The Disappearing Appeal of XBox Gaming

So are we watching the resurgence of a former champion in Sony?


Or a total collapse of another company in the gaming industry in Microsoft?

It is like the eternal sports question, is it a comeback or is it a collapse?


Sony’s return to prominence has been happening for the past couple of years, as the PS3 has cranked out a variety of gems and allowed itself to leapfrog the Xbox 360 into second place in the seventh generation market share. Although the Vita is still a mess, the PS3 has remained relevant, and the former ugly image associated with Sony is slowly drifting away.


On the other hand: Microsoft is in major trouble.


They may not even see it yet.


The 360 hasn’t come up with a major original hit in quite some time. The Halo appeal has drifted, the other major Microsoft franchises has seemingly disappeared, third-party games are beginning to do better on the PS3, and Japan is still positively avoiding the company like the plague (The 360 has already been outsold by the Vita in lifetime sales over in the Japanese gamespace). But none of this can possibly prepare you for the potential backlash of the Xbox One.



Required Online.



Think about this for a second. They want your Xbox One to be online---at least once a day or your game will experience issues. So this pretty much ruins your Xbox experience if you are overseas fighting, if you are in a cruise ship, if you are on vacation in a hotel, in an area with very poor online reception, in an area that had just been hit by a disaster, or if you had just moved to a new place and await for cable to arrive. There are dozens of other scenarios in which this new requirement would make for gaming to become an absolute chore on the new Microsoft machine, but then I would drift off-topic.


And wait…what if Microsoft’s servers went down?

What if Xbox Live got attacked?


The fact is this: Microsoft is alienating its entire audience and fanbase: hardcore and casual. Casual gamers would have absolutely no idea how to maneuver around life with the Xbox One restricting your damn game from playing if it didn’t touch the internet in 24 hours, and the hardcore most likely won’t appreciate the fact that you can’t share the games at launch, can’t re-sell the games at launch (and possibly beyond), you have to wait 30 days just to share certain content with someone else, and can’t even play Xbox 360 games in this new machine.


Gaming is supposed to be simple.
Gaming is supposed to unite people together.


United gaming is essential, which is why the SNES remains one of the best systems ever (the slew of excellent 2-player games), why the N64 survived (Became the ultimate party system until the invention of the Xbox Live), why the PS2 won the war while the Gamecube faltered (Online gaming was best here, and Nintendo didn’t embrace the internet—leading to a last-place finish), why the Nintendo Wii was at one point on pace to shatter every sales record known to man (I had pretty much declared the Wii the winner two years ago because of how freakin' big a sales lead it had) and why the Xbox 360 was able to survive in 1st/2nd for so long with the weakest 1st-party lineup (Xbox Live was wonderful in recent years).


Connectivity is what makes Microsoft’s systems—why on Earth would you damage this?

Xbox Live is usually synonymous with good online gaming. All we want is a next-generation system with good games, good third-party support, and good online capabilities. It is such a simple formula. Nintendo doesn’t follow this because they don’t have the Sony/Microsoft budget so they do a smoke-and-mirrors technique of trying to change the rules. The Playstation 3 learned that great games push great hardware sales. The Last of Us is the latest example of Sony truly digging deep into its first-party weapons to continue the positive upswing.

It is so obscenely simple. We want games. Games. Games. Games. The WiiU would not have been such a disaster if it weren't for the total lack of games. No television/gaming connections, no extra random features, and especially no pointless and irritating restrictions that makes a simple hobby known as gaming become a fight for justifiable expensive entertainment. And what are the chances that with these constraints Microsoft can quietly jack the price of the games themselves? Up to this point, anything is possible.

Microsoft managed to shatter any momentum it could have had at the expense of the flailing Nintendo WiiU and the also-questionable Playstation 4 (Sony, don’t think that I have forgotten that your stance on DRM remains ho-hum). Now, the WiiU doesn’t look that bad because you can actually share the games, while Sony isn’t pushing for the stupid daily online requirement.



Microsoft, you are ridiculous. You lost a potential buyer this year.




And I am pretty sure you are going to lose many more if you continue down this path.

The Bond Villian Syndrome of Sony and Microsoft

Nintendo is like James Bond, a flashy character that's seen better days now he is tied up and inches away from being killed. This is it. The only way to get out of this alive is through other factors beyond his control.






Sony and Microsoft are the Bond villains that have successfully mounted a comeback, successfully had their plan in motion, and now have James Bond on the ropes, inches from his death. All they need to do is pull that one switch. Yet, inexplicably, they delay their death blow, allowing for James Bond to escape.

This is what essentially has happened in the past couple of weeks. Both the Playstation 4 and the XBox One have had their opportunity to unveil their system, and pretty much strip every last ounce of hope from the Nintendo WiiU. Instead, with a series of ridiculous decisions we now find ourselves seeing some hope in Nintendo---while uncertainty faces the gamers that want the next-gen systems but aren't sure how much they have to actually sacrifice.

Let's start with the issue of Backwards Compatibility: there is none. Sony's success with the PS2 as well as the only reason the PS3 had any playing time can be attributed to the ability to play games from the past. The sixth generation saw the PS2 as the only backwards compatible machine as it overtook the Gamecube, the XBox, and the Dreamcast quite easily. The PS3 had an extremely rough start because of its pure lack of games--but with the ability to play PS2 games (at first, not later in the seventh generation) definitely helped a little.

And then there's the XBox One, also not backwards compatible. Now, we have layers of advancements in gaming and production technology and we still can't find a way to play older games? What about downloadable games from the PS3 and XBox 360 days? What happens to those? Well, Microsoft and Sony are still a little iffy on the subject. The answers remained mixed.

And now there's the DRM issue. Nintendo not only has the ability to play Wii games (and games even older, but that feature remains extremely limited and extremely far from reaching its potential) but it does not believe in the DRM technique. The DRM technique is basically charging people money for using someone else's video game----that or not even have the chance to play it unless you buy your own copy or play it over at someone elses' house. Once again, Sony and Microsoft were mum about the issue.

So now begs the statement: why? Why? Why? Why?

Sony, you had it. You are riding so much momentum it looks like a tsunami sometimes. And yet, somehow, you not only manage to minimize excitement of the PS4, but gave the WiiU a good shot. Why on earth did you eliminate backwards compatibility? The PS3 had an amazing underrated arsenal of games that gamers realized only way too late and too deep into the lifecycle. You could have continued sales of PS3 games as well as PS4 games if you had made the smallest of efforts and allowed us to reach into the past. And remaining quiet about the DRM is issue is quite scary.

Microsoft, you also blew it. Your conference came off as company that wants to do everything, which means focusing less on games and gamers. Did gamers really want to hear about the exclusive content of the NFL? Not really. And now you are required to be online at least once a day? Required online connectivity with the Kinect at the helm is a hacker's dream come true, not to mention a conspiracy theorists' nightmare. So instead of us being excited for the upcoming E3, we are now worried about what we might see: Required online, potential DRM features, no backwards compatibility, and a strong potential for a heavy price tag at launch.



Nintendo, you escaped, for now. It is up to you to take advantage of the small breathing room that has just occurred.

Why Gran Turismo 6 Needs to be a PS4 Launch Title

The Playstation 4 is on a good start with a successful conference, a successful lineup, and good momentum coming from the rebound of the Playstation 3. Let’s not bring up the Vita-----quite possibly ever. What the PS4 needs is that killer launch title that can get the system going to a great start. Against popular opinion, one game can turn a system around. Donkey Kong Country allowed for the SNES to win the war, Final Fantasy 7 catapulted the original Playstation to new heights, Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow gave the Game Boy new life, Wii Sports jump-started the mammoth success of the Wii, and lastly we have Ocarina of Time 3D arguably giving the 3DS its first true breath of life back in the summer of 2011.

So all Sony needs to go is guarantee a good, good launch title.




Gran Turismo 6 must be that game.


GT6 was announced recently to become a PS3 game, continuing the trend that each Playstation needs 2 GT games. This racing sim franchise is the most successful in all of gaming, even with Forza nipping into its sales in recent years. Gran Turismo is the perfect game to showcase what Sony’s machines are capable of. Gran Turismo 2 through 5 were games that always tested the hardware and set the benchmark as to the way racing games should look, sound, and feel. GT3 remains in my opinion one of the best racing games of all-time---ranking way up there with Forza 3, and the underrated gems of Excitebike 64, Mario Kart 64 and (especially underrated) Burnout 3.

So why is part 6 just a PS3 title this year? They should pull a Twilight Princess and release it on both the current platform and the future platform to reach out to a wider audience and in order to truly flash the specs on the PS4. It only makes too much sense. When Twilight Princess pulled off the same technique, it became part of the 2006 launch of the Wii while becoming the swansong of the Nintendo Gamecube. It sold a total of 7 million copies---most of it coming from the newer system.

With the already-established base of 77 million, Gran Turismo 6 for the PS3 is an absolute no-brainer. GT5 itself sold 10 million copies, and the prologue sold 5 million to add to that. But in order to really get the gamers excited about the next big thing, GT6 should also coincide as a launch title. Some may argue that putting it on both systems would kill sales of the PS4, but the truth is we all know the PS4 is going to be expensive right off the bat so why not reward owners of the PS3 (whom have been through a roller coaster of emotions these past few years) with the same game? GT6 for both the PS3 and PS4 would be perfect because that way owners that aren’t ready to enter the eighth generation of gaming can still get their quality racing simulating fix.

Sony, it is very simple: your top franchise deserves to be on multiple systems, and Gran Turismo 6 most definitely should become a launch title.