Don Mattrick Leaves Microsoft

Yes folks, in a move that's sure to break the hearts of so many, Don Mattrick, who succeeded Peter Moore in leading the Xbox division of Microsoft, has quit to pursue a job with Zynga.

While in past years my gripes with Mattrick would have been rather unimportant on the grand scale, based mostly around the homogenization of games development at Microsoft Studios, the fact that he was head of the division when they tried to push forth with an awful DRM platform which would have mostly fucked over the Xbox customer base, all the while displaying incredible arrogance and condescension, leads me without any hesitation to say that he shouldn't let the door hit him in the ass on his way out of Redmond.

So farewell to you Mr. Mattrick, you won't be missed.

Gamers: FLAWLESS VICTORY!!

Today Microsoft shocked me and most everyone else by posting the following on Xbox.com: 

"Last week at E3, the excitement, creativity and future of our industry was on display for a global audience.

For us, the future comes in the form of Xbox One, a system designed to be the best place to play games this year and for many years to come. As is our heritage with Xbox, we designed a system that could take full advantage of advances in technology in order to deliver a breakthrough in game play and entertainment. We imagined a new set of benefits such as easier roaming, family sharing, and new ways to try and buy games. We believe in the benefits of a connected, digital future.

Since unveiling our plans for Xbox One, my team and I have heard directly from many of you, read your comments and listened to your feedback. I would like to take the opportunity today to thank you for your assistance in helping us to reshape the future of Xbox One.

You told us how much you loved the flexibility you have today with games delivered on disc. The ability to lend, share, and resell these games at your discretion is of incredible importance to you. Also important to you is the freedom to play offline, for any length of time, anywhere in the world. 

So, today I am announcing the following changes to Xbox One and how you can play, share, lend, and resell your games exactly as you do today on Xbox 360. Here is what that means: 

An internet connection will not be required to play offline Xbox One games – After a one-time system set-up with a new Xbox One, you can play any disc based game without ever connecting online again. There is no 24 hour connection requirement and you can take your Xbox One anywhere you want and play your games, just like on Xbox 360. 

Trade-in, lend, resell, gift, and rent disc based games just like you do today – There will be no limitations to using and sharing games, it will work just as it does today on Xbox 360. 

In addition to buying a disc from a retailer, you can also download games from Xbox Live on day of release. If you choose to download your games, you will be able to play them offline just like you do today. Xbox One games will be playable on any Xbox One console -- there will be no regional restrictions. 

These changes will impact some of the scenarios we previously announced for Xbox One. The sharing of games will work as it does today, you will simply share the disc. Downloaded titles cannot be shared or resold. Also, similar to today, playing disc based games will require that the disc be in the tray. 

We appreciate your passion, support and willingness to challenge the assumptions of digital licensing and connectivity. While we believe that the majority of people will play games online and access the cloud for both games and entertainment, we will give consumers the choice of both physical and digital content. We have listened and we have heard loud and clear from your feedback that you want the best of both worlds. 

Thank you again for your candid feedback. Our team remains committed to listening, taking feedback and delivering a great product for you later this year"

 This news is awesome for everyone! The customers have made themselves heard and forced a behemoth to bend to their will. To all those who participated in the social media campaigns #PS4NoDRM and #XboxOneNoDRM, to all those who crashed the comments sections of Xbox videos so hard that MS had to shut off the comments completely, to those who responded to MS's Facebook promotions with ASCII-art middle fingers, to those who spoke with their wallets in pre-orders for non-DRM-hell consoles and spoke with their mouseclicks in online polls that embarassed Microsoft, and to those who created the educational .jpgs warning others about the awful DRM that spread like wildfire across the internet, THANK YOU!

In the face of the industry sycophants like Cliff Bleszinski and Totalbiscuit, who downplayed and/or ridiculed the efforts to fight back with social media campaigns and harsh criticisms, so many stood their ground, refused to give way to the cynicism and mockery and actually made a change. We saw it first when Sony acknowledged the NoDRM campaign and it's creator, NeoGAF's famousmortimer, in their press conference, and now after a few weeks of intense pushback Microsoft has raised the white flag and decided not to fuck it's customers over after all!

Before I close out this celebratory post, allow me to indulge in a moment of pure gloating excess:

 To all the apologists in the industry and games journalism who called the critical voices across the internet a bunch of entitled whiners, who implied that we're backwards troglodytes, that we're spoiled and that we are a loud and unimportant minority who don't amount to anything, all I can say is suck it, suck it hard motherfuckers! While you were willing to bend over and take the loss of first-sale freedoms for whatever petty reason, be it simple fanboyism, blind faith in unproven promises or licking the asses of the industry suits that give you free shit, we became an unavoidable storm that forced the corporate regime in Redmond to adapt or die. You kiss-ass shitlords lost, but the fact that you lost means you get a better and more user-friendly Xbox One than the one you would have gotten had we heeded your terrible advice to calm down and stay quiet. You can thank us later, after you've picked your egos up off the floor, but until then, YOU'RE WELCOME.

History Repeats Itself?

"It’s probably too cheap…"

-Former Sony executive Ken Kutaragi in regards to the announcement of the PS3 launching at $599

"…for consumers to think to themselves ‘I will work more hours to buy one’. We want people to feel that they want it, irrespective of anything else."

– Ken Kutaragi, again, attempting to justify the $599 price tag


"We do not care."

– Kaz Hirai, then President of Sony's gaming division, on the Wii and 360

In 2005 and 2006, Sony, who was riding high on the dominance they had with the Playstation 2, displayed an incredible amount of arrogance in regards to the upcoming Playstation 3. Now that seven years have passed and we've seen Playstation go from the top of the world to circling the drain and then rise up again in an epic comeback, it's interesting to note the parallels between the statements coming from 2006 era Sony executives and those coming from Microsoft execs in 2013.

But don't take my word for it, take theirs at face value:  

"I think it's fair to say there's a segment of consumers at this show in particular who really pay attention, who are very passionate about all aspects of gaming, and that we listen to closely. In a broader set of community, people don't pay attention to a lot of the details. We've seen it in the research, we've seen it in a lot of the data points."

- Xbox Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer Yusuf Mehd, downplaying the outrage over the Xbone as irrelevant since most consumers don't pay attention anyways 

“I don’t think,… I mean we’re really not going to change anything we’ve done with Xbox One. We’re very happy,… did you see the games on stage during our briefing? Did you see the exclusives? I mean we’re really really proud of the system and the games that are coming out. When you look at games like TitanFall,… have you gone through Titanfall yet? Enough said. Conversation over"

-Xbox Live Director Larry Hryb, aka Major Nelson, regarding the disparity in recption at E3 between the Xbone and the PS4 

"Fortunately we have a product for people who aren't able to get some form of connectivity, it's called Xbox 360"

-Don Mattrick, head of Microsoft's Xbox division, responding to concerns of gamers in the military who don't have access to first-world internet much of the time

Notice in both batches of quotes the assumption from the execs that we're all fucking stupid and will buy anything just because they hype it. Notice the levels of condescension in their words and the dismissal of all contrarian concerns.

Sony had to crash pretty hard before they straightened themselves out. The spring after the PS3 launch, when it was selling at or below 80K units a month in the US marketplace and getting trounced by the soon-to-be-retired Gameboy Advance monthly, it almost looked like the PS3 would go the way of the Virtual Boy, the Dreamcast and the Dodo bird.

Now, seven years later, it appears Microsoft is following the 2006 Sony strategy of thinking they can ignore criticism because they will steer us lowly customers to buy into their grand visions and dreams, no matter how often the marketplace trends show that we simply want a box that plays the latest game software, and plays it well, and that alternate functionality is a take it or leave it proposition which is nice to have, but not if it costs us an arm and a leg or our freedom to use the things we buy in the manner of our own choosing.

Take heed Microsoft, you're walking a path that may threaten the entire Xbox division. Many of your investors don't like the entertainment section of Microsoft as is, due to years of losses in the billions of dollars, the history of failed products like Zune and Windows Phone and the low revenue and profit of the division when compared to products like Office.

When Microsoft Can't Control the Questions...

...this is what happens:

One of the most annoying aspects of modern gaming is that most of the outlets for the discussion of and spreading of information oftentimes act like they are arms of the PR departments of the platform holders and largest publishers. We the readers/watchers receive PR approved statements and fluff that don't amount to anything of use except to convince the easily swayed to spend their money foolishly.

Normally when we're discussing the realm of games journalism most would say this is truly a first-world problem, that it's not important to society at large, and that if you want to attack or call-out pseudo-journalism you should focus on things that truly matter such as a mainstream news outlet like Fox News basically acting as a propaganda machine for the Republican Party. I can't say that the people making these types of statements are wrong, because even though it's common knowledge that many of the reviews you see of major AAA game releases on Metacritic are boosted by publishers gifting ethically bankrupt promoters to write  glowing recommendations of products that may not be worth the cost of the optical disc on which they are printed, it's hardly a concern for most when compared to the verbal diarrhea that emanates from the likes of Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly every night under the guise of being a news source.

But alas, this is not a blog about politics and world news, this is a blog about videogames, the videogame industry and the culture that surrounds gaming. So when I see something rotting within this culture I feel the need to call it out and expose it because gaming is not a cheap endeavor and there's not many voices speaking on behalf of the average game purchaser. Between the costs associated with acquiring platforms at $350-$500, new games at $60, used or discounted games still sold at higher prices than any other media form out there, nickel-and-diming downloadable expansions and subscription fees for services, this is one of the most expensive forms of entertainment to keep up with.

Within this environment I find that so much of the so-called gaming journalism space is occupied by sycophants; corporate apologists who grovel at the feet of multimillion-dollar businesses out of fear that offending someone in a boardroom may damage their access to free review games, early reveals and previews and all that free swag that gets sent to reviewers to help insure that a favorable number is attached to the grades that get posted on Metacritic. Sure, there are exceptions to the rule even on well-known sites; Jim Sterling of Destructoid would be one example of someone who doesn't pander to the pitiful corporate hivemind and calls out the absurd when he sees it, but he would definitely be in a minority class for his profession.

Sometimes, in order to buck this sort of incestuous echo-chamber and get through the manufactured PR bullshit, you need an outsider to come in and disrupt the process. You need someone who hasn't been groomed in the corporate newspeak and the accepted rules of compliance who can bring some real questions to the table and press for real answers without just swallowing the load like so many want to do. In that regard, YouTube gaming personality Angry Joe officially wins this E3.

In the weeks leading up to E3 Microsoft, facing an intense level of backlash over their anti-consumer DRM in the Xbone, began to circle their wagons and cancel most of their interviews. Only certain outlets would get access to Microsoft employees, and most of those interviewers would go rather soft on pressing the PR puppets too hard. Angry Joe, an unrestrained wild card, managed to get through and snag some time with Xbox Minister of Propaganda Major Nelson.

Angry Joe may not be the smoothest or most skilled interviewer, but his blunt questioning and choices of topics rattled Major Nelson to the point where he became visibly frustrated and annoyed. For someone who has been giving carefully scripted canned PR bullshit to Xbox customers online and pseudo-journalists and podcast personalities inside the E3 halls, this must have been quite a disruption to his message building. It was clear that Nelson had lost all credibility in sustaining his bullshit at the moment he grabbed the microphone out of Joe's hand in an effort to shut him down with some barely contained alpha-male rage posturing. While most of the journalist types at E3 tried to ride on the fence and were afraid to call out Microsoft's bullshit, often attributing the controversy to "misunderstandings", "bad methods of messaging" and in the worst cases blaming gamers for being a bunch of old-fashioned troglodytes, Angry Joe, unpolished as his delivery may be, managed to get in the way of the constant spinning and do more actual fucking journalism than many of the people who claim they are journalists!

If only the professionals who do this sort of shit for a living could grow a pair and perform their jobs with the same earnest effort and honesty as this modest YouTube personality did, perhaps the amount of bullshit that gets circulated around would be drastically lower than it is now.

Kudos to you, Angry Joe.

Nintendo Burned By EA

Nintendo stormed the world in late 2006 with the Wii, a console that sold faster than any console in history and oftentimes in it's early years sold twice the amount per month that the PS3 and Xbox 360 sold combined. But in recent times Nintendo has struggled to gain any traction, oftentimes seeming like an afterthought and scraping by on sub-40K units a month sales in the United States. Numbers that low aren't just bad, they're shockingly bad and usually only seen by aging platforms on their way to retirement. To say the WiiU is struggling is an understatement, it seems more like a case of being stillborn.

In this sad state of affairs for the Big N, who managed to get a decently positive reception at their E3 Nintendo Direct broadcast based on the exclusive titles Bayonetta 2 and X, the wrap up to their E3 week came with EA making a public statement that's certain to cause some corporate hand-wringing. In an interview with CVG, EA Labels president Frank Gibeau had the following to say:

"Gibeau told Joystiq this week that Nintendo must "sell more boxes" for EA to resume full support for the platform."

Also of mention in the article were a number of annual EA sports games, which typically release on as many devices as humanly possible, passing on WiiU this year. This is not a good sign for Nintendo, who is already facing a continual downward revision of their forecasts, has a stagnating handheld market and has a CEO who will likely be forced to live up to his promise of resigning if Nintendo doesn't make their fiscal year goals. At this stage, with third party games support rapidly drying up and industry trendsetters like EA starting the ball rolling on publishers and developers actively making it public knowledge they are abandoning the platform, I think it's only a matter of whether Iwata remains CEO for the full year or resigns his commission early.

Even though I have been a critic of Nintendo in recent years due to their localization failures, their increasingly repetitive game releases, their long droughts of software support on their platforms and their inability to adapt to modern internet fucntionality in regards to online accounts and transactions, it really is sad to see them in this shape. Nintendo was a vital part of my childhood and it's amazing that the company which brought us so many all-time classics now can't figure out how to stop their recently launched platforms from dying on the vine. With exclusives like X and Bayonetta 2, along with the inevitable high definition Legend of Zelda, it would be nice if they could get in touch with the gaming audience at large again, but it seems they are struggling to even comprehend how to begin.

I suspect EA sounding off on dropping support will be a catalyst for more companies to follow suit and begin removing WiiU from their mutliplatform strategies. Hopefully the Big N can turn the momentum around and regain the support of the third party publishers, if for no other reason than to become a worthwhile opponent to the seemingly increasing juggernaut of Sony's Playstation 4 and help insure that good competition will keep Sony from regaining the incredible arrogance they displayed prior to the PS3 launch.

A Message to Cliff Blezinski: "TOO BAD MOTHERFUCKER!"

 "TOO BAD MOTHERFUCKER!" -Cliff Bleszinski, in a post on NeoGAF responding to a critic

So today on Twitter former Epic games designer Cliff Bleszinski took to defending Microsoft's anti-consumer bullshit in a series of Tweets that demonstrates just how fucked up the thinking is of the people who are part of the AAA Gaemz Industree™ culture.

"You cannot have game and marketing budgets this high while also having used and rental games existing. The numbers do NOT work people."

Bullshit Alert! Bullshit Alert!
The truth is that nearly 70% of the money Gamestop pays out in the US to people selling their disc games is used by those same customers to pay for copies of new games. The truth is that there is no causal evidence showing that used games significantly disrupt the sales of new games enough to cause the financial hemorrhaging the games industry is seeing in recent years. If there were we wouldn't see things like each Call of Duty title stay at the top of NPD's top 10 for months on end while used copies occupy space on Gamestoip's shelves at prices far less than MSRP.

Used games are not responsible for marketing budgets so large that they in many instances double or triple the cost of releasing a big-budget title. Used games are not responsible for developers and publishers deciding to take franchises with a historic sales ceiling of less than 2-3 million units per release, spending $50-$100 million in trying to capture the sales numbers seen only by the likes of Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto or Halo, and then scrambling to find any excuse they can as to why they're in the red when they don't meet sales numbers that were unrealistic to start with.

"The visual fidelity and feature sets we expect from games now come with sky high costs. Assasins Creed games are made by thousands of devs."

I'm sorry, but this is more total bullshit. Graphics are important, yes, but to say you need a team of thousands to make a nice-looking game is ridiculous. Dark Souls is a very pretty game with amazing art direction, and it costs a fraction of what comes out of the mega-publishers like EA. The Witcher 2 was allegedly made for less than $15 million, it's got far superior graphics to any console game of this current generation, and the developer made quite a bit of money selling the game DRM-free and not treating it's paying customers like potential thieves like so many in the industry want to do.

And just what is this about "feature sets we expect"? Nobody asked for multiplayer in the Uncharted games, Bioshock 2, God of War: Ascension or the Tomb Raider reboot, but the developers spent time and money putting it in anyways. Nobody asked for Resident Evil 6 to become even more scripted and "cinematic" on a scale requiring hundreds of developers to create an interactive film, thus leading to Capcom needing a base of more than 6 million unit sales just to break even. Game developers and publishers are in a self-created arms race to outdo the other mega-publishers as they overspend on things they think will get them higher Metacritic ratings and trying to ram their way to the top of the AAA heap. Instead of being smarter, they just spend harder and cast blame on the gamers for being "entitled" or "too demanding".

"Newsflash. This is why you’re seeing free to play and microtransactions everywhere. The disc based day one $60 model is crumbling."

Oh my, did he actually finally say something in his Twitter spree that makes logical sense? Could it be that he's realizing that trying to sell every game imaginable at $60 is not sustainable?

"Those of you telling me “then just lower game budgets” do understand how silly you sound, right?"

Nope, guess I was wrong!
He immediately follows that Tweet that showed hints of mental clarity with this dud. Apparently to Cliff, proud alumni of the AAA Gaemz Industree™, the very idea of spending realistic amounts on a game is unthinkable! We need moar and moar money to sell our homogenized, overpriced and uninspired products! We need moar restrictions on gamer freedoms as we ram in things they didn't ask for! We need moar and moar money to hit 9-10 scores on Metacritic!

Won't someone please think of the poor developers!? For only $60 per non-transferrable disc plus the price of DLC, you too can help keep a starving AAA Gaemz Industree™ developer from having to sell their sports cars! Please, think of the poor CEOs and staff at the mega-publishers, and donate today!

What Bleszinki seems to not grasp is that most of the problems the publishers and developers face are things they imposed on themselves instead of working smarter, analyzing the marketplace conditions better, understanding the actual value their IP holds rather than the inflated value they think it holds and budgeting according to realistic sales and production goals. The industry bigshots instead continue to over-extend themselves trying to hit 10 million in sales for franchises with a maximum ability to appeal to maybe 2-3 million customers. So given all of that, and the notorious efforts of so many industry shills and puppets doing whatever they can to blame and pass the cost off to us, all I can say about the negative reaction to DRM and the financial bleedout seen by AAA Gaemz Industree™ publishers is "TOO BAD MOTHERFUCKER!"

Dead Rising 3: An Example of an Industry Killing Itself

Dead Rising 3, revealed at Monday's Microsoft conference as an Xbone exclusive title, is apparently now becoming a stereotypical case of exactly what is wrong with the modern AAA Gaemz Industree™.

The Dead Rising franchise debuted on the Xbox 360 as a mid-tier arcade-like experience that was built around the simple fun of running around a mall and slaughtering as many zombies as possible with as many objects as possible. There wasn't any real cinematic flair and they weren't trying to make an epic blockbuster, they simply stuck to the tried and true concept of making something that was easy to jump into and have alot of instant fun.

As a mid-tier title Dead Rising was a surprise breakout in the early days of the 360 and was a great game to keep players engaged during the wait before the release of Gears of War. Capcom actually seemed to have their head on straight during this period and scored some decent acclaim and sales on not-quite-AAA titles like Dead Rising and Lost Planet while they worked behind the scenes on their blockbusters like Resident Evil 5.

But as the console generation continued on Capcom seemed to slowly and publicly lose their minds, focusing on trying to turn their mid-tier franchises into massive AAA projects, even when the properties displayed no evidence of having appeal on the levels of Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty. One example is Lost Planet 2, a game they spent way more money on than they should have, a game whose features got homogenized to copy all the leading third person shooters on the market, and a game whose reception was less than stellar and which became an afterthought even though the first game had been a solid cult hit. 

Devil May Cry was another franchise Capcom damaged by focusing on all the wrong things and expecting to sell more than what was reasonable. Stating before the release of Devil May Cry 4 that they wanted to sell 5 million units (a feat in that genre only achieved by God of War II), they seemed disappointed when the game dropped well below that target in spite of the fact that it was the best-selling game in franchise history and showed an upward trend in the series' popularity over the previous installments. Their later response to try and westernize the 5th game by farming it out to Ninja Theory in order to "westernize" the IP and sell even more resulted in a crash in the popularity of the franchise.

As Capcom struggled more and more to stay in everyone's good graces as the quality of their games output steadily declined, they released the multiplatform Dead Rising 2 which debuted on the PS3 and PC as well as the Xbox 360. By all accounts it should have done much better, seeing as it was the sequel to a cult hit, it was releasing on more platforms than the first game and it boasted a more impressive production value and feature set. But the game tanked. Even in multiplatform status it couldn't outdo the sales or the mindshare of the the original Dead Rising and it ended up as another checkmark in a string of failures for Capcom.

So it is with that in mind that I was actually stunned to read this today in regards to the newly announced Dead Rising 3:

"Capcom is pointedly trying to appeal to a wider audience in this latest iteration, saying it's going after the Call of Duty player. Gone is the cartoonish visual design, replaced by a more "realistic" interpretation of a viral apocalypse. That change is part of the maturation. By shifting the art style, the combat can be "more visceral" than in previous versions, with "real gore.""

The above quote came from an article published by Gamespot and it has all the classic alarm points of how the games industry loses it's focus on making fun games and instead begins to travel the path of over-spending and over-extending their expectations into unreasonable realms, thinking that something will sell simply because they spent a great deal of money trying to force it to become the next AAA blockbuster. They think that by making the game look more like Call of Duty it will sell like Call of Duty, seeming to not notice that the more powerful EA has been pursuing Call of Duty relentlessly for years and failing to overtake them because the Call of Duty player wants to play Call of Duty and not a knockoff derivative.

This sort of thinking is a problem across the games industry and why so many of the larger publishers are struggling financially. When you hear Square-Enix complain that 3.5 million units of Tomb Raider selling wasn't enough, even though it was the best selling Tomb Raider of the last decade, you can see the sickness is running deep. Now it's apparent from Capcom's statements on Dead Rising 3 that they are falling into the trap yet again, trying to turn a middle tier B grade franchise which showed decline in popularity, into a massively bloated and expensive gamble. Instead on simply trying to recpature the Dead Rising audience, which is far more realistic for a game such as this, they're now aiming for the stars and will likely fail.

The Calm Before the Storm

 

Today is the final day of relative peace and quiet before E3, and for the first time I'm not excited by the prospect of what I'm going to hear. I should be, considering that we have 2 brand new consoles debuting and we have a contender who's not doing so well right now and knows they need to knock it out of the park with killer games to stop the stagnation of their recently launched platform. This should be a grand show with the blockbuster announcements from all those hungry to get a foothold in the hearts and minds of the gaming audience as the new generation descend upon us.

But thanks to the malicious activity of the industry of late I'm filled with dread instead of hope. The WiiU is DRM-free but 3rd parties have all but abandoned the device. Microsoft is going forth with a horrible DRM platform on Xbone that virtually ensures I won't ever own one so long as that software is a "feature". It's still unclear how Sony is proceeding on the DRM front. If Sony advances a DRM scheme similar to Microsoft I may just call it quits on console gaming altogether. Even if they announce that the forever-in-development games The Last Guardian and Final Fantasy Versus XIII, the upcoming Metal Gear Solid 5 and speculated unannounced games like Kingdom Hearts 3 are now being designed for the Playstation 4, I would be hard-pressed to find justification in buying the machine to play them. And yes, if Sony has DRM similar to Xbone on the PS4 they will receive just as much hatred as Microsoft has in my future ranting blog posts.

So we now stand on the eve of E3, with both the Microsoft and Sony conferences happening tomorrow. I find myself wondering, as I did in one of the very first blog posts I wrote here, if the AAA Gaemz Industree™ which is pointing a gun at it's own head will squeeze the trigger and pre-emptively ruin the entire next console generation before it even starts. Is there is anyone coming to their senses before they ruin things? Microsoft can choose to remove the DRM if they want to, Sony can choose to not implement it at all, the question is will they? The ball is now in their court and all we can do is wait. 

The storm is coming my friends, the storm is coming.

The Ballad of the AAA Gaemz Industree™

gave up trying to figure it out but my head got lost along the way
worn out from giving it up my soul I pissed it all away
still stings these shattered nerves
pigs we get what pigs deserve
I'm going all the way down I'm leaving today

come come come on you've gotta fill me up
come come gotta let me inside of you
come come come on you gotta fix me up
come come gotta let me inside of you

still feel it all slipping away but it doesn't matter anymore
everybody's still chipping away but it doesn't matter anymore
look through these blackened eyes
you'll see ten thousand lies
my lips may promise but my heart is a whore

come come come on you gotta fill me up
come come gotta let me inside of you
come come come on you gotta fix me up
come come gotta let me get through to you

this isn't meant to last
this is for right now

I know it's all getting away and it comes to me as no surprise
I know what's coming to me is never going to arrive
fresh blood through tired skin
new sweat to drown me in
dress up this rotten carcass just to make it look alive

come come come on you gotta fill me up
come come gotta let me inside of you
come come come on you gotta fix me up
come come gotta let me get through to you

this isn't meant to last
this is for right now

I wish I could put the blame on you
I want you to make me
I want you to take me
I want you to break me
then I want you to throw me away

This preceding musical interlude of the song "Last", courtesy of Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails, is dedicated to our dearly beloved AAA Gaemz Industree™.

Today Microsoft confirmed most of the horrible anti-consumer policies that were speculated on for the Xbone on their official website. As we witness Microsoft conspire with the mega-publishers to create complicated systems to limit user freedoms and punish end consumers, all in a desperate bid to stop the financial bleeding from our dear friends at the likes of EA, Activision and Ubisoft, let us ponder the lyrics to this song and see just how much of it describes the rotting mindset of an industry that is killing itself.

Sony Bombarded With Anti-DRM Campaign

 

Since the public reveal of the Xbone and the statements issued by Micrososft executives regarding used games there's been a great number of questions surrounding the next-generation console cycle as a whole, and whether or not Microsoft's closest competitor, Sony, would follow suit with used games DRM on the upcoming Playstation 4 console.

Up until this past weekend some statements, seeming to indicate that Sony was possibly planning to allow the PS4 to operate relatively DRM-free in the same manner as the PS3, had many assured that the next console cycle wouldn't be a complete wash. Popular thought was that one could always just switch from supporting Microsoft to supporting Sony to avoid having their expected consumer rights removed. However, on the latest episode of the Gametrailers show Bonus Round, host Geoff Keighley made the following statement regarding DRM on the next-gen machines:

"The one thing that is amazing to me is that right now we're not hearing a lot from the game publishers about what their view is on this. The console companies are becoming the bad guys. And, you know, Microsoft is getting beaten up a lot on it. Sony, I think, has been seen as this kind of white knight so far that's not going to restrict used games. Based on some of the things I'm hearing, I don't think that's entirely true, because I can't see publishers allowing one system to do one thing and one do another."

 Within hours of that episode of Bonus Round hitting the internet, gamers on several sites, beginning first at NeoGAF and spreading to reddit, 4chan and other online communities, began mobilizing to flood Sony with requests to not implement used game DRM on the PS4. While some have taken to single e-mail campaigns to express their concerns, the majority of the effort has been centered around social media, most notably on Twitter.

In the last few days Sony execs who are on Twitter have been hit with 24 hour a day barrage messages from all over the world asking them not to restrict consumer rights on their new console. The hashtags #PS4NoDRM and #PS4USEDGAMES have been wildly successful and gotten the attention of many mainstream games sites like MCV and Eurogamer as well as popular games personalities like Angry Joe and Jim Sterling. While it's absurd that things have gotten to the point where fans have to mobilize just to not be screwed over by the entertainment industry they enjoy, it's good to see an effort is being made. Hopefully the corporate execs across the industry, not just at Sony, are paying attention.

Leading the Sheep

According to a story posted today by MCV the Xbone TV input device is breaking pre-order records at Blockbuster.

Someone, please kill me now.

In all seriousness though, this is another instance of the gaming audience disappointingly acting like trained sheep by supporting the worst aspects of the AAA Gaemz Industree™. In all the years of gaming I've been aware that there are single platform loyalists; people who care more about the health of a specific console maker like Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft than they do about gaming in general. I've seen one guy who to this day refuses to touch a Nintendo or Sony platform because he blames those companies for Sega's exit of the console business and early demise of the Dreamcast. But how anyone, even the most diehard of Xbox-only gamers, can want to place a pre-order on a potentially DRM-infested and privacy invading TV switching box with an unknown price tag and an unknown release date following an unveiling that showed more footage of The Price is Right than actual in-game footage of all the announced games combined is beyond me.

Unfortunately this all falls in line with previous instances of the AAA Gaemz Industree™ training it's subjects so well that they seem to buy, support and validate some of the most ludicrous and awful cash-grabs one can imagine. Apparently with enough hype and a whole slew of corporate Gaemz Jurnalistz™ who do nothing but parrot publisher PR speak while receiving free consoles, games, paid expenses trips and bribery swag, you can get enough of the audience to plop down their cash and buy anything no matter how fucked up it is.

Beginning in the early life of the Xbox Live Marketplace when EA would sell downloadable content for the 360 version of The Godfather that was present and usable on the disc for free in the PS2 version of the game, which retailed for $10 cheaper, to modern times when we have an industry riddled with shitty season passes for DLC, DLC content on the disc locked behind a paywall and an attitude that says releasing a broken and buggy game only to patch it after the $60+ sale has been made is acceptable, it's become quite clear that it's not just the industry that's at fault, part of the blame also belongs to the consumers who put money into this machine.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not calling for people to not be able to spend their money how they want, but clearly there needs to be enough of a pushback against anti-consumer practices to counter the noise of the industry PR so that the audience is much better educated about how often they are getting the shaft from the companies whom they often defend quite vocally. The news of rapid uptake of pre-orders of the Xbone suggest there is a long ways to go.

Worth Checking Out: PersonaGAF Podcast With Erin Fitzgerald

On the popular NeoGAF forums there is a community of fans of the Persona franchise who have created their own podcast called S.Link FM. The most recent episode of the show had special guest Erin Fitzgerald, who voiced the English version of Chie Satonaka in Persona 4 Golden, Persona 4 Arena and Persona 4: The Animation, join in the discussion.

This was definitely a great show which dived into the inner business workings and psychology of anime and videogame voice acting, all things Persona 4, all things Chie Satonaka and some other miscellaneous subjects. Do check it out if you can.

Downloads available at:
S. Link FM Episode 7: Voices in My Head with Erin Fitzgerald

Backdoor Corporate Deals and the Loss of Gamer Autonomy

Today MCV posted an article detailing how exactly the pre-owned games market will operate on the Xbone. Amongst the noteworthy tidbits:

" Retail sources have told MCV that Microsoft has this week briefed key retail partners on how it intends to take ownership of the pre-owned market."

"A gamer walks into a retailer and hands over the game they wish to sell. This will only be possible at retailers who have agreed to Microsoft’s T&Cs and more importantly integrated Microsoft’s cloud-based Azure pre-owned system into its own.
The game is then registered as having been traded-in on Microsoft’s system. The consumer who handed it over will subsequently see the game wiped from their account – hence the until now ambiguous claim from Phil Harrison that the Xbox One would have to ‘check in’ to Microsoft’s servers every 24 hours."

"These same unconfirmed reports also suggest that the activation cost for consumers buying or borrowing pre-owned software will be £35."

 It is worth noting that often the way the games industry prices things between Europe and America is simply to switch the currency notatins and leave the numbers intact, regardless of currency exchange rates. Thus a European retail price of £35 will translate directly to $35.

So there you have it folks, if this system of corporate control does come to pass on the Xbone the gaming audience faces a fee of more than half the original retail price of a game to have Microsoft's permission to activate the mandatory install. Only those who have enough corporate power to be accepted as part of Microsoft's Azure cloud-based ecosystem get to have any part in selling pre-owned software. This is the stereotypical worst of modern corporate backdoor handjob dealmaking, as it serves nobody but the pititful mega-publishers, Microsoft and a few select retail chains while shitting all over the end-consumer and small businesses. This is how oligopolies form and more of the type of crap that has led so many in the tech sector to hate the Microsoft corporation for decades now.

The worst part though is that this practice, as outlined in the quoted article, already has defenders amongst the gaming population. On one popular gaming forum the following quotes could be read in response:

 " Seems fair."

Fair to the corporate entities maybe. Name me one other consumer product that bars me from private reselling, and why it should be acceptable in this instance.

" Publishers Win Retailers Win
This is something both sides of the equation can support... what, therefore is the big deal if you can still go to a major retailer and trade in your stuff?"

Yes, let's gladly let "major retailers" and Microsoft have complete control over how we resell the things we have paid our own money for, so long as the mismanaged AAA Gaemz Industree™ and select corporate resellers win. Oligopy Super-Winning Power....Activate!

"Makes sense."

I seriously hope you mean it "makes sense" in that it follows the trend of American corporations freely enacting measures to control the end consumer like rats in a maze, and not that it "makes sense" in a fashion of being a good idea.

"Sounds good."

Sluuuurrrrp....sluuuurrrrpppp..."Oh Master Ballmer, shoot it all over my face, get it all over my face!"

"Sounds good, but will places like gamespot just increase the price of used games to cover what they will lose and pass the cost on to us? Also, how will renting work?"

This retard just confused Gamespot with Gamestop, speculates that the prices of used games will increase, asks how rentals could ever work under this system (they likely can't, genius), and starts their post with "Sounds good". Can people really be this fucking stupid?

"So what? Who lends £40 discs to get scratched to fuck anyway?"

Redbox, Gamefly, local mom and pop stores, people with active social circles of friends and family who enjoy the same hobby and may lend a game out to those whom they associate with. You know, people who have a LIFE and don't play videogames exclusively in their gamer basements.

"All it does is prevent loaning games to a freind and I havent done that in a while"

This reminds me of the modern Libertarian/Objectivist view of economic disparity: "I got mine, fuck the rest of you!"

To be fair, this is just a small subset of the larger discussion at the site I pulled these quotes from and doesn't represent the majority of opinion and discussion. I just wanted to highlight these selected responses because it perfectly showcases one of the major problems we as game consumers face. So often we're willing to give up our expected consumer rights and freedoms to corporations which don't deserve our respect or money, but who have an uncanny ability to garner such support even after screwing us over through sheer power of PR hype machines.

While I hope the gaming audience on the whole continues to respond to this anti-consumer garbage with such negative force that it becomes mandatory for Microsoft to abandon their plans in order to keep their gaming business alive, I fear many will simply just sadly come to terms with it and still buy the damned box once they get "hyped" after the inevitable E3 trailer with Master Chief's helmet.

For the Dumbasses: Clearing Up PC vs Xbox One DRM

As the fallout from Microsoft's day of woe (Xbox One reveal) continues and they get roasted by the gaming community left and right nonstop, some of their apologists, who are no doubt shellshocked that their favorite console corporation is under such assault of negative opinion, are scrambling to find any defense they can for the bullshit anti-consumer tactics that are set to be launched on the Xbone TV switcher.

In their desperation they try to call out PC gamers and ask them such stupid questions as "Why is this a big deal? Isn't it the exact same DRM as Steam and PC games?" Thinking they've thrown a brilliant rhetorical jab at their opponents they fail to notice the only thing they've done is display a shocking level of ignorance about the vast world of difference between PC gaming and console gaming.

So, as a public service to the clueless, uninformed and the willfully ignorant who would pose such a moronic question, allow me now to spell out why lack of ownership rights has been accepted to a certain degree in the realm of PC gaming. I hope I can explain for even the most simple-minded of readers why restrictive DRM on services like Steam is not drawing the wrath of the gaming public like the proposed DRM of the Xbone is.

- On a PC I have complete control of all the hardware and software installed on my system. I can switch any component I want and run any program on my OS I want. On an Xbox I can only use overpriced Microsoft approved hardware and software. On Xbone the hard drive won't even be replaceable.

- On a PC I have free reign to modify my games any way I want to, with the exception of MMORPGs which are more of a service platform than a traditional game. I can even copy my game files for archiving or remove things like the Steam DRM with a little know-how and/or a guide. What are the chances any of this will be available to Xbone users?

- On a PC I can run older games dating back to the days of Doom and Wolfenstein alongside newer tech-intensive games like Metro: Last Light and The Witcher 2, and my library of games can be modified to be future-proof to play on new operating systems and hardware as they come out. Xbone can't even play 360 games and the game library will likely only have a playable lifespan equal to Microsoft's desire to run XBL servers for the console. 10 years from now your copy of Forza 5 might only be usable as a drink coaster once Microsoft pulls the plug on Xbone services.

- Steam is a FREE service that has FREE online play and the store often features amazing sales where major AAA games, many less than a year old, get price drops of 75-80%. For less than $15 you can pick up entire packs of games and entire series of popular franchises. Xbox Live almost never offers deals like these, and even with Steam's DRM in place the fact that they often drop prices of games to levels where they compete not with other games, but with everyday consumable items truly does go a long way to soften the blow of the loss of ownership of the software. If you pick up the first two Bioshock games for $5 are you likely to complain later that technically you really only bought the license to use the game code? Probably not.

- Competition improves PC services in a way that you don't see on consoles. Sure, there is some competitive fire between Playstation Network and Xbox Live, but for the most part they are closed monopolistic ecosystems on the platforms they inhabit and are not subject to the same pressures a service like Steam is. For the savvy PC gamer who doesn't like Steam they can often simply choose to go buy the game they want at Gog.com (DRM-free), or Amazon, or even for the masochistic, Origin. There's no shortage of competition in the PC gaming space, and it's that competition that forces companies like Valve or Good Old Games to be as consumer-oriented as possible.

- PC games are almost always the best versions of the games technically. While consoles age over their lifespan to the point where after a couple years many games are unable to run even at 30 frames per second in 1080p resolution, the constant evolution of PC hardware allows the same games to run at even higher resolutions, sometimes spread across multiple HD monitors, with more detail and a steady 60 frames per second on a system with even a moderately priced graphics card and CPU. There's just no way around it, the PC version of a game is typically THE definitive version.

Hopefully for those who use comparisons full of ignorance and logic failures in regards to PC gaming vs Microsoft console gaming this will clear things up a bit. Hopefully it will make them realize why their arguments are bad and why they should feel bad for making them. Maybe, just maybe, it could help them understand why they should re-evaluate where they should spend their money this coming holiday season in regards to gaming hardware.

Of course, the problem for some is that they'd have to get their heads and eager tongues away from Don Mattrick's asshole first in order to read this, wouldn't they?

Will The Industry Squeeze the Trigger?

Right now it seems that our beloved games industry is in trouble. Publishers and game developers within the mass market "AAA" games space have become bloated behemoths who spend absurd amounts of money on game development, oftentimes resorting to firing their CEOs, closing long-running studios and posting financial results in the red even after having games that top the charts and sell 3 million units in a fiscal quarter. We've seen entire companies go under and others consolidate and contract, all while homogenizing their products to imitate the top franchises in their chosen genres and creating an environment where most major $60 games all feature the same modes, the same mechanics, the same character and plot archetypes, the same features and the same dependence on pitiful pre-order DLC bonuses and gimmicky downloadable garbage which one would expect to see from a free PC game modding community.

The worst we've seen is the stale and bloated corporate industry masters, unable to grasp what it is their audiences want, flail around wildly at every strawman they can to find something, anything, to blame their performance and management woes on. Piracy, used games, Gamestop, game rentals, negative reviews and all manner of other excuses have been made, and the industry has marched ever onward with badly implemented and sleazy digital rights management schemes to try and curb behavior they disapprove of. Oftentimes these schemes result in trampling on consumers' expected rights to use products they purchase in the manner they choose and burdening paying customers with barriers to their gaming while doing almost nothing to curb things like internet piracy.

With the Nintendo Wii U currently bombing at trainwreck-spectacle levels in the market and the upcoming Xbox One console implementing system-wide DRM measures that penalize those who might wish to trade or borrow games, use Gamefly or Redbox or allow someone to use their disc on their own account, it's become clear that the gamer backlash against Nintendo's hardheaded insistence on ignoring their own market and Microsoft shitting all over theirs outright has become a very, very noticeable trend that should cause the industry to shake in fear. Out of the "Big Three" who have dominated living room gaming for the past few decades, two of them are seeing an outright revolt, with one dying on the vine from apathy and one facing the collective wrath of the entire gaming community before their product even enters the market.

This leaves us with one last contender to the next-generation throne, Sony, and their upcoming Playstation 4 console. Sony is at the crossroads now, and the decisions they make before launch I believe will determine whether we go back to a PS2 era situation where one console takes 80+% of the market and offers a viable outlet for developers and publishers to succeed and expand even as the competing platforms struggle to gain significant marketshare, or if we see a collapse of the industry to levels more reminiscent of the late 80's and early 90's.

If Sony follows Microsoft in restricting the rights of paying customers then I predict there's a good chance that console gaming as we know it will become an irrelevant niche, suitable only for the most sycophantic of corporate cockmunchers who will willingly part with their money to buy an expensive pseudo-computer with $60+ software that will be unusable once those who grant us permission to use the products we buy decide to axe their services.

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth"

The above quote is from the famous poem The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, and is a perfect description of the state of the industry. As low budget consumable titles ascend and high budget behemoth games fall like stacked dominoes it seems that everyone in the corporate offices of the platform holders and publishers face a choice. They can either double-down on the losing strategies they've employed so far or change to control their costs and serve the end-consumer better. Unfortunately it seems the early outlook has seen many of the big players continue on their path of self annihilation. As this current generation of hardware rapidly reaches it's end, time is running out for the industry players to reverse course and stop a self-inflicted implosion. Will they take the road less traveled and succeed at expanding the gaming business again, or will they end up putting the gun to their head once and for all and squeezing the trigger?