Gaming Journal Archive- 2001

December 6, 2001
   When Sega announced at the end of January 2001 that it was becoming a 
multi-platform publisher, it strongly stressed that its Dreamcast line-up 
would be just as strong as ever "for the next 18 months," which would take 
them to August 2002.  At that point, Sega would "re-evaluate whether or not 
it makes sense to continue publishing Dreamcast games."
   That's what Sega said in order to appease its loyal fans in January; now 
let's look at the reality of the situation.  It's December 2001 and the 
Dreamcast's third holiday season has been its worst from a first-party 
standpoint.  Countless Dreamcast games have either had their online support 
removed (including Tennis 2K2) or have been cancelled altogether (including 
Shenmue 2).
   Also, SegaNet was shut down as an ISP and all of its members were 
transferred over to EarthLink unless they specifically requested otherwise 
within a certain time period.  Worst of all,, only two more Dreamcast games 
are scheduled to ever be released in the US.  These games are Ubi Soft's 
Conflict Zone (which is due out in mid December) and Sega Sports NHL 2K2 
(which is due out in late January).
   Sega probably made the decision to lie about its future Dreamcast plans 
in the January press conference as a way of softening the blow for loyal 
Dreamcast/Sega fans.  They revealed only part of the truth in January (the 
multi-platform part) and slowly revealed the rest of the truth over the 
course of the year (the fact that they were dropping the Dreamcast extremely
quickly).  Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I would have preferred to have 
been told the entire truth in the first place rather than the usual half-
truths and outright lies.

November 5, 2001
   I'm a little bit surprised that Namco is bringing Soul Calibur 2 out for 
all three major systems rather than just one or two of them.  Here's an idea
for Namco: Pledge your support for VM Labs' Nuon system and make Soul 
Calibur 2 exclusive to the Nuon.  Then, never release another freaking game 
for the Nuon ever again other than a crappy puzzle game called Mr. Driller. 
Any similarities between this strategy and your pre-existing Dreamcast 
strategy are purely coincidental...
   Am I the only one who thinks that Nintendo has been gushing just a little
bit too much about the high sales of Pokemon Crystal?  Nintendo of America 
vice president Peter Main was as giddy as a schoolgirl with his statement, 
"Pokemania continues across the product spectrum!"  Hey Peter, while you're 
stealing phrases from 1980s wrestling star Hulk Hogan, I would like to 
suggest the line: "So whatcha gonna do, brother, when Hulkamania runs wild 
on you?"
   Nintendo's Peter Main set himself up for further jokes by saying, "The 
incredible launch of Pokemon Crystal comes as no surprise to retailers-- 
they've seen this all before."  Actually, it's not just retailers who have 
"seen it all before."  Gamers have too, with each game being a bigger re-
hash than the previous one, and the series as a whole losing its creative 
legs somewhere around Pokemon Yellow...

October 3, 2001
   Infogrames employees around the world are dropping like flies as a result
of the company's continued lay-offs, but fear not, video game industry 
employees!  According to Infogrames' delusional CEO Bruno Bonnell, losing 
your job is actually a good thing.  In a recent interview, the always-
charming Bonnell started off by saying, "We're not laying people off as 
often as some might think... the absolute number of employees right now is 
2,000, and by the end of this calendar year, we will have lost about 20 
percent [400 people]."
   Now, here's the real kicker: "The number on its own is not the full story.
A lot of people are getting to form their own companies... lay-offs are not 
necessarily a sad story.  I have always felt that it is actually the land of
opportunity."  This thought apparently comes from the alternate reality in 
Bonnell's head, the same one in which crappy licensed games are the road to 
glory, and where buying sh-- companies like Hasbro Interactive, GT, Accolade,
and (almost) Eidos is a smart business srategy.
   If Bonnell really feels this way about lay-offs, does he show up to work 
one day and say to an employee, "Congratulations!  You're fired!  Now get 
out there and be somebody!"  In Bonnell's mind, do laid off employees think
to themselves, "Hooray!  I have always dreamed about being laid off, but I 
never thought it would happen to me.  I have been waiting my entire career 
for this!"
   The moral of the story is that if you're getting into the video game 
industry, don't even entertain the thought of working for a cutting-edge 
company like Square, Maxis, Lionhead, or Tiburon.  Instead, get a job with
Infogrames and put all of your hopes and dreams into the thought that one 
day... maybe, just maybe, if you're lucky and if the gods are smiling down 
upon you, you'll get laid off.

August 10, 2001
   It has been a very sad couple of days for the game industry thanks to the
closures of GOD Games and Dynamix.  The people at these companies worked 
hard to deliver hit games (Max Payne and Tribes 2, respectively), and both 
developers succeeded in their tasks.  Naturally, they were rewarded by 
having the corporate rug pulled out from underneath them.  How can GOD and 
Dynamix can shut down while crap-happy companies like Acclaim, Midway, 3DO, 
Titus, and Infogrames are still in business?  The answer is obviously "lack 
of available funds," but that doesn't make it any less painful.
   Just as sad is the two-faced nature of GOD co-founder Mike Wilson.  At 
the time the Take-Two sale took place, Wilson claimed that GOD was in 
perfectly good health, and that the Take-Two sale would change nothing other
than to give GOD's games better distribution.  Now that the plug has been 
pulled on GOD, Wilson pours his guts out and essentially says that the 
company has been all-but-dead for a very, very long time.  If Wilson has 
been lying about the state of affairs at GOD for the past year or two, how 
do we know he's not lying about the circumstances surrounding its closure?
   The GameCube's announced launch total of 1.1 million units is bold 
considering the fact that Microsoft's goal for the entire calendar year (not
launch day) is 1-1.5 million units.  Then again, the 1.1 million figure 
comes from the same company that was supposedly going to ship one million 
Game Boy Advance systems to US retailers on launch day, but then cut that 
number to 500,000 in what the company's own representatives admitted was 
"a strategic decision."  In other words, they had more than 500,000 systems 
ready to go, but only shipped 500,000 in order to artificially boost the 
demand and launch day hysteria for the system.
   Peter Moore's comment that Sega hasn't announced a co-development deal 
with Nintendo drastically increases the belief in my mind that such a deal 
is actually in place or will be shortly.  Over the years, the normal spin 
for a video game company to use is this: When you're asked a question and 
the real answer is no, you firmly say no and leave it at that.  When you're 
asked a question and the real answer is yes, you say something to the effect
of, "We haven't announced anything like that."

April 20, 2001
By Ivan Trembow
   It's odd that the state of Michigan would dedicate resources to do an 
"undercover sting operation" in order to determine whether retailers are 
selling M-rated games to people under 17.  Wouldn't it make more sense for 
the state to do a sting operation on... oh, I don't know... maybe something 
that's actually illegal?  
   The video game ratings system is merely an advisory for parents who want 
to know what their kids are playing and/or buying; it's not a legally binding
system that makes it illegal to sell M-rated games to children.  Now that 
the state of Michigan is in the habit of cracking down on perfectly legal 
activities, what's next?  Are they going to arrest people who don't wait 30 
minutes after eating before they go swimming?
   I am also confused by this statement by Michigan Attorney General 
Jennifer Granholm: "I hope that Michigan consumers will exercise the power
of their pocketbooks to support retailers who've pledged to be part of the
solution to youth violence."  Call me crazy, but I think it's more likely 
that Michigan consumers will exercise the power of their pocketbooks to 
support retailers who don't try to tell them what they can and cannot do, 
and what they can and cannot buy?
   I don't think I'm the only one laughing at Disney Interactive's claim 
that its upcoming first-person shooter will be "edgy" rather than "cutesy."  
When you're assessing the validity of Disney's claim, remember the fact that 
you don't actually kill anyone in the game; you capture or freeze them 
instead.  Plus, the game never even uses the term "weapons," choosing 
instead to call them "tools."  Oh yeah, Disney, that's really edgy.  You 
better tone it down or you might be banned from retailers because of this 
extreme level of edginess...

April 13, 2001
By Ivan Trembow
   As it slowly sinks in that online gaming is not going to be a reality on 
either the PlayStation 2 or the Xbox until 2002, there are a variety of 
emotions that I'm inclined to feel.  Looking back, Sega was the only console 
maker with the foresight to realize that broadband was going to take a lot 
longer than initially expected to achieve widespread distribution.
   If you're like the vast majority of America and broadband is not yet 
available in your area, you'll have to stick with the Dreamcast and PC for 
your online gaming needs.  While Sony has its proverbial nose up in the air 
at the thought of PlayStation 2 games being playable with a 56K modem, Sega 
has the last laugh because it now has over 200,000 SegaNet subscribers who 
pay $22 per month for the service.
   While market research companies are predicting an explosion of broadband 
growth in the next few years, these are the some companies that predicted in
1998 that the market would explode by 2001.  Call me a skeptic, but it 
appears that this is how these research companies have operated in the past 
and will continue to operate in the future.
   In 1998, they predicted explosive growth in a wide variety of markets by 
2001.  Now in 2001, all of their previous estimates have been proven false, 
but no one remembers that because they're now predicting explosive growth in 
a wide variety of markets by 2004.  In 2004, we'll all be hearing about a 
what great year 2007 is going to be.  Fortunately for gamers everywhere, 
Sega was wise enough to see through the broadband BS and provide gamers with 
a more than sufficient, low-latency 56K network.
   By the way, it took a real marketing genius at Disney to decide on 
"Disney's Aladdin: Nasira's Revenge" as the name of the company's movie and 
line of accompanying products (including a PlayStation game)?  Most people 
aren't aware of this, but children absolutely love products with titles that 
they can't pronounce.  There's a huge market for it...

April 7, 2001
By Ivan Trembow
   I thought that Sony's Phil Harrison was the best "Artful Question Dodger"
in the business, as he skillfully avoided PlayStation 2-related questions as
far back as 1996.  Apparently, Harrison doesn't have a thing on Sega's 
Charles Bellfield (see Master Gamer's Five Questions With Sega).  How can 
Bellfield say with a straight face that there are no hard feelings between 
Sega and EA, when Sega's own president (Peter Moore) outright said that such
hard feelings do indeed exist in an interview with Games Business last year?
   When someone asks EA whether the Dreamcast can succeed without EA's 
support and the entire response is "no," Sega would have to be run by an 
army of robots to not feel any kind of emotion.  It's even more of a cop-out 
to deny the widely-publicized reports about the mess of a relationship that 
exists between Sega of America and Sega of Japan, which only grew more 
strained when the Dreamcast flopped in Japan and was only moderately 
successful in the US.
   Remember, Charles Bellfield is the same man who categorically denied that
Sega was ceasing production of the Dreamcast with statements like, "Sega 
never said this... everyone is jumping to conclusions... the Dreamcast is 
very much the core of our business going forward."  The previous statements 
were made less than one week before the announcement that Sega was, in fact, 
ceasing production of the Dreamcast.
   Sega also denied that it would be developing games for the PlayStation 2, 
only to announce not much more than a week later that Sega had been in 
possession of PS2 development kits for "several months."  Those expensive 
development kits and multi-million-dollar PS2 game budgets must have just 
slipped under the radar, right?  How about the straight-faced claim that 
Sega was "still in negotiations" to make Xbox games long after the company 
had begun work on the system?
   Sega has a well-deserved reputation for making quality games, but the 
company's inability to tell consumers the truth is almost Nintendo-like in 
its absurdity.

March 16, 2001
By Ivan Trembow
   Microsoft's line-up for the Xbox doesn't look particularly impressive 
outside of Munch's Oddysee, but it's important to take a look at Sony's 
PlayStation 2 line-up in order to put things in perspective.  The PS2 is 
doing very well despite its horrible first-party line-up of Fantavision, NFL 
GameDay 2001, NCAA GameBreaker 2001, NBA ShootOut 2001, and NCAA Final Four 
2001.  That's one mediocre puzzle game and four of the worst sports game 
ever created.  Great first-party line-ups give boosts to their respective 
systems, but bad first-party systems are far from death blows to their 
systems.
   Dreamcast owners are understandably upset that Eidos has cancelled the DC 
version of Soul Reaver 2 in order to focus on the PS2 version, just as PSX 
owners were upset with Eidos cancelled the PSX version of the game to focus 
on the Dreamcast version.  At this rate, the next update on Soul Reaver 2's 
status will be that the PS2 version has been cancelled in favor of a GameCube
version, followed by an announcement that the GameCube version will be 
cancelled in favor of an Xbox version.  My guess is that Soul Reaver 2 will 
eventually be released for the PlayStation 4 in 2010...
   I was surprised to learn that not only have Sony and Connectix settled 
their PlayStation emulation lawsuit out of court, but Connectix will cease 
all sales of its Virtual Game Station line of products as of June 30.  Why 
would Connectix agree to stop selling the VGS if it was beating Sony in court
time after time?  One might be inclined to think that Connectix simply ran 
out of money and could no longer afford the constant and seemingly never-
ending court dates and lawyer fees, but that's purely speculation.
   This has nothing to do with video games, but I'd say that Round 1 of 
Vince McMahon vs. Bob Costas goes to Vince...

January 5, 2001
By Ivan Trembow
   Is Sega's Hideki Sato completely oblivious to the fact that a "networked 
game machine" called the Dreamcast has been for sale in Japan for over two 
years?  He talks about his goal of creating a new "networked game machine" 
as if it's a novel concept that has never been done before.  Not only has it
been done before, but Sega itself has done it before.
   The scariest quote of the week goes to Seaman's lead designer Yoot Saito,
who says that the PC version of the game will be slower than the Dreamcast 
version.  You mean to tell me that it's possible for a game to be slower 
than the DC version of Seaman?  If the DC version of Seaman is Saito's idea 
of fast, I don't ever want to see his idea of slow...
   Namco's statement that it will be supporting the GameCube doesn't mean a 
whole lot to me.  Remember, this is the same company that once claimed it 
would support the Dreamcast.  In fact, Namco only released two Dreamcast 
games in the US, and one of them was Mr. Driller.  I also can't believe 
anything that Sierra or Valve says about the Dreamcast version(s) of Half-
Life.  They have changed their minds about it so many times that their
credibility has suffered as a result.

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