How Halo 3 Changed Game Development - Tom Carroll

The Difficulty of Difficulty

The success of the Halo franchise has led to a need to appeal to a wider collection of gamers than just those labeled "hard core." As a result, in Halo 3 the easy and normal settings are easier than they might have been prior, and the heroic and legendary settings are likewise more difficult. Casual gamers will be overjoyed with the easy setting, but they'll miss out on numerous cool features of the game, including hidden skulls and cool enemy AI. Dedicated gamers, the ones who have invested hours mastering earlier incarnations of Halo, will want to jump in on heroic or legendary, lest they risk becoming bored from the start.

The secret skulls were first included in Halo 2, but then they nearly always activated some challenging feature, such as not being able to see anything on your HUD. In Halo 3, the system of skulls is much more challenging (read: fun) for anyone choosing to find them and activate them. A skull might make it so you can't see your gun scope, or enable enemies to throw grenades faster. Activating a golden skull makes the game harder for the player, but by surviving you earn a lot more points.

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Sony discontinue 20 & 60 gb PlayStation 3 in Japan version left cannot play PS2 games...

SCEI made an announcement in reference to Japan no longer shipping the 20GB and 60GB PlayStation 3 configurations.

"We have already stopped shipping these in the US and have been focused on the 80GB and 40GB configurations which are currently at retail," the company said in a statement.

"As we've said, we will also continue to read and evaluate market trends and communicate with consumers to determine appropriate configurations for each territory."

The 40gb model was introduced last November and in the US where the 20gb has also been discontinued - the last few were in great demand.

Sony release a 40gb US model in October but this doesn't play older PlayStation 3 games.

Tough year for Microsoft and the Xbox 360?

Success comes in many guises. Most people would agree that 2007 was a successful year for the Xbox 360 - a year when the firm's head-start over rival Sony was used to great effect, and when the console's software line-up was widely considered to be one of the strongest the industry has ever seen.

It was the year in which Halo 3 arrived, was critically acclaimed, and sold around 8 million copies - and perhaps most impressively of all, it was the year when Halo 3 almost seemed buried in an avalanche of superb games, whereas in any previous year it would have stood astride the software landscape like a colossus. It was the year when Xbox Live user figures passed the 10 million mark, and the year when Microsoft registered its second ever profitable quarter for the Xbox division (although it almost certainly slid back into a loss in the following quarter).

A good year, then? Well - maybe. Success is multi-faceted, and it's important to look at it from many angles before you make up your mind and stick a label on something. There are other ways in which 2007 was a terrible year for Microsoft - and in some regards, the company's lacklustre showing at CES in Las Vegas last week may be a hangover from those failings.

More from ... Games Industry

Sony PSP titles available on PlayStation Network download

Sony also plans "bite-size" games for download service

Sony plans to give PSP titles a new lease of life by making them available digitally over the PlayStation Network.

Games that have been dropped by retail but are still in demand by consumers will head to Sony's online store, as well as short "bite-size" titles, according Sony's senior product manager John Koller.

Speaking to Kotaku, Koller said that PSP titles which "retailers aren't interested in carrying at this stage, games that we hear a lot of demand from PSP owners," will be re-released over the service.

Sony has already released a handful of retail PSP titles via the newly re-launched PlayStation Store, most notably first-party releases B-Boy and Fired Up.

Demos, trailers and classic PSone titles are already part of the offering, but Koller said the company is keen to experiment with shorter, more immediate gaming experiences.

"We have an opportunity to bring bite-size experiences to the system, ten minute, pick up and play content that can be downloaded from the store," said Koller.

Movies on the UMD format are likely to benefit from a price reduction, and Koller also said Sony was happy to see Blu-ray movies come with an embedded PSP-formated version of the title, as recently announced at CES.

"Any way we can help get that multimedia content onto the PSP, we're going to take it," he said.

Source: Games Industry - Kotaku

Japan - top ten video games ALL Nintendo Wii and DS titles

Wii and DS titles pack out the entire top ten and 25 of the top 30

If ending 2007 on a dominant note wasn't enough for Nintendo, the first Japanese software chart of 2008 will be depressing reading for Sony and Microsoft in that territory.

All of the top ten in the software sales chart for the week ending January 6 were games for either the Wii or DS, with those platforms taking up 25 of the top 30 positions as well.

According to the latest Media Create data only three PlayStation 2 titles and two PlayStation Portable games prevented a complete whitewash.

Top of the list was Mario Party DS, selling just under 200,000 units, while Wii Fit broke the million total sales barrier in second and Wii Sports saw a revival in third.

Final Fantasy IV raced past the 500,000 mark in fourth, Super Mario Galaxy was fifth with Dragon Quest IV in sixth – but not one of the top ten was a new entry.

In total there were four Mario titles in the top ten, while Nintendo itself published seven of the games present – Square Enix was responsible for two, and Level 5 for one

The highest non-Nintendo title was Monster Hunter Portable 2nd for the PSP in 14th place.

The full Japanese top ten chart is as follows:

1. Mario Party DS (DS)
2. Wii Fit (Wii)
3. Wii Sports (Wii)
4. Final Fantasy IV (DS)
5. Super Mario Galaxy (Wii)
6. Wii Play (Wii)
7. Dragon Quest IV (DS)
8. Prof Layton and Pandora's Box (DS)
9. Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games (Wii)
10. Mario Party 8 (Wii)