Also, did anyone post EGM scores/info? I saw rumours but not the reviews. Also I did an extensive search to see if these scores were posted but came up with nothing, so sue me if it's OLDlol.
OPM Reviews:
PS2
The Warriors - 4.5/5
Path of Neo - 3/5
NFS: Most Wanted - 4/5
Fatal Frame III - 4.5/5
NBA 2k6 - 4.5/5
NBA 06 - 3/5
Battlefield 2: MC - 4/5
Brothers in Arms: EiB - 4/5
Heroes of the Pacific - 3.5/5 (MAF am cry?)
Tony Hawk: American Wasteland - 3.5/5
King Kong [GOTM] - 4.5/5
007: From Russia With Love - 3/5
EyeToy: Operation Spy - 2/5
Taito Legends - 1.5/5
Top Spin - 3/5
Chronicles of Narnia - 2.5/5
WWE Smackdown vs. Raw - 3/5
DBZ: Budokai Tenkaichi - 3/5
GUN - 3/5
World Poker Tour - 3/5
World Championship Poker 2 - 3/5
Wild Arms Alter Code F - 3/5
Dynasty Warriors 5: XL - 3/5
Magna Carta: ToB - 3/5 (Drinky love)
WTF Review KIDS SPECIAL
Bratz: Rock Angelz - 2.5/5
Spongebob: Lights, Camera, Pants!: 3.5/5
PoPoLoCrois - 2/5
Neopets - 3.5/5
Incredibles: Rise of the Underminer - 2.5/5
Harry Potter: Goblet of Fire - 3.5/5
Frogger: Helmet Chaos - 2/5
Frogger: Ancient Shadow - 2.5/5
Tak: The Great Juju Challenge - 3/5
Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 3 - 3/5
Chicken Little - 1.5/5
Scooby-Doo!: Unmasked - 2/5
Crash Tag Team Racing - 2/5
Wallace & Gromit - 3/5
PSP
SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo - 4.5/5
Star Wars: Battlefront II - 3/5
Kingdom of Paradise - 4/5
Infected - 4/5
Lord of the Rings: Tactics - 3/5
Legend of Heroes - 3.5/5
NFS: Most Wanted 5-1-0 - 3/5
X-men Legends II - 4.5/5
NBA 06 - 3.5/5
Gretzky NHL 06 - 2.5/5
I'll be writing the important info from the Allard/Hirai interview shortly. Some interesting tidbits...
Hirai Interview Tidbits - All paraphrased
On PlayStation 100 Issue Celebration/PlayStation Brand/etc...
OPM - You're #1, gonna get complacent?
Hirai - Any business that is successful has this risk, especially the longer you're on top, because you might take this position as a given. You might have tricked yourself into thinking you're there cuz you're a genius. That's bullshit. We're here cause we work hard, and we gotta keep this up to stay in this spot.
OPM - How can you make PlayStation brand stronger?
Hirai - Continue to be cutting edge, but not so cutting edge that you only have a few people following you. Just enough so that people walk with you. That's why 90,000,000 people got PS2. It's a balance.
PS3 Online
OPM - Consumers look back on PS2 now that PS3 coming out, especially w/ harddrive and online. Sony gonna continue this route or is it gonna lead the pack with online/harddrive or more?
Hirai - Hard drive is a method of for entertainment content distribution to consumers, but on strategic level.... online - especially with net-gen - it's gonna be as essential as air conditioning in cars. Can you imagine any car without that shit? Neither can I. We showed onlinein PS2 gen isn't gonna be the end all be all, but it is becomming a more integral part of games. Look at SOCOM 3. Out for 2 weeks, 40,000 peak users. Fucking staggering.
Looking forward, the biggest challenge is that we have huge PS2 install base and growing PSP install base. When we launch PS3, we're still gonna have that huge install base of users. So we can't say like other platforms "The old platform is the old platform." When we launch PS3 online service, we certainly want to take advantage of the PS3 technology, and offer a great online experience. On that same note, we want to make sure huge install base from PS2 and PSP are able to come along for the ride. So in other words, we don't want to be cutting edge for cutting edge sake, we want something that all people who own PlayStation consoles can enjoy. Still, we want to push the envelop for PS3. It's a challenge, but it will pay out big time.
On Competition
OPM - Xbox 360 is out first. Some urgency to rush PS3 to the market cuz of this? Or gonna take your time to make sure everything is ready?
Hirai - You answered your own question. We've never been first to market. Saturn, Dreamcast, lots of portables - they all beat us. People UP NORTH AND ON THE WEST COAST (Amir0x's Note: I wonder who this is!?) put a lot of credence on coming first. But if you look at when competitors came on the market, there were 3 to 5 million PS2s. Consumers adopted PS2 cause they liked it best.
On having the Technological Advantage
OPM - So you say content is key. But you seem to have tech advantage too.
Hirai - Our technological advantage is a given. But by itself, it doesn't mean shit. What type of software do we have to drive this technology? We've proven over past ten years that we will deliver, whether first or third party.
OPM - With technological advantage comes increased development costs. That shit scaring away devs from PS3?
Hirai - Just looking at closed world of PlayStation products, no. Yes, costs are expensive compared to last gen. But we bring three platform strategy that gives publishers the opportunity to invest in PS3 development.
If you expand that to other platforms, dunno if it holds. If you dev for 360, how much money can you get back from advertising current-gen titles? That's the question. But looking at PS business, we're providing a solution that allows for good revenue on PSP/PS2 and then devs can spend it on PS3.
On PlayStation 3 Controller
OPM - What about PS3 controller? Gonna stay that fugly?
Hirai - That was a prototype. Kutaragi-san ran tall order past the designers. We've had two consoles, basically same design. So we want a fresh approach. We're going to look at form factor, but it has got to feel familiar. It's a difficult balance. But it's definitely a work in progress. We want to make sure when it's in your hands, it's familiar.
Allard Interview Tidbits - All paraphrased
On having an interview with a PlayStation Mag
OPM - What do you think about a PS mag having an interview with you?
Allard - I think it's awesome. Congrats on reaching 100. I'm a reader of this mag, and I have been for a while, so i'm glad to do this. One thing that bums me about the industry is that we've split into these camps and factions, but we're all just gamers. We're not as grown-up as other industries like movies, television and music. It holds us back.
On the difference between Sony and Microsoft's online strategies
OPM - We see the divison between Sony and Microsoft, but beyond that, we see the online strategies for each company, specifically regarding XBX Live, and we wonder why Sony isn't following suit.
Allard - We started Xbox as part of the dream. We believed consoles were gonna shift to online like PCs did back in the day. We wanted to be the catalyst for this movement. That's probably the biggest thing that made XBL a success, the fact that we didn't seperate it from the hardware. We didn't seperate it from dev tools or first-party development. Instead, we said online is a part of everything we do. If we make a first-party racing game, it's gonna be online - and so on and so forth.
The next biggest thing is that we're an online company. We don't outsource our web shit. We have a lot of talent within our company for this stuff, and so we used this to our advantage. We have assets like passport and microtransactions and we're using it. That's where we have a leg up. Sony's advantage is that hardware is the strongest thing they do, so they do things like shrink down PS2. That comes naturally to them, like online for us.
OPM - People don't like paying extra for things. Sony's model, where there's no extra fee, seems like it would have an advantage on paper due to this. Why are people so willing to embrace XBL?
Allard - Quality. Back in the day there was cable tv, but you only paid for it because it offered better reception. It had HBO, ESPN and MTV which eventually helped it really catch on, but before that people bought it for reception. Today you would say 'who on earth would pay for better NBC, ABC or CBS?' Turns out millions of people would. Likewise for XBL, we offer a higher quality experience. People are willing to pay for that. So we said every game will have voice, you're gonna have one identity, one reputation - we're gonna tie all that up.
We also put an emphasis around [stopping] cheating. We can do this because it's a managed network. We didn't want XBL to be an environment where people can spoil it. So we're gonna put up walls to prevent hackers or gamers driving around the track backward, to make it safer, etc. We see cheating a lot in PC games, and we didn't want that. We learned lessons from that and applied it to Live.
So we made good on our promises, and people are happy. Games like Halo 2, Forza, PGR2 or any XSN sports games show this.
OPM - So people walk into a store and realize XBL is a good value. But what's the attraction for developers? EA took a while to jump into it, because EA wants to control the online experience.
Allard - You have to seperate devs to start with. Smaller devs just can't think about managing servers, taxes, credit cards and other issues like that. All this is very complex. Even mid-sized devs that could do it think XBL is a godsend. Very big companies are a bit slower to adopt. They think things through more, longer to commit. EA has a big team of server people, and most of their software is multiplatform. So our online solution only solves the problem for one platform, and they're thinking how they can deliver the very best for both PS2 and Xbox.
OPM - Surprised how much a part of gaming XBL has become?
Allard - Nope.
OPM - Any concern that too much is being integrated into next-gen XBL, since simplicity seems a big factor?
Allard - Hard to read. We haven't shipped yet. I've been playing with it for months, as are people on the team trying to work out kinks. I've got 450 points. I've earned a bunch of these points and achievements. It's going to be an emotional moment when we erase all of that when the service goes live and everyone starts from zero. I'm going to lose all that progress, so i have to jump back into games and earn all that back. On one hand you worry about doing too much. On the other, I'm a gamer, and this shit is awesome. It's my save-game history. Preserved forever, even if you rent.
I still have my PS1 mem card with GT saves, but with Live it's gonna remember if you conquered a racing game forever. So is there a concern we've done too much? Maybe. The good news is that in a community like this, the community will decide.
I hope those at Sony are listening, and have people with XBL accounts taking notes. Shit is better than web surveys, that's for damn sure.
OPM - It's clear Microsoft things of online as part of gaming. Sony doesn't necessarily present online the same way.
Allard - Think that's gonna change for PS3? It feels like they're forced to talk reactively. Phil Harrison said in a few interviews they're more committed to it next round. You feel like it's coming around?
OPM - Seems that way, but sometimes it also seems like Sony doesn't know wtf to do. Because, as you say, they're not an online company.
Allard - I'll give them a road map. [laughs] No seriously. Ken Kutaragi has my number, I'd be happy to talk to him about it. It's damaging as an industry to have three different companies pursue three different online theories. 'Cause then as a gamer you have to decide. Am I a voice guy? Then I'll go over here, but I can't get GTA (Amir0x's Note: OMGWTF PS3 EXCLUSIVE CONFIRMED. j/k). Am I keyboard guy? Then I go there, but no Halo. It's tough.
On Xbox 360 being Dreamcast 2
OPM - People say 360 is like Dreamcast 2. What say you?
Allard - I was there for DC launch. Spent 999 bucks. On 9/9/99. Lots of nines going around. [laughs]. It was the most satisfied I've ever been for a console. Games looked next-gen, online shit, and great games. So if we deliver content like that, and people agree, then I'll take that.
But after that, content for DC dried up. Companies like EA and SquareEnix didn't commit. Anyone who thinks this is a problem for 360 needs to go to the website and look at the release list or talk to people in the industry. Everyone is behind this platform. People are saying "Gears of War and Halo aren't shipping on day one." Right, exactly, because we have an amazing first-day lineup, so Gears of War and the yet-to-be-named Bungie title coming out on 360 can come later.
Why did SEGA exit? Because they couldn't afford to stay. Nobody knows better than my partner in crime Peter Moore. He's not going to make the same mistake again.
On Being First to Market
OPM - What are benefits and pitfalls to being first to market?
Allard - I'd say the pitfalls from a competitive pov is that you don't always know what the other guys are doing, and to be frank, the guys over at Sony have done a very good job at not telling anyone what they're doing. It's tough to see where PS3 is going. The other thing is that you're under a microscope. Sony shows two movies and the unit behind glass and that's what you have to write about. For us we had 2000 journalists come to Europe, set out 20 games and said "go play." If you're a journalist, you can compare. One company has promises, the other reality. Sometimes it's tough because we're not trying to fake reality.
The good thing to being first is we have a whole bunch of ideas and talent, and we're going to put the titles into the hands of gamers. We can't wait to get people's feedback. I want to ship this sucker. We're going to get the reaction first. We're taking gaming to the next level, and we're first. Strategically and competitively, we're gonna be finished the first lap before your competitor even leaves the pits. Is it good for the industry? Who knows. But it worked well for them last gen. They sold 10 mil before we got to shelves.
We haven't rushed this product to get that benefit. It's just we said 2005 was right for next-gen. That's when HD gaming starts, and when the technology is ready. Consumers and industry is ready now. We weren't going to do a handheld, because if we did, it'd distract everyone. Gonna be a good holiday for us.
On Technological Differences
OPM - What about tech difference? The Xbox's late arrival gave it better hardware, which made it attractive to devs like Team Ninja.
Allard - In the last gen, we hadn't even started hardware before they shipped. So we did have that advantage, we were willing to spend more and lose more. They're talking about Spring 2006 release - the specs they published are equivalent to the specs we published when you go away from theoretical performance. It's a jump ball. Two companies selling something at Wal-Mart for the same amount of money and coming four months apart. They aren't going to have products that are materially different. Plus they're willing to dump a whole lot of money per unit, and I'll tell you what: As a company with more money than just about anyone, Microsoft isn't willing to do that again because it was really tough for us the first time around. So I'd be surprised if they had a strategy that said they could lose a few billion this gen to make more powerful hardware.
You have to think Sony has learned their lesson about online. If they had XBL, Gran Turismo would be online. And you have to think that hurt them, because Polyphonal always wanted GT online. Sony wouldn't sold more copies, and it would've been better for the PlayStation brand. They diluted a franchise property in a world where you can play Forza online or NFS online on another company's system. Here's the title that defines your companies system, and you can't make it online? That's disappointing. I love the game and own every single one, so I'm hoping as a gamer they get serious about online.
EGM Scores/Rumours -
XBX 360:
Madden NFL 06 - 8.0/7.5/8.0
Condemned - 7.0/6.0/8.5
Call of Duty 2 - 8.5/9.0/9.0
Kameo - 6.0/6.0/7.0
Amped 3 - 7.5/8.5/8.0
NFS: Most Wanted - 7.0/7.5/7.5
NBA Live 06 - 8.0/7.5/7.0
NBA 2k6 - 6.0/7.0/5.0
Ridge Racer 6 - 6.0/6.0/7.5
MULTIPLATFORM
King Kong - 8.5/8.5/9.0
Matrix: Path of Neo - 7.0/8.0/4.5
007: From Russia with Love - 6.5/6.0/6.0
Shadow the Hedgehog - 6.5/5.0/4.0
GUN - 8.0/7.5/6.0
NFS: Most Wanted - 8.0/7.5/7.0
True Crime: NYC - 3.5/6.0/5.5
PS2
Magna Carta - 7.5/6.0/5.5
WWE Smackdown vs. Raw - 6.5/8.0/7.0
XBOX
Half-Life 2 - 9.0/9.0/9.5 [GOTM]
Operation Flashpoint - 8.5/7.0/8.5
Stubbs the Zombie - 8.5/8.5/9.0
GAMECUBE
Super Mario Strikers - 7.0/7.0/7.0
Mario Party 7 - 6.5/6.5/7.0
PSP
SW:Battlefront II - 6.0/7.0/6.0
Kingdom of Paradise - 7.0/7.5/5.5
SOCOM: Fireteam - 6.5/7.5/8.5
LOTR:Tactics - 6.5/3.5/6.0
Legend of Heroes - 6.5/8.5/7.0
NDS
Mario Kart DS - 9.0/8.5/8.5
Mario and Luigi 2 DS - 8.5/8.0/9.0
Animal Crossing DS - 7.5/7.0/9.0 (*sigh*, I'll take it)
Sonic Rush - 8.0/8.0/8.0
GBA
Mario Tennis: Power Tour - 8.0/8.0/4.0
RUMOURS:
Shadow of the Colossus SEQUEL for PLAYSTATION 3. Online play included.
Iron Man game and X-Men 3 movie based game.
Graphics Revolution can produce "Barely better than those on Gamecube". Q comments "sounds a lot like Xbox-Xbox360"
THREE Killzone games in development. Q guesses one for PSP, PS3 and another for PS7 from looks of Killzone CG
Rare has two games in dev for DS. One Banjo Kazooie platformer. Other ?. Hopefully not Grabbed by Ghoulies.
