Any games to get excited about in 2009?

[LightPhoenix]

Dragon Age is the big one I'm looking forward to. I'm hoping it comes out by June, so I can nab it before finishing my thesis.

Starcraft II I'm looking forward to, but only as a single player game. I'll probably play multiplayer with my friends, but I'm not terribly interested in Battle.net and random people.

Diablo III will be fun, but like others here I don't think it will come out this year.

Those are the big three that I'm interested in. I'll probably pick up Sacred 2 on Steel_Wind's suggestion (we seem to have similar tastes... in games at least ), but seeing as how I still haven't gotten to Mass Effect, let alone cleared out my list of games to finish... I don't know when I'd get to that.

The whole concept of exclusive titles has essentially died. It was always a concept that occurred in the past more due to happenstance than by clever design or any real marketing inititative. If you think otherwise, well... for the most part, it just looked that way.

I'm not sure it's totally happenstance so much as a combination of:

1) While the general coding was the same, hardware was quite different as you go back in console generations. This is especially true when you go back to the cart vs. CD days. The only people that bothered were shovelware producers.

2) In general today there's been a convergence of hardware specs fueled by the influence of PCs, and specifically the emergence of only a few dedicated processor developers (AMD, Intel).

I totally agree about the economic detriment of exclusive titles. There is absolutely no natural stimulus for game developers to stay exclusive - you want as many people as possible buying your game. Only large payments by the console developers keep this happening at all... and even now they're generally windows of exclusivity (see: Mass Effect) rather than true exclusive titles.

 

[Arnwyn]

The others? Meh, 'specially on MGS4

Yeah, that's what I thought about the meager 360 exclusives after I tried 'em.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Don't know where you're getting this intel from. Exclusive titles are often aggressively pursued, at least in Microsoft's case. Mass Effect, Halo, Gears of War, and Fable are franchises they intend to pay to keep. Sony has recently spoken up and said they aren't going in that direction anymore.

I get my intel from the game industry: reading it, watching it, contracting in it for both my own game development company and on behalf of clients in the game industry.

BTW, from the above list? Not a single title you listed as an "exclusive" was, in fact, "exclusive":

Mass Effect Not an exclusive. It skipped the PS3 due to engine issues and dev specs. ME went to PC within months of release for the 360.

This is being repeated with Dragon Age: Origins, except in reverse. It's out for PC first, 360 and PS3 for November 2009.

Gears of War? Same story. Indeed, the PC version included bonus content.

Fable: Ditto. The PC version also included bonus content.

Halo? Same story - though in that case Microsoft bought the company to ensure it would go console first, PC second, and PS2/3, never.

Exclusives simply make little sense in an age where the dev costs of games is so astronomically high.

 

[Kaodi]

I do not know if it will be released in 2009, but Elemental: War of Magic, Stardock's new fantasy 4X game is gunning for a public beta beginning in June.

There are a lot of games I am looking forward to more than that one, but I anticipate it being really good, and I am not sure how many folks would have heard of it already.

 

[TwistedBishop]

BTW, from the above list? Not a single title you listed as an "exclusive" was, in fact, "exclusive":

They're absolutely exclusives. They might be Microsoft exclusives rather than simply Xbox 360, but exclusives nonetheless. Either way a deal is made which restricts content to a certain company, and keeps it away from others.

However, I would disagree that Sony avoids a similar practice. They might be on record stating they don't "buy exclusivity" -- which might be semantically correct in reference to huge titles like Final Fantasy or GTA -- but they have locked down third-party games in publishing arrangements just like Microsoft.

 

[Felon]

They're absolutely exclusives. They might be Microsoft exclusives rather than simply Xbox 360, but exclusives nonetheless. Either way a deal is made which restricts content to a certain company, and keeps it away from others.

Exactly. Steel Wind's retort puzzles the heck out of me. Someone who's informed about the industry probably knows that the company that makes Windows is also the company that makes the Xbox. The Xbox was conceived as a way to take advantage of folks developing games for Windows, by expanding the market to gamers who prefer to play with a controller in front of their TV's.

Thus, a game that's available only on Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Xbox is, of course, a Microsoft exclusive. The rapport between the two is a feature, not a flaw.

 

[AJCarrington]

I do not know if it will be released in 2009, but Elemental: War of Magic, Stardock's new fantasy 4X game is gunning for a public beta beginning in June.

I'd completely missed this one. If it's on par with GalCivII, then I'll be picking it up pretty quickly.

AJC

 

[Steel_Wind]

They're absolutely exclusives. They might be Microsoft exclusives rather than simply Xbox 360, but exclusives nonetheless.

A Microsoft exclusive? Are you saying that with a straight face?

Let me help your analysis out a little: One of those titles earns Micrsoft a royalty; the other does not.

Your expansive definition of "exclusive" would have been greatly appreciated by EA/BioWare, when it had to explain to its fans in Jan 08 that its 360 "exclusive" Mass Effect released in November 07 was due to be released in February 08 for the PC. (As events transpired, it didn't get released till about May 08 for the PC).

There were few fans at that time who understood "exclusive" to mean "not on PS3".

Not even EA PR in full flight was trying to spin that as an "exclusive". The best they could say was that their marketing claims that Mass Effect was an "exclusive" were true...at the time it was initally released.

Because when it's available on more than one platform, it is no longer "exclusive". That's the common meaning of the word in the english language. And *nobody* in the game industry suggests that a title on a console and PC meets the definition of "exclusive".

Halo 3? 360 *only*. That's an exclusive.

Well, for now at any rate.

 

[TwistedBishop]

There were few fans at that time who understood "exclusive" to mean "not on PS3".

By the time Mass Effect came out, you'd have to be willfully ignorant to believe Xbox games don't get ported to the PC. Halo, Halo 2, Fable, Gears of War, Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire, all big Xbox or Xbox 360 exclusives and more importantly all of Bioware's recent efforts, were already ported to the PC. It's no secret Microsoft has such a practice.

It's also no secret the size of the console industry dwarfs the size of the hardcore PC gaming crowd, and the gap has only widened since consoles started taking on genres and features which used to be exclusive to PC gaming. While a good number of people who own gaming PCs probably own consoles, the inverse of a majority of console owners maintaining gaming PCs is not true, for some very understandable reasons of expense and convenience. To say that Gears of War didn't move, and continues to move, Xbox 360 consoles because of a PC version being available? No one would rightly believe such a thing. And that's the function of exclusivity.

 

[Felon]

There were few fans at that time who understood "exclusive" to mean "not on PS3".

Not even EA PR in full flight was trying to spin that as an "exclusive". The best they could say was that their marketing claims that Mass Effect was an "exclusive" were true...at the time it was initally released.

Because when it's available on more than one platform, it is no longer "exclusive". That's the common meaning of the word in the english language. And *nobody* in the game industry suggests that a title on a console and PC meets the definition of "exclusive".

Steel Wind, come on, man. You are not the voice of the entire gaming industry. In the sense that "exclusive" means exclusive to Microsoft platforms, the word works fine. Or one prefers, it can be called a console exclusive, which it should, as a PC is an entirely different animal from a console.

To reiterate, the rationale that PS3 outnumbers 360's exclusives because 360 titles get ported to the PC--and vice versa--is of dubious merit, because the Xbox's foothold into PC gaming is a strength of the 360, not a weakness.