Skip to main content

Gaming Platform Exclusivity - Who Wins That Game?


A Daring Expedition - no. A Dangerous Endeavour.


Tired of my drama? In layman's terms, it's a risk.

Why can't we play God of War or Uncharted on Xbox; and of course, what about Halo?

How about Heavy Rain?

The most recent example is Rise of the Tomb Raider's for the Xbox One - released on the same day as Fallout 4 actually.

Hmm. Choosing game release dates.

I could write a whole post about that, but the gist of it is do not have two games scheduled for the same release date!

It did not do Tomb Raider justice; we've been waiting for some 5 years for Fallout 4.

I'm not sure if they thought people would happily bundle the two when they line up outside Gamestop at 12 midnight, to sort of ride off Bethesda.

In short, it apparently didn't work.

Now they have to bundle it with an Xbox to make up for it.

Which brings back to the topic at hand.

2013's Tomb Raider is hands-down my favourite game reboot, ever.


Where would games be without its capstone woman-lead Lara Croft?

No the real one.


Even though the Jolie Croft has been the token character for the majority of the Tomb Raiders.

Video game movies ...
That's a whole other post, but the essence is it should stop at comics; when did one actually turn out successfully?

Besides, video games trump movies (lot more post ideas coming ...)

Rise of Tomb Raider released on November 10th, for the Xbox One.

Only the Xbox One.

At least it's only a timed exclusivity - but still PC and PS4 guys were not happy to have to wait longer to play the sequel - almost three months for those of us on PC and ... over a year for the PS4 team. Ouch.


Why Xbox? I'm a fan of the 360 here, but are there even enough Ones to make this worthwhile?

Sony has a lot more exclusive titles that people actually care about. Microsoft's always had their Halo.

Everyone is trying to compete here. They need a reason for people to switch over - but is Microsoft that desperate?

Does anyone win at all? Making players happy and money in the process?

In the end it's just a game with little boys in the industry, trying to show each other up and consumers become royally annoyed. Well done.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Level Design in God of War (Part 1)

Becoming the God of War God of War is one of the most-critically acclaimed franchises to ever hit the Playstation market. In this pipeline deconstruction, I will refer to elements of the series as a whole. Dominus the main character in concept, needed to be summed up in a single word -- wrath . Covered in the ash of his wife and child, the character is a demigod who seeks revenge on the gods who betrayed him. Once the artists stripped away his armor and shield, the character’s true raw, animalistic side was exposed. Tall with upper-body musculature, covered in ashes and hunched over with his signature Blades of Chaos, Dominus was a force to be reckoned with. Dominus set the stage for the today’s Playstation mascot -- Kratos. Level Design Mood and exploration is a staple part of level design in God of War . Areas that are more open are also relatively barren; while many objects are placed around smaller areas like rooms. I think this encourages the player’s sense o...
Post a Comment
Read more

Time Manipulation in Game Design

Time Manipulation in Games Introduction The gameplay mechanic that I wish I had come up with first, is Time Manipulation. This is includes the concept of time dilation and the reversal of time in games. Implementing the Manipulation of Time Time manipulation is a robust mechanic. It involves non-exploitable time manipulation, with the goal of being fast and smooth, while not computationally-taxing on memory or hardware resources. The best way to implement this mechanic can be seen in Braid - an indie platform and puzzle game, developed by Number None, Inc. In this game, the world state is recorded for every frame, where the data is stored and compressed. With the recorded frames, any changing entities are extracted and mixed into the final state, which can be manipulated or rewound by the player. The player’s position is recorded and other properties such as color and rotation are stored as an integer that can be reconstructed, along with time information taken fro...
Post a Comment
Read more

Most Difficult Parts in Heavy Rain

Under Pressure In my experience, the most difficult button combination sequence in the game is when Norman Jayden must bring in a suspect for questioning, who goes by the name of Mad Jack. Jackson is said to have sold a used car to the Origami Killer and presumably has information on the killer identity or alias. When Jayden finds traces of human blood and orchid pollen, he tries to arrest Jack on the spot. He resists the arrest and goes to Kill Jayden — which he can if the player is not quick enough during the intense fight sequence. If Jayden survives the attack and beats Mad Jack, he concedes and Jayden proceeds with the arrest. It’s then Jayden’s nose begins to bleed, his eyes begin twitching and his hands start shaking uncontrollably in the middle of the arrest. To resist feeding his addiction to a drug called triptocaine, the player must hold down a series of buttons to stop his hands from shaking and the weakness from his symptoms of withdrawal. If the playe...
Post a Comment
Read more