Are you familiar with the term ‘killer app’? Probably…it’s in the urban dictionary, after all. It’s the one piece of software you must own in order to make the purchase of hardware justifiable or worthwhile. Why buy an XBox? It plays Halo. Why buy a PC? It plays World of Warcraft. Why buy a Playstation? It plays Final Fantasy…oh wait. After the recent announcement that Final Fantasy will be appearing on the XBox 360, Sony appears to be putting all its eggs in Little Big Planet’s basket. With an October release date, it’s still too early to tell whether or not LBP will be the system seller Sony hopes it will.
Killer apps are nothing new. Hell, you could argue that Space Invaders was the reason the Atari 2600 won the original console war. That, and because their games weren’t terrible clones. Super Mario Bros. on NES, Sonic the Hedgehog on Sega Genesis…the list goes on.
In this now-gen era of consoles, are we ever going to see another killer app? It’s a silly question, I admit, in an era of $310-million-launch-days, but I think it’s one that deserves a closer look.
Sure, there are games that are going to sell ridiculously well. Just as some people will buy anything branded Star Trek or KISS, people are going to buy Halo and Super Mario Bros. games. Will they necessarily invest in the console and peripherals just for the privilege of doing so? It seems harder and harder to justify that expense just to play one game. I think that has a lot to do with the reason that the average gamer spends $30,000 US on video games in his/her lifetime. People seem to be waiting until a solid library has been built up before jumping into the console fray.
I had a recent eye-opening experience in this domain. The Prince of Space, who you may recognize from the message boards, was recently visiting the completionist.com gulag in order to record an extended podcast. Whilst sifting through our Playstation 3 collection he asked why we had a PS3 if all but one of the games we owned was available on another system. An astute observation, certainly, and one I didn’t have an immediate retort for at first…other than ‘it’s a damn fine blu-ray player’. The same is essentially true of our XBox 360 collection as well.
The ultimate answer to the Prince’s query is that the first party games, meaning those made by the same company as the console they are played on, seem to be decidedly lacking this generation. The exception in this case is of course that of the Wii, where we almost exclusively own Nintendo developed or published games. With the exception of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune & Metal Gear Solid 4 for the PS3 and Halo 3 for the 360, I can’t think any must-have exclusive games I’ve yet to pick up.
So it would seem that the actual hardware being used to play the games is becoming less and less relevant. Why? The end of exclusives by third parties, who are software makers who have no association with a particular console. Could this be the beginning of the fabled one console future? Perhaps. I will be exploring the topics of exclusivities and singular hardware in future articles. For now, a conclusion on killer apps…
The microcosm of the issue was the release of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. The game which was to prophetically usher in the era of the Playstation 3, only increased the PS3’s sales by 200,000 from the month before its release…granted that 200,000 more units was roughly a 100% increase. Still, it didn’t manage to come close to the numbers put forth by the Wii. Perhaps Little Big Planet will have to be the system’s saviour after all.
While the Prince of Space is a decided Sony hater, he did bring up a good point: why do we own a PS3? When he asked us what games we play on it, and we showed him Pixel Junk Monsters (an excellent game, by the way), he basically said “So, you spent $600 on a system to play flash games?”
When I look at the now-gen consoles, they are basically split up into two groups: the Wii, and the PS360. Nintendo has a lot of franchises, and exclusive titles, not to mention a completely innovating way of looking at gaming. The other two, however… are basically interchangeable in my mind. We own both, because we like owning things, but I’ve never even played Halo, and have only played the first MGS. I like that PS3 has online play for free (but who knows how long that will last), and the 360 has achievements, but who really cares?
Anytime a new game comes out, we basically discuss the pros and cons of owning it on one system or the other. We usually go with the PS3 for free online and marginally better graphics, but we’ve been known to swing to the 360 side for a few titles as well (Condemned 2 for example, because in my head it’s a “360 game”)
I don’t regret one minute of my 16 hours spent in line to buy a PS3, but my prediction is: The next gen of consoles will have Nintendo and….. Microsoft. Sony dies with the PS3. You heard it here first, folks.
Hey now, I’m not a Sony hater. I’ve owned and had a lot of fun playing the first two Playstations. I disagree with the price tag that accompanies most of the PS3 SKUs and their decision to phase out backwards compatibility going forward. Perhaps the console is too ahead of its time with opting for a blu-ray drive when regular ol’ DVD still has a lot of life left in it and promising the moon with Home (and to a lesser extent Little Big Planet) and thus far failing to deliver (at least in the case of the former). Some of stuff they’ve been doing with the Sony Online store has been great, the PixelJunk games that were mentioned as well as Warhawk, a new full-service Ratchet & Clank game et al. Should the system survive long enough to see a signifigant price drop, a much broader acceptance of blu-ray as the choice for video content (as opposed to simply digital downloads) and have a handful of exclusive titles that pique my interest I will no doubt pick one up. For the time being, it’s not really on my radar. As an aside, we can agree that paying for Xbox Live is a nuisance for a service that should be all rights be free (much like Microsoft’s GFW Live for PC) but what good is getting all that free Playstation Online when you have mentioned more than once how neither of the Completionists enjoy playing online at all? ;)
Maybe it’s just that the ‘console’ war for me has always just been a Nintendo/Sony thing (remember ‘You are not ready’ commercials? ;p ) I mean I can remember playing some of the oldschool games like Battle Arena Toshinden and being so torn between playing PS or Nintendo. There were always great games coming out for both. It just seems to me that Sony and Microsoft almost CAN’T innovate these days because they are so wide spread, and instead leave it to the production houses to do their selling for them.
This is why I think the PS3 excels. Most of the time I find the small gems on the PSN more worthwhile and fun than half the ‘blockbusters’ already available.
Sony dies with PS3? haha I doubt that very much. Blu-Ray has already dominated HD DVD so I think that’s out, as even if you look at the average price of Blu-ray players, it still makes sense to get a PS3 =)
The blu-ray alone has been selling PS3’s like hot cakes. One more thing to sway gamers from XBox to PS (at least people buying a “current gen” console for the first time) is the 360 failure rate. Working where I do, I see so many come back. So many, it saddens me. However, Nintendo has it right; not bothering to compete. They’ve gone their own way with the cheaper, faster, no hard drive high def crap. Plain ol’ fun.
I laugh because I’ve had many a grandmother come to me and say, “My grandson is getting fat. I need to keep his hands off the potato chips. He needs a Wii.”
OH LAWD!