download now (pdf file, 9mb) - Pixel Hunt

More documents

Recommendations

Info

FEATURE Wii Don’t Need No PS4 DYLAN BURNS and MICHAEL PINCOTT look at the state of the seventh generation of video game consoles and why we don’t need an eighth generation any time soon. TIME OF THEIR LIVES SONY 1994 Sony Playstation 2000 Sony Playstation 2 2006 Sony Playstation 3 We live in an interesting gaming age. For so many years, the industry has been growing at an exponential rate. As more people came to gaming, demand has fuelled the development of new consoles, new technologies and has allowed new companies to try their hand at jumping into the development and publishing pool. Where once you could analyse the industry and chart specific development timeframes – particularly in relation to console life cycles – we face, with the 360, PS3 and Wii, an era of elongated shelf life, with no side truly ready to invest in a new console. The reasons for these are varied: games are still selling well on these systems, graphics and the technologies behind them have reached a certain level of fidelity and stayed there, and, predominantly, the sheer cost of developing and marketing a new console in an established market is almost unimaginable. Indeed, Microsoft and Sony are still recouping the costs of developing and manufacturing the 360 and PS3. Only Nintendo can claim to be making a profit on every console unit sold. Then there’s the PC, once considered a lofty, exclusive peak of quality gaming, upon which PC gamers could look down at their console brethren like ants below and laugh heartily at the fact that their games looked better, ran faster and were generally superior. Undoubtedly, the PC is still considered the ultimate gaming platform by many, but the gap between PC and console has shortened considerably. The current generation of consoles have adapted to mimic the PC, sporting large hard drives, capable online play and robust communities. The online connectivity of consoles now easily facilitates updates, patches and extra content. Consoles are even attempting to match the PC as a media hub. What once was exclusively the realm of the PC is being hotly contested. Console gaming is still PC gaming’s little brother, but it’s growing up fast. The need for consoles to catch up is greatly reduced; some might even say negated completely. 18 www.pixelhunt.com.au JANUARY 2011
Only Nintendo got it right, offering total compatibility for Gamecube titles and ensuring that the Wii had ports for both Gamecube controllers and memory cards. NO GAME LEFT BEHIND Does a new console generation mean that the current generation of games get left behind as those before them did The precedent is poor for both Microsoft and Sony, thoroughly botching their opportunities to support their strong back catalogue. The 360 would play some Xbox titles with a patch, but eventually Microsoft simply stopped providing them, leaving plenty of games either unsupported or broken. They then started offering Xbox titles as downloads on the Marketplace but, due to high prices and low sales, this was short-lived. The Playstation 3 shipped with more substantial backwards compatibility, supporting most PS2 titles without issue, until Sony made the mind-boggling decision to no longer include the Emotion Engine chip that made backwards compatibility for PS2 titles possible. We’re now seeing an interesting consequence of that, with Sony releasing a spate of HD collections of PS2 series like Prince of Persia and God of War. Only Nintendo got it right, offering total compatibility for Gamecube titles and ensuring that the Wii had ports for both Gamecube controllers and memory cards. FUTURE SHOCK Which brings us to the topic of the NEXT generation of consoles. The very cogent question being, do we even need them Simply put, developers, publishers and gamers all seem rather content exactly where they are. A level of mutual TIME OF THEIR LIVES NINTENDO 1983 Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) 1990 Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) 1996 Nintendo 64 2001 Nintendo GameCube 2006 Nintendo Wii Australia’s best gaming -zine www.PIXELHUNT.com.AU 19
Page 1 and 2: PS3 360 Wii PC MOBILE OPINIONS FEAT
Page 3 and 4: contents ISSUE 13 JANUARY 2011 Publ
Page 5 and 6: Garbage Tips Around the World Appea
Page 7 and 8: NIER Developer Cavia Publisher Squa
Page 9 and 10: YORDA If the player is to care abou
Page 11 and 12: like Cortana in Halo, the dependabl
Page 13 and 14: TRANSFORMERS: WAR FOR CYBERTRON STE
Page 15 and 16: STEAM Report Card Paradox Interacti
Page 17: Always call ‘shotgun’ in MAFIA
Page 21 and 22: For our money, this console generat
Page 23 and 24: ASSASSIN’S CREED BROTHERHOOD Deve
Page 25 and 26: QUESTIONS & ANSWERS PROFESSOR PIXEL
Page 27 and 28: ON THE HUNT PATRICK LANG Deadly Pre
Page 29 and 30: it was enough to make me fling a hi
Page 31 and 32: ASSASSIN’S CREED BROTHERHOOD MEDA
Page 33 and 34: When I say that games are getting l

download now (pdf file, 9mb) - Pixel Hunt

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?