Followup: Sony, Sony, Sony...

This article on Kotaku reminded me of my earlier post about how Sony thinks they can get away with charging way too much for their systems:

"The new Sony Europe head man said "When you introduce a new piece of hardware you have the opportunity to say there is a certain premium that is associated with it, and we took that into account."

In other words, the PSPgo isn't $249 because Sony broke the bank researching it. It's not $249 because it uses radical new technology, or because it has to make up for the fact people aren't buying many PSP games.

It's $249 because it's new, and Sony knows (or at least believes) that the kind of people who will buy something when it's new will pay more for it than they probably should."

-"The PSPgo Is Expensive Because, Well, 'There Is A Certain Premium'"

Additionally, a few smaller game chains in the UK are just not going to sell the PSPgo, because they "can't see any justification for stocking it. ... Certainly I'm not getting the response from consumers." The price, of course, is the issue. Announced at $250 during Sony's E3 press conference, the retailers say that "it seems really high, especially the way PSP's going at the moment. The models they've got out now are struggling at basically £129, pretty much [the] cost price, which we're putting them out at, and they're not selling through at that. We're trying to do some bundles just to push them through and the PSP just seems to have died as a format really… Nothing sells at the minute on PSP."

They also refuse to cut the price on the PS3, saying that "the PlayStation 3 has a ten-year life cycle and there are issues of cost and profitability." I think there are issues of cost and profitability when your system ISN'T SELLING because it's $150 more than the Wii and $200 more than a 360!

But they will, of course, "look at price and will address it when the time is right." I'm curious about when this is going to be, since they admitted themselves during the Sony press conference at E3 that even the PS2 is outselling the PS3.

The way I see it, there's an issue here when companies are continuing to make new games for the PS2. With Microsoft and Nintendo, I could definitely be wrong, but I don't think there are that many games coming out for the Xbox or Gamecube anymore, while freakin Rock Band came out on the PS2. Why is that? Is it because Sony is doing some ridiculous overcharging for their new system and developers know lots of people can't/won't pay that much?

So thanks, Sony. Thanks for saying right out what I accused you of in my earlier post - that you refuse to lower the price because you are stubborn. Thanks for proving my point, guys! Appreciate it!

FFXIV looks identical to all other FF games; exactly no one is surprised

Since I'm a huge RPG fan, most people are surprised when they find out that I've never beaten a single Final Fantasy game. It's nothing against Sony or SquareEnix or anything, but there's something about the games where no matter how hard I try to like them, I just don't get pulled into the story or care about any of the characters. After playing Bioware's incredible games, it's hard for any other game to even come close to how much I love things like "Star Wars: KotOR" or "Mass Effect."

I've tried to like the games. I really have. I'm not usually one to do something because everyone else does, but hey, some things are popular for a reason. And practically everyone I know raves about them. But I just can't get into them. I may not have beaten any of them, but I've played 3-5 hours of most, a little more than that on others, and I've had all the stories summarized to me, hoping that if I like the story enough, maybe I can keep playing.

Maybe it’s the female characters that get to me – how so many of them are totally flat characters without much of a personality, running around in a bra and a skirt the size of a belt. It seems like SquareEnix is just catering to boys who prefer their girls to be the pixel variety. So I try to just play the games, while attempting to shut down that part of my brain that protests to so many of the Final Fantasy girls either being pathetic (Aeris, Garnet, Ashe) or hardasses with big boobs (Tifa, Paine, Rikku).

But nope. It's still no good. And for a while, I asked myself, "why is it that you are such a rebel and don't like these supposedly awesome games? XIII is even going to have a female main character who might not be so annoying! Keep trying to get into the games and maybe they will someday not disappoint you!"

After watching the trailers for Final Fantasy XIII and XIV Online, both shown at E3 this year during Sony's press conference, I think I know the reason I just can’t play them.

Let me summarize the story of every game (with pictures!):

An evil government is doing something shifty, and only a ragtag group of adventurers can stop them.

The government has huge armies




and badasses, often with silver hair, working for them,



plus access to huge intimidating machines



and flying ships.





The heroes consist of either a wussy or badass princess (or princess-y girl),



a comic relief guy who acts like an idiot,



a rugged manly guy,


an overly-hardass guy,




a surprisingly-powerful or skillful child,



and girls in revealing outfits.



After hours of skipping merrily through very pretty areas,


the heroes are able to overcome the evil government by using their Teamwork!,



glowing gems,


ridiculous angst and supreme pouting skills,


and their ability to stand in straight lines 10 feet from the enemy.




The end.

I used pictures from many of the games to emphasize my point that they are all the same freakin game. Maybe they're called FINAL Fantasy because there is only ONE "fantasy" left, so they keep telling its story over, and over, and over, and over...

Honestly I don't get the appeal. And I don't mean to hate on all the people I know who love these games (hi guys! sorry I'm bashing Sony again!), but what is the deal with repurchasing and replaying the same game over and over?

The story just always seems so, flat. As I described above, it seems to me like the same thing being told repeatedly, with a few changes to settings or characters thrown in every time to "spice things up." Why should I bother with this evil government? I don't know these characters. They don't have personalities that interest me or make me care about their plight. Sony seems to think that pretty graphics will distract us long enough to make us forget that they're rehashing the same things and selling us new $400 systems and $60 games just to play the same story again.

Though the battle system, as always, is my main complaint. The menu-based thing just does not work for me - it takes no skill. It's like Pokemon. I am not kidding. Here's a handy guide: Pick your most powerful move. Use it over and over until the enemy is dead. If the bad guy has an elemental attribute, pick something opposite. Protip: if the enemy has flames coming off of it or any reference to fire in its name, use a water ability and it should be a CRITICAL HIT! IT'S SUPER EFFECTIVE!

"But Impsy," you might say, "what about Final Fantasy XII? Didn't that switch things up?" I would reply, Yes, dear reader, but you can set Gambits, which are conditions for healing or damaging or ANYTHING, meaning that if you set it all up right, you get to sit there and watch your party do absolutely nothing. My friend's friend played the entire game this way - get to a boss, learn the boss's moves and let the party die, reload, set his Gambits up according to what the boss did, and sat there watching himself win.

To me, Final Fantasy games are not games. They're movies where you occasionally press buttons. You have no choice where you want to go - you are instructed to go to this city, this forest, this desert. You accomplish this task, then move on to this next one. If you have thoughts or opinions on characters or the story - too bad, there's no way to express them, and yelling at the tv does nothing (trust me, I've tried).

So when I saw these new trailers, sure I was impressed at how pretty the graphics are. Final Fantasy never lets us down with that, with their new stuff anyway. But as I thought about it later, I realized that as gorgeous as the trailer was, it gave me zero motivation to want to play it. Sadly, this is no big shock.

Even the switch they’re making in Final Fantasy XIII, which will feature a female main character for the first time, is not enough to entice me. The main character, named Lightning (that is a noun, not a name) and her probably-boyfriend Snow (again, USE NAMES), intrigued me at first. Then I did some research.

In an interview with 1up.com, several of SquareEnix’s bigshots talked about Lightning and the history of female leads in previous games. “Looking at the history of the FF series, there were already female main characters, like in FFVI, FFX, and FFX-2.” Nevermind the fact that the three girls in X-2 were set up as basically Charlie’s Angels, complete with the same image:



The article continues: “This time, one of the characteristics of this heroine is that she's not that feminine. I tried to make her someone very strong, independent. When I asked Mr. Nomura to design this character, I requested someone like a female version of Cloud from FFVII.”

Ok, so let me get this straight. The company realizes that most (if not all) of their female characters are extremely feminine, needy, and have to have someone take care of them. Then we have Lightning, who is the manly main guy from Final Fantasy VII transferred into a female body.

Is there no medium ground? Can there not be a feminine girl who can also take care of herself? Does an independent princess not exist? Do girls have to either be feminine and weak OR masculine and strong?

It seems to be that, like many other companies in the industry, SquareEnix can only see two kinds of gender: the manly man and the girly girl. This “manly girl” – since it is a male characterization with a female body – is not the same as making a strong, independent female character, especially when they go around describing her as a female Cloud! We don’t want a female Cloud. We want a female character who can be strong on her own terms, not strong based on some man.

SquareEnix, I challenge you, dare you, nay, Triple Dog Dare you, to change. Give us a story that isn't based on all the other games you've done. Give us a female character who can do her own thing and doesn’t need to be based on a male character to be validated as a badass. Everyone tells me that you're a good company. Now it's time to prove it by taking a risk and giving us something new and really great.

NOTE: This article is also featured on GirlGamer.com, where I am a writer/contributor. Check it out! :)

Sony, Sony, Sony...

When are you gonna learn, Sony? There's this crazy thing called the "recession" going on and I get the impression you guys are just covering your ears and screaming "LA LA LA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU." Because honestly, you guys are getting a lot of bad press lately, and a lot of it is your fault.

I ranted yesterday about the new "lilac" PSP that Sony will be releasing with a Hannah Montana bundle to target tween girls. I don't fault them for that - it's a market, it's money, you gotta do what you gotta do. However, their other announcements at E3 this year were a little less on the good side.

I watched the Sony press conference live on Gamespot, and one thing that really looked cool to me was the PSP Go. A nifty, smaller version of the PSP, with the ability to download files and look more adorable.

















Unfortunately, as you can see in this picture, the biggest problem here is PRICE, and this is my biggest complaint with Sony. The presenter of the PSP Go! at E3 was talking all about the cool new features of the system, and he finally announced that it will cost $250, for a HANDHELD, and honestly I was just in shock. Know how much a Wii is? THE SAME PRICE! For an entire PLATFORM! The Nintendo DS is $130, HALF the price of the PSP Go. Sony did say that they were "dropp[ing] the price of the PSP development kit by 80 percent, which should ease developer costs and bring even more games to the handheld." (Gamespot) Well that's great for them, but it'd be nice if the people who want to actually play the games could get a price cut too. During the press conference, they mentioned how the PS2 was actually outselling nextgen systems. I can only assume that PS3 is one of those it's outselling.

Yes, there are cool games for Playstation platforms, and plenty of them are Playstation only. I may not be a Final Fantasy fan, but I know a lot of people are. Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari are more my style, and I can't play those two on anything but my (old school, amazingly still functioning, original) ps2. Plus, of course, LittleBigPlanet is great, and that does make me want a PS3. But not at these prices. There are some cool, really original ideas on these systems. Unfortunately, it's difficult to check them out because Sony refuses to see reason when it comes to how much their systems cost.

Remember when the PS3 came out and it was like $400 and everyone thought it was ridiculous? And how Sony was all, "hey don't even worry about it guys, it doesn't just play games, it's also a BLU RAY player! It's an ENTIRE ENTERTAINMENT CENTER!!!" Well according to this article, more than half of the people who bought PS3s don't know or don't care:

"According to the results, only 40% of PlayStation 3 owners polled were aware the machine had a Blu-ray player and about 50% of that number had popped in a Blu-ray movie during the last 10 times they turned on the machine -- the other half didn't use the feature."
-1up.com

Admittedly, this article was published in '07, and blu ray has become more popular since then, so I can only hope that more people realize/use this feature on their PS3s. But this doesn't change the fact that they marked up the system, largely, I assume, because of the addition of blu ray capability, and 60% of the people who owned it had NO IDEA. Wow, and apparently PS3s still sell for $400. My god. To compare - $200 Xbox 360 and $250 Wii, both as new systems from Gamestop.

I'm talking about all of this because of an article Gamespot has featured today, where Activision is just about ready to give up on the PS3 and PSP because they're too damn expensive to both develop for and purchase. The PS3 is still way behind the 360 and Wii in how much they've sold.

"I'm getting concerned about Sony; the PlayStation 3 is losing a bit of momentum and they don't make it easy for me to support the platform," he said. "It's expensive to develop for the console, and the Wii and the Xbox are just selling better. Games generate a better return on invested capital on the Xbox than on the PlayStation."

"They have to cut the price, because if they don't, the attach rates are likely to slow," he continued. "If we are being realistic, we might have to stop supporting Sony." When asked about a time frame he said, "When we look at 2010 and 2011, we might want to consider if we supportthe console--and the PSP."
-"Activision threatens to drop PS3, PSP" at Gamespot

How much worse can it get when a major developer flat-out says you are charging way too much for most people to consider buying your systems? Yes, games are still doing pretty well, even in the recession. But the fact that Sony thinks they can charge $400 for a system and $250 for a handheld, when Nintendo charges $250 and Microsoft charges $200 for a system, just seems totally unreasonable. Yes, the PS3 is still selling. But is it selling well? Definitely not. Would a price drop change that? No guarantees, but it definitely couldn't hurt.

Overpricing stuff doesn't mean your system is better, Sony. It just means it costs more.