Introduction

People fear the unknown. When new ideas and technologies are first revealed to the world many people are unsure what to consider fact and what to consider empty promises. This is clearly evident in the video game industry with new technologies and ideas being revealed everyday.

Currently, the big three (Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo) are the kings of the video game industry. When it comes to home consoles, no one else compares. For the past decade all three of those companies have been dictating the new technology gamers expierence with video game consoles.

Now though things have changed because of a small company called OnLive. While you probably know about OnLive and all it’s features, you probably have your fair amount of doubt. One thing gamers must give them credit for is the fact that they have now pushed the big-three to the wall and called them out.

Digital Distribution a Generation Early

OnLive’s digital distribution plan shocked the industry with it’s reveal at GDC because the technology they were revealing to the world was consider years ahead of it’s time. How could a small upstart company create technology that blows by that of major corporations Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo? Well thats what OnLive has ben able to do.

The Technology Does Work

Reviews from GDC have come in and so far they have been nothing but positive. The ability to stream high quality PC games in the blink of an eye will not only revolutionize the console industry, but also reinvigorate PC gaming. This technology allows a new level of freedom that gamers have yet to see. They can play high end games on a easy to travel with micro-console, or on any PC/Mac that has the OnLive program downloaded on. Not only is the technology going to eliminate the need for discs, but will also allow gamers to play high quality games where they want and when they want.

The Big-Three Dropped the Ball

When OnLive launches this winter at a lower price point than any of the other consoles they will have their place in the market, but what will really be interesting about it’s release is how complacent the big three have become with their hardware and software. All three of them are multi-billion dollar companies, but aren’t nearly capable of achieving what OnLive is promising at the moment. Currently it takes far too long for gamers to download DLC or small games on Xbox Live and Playstation Network, forget about streaming full length high quality games.

Hopefully with the reveal and eventual release of OnLive the hardware giants will take notice, and begin to step up their game. Instead of growing complacent with their current progress in hardware, instead they will step up their game. OnLive will revolutionize the way we buy and play games. Who would have thought that it would start at company we had no idea about 3 weeks ago?

Upon the release of the latest weekly hardware and software sales, which had Killzone 2 in the number 20 spot, I decided to engage in a little mathematical research of my own. As it turns out, only 6% of PS3 owners have purchased Killzone 2. (1,320,000/21,550,000) As all of you armchair statisticians are aware of, numbers mean nothing unless you have something to compare them to. Therefore, I went over to compare these numbers with the percentage of Xbox 360 owners that picked up Halo 3 and Gears of War 2. The results are shocking.

As it turns out, 23%(6,950,000/29,760,000) of Xbox 360 owners have purchased Gears of War 2 and 31% have purchased Halo 3. So the question is this; how does the most hyped game for the system only manage to attract 6% of the user base? There will no doubt be a couple of explanations for this. First, one could argue that the game has just come out a month ago, therefore it takes time for the amount of owners to grow. This argument fails being that as the amount of KZ2 owners grow, the amount of the install base also grows, therefore the percentage stays the same. This could be reversed if KZ2 sales started to grow exponentially, but as we understand in the videogame industry games tend to sell fast initially but tail off later on. Of course Sony marketing could be the culprit, but this has been discussed ad nauseum so I won’t go there. Why is it that this game hasn’t attracted the same percentage of the audience as the other titles listed? Any other thoughts besides the usual are more than welcome.

**Source vgchartz.com**
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PSN ID: ph8al
Gamertag: ph8al

Da Lockdown Podcast
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It appears director Katsuhiro Harada has change his mind about the 360 version of Tekken 6 being inferior to the PS3 version. He states, ”We want to dispel any fears that fans might have that the 360 version will be inferior [to the PS3 version],” said Harada. “We are making progress every day and we’re quite confident.”

Seeing that Tekken 6 was build around the PS3’s architecture, this is kind of a hard statement to believe. Mr. Harada also states, ”As far as [the PS3's] potential goes, this is something we really noticed when developing Bloodline Rebellion. In the Tekken Project, when we talk about dividing the processing we say to “SPU it”. If you use the SPU’s capabilities properly and optimize the code accordingly you can pull a lot out of the hardware.”

Since the developing team for the Tekken 6 project are trying to make both games identical, let’s just hope the PS3 version of game doesn’t have to scale down because of the 360.

Sources:

http://www.nowgamer.com/news/367/tekken-6-qampa

For the first time Konami has released some astonishing screenshots of the upcoming movie based video game title SAW. Apparently Konami are working real hard on this game and want to make it just like the movie and also want there fans to be suprised, the game is apparently running on unreal engine 3. Autumn 2009 is the released date, screenshots below.

Nextgamer

Interested in Platinum Games upcoming action title, Bayonetta? Well, if you are you should check out the newly launched blog for the game. The first post, which was posted today, was written by the games developer, Hideki Kamiya. He talks about what he wishes to accomplish in the game, and how he hopes this game revloutionizes the industry like his past projects.

“With Bayonetta, we would hate for someone to think it is a heartwarming tale and then buy the game to discover it is really a sadistically hard game (I hope?) where you play as a witch who laughs as she destroys angelic enemies.”

To read Kamiya’s full post and check out the entire blog, hit the link:

http://platinumgames.com/2009/04/01/greetings/

Rock Band Unplugged, LittleBigPlanet and MotorStorm are a few of the big PSP releases for 2009 recently announced, but as much of 50-60% of the handheld’s lineup for just this year still remains a secret, Sony Computer Entertainment America’s director of hardware marketing John Koller told GameSpot in an interview today.

“The many announcements we made on the software side for PSP were inclusive of that tremendous sales growth that we’ve seen on PSP,” said Koller. “But they were also representative of the fact that we went out and talked to publishers about what sells best on PSP and how to craft their business model accordingly. Many of them had taken a bit of a scattershot approach and done a lot of ports and titles that just weren’t going to sell very well on PSP.”

Koller claims PSP games in 2009 and beyond will not suffer from the same issues as they did in the past, and we’ll start to hear more about the other half of the PSP’s still unrevealed software lineup starting at E3 in June.

“There’s a lot of announcements coming up to E3 and particularly at E3,” Koller told GameSpot. “There’s probably 50-60 percent of the lineup for the year that has not been announced and there’s some big titles coming. So there’s a lot of excitement on PSP.”

SOURCE: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3173560

MY THOUGHTS:

Game looks like it has potential, but you still gotta be hesitant on it. Hopefully these guys live up to their promises of making a great comic book game. Well see what happens, but who wouldn’t want to play as a badass Wolverine?

kotaku

Crysis developer Crytek reveals that they have done research into providing streaming game services like the ones Onlive is promising, only to conclude that the internet wouldn’t be ready for them until at least 2013.

According to Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli, the company began research the potential of a service that allowed games played on high-end servers to be controlled remotely via an internet connection back in 2005, only to stop in 2007, having determined that such a service wasn’t feasible yet.

“We saw that by 2013 – 2015 with the development of bandwidths and household connections worldwide that it might become more viable then…It doesn’t take a lot to make a video-based renderer, but what you need is the right infrastructure that is beyond the technology we have, it’s more like cable net providers and communication networks. They have to provide fast bandwidths and connectivity in order to allow such technology to excel. So as it was dependent on somebody else, we decided to wait.”

This was actually my primary concern when I first heard about the Onlive service. Having watched my supposedly stable internet connection have to reset itself at least three times while streaming a Netflix movie to my Xbox 360, my faith in streaming even something as simple as keyboard and mouse commands is a bit shaken, even with Steve Perlman of Onlive’s assurances.

Despite his own company’s conclusions, Yerli wants to see Onlive succeed.

“I want to see it myself. I don’t want to say it’s either ‘top or flop’. I hope it works for them because it could improve gamers lives. The technology of video-based rendering is not actually a very new concept but they do some things that others didn’t do before so it will be interesting to see.”