Cerise Magazine

Gaming news tends to hit the mainstream media in a big way. Following are three of the standout stories from the blogosphere to the newswires.

The PS3 and the Console Wars

Article: PS3 Launch Costs Sony Profits

As reported by BBC:

Electronics giant Sony has reported a large fall in annual operating profits following the launch of its PlayStation 3 games console.

The cost of launching the PS3 console contributed to a 68% drop in operating profits to 71.8bn yen ($597m; £300m) for the year to 31 March.

The PS3 is up against tough competition from the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii.

What does this mean for gamers?

Hopefully nothing. Still, an uncomfortable correlation can be drawn between Sony’s financial struggles and the continuously escalating console wars. The wars have been steadily increasing since Playstation entered the market, but they took a serious upswing after X-box launched, taking the focus from being about the latest titles to being about the latest hardware, thus driving the costs of systems skyward.

Nintendo, for the most part, seems to have opted out of the pricing side of the war, preferring to keep hardware features minimal. After fighting their way back onto the gaming stage with the innovative Wii, Nintendo has been able to keep console prices low, and continues to create solid titles with great gameplay for their system.

The Xbox 360 and PlayStation3, however, are targeted to older gamers, with price tags to match: the consoles respectively retail for $499.00 and $599.00. While both the XBox 360 and the PlayStation3 boast impressive hardware features, their high retail price has caused many gamers to hesitate before shelling out that kind of cash.

Unfortunately for Sony, the gaming arms race is starting to cause casualties. Their supermachine may be hot, but the sad reality is most gamers cannot afford the system and the games to play on it. With a price that is nearly equivalent to car or rent payments, it appears that many gamers are holding out on purchasing the system until the prices drop – sending Sony’s projected sales into a shambles.

The current situation, while grim, does not seem to indicate anything but a small financial setback. As PS3 is still a hot commodity among gamers (and many more plan to upgrade their PS2s as soon as the price falls). It appears that Sony is correct in being confident they will recover profits later in the year.

What does this mean for the non-gamers?

This piece landed in the business section of BBC news, which means the people most impacted by this are businesspeople and investors. What is key will be the investor reaction to the news.

While Sony is hopeful they will still increase profits for the year, investors rely on this type of company information to make decisions about investments in Sony. All the money it takes to create and refine new technology and gaming ventures is fronted by the various investments people make in Sony. If jittery investors begin to jump ship, Sony will be in for quite a few problems — they will not be able to rely on money to create new initiatives or to have investor money to tide them over when a new venture fails. Sony will actually take a double blow: a loss to their profits (which they based on the PS3’s expected sales), and a loss of investor confidence (which will lower stock prices and may drain Sony’s cash reserves).

As of right now though, the tone of the article does not suggest the need for immediate action — hopefully, most investors will not make snap decisions.

More on the PS3’s Lackluster Sales

Article: Seven Ways to Turn Around the PlayStation 3

Writing from GamePro.com, Blake Snow details the issues surrounding the PS3’s lackluster sales and offers up seven tips to fix the problem.

Snow’s Seven Tips for Sony are:

1. Admit there is a slight problem [with sales]
2. Acknowledge the high price
3. Drop the PS3’s price, like now!
4. Hire ninja lawyers to write more exclusive game deals
5. Promote the thing as a game console, not a supercomputer
6. Make the system easier to develop for
7. More games, please!

What does this mean for gamers?

Sony is in the process of learning a painful, but very important, lesson: gamers are willing to shell out the cash to have the latest and greatest in gaming systems — but even the most rabid of all gamers has a budget. The PS3 is not an toy; it is an investment. As such, many parents and older gamers cannot justify the high price to play.

Snow’s article makes it obvious that gamers (and the gaming industry) have noticed the problems with Sony, and are waiting to see how the gaming monolith goes about fixing the problems. One of the key issues facing Sony is a time frame in which to take action — their hold on the gaming market dwindles with every passing day. The article rightly points out that in order for Sony to come close to meeting their goals, they need to refocus their offering: dropping the price, focusing on software and not hardware specs, and improving titles and third party development.

What does this mean for non-gamers?

GamePro.com has a fairly targeted audience: gamers and people in the gaming industry. As a result, many people outside of the gaming community probably will not read this article. However, Snow’s article illuminates some of the the thinking that is prevalent to the mass consumer market — a market for casual gamers or non gamers that Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony are falling all over themselves to reach.

As the future of gaming tends to lie with the casual gamers — people that might purchase one major system per year, not three — acknowledging the points in the article will be key to Sony’s development. Casual gamers are not going to spend $600 for a system, and then turn around and spend $60.00 a month on titles. The Wii is so popular with casual gamers because it is affordable (right now, the Wii looks like it can be purchased for about $450.00, which includes the console, four different controllers, two games, and 2000 Wii points — as compared to the Sony system, which for the asking price includes only one controller and the main console) and because it has playable games. It appeals to older people, younger people, and non-gamers, which has caused the Wii to be a hit. Sony should heed this article, as taking the advice could allow them to recover some ground, and taking definitive action will increase investor and industry confidence.

Violence in Games

Article: Makers of Violent Video Games Offer Rare Defense of Their Work

As reported by MTV:

At Sony’s PlayStation Gamers Day, the usual tactics of silence, defensiveness or above-it-all cool that game companies enlist in the face of attacks on violent video games were replaced with two less common approaches: satire and gory but thoughtful detail.

The first sign of something different came Wednesday morning in a cafeteria-size room at Sony’s San Diego studio that had been converted into an exhibition hall for the year’s remaining PS2, PS3 and PSP games. The morning began with a stage presentation of PSP and downloadable PS3. During the presentation, Sony producer Travis Williams got onstage and told the couple of hundred reporters on hand that the company was making a new game, “Pain,” based on the idea that many people enjoy watching videos of stunts gone wrong. He cued a trailer.

With that began “Sony Computer Entertainment presents moral panic: The false perception that some cultural behavior poses a menace to society.” The scene was an empty city street. A man, and then a monkey, dropped into it from the sky and bounced a couple of times, knocking open a manhole lid. Quotes appeared from fake publications like The Neocon Weekly (“an aberration on the moral fabric of society”). Just when it could have seemed that all the verbiage was referencing the made-up “Pain” sport of flinging people into billboards using a giant slingshot, one more quote appeared from “Suzy Homemaker” that read, “My kids are NOT playing this!”

Sony’s “Pain” trailer was making fun of people who get upset about violent video games. Now that’s something new.

What does this mean for gamers?

Historically, the gaming industry has shied away from the discussion of violence in video games. For the most part, violent games are intended for mature teens and adults — not the children that many anti-violent game crusaders are trying to protect. As a result of this, the game makers and other industry reps have stayed away from engaging in a conversation with these groups. The gaming industry has already complied with an easy-to-read rating system, which allows parents to know the questionable content of a game before purchase. Also, the retail price of the average game (often the upwards of $50 dollars) helps to curtail purchases by those who are underage — most fourteen year olds do not have a spare $60 sitting around, and so they will often need parental assistance to acquire these kinds of titles.

This still does not placate many opponents of the gaming industry, however, as they refuse to acknowledge that many gamers are well over the age of consent. Just like in the film industry, the book publishing industry, the manga industry and the magazine industry, there is a constant struggle to determine what is the appropriate level of content for their core audience. After Sony’s mock-video release showed that game makers were ready to parody the issues, it became clear that game designers were ready to share their side of the story. The designers were not apologizing for making video games violent — the violence is often integrated in the plot of the game. However, some representatives stressed the need for balance — making sure the violence was not needlessly gory or intentionally made for maximum shock value.

What does this mean for non-gamers?

Sadly, the watchdog groups who berate the gaming industry probably will not want to discuss anything with game designers. It appears that the committees against video gaming are more concerned with limiting access to games (if not banishing them outright) than the actual reasons why game designers make the choices they do. Just like with any other form of art or entertainment there is a lot of artistic license applied — at its core, a video game is a combination of an interactive story and a movie. In order to engage the audience, game designers need a compelling story with multiple plot twists.

While not all video games require the inclusion of violence to be fun and playable, games follow genres in the same way that movies do. Take, for example, the Max Payne series. Often compared to a gritty film noir flick, the video game incorporated advanced narration, grim antiheroes, and dark environments to create a heavy gaming experience. Gamers could connect to Max Payne for more reasons than one – far from the typical sunny protagonist, Max Payne would probably be at home with the darker American comic heroes.

Other studios, like Rockstar Games, come under frequent fire for promoting games that seem to subvert the social order. With games like Manhunt, the Grand Theft Auto series, State of Emergency, and Bully, Rockstar Games offers a different perspective on gaming – instead of always playing from a hero’s perspective, Rockstar serves up the antagonist side of gaming, and allows players to adopt a wicked alter ego for a few hours. As a result of Rockstar’s willingness to open the door to that second kind of perspective in gaming, their popularity has soared.

Hopefully, game designers will continue to address the issues brought up by the watchdog groups. If they do, they will show that game studios are fighting to balance entertainment and social responsibility, which may win them a few more allies.