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What’s in a game?
What makes a game the bestseller? What are the gamers now looking for? What do they feel about the current trends? Do consoles really make all the difference? Here is what some gamers have to say.
I believe the console wars in today’s gaming are the sole result of diverging opinions and likings, apart from all great facilities and functions provided, the consoles are made to deliver the best gaming experience and one way or another it all ends up to that. What I look forward to in a console is its games, and the best experience will only be provided by the console which has the abundance of games with great art style, immersive gameplay, and a coherent story to blend it all together.
Fareed Usmani - Student, 17
When it comes to next-generation gaming, every one’s attention is drawn to the visuals mainly and I wonder why is that, literally every gamer now needs a shiny mindless shooter with a gun placed in hand and gigantic bosses that defy nature. Replay value is where every good game on a next-gen console, irrespective of gameplay, story, audio, visuals and character development stand out because literally each and every game nowadays has an online multiplayer mode. The newcomers to a particular well-known series even buy a sequel to it when there's this online multiplayer.
Naveen Chandar- Software programmer, 23
With regards to current trends, I expect to see the number of casual gamers rise exponentially. And I'm not talking about consoles and PCs here. I’m talking about flash and java gaming websites. I expect to see these websites eventually evolve into full blown social networks.
With regards to the media that games are released on, I don’t think that it makes a difference to any gamer. A game is a game. It doesn't matter what format it releases on, as long as it's playable. Yes, Blu-Ray won the war, but in the long run, digital downloads will be an every day thing. Expect to see cheap flash based hard drives that have tetrabytes of capacity. I mean, if my console can play movies on the latest generation format, then that's a perk, but it is not a universal selling point. As a gamer, I'm concerned with two things: the quality of games for that console, and the size of the consoles' game library. To qoute EA: it's in the game.
Rahul Desai- Student, 24
I bought a PS3 because PS2 and PS impressed me, and also because of God of War 3 and MGS4 will only be released on this console. None of the PS3 games that I have (all exclusives except Oblivion: GOTY edition and maybe Sigma) is a system seller. PS3 being the cheapest Blu-ray player does not mean anything to me since my DVD players are serving me fine. I have nine PS3 games and I really haven’t seen any such thing yet which couldn’t run on a DVD-9.
Navaid Zafar- Lecturer, 34
As far as Blu-ray and DVD 9 is concerned, my vote will definitely go to Blu-ray. The time has come when games cannot simply be put on one disc with a capacity of not even nine gigabytes. The more space you have, the more content you can add. Multiplatform games will still be the same as far as content goes but as far as exclusive titles go, yes, you can clearly see the difference. 'Please enter disc 2' might not be annoying for some but it is definitely irritating for me. It means that I have to get out of my comfort level for the sake of playing the game more.
Asad Saleem- Student (computer games and visualisation), 22
T he PS3 reads Blu-ray discs at a speed of a puny 2x with a data transfer rate of 9MB/s while the 360 reads DVD at 8x speed with a data transfer rate of some 14-16MB/s, that’s why PS3 games need to have installations for each game and this is the reason why the PS3 version of multiplatform games are bigger in size because they need to duplicate the data many times. The game which I really felt was suffering the most because of DVD9, was Mass Effect. One can clearly see that the amount of frame shuttering and texture pop-ups were just too much and you sometimes felt that it’d have been better if they had the game in two discs. But apart from this I really don’t feel that Blu-ray is overall that necessary. Changing discs is certainly easier than waiting for the game to be installed. I waited some 15-20 minutes for the installation of Gran Turismo: Prologue.
Praveer Barik- Student, 18
I will not buy the PS3 because it is the cheapest Blu-ray player in the market; I would buy it because it is redefining the way games are being played and made. It has the capability of breaking away from the norms established in the market and reinventing them.
Hasan Riaz- Student, 19
Currently, the 360's DVD are not giving them any major issues, but as technology progresses and more developers start exploiting the PS3's architecture, there is no denying that the DVD 9 will be unable to cope up. The more space you have to work, the better. Why compromise on some things, when you have the space - use it to enhance the games, work freely without restrictions and give a superior presentation. For instance, who wants compressed audio on DVD 9 when the BD can give you multi-channel surround sound.
Mohit Virmani- Student/Self-employed, 22
— Compiled by J.K.
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