News From Way Up High

As you might have guessed from the absence of posts, I've been insanely busy this week, largely on interviews for stuff I can't talk about yet (but awesome).

Let's see; I reviewed Hail to the Chimp for Variety. I did not like it. In fact, I often worry that I'm too soft sometimes as a reviewer, too optimistic, but I like to think that I have the ability to see something good in everything. Alas, I can't remember the last time I disliked a game nearly this much. I know many developers get frustrated with us reviewers because they want constructive criticism and they'd like to know how they can do better; in this case, I wouldn't know where to begin.

On a much brighter note, I went to visit Xseed in New York and saw Valhalla Knights 2 and the much-anticipated Little King's Story. Fans of Japanese games with all-star pedigrees have much to be excited about. Speaking of pedigree, I also witnessed (and snapped a photo of) a TWEWY DS that was a gift from Tetsuya Nomura to Xseed president Jun Iwasaki, who was himself a Square prez back in the day. Nomura also gave Iwasaki one of the coveted Crisis Core PSPs (which I really wish I could afford) - but Iwasaki generously gave it away to a colleague.

I also played Space Chimps when I swung by Brash Entertainment. Header image here is the view from the penthouse suite where I saw the game. It's a kids' platformer based on an upcoming animated flick, but it's decent. In fact, it was pretty much exactly like, in spirit at least, the mascot-driven 3D platformers I used to play in my adolescence. You know, the "good old days" we're always waxing about, the memories that send fanboys up in arms whenever Rare decides it shall dare to create a game that isn't a straight-up gap-jumper?

Makes me wonder how nostalgia is affecting our tastes today. As with our rampant demand for 2D fighters and 2D Castlevanias (which provoke rage when they turn out to be 3D fighters), would our demand for old-fashioned platformers, if met, actually produce a "kids game?" We were kids, after all.

Other noteworthy stuff I've seen recently and didn't have time to make a note of here: the vaguely MGS-ish Velvet Assassin, and Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball which is also decently fun, though you know how I feel about playing online with people. Shudder. Both suggest that Hail to the Chimp is fortunately not the baseline we can expect from Gamecock. SouthPeak's looking pretty perky, too - I liked Roogoo when I played it at Comic Con, and Ninjatown, which I just played, is surprisingly addictive and cute.

I feel the whole ninja pop culture is slightly passé, but that's neither here nor there.

Sony's doing better and narrowing its losses, it seems. I mined their annual report and learned just how big a hit they took on the PS3's "difficult" launch, though. After that, I was disinvited to their press event, but ostensibly because of a coincidence, not my reporting. Anyway, in the annual report, Sony meticulously warned their investors that a new platform is a huge investment that might take a while to pay off. In fact, Sony said, it might never pay off, and that's always a risk.

So how much money might Sony have lost forever rolling out the shiny black box it seems we're slowly coming to embrace? $2.16 billion in 2007 and $1.16 billion in 2008. Yeah, over $3 billion since launch. Specifically, this is because they had to price it (and still do) for less than it costs to make.

Sadly, the PS2 is finally beginning to decline in its old age (in its ninth year!). Whether or not you like sales figures, you must check out this story even if simply for the "Old PS2" picture Mike McWhertor made for my post. (Console) War has changed.

Anyway, Big Boss Howard Stringer said at the company's mid-term strategy meeting that this year, this year Sony's games biz will become profitable. Kaz Hirai admitted that it was a strategic error not to laser-focus the PS3 as strictly a games console at first, but it's all good now that we have games like MGS4 that will sell eight times as many consoles in the game's release week than the week prior. He seemed to indicate MGS4 is the first title that really shows what the PS3 is capable of, and promised we can expect more.

I'm still very busy. I went to EA's press event yesterday, and I'm going to a Guitar Hero Aerosmith launch event in Times Square in just a little bit. The street carnival, complete with suspicious-looking rides, is in my neighborhood for the weekend, so at the end of the day, I'm going to drink like three mojitos and go on the ferris wheel. If I don't ever post again, you know what happened.