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November 12, 1999
Eidos Interactive is going more than a little over-board to promote the
Tomb Raider series and its well-endowed star, Lara Croft. Due to the
upcoming release of Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, there are now demo
CDs being handed out at Pizza Hut, Lara Croft sunglasses, Lara Croft
footwear, a Tomb Raider card game, a Lara Croft candy bar, a line of Tomb
Raider t-shirts, Tomb Raider action figures, Tomb Raider comic books, Tomb
Raider wall paintings and bus wraps in major US cities, and more. I feel
like I'm forgetting something here... what could it be? Oh yeah... the
actual game! The vice president of marketing at Eidos (I'd tell you what
his name is, but IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT HIS NAME IS) recently said in
another one of Eidos' so-jolly-they-make-my-head-hurt press releases, "At
Eidos, Tomb Raider marketing is a 12-month-a-year process, and with Tomb
Raider: The Last Revelation, we've truly out-done ourselves." If Eidos
really wanted to out-do themselves, how about implementing these weird
little things called "improvements" and "changes" in the actual game?
Sega has sold 750,000 Dreamcasts in the US since it was released on
September 9. Sega previously said that they would not increase their sales
predictions for the system until they sold one million units, but they went
ahead and did it after selling 750,000 units anyway. Here are both the old
and new sales projections for the Dreamcast hardware:
by the end of the year: previously 1.0 million, now 1.5 million
by March 31, 2000: previously 1.5 million, now 2.0 million
by March 31, 2001: previously 5.0 million, now 6.0 million
Despite plummeting sales of the N64 and a Game Boy market that hasn't
seen anything too innovative since... well, ever, Nintendo of America's
Peter Main recently predicted that the company would be number-one in sales
this holiday season. This is a reasonable prediction, because we all know
that the key to long-term success in an industry with a rising age
demographic is to continue to pump out re-hashed kids games. Main also
said that online gaming is "not very lucrative." Make a console with PC-
like online gaming capabilities (like the Dreamcast was supposed to be),
and we'll just how lucrative it is.
Rumors are flying that Gran Turismo 2 isn't going to be released on
December 7 as scheduled. If Sony is intent on releasing the game before
Christmas, it could be released as late as the 23rd or 24th of December, or
it could be delayed until next year. Sony would not confirm the rumors,
but they have reportedly apologized to retailers for print ads that have
already gone to press which advertise December 7 as the game's release date.
Rockstar Games has partnered with Motorola in an un-precedented promotion.
If you buy any Rockstar game between now and the end of the year, you'll
get a Motorola pager (with a retail value of $110) for free. The $20
activation fee will also be waived if you sign up for a year of air-time
service. However, this deal is not without a catch. A Rockstar logo on
the pager will constantly remind you where you got it from, and Rockstar is
also going to harass you for the rest of your life with "details of
Rockstar's game releases, cheats, and codes, as well as news of forthcoming
Rockstar events."
Westwood's Louis Castle recently confirmed what many already suspected:
That Westwood's management intentionally holds back their developers from
making games that are "too innovative," resulting in re-hashes like Command
& Conquer: Tiberian Sun. Castle is Westwood's "vice president of creative
development," and here's the quote in question: "We temper our creativity
with what has worked in the past and try to sprinkle in new ideas within a
familiar framework. This is very difficult, but not because it is hard to
come up with new ideas. The difficulty is in holding back and not pushing
the product so far out that the consumer feels lost or confused." With
that logic, why hasn't the entire video game industry revolved around re-
hashing Pong for all these years? What kind of confidence does Castle have
in Westwood's audience if he thinks that innovation will make them "lost
and confused" rather than pleasantly surprised?
Sega's vice president of marketing Peter Moore recently made a few
statements which contradict Sega's own official company line, and it is not
known who is right and who is wrong on these issues. Here are the quotes:
Official Company Line: "Online gaming will be on the Dreamcast in the first
half of 2000."
Peter Moore: "Exactly when is still to be determined, but our expectations
are that it will be sometime in either quarter three or quarter four 2000
(between July and December) for fully immersive, online gameplay."
Official Company Line: "The Dreamcast Zip Drive is indeed coming out in the
US at some point."
Peter Moore: "We're still weighing up the pros and cons and are ready to
make a business decision as to whether we will offer the Zip Drive to US
consumers... It's there, it's available, we just have to make a business
decision. Believe me, that decision is nowhere near being made yet."
If the Zip Drive is actually brought to the US, a Sega spokesperson
recently said that it will be used for up-loading levels onto the Internet,
doing video chat, and saving MP3s. It will also act as a really big memory
card by giving you more slots to save your games, as well as room to
archive all the e-mail you send and receive. The Sega spokesperson also
alleviated concerns that the Zip Drive could lead to patches being made for
Dreamcast games. He said, "The architecture of a Dreamcast is not
developed to incorporate patches into games. We would not see that as a
key use of the device. It's not about fixing problems; certainly the
console industry has never had patches in the past. We will not be
bringing that typically PC activity to the Dreamcast."
The "new" issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly (the one that went to press
two months ago) speculates that Electronic Arts may be signing on as a
Dreamcast developer and porting some of their hit PC franchises over to the D
Dreamcast. EGM also said that Metal Gear Solid might be brought to the
Dreamcast after all, and that Fox Interactive is thinking about bringing
Die Hard Trilogy 2 to the system. All of this means one of two things:
Either hot Dreamcast sales have inspired a few companies to make more games
for the Dreamcast, or EGM has added three more false rumors to the dozens
of false rumors they have published over the years.
Now that Burger King executives have allegedly been seen rolling around
naked in piles of cash as a result of their Pokemon promotion, what does
McDonald's think about all of this? Well, McDonald's CEO Jack Greenwood
recently said, "It was a promotion that we could have had, or at least
could have tried for, and chose not to because we don't think it stands for
family values and what our brand stands for." In other words: "I can't
figure out why Nintendo chose to go with Burger King instead of us, but I
can sure as hell do some damage control!"
Thanks to a promotion with Sega, anyone who registers at the sports web
site eteamz.com will be entered into a drawing to win a Dreamcast and other
Sega prizes. Eteamz is one of the many web sites that is partnering with
Sega to give away Dreamcast-related prizes, but apparently Master Gamer
will not be one of those sites because Sega "wasn't pleased with Master
Gamer's NFL 2K Review." Well, Sega, I wasn't pleased with NFL 2K, so why
don't we call it even?
A Sega executive recently said the following about Sega's flagship game
Shenmue being delayed again: "The only news is that Yu Suzuki is requiring
more time to get this game right. It's a monster of a game. A lot of work
has been done to utilize the Sega Dreamcast Network with Shenmue for a
tremendous amount of online capabilities within the game. That, I think,
has added to the workload of the development team for Shenmue."
ESPN and Konami have formed a partnership which will involve Konami
making games featuring the ESPN brand. I'm pretty sure that a Konami
spokesperson didn't say, "Finally, an excuse to kill off our horrible XXL
sports line!" but they may as well have. If you remember correctly, ESPN
was previously partnered with Radical Entertainment, but ESPN's parent
company Disney (allegedly) said they wouldn't release any ESPN games from
Radical for some unknown reason. So while Konami is understandably excited
about their deal with ESPN, they shouldn't get too excited because all they
have to do is piss off Disney and the deal will be done regardless of what
the contract says.
Nintendo previously announced that they're making a sequel to one of the
worst games of all time, Mario Party, and now they have revealed new
details about its gameplay. The jist of the press release was that in
addition to there being six new game boards in the sequel, the game's
characters will dress differently based on the theme of the level they're
in. The fact that Nintendo considers this to be a major gameplay feature
just goes to show how far they have truly fallen.
Apparently failing to realize that a two-year-old PC game is slightly
less attractive than a one-and-a-half-year-old PC game, Nintendo has
delayed StarCraft 64 until early 2000. The reason for the delay is that
they don't want StarCraft 64 to cut into Command & Conquer 64's sales, and
vice-versa. With that logic, why doesn't Nintendo only publish one good
game per year? Oh, wait a minute, they're already doing that...
Naughty Dog's president and co-founder Jason Rubin recently stated that
Crash Team Racing was Naughty Dog's last Crash Bandicoot game. Sony owns
the rights to the Crash Bandicoot franchise, so the series will undoubtedly
live on through other developers. Rumor has it that the next action/
platform game starring Crash will be developed by Eurocom.
In the first two months that the PlayStation was priced at $99, it sold
an impressive one million units. This is impressive because the system is
four years old, and most gamers already own it. Since it was released on
September 9, 1995, over 21 million PlayStations have been sold in the US
alone.
One of the character designers for the Final Fantasy series, Yoshitaka
Amano, recently said that Final Fantasy 9 will be more of a fantasy game
and less futuristic. Amano said, "I don't know if I'm allowed to say this,
but it is becoming closer to the original Final Fantasy. So instead of
being a science fiction game, it's becoming more of a fantasy game again."
Square has not yet announced what system FF9 will be for, but rumor has it
that FF9 will be for the PlayStation and FF10 will be for the PlayStation 2.
Rare recently updated the Frequently Asked Questions section of its web
site. Rare is still using the vague release date of "next year" for their
N64 sequel to Banjo-Kazooie. The sequel is called Banjo-Tooie, which is
perhaps the only title that could possibly be more stupid than Banjo-
Kazooie. Rare also said that Twelve Tales: Conker 64 has not been cancelled,
and elaborated, "It's still being worked on by a full team and with the
same level of dedication as when it was first announced - it's just been
through a couple of fairly major facelifts in its time, the current one
being the most drastic. We still have every intention of unleashing the
game upon the world just as soon as it's finished, and we think you'll be
impressed with the results," apparently despite the fact that Conker's
Pocket Tales for the Game Boy Color was one of the worst games that Rare
has ever made.
For those of you who didn't see it, a recent episode of South Park was a
parody of the Pokemon phenomenon. For legal reasons, they used the word
Chinpokomon instead of Pokemon. The episode focused on Cartman, Stan, Kyle,
and Kenny getting hooked on the Chinpokomon cartoon series, toys, and video
games. It was revealed during the show that Chinpokomon's creators (called
Chinpokomon Company instead of Nintendo) were using the products to
brainwash kids into helping them bomb Pearl Harbor and overthrow the United
States government. In the end, all the children's parents snapped the kids
out of their brainwashed state by pretending to also love Chinpokomon,
which made it un-cool in the children's eyes. Kenny's death came after he
had an epileptic seizure while playing the Chinpokomon video game. Beneath
all the hilarious jokes, the show told a serious message about Pokemon
being an over-blown fad, and it also said that many people claim to like
Pokemon just because all their friends do.
NEWS BRIEFS
Blizzard has delayed Diablo 2 so that it will meet the company's high
quality standards. Blizzard said that they will not take development
shortcuts at the expense of disappointing their customers, and as a result
Diablo 2 is now scheduled for an early 2000 release.
Koei wants to bring the next game in their turn-based strategy series,
Romance of the Three Kingdoms 6, over to the US. Rumor has it that the
game will be released in the US in early 2000, unless of course Sony
rejects it like they rejected Romance of the Three Kingdoms 5.
Blue, red, green, and yellow Dreamcast controllers are now available for
$30 apiece on Sega's web site. The controllers won't be available at
retailers until December.
EverQuest is now the best-selling online game ever, with over 225,000
copies sold. The gap between EverQuest and Ultima Online will only grow in
the future since EverQuest is currently selling much better than Ultima
Online.
Sega claims that both Sonic Adventure 2 and Phantasy Star Online will be
released in the US before the end of next year.
SALES CHARTS
In the week of October 17-23, the top ten best-selling games for all
systems were:
1. Pokemon Yellow for Game Boy Color
2. Pokemon Pinball for Game Boy Color
3. Pokemon Red for Game Boy
4. Pokemon Blue for Game Boy
5. Pokemon Snap for Nintendo 64 (click on the blue text for Master Gamer's
review of the game)
6. Driver for PlayStation
7. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater for PlayStation
8. Final Fantasy 8 for PlayStation
9. Madden NFL 2000 for PlayStation
10.Gran Turismo for PlayStation
On a points basis (with the first-place game earning its system ten
points, the second-place game earning its system nine points, and so on),
the Game Boy Color won with 19 points, followed by the PlayStation and Game
Boy with 15 points apiece and the Nintendo 64 with six points.
You can see the top-selling PlayStation games in the list above, and
here are the top-sellers for the Dreamcast, Nintendo 64, and PC (in order
from #1 to #3).
Dreamcast: NFL 2K, Soul Calibur, and Ready 2 Rumble Boxing
Nintendo 64: Pokemon Snap, Army Men: Sarge's Heroes, and Jet Force Gemini
PC: Age of Empires 2, Deer Hunter 3, and Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear
The following are old games that are still among the top ten best-sellers
for their respective systems: Gran Turismo, WarCraft 2, Half-Life, and
Goldeneye 007
Sources for news: Fastest Game News Online, GameSpot, GameFan, Blue's News,
GI News, Next Generation, Adrenaline Vault, The Magic Box, Happy Puppy, PSX
2 Online, IGNPSX, IGN 64, Nintendorks, The Sega Zone, Sega Otaku, Gaming
Age, The NPD Group, www.hamsterdance.com
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