Technology - Google News

Amazon's Black Friday Sales Start Early. Here Are the Deals
One Important Thing Could Be Hindering A Nintendo 64 Mini Classic Edition
The DeanBeat: The madness and sanity of Sony leaving E3

Amazon's Black Friday Sales Start Early. Here Are the Deals

Posted: 15 Nov 2018 11:24 AM PST

Welcome! To bring you the best content on our sites and applications, Meredith partners with third party advertisers to serve digital ads, including personalized digital ads. Those advertisers use tracking technologies to collect information about your activity on our sites and applications and across the Internet and your other apps and devices.

You always have the choice to experience our sites without personalized advertising based on your web browsing activity by visiting the DAA’s Consumer Choice page, the NAI's website, and/or the EU online choices page, from each of your browsers or devices. To avoid personalized advertising based on your mobile app activity, you can install the DAA’s AppChoices app here. You can find much more information about your privacy choices in our privacy policy.   Even if you choose not to have your activity tracked by third parties for advertising services, you will still see non-personalized ads on our site.

By clicking continue below and using our sites or applications, you agree that we and our third party advertisers can:

transfer your personal data to the United States or other countries, and
process your personal data to serve you with personalized ads, subject to your choices as described above and in our privacy policy.

EU Data Subject Requests

Let's block ads! (Why?)

One Important Thing Could Be Hindering A Nintendo 64 Mini Classic Edition

Posted: 16 Nov 2018 07:29 AM PST

Nintendo 64Getty

Yesterday, Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime broke a lot of hearts when in a Kotaku interview, he said that while he wouldn’t rule out the concept, a mini N64 Classic Edition was “not in our planning horizon.”

That comes as something of a surprise, as many assumed it might be another holiday blockbuster for Nintendo as soon as this year, but it seems for now that NES and SNES Classic Editions will be all Nintendo has, though rival Sony is producing a (not terribly well-received) Classic PS1 for the holiday this year.

So, why isn’t Nintendo making an N64 classic? There are a number of potential reasons, some having to do with hardware given that it’s an upgrade from the 8/16-bit era, others having to do with marketing, saving it for a rainy day. But there’s one aspect of an N64 Classic that would taint the console unless by some miracle, Nintendo can work something out.

That would be Rare games.

It goes without saying that some of the most iconic games in Nintendo 64’s history are Rare titles, namely Goldeneye and Banjo-Kazooie, and to a lesser extent, Perfect Dark and Conker’s Bad Fur Day. But Rare was bought by Microsoft in 2002, where it proceed to make a lot of less-classic games than those, culminating with this year’s Sea of Thieves, an experimental Xbox-exclusive pirate title that has not exactly lit the world on fire since its release.

GoldeneyeGetty

The Rare of today is not the Rare of 20 years ago, and I mean that literally, as most of the core people involved with it have moved on. But with Microsoft owning all Rare content, it would be something of a licensing nightmare to try and figure out how to get these all-time classic titles on a mini console they desperately need to be on. And for Goldeneye in particular, the James Bond license may be the most complicated question mark of all, as Activision last owned the license in 2013, but then had it revoked and we haven't seen any Bond games since.

Previously, Microsoft, or at least a few individual executives, have expressed willingness to lend Nintendo back some Rare characters like saying they were open to Banjo-Kazooie in Smash Bros. But it’s a different matter altogether when you’re saying “hey, we need to borrow the rights to the most famous games Rare has ever made to sell this new mini console,” and that may be a proposition that is so expensive or impossible to orchestrate, Nintendo doesn’t want to bother with it.

With all this said, it’s clear that Nintendo could still have a hell of a nostalgia machine on its hands even if it was just using its own classic properties. Off the top of my head, there’s Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Starfox 64, Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, Pokémon Snap, Donkey Kong 64, Paper Mario and Yoshi’s story. So maybe you don’t have the Rare games or Turok or WWF No Mercy but that’s still quite a haul.

And yet, a Nintendo 64 re-release without Goldeneye? The N64 was practically a Goldeneye machine alone for my childhood, so that would be a bummer. There is probably a lot going on behind the scenes here in regard to why an N64 Classic isn’t forthcoming, but hopefully we may end up seeing it one day all the same.

Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Read my new sci-fi thriller novel Herokiller, available now in print and online. I also wrote The Earthborn Trilogy.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

The DeanBeat: The madness and sanity of Sony leaving E3

Posted: 16 Nov 2018 08:01 AM PST

Sony stunned the gaming world yesterday when it announced it will not attend the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) trade show in 2019. For the first time in 24 years, it won’t have a booth or a press event when the show opens in Los Angeles from June 11 to June 14.

That sounded so crazy that I didn’t believe it at first. It sort of freaks you out when one of the stalwarts of the industry decides that it’s going to stop doing what it’s been doing forever.

“As the industry evolves, Sony Interactive Entertainment continues to look for inventive opportunities to engage the community,” the company said in a statement. “PlayStation fans mean the world to us and we always want to innovate, think differently, and experiment with new ways to delight gamers. As a result, we have decided not to participate in E3 in 2019. We are exploring new and familiar ways to engage our community in 2019 and can’t wait to share our plans with you.”

Mike Gallagher, CEO of the Entertainment Software Assocation, at Sony's event at E3 2018.

Above: Mike Gallagher, former CEO of the Entertainment Software Association, at Sony’s event at E3 2018.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

At the last show in June, we knew some funny thinking was going on at Sony, with the crazy and beautiful nontraditional press event that it had.

Instead of talking to us in an auditorium, Sony shuffled the 2,000 or so press into a soundstage. A few folks were able to sit in faux church pews, but the rest of us were standing in a giant empty space, designed to look like a scene from The Last of Us: Part II. A guy played a banjo and then the screen turned into a scene from the video game.

We finally understood that the whole place was meant to make us feel like we were inside the video game.

It was a total surprise, but I kept worrying that if somebody spooked the crowd, we would all die in a stampede. Then we got up and moved to a big round theater, where we watched a scene from the upcoming game Ghost of Tsushima. We saw some more bizarre madness in a reveal of Death Stranding’s latest preview. GamesBeat’s Jeff Grubb and I looked at each other and laughed at the strangeness.

And then we walked out into a place that seemed like a Japanese garden, complete with fake maple tree leaves that evoked the scenery of Ghost of Tsushima.

Above: Ignore the shoes of journalist Chris Morris. Why does Sony have fake maple leaves?

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

That was all madness. I thought to myself, “Who spends all this money on such a crazy presentation, not to mention the cost of the sprawling booth inside the Los Angeles Convention Center?”

And apparently Sony finally asked itself this question and agreed with us. Now it has pulled out, not long after the Entertainment Software Association announced in October that longtime CEO Mike Gallagher had resigned, with various outlets saying he was pushed out. In hindsight, the shake-up that led to Sony’s departure was clearly already rumbling when Gallagher left.

I worry about one thing with Sony, which with 86.1 million PlayStation 4 consoles sold is the undisputed leader of the industry. Leaders should lead. They should not simply act in their own self interests. Electronic Arts bailed out of the show a couple of years ago, in order to increase its own social media presence and attention, by getting rid of its booth and setting up in Hollywood ahead of the show.

It was successful, but it weakened the show by putting its own interests first. It’s like nationalism, but for companies, rather than globalism. I call it the game industry’s “tragedy of the commons.” That worked well for EA, but it wasn’t good for E3. And now gaming’s strongest leader, Sony, is pulling out.

Above: PlayStation is skipping E3 2019.

Image Credit: GamesBeat

In the past, we could trust the game leaders that we knew. They could grow the audience, the game industry, and the attention around games. At EA’s urging, the ESA blew up the show back in 2007, taking it down from 70,000 people to 10,000 in the course of a year. Gallagher arrived in 2008 and helped build the show back up, eventually morphing it so it let in about 15,000 fans.

Sony’s leaders — Jack Tretton, Andrew House, and Kaz Hirai — were a familiar trio from the original PlayStation team in the U.S. They helped get the PS4 back on the top of the industry, and then they all left after accomplishing that task.

Above: The crowds at E3.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

Sony has a new CEO, Kenichiro Yoshida, and a new PlayStation chief, John Kodera. These are not the people who grew the game business. I hope they are not the ones making these changes. Sony has plenty of other game leaders. But I see enough uncertainty to make me wonder if they’re leading us from one kind of madness to another.

If the people in charge of this latest E3 rebellion find a way to build a new path and a way to strengthen the common center of the game industry, I would gladly follow. But I do not favor seeing game leaders retreat into their own comfortable events, celebrate lower costs, and forget about the common good. I really hope they have something good up their sleeve that can benefit us all.

It’s a bit scary. Because right now, E3 is all we’ve got, aside from the overcrowded Game Developers Conference, to guide the industry forward. I realize it is a bit crazy of me to come to E3’s defense, for all of its kooky canned events and giant crowds. E3 is truly insane, but it’s also insanely fun.

Let's block ads! (Why?)