Joystiq

Ohio library now loaning video games

Ludwig Kietzmann — 2008-07-01T19:55:00+00:00

Filed under: Culture, Sony PlayStation 2, Sony PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360

Eager bookworms visiting the Washington-Centerville Public Library in Centerville, Ohio, will face exposure to the new-fangled "video game" entertainment medium, as the library will now be loaning PS2, PS3, Wii and Xbox 360 games. According to the Dayton Daily News, the library will carry two categories of games: Titles aimed at families, and ones aimed at players aged 10 and up (sans adult-only games). Each game will be available for one-week loan with the option of one renewal.

You can check for yourself which games are available in the library's online catalog, though the Dayton Daily News has gone and confirmed the presence of Guitar Hero, Kung-Fu Panda, Madden NFL 08 and, err, Iron Man. That one's probably meant to frighten the kids into reading books again.

[Via Shacknews]

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Summer movies raise demand for associated classic games

Kyle Orland — 2008-06-10T14:55:00+00:00

Filed under: Culture, Business

Summer blockbusters aren't just good for propping up the sales of crappy new movie-based games ... it turns out they're also good for pumping up the prices of crappy old games based on the same characters. For proof, look no further than the always interesting Video Game Price Charts blog, which shows a distinct and recent uptick in the selling prices for older games based on the Speed Racer, Iron Man and Indiana Jones franchises. Never mind that these games aren't directly related to the new movies, or that the games are universally awful (well, almost) -- once that old clunker of a game gets attached to a hot new movie, the asking price can get inflated by up to 170%.

We can almost see the logic behind the increased demand, from the average consumer's perspective. After all, why waste $50 on the crappy new Iron Man game that junior is begging for when you can pick up a crappy old Iron Man game for half the price (even after accounting for the recent uptick). The little punk won't know the difference anyway, and the game will get him out of your hair so you can get back to having an affair with the pool boy. It's win-win!

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Counting Rupees: GTA IV vs. Iron Man

Jeff Engel — 2008-05-09T11:56:00+00:00

Filed under: Culture, Business

Each week Jeff Engel and Geoff Brooks contribute Counting Rupees, a column on the business behind gaming:

According to several "analysts" last week, the successful launch of Grand Theft Auto IV threatened to sink the box office returns for Iron Man. The thinking went that since the game and the movie both target primarily the same demographic (males 18-29), that demographic would stay home and play the game instead of going to see the movie. While it's impossible to declare with complete certainty, as Variety did, that GTA IV had absolutely no effect on Iron Man's opening (with $104.2M in domestic receipts, $201M worldwide, and a release date for a sequel already announced), whatever effect it may have had was clearly not enough to significantly impact the movie. But clearly, many had predicted that the game could adversely affect box office receipts. It makes me wonder -- have we ever seen this sort of effect before?

The most obvious place to start looking would be the last GTA game: San Andreas. GTA: San Andreas debuted on October 26, 2004.

"If the last GTA game didn't stop people from going to the movies, there's no reason to believe the new one would either"

A few days later, the $1.2M movie Saw, with an arguably similar target audience, debuted and not only raked in $18,276,468M on opening weekend, but went on to make $55,185,045 in the US and $103,096,345 worldwide, in addition to spawning three successful sequels (and two more on the way). What's additionally telling about this is that Saw was a completely new property created on a small budget, yet people still apparently put the game down for a few hours so they could go see the movie. Iron Man had the added advantage of being a well-known comic book with a high-profile adaptation. Obviously, Iron Man also did substantially better than Saw, but if people turned out to go see a complete unknown when they had just bought GTA: San Andreas, it seems pretty clear that they would similarly turn out for one of the most hyped movies of the summer. Maybe there's another example I'm missing (although I've tried to find one), but if the last GTA game didn't stop people from going to the movies, there's no reason to believe the new one would either.

The reasons why big video game releases don't impact similarly demographically targeted movies are fairly simple. To begin with, a movie represents a short term "event" for someone. It's something that's easy and (fairly) cheap to do, gets you out of your home and typically represents a social occasion that can be considered "going out." While some games are social experiences and may even have in-person multiplayer modes (Rock Band, Super Smash Bros, Mario Kart), it's still fundamentally a solo activity, particularly for a game like GTA. Going to a movie is often not a solo activity for a lot of people, and even if it is, it still feels like you're taking a break from your home and that, in the words of George Castanza, you're "doing something". With this in mind, big video game releases are far more likely to impact other things you do in your own home such as watching TV, reading books, or viewing movies at home (which is a lot different than going out to see a movie).

" Even if someone is playing a game like GTA obsessively ... they'd probably have no problem taking a break for a couple of hours "

Second, a movie only lasts around two hours. Most games are played for far longer than that. It's safe to say that even if someone is playing a game like GTA obsessively after they get it, they'd probably have no problem taking a break for a couple of hours and then coming back to play the game some more. To add to this, a game also costs a lot more money than a movie. This probably contributes to the fact that a person will likely be happy to spend more time with a game, even if it's broken up by a movie, so that they feel they've maximized their investment. In any case, maybe there are some people who are so obsessed with a game that they won't even leave their home for a few hours to see a movie demographically targeted at them (and thus interesting to them), but that likely doesn't represent the vast majority of the gaming audience right now.

So, if these are fairly obvious - even basically acknowledged in the follow-up Variety article - why were analysts predicting problems for the movie? It probably has more to do with the fact that movie ticket sales have been sliding in recent years and industry insiders are just trying to figure out why. The problem is, there's a whole host of other issues people bring up when asked why they're not going to the movies anymore, and I've never seen video games listed. More issues commonly cited are the rise of cheap DVDs, poorer quality movies, more and more pre-movie ads at theaters, and annoying audiences (SSSHHHH!).

Of course, this isn't to say that video games have had no impact at all on the overall rate at which people go to movies, just as the rise of the internet and DVDs have probably had some impact. Certainly, when people have more mediums in which they can consume information and entertainment than they did before, the older mediums are going to see less time to devoted to them. However, what likely happens is that people simply start increasing their "filters" for what they're willing to see. For instance, if a person used to see 2-3 movies a month, that might get reduced to an overall one movie a month. So which movie does he/she see? Probably the one most demographically targeted to them (or their significant other). In an odd way, this means that it's more likely a video game release would impact movies that are not targeted at the same demographics as the game, as those are the movies that people may have given a chance before they had the option of playing a video game. Iron Man, with the strong hype behind it and a strong appeal to the demographically similar GTA IV audience, was never in danger of losing that audience exclusively to the game.

As co-editors of A Link To The Future, Geoff and Jeff like to discuss, among many other topics, the business aspects of gaming. Game companies often make decisions that on their face appear baffling, or even infuriating, to many gamers. Yet when you think hard about them from the company's perspective, many other decisions are eminently sensible, or at least appeared to be so based on the conditions at the time those choices were made. Our goal with this column is to start a conversation about just those topics. While neither Geoff nor Jeff are employed in the game industry, they do have professional backgrounds that are relevant to the discussion. More to the point, they don't claim to have all the answers -- but this is a conversation worth having. You can reach them at

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No GTA IV effect on Iron Man opening

Alexander Sliwinski — 2008-05-05T13:25:00+00:00

Filed under: Culture

Talk of Grand Theft Auto IV possibly hurting Iron Man's opening was clearly wrong. According to Variety, the movie made $104.2 million during its opening weekend, proving Paramount's Rob Moore right when he said that young males can carve out two hours to see Iron Man.

Variety did explore GTA IV's impact on the home video market recently, which showed no major releases targeted at the young male demo for the week. Probably the best comparison would be to see how the Iron Man video game did in sales when NPD comes out next month, and we know we're going out on a limb on this one, but we're pretty sure GTA IV won that battle.

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Iron Man demo hitting Xbox Live Marketplace tomorrow

Ludwig Kietzmann — 2008-04-17T21:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Action

Sega has kindly informed us that an interactive snippet of gameplay from its upcoming Iron Man game will become available for download on the Xbox Live Marketplace sometime tomorrow. Players are invited to become literal cans of whoop-ass, with Marvel's metal-clad superhero aiding them in the destruction of tanks, jets and other things that explode when you punch them a lot.

PlayStation 3 owners will have to make do with our impressions for now, though a PSN demo is scheduled to arrive "soon." Iron Man is out for every console ever on May 2, the same day they release a movie of the same name. What a coincidence!

Gallery: Iron Man

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New Iron Man trailer is creeping us out

Justin McElroy — 2008-04-09T10:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Action

After watching the above trailer we were thrilled, because we figured a hilarious joke about Iron Man and the Un-can-ny Valley was well within our grasp. You know, because cans are metal and Iron Man, he's ... well, the short version is that we stared at the keyboard for minutes and nothing came. Honestly, looking at it now, we're not all that surprised.

But hey, we figured, we already had it embedded and everything, so we might as well pass it along with our (not as hilarious) response. This old video: Good. This new video: Creepy.

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Joystiq impressions: Iron Man (Xbox 360)

Ludwig Kietzmann — 2008-04-01T11:05:00+00:00

Filed under: Nintendo DS, PC, Sony PlayStation 2, Sony PlayStation 3, Sony PSP, Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360, Action

Of course Iron Man is yet another movie cash-in, a title that will sit on the shelf and call to you as you march out the cinema with glitzy, superhero shenanigans still fresh in your memory. But aside from all that, wanting to play as the eponymous, metal-clad cad is a desire that doesn't just come from the foul wells of corporate synergy and marketing. Nigh indestructible and capable of dishing out destruction from the palm of his hand, it's no challenge to see the appeal in controlling Iron Man -- a literal can of whoop-ass.

It does come as a major concern then, when his in-game movements display more than a little clumsiness. It's not entirely Iron Man's fault -- he's a flying tank that performs best when it maintains momentum and moves in a straight line -- but the 3rd-person action shown to us by a Sega representative seemed hampered by the controls and camera. While there's a great sense of speed and freedom conveyed by soaring across a desert, it's only when Iron Man cools his jets and starts punching things that issues arise.

Gallery: Iron Man

In the category of things to be punched, you'll encounter enemy tanks, helicopters, turrets and other contraptions that litter the game's large, open-ended environments. Stationary or slow-moving objects are easiest to deal with, as Iron Man can employ his projectile weapons from afar before delivering a close-up, contextual coup de grâce which, much like those found in God of War, allow him to his tear enemies apart. Replace the blood with showers of sparks and you'll have a pretty good idea of how those actions work. There's also a modicum of forethought involved in these assaults, with Iron Man being able to allocate his energy to four different aspects of his suit, namely thrusters, weapons, shield and melee ability.

When approaching nimbler targets such as fighter jets, Iron Man appears to become a bit more unwieldy. Attempts to grab or fire at a circling jet seemed severely hampered by an inability to lock on to the target and keep it in the camera's view. As annoying as the constant reorientation is likely to be for players, we imagine it's much worse for poor Tony Stark who's spinning around in an enclosed, metal suit. GAME OVER: You drowned in your own vomit.

That isn't to say Sega's take on Iron Man constantly evokes nausea. His in-game model is clearly the graphical star, and an array of different suits is sure to please the superhero fashion police. Naturally, the game's story and environments all go "beyond the movie" (look for that phrase on the back of the box), with developer Secret Level delving into Marvel's catalogue of comics for additional characters. Provided the movie isn't complete rubbish, it'll be hard to begrudge fans who just want to grab an incoming missile and hurl it back like an explosive javelin.

Still, if one were to sever the Iron Man connection and examine this as a straight-up action title, the apparent targeting and camera flaws would push it into a wishy-washy mass of overlooked titles. There's still time to address these concerns, but with the movie demanding companionship across all current platforms in May, not that much time.

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Robert Downey Jr., Terrence Howard give voices to 'Iron Man' video game

Ross Miller — 2008-03-20T19:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Action

Much to our (elated) surprise, the Iron Man video game is looking good. Adding a few more mega fonzies to our Cool-O-Meter is the addition of a few actors from the film. Robert Downey Jr., Terrence Howard and Shaun Toub will all lend the voices to the game, according to a Sega press release.

To catch up the few people who live under a rock, Downey plays Tony "Iron Man" Stark, Howard plays Lt. Colonel James Rhodes (who later becomes War Machine). Toub has a more minor role, playing fellow Afghanistan captive Yin Sen. We wonder if he'll fill in the same role as Bruce "Don't call me Ash" Campbell in the Spider-Man games as a tutorial guide. The Iron Man game is expected to arrive just before the film's May 2 release.

[Via Press Release]

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Analyst: Iron Man film could suffer from GTA IV release

Ross Miller — 2008-03-12T15:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Business

Jon Favreau's Iron Man adaptation is looking really good, but its ticket sales may suffer from a proverbial digital drive-by. That's according to Janco Partners analyst Mike Hickey (via Next-Gen), who warns that the April 29 release of Grand Theft Auto IV could adversely affect the superhero film's May 2 opening the same week. Said Hickey, ""We anticipate the video game release of GTA IV on April 29 could dampen the potential from Iron Man's theatrical release on May 2."

While you might scoff at the notion, remember that Halo 3 was cited as a primary reason for poor box office sales the week after its release last year.

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Iron Man's new trailer looks unexpectedly awesome

Justin McElroy — 2007-12-10T11:20:00+00:00

Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Action

We know, we know, it's just a video clip. And yes, we know that we've been burned by sexy trailers for mediocre licensed games before. But this new trailer for Iron Man (shown during last night's Spike VGAs) is just so freaking good, we're finding it hard to keep our cynical composure.

How about when Iron Man throws a fighter jet, or when it grabs a missile and redirects it? How about the original gray armor? Awesome. Everything here is. There is one thing that troubles us though: At one point, Tony Stark flies through a ring. If it's a stylish move, all's well, but if Iron Man's going to get into some Superman 64 shenannigans, things are going to get hectic.

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Iron Man game designers using ILM model

Ross Miller — 2007-10-30T00:57:00+00:00

Filed under: Nintendo DS, PC, Sony PlayStation 2, Sony PlayStation 3, Sony PSP, Microsoft Xbox 360

The Iron Man video game has two strikes against it, by merit of being (1) a licensed product and (2) poised to be released alongside a movie. However, there are some benefits to the movie connection. Speaking to USA Today, Sega of America Senior Producer Mike McHale revealed that they had received the CG model for Iron Man himself created by Industrial Light & Magic for use in the film.

The game, according to McHale, will extend beyond the movie's storyline and also include classic villains from the comics. Whether or not this game succumbs the fate of most licensed titles remains to be seen. Iron Man, the game, is set for release "just before the film arrives in theaters May 2."

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