No. 41 - 6 February 2001

While sad to see the demise of a machine which deserved better, Devil’s Advocate is relieved that at least there will now be one less console in what already looks like being a badly-overcrowded next-generation market. Three platforms, all with a reasonable chance of success (four if you also include the dark-horse Indrema) has traditionally been at least one too many. What your columnist finds a little hard to understand is quite why everyone is so excited that Sega will be developing software for other platforms. Industry types like ourselves have been full of praise for the firm’s recent output, but the fact is that since Sega produces neither wrestling, football management or Pokemon games, the public just isn’t interested.

After all, if people wanted to play the great Sega games that came out on the Dreamcast, they’d have bought one. For the last six months, the machine has effectively been given away for free (150 quid or less, with 200 quid’s worth of games thrown in for nothing), and with PS2s overpriced and underavailable, it was the only option for anyone looking for a next-gen machine anyway. Yet even with the lure of all those great Sega games, nobody wanted to fork out the peanuts the DC cost. What makes everyone think that those same games will have any more success generating revenue and profits on any other platform?

No. 42 - 20 February 2001

Sometimes, friends, Devil’s Advocate wonders if everyone else in this business is living on an entirely different planet where nothing is the same as it is here on Earth. Certainly, there’s very little other explanation for the results of the vox pop in last week’s paper, in which a collection of seemingly deranged and deluded Pollyannas concluded that there was no crisis in the games industry, and that everything was just great, and would be even greater in the future. The most notable was the representative from the 3DO Company, who managed to express untroubled joy at their company’s present situation, acclaiming the sales of one particularly awful series of games while in the very same issue CTW reported 3DO’s sales figures plumetting by over 25% and a respectable profit in the same quarter the previous year turning into a loss TEN TIMES as large for the corresponding section of 2000.

Will nosediving sales figures and massive profit reverses actually have to be delivered on flaming tablets by the Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse before this industry wakes up and realises it’s staring into the face of potentially its worst crash of all time? Exactly how bad do things have to get before we grow up and actually tackle some of the problems threatening to destroy us all? Devil’s Advocate is digging its fallout shelter even as we speak.

No. 43 - 7 March 2001

According to recent reports, Sony have said that there will be no UK price cut for the PS2 in 2001, which conflicts with everyone in the industry's previous belief that we'd see a significant cut no later than next month. Now, with  the inclusion of a DVD player Sony don't quite have the freedom to slash the hardware price that they did with the first PS, but nevertheless if they're really planning to keep the PS2 at £300 until next year then the firm’s management needs locking up. With a tiger.

You've probably already noticed, as Devil’s Advocate has, that although supplies have been just a trickle, pretty much every major retailer has long had PS2s freely available to buy over the counter, and yet despite all the lazy media hype, even these highly limited stocks haven't been snapped up. If Sony think that the machine, now deprived of rarity value, is going to sell enough to give it an unassailable user base in time for the launch of Xbox and Gamecube, they must have been sniffing marker pens in their lunchbreak.

They seem to be pinning their hopes on "killer apps", but no matter how pretty the rain effects are, only a total loony is going to fork out almost £400 (you'll need a memory card, remember) just to play Gran Turismo 2 again
with better graphics. If Sony haven't got the price down by at least £50 (and probably £100) by this summer, get your PS2 on eBay straight away and beat the rush.

No. 44 - 21 March 2001

Over the last couple of years, Devil’s Advocate has grown used to new consoles launching with highly insipid line-ups of software. Gone for ever, it seems, are the days when a new machine would come with at least a couple of games so astonishingly innovative and superb that any sane person would have no option but to rush out and buy the console at once. The Xbox is the latest next-gen machine to announce an opening salvo of games likely to provoke nothing but a stifled seen-it-all-before yawn, but it’s the unlikely source of Nintendo which really takes the biscuit this month with a Game Boy Advance launch schedule that’s almost breathtaking in its cynicism.

Nintendo’s official press announcement this week listed just eight launch titles for GB (Devil’s Advocate isn’t sure where its CTW colleagues got the two Konami titles from), comprising one SNES port, one NES port, three dull other-format ports (Rayman, Tony Hawk’s and Ready 2 Rumble – gee, why no WWF game?) and just three original titles, of which only one (the lovely Kuru Kuru Kururin) looks at all decent. Clearly, the plan here is to milk gullible early consumers by giving them nothing else to buy but games which they otherwise wouldn’t look at twice. It’s probably a wise lesson learned from the PS2 launch, but swapping “quantity not quality” for just plain old “not quality” isn’t much of an advance in this reporter’s book.

No. 45 - 4 April 2001

It looks as if Konami have hit on a real winning formula with the recent chart-smashing success of Zone Of The Enders on PS2. Short-lived and rather so-so giant mech games have never exactly gone down a storm with the UK public, but quality-starved PS2 owners rushed out in their thousands to snap up copies of ZOE. The reason, of course, is the 10-minute demo of Metal Gear Solid 2, the game that’s still favourite to become the PS2’s first killer app, a mere two years or so after the console’s launch.

But why stop there? Everyone’s been going on recently about episodic gaming being the way forward for the future, so why don’t Konami just go the whole hog and release MGS2 a level at a time, as demos on their next dozen or so not-so-hot titles? That way, you get 12 sets of unnaturally high sales figures instead of just one, and today’s consumers are so dumb and crazed by hype that they’d probably still buy the full game at the end of it all anyway, especially if you stuck a bonus level on at the end. Frankly, Devil’s Advocate can’t see the flaw in the plan, and it could be just what the embattled industry needs to break out of the financial quicksand it’s currently wallowing in. Just remember where you heard it first.

No. 46 - 18 April 2001

It’s a fickle old business, this. More than anything save for the stock market, the games industry is a fragile beast that can be made or destroyed on a whim of “confidence” from a group of people who, by and large, have no idea what they’re talking about. Just a couple of short months ago, the Xbox was everyone’s darling. A business that hadn’t had the massive profit-festival it had been expecting overnight from the PS2 suddenly decided that despite Microsoft having shown nothing other than the willingess to throw money at it, they were going to be the console-making geniuses that would save us all.

Now, with absolutely nothing substantial having changed, everyone’s in a mighty panic, saying the Xbox is doomed to failure in Japan, and hence will fail in general. Let’s have a sane person look at this for a second, shall we? Firstly, there are already some major Japanese names signed up for Xbox, including the no-small-matter one of Sega. Secondly, no Western console has ever been a hit in Japan – why is anyone acting all shocked about the prospect now? Thirdly, despite all our hero-worship, Japan is by far the smallest and least significant of the three games markets – if it came to it, Microsoft could still do very nicely without it. And how many of the PS2’s big hit games so far have come from Japan? You’re like a bunch of neurotic fishwives. Get a hold of yourselves.

No. 47 - 1 May 2001

It was no surprise to see ELSPA’s Avuncular Avenger Roger Bennett having a go last week at the judge who accused game companies of grossly overcharging the public. But it must be terribly confusing for the grey-haired publisher-protector having to spend half his time preparing press releases about what a fantastic, dynamic, thrusting industry the British games business is, out-earning movies and music and generating a fortune for the British economy, and the other half of his time bemoaning the fact that the industry is impoverished due to piracy, and in imminent danger of collapse if it doesn’t get given a load of government handouts and tax breaks immediately.

Really, though, isn’t it about time we finally admitted once and for all that we’ve lost the PR war on this one? When even judges, traditionally the most conservative and reactionary group of people in the entire country, are suggesting that games are a rip-off, then just maybe it’s time to abandon the ludicrous “hard drugs and IRA paedophiles” line that’s so far failed to make any impact on public opinion for the last 20 years, and adopt a more constructive approach to the problem? WH Smith, another institution not noted for radical Marxism, have given everyone else a lead, and the measures other retailers have been forced to adopt to sell new-generation software just about clinch the argument. Isn’t it time we stopped fighting it?

No. 48 - 16 May 2001

Devil’s Advocate doesn’t like to say it told you so (note: this is a lie), but the recent furore over the profit margin likely to be offered to retailers on Game Boy Advance confirms your columnist’s previously-voiced fears about the platform many in the industry were pinning their hopes on to dig us all out of this cyclical and transitional sticky patch (now two years long and counting).

While punters will swarm to the shops like locusts on June 22 for the pretty small supply of consoles available, retail will make peanuts from the machine itself, and with third-party software likely to be priced higher than the street price of many PS2 titles, it’s difficult to see the games flying off the shelves in big numbers either. After all, the traditional handheld-buying audience is going to be busy with Pokemon Silver and Gold for months yet, and are we sure the diehard early adopter wants to fork out that sort of money on a bunch of SNES-quality platformers and retro driving games?

It rather looks like Nintendo, currently riding a big high on its Pokemillions and the genuine excitement surrounding Gamecube, is heading into the same tricky pickle as Sony are encountering in trying to force customers into buying upgraded technology when they’re still perfectly happy with the machine they’ve got. Devil’s Advocate would advise retailers not to book those Caribbean holidays just yet.

No. 49 - 30 May 2001

So, who wants to stake their future on the Xbox’s chances now? Nintendo’s show-stealing Gamecube launch announcement really yanked the rug out from underneath Microsoft as it struggled with a largely hostile Japanese market. With the US machine’s games on display at E3 looking hugely derivative, it’s fast becoming impossible to imagine why consumers would want to pay out a 50% premium on the price of the Gamecube, given that unlike PS2, Xbox doesn’t even come with out-of-the-box DVD movie capability. 

Of course, none of this comes as much of a surprise to your humble columnist, who noted as long ago as March 2000 that Microsoft had shown no signs of coming up with software for their new machine to rival that of what Devil’s Advocate described as “the Japanese giants”. And with a line-up of gloomy, brown-looking PC-inspired games and slightly tweaked console ports, the Xbox looks as far away from having a killer app as, well, the PS2 still is. With the Big N swimming in money even as Microsoft prepare to pour theirs down the toilet for years before expecting any profit, it looks as though the software industry is finally, painfully slowly, coming round to the notion of throwing in its lot with the one firm that’s shown the consistent ability to generate money by producing continually evolving games that people actually enjoy playing and get excited about. And Devil’s Advocate, for one, is delighted. Roll on Luigi’s Mansion.

No. 50 - 13 June 2001

What on Earth is happening to the magazine business at the moment? We’re at theoretically the most exciting point of the games industry for years (PS2 doing fairly well even at £300, PS1 hanging on gamely, GB Advance any minute, and Xbox and Gamecube just a few months away), yet no-one seems to want to touch videogames magazines with a bargepole. Neil Harris’ dodgy fly-by-night outfit Quay went down the toilet not long ago, once-giants EMAP have all but ducked out of games mag publishing altogether (who’s going to bet on them even seeking a renewal of the official Nintendo licence when it comes up soon?), and even Dennis are shutting mags.

Then, of course, there’s Future, which is stewing in what’s beginning to look like one of the biggest corporate messes ever. Frantically selling off anything that'll fetch a few quid and closing everything that won’t in an attempt to reduce debt and pacify their bankers (rumours abound that flagships Edge and PC Gamer are next up for grabs), the once-proud firm is also rumoured to be in serious trouble with Sony over the terms of the Official PS2 Mag licence. Why, when interest in videogaming should never have been higher, is everyone who makes videogames magazines either hurtling towards the ground in flames or chucking themselves out of the plane with a shot-up parachute and hoping for the best? What do they know that we don't?

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