/ 22 February 2007

New tech industry with old tech habits

A games drought is coming. Xbox 360 owners in the United Kingdom will get <i>Crackdown</i> this week then nothing much until the likes of <i>Mass Effect</i>, <i>Bioshock</i> and, of course, <i>Halo 3</i>. Wii fans have <i>Mario</i> and <i>Metroid</i> titles to look forward to in the distant future.

A games drought is coming. Xbox 360 owners in the United Kingdom will get Crackdown this week then nothing much until the likes of Mass Effect, Bioshock and, of course, Halo 3. Wii fans have Mario and Metroid titles to look forward to in the distant future.

For those who’ve pre-ordered PS3s there’s Heavenly Sword in spring, but not much after that until Gran Turismo 5, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Assassin’s Creed. On handheld, a ridiculous number of games are hitting the shelves for Easter, then it all goes spookily quiet.

This always happens when a new generation of consoles arrives. The big publishers put all their efforts into getting something, anything, on the shelves for launch, then seemingly wait to see what happens in the ensuing format war. Two elements are built into the current consoles to make them drought-proof.

First, episodic gaming, which allows publishers to drip-feed big titles over several months via supplemental downloads. Rockstar has talked about making fresh areas of Grand Theft Auto 4 available to Xbox 360 owners after the game launches, while PS3 biggies MotorStorm and Warhawk should both offer new levels further down the line. The problem is, the traditional 18-month production schedule is burned deeply into the culture of development. A more level, less stressful approach is needed to sustain an episodic release routine.

The other big saviour was meant to be downloadable games — cheap, quick to produce mini-titles, which could occupy small dev teams between major projects. Sure, this is happening — Bizarre Creations, the developer behind the Project Gotham Racing series on Xbox 360, also makes Xbox Live Arcade titles like Geometry Wars and Boom Boom Rocket, while Sumo Digital, responsible for decent OutRun and Virtua Tennis 3 conversions, has also produced Go! Sudoku for the PlayStation Network.

But new games are a tiny minority compared to ports of arcade classics — especially on Xbox Live Arcade and Wii’s Virtual Console. PS3 is a promising player here. It has lots of new games like Cash Guns Chaos, Blast Factor, Flow and Calling All Cars, and Sony keeps talking about encouraging home coders to submit games, or to develop and distribute titles independently. But again, none of this will surface for a while.

It’s incredible really, that an industry so dependent on reacting to new technology can be so entrenched when it comes to distribution models and key launch periods. Change will come from left field — some bright spark with a crazy new way of getting games to people. Until then, it’s back to launch titles, film tie-ins and retro remakes for us all. – Guardian Unlimited Â