41 p.m. CST): Okay, got it working (before stepping out to make the trade-in trip). Seems I've encountered the "flaky contact" issue mentioned above, where the pins in the base don't always touch (or touch properly) the corresponding leads, or whatever you want to call them. After pushing on them with my fingers, then wiping off the surface of the contacts on the neck, the yellow button's working perfectly.

Except now I have a new problem: My wife just discovered 'easy' mode, and some dozen songs in, she's refusing to give up the controller, and, you know, actually dancing around with it like she's Janis Joplin or something.

Like I said, darn you Activision.

Nintendo Wii Sales Second Best Since Launch

350,000, that's how many Wii's Nintendo sold last week, compared with 300,000 the week prior, and second only to an eight-day honeymoon period in late November 2006 after the system debuted and retailers moved more than 600,000 units. Remember when everyone shuffled nervously after Nintendo said they'd sell 14.5 million Wiis by fiscal year's end next March? Try up to 17.5 million, now, if they keep up this pace.

AP reports that Nintendo has ramped up production from 1.2 million units per month to 1.8 million, though it's still not enough to keep them on shelves. I'm sure plenty of stores even held systems in the back, the week going into Black Friday, just so they could more or less bolster their day's figures year-over-year with an instant guaranteed cashwrap-ringer.

One nitpick: Fils-Aime needs to tone down the hyperbole when he says stuff like "Consumers are buying every game we can put into the system." No Reggie, they're not, and you know they're not, and we don't need to talk about your system's staggering (yes, staggering) number of clunkers driven, in my opinion, by too many opportunistic bus-jumpers.

Yes, Super Mario Galaxy finally pushed Nintendo's weekly software sales slightly north of Microsoft's, but overall, Nintendo's a year from launch with a number that's almost exactly half Microsoft's current in total software sold. No indications the Wii's gaining, in other words.

Wii Sports is number one (or thereabouts) because you can't buy a Wii without it (and thus it ought to be delisted) and Super Mario Galaxy debuted only two weeks ago, so its numbers are predictably up there. Else it's down to Wii Play (a remarkable if creaky 41 weeks and going), Guitar Hero III (outsold by the PS2 and closely followed by the PS3 version) and Mario Party 8 staking out the top 25. Five for Nintendo, compared with nine for the Xbox 360.

With nothing else up anyone's sleeves now that Mass Effect and Mario are out, I'm sticking by my original prediction that Microsoft cleans up in software sales, followed by Nintendo, and trailed distantly by Sony's gradually accelerating PS3.

Seeing Triple: PlayStation 3 Sales Up 245%

Don't call it a comeback yet, though, because the PlayStation 3 has miles to go before it can the relax even a little, something that in my opinion only happens when the system finally manages to outsell its still-ticking elder sibling, the indefatigable PlayStation 2.

Sony shares are up this morning on news that sales of the PlayStation 3 more than tripled, increasing by 245% during the big-money holiday week (November 18 to 24) following a significant price drop from $600 to $500 on its 60GB model and the introduction of a cheaper $400 40GB model packaged with the Blu-ray version of Spider-Man 3. By contrast, Nintendo shares slipped 800 yen or 1.28 percent, despite Nintendo's Wii leading Sony and Microsoft in overall console unit sales.

According to our own IDG news service, sales of the PS3 have increased by 192 percent at the top-10 major retailers in North America and "more than doubled" overall. Note that the 245% figure is explicitly for Black Friday, year-over-year.

IDG rightly points out the sales increase will in fact likely lead to more losses in Sony's beleaguered gaming division, because the company is still losing money on each PS3 due to component costs. Nintendo, by contrast, has been making money on everything it's been selling since day one.

The Wizards of Oz: Australia Luring Game Devs?

This one's for my PC World colleague Danny Allen, who hails from the only continent I'm dreading visiting because of the 14 hour and 45 minute average flying time. Because I hate to fly. Because every little bump, growl, creak, and whirr makes my systolic-over-diastolic look like something off the charts of an 80 year old lifetime champion bacon gobbler. Oh yeah, and Rain Man was wrong. Between 1927 and 1951, Qantas had eight fatal accidents (though to be fair, half occurred during World War II, and the airline hasn't had a fatal accident since 1951).

Anyway, UK-based trade mag MCV today reports that Brisbane-based developer Vile Studios is suggesting that an "appealing lifestyle looks set to lure US and European talent" to Australia in a capacity set "to rival current European, Japanese and American market leaders." (Vile is currently developing a sci-fi online game self-titled Project V.I.L.E.)

Says Vile's creative director, Ashley Hodgetts:

The Australian games industry is still pretty much in its early years in terms of development. The universities and colleges have been gearing towards training students the right way and there is an abundant supply of talented people.

Once overseas markets can overcome the stigmatism, I feel there?s going to be nothing stopping the Australian studios from being up there with America and Europe?s finest.

But is that all just the usual self-justifying company hype? An attempt to make a mountain out of a relatively remote South Pacific molehill? Hard to say, but whatever the case, the Australian game market is clearly doing something. Here's a bit I wrote about the Australian game industry back in September:

In 2006, Australian game sales surpassed $1 billion in sales, with more than 12.5 million units sold. Sound like a pittance compared to the United States with its lofty $7.4 billion 2006 figure? Not if you compare populations. The United States? 300 million. Land Down Under? Try 20.4 million. And according to GfK Australia, 2007's first half already reveals a 30 per cent increase over the 2006 figures for the same period. What's more, according to The Sydney Morning Herald, "Revenues from the sale of video games and associated hardware were almost $200 million more than cinema box office takings, and the DVD movie business is now within striking distance." Mind you, that's game sales, not exports, but the point is = Australians love games pretty big time.

Australia plays home to some 40 game development studios with over 200 game titles produced. According to Interactive Entertainment Association of Austrlia CEO Chris Hanlon, "With more than 1,600 people directly involved, the Australian
interactive games industry is an export industry worth more than $110 million." Austrade, an Australian government agency "that helps Australian companies win overseas business for their products and services," lists the "arts, culture, and entertainment" total export market at $301 million for 2005-06. Whether Hanlon's $110 million figure is included in that number or not (I'm fairly certain it's not), game production as an export industry alone would be worth either one-third or one-quarter of all Australian entertainment exports.

(For more, see "Aussie Game Devs: We Want 40% Kickbacks Too.")

Post Turkey Day Game News Highlights

So you ate too much turkey and stuffing and sweet potatoes drizzled in butter and brown sugar and maybe topped off with a big snowy pile of lightly seared marshmallows (guess what my favorite side dish is). Or maybe you're a vegetarian (or you have vegetarian relatives, or you're a Bill Maher fan) in which case you perhaps had...I believe the portmanteau is "Tofurkey"?

So what did you play? Mario? Ratchet & Clank? Mass Effect? Crysis?

I spent most of my weekend plugged into The Witcher, set up in a gloriously sequestered cave of a bedroom downstairs at my wife's parents' house with a pair of Princess Leia headphones making my plastic glass frames dig into my temples like a slow vise. Call it the price to game discreetly and put a locked door between myself and someone else's sugar-charged two-and-a-half year old who, incidentally, looks at a PC keyboard the way John Bonham might've eyed his bass and toms and mini-classic lugs right before tearing into 20 minutes of "Moby Dick."

Otherwise, it was a slow news weekend.

But not a slow sales period. According to market analysis firm comScore, online sales of video games, consoles, and accessories were up 134% over 2006 for the November 1st-23rd sales period. Also, no surprise that Nintendo's Wii and Guitar Hero III and Rock Band experienced serious supply issues. I personally had a heck of a time tracking down a copy of Guitar Hero III for the Xbox 360. My local GameStop was out, but for some reason a long shot stroll through Target turned up three copies.

Black Friday's top of the video game hill? The Nintendo Wii. Information Week reports the 134% year-on-year surge was ineluctably shaped by the Wii, but somewhat less predictably by Sony's PlayStation 3 (with sales already up 192%, according to Sony, going into the busiest shopping day of the year) and of course, Microsoft's Halo 3. If I'm reading the latter right, Nintendo took volume honors, but Sony's PS3 may have actually outsold the Xbox 360 unit for unit, owing perhaps to Xbox 360 demographic (per its current price) install base saturation.

The only other news of passing interest? Newly opened studio Eidos Montreal announced Deus Ex 3, which means about as much to me as watching the early previews for 28 Weeks Later. Sure, it turned out to be a brilliant sequel by a team that had nothing to do with the Danny Boyle original. But considering the prior two Deus Ex games weren't (brilliant) and the trailer's just a Matrix-y tease (and the fact that Warren Spector doesn't appear to be involved), color me coin-tossing for now.

The debut Deux Ex 3 teaser trailer. "For centuries, man has struggled to understand his true nature." (Oh yeah? And here I thought Family Guy had that question wrapped...)

The Witcher: Pardon Me, Not a Turkey

Happy Thanksgiving, which if you live in the US and dig on RPGs as much as I do, means today's the day you do battle with relatives and weird gelatinous fruit salads and post-feast lethargy and -- by the grace of hyper-caffeinated beverages -- possibly enjoying a sprawl of time in front of your computer axing mud crabs and bog lurkers and furbolgs and maybe, just maybe, seducing naked greed dryads.

Oh yeah, I guess the latter means I've been playing Atari's The Witcher, and for the life of me, I can't figure out how to not like this game. It's grungy, it's medieval, it's adult, it's thematically sophisticated, it has miraculously intelligent realtime mouse combat, and -- so far anyway -- a vastly more ethically complex (or at least weighty) plot than the bland sort of PG-rated moral matrix that's supposed to pass for trailblazing in story-driven games like Bioware's Mass Effect.

Friends can be duplicitous cult members, guards are (shockingly) guilty of sexual assault, witches sell poisonous suicide solutions and craft voodoo dolls to compel siblings to kill each other, barmaids (and plenty others) will sleep with you for booze, religious fanatics turns out to be distastefully misogynistic, and for all the bosky monsters, the worst aren't the ones with ten or twenty consonants crowding a single vowel, but other humans, just like you.

(I'd love to say more, but my wife's calling me, and it's time to shower and pack up and hit the road...)

So enjoy your one or two or four day holiday, and if you're casting around for something a little deeper and more unabashedly grown-up than pretty much anything else on the market, you might want to consider this bleak little gem in the comparatively jejune rough.

Is 500,000 for Super Mario Galaxy's First Week Good Enough?

I'm inviting flaming brands, pitchforks, a noose, and a swinging trapdoor for saying so, but, well, you do remember Halo 3 sold $300 million (or some 5 million copies) worldwide in its first sales week, and $170 million (some 2.83 million copies) in the US on its first day alone, yes? It's much too soon to say "told you so," but while George Harrison of Nintendo may be correct (I haven't double-checked) that with 500,000 units sold in the US, Super Mario Galaxy had "the strongest one-week debut of any Wii game to date and has also become the best-selling Mario title ever in its first week," those opening numbers don't bode well for the most important holiday release on a system that's closing in on the hardware install base of its only real competitor in the U.S., the Xbox 360.

A rough guesstimate based on initial European (it debuted at #5) and Japanese sales (a shockingly low 251,000) suggests SMG's worldwide first week take is probably still shy of one million units sold.

He can fly! But can this lovable little guy outrace hardware shortages and blockbuster software sales competitors?

Greg Howson in the UK blogs about the game's less than stellar debut on UK sales charts at number five, asking the question "Mario Galaxy sales less than super?"

I'm not trying to knock everyone's favorite comeback kid, and for the record, I personally love Nintendo (maybe even more than you do, whoever you are preparing to burn me in effigy) but I wanted to pose some counterpoint to the predictable media gloss-job you'll find if you do a Google News search on the game title.

Now factor in the critical retail shortage of Wii systems, which ABC's Ashley Phillips rightly posits as easy make-up sales for the Xbox 360 and a potential gap-filler for the beleaguered PlayStation 3, and is Nintendo actually, dare I say it, in trouble?

Nothing spells success like spectacular demand (and no one's arguing the Wii doesn't have it), but nothing hastens knife-sharpeners like a lack of supply. It's happened plenty of times before, with calamitous short and arguably repercussive long-term effects. Remember the Xbox 360 drought of 2005? The Sony PlayStation 2 slim-line shortage in 2004? Don't mistake the media hype for a Good Thing (unless it's a PR stunt, which neither of those were, it only exacerbates the problem). To quote Slate's Tim Harford referencing economist Kenneth McLaughlin of City University, "despite their suspicious regularity, the shortages benefit nobody." I wholeheartedly concur.

So yes, Super Mario Galaxy is getting the best reviews (or at least review scores) not just of any Mario game, but of any game across any platform, including the PC, ever. And yes, breaking your own long-past sales records is surely worth tooting about. But the real question is, can Nintendo turn in sustained sales to beat here-and-now juggernauts like Halo 3 while simultaneously bringing the hardware into the channel quick enough to gratify currently Wii-less gamers marching to stores, as I write, for this game alone.

SimCity Societies: Homey Homeostasis

So I'm noodling this morning with SimCity Societies and cobbling together a "Fun City" which amounts to a bunch of cheery architecturally improbable structures like Clown Schools and Castle Ruins and Creepy Barns, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to lose.

You start with a blank, squarish tract of brown or green turf and plop down power structures and workplaces and homes, add a few courthouses and police boxes, then polish with decorations (statues, parks, memorials) and venues (clubhouses, carnivals, chocolate bunnies). But as long as you keep your societal values in the positive and your homes and workplaces at roughly the same number, you can pretty much slop your way through a half-baked city and win like gangbusters.

You don't need me *sob* You just don't need me...

I guess that's the question, how does developer Tilted Mill define "winning"? Well, aside from the occasional heat wave or flood, or crazy disasters like killer storms, earthquakes, and my personal favorite -- meteor showers -- your goals are mostly reward-related. No missions, no campaigns, no competitive city building (like, whatever its other shortcomings, the well thought out multiplayer modes in Sid Meier's Railroads!). Nope, in SC:S it's all just "win a medal" or "win a medal more than once" or knock out a few achievements (less than a dozen) by meeting X requirements to earn a ho-hum permanent bonus for your future cities. With a single hybrid city, I've already got most of the medals, and I'm just a few bonuses shy of all the achievements.

Kind of disappointing, really (though to be fair, it's very, very cute!).

On losing: Once I had my Fun City up and running with maybe 200-300 Sims and $20k Simoleans I thought what the heck, I'll make my wife pancakes and coffee and leave this thing running for an hour. So after an hour of hearing lots of cheers and happy sighs and giggles and goofy Sim-lish coming from the speakers downstairs, I head back down only to find... Everything. Exactly. The Same. Except for one thing: I now have over $120k in my city's treasury. Woohoo! or just Woohoo?

Apparently you can't really break this game. Not without reaching in with your godly mouse-hand and manually wreaking destruction and dea--well, just destruction vis-a-vis natural disasters, which is kind of fun for a couple seconds. "No Sims were harmed during the course of playing this game," etc., though I have to say, loosing marching columns of grease-painted mimes on your Sims to raise "happiness" always makes it seem like they might be.

Maybe we need a new ESRB rating. How about 'E10-' or 'Everyone Under 10'?

Mass Effect: Effectively Overhyped

About halfway through Mass Effect, Bioware's new sci-fi epic for the Xbox 360, my eyes glazed over and I felt the great ratiocinative crankshaft in my head involuntarily shift from "playing" over to "slogging." I had to finish the game, you see, despite the fact that nine-tenths of what you do in Mass Effect doesn't feel much like a game to me at all.

You can read my review here.

Remember the way old-school adventures used to work? You moved a character from this place to that, scanned the screen for stuff to pick up or interact with, but mostly spent your time clicking through dialogue trees conversing with people (or creatures) who filled in backstory and advanced the plot. The game mechanic, if it's even fair to call it one, came down to figuring out someone else's idea of a logic puzzle. Put the hat you found in the study on the statue in the hallway to open the secret passage down to the basement. Buy the bum near the fountain a bottle of whatever to get him to ramble out directions to the dance club you need to visit to find a dropped engagement ring to return to some girl who's supposed to marry some guy who you need to talk to but she won't let you see until the ring's back on her finger. And so on.

Now add a no-frills squad-based shooter angle, pimp the visuals to make them absolutely stunning, and clap on a few character attributes designed to improve shoot-sequence proficiencies with weapons, technology, or biotics (the classic sci-fi psionics-based take on "magic") and you get Mass Effect, an overbearingly talky action-adventure more or less masquerading as an RPG.

Nothing about saying that makes me happy, not even the part of me that's irritated (yes, irritated) having played and finished and handed over slightly north of two dozen hours polishing off the main story. Bioware used to be a great developer, as far as I'm concerned. Co-founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk managed to deftly grab the ball from Tim Cain (Fallout) and sort of keep things going with stuff like Baldur's Gate and the absolutely magnificent Baldur's Gate 2.

But with Mass Effect they've pushed the story-on-rails formula way past its prime, as far as I'm concerned. You can make a game look as stunningly photo-real as you like and add a few shades of gray to black and white dialogue, but a game still rises or falls on the merits of its mechanics (anything less and you might as well rent a movie). Playing the choose-your-own-adventure version of 2001 or Serenity isn't a game and it isn't really interactive the way we mean that word in common parlance today.

So sorry Mass Effect, but you're no Baldur's Gate 2 or even Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. And no, you're also not "the next evolutionary phase" in interactive storytelling, i.e. this isn't about disliking the game for simply being what it purports to be (and it's not anyway). If this is supposed to be the evolution of the "narrative-driven RPG," I want my ticket back, and if I'm standing into the wind on this one, I'm only sorry for what that says about my hobby.

Wii, DS, and Guitar Hero III Dominate October Sales

Crack a bottle or two Nintendo and Activision, because for all the Halo 3 hype, October belonged to the Wii and Guitar Hero III according to NPD's just-released sales data for last month. What's more, Guitar Hero III launches on October 28, giving it all of four days to sell 1.4 million copies, an astounding number given the fact that Halo 3 had just four weeks to sell 433,800. Halo 3's momentum was mostly front-loaded, in other words.

October Console Sales

519,000 - Nintendo Wii
458,000 - Nintendo DS
366,000 - Xbox 360
286,000 - PlayStation Portable
184,000 - PlayStation 2
121,000 - PlayStation 3

Analysis: The Wii regains its top spot from the Xbox 360, which briefly unseated Nintendo's financial pit bull at the end of September with the release of Halo 3. The DS continues to secure top positioning with an overall install base that's the envy of every other console save the PS2, and the PS2? Continuing to outsell the PS3 nearly one year after the latter's launch, no doubt to Sony's double-sided delight/chagrin.

No sign of the Xbox 360 Arcade in these numbers, since it debuted too late in October to make much of an impact. Look for it to (impact) or not when November's data is in. Also, If you're wondering why no PS3 price spike, it's because we have yet to see the sales impact from the system's price cut in the U.S., which occurred in November, not October.

October Software Sales

433,800 - Halo 3 (360)
383,200 - Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock w/guitar (360)
286,300 - Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock w/guitar (Wii)
271,000 - Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock w/guitar (PS2)
263,000 - Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (DS)
240,000 - Wii Play w/Remote (Wii)
238,000 - Half-Life 2: Orange Box (360)
232,000 - Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (PS2)
130,000 - FIFA Soccer '08 (PS2)
117,000 - Brain Age 2 (DS)

Analysis: Halo 3 is still beating Guitar Hero 3 in overall sales (see chart below), but it just goes to show that broad, name-brand appeal and multi-format are where cash windfall's lie when leveraging total sales against multi-console market penetration (it's also, in my opinion, why denouncements of unified consoles are both philosophically and economically spurious).

Don't be surprised if Guitar Hero III eventually surpasses Halo 3 in units sold once the latter hits its saturation point. Remember, the Xbox 360 is still limited to an 8+ million U.S. install base two years after its inception. Halo 3 has the same problem the original Halo did, i.e. an as-yet limited install base.

NPD's Anita Frazier notes:

Guitar Hero has certainly established itself among the elite video games properties. Very few games sell in excess of 1 million units in their first month in market, but Guitar Hero III did easily with combined sales of 1.4 million units in only 6 days.

Year-to-Date Software Sales (by franchise)

3.7m - Halo 3
3.2m - Madden NFL '08
2.8m - Guitar Hero II
2.5m - Wii Play w/Remote
2.1m - Pokemon Diamond
1.5m - Pokemon Pearl
1.4m - Spider-Man 3
1.4m - Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock

Analysis: Total year-to-date video game sales are at $1.1 billion, an impressive 73 percent bump over last year's $643 million owing to strong hardware sales and related A-tier software releases. It's a similar story for hardware sales, which at $469.7 million more than doubled last year's $207.1 million.

Holiday predictions wild guesses for...

Sony: The PS3 price drop and new model positioning should boost sales of the system over the next 6-8 weeks, possibly up to Xbox 360 levels (but not Nintendo Wii). Also, watch for Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Haze, and Unreal Tournament III (along with the outstanding Ratchet & Clank) to compete favorably with Mass Effect and Halo 3 in software sales. PS3 placement for November and December? Still third in hardware and software sales, trailing Nintendo and Microsoft.

Microsoft: If Halo 3 was Microsoft's star performance, Mass Effect is the holiday encore. While the latter has much more of a niche RPG-head appeal, it's probably the most anticipated game of the year by anyone who dug Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and/or Jade Empire. In any case, expect the Xbox 360 to take the silver in hardware sales (though by a relatively narrow margin over Sony) and the gold by a handsome margin in holiday software sales.

Nintendo: The company's set to maintain its hardware pole position through the end of the year, driven that much higher by Super Mario Galaxy which just launched this week. But while Italian Plumbers in Space should keep the Wii well out of Sony's reach, expect Nintendo to rate a distant second in holiday software sales.

PS3 Clobbers Wii and Xbox 360 in Japan

The comeback kid keeps on keeping on -- in Japan anyway -- where research firm Media Create's sales data reveal the PS3 surging past the Wii and Xbox 360 for the week ending November 11.

According to the weekly sales numbers, the PS3 more than tripled its sales with 55,924 units compared to the Wii's 34,546 and the Xbox 360's scant 5,817. The PS3 sales spike comes after the launch of the force-feedback DualShock 3 controller as well as a cheaper 40GB model alongside price cuts for both the 20GB and 60GB iterations.

Surprisingly, the Wii's numbers are already down despite a modest spike following the release of Super Mario Galaxy last week.

PS3 price drop vs. sustained Super Mario Galaxy sales? It seems, somewhat remarkably, that the PS3 may be winning that battle overseas.

Poll: Liberals Play More Games than Conservatives

Results from a new poll conducted by Zogby and released on November 11 suggest that ideologically conservative, or "red" respondents, don't play many video games, but that when they do, they favor Madden NFL and Mario.

Moderates, or "purple" respondents, described as watching "a lot of Fox News" but also "daytime and children's programming" and "less likely to read books about politics or current events than other people" also favor video games like Mario, Donkey Kong, and Madden NFL.

Liberals, or "blue" respondents "shy away from a lot of primetime programming, especially game shows and reality TV" and read "politics and current events" play video games "a lot more than other people." Their favorites? Mario and The Sims.

No data on the methodology, i.e. whether the poll pre-listed answers or allowed respondents to answer openly. In any case, don't be too surprised games like Halo or Metal Gear Solid or Final Fantasy aren't listed. Halo may be a well-established series and perfectly newsworthy as far as the enthusiast press is concerned, but it's still not as broadly popular as far more seasoned franchises like The Sims, Madden, and Mario.

On the Cutting Room Floor with Crysis

If you're thinking about playing Crysis -- and if you play games on your PC, you absolutely should be -- know that most of what makes its sights worth seeing hinges on how much weight your PC's able to bench. Running Crysis on the lower detail settings with enervated physics or environmental FX isn't worth it, in my opinion, for the same reasons a videophile would balk at watching serious TV or film courtesy a low-res video aggregator like YouTube.

While you're contemplating whether to upgrade, how about some Crysis factoids? The following list comprises a brief slightly spoiler-ific (warning!) collection of ideas developer Crytek originally planned to include, but pulled somewhere along the way, presumably for design or programmatic reasons.

Piloting helicopters. You can control tanks, trucks, and boats, but helicopters were apparently traded out for VTOL aircraft. No complaints, of course, though the VTOL sequences turn out to be some of the least necessary (and most frustrating) in the game.

An asteroid crashes to earth. In the original, a "colossal asteroid crashed down to Earth" in 2019. In the final, the asteroid (or ship) appears to have already existed on the island for untold millennia.

The U.S. and North Koreans eventually work together. At one point the U.S. and North Koreans were supposed to unite to "save mankind," suggesting you'd be fighting alongside (and not just against) these guys. Not in the final, which simply dismisses the North Koreans altogether about three-quarters of the way through.

Freeze ray gameplay. Remember Duke Nukem 3D? Of course you do. Crytek did too, planning a freeze ray, i.e. "molecular arrestor" that would let you ice over anything, then shatter it with sufficient force. The final version? A glorified laser gun. Let's hope the sequel turns up something like the original idea, because...how cool would that be?

A singularity cannon? Really? Yes really, a cannon that would shoot miniature black holes. "You?ll actually see people getting sucked in toward the black hole a little bit," said Jack Mamais when describing this. "It?s very small and it only hangs around briefly, but this is the aliens? massively big weapon."

Capturing aliens, modifying their weapons. What a lovely mini-game this could've been. Instead of killing, how about capturing aliens then applying technology or research points toward reverse engineering their weaponry? As Mamais put it, "There's definitely an X-Com aspect." Alas, if only.

Energy upgrades to your combat suit. Originally you were supposed to be able to increase energy available to your armor, but since it doesn't dovetail with the fiction believably (and frankly sounds a little too Doom-ish) I'm glad they dropped it in favor of a full-functioning nano suit from the get-go.

Enemy A.I. that follows your back trail. Imagine bad guys that notice moving or broken foliage as you're creeping along, that investigate, and that follow your back trail (if you leave one). Apparently too complex for Crysis, which shelved this feature originally touted in early 2006.

Physics changing with weather. "Rain and thunder may just kick in and make surfaces more wet, and depending on the wetness, the properties of physics will change accordingly," said Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli in early 2006. Not so in the final game, though you have to assume the CPU cycle costs to do it realistically and comprehensively would have been enormous.

LEGO Batman Teaser Trailer Debuts

I swear I called this over a year ago, though I'll bet you called it too. The one I wasn't expecting? LEGO Indiana Jones. Still, LEGO Batman: The Videogame? Come on, how cool is that?

Okay, so it's a tease in the worst way, i.e. it shows nothing of consequence including what appears to be any part of the actual game engine. Then again, Warner Bros. just picked up LEGO Star Wars and LEGO Indiana Jones developer Traveller's Tales, so perhaps it'll get fast tracked and actually make its fall 2008 release date, following the release of The Dark Knight in mid-July.

Nearly Half of All Adults Play Video Games

More surprises from the institute of "didn't see that one coming." Eight out of ten kids between the ages of 4 and 17 play computer or video games according to new poll data from AOL Games and The Association Press.

81% of kids play at least occasionally compared with 38% of adults who admit to playing computer or video games in any capacity, and 45% of those adult gamers are female. Lest you assume that means half the Halo 3 crowd, remember that "computer games" include everything from online versions of Tic Tac Toe to Solitaire and Texas Hold 'Em.

Actually, a few surprises in the following stats culled from the press release:

Nearly half of all adult gamers are under 40 years old.

Only one third of adult gamers are married with children.

A majority of kids play video games, but not with their parents, and younger parents are more likely to play games with their kids than older parents.

A majority cited price as the deciding factor in whether they'll purchase a video game console this holiday.

The typical adult gamers games for 2 hours each week ("Shooter" fans play 4 hours per week, while "Adventure / RPG" fans play 5 hours per week).

41% of all games classify themselves as "hardcore" or spend at least 3 hours per week playing video games.

58% of hardcore gamers are male, while 42% are female.

Take Two Takes Hit, Settles Hot Coffee Sex Lawsuit

Because Americans can't be held responsible for the consequences of using products in ways they were neither designed not intended to be, game publishers should instead, apparently. According to Macworld, game publisher TakeTwo Interactive Thursday announced a preliminary settlement with all consumer class action lawsuits in the U.S. related to the infamous "Hot Coffee" software mod which unlocked simulated (not actual -- participants are fully clothed) sex scenes in video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

The question, as I see it, isn't one of scruples, but whether "existence" should blindly trump "intentionality" in the eyes of the law, especially with software governed by an End User License Agreement that explicitly forbids tampering and unauthorized modification of the game code. Does the presence of what amounts to particular sequences of 1s and 0s on a game disk make a game's publisher culpable if a user violates the EULA and manages to access them anyway?

Take Bethesda, which got into trouble with the ESRB for creating anatomically detailed but fully clothed humanoid characters in its uber-RPG Oblivion. Does it not strike you as nutty that when a user hacked the game to pull off those clothes, allowing users to play with topless female characters, the ESRB retroactively bumped the game's rating from Teen up to Mature?

Where's the shock, the indignation, the moral outrage, the lawsuit against Mattel for letting boys and girls disrobe Ken and Barbie?

Belgian Retailer's 40% PS3 Failure Rate Claim Refuted

You've heard the phrase "echo chamber"? Here's a rumor that fortunately came and went before it had a chance to reverberate in the digital blathersphere.

Apparently a Belgian game retailer (Game Mania) claimed their new 40GB model PS3s had a 40% failure (and return) rate due to hardware defects, which tabloid game blog Kotaku picked up and posted as "rumor" though the headline read "40 Percent of 40GB PS3s Are Defective?" instead of "Belgian Retailer Claims..." which would've been a better, more responsible way to report the story given aggregator indifference in my opinion.

The next thing you know, the original story (courtesy Evil Avatar) is top of GameTab's "most popular news" feed.

A couple hours later, Sony Computer Entertainment of Europe formally denied the rumor, claiming failure rates for the new model are "very low" and telling Kotaku that "[Sony] are very proud of the quality and reliability of PLAYSTATION 3 and are disappointed that such extremely sloppy journalism has resulted in this totally inaccurate story."

SCEE went on record exonerating Kotaku from the "sloppy journalism" comment, but one of Kovach and Rosenstiel's journalistic tenets is that you must "keep the news comprehensive and proportional" (my emphasis). Is reporting an unsubstantiated rumor that's extremely eye-catching -- which is how the tabloid blogs get a lot of their hits -- responsible? I'm not judging, just asking.

Target Scrubs Manhunt 2 From Shelves, Leaves Saw

It begins with a grotesque autopsy, in which a medical examiner slices graphically through scalp, skull, and sternum. Shortly thereafter, a man who cannot speak murders a man with his eyes sewn shut as the two are slowly, inexorably pulled toward a killing machine by a chain wrapped around their necks. Eventually we encounter a woman who's been instructed to escape an abusive relationship by removing spikes piercing her body as well as her husband's, inescapably killing him in the process.

"It is some of the most horrific, senselessly violent stuff you've ever seen," says James Steyer, CEO of ratings organization Common Sense Media, reacting to Rockstar Games' Manhunt 2, except that the above description has nothing to do with that game. In fact, it's an overview of just a few of the grisly sequences in Lionsgate's Saw IV, the latest in a series of horror films in which the explicit mechanics of pain, torture, and death are the movie's uncredited lead.

Manhunt 2 stylizes brutal killing.

In Manhunt 2, you play a couple of criminally insane asylum escapees who can perform "execution" style killings, e.g. thrust enemies into live fuse boxes, strangle them with telephone cords, club them to death with a toilet, and so on. In the Saw series, a psychopathic "vigilante" kidnaps people and places them in deadly traps, where they're supposed to somehow repent the sin of "taking their lives for granted" while screaming and crying and bleeding profusely.

Saw IV -- Any less potentially offensive than Manhunt 2?

Saw IV is rated R and recently released to theaters. The prior three films, including "unrated" versions, are available for purchase in Target stores everywhere. Manhunt 2 was banned in the UK, originally rated 'Adults Only' by the ESRB in the United States, then bargained down to a 'Mature' (17+) rating before it was green-lit for release. Recently, a group of hackers managed to unlock intentionally disabled content by tweaking Manhunt 2's initialization files on the PSP edition, ostensibly freeing up the content that elicited an Adults Only rating. In response, Target just announced it was pulling the game from store shelves.

I'm not a fan of voyeuristically violent games or movies and I frankly can't be bothered with arguments about the aesthetic merits of either the Saw series or the Manhunt games.

Nonetheless, is it just me, or is there a glaring double standard here?

Xbox 360 to Live Long and Prosper

So sayeth the suits at Microsoft, who think the Xbox 360 has legs to carry it past the typical five-year lifespan of the average game console. Well...what else are they going to say?

Sony and Microsoft have turned "losing money to make money" into a convoluted cash-splash process worthy of an equally convoluted motivational seminar. Microsoft's Xbox gaming division, over six years old, is supposed to finally be profitable in 2008. But that's effectively seven years of net losses, and more if you count research and development time. Seven years, which is fast approaching a full decade.

To paraphrase Gordon Gekko, risk is good, risk works, risk clarifies. Mm-hmm. But what's the ceiling on a money pit? At what point do you pull a Sega and cash out? And if you ever "arrive" -- unless you can somehow mimic the Windows model, where consumers and businesses are essentially "indentured users" -- what's the guarantee you'll be able to hold on for more than a month or a year or a single product cycle? Sony had and arguably still has the market by the teeth with the PlayStation 2. Now look at the PlayStation 3. A year on, hemorrhaging component costs, and Sony rumored to be pleading with developers to stay the course.

The guys with perpetual game-driven money in the bank, making a profit out of the gate? Who else?

So when we eventually hear how Microsoft's gaming division is finally in the black, or witness the point at which the PS3 turns the curve (and I think a recognizable turnaround's coming) instead of clapping or cheering, all I'll be wondering is: "At what cost?"

Is Gaming Really More Complex?

If you've been playing video games for at least a decade and would never confuse a PS2 with a PS/2 [fill in the blank], this isn't really for you. Or then again, maybe it is. After all, you (or should I say we) may have contributed to the problem.

What problem? The one Don Reisinger's after in his CNET blog, namely that the proliferation of scalable options in gaming (particularly console-dom) like five versions of the Xbox 360 and four for the PlayStation 3 is making things too confusing for consumers.

Or is it?

Nostalgia trip. Anyone remember CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT? HIMEM and EMM386? DOS/4GW and MS-DOS mode in Windows 95? Setting IRQs and DMAs and I/O addresses manually to get a sound card to output properly? You could fill a small book with all the trials and tribulations PC gamers have had to endure over the years sussing out design quirks in hardware and software just to get games like The 7th Guest and Wing Commander and Doom running functionally (to say nothing of "optimally"). And that's drawing the starting line in the early 1990s. I could reminisce for hours (and I'll bet some of you could too, or as quick, one-up me) about "growing up Commodore," e.g. the Vic-20 and 64 and even a monochrome B128 I used to run text and ASCII-graphics games I'd get on 5-1/4" floppies (real floppies, not the fictional 3.5" kind) from a local electrician who'd pull them down with a 1200 baud modem.

I remember the first IBM PC-compatible (remember when we called them that?) computer I bought and having to figure out what SX vs. DX meant, whether a math-coprocessor was worth a hill of beans, managing files across different sized 5-1/4" and 3.5" disks, learning what 320x200 and 640x480 was all about, and trying to get a handle on why the first Pentiums were supposed to rock my socks off compared to my putter-some DEC 486/DX2 with a whopping 8MB of RAM.

And what about video game consoles? Remember the Sega 32X? The Sega CD? The Sega Channel? The Atari Jaguar and Atari Jaguar CD? All the relentless guns and gloves and rumble pack add-ins? When I managed a retail software store in the mid-1990s, we'd have at least three or four SKUs at any given time for Nintendo and Sega and Sony consoles based on game bundles and peripheral additives (controllers, guns, proprietary gizmos). I personally spent countless holiday hours explaining the differences between these to understandably clueless parents out shopping for birthday or Christmas presents.

Remember the 3DO? That it was sold in different configurations by no less than three manufacturers (Panasonic, Goldstar, and Sanyo)?

We live in an increasingly tech-savvy society. Even my baby boomer parents have managed to adapt to a world in which cameras can have half a dozen different memory sticks (what's a memory stick?) and you can upload your digital photos in JPEG format (what's a JPEG?) to a developer like Kodak through a web site (which browser should you use?) connected via the Internet (cable or DSL?) perhaps even from the convenience of your couch on a wireless network (802.11 'a' or 'b/g/n'?).

You get the point. The geek-o-system you and I grew up in figuring out how to connect RF adapters or Game Genies or blow into our cartridge-based game systems to "clean" the connectors when a game wouldn't play, has expanded well beyond us, making nostalgic reminiscing about the "simplicity" of the game industry "back then" almost irrelevant (not to mention, as noted above, somewhat inaccurate). Somehow consumers are managing to figure out whether to buy LCD or plasma, gas-only or hybrid, iPod or Zune, Guitar Hero or Rock Band, etc. We're smarter about technology and its many, many nuances than we've ever been -- and by we, I mean all of us, not just the early-adopter geeks.

So while I have my own issues with Microsoft and Sony's fragmentation of the game hardware market by introducing simultaneous alternative models, they have less to do with consumer complexity than basic bottom line consumer value. It takes a sentence or two to explain to the average consumer that the new 40GB PlayStation 3 will play PS1 but not PS2 games -- the issue for me isn't complexity, but that Sony's pulled a software-based feature from the latter model to in part justify the arbitrary $100 cost delta to the next model up. That isn't hard to understand, it just -- pardon me for saying so -- really sucks.

Oh yeah, speaking of complexity, never mind the number of configurable settings, channels, system updates, Mii menus, "put the sensor bar on the top, on the bottom," etc. in -- that's right -- the so-called "elementary" Nintendo Wii.

Crysis Turns Up Nose at Quad Core?

For those of you with quad cores aching to chew on something really grueling, it looks like Crysis may not be tickling those extra cores after all. I've been playing the final gold build of Crysis and for fun tonight popped an Intel Penryn QX9650 in to see how it compared with my old E6600 Core 2 Duo. Clock for clock, resolution for resolution, and detail setting for setting, the frame rates are for all intensive purposes identical. Which is not to complain, mind you -- keeping the numbers above 24 fps with everything but the water effects maximized is no easy trick when you're talking about a game that's every bit as momentous visually and functionally speaking as a John Carmack engine upon release.

Still, that's a steady 24-30 fps with either a dual or a quad, and no discernible different between. So I'm a little disappointed that Crytek's Cevat Yerli would say something like this to Shacknews a couple weeks ago.

Multi-core will be beneficial in the experience, particularly in faster but also smoother framerates. 64-bit and higher memory will yield quicker loading times. We recommend quad core over higher clock.

Why does Yerli recommend quad core over dual core? Beats me. It doesn't help the game perform any better, and reasonably high-clocked quad cores aren't cheap. You can get an Intel X6800 Core 2 Duo Extreme Edition @ 3 GHz for $400 compared with $910 for an Intel QX6850 (quad core) running at the same speed. The QX9650 with 12MB of cache and a 1333 MHz FSB will cost around $1000 at launch (no doubt driving the price of higher clocked dual cores down).

While I have almost blind faith in the potential of Intel's QX9650 to blow the lid off future multithreaded applications with more sophisticated A.I. and physics and audio requirements, Crysis isn't looking like that game (or rather, it's looking like that game on a one or two core system).

The game clearly seems to be more GPU and CPU-clock limited than some of us were hoping, based on all the hype about it's purported multi-core availing. Too bad the design team couldn't offload some of that GPU work to either of those third and fourth cores to make Yerli's recommendation stand up.

"Excessive" Computer Game Playing Impairs Sleep, Verbal Ability

TV and computer game exposure affect children's sleep and degrade verbal cognitive performance, according to the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. I noticed the study this morning when SafetyLit (Injury Prevention Literature Update) posted the abstract for the paper, which investigates the effects of excessive TV and computer game consumption on the sleep patterns and memory performance of eleven school-aged children.

I don't know what "excessive" meant to the observers, or which games and shows were involved (viewing the full study requires a subscription) but to the extent the methodology is sound, it raises an intriguing point. It's one thing if Steven Johnson (Everything Bad Is Good For You) turns out to be right, that games and television are having a net positive cerebral effect on viewers. TV shows and video games make more demands on us today than their predecessors decades ago, suggests Johnson, and are therefore making us "smarter." Lost and Survivor (yes, Survivor) are much more sophisticated than Leave it to Beaver and My Three Sons (think about what you're required to keep track of in the former). And it's certainly a hike, to say the least, from games like Grand Theft Auto and BioShock all the way back to Asteroids and Pong.

But too much of anything can be harmful. If I read over-frequently and without breaks I may well compromise my eyesight and end up needing glasses. Too much vitamin A (carrots) can increase fracture risk, and too much vitamin E (vegetable oil, lotion) can increase your chance of dying younger in general. It doesn't mean that reading and vitamins are inherently bad for you.

Curiously, only computer games significantly reduced slow-wave sleep (helps consolidate "factual" memory) and harmed verbal memory performance. It also took longer for computer game players to fall asleep, at which point they entered into intermediary "stage 2" sleep more often. Spatial and procedural memory processing tend to occur in "stage 5" or REM sleep. In short, the study essentially concludes that playing computer games excessively actually harms verbal and other types of memory performance by affecting sleep patterns designed to re-calibrate the brain.

How much is too much? Like anything, it almost certainly depends on individuals, and as well, I imagine, the type of game. From the abstract, the study doesn't appear to break performance down by game type or genre, which begs the question of how a marathon Civilization session might compare to sleepless nights playing World of Warcraft or a thematically trite platformer like Sonic or Mario.

I always think of Harvey Steiman here, who once said "Everything in moderation -- including moderation."

Nintendo Wii Lead Narrows Over PS3

For four consecutive months, the PlayStation 3 has been catching up with the Nintendo Wii in Japan, according to game magazine publisher Enterbrain. While the Wii still outsold the PS3 2-to-1 in October (110,415 vs. 47,183), monthly sales of PS3 units continue to rise notably, up from a 6-to-1 ratio in Japan in June.

Most of the Wii's sales compression is attributable to a monthly decline in Wii sales, though PlayStation 3 sales have been gradually increasing. For the week ending October 21, VG Chartz shows a 40% weekly increase in PS3 sales (versus 25% for the Wii) though the only three PS3 games in the Japanese "Top 50" are Lair (#17), Oblivion (#39), and Everybody's Golf 5 (#48).

Bringing up the tail? The Xbox 360 with just 18,717 units sold in Japan for the same four week October period. The only "Top 50" Xbox 360 title is Beautiful Katamari (#7).

Game Reviews Aren't All That's Broken

Every couple months some random writer lifts his or her head up long enough to sort of glow half-illuminated in the noisy digital ether and tap out a more or less coherent rant about the state of game reviews, often perhaps understandably forgetting or flat out ignoring how often and over-thoroughly said rants have been done (beaten, flogged) to death before.

Kotaku ran such a piece yesterday which commits at least one of the errors it rails against (being unintentionally condescending -- see the first paragraph) but otherwise makes some good points, even if they're well worn.

Why score "X out of" anything, 5, 10, 100, etc. if you're not willing to hand out a "perfect" score? Isn't it broadly the consumer's fault for perpetuating the methodological status quo with online clicks and subscription dollars? Aren't sites like GameSpot and IGN and GameSpy, which tend to engage in template style reviews, i.e. graphics, controls, difficulty, replay value (carrots, celery, milk, pampers, etc.) just perpetuating an adolescent techno-geek fantasy that games are merely consumables?

Good questions, even if they've been raised many times before, and I'll tip my hat to Kotaku for using its reach to relay the message.

Aw, what the heck. A few of my own additions to the "What's wrong with game reviews?" list, granting that they're just as dead-horse-beaten as the rest.

1. Game score aggregators. These guys do the darnedest things. They assign a score to text that has none based on their internal assessor's "feel" for the review's tone. They illogically average together numbers from different scales to get a single "lump" number. They can't accommodate cases where writers deliver different copy of a game review to more than one publisher. And while this next isn't the aggregators' fault, public relations firms -- increasingly used by game publishers -- are also increasingly blacklisting publications whose scoring systems don't integrate with the "lump" score "anything less than 50% is irredeemably awful" approach.

2. Rookies. There's nothing axiomatic about learning to write competently, but you could do worse than pick up a copy of Strunk & White's The Elements of Style, and if you're thinking about news writing, The AP Stylebook. Then don't, and I repeat do not read current game reviews to find your voice. Chances are your writing will end up poorer. Instead, pick up a copy of The New Yorker or The Atlantic Monthly and check out how the pros do it. Read outside your little box, and don't assume everything's one way or the highway. The idea that games have some kind of new or specialized grammar (i.e. the very tired, very sad so-called "new games journalism" fad) is just stupid. They don't. Get over it.

3. Negligent editors. Editor, from the Latin 'edit' meaning 'produced, put forth'. Editors generally speaking own final copy of a piece, whether they've tweaked it or no, and at minimum share responsibility for something's compositional integrity. Always remember, editors are the firewall, or supposed to be anyway. If your ire is focused on a writer for something said or the way something's been written or presented, you're only aiming at half the target.

And so on. If there's a problem with the way criticism in this biz trickles down, it's that gamers and game critics tend to view themselves as if their medium exists in some sort of special cultural "blind" zone. They don't seem to be entirely cognizant of the fact that many of the criticisms leveled here apply pretty well anywhere, now more than ever with the proliferation of fan sites (some, it's worth adding, doing much better work in my opinion than several of the so-called "pro" establishments).

Manhunt 2 Requires "The Same Actions it Would Take to Stab Somebody"

Remember the days when a kunai-tipped rope and a throaty "Get over here!" in Midway's Mortal Kombat could stir up anti-violence loons like pigeons flocking to bread crumbs? Here we go again with Manhunt 2, Rockstar's just-released "killer" action game for the Wii, PSP, and PlayStation 2.

"The actions, you have to actually stab the person, so you are doing the same actions it would take to stab somebody," says one parent to a WATE reporter in Knoxville, Tennessee. "If kids do that at an early age, it would have an effect on them."

The same action if would take to stab somebody? Really? Are we still hung up on "mimicry" in a goofily Platonic sense, where the more it looks like the real thing the more intuitively affective it's supposed to be?

Where all the science suggests otherwise, are we seriously worried that our kids holding plastic guns in front of a TV screen are somehow more susceptible to suggestive violence than when they're running around outside wearing cowboy hats or helmets and slinging little plastic six-shooters or swords and not uncommonly physically using them on each other?

Come on.

In related news, it seems a group of hackers has managed to unlock intentionally disabled content by tweaking Manhunt 2's initialization files on the PSP edition, ostensibly freeing up the content that elicited an Adults Only rating from the ERSB. No doubt it's just a matter of time before the ESRB reengages its AO rating for the same dubious reasons it slapped Bethesda's Oblivion with a Mature rating after a hacker modified the game in a way that allowed player to disrobe in-game characters -- wait and see.

In principle, you can't blame Rockstar or Bethesda for including but locking out potentially questionable content, can you? When you buy something, you enter into an implied contract with the seller based on the seller's terms of use. Much as I personally loathe guns, is it Smith & Wesson's fault when someone leaves their gun case unlocked and the kiddies decide to play cops and robbers with live bullets?

Just because some tinkerer makes it possible to use something in a way it wasn't intended doesn't make the seller culpable. You certainly don't have to engage the nudity tweak to play Oblivion (in fact it requires a certain amount of specialized knowledge), just like you don't have to eat all that fast food or candy or ice cream. If you don't want your kids putting certain kinds of images in their heads, pay attention to what they're playing for the same reason you're supposed to be monitoring what kinds of food they put in their mouths. What's complicated about that?

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, it used to be called "taking responsibility."

[Thanks, GamePolitics]