Portable gaming thoughts, and I hate the NGP acronym.
By vidiot 14 Comments
Glass Boxes
Have you looked at an original GameBoy recently? No, not the Gameboy pocket, or another semi-modern color iteration. I'm talking about the original Gameboy: The one you can knock someone out with.
They were also, and I'm paraphrasing my reaction here, "Farking huge!"
What was perhaps most interesting was not the devices themselves, but my reaction that they seemed foreign. Perhaps I have discovered a concept in human nature, where anything placed in a glass box is rendered as an alien artifact, but my own personal reaction superseded this idea. (If anyone can randomly take things they own and place them in a glass box, and see how they're own perception of said object/person changes to said individual, please contact me so I can take all credit for this idea.)
The GameBoy was not some mysterious device for me. It was a freaking GameBoy. I played with one for years. Same thing with the GameGear, a device that out-side of it's ludicrous battery-life, wasn't all that bad of a device in retrospect.
Yet here I was. My DS was somewhere in my pocket, next to my phone. I took it for granted. While I began to reminisce about the time's I had with the GameBoy, my mind pondered about how far we had come.
Back to the future
Enough of that, back to reality: What a strange cornucopia of gaming news that has happened this past week, that everyone knew was going to happen.
The amount of time and effort involved in making new hardware for companies, kinda defeats the usual blanket silence regarding what the next platform is going to be. You then compound stuff like, the internet, and you have situations with anonymous individuals leaking full-blown prototype shots of said hardware. Or in the case of the PSP2, developers flat-out stating not only it's existence, but certain key-features with it's hardware.
Watching the PSP2's debut was an interesting experience to say the least.
I hate the name of the prototype. "NGP". Certain acronyms annoy me, because I find that saying " Blops" out-loud sounds like I'm referencing some-form of transmitted disease. I don't like NGP for another reason, specifically it's use of "Next-Generation" in it's title.
Yes, I understand that it's a prototype/not finalized name. Other systems and hardware go under a myriad of different monikers and names prior to release.
NGP just seems lazy. It reanimates memories of a time a few years into the current console generation, and listening to how people would still refer to the current generation of systems as "Next Generation". As if though HD consoles were stuck in some time-warp, and we were incapable of calling something current....current...and had to keep referring to modern games as some unobtainable concept that had yet to be shown to the world.
As of now there are too many things about this device that I don't like, but perhaps more importantly: Don't understand.
Everything will become more clear in the upcoming months. Right off the bat the idea of having touch capabilities on the back of the device confuses me. Playing an intense game on-the-go can become difficult enough with out-side stimuli, now you want me to feel the back of this thing? I get the impression we will be seeing tons of funny youtube video montages, of people feeling up the back of this device in a creepy manner. It's one of those things we will understand when we finally get a-hold of the device ourselves...
That didn't sound right...I didn't...I...uh....with the previous sentence...err...
The Japan factor
Do you know what I took away from the entire show this week? That Japan might be in a bit of trouble. This part is admittedly a bit more muddled, and the amount of variables are off the charts to make a concrete statement: But my level of concern for Japanese game development, that silent barometer that resides silently within many of us, began to rise a bit with me. "A hand-held, with PS3 capabilities and graphical fidelity!!!"
That sounds great right? Right? It's going to have trophies too! MMMM! Delicious trophies!
A combination of archaic development management, coupled with simply the high cost of producing these games, has hit Japan's once thriving industry hard. I'm talking in broad generalizations here, the exact make-up of what's happening in Japan is far more complex for one blog to illustrate entirely. What has happened in the last few years has been a resurgence in portable games, and of course, the Wii.
Looking for a new cool JRPG? It's probably on the DS, or the PSP.
While the next few sentences are pure personal dribble: It almost feels, for me at least, that Japanese game development has become terrified of HD gaming in general. It feels like they are almost, hiding out in the portable market. Weathering the storm. I don't take that much umbrage with them, it makes sense that they're focus is just to survive.
Also, Japanese games love Monster Hunter. Can't blame them, even if I don't understand it.
Valkyria Chronicles was probably my personal favorite game of 2008. Yet here I am two years later, not playing the sequel on the PS3, but on the PSP. This isn't an absolute example of what's happening everywhere within Japanese game development. Just pointing out a trend, a philosophy that I feel the PSP2 threatens.
To be fair, who knows the exact quality of these games. Although if Sony is pushing this device with it's graphical fidelity as it's top billing, one has to take notice. Based on the current speculation, one can argue: If Japanese game development can't comprehend the costs of current generation games, how will they be able to make games for this device? Again, I'm talking with sweep generalizations (and speculation), but there is a pause for alarm here.
Watching the "games" that were on display for PSP2, it felt like I was watching a cornucopia of art assets being ported over. You ported over character models from Metal Gear and Yakuza! That's awesome!
What else do you got? Anything new? Uh...This doesn't bode well.
The bigger news? How about Epic's Mark Rein jumping up and down like a hyper child binging on candy, because Unreal 3 runs fantastic on it?
Rein calls the NGP a "pretty huge deal" for not just Playstation fans, but gamers.
How much of a deal is it? Pretty huge.
That obviously vague statement makes me wonder the capabilities of where this device can take us. Western portable gaming (outside of cellphones and Iphone devices.), isn't exactly very prominent. I'm not talking about the trillions that Angry Birds has made, just talking about who leads software sales on PSP and the DS. Can this be the beginning, of the rise of big budget western portable game development?
History
Which brings me back to the original PSP....and the glass display box.
The Game Gear sits alongside the GameBoy. The Gameboy was technically inferior to the Game Gear. The Nomad was literally a portable variation of the Mega Drive/Genesis, which at the time wasn't exactly a dead platform. Both were crushed by Nintendo's little portable device, that didn't get the ability to display color until 1998. A year after Sega stopped supporting the Game Gear.
While Sega's collapse is one that someone could write volumes of books about, it does make one still pause and wonder...
...Does powerful hardware command the same form of dominance in the portable market?
The PSP was hailed at the time as a portable device able to render PS2 quality games, but how exactly did that help in the long run? As an owner of both the DS and the PSP, I would be lying if I said my PSP got the most play-time. Every once in a while, a PSP game would floor me, make me upset and wonder why other developers are not trying to upstage what I'm currently playing at the time.
Instead of diving head-long into praise, I find myself holding back. Contrary to another Sony press release, I feel like I've been down this road before too many times. Not only that, new-found uncertainty about what's in development now bothers me. Are we on the verge of finally bridging the gap between these different platforms? Or are we perhaps forgetting, that Angry Birds doesn't necessarily need Unreal 3 to be successful.
Stick in what's probably going to be a very draconian closed system with how you play these games, because of the current PS3 hacking controversy...
Well...I wish Sony luck...I don't normally pick up consoles when they immediately launch...But at least I'm enthusiastic about the next big thing.
More apprehension than excitement. :/