NYT: A Year of Hype; Some of it Actually Justified

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FOR most gamers and the people who love them (and sell to them), 2006 was the year they were waiting for. Following last yearʼs debut of the Xbox 360 from Microsoft, the introduction of new consoles by the Japanese game giants Sony and Nintendo meant that the battle to dominate the next generation of interactive entertainment could finally begin.

 

But that wasnʼt the only big news in the game world. Here are the most important, intriguing and just plain amusing developments of 2006.

 

Best Leap From Mere Game to Pop-Culture Fixture: World of Warcraft. It may have first hit the market in late 2004. And it may have grown really popular in 2005. But 2006 was when the best online game yet established its place as the most far-reaching global game phenomenon since Pac-Man. Forget about the more than seven million paying subscribers: once an entire episode of “South Park” has been devoted to your game, you know youʼve arrived.

 

Best Wrenching Change: The Death of E3. Sure, the parties were great, but the elephantine Electronic Entertainment Expo each spring in Los Angeles had clearly ballooned beyond the point of usefulness. Faced with a revolt by companies tired of spending $8 million every year so thousands of game-store clerks could monopolize the demonstration kiosks, the Entertainment Software Association wisely ended the show. Starting next year, E3 will be a much smaller, exclusive event for insiders. As one senior game industry executive aptly put it: “Look, to run this business effectively there are really only 150 people that I need to deal with worldwide. The other 80,000 people coming to E3 made it almost impossible to actually get any business done.”

 

Best Job of Living Up to the Hype: Gears of War. Even before the Xbox 360 came out, Microsoft was talking an immense amount about how Gears of War would redefine console shooters for the next generation. Every time Sony showed off Resistance: Fall of Man, Microsoft said, “Just wait for Gears.” It took long enough, but Gears delivered, even surpassing some of the superheated expectations Microsoft and the developers at Epic Games in North Carolina had created. In fact, they set a high bar for the next installment of that other Xbox shooter series (due in 2007), a little franchise called Halo.

 

Worst Job of Living Up to the Hype: Sony PlayStation 3. Itʼs understandable why Sony worked up such a lather about the PS3 before it came out: it wanted consumers to hold off buying the Xbox 360. But after so many years of buildup, after so many delays and retrenchments, it was flabbergasting when Sony delivered a mediocre product. The PS3 does nothing that the Xbox 360 does not accomplish at least as well (and in some cases far better) and for less money. The most important video game story of 2007 will be whether Sony can rebound and turn the PS3 into the must-have machine so many players were awaiting.

Best Job of Bringing Gaming Back to the Masses: Nintendo Wii. If anyone in the game world can be called visionary, it is the senior executive team at Nintendo. Satoru Iwata, Shigeru Miyamoto and company realized that since the 1980s gaming had largely devolved from mass-market entertainment (like Pac-Man and Galaga) to niche hobby for hard-core young men. The Wii breaks that mold beautifully; itʼs the first game system in decades that a family can enjoy together. If my 61-year-old mother can play it, anyone can.

 

Best Retreat From the Grandstand: Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Joseph I. Lieberman. In the aftermath of the Hot Coffee “scandal” of 2005, when the makers of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas were accused of concealing a sexually suggestive scene, Senator Clinton and Senator Lieberman said they lacked confidence in the Entertainment Software Ratings Boardʼs game-classification system and introduced a bill requiring the federal government to regulate the sale of games nationwide. The bill went nowhere, possibly because in recent years federal judges have blocked similar measures taken at the state and municipal levels more than a half-dozen times. Coincidentally, perhaps, the senators didnʼt talk much about their bill in 2006, and on Dec. 7 they held a news conference to endorse a new campaign promoting the ratings system.

 

Best Reinvigoration of an Endangered Genre: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. With so much attention (and so many dollars) going to online role-playing games like World of Warcraft, their illustrious offline, single-player counterparts appeared thisclose to extinction. That is, until Oblivion demonstrated how a single-player game can in some ways provide an epic experience and heroic story line no online diversion can match.

The Lead Foot Award (a k a Best Job of Keeping the Pedal to the Metal): Microsoft. What else would you expect from the company that has taken down competitor after competitor in market after market over the last three decades? Microsoftʼs Gatesian relentlessness was on prime display across the game world in 2006, most clearly in the continued evolution of Xbox Live, the best online game service around. Besides being peerlessly easy to use, the system can download movies and television shows to your Xbox 360. The company also rediscovered the fact that the worldʼs most popular game machine is no console, but the PC. With the introduction of Windows Vista (and its heavy emphasis on gaming) in early 2007, Microsoft isnʼt likely to let up.

 

Game of the Year: Wii Sports. What is gaming supposed to be all about? How many pixels are on the screen? Technical mumbo jumbo like memory throughput and high dynamic-range lighting? No. Gaming is supposed to be about fun, and Wii Sports delivered more fun more quickly than anything else I played in 2006. (Helping kill the evil god CʼThun in World of Warcraft was pretty cool too, but that took dozens of hours of practice.) Within minutes of picking up the Wii controller, you and your most game-phobic friends and relatives are laughing and smiling while playing tennis, sinking birdies and trying to bowl that elusive 300 game. Good times.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/24/arts/24schi.html?ref=arts