Video Games Live is supposedly a concert of epic proportions bringing together video game music and symphony orchestras. This concert was started by Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall, who are both composers in the world of game design. Since this show was stopping in New York City at the Beacon Theater, I just had to go out and see this, seeing as everyone is talking about it. This seemed to be the perfect Saturday evening activity, seeing as how much I enjoy listening to classic video game soundtracks. However, all was not well, as I was soon set up for disappointment. If you’re ready for my review and rant, hit the jump. (more…)

Thanks to the one-two punch of titles like Super Smash Bros. Brawl and the quirky Wii Fit balance board, Nintendo has widened its lead in Japan over Sony’s PlayStation 3.

According to an article from Reuters today, Nintendo’s Wii game console outsold the PlayStation 3 nearly 4-to-1 in Japan in February despite Sony’s console beginning to narrow the gap last autumn. In addition to strong hardware sales, Wii software titles also dominated the best seller list. Super Smash Bros. Brawl led the software sales with 1.33 million units, followed by Wii Fit which sold 309,311 units in the four weeks.

According to Reuters, Enterbrain and the Japanese gaming mag Famistsu, the Wii’s lead on the PS3 appears to be widening. In February it was 4:1; in January, the Wii outsold the PS3 by almost 3-to-1. Nintendo sold 331,627 units of the Wii in the four weeks to Feb. 24, compared with 89,131 units of the PS3, market research firm Enterbrain said.

Microsoft, content to sell to that lucrative “niche collector’s market” in Japan, sold 14,079 Xbox 360 units in the February reporting period.

I never in a million years thought I’d be caught dead saying this, but thank you Phil Harrison, thank you.

Why the love? Because last week at the Game Developer’s Conference the outgoing Sony video game chief said that controllers for the PS3 and the Xbox 360 were too confusing for a majority of people in the world today. “You hand somebody a game controller and it’s like you’ve handed them a live gun or a hand grenade with the pin taken out,” he said.

Then Harrison, perhaps emboldened by his recent decision to abandon ship at Sony and swim towards the sinking ship that is Atari (Infogrames), applauded the Wiimote and the Apple iPhone for their ease-of-use.

GameIndustry.biz reports that Harrison praised Nintendo’s Wiimote for being a “non-game centric device” which has democratized video game controls. He was also impressed with the iPhone for appealing to a user’s natural instincts. No, not making babies — touching things! (which, in hindsight, can also lead to making babies, but I digress…)

“I saw this first hand a few weeks ago where a two year old was playing with an iPhone and he knows how to get the pictures up of mum and dad. The two year-old then intuitively thought that all electronic devices worked like that,” said Harrison. “He’s pressing the TV to change channels. He’s right and the rest of us are wrong – that should be applied universally. Apple should be applauded for that innovation.”

So, if you remember nothing else today, remember these wise words — The Wii: building one video game democracy at a time. The iPhone: makes babies.

All signs are pointing to 2007 being the best year ever for video games, but how did the industry stack up against some of the Old Guard like movies and music?

If the Entertainment Software Association (via Ars Technica) is to be believed, it was a banner year that left tired old things like “CDs” and DVDs” in the dust. (more…)

Malstrom is at it again. Today he’s delivered us a series of new (and lengthy!) articles about gaming, Nintendo and the future of the industry as a whole. I think with the outrageous success currently being enjoyed by the Wii and its software (you know, the software that ignoramuses say doesn’t exist yet) this is an especially timely delivery.

On a personal note, the reason I enjoy these columns is two-fold. First, the style is unique. There are no other writers out there today in the gaming industry that can hold a candle to the style that Malstrom brings in his articles. They tell a story, create characters and include real life quotes from industry movers and shakers, and advance the conversation instead of miring it in stagnation. Kind of like the Wii and DS.

Secondly, they use words from the analysts and industry players themselves. Oftentimes Malstrom simply sits back and lets some of these clowns set the stage for him. In this light, the columns cannot be dismissed as fanboyism or marketing because they employ something rarely seen in the putrid, vitriolic message boards and forums of today: facts. For those reasons alone, these are a welcome addition to Infendo. I haven’t seen these columns outside of Infendo (aside from at the now-retired Wiikly.com), so for that I thank Mal for the pro bono contribution. I think I speak for Blake, David and the rest of Infendo when I say thanks a million for these articles. But I digress, as usual.

On that note, here’s one of Malstrom’s latest, A Rising Continent.

– Jack (more…)

Sony’s Jack Tretton is in a difficult position right now. His company has on their hands the most powerful console that nobody knows they really want. It’s the thing people will buy “eventually.” It’s got the most “potential” of any system out there, and developers will realize that “one day.”

Today, the San Jose Mercury News digs into the best system available today that no one really wants in an interview with Jack Tretton. Unfortunately, Tretton remains in the dark, deep money sink hole that is the PS3 after the interview, and proves he has no strategy to combat the meteoric growth and popularity of Nintendo’s Wii.

We have seen it time and time again. Tomb Raider was a revolutionary product on the PlayStation. Everyone tried to do a rip off. By the time they got there, it was too late. When Grand Theft Auto came out, everybody gravitated to Grand Theft Auto. Now the Wii is having success. They are touting casual gaming. Supposedly everybody is going to race over to casual games. The unfortunate thing is the fruits of those labors will show up two years down the road, and if the consumer tastes shift, they will find themselves all dressed up with no place to go.

First, let’s officially stop calling them casual games. That’s spin. They’re games and they can be broken into genres. There are puzzle games and action games and adventure games, and people will play them for various amounts of time throughout the day. When people label the Wii a casual system, they’re probably working for the competition.

And as Wired’s Chris Kohler deftly points out, Tretton’s statement isn’t exactly true. In fact, it’s factually incorrect. “The early imitators, the ones that copied the superficial form, might not have hit the mark. But the underlying concepts — sandbox games with large, free-roaming cities and over-the-top fantasy violence and characters — have come to define consumer tastes,” Kohler said.

It will be the same way with the Wii, if it hasn’t already begun already with publishers like EA and others. The first run games were pale copies of Wii Sports, or were vast collections of haphazard mini-games. These were the superficial crop, easily discarded as chaff, but very important none-the-less. They are the base. E3 saw the beginning of a new era. The second wind, so to speak. And as all that money that’s being shifted by developers into Nintendo projects finds a home and takes shape, you’ll see this holiday and 2008 become the “underlying concepts” phase that will truly define the console.

Tretton’s s smart guy. He knows this. He simply has no answers to offer.

The more I watch the recaps of Microsoft’s E3 presentation and the GameTrailers Killzone 2 footage, the more I find myself agreeing with Infendo contributor Malstrom.

I usually agreed with ol’ Mal when he wrote over at The Wiikly, but more recently he said something in a column here at Nintendo that managed to coalesce all the thoughts in my head into one easy to swallow morsel. That morsel? That the Xbox 360 and the PS3 were not the beginning of the “next generation,” but were instead shiny bookends to the last generation.

It’s in this that I find the most hilarious of ironies: That people would discredit the Wii as a “GameCube 2.0,” when all the while it is the “next generation” systems in the PS3 and Xbox 360 that are actually the swan song of the previous generation of consoles; that they are the Last Generation, 2.0. (more…)

The recent comic at Penny Arcade is spot-on, but for once I’m linking to the commentary that’s provided alongside it by Tycho. He discusses how uncomfortable everyone’s become now that Nintendo has rewritten the rule book on gaming (tore it to shreds with its bare hands, then manifested a new one out of thin air is more like it, I suppose).

No one, aside from Nintendo, really knows what to do right now. Rumors persist that Sony is crafting itself a PS2 waggle wand and a $99 price point for the PS2. Microsoft execs look absolutely ridiculous as they try and market “kid-friendly” fare for the Xbox 360. Honestly, if you had told me 18 months ago that one day Microsoft’s Xbox division was going to start looking like that 35-year-old guy who tries to blend in and be cool at a college party, I would have laughed in your face.

PA:

With the compact E3 about to begin, the tactical nature of the conflict (Note: marketing, competing — j.l.) will become more brutal. People get even nastier when they’re vying for second place than when they’re fighting for first. When you’re playing for scraps - and rest assured, dear readers, that you and I are the scraps - you have to get all of them to make it work. Nintendo has simply skipped the first phase - building the brand with us - and jumped straight to the mainstream play. It’s worked flawlessly. And it’s made their competitors increasingly uncomfortable.

Things will start to get ugly, dear readers, as those people who feel threatened by the Wii’s success — for whatever their reason is — begin to lash out. Just ask Gandhi. It will be ugly, but it’ll be fun to watch. That is, when we’re not having a blast with Smash Bros. or Metroid Prime 3.

On an unrelated note, I had a dream last night in which I wielded a 5-foot broadsword and dodged cannonballs.

I’ve discussed this via the comment section with some Infendo readers in the past, but today I’m coming back at it because Wired’s Chris Kohler and EGM are reporting on the PS2 Wiimote-like controller *allegedly* due out at Christmas time.

As I said in the past, this kind of controller would be a colossal failure for Sony. The last minute addition of motion sensing to the PS3 controller was as big of a joke as I’ve seen come out of a gaming company in quite some time (a-hem, Virtual Boy), but this would take the cake.

As a supporter of Nintendo, am I scared this will steal some of Nintendo’s thunder? Insecure perhaps? Not bloody likely.

Wired:

I think the thought process is that if Sony can actually reposition the PlayStation 2 as a direct knockoff of the Wii at a cheaper price point — dropping the price below $100, packing in a controller with functionality identical to a Wiimote/nunchuk setup — they can take some of the wind out of Wii’s sails with the strong PlayStation branding and a much lower price point.

What this will really do is validate Nintendo’s strategy. Even now, there are still quite a few people who believe that Nintendo’s bubble is ready to burst at any moment. But if Sony follows right behind them, all that’s going to do is solidify Nintendo’s position. If Sony goes forward with such a product, they’ll be sending a very strong message to consumers that Nintendo was right all along and that this is the wave of the future.

If this happens, expect Sony’s stock to tank. Again. Expect Nintendo’s to rise. Even more. And expect Microsoft to fire off a thousand press releases in a thousand different directions chastising Sony for its backwards thinking. There’s a next generation race to be one, after all, right?

The rest of the Infendo staff had their fun today with contest winners and near-perfect Zelda Famitsu scores and Tesla coils — but not me. I’m into numbers and net worth and things with commas separating tens, hundreds and thousands. So when I heard about what Nintendo accomplished today, I nearly fell over and hit my head on the solid mahogany desk that all Infendo writers get for their efforts (Snow pays us with things that have leaves. Don’t ask). The news? That Nintendo nearly matched Sony (all of it) in market worth.

Who cares you say? Bring us more on Phantom Hourglass and the rest of Nintendo’s killer IP that’s sure to drop at E3? In due time, my Wendy’s eating, console winning brethren, but for now know those games are exactly the point! Nintendo makes one thing: video games. Sony, and the other company in the top three, Matsushita (maker of Panasonic), make a slew of products. Sony even sells insurance, if you can believe that.

Rumas, over at 4cr, where I found this gem, says he can’t wait until the Interbrand Top 100 comes out, and what that list could mean for Nintendo. I’m with him in that I’m pretty excited about where Nintendo might fall on that list, but I’ll add that regardless of their placement, the Big N is, well, pretty big again.

Why on earth am I posting Sony’s greatest (read: dumbest, most arrogant, and ultimately untrue) quotes here on Infendo? Because so many of them bash Nintendo, that’s why.

Go check them out. Here’s a sample:

“Nintendo knows its target audience, because it has really narrowed that down; and it’s pretty much defined by a boy or girl’s ability to admire Pokemon.”
- Phil Harrison, president of Sony Computer Entertainment’s Worldwide Studios

“But I fear that it won’t have a lasting impact beyond that of a gimmick.”
- Sony executive Phil Harrison cuts to the chase with his incisive analysis of the Nintendo DS in gaming paper MCV.

“You can look at the software that they sell. All their licensed kid stuff. So, what we’re doing with the PlayStation Portable is really establishing a new marketplace, and establishing, frankly, a new beachhead.”
- Peter Dille, Sony US Senior Vice President of Marketing, on comparing PSP to DS

I like the ocean. I like ships of the line. It’s a damn shame to see one so large as Sony’s video games division go without anyone at the wheel for so long. No wait. It isn’t.

Nintendo has sold over 8 million Wii systems worldwide in less than seven months. This outpaces both the Xbox 360 and PS3 for the same period of time since their respective launches.  Check out VGChartz for the full graph.

If it was easier to buy a Wii, would this number be even higher?

Bloomberg reports that Nintendo is outselling Sony in Japan. They say Wii is outselling PS3 by 5 to 1. Having a hard time visualizing numbers, and being inspired by Blake’s chart obsession, I created the above pie graph to illustrate just what those numbers mean. [The totals are for video game hardware only, so Sony’s plethora of other products do not figure into the equation.]

Infendo Nation, I ask you, how does Sony get back on top? Can they?

Once upon a time, either here on Infendo or in the clandestine back channels of the Infendo staff offices (read: gmail), I predicted that in 2007, we would see one of the major print magazines like BusinessWeek or Wired run a cover story about the resurgence of Nintendo.

It came a bit earlier than even my fanboyish self could have predicted. Fortune has a huge article on Nintendo up right now, and the cover is over there, to the right.

The gravy:

While game consoles typically attract youngish males with an antisocial streak, the Wii is bringing people of all demographics together: in nursing homes, for Wii bowling leagues, on cruise ships, at coed (!) Wii-themed parties and, of course, in lines - as hordes of consumers clamor to buy the impossible-to-find $250 machine. Nintendo is churning out over a million units a month and still can’t meet demand.

Game. Set. Match? Not quite, especially six months into the long haul. But damn, that’s some sweetness right der.

The father of the PlayStation Ken Kutaragi will “retire” on June 15 in light of a dismal PS3 launch. Kaz Hirai will take the helm effective this summer. The AP reports:

“Although Kutaragi will remain an adviser, some U.S. gaming experts said the retirement may have been a face-saving firing and an effort by Stringer to recover from the botched PS3 launch.”

Video games owe a lot to Kutaragi. Makes you wonder what the mood is like at Sony HQ at the moment…