Lost Voice comments on Playstation 3, XBox 360, Wii, and Computer Video Games

Now that the PS3, Wii, and XBox 360 are out just a couple days ago in North America I wanted to get some feedback about the experience of gamers. Unfortunately there is very little, there are lots of technical descriptions but no real genuine heart felt feedback of gaming experiences from those who own these systems that seems unbiased, you can find lots of bashing unfortunatley. So I am going to take a moment to review the PS3, XBox 360, Wii, and Computer Games without having tried a single one of these platforms (yet).

First off what would make me an expert on this subject. Although I am not a gamer anymore I worked in the video game industry for over five years as a developer, animator, modeler, level designer, and art director, not in that order. Unfortunately both companies I worked for had gone bankrupt so I moved on and living in Ottawa there are no cutting edge video game companies in the region and as my wife is completing her doctorate we need to be where the schooling is not that I didn't get her to apply to schools in Vancouver, California, Montreal, and Toronto and luckily for us she was accepted in Canada's government town. I also worked for Canada's largest software company in the New Media department researching and exploiting new technologies. Now I am an owner of Gizmo Logic Studios Inc. where we produce children's video, Baby Gizmo and released our first one June of 2006 and a couple more slated to leave the door in the next couple of weeks. Many of my friends from those days now work from some of the largest video game studios around the world working on some of the biggest name titles in all the platforms and they still keep me in the loop behind the scenes also.

Since stepping away from the video game industry in 1998 I always payed close attention to the industry as it was the most enjoyable careers I have had being on the leading edge of development and story telling. I have stayed silent for almost a decade on the subject and now with the release of all next next generation I wanted to have an opinion and I'll admit I have a bias to Sony. There a couple dates and games that stick out in my mind but there is one that was defining for me an my opinion it was the launch day of PS2 while I was working at Corel and someone had brought it to work and since I worked in the New Media department we had the biggest TV's and a private room. Although I provided the environment I sat as a spectator to watch as the put in EA's football game. Like most people then I was blown away, not only because it blew me away graphically but because the biggest hurdle was knocked down in the video game industry for all platforms. Finally games were not limited to technical hurdles now games were only as good as game play and story telling could allow. Sure there were still some technical limitations but they could all be overcome by clever planning and development, AI and rendering cycles didn't have to be significantly compromised for the game experience . Video game industry had turned a corner to the best games with be the most fun to play and history has shown this with the most popular and commercially successful titles since then were not necessarily the most aesthetic.

There is a lot of chatter throughout the media about what system is the greatest. This is a mute point today, although the PS3 is the most powerful system and the Wii the least and the Xbox 360 in the middle but much closer in power to the PS3 than the Wii but all this doesn't matter. In the early console days publishers could only afford to publish games on a single console and they would pick a console where the studio had expertise and usually most popular. But today it is a different trend, publishers and developers now prefer to release on PC and all consoles to reach the widest audience and the biggest profits. This is a mixed blessing it means you can own any console and play your favorite games but developers and studios make tools that are more generic so publishers and developers don't usually take advantage of system hardware as they could, so games could be technically better but that costs money. Hardware developers Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft prefer exclusive games because it is a must have title. Those days are becoming less and less frequent. With new hardware release they are always some exclusive titles but now it is mostly the hardware manufactures that sponsor those titles but as time passes exclusive titles are rare. If you were to chart exclusive the percentage of exclusive title releases against hardware release you would notice that the numbers would be very low and get lower quickly over time.

Now games are like movies and television if it popular copy it. Right now Nintendo shows a lot of innovation but that innovation will be copied and some developers will do a better and worse job but they will all do it on all platforms. It all comes down to the game and the experience which puts a lot of pressure on developers because with almost no limits the technical aspects of games and expectations becoming greater and great developers and studios are expected to produce movie quality stories and details. This requires talent and money this now pushes smaller newer and innovative studios out to be able produce and release games. This is the only casualty to next next generation gaming the small studios. Television and film suffer the same problem. Sure there are still some exceptions to the rule where innovation makes it mainstream and although they are refreshing they will become less and less the more complex it becomes to develop games.

What I can't wait for is playing some fun games and although I have a bias to Sony I think today Nintendo has the most fun experience right now. But being a father now also skews my vision a little, I see games that I would like to play with my kids and the Wii looks like a lot of fun to spend some time with my children.

To the next next generation I say lets play some fun games regardless of the hardware.