Killzone 2

Set for release in February, Killzone 2 is perhaps Sony’s biggest play for the first half of 2008; a big, beautiful, beefy shooter that will seek to place PS3 as the shooter-lover’s platform. After four years of development, expectations are very, very high. Failure will focus negative attention on big-budget productions.

Los Angeles

E3 is back; bigger than before but perhaps not quite as big as before-before.  The recent history of E3 is a wonderful example of the inevitable mess that hard-faced cost-cutters create when they get their hands on something beautiful. Within two years of its launch, the budget-version of E3 was a forlorn, emaciated shadow. Ironically, the very companies that had pushed for an end to expensive old ways were the loudest to squawk at this entirely predictable turn of events. Let’s hope that the E3 renaissance finds a middle way that avoids the penny-pinching, Dickensian alleyways of '08, as well as the Vegas monstrosities of the fatter years. E3 is our friend. We should protect it.

Multiplayer

Games that tack on multiplayer modes as a gossamer-weight after-thought are doomed. Consumers today, spending $50 or more on a title, often view multiplayer as the real experience, and single-player as little more than a training mode. The most successful developers of the last few years have understood this change; a requirement to offer long-term value through multiplayer. Even previously bankable franchises are focusing much more energy and attention on multiplayer. We all recognize that hollow feeling when a game’s multiplayer capabilities turn out to be a disappointment. In 2009, that feeling will ring the death-knell for all guilty franchises, even the really big ones.

New IP

When the third-party publisher CEOs spied a new console generation, stampeding across the frozen tundra of 2005, they made a decision – “We will create games based on IP that we own, thereby keeping more of the money we generate to ourselves.” It was a plan to create wealth by generating less waste; a good plan hatched by thrifty men. The plan has only been a partial success, as they understood at the time – new IP has a high mortality rate. It’s encouraging that, in 2008, more than 50 percent of games in Metacritic’s top 20 were based on IP that had been entirely invented or unexpectedly reintroduced (e.g. Fallout) during the current generation.  However, sales are still dominated by long-established names. Only Nintendo has managed to consistently introduce truly mass-market new IP in the last few years, with mainstream titles closely tied to the success of Wii and DS (Wii Sports, Nintendogs etc.). The most successful new IP from third parties has been music-based games. Even really hot IP like Gears of War or Resistance have struggled to eclipse older IP like Call of Duty or Halo. The bad news is that mid-generation is a poor time to introduce new IP as a higher proportion of unadventurous consumers pour into the market, so games like Heavy Rain, Dante’s Inferno, White Knight Chronicles, MAG, Infamous and Mad World have much work to do, in order to compete against safer options.

Originality

Again and again the media and vocal consumers demand something entirely new. And when we get it, consumers very often fail to respond; retailers cut prices; publishers become cynical, the media becomes tetchy. The fact remains that, in terms of cold, hard dollars, originality is much over-rated. Games like Madden and FIFA and Call of Duty, which by necessity innovate by degrees, remain the most successful sellers and the most profitable. Wonderfully original games like LittleBigPlanet struggle to find a place in the market. But if originality is an expensive virtue in the malls, it has something to offer online. Games like Braid, LostWinds and World of Goo demonstrate that financial risk and originality can be reconciled in the market. In 2009, beauty and originality will continue to find a home on PSN, XBL and WiiWare.