This week! E3 from the perspectives of four guys who didn’t attend the show. Listen as we go in order of the press conferences from the big three and give our analysis. Who won? Who lost? Which of these motion control solutions has the best chance? And oh so much more.
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Got three games recently that’ve come in Microsoft’s new Wagon Wheel 360 keepcases – DJ Hero, LEGO Rock Band and now Modern Warfare 2. And it got me thinking about packaging. Basically how at least on Microsoft’s side it’s done nothing but deteriorate over the years. Multi-disc games on one spindle, now we get a keepcase with gaping holes making the whole thing feel less solid or protective. I can appreciate so-called “Green” packaging. But I think the Wagon Wheel keepcases just feel cheap.
And of course on the publisher side you get a game like Modern Warfare 2 which is an assured hit/million-seller/what-have-you and the manual is six pages, black & white, with just two images….one a stock photo of the 360 controller and the other a crude wireframe of the in-game HUD. Thank you for providing me the absolute minimum experience for my $60. I understand that no one reads manuals anymore and what have you but MW2 is a game in a million-selling franchise. I’ll have to check but I think Oneechanbara, one of the worst 360 games I own, got a better manual that this.
What the hell man?
Am I alone in my dislike for the Wagon Wheel? And could the impetus for the new packaging actually be to be “environmentally conscious” or is it just cheapening out?
And while I was surprised at the black and white manual for MW2, I was also shocked that Activision hadn’t sold ad space on every corner of the manual as they do in some of their games. Anyway…thoughts? Just me?
I must be remembering the Xbox 1 era of gaming wrong. Because I thought that there were more than 20 games worth owning on the system, but you wouldn’t have guessed it by the games Microsoft’s been putting out via their Xbox Originals program. The Originals banner, which does not seem to imply any sort of quality standard or particular sales requirement, is frankly a joke of a program that makes you wonder how the hell Microsoft’s been lucky enough to be in second place this generation if this is the kind of software deemed “original” on the first Xbox.
The most recent example of which is Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Rare’s first game under Microsoft’s publishing banner and a pretty bad one at that. I remember spending a little bit of time with the odd analog-stick brawling control of the game and not being terribly impressed by it, but then again perhaps my utter and complete disgust with Star Fox Adventures colored my judgement of that one.
Frankly I think Microsoft should step up and establish the Originals banner as something other than a dumping ground. Really program the label with quality Xbox 1 games (and release something like Ghoulies in October to coincide with Halloween where it sort of looks like there’s a reason you put it there.) But then I think it’d be worth unifying the store as Apple has with its App Store. In the end, Originals, Arcade and Community games are all downloadable games — and what happens in the future if Microsoft begins offering full downloadable 360 games as Sony has done on the PSN with stuff like Warhawk and Burnout Paradise? There’s no reason to keep the “Arcade” banner if half the games released in there aren’t actually “Arcade” or retro games. Open it up. And give Community Games the kind of exposure and dignity they need to foster more and better titles by taking them out of the black hole that is the “Community Games” area on XBLM. Does anyone go in there? No. As Apple has on the App Store, let the iFart Mobiles mingle with the Sim Cities of the world on the charts.
Also, and I’ll really never get this…open up new releases to days other than Wednesday. And open the floodgates. I know that early on there were reports that Microsoft would say no to games of similar genre on Xbox Live Arcade. But screw it, man! Let the best version of Sudoku win (or what have you).
The most recent example of which is 
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