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- Saving the System: Where Failed Consoles Went Wrong Instead of Right
- Lineage II (JP) prepares for Goddess of Destruction
- Playing Modern Warfare 3 Early Actually Can Get You Banned
| Saving the System: Where Failed Consoles Went Wrong Instead of Right Posted: 04 Nov 2011 09:51 PM PDT Consoles only get one chance in the game industry, and that chance isn’t always a good one. Theirs is a crowded playing field where third place is last place and there’s no mercy for the unsuccessful. It’s tempting to wonder just how some failed systems could’ve done better, especially in the turbulent 1990s. What follows is a look at just how three consoles might have survived if they’d been marketed, funded, and supported better. To keep this little exercise from descending into an embarrassing stretch of game-system fan fiction, we’re not going to change the systems themselves and redesign them into things they never were. Instead, we’ll consider how they could’ve fared with different approaches in the North American market — and then we’ll remind everyone of the depressing reality that took hold. THE TURBOGRAFX-16NEC and Hudson Soft’s entry into the 16-bit wars failed twice. The TurboGrafx-16 was introduced in 1989 with an enthusiastic advertising push, but spent the next few years sitting on the sidelines while the Sega Genesis and Super NES fought it out and the TurboGrafx’s Japanese incarnation, the PC Engine, proved a success in its native country. In 1992, NEC and Hudson’s newly formed Turbo Technologies Inc. tried for a second wind with the TurboDuo, which combined the cartridge-based TurboGrafx and its CD attachment into one unit. It stumbled in its race with the Sega CD, and 1994 saw NEC scrap its game-console plans in North America. Here’s what might have helped it survive. 1) GIVE IT A BETTER NAMEThe TurboGrafx-16′s title is well-intentioned, playing up its visual edge in a mash-up of 1980s buzzwords. In the opinion of Chris Bieniek, an editor for VideoGames, Tips Tricks, and the TurboGrafx-centric magazine TurboPlay, it was too much for the American public to remember. “One of NEC’s worst decisions was one of its first: The goofy name,” Bieniek says. “Most people never figured out the correct spelling and capitalization of TurboGrafx-16. To this day, I still see it misspelled more often than not. It’s hard to get people talking about a product when the name of that product is so abstruse.” NEC needed something short and catchy, not unlike the sports-car moniker of the Sega Genesis. The TurboGrafx-16 could’ve been the NEC Pulsar, the Matrix, or even the Engine, just so long as it was easy for kids and casual game-buyers to keep in mind.  What Happened Instead: The Sega Genesis had many advantages over the TurboGrafx-16, and a simple name was one of them. The Super NES, while generic in title, played directly on the recognition of Nintendo’s rampantly successful NES. Meanwhile, the TurboGrafx-16 was a mouthful, and the “16″ suffix asked for a fight that the system couldn’t win. “Sure, people cared about eight-bit versus sixteen-bit back then,” Bieniek notes. “But by catering to the tech-savvy consumers who knew what the ’16′ was supposed to mean, NEC also left itself open to criticism from those same people when they learned that the machine actually had an eight-bit CPU, albeit a very powerful one.” 2) DO MORE WITH BONKCartoonish mascots may not matter much in today’s system conflicts, but they were essential in the 1990s: Nintendo had Mario, Sega had Sonic, and the TurboGrafx-16 had a good contender in Bonk, a smirking little caveman who bashed things with his head. After a brief flirtation with Keith Courage, NEC embraced Bonk and his punkish future self Zonk as their console’s pitchmen, putting them in ads and offering Bonk’s Adventure and Bonk’s Revenge in a package deal with the console. Bonk could have gone even farther. He’s a unique character even by mainstream cartoon standards, and his world of dinosaurs and Flintstones-style technology could easily be expanded. Had NEC pushed him in the right directions, Bonk could’ve had his own empire of toys and other merchandise. If the right investors would’ve bitten, kids would’ve squabbled over the Bonk trinkets in boxes of Froot Loops and Apple Jacks before sitting down to watch a cheaply animated Bonk’s Adventure cartoon on Saturday-morning TV. A video game character could ask for no greater honor.  What Happened Instead: NEC and Hudson Soft gave Bonk plenty of exposure in games, but it never spilled over into other venues. Turbo Technologies Inc. even set Bonk aside in favor of comic-book superhero Johnny Turbo, described by Bieniek as a company in-joke that misguidedly became an actual marketing campaign. Bonk and Zonk returned after this brief absence, but NEC couldn’t hold them. “It was really weird when Hudson suddenly started to release Bonk games for the NES and Game Boy,” Bieniek recalls. “It indicated to me that the TurboGrafx-16 was on the way out, but it also made a statement that Bonk was bigger than the platform to which he had been confined…that he deserved a shot at a bigger audience.” Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Lineage II (JP) prepares for Goddess of Destruction Posted: 04 Nov 2011 09:51 PM PDT
Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Playing Modern Warfare 3 Early Actually Can Get You Banned Posted: 04 Nov 2011 09:49 AM PDT Contradicting what we learned yesterday, those who decide to play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 before release on Xbox 360 apparently are risking their Xbox Live accounts. Xbox Live director of policy and enforcement Stephen Toulouse stated on Twitter yesterday that those who obtained a legitimate copy of the game — which went on sale at certain stores ahead of its planned November 8 release — were safe to play on Live. Since then, he has written a follow-up tweet stating Activision doesn’t want people playing early and that doing so puts your account at risk. “clarification: dblchk’d with Activision,” he wrote. “Mw3 pre-release play not authorized. So pls be patient. Playing early may impact your account!” It’s not the greatest method for getting the word out as not everyone goes on Twitter or follows Toulouse. At the same time, what he said is no guarantee that your account will be immediately banned the second you get online, but the contradictory messaging is only going to lead to confusion over what is and isn’t allowed. That’s also not to mention how someone who legitimately buys the game early and goes home to play it isn’t doing anything wrong — it isn’t their fault the game was sold early. In addition to the stores that began selling it this week, copies have hit places like eBay and Craigslist. One eBay auction for an Xbox 360 version in particular (via Joystiq) saw 88 bids that reached $1,725. Whether the buyer will actually play that exorbitant amount for a game coming in just a few days’ time — let alone a game that could get you banned — is unclear, but the winning bidder was not the only person willing to bid hundreds of a dollars for an early copy. We’re checking with Microsoft to find out exactly what the deal is with these potential bans and if users will be given any notification before being banned. Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
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