Kojima’s Comments on MGS4

 

I must admit Hideo Kojima recent comments on Metal Gear Solid 4 confused me a little. For those who don’t know Hideo Kojima is the creator of Metal Gear and in a recent interview with Edge magazine he displayed his disappointment with the most recent game in the series. Now of course one could take this to be modesty; a bit of a perfectionist who feels he could have done better. In fact I think is definitely true to some extent.

  However what puzzled me was how he refereed to the PS3. He stated that when the game was first displayed at TGS the PS3 was a ‘dream machine’ but as time went on his implication seemed to be that he and his team had overestimated the power of the PS3 resulting in a game below his original expectations. He also claimed his team were pushing the Cell Processor to its limit, which I just cannot believe considering how powerful and future proof  Sony claim this multi -core little beauty to be. I suppose this could just be a throw away interview and I should wait till the game is released before passing any serious judgement but just… why on earth would someone say this before release? Unless your trying to make a point?

Meh, I need more coffee…

http://kotaku.com/381412/kojima-disappointed-with-metal-gear-solid-4

Innovation vs Reinvention

Ok so the title is probably a little too dramatic for what I’m going to talk about but here goes.  In recent weeks there has been debate on the net regarding developer comments made towards the Xbox 360’s Live Arcade platform.

  These comments suggest that the platform that was originally supposed to allow small time publishers to release titles on the 360 has been taken over by the  big cooperate companies and as such arcade has turned into a platform for rehashes of old games.  Further criticisms were aimed that the majority of remakes were in fact just ports and nowhere near the level of Ubisoft’s Prince of Perisa remake.

  Of course the flip of the coin is that many fans of arcade are often screaming out for their favourite old titles to be brought back with slight improvements like multiplayer. And of course  Microsoft being the company that it is, is going to try and meet demand of its customers.

People aren’t really going to know the names of small arcade games before their released are they? My standpoint is why can’t we have both? Why can’t we have big publishers using licences to bring the games everyone wants to the platform while small time publishers make fresh new games good enough to be on the service. I mean if you just look at Microsoft as just a bloodthirsty  company their not going to turn down a potential big hit just because it came from a smaller developer are they? If anything that would mean they have potentially more leverage in negotiations. As a young programmer I feel if I created a game that was genuinely good and suited to the arcade platform I  would be confident of getting it on live arcade. Why would Microsoft turn away potential revenue that isn’t going to cost them anything?

I guess the point of this post is I don’t see the problem. So if you didn’t want to read the above just read this paragraph.  

PS3 DualShock Controllers..

The new rumble controllers for the PS3 will be arriving in the US within the next couple of weeks. Least anyone forget the saga it took to get ‘rumble’ on the PS3 following the lawsuit by Immersion in 2002 on grounds of patent infringement. While Microsoft shrewdly chose to settle out of court Sony’s decision to defend left them with $82 million to pay for the 7 years they had been using the rumble technology previous. In addition to this they were no longer allowed to sell any ‘rumble controllers’ for any of their 3 consoles despite an appeal attempt. Sony tried to play this off as a ‘we have outgrown rumble’ marketing ploy, before making a deal with Immersion to gain the rights to include that horribly ancient technology for their net-Gen console. Something their rivals had from the start.

   I will be curious to see sale figures for this controller assuming Sony do not offer to trade in old controllers for free (and I can’t imagine the loss for doing that) as will anyone really want to spend $50 on a new controller? I could make a there’s’ certainly no games buy’ joke here but I’m going to rise above it.