Welcome to Beyond Co-Op, a weekly piece that talks about industry stories that may or may not be related to co-op gaming.
The stories for this week:
- Dragon Age Writer Puts Smack Down on Idea of Neglecting "Straight Male Gamer" with DA2
- 10 Highest Grossing Games of Current Generation Announced
- Duke Nukem Forever Delayed to June 14 (NA), June 10 (International)
- Sony's Biggest Nightmare? Guy Gets Killzone 3 Working w/Kinect
- Nintendo 3DS, 3DS Games, WWE All-Stars, Tiger Woods 12, The 3rd Birthday, Need for Speed SHIFT 2, NASCAR 2011 All This Week
Dragon Age Writer Puts Smack Down on Idea of Neglecting "Straight Male Gamer" with DA2
Now, please bear with me as I haven’t played either Dragon Age: Origins or it’s newly released sequel, Dragon Age II. A forum poster on BioWare’s own forums created a lengthy post (at the source link below) where he felt that BioWare was neglecting it’s greatest demographic: the “Straight Male Gamer”. I guess the new game has some homosexual overtones and the forum poster wanted a “No Homossexual” option. He was evidently bothered by the attempted gay flirting a couple of the male characters were giving his character.
The senior writer at BioWare, David Gaider, replies with some evidence that their demographics are far different than the original poster was giving (he threw around the idea that 80%+ of RPG gamers were straight males and 5% at best were gay) and that the romances were built around the idea that there were more diverse people playing their games. I consider that a pretty good smackdown, but I still find it pretty funny that a person was looking for a “No Homosexual” option in a game. Face it buddy, we’re in a different social situation and there will probably be more RPGs made that have homosexual overtones in them.
Source: BioWare Forums
10 Highest Grossing Games of Current Generation Announced
Note the word “grossing” and you’ll understand more of why a certain game is #1. You’d think the biggest selling game (in numbers) of all time, Call of Duty: Black Ops would be #1, but you’d be wrong. Instead we have to look at a game series that recently was killed off: Guitar Hero, and specifically Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock which grossed an amazing $830.9 million over its lifetime. The other big surprise is that except for the Call of Duty games that are here (Black Ops at #2, Modern Warfare 2 at #4 and Modern Warfare at #10) almost all of the games (save Wii Fit Plus) are ones that included peripherals or had options that included peripherals. Here is the list:
1. Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock
2. Call of Duty: Black Ops
3. Wii Fit
4. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
5. Rock Band
6. Wii Play (with Wii Remote)
7. Guitar Hero: World Tour
8. Wii Fit Plus
9. Mario Kart (with wheel)
10. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Also interesting to note is that Activision takes up one half of the list and Nintendo takes up 4 of the remaining 5 spots.
Source: CNBC
Duke Nukem Forever Delayed to June 14 (NA), June 10 (International)
I was a bit shocked when I saw this in my e-mail early Wednesday morning. It said to go and download a new Duke Nukem Forever announcement with the password on the video being “june14”. I immediately thought to myself, “Oh crap, it’s a delay to June 14.” Indeed it was with the added strangeness that the International audience will get it earlier now on June 10 (it was May 3 and May 6 respectively before).
Now the video itself (located here, although you must login to see the adult content) was pretty funny with Randy Pitchford of Gearbox being pissed off at the end as someone put a new placard on the DNF stand-up poster with the new dates.
There are a lot of things that pop into my mind with this. The first one is that the game releases internationally the day after E3 ends in Los Angeles. Most international press will be in Los Angeles for E3 and if they get the title early there may not be any reviews out for it. Now, Gearbox and 2K could also be doing a private review session with the worldwide press during E3 or after E3’s hours. It isn’t unheard of, although I think most press will be wanting to cover everything and not just spending time to review this new game.
The other thought I had was that maybe this was all a joke and later on we would find out May 3 and May 6 are indeed the correct days. Face it, after the 12-15 years we’ve been waiting for Duke Nukem Forever, how hurt would we be if Gearbox was playing a joke on us? Now, early previews haven’t been especially kind about the game with the Las Vegas preview a month ago and the showing at PAX East, but I still think this is going to be a big game and should set the stage for Gearbox to make its own Duke game without having to rely on 3DRealm’s assets like they did here.
Source: me
Sony's Biggest Nightmare? Guy Gets Killzone 3 Working w/Kinect
Although it is still being tweaked, there is video evidence of someone getting the Kinect to work with the Playstation 3 and Killzone 3. Obviously the hacking community has been having a field day with the Kinect since its release and Microsoft has made no move to stop them from unleashing the power of the system beyond the 360 itself and into amazing new developments. It is probably the biggest reason the Kinect has been so popular since its release with Microsoft taking a hands-off attitude towards it.
At the link below you can find the video and many other Kinect hacks done since its release. If this guy can really tweak things, this could be quite scary for Sony given that someone can use their competition’s hardware on their own system and play a first-party game that also has Move support. It’s a crazy world we live in.
Source: Kinect Hacks
Nintendo 3DS, 3DS Games, WWE All-Stars, Tiger Woods 12, The 3rd Birthday, Need for Speed SHIFT 2, NASCAR 2011 All This Week
Crysis 2 had its week to shine last week, now this week comes a possible major punch to your wallet. The Nintendo 3DS system comes out in Aqua Blue and Black options with a bunch of games in tow. I’m still deciding whether to get one now or later. I’d like to see if I can see the 3D in games with this system (I was born without a left eye), maybe I should go check it out at Best Buy or something.
Along with this there are a lot of sports games this week. WWE All-Stars takes a more cartoon and over the top look at wrestling games with this being the week of the yearly Wrestlemania. Tiger Woods 12: The Masters comes out this week as well, a scant 6 months (I think) since the last game dropped. Obviously they wanted it out before the Masters in early April. Another Need for Speed comes out just 4 months after the last one (Criterion’s Hot Pursuit) with the sequel SHIFT 2. Activision also comes to the party with NASCAR 2011, having taken away the rights to the brand from EA.
Finally we have the second sequel in the Parasite Eve games coming out this week on the PSP: The 3rd Birthday. I’m intrigued by the game, but my PSP hasn’t been played in quite a long time. I enjoyed the first two games in the series and might be interested in trying this one out. Hope your wallets don’t feel too threatened this week.
Source: me