Andy Laub they call me "The Solution"

It’s pretty much a given that game developers will capitalize on the success of a popular title by releasing a sequel (or two, or three). Often these promise more of what made the original game so appealing. Some fall short, especially when a franchise changes developers. Other times, the game falls short even with all the features that promise to make it better.

Personal experience with both of these within the last twelve months is enough to make me rethink my buying strategy, as twice now I’ve bought a game in the hopes of a new yet familiar experience, only to conclude that that once was probably enough.

The Benchmarks

Last year two franchises came into my life that I had not previously had an interest in playing. Both were launch titles for the Xbox 360, and both are remarkable games. It didn’t take me long to play through either of them, and I was impressed by the entire experience in both cases.

The Successors

Something got broken in the transition to the newer titles. One sequel was handled by a different developer, and while I’ve heard great things about the multiplayer, I think the single player experience suffered for it. Everything was mostly the same with small changes that seemed more like they were different for the sake of being different than anything else. I bought it right after finishing the previous title and forced myself to complete it before I could move on to other games, but I haven’t touched it since.

The other game showed a lot more promise, and I was genuinely excited for its release. There were some really great features promised, and upon playing through I can’t argue that they weren’t delivered. But at the same time, they again seemed to make some arbitrary changes, and the game lost some of the slickness that I liked so much about its predecessor. I think about the day I bought it. I needed to use some about-to-expire Best Buy offers, and so it was between this, Bioshock, and Halo 3.

I should’ve waited for Orange Box.

The Conclusion

You may be wondering why I haven’t mentioned titles. I’m not convinced it’s really relevant; despite the fact that I was disappointed by the games in this context, they are both quite good. I guess they just weren’t what I was hoping for.

A few days ago, Microsoft finally acknowledged that yes, there is a new SKU to replace the Xbox 360 Core. It will be the same price but includes a memory card and five free XBLA titles.

I think it’s a decent package, but not one that will appeal to the target 360 demographic since that person would probably prefer a hard drive. But I suspect that it will be the last bit of activity we see in the 360 lineup for a few months (at least until after the holidays). What sort of activity?

• Spring 2007: Xbox 360 Elite released
• Summer 2007: price drops across all three SKUs
• Summer 2007: HDMI quietly added to all SKUs
• Fall 2007: Xbox 360 Halo Edition released
• Fall 2007: MS announces Forza 2 & Marvel: Ultimate Alliance will be added as pack-ins to Xbox 360 Premium (”Pro”)
• Fall 2007: Xbox 360 Arcade replaces Xbox 360 Core

That’s quite a lot of rearranging. It makes me a little relieved that I picked up my 360 a good 6 months before any updates started happening; that was enough of a bubble to cancel out the buyer’s remorse phase. I probably would’ve been willing to shell out an extra $80 for an Elite, only to be disappointed when the prices all dropped three months later.

Worse yet, the price drops were publicized, but the addition of HDMI was not. So if you walked in to pick up a 360 at that time, you could’ve ended up with either unless you knew to take a close look at the box.

And even then, you confidently buy the $350 model, confident that this is close to the best deal you’re going to get aside from the crazy post-Thanksgiving promos, only to have them announce $100 worth of free games a month later.

It was not my intent to single out Microsoft. I’m well aware that they’re not the only ones playing this game. What is nice is that when you look at all the updates this year, you can basically pare it down to two basic choices: HDMI or not? Everything else can be added as needed. The games can be bought separately, as can the hard drives, wireless controllers, and memory cards.

One of my main reasons for enjoying console gaming is that compared to PC gaming, it has always been easier to work with from a hardware standpoint. Consoles are a very Apple-esque approach to video games, as the main manufacturers (Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo) are the ones controlling everything. Combine that with a need to only really do one thing well (play the games), and you have a much simpler experience.

That was the case for quite awhile. Sega went through three versions of the Genesis, and Nintendo did two each of the NES and SNES, but underneath the hardware and experience were the same. Where Nintendo really did a number was the Game Boy, which received incremental updates nearly every two years for its entire existence. There was never really a great time to buy a Game Boy, as you could never be confident that a better one is not right around the corner.

That mentality is basically universal now. There are rumblings that calendar year 2008 will see some major hardware updates for the 360 in the form of new processors and potentially HD-DVD integration. I’m not sure what we’ll see out of Sony; 2008 could be a quiet year since they seem to have hopefully worked out all their SKU issues this year. I honestly don’t know what to expect out of Nintendo. The Wii and DS are both selling well, but I wouldn’t put anything past them.

It’s unfortunate that buying a console in this day and age is not something one can do with 100% confidence. But that solid black PS3 is hot.

That’s what I was told during a recent discussion with a colleague as he was “blogging on his blog“. It’s common sense, yeah. I have a blog, why not use it?

The thing here is, as soon as I start to break out of my average posting time (say, every three days), the harder it is to come back. And when I do come back, the tendency is to start out with a “boy, it’s been awhile” sort of post instead of diving into real content, assuming there was any in the first place.

My problem lately is that my creative “pie chart” is currently overtaken by three things:

1. Design
2. Coding
3. Acting

The first two are pretty standard considering the recent freelance decision, but the third is unexpected. As much as I enjoyed West Side Story, it took a lot out of me and with freelance calling my name, I was looking forward to a lack of rehearsals. Suffice it to say, the lull didn’t last as long as I would’ve liked.

Obviously, both writing and photography are excluded from the list, which means this blog suffers. But here’s me, blogging more.