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 On 02/01/2014 at 10:18 AM by gigantor21 See More From This User » |
The ubiquity of phone gaming, and it's creeping impact on the console space, are well documented. The extensive use of microtransactions and the like in $60 titles has been a flashpoint in the gaming community for years. My main concern is that it risks devaluing the base game by making the experience more dependent on paying extra--a well-worn tactic in the mobile space (in game timers, paid weapon repair/upgrades, etc.) that is spreading into retail titles. Hell, one of the leads on Forza 5 pretty much said the game was designed with high-spending "whales" in mind.
I've been thinking about just who is concerned about this, though, and why the long-term demographic trends may make our complaints about these practices a losing battle.
While we grew up with stuff like the Gameboy, DS, and PSP, kids today are doing a lot of their gaming on iPhones and tablets, where these practices are most prevalent. They aren't old enough to remember a time before the App Store and Google Play. And the games-as-a-service approach has been most successful with the younger market; games like Disney Infinity and Skylanders are essentially just $60 platforms for promoting toy sales.
In light of this, I feel the "iOS generation" isn't going to be nearly as angry about things like always-online or microtransactions as we are. The industry seems to be banking on this; Microsoft has gone on record stating that they don't think their initial Xone policies were wrong, but simply too early, while Sony speaks of PSNow as a trojan horse to transition away from dedicated hardware entirely. And there are no shortage of publishers singing the praises of always-connected experiences or microtransactions, and have been foisting both upon us whenever they could.
If the PS5 and X-two are always connected or disc free, will the backlash be as virulent as it was this go round? More of the market will be pliant to such things, and the network infrastructure around the world will be more capable of handling it. The industry as a whole is chomping at the bit to get away from retail as it is; with more and more of their revenue coming from digital sources, the likes of Gamestop and Best Buy will be far less powerful 5-6 years from now. Nintendo is one of the last holdouts who aren't pushing these things, but they're going to be non-entities in the console space until their next box comes out. And it's not like the Wii's success stopped this trend from progressing anyway.
The future of game sales and distribution is going to be interesting to watch over the next couple of years. Interesting, and a bit scary.
BaD doesn't really start until monday, but heh, i'm not going to stop people from posting on weekends :P
I don't know, I see mobile gaming as it's own identity, and even with the microtransactions prevalent in both console and cell-phone, it hasn't so far affected that much the consoles. Atleast that's what I saw, I don't know about this things as much as you.
I don't want to wait any more, LOL.
It's something that's come up several times as of late. Forza 5 was heavily criticized for pushing microtransactions far more than past games--my brother is a huge fan of the franchise and he was pissed off by it. Ryse and Crimson Dragon also use stat boosting microtransactions to "help people who don't have time to play normally." Gran Turismo 6 added microtransactions for the first time in the series for that reason as well. Then last year had Street Fighter x Tekken, where the game was built around a stat-boosting mechanic in which people could buy better stuff online, without any way of unlocking them for free. That not only caused a shitstorm (along with their putting DLC characters on-disc), but ended up hurting the games sales as well.
It kinda sucks that in game purchases actually work and make money for the publishers, etc... I don't like seeing them in my games and I won't play free-to-play games at all because I can't keep track of what I'm spending and that's just what they want in order to get more money out of you. It's exploiting human psychology, and I resent that.
I still don't see phone and tablet gaming as having much of an impact on dedicated handhelds. People who play Candy Crush and people who want to play a Mario game or an RPG are two distinctly different groups of people. What generally passes for a game on a mobile device is more a 2 minute distraction than actual gaming.
Yes I know there are more fully fledged games available on phones and tablets but the people who play them are in the minority.
Third parties have been diverting development away from handhelds for years because of the sheer number of smartphone users around. That's particularly true in the West, whose third parties are nonexistent on the 3DS and Vita outside of multiplat sports and licensed games. But it's also been siphoning off Japanese development as well, where phone gaming is prolific. Between that and the implosion of the Vita, Nintendo's first party work is the only thing propping up the handheld space right now.
It's an enourmous step backwards for that segment of the gaming space IMO. Mobile is cannibalizing development resources that could be put into more substantive experiences. To begin with, few developers besides Nintendo have been seeing reliable success in the dedicated market as of late, so the prospect of having their own Angry Birds or Puzzle and Dragons is proving to be a major lure. These issues were not anywhere near as big before the iPhone came out.
I can't think of what can be done to stem that tide. Not when the Vita is dead and the 3DS has likely seen it's best days already.
I even heard on Wired's GameLife podcast today ideas about iOS game makers looking to put their games on 3DS. Or maybe Nintendo courting iOS devs to bring their games to 3DS. You can see where the real success stories are right now. It's on iOS devices.
My experience with my under 10 neice and nephew is that they mostly play on iPhone or iPad. My nephew has a DS (not a 3DS), and I only saw him play it once. Both kids are rivetted to their iOS devices, playing all sorts of games, not just movie liscenced auto-run games or Candy Crush Saga. I think the touch controls are just more intuitive for them than what's on a 3DS or Vita. What are those kids going to play when they grow up? Just more phone and tablet games I guess. Why doesn't Nintendo sell the game pad on Wii-U seperately as a gaming device to compete with iPad?
Interesting research topic for my class, thank you.
No problem. :)
Just stopping in to ask you to pick the "Blog a Day (BaD) 2014" series on this blog so it makes it in the full listing, accesible from the headline ticker.
This exact message will be pasted into several blogs. I love each of you as an individual, but also love efficiency.
Huh. I thought I already did. I'll fix it.
Edit: Done.
I've seen three Gamestops in my area close already and there's rumors BestBuy is close to closing up as well. Additionally, a friend of mine mentioned he heard Microsoft will offer a $499 Xbox One with NO DISC DRIVE. Now this might just be rumor, but they did try to get gamers to switch to online only purchases initially with the X1, so it's not too far fetched an idea. Pretty soon there'll be no place to buy a physical disc and everything will be downloads. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but I did stop buying a lot of music once all the record stores disappeared. Without something in my hand, I just didn't care as much.
Sony and Microsoft are both priming themselves for a discless, constantly connected future, and the industry is more than happy to go along with it given how much they hate retail and used games. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if this was the last generation that used discs at all.
I'm just hoping they allow for some kind of digital exchange where you can trade and sell games to people through their services, where the hardware makers and publishers get a cut of each sale. That would be a good compromise. There hasn't been much push to do that on PC, though, where retail is a non-factor, so I'm not getting my hopes up. -_-
MS was so geared up to do just that this gen, but everybody screamed and yelled and so they backed off. The public will get used to the idea eventually. I think you're right. This is the last gen for disc based games.
Now you see why I don't care for these younger gamers taht don't see how bad it can get with the way they are gaming now with tablet and mobile gaming. I don't want to see the future of console gaming turn to this method of game creation.
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