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Feature Article: Artful High Definition Games

Thu Jun 12, 2008 at 01:00 PM ET
Tags: Wayne Santos, High-Def Gaming (all tags)

Editor's Note: Columnist Wayne Santos is a dedicated gamer from the infancy of the medium. He is a contributor at IGN and associate editor of Southeast Asian gaming publication GameAxis. His columns for High-Def Digest examine the world of High-Def Gaming.

By Wayne Santos

In my previous article, I discussed games as a medium and an emerging art form and cited, very briefly, a few titles I felt were good examples of games being an artistic venture. Now if you think of games as a medium, like film, literature, or paint, then many elements factor in to what constitutes an artistic work. In the same way a movie can be hailed for ingenious art direction but not necessarily be considered thematically or narratively important, the same can be said for games. Various elements of a game can be considered to have made some kind of artistic contribution, while others may not. On rare occasions, every aspect of a game may be considered artful.

While games may have a long way to go before they can be considered full blown works of art, that doesn’t mean the groundwork isn’t being laid out. Ask certain observers of the medium and they’ll tell you that the groundwork has been in the process of being built up for quite some time, but it’s only in recent years that public scrutiny has grown outside of the world of gaming enthusiasts. Reasons for this range from the mainstream proliferation of games in greater numbers to the inevitable march of technology finally getting to the point where imagination is quickly becoming more important than technical prowess. After all, it’s one thing to have a graphics engine that presents awe-inspiring visuals, but it’s quite another thing entirely to have a vision and a team sufficiently talented enough to actually create visuals that can inspire awe purely beyond the number of polygons composing a single character model. In the same way, sound in games has been steadily evolving beyond basic beeps to MIDI compositions and now to full blown streaming of pre-recorded orchestral scores off the disc or hard drive. Even more forcefully than visuals, sound is now limited by only one thing; the talents of the musicians and audio engineers. If games still share an appreciable weakness with older more established mediums, they can be fairly criticized for the lack of depth in narrative and themes, but these are concepts from older mediums that are wrestling with the one thing games bring to the table that is entirely new; interactivity.

So for this article, we’re going to take a look at some of the games currently available on the current generation of home consoles that, in one way or another, make a fair attempt at advancing the notion of games as viable works of art. The games may have a distinct visual or thematic characteristic that puts them above the norm, much as some argue that movies such as 'Dark City' rise above mere popcorn conventions because of the visual feast at play, or how the animated adaptation of 'Watership Down' transcends the normal perception of animated features being “just for kids.” These games in some way go beyond mere commercial entertainment to provide gamers with something they can mull over beyond the simple act of being fun to play.

Beautiful Katamari

Xbox 360


While Beautiful Katamari is actually the fourth title in this bizarre series, it’s the only title available on the current generation of consoles, with the previous three having been available on the PS2 and PSP respectively. This first game is also possibly the weirdest one to appear on the list. For those unfamiliar with the series, the philosophy of the game is very simple; you roll stuff up. As the ball of matter you roll gets bigger, it attracts bigger and bigger objects until what began as a collection of paperclips and staples on a table, is now engulfing entire buildings, and eventually landmasses.

The Katamari series is the brainchild of Keita Takahashi, himself a developer who doesn’t even think of himself as a developer and who cites various sculptors, painters and authors of the Japanese arts as his primary influences. In interviews, Takahashi has gone so far as to admit that he doesn’t even like the gaming industry in its current state, and ultimately would like to go on to design playgrounds for children. The Katamari series is his response to what he viewed as an increasingly dark, serious atmosphere in the world of gaming, that seemed to have abandoned the possibilities for a more innocent, childlike form of fun and enjoyment. The Katamari series certainly lives up to his ideology, lacking any kind of conventional violence and having a simple, blocky, cartoony art direction that stresses the surreal, unreality of the entire situation Takahashi has created.

The basic story of Beautiful Katamari is simple. There is an incredibly muscular (think bodybuilder proportions) “King of All Cosmos” that invariably causes a hideous accident that removes the stars from the sky. In this case, the accident is a powerful serve during a tennis game that rips a hole in the fabric of the universe, creates a black hole and sucks away all the stars, leaving Earth alone in a black, empty void. As usual, it is up the miniscule Prince of All Cosmos to clean up his father’s mess, by going to Earth, rolling things up and creating spheres of sufficient mass that the King can use them to create new stars with which to populate the sky.

What makes Beautiful Katamari so difficult to describe as a Game That Is Artful is almost as troublesome as trying to describe art itself. It has one of the most bizarre concepts ever seen in a game, with an even more surreal storyline. While on paper the idea of simply rolling objects up to make a giant ball might not seem like much fun at all, there is a moment when an unsuspecting gamer first gets a ball big enough to roll up an elephant (and said elephant lets off a very surprised roar) that some how compels people to smile, laugh and keep going. It’s an anomaly in the medium of games in that there really hasn’t been anything quite like it. There are conditions for “winning” in that Takahashi has incorporated things like time limits and minimal size requirements to have considered “clearing” a level, but where the game really shines is the ability to create a crazed sense of whimsy out of its ridiculous conceit, making victory an afterthought in the face of the constantly rolling mass of matter that just gets bigger and bigger. In theory this is a game that should not work, and yet it has endeared itself to a devoted fanbase who, contrary to Takahashi’s own wishes for originality, continue to demand more and more of the same old Katamari fun.

Okami

Wii


There was a reason I used the term “this generation of home consoles” at the beginning of the article and this is it. Although not an HD game, the Wii must be included in the current generation of hardware, and this title in particular is one that should not be missed, but most likely will be.

This is actually the second time that Okami debuts on a console. The first time was during the previous generation, with the Playstation 2. Then, as now, Capcom was the publisher and developer, but sadly the original Capcom team that created the game, Clover, is no more. That is a direct result of the financial failure of Okami and Clover’s other concurrent title Godhand with the gamers. Okami seems to be the sad victim of that occasionally baffling occurrence in gaming where a product debuts to massive critical acclaim and praise, is strongly recommended by everyone in the industry and yet the public ignores it. Released in 2006 by a team comprising the original creators of Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe and Resident Evil the game had all the makings of a giant critical hit. And it was. But few people bought it and the game was considered a commercial failure.

The game itself is an action-adventure in the style of the famed Legend of Zelda games on the Nintendo consoles. It’s set in a fairytale version of old Japan, centering on the exploits of the earthly avatar of the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu, manifesting as a white wolf with incredible powers. An ancient evil defeated by Amaterasu during her last incarnation has been foolishly reawakened by humans that no longer believe in the legends of old, and Amaterasu must walk the Earth once more, restoring the world from the corruption of her nemesis the Orochi, and using the Celestial Brush technique to literally re-paint the world into order or combat the foes lined up against her. The Celestial Brush was a brilliant innovation in that players would literally draw bridges where they needed one to cross rivers, draw bombs to bring real bombs into existence, or pause the world and slash at enemies with a brush stroke to erase them from existence. On top of that, the world was huge, with plenty of things to do, and the story itself was uncharacteristically positive and optimistic, stressing friendship, love for nature, and the greater good over the usual vengeance motivated stories so common in games.

Where the game truly steps into the direction of the artistic is the art design itself. Eschewing the usual “photorealism=beautiful graphics” mantra that dominates the majority of game design philosophy in the industry, Okami went decidedly old school. Old school in this case means simulating the effect of the ink brush aesthetic that was so prevalent in Asia in earlier eras. As a result, Okami is a game that looks nothing like any other game on the market. The screen itself has been textured to resemble paper, and the graphics are then “laid on top” of this effect so that every screenshot looks like something illustrated for an old book. The resulting combination of brush work and highly stylized character design is so incredibly original by gaming standards that more traditional gamers, insisting on realistic art design may find themselves disgusted with this choice. For gamers that are willing to accept that there is a world of graphical fidelity beyond photorealism, Okami offers an incredibly rich world to marvel at. On top of its beautiful sense of art design, the narrative of the game itself is, like a fairy tale, a hearkening back to simpler times. The Japanese have always had a respectful relationship with nature, and this is clearly evident in Okami where the Orochi’s corruption leaves the world smoky and almost devoid of color. Whenever Amaterasu restores a region to its former glory, a gorgeous transformation occurs, showing the vibrant color wash across the world as flowers, trees and life itself are restored to the area, accompanied by traditional Japanese string instruments in a rising crescendo. Okami is a uniquely beautiful game that stresses positive values and embraces friendship. It’s the kind of game that has the potential to make a very positive impact on younger gamers, or even remind older gamers of the more idealistic side that lurks within their jaded, modern sensibilities. Even though the game is on the Wii and not actually an HD game, its rewarding gameplay, gorgeous art design, and more innocent themes make it a game well worth owning, and in this generation, gamers now get a second chance to see what they missed two years ago.

Everyday Shooter

Playstation 3


It should come as no surprise that if an original ideas are going to come from anywhere, they’re going to come from outside the established machinery of the industry. Everyday Shooter is the perfect example of this, as the game is the sole work of one man. Jonathan Mak created the game purely as a labor of love, and eventually won awards at Indie Game Development shows before getting noticed – and picked up – by Sony Santa Monica to have his game first appear as a PS3 exclusive before debuting on Valve’s Steam Digital Distribution network just a few weeks ago.

Like Okami, Everyday Shooter has its gameplay roots firmly planted in a very familiar genre, that of the shooter, specifically the top-down shooter. There have already been many games released in this genre since the advent of the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, and, like Everyday Shooter, they are largely games available as downloadable content available on the respective console’s online store. The genre is nearly as old as the medium of games itself, hearkening back to Asteroids where the mechanics were as simple as “move around the screen and shoot anything that moves.” The simple fire and turn buttons have been replaced by the more contemporary and elegant twin analog stick control system where one stick handles movement and the other lets you fire in whatever direction you’re pushing towards. This should, in theory, be a simple, almost IQ-free exercise in reflexes that appeals to that reptilian hindbrain in our skull that responds to movement. Surprisingly, while Everyday Shooter can meet this requirement quite handedly, it does a good bit more, although in the most surprising of ways.

Everyday Shooter has no story, and, perhaps more intriguingly, has no consistent gameplay. Yes, you shoot everything that moves, that much is true, but Jonathan Mak thinks of his game as an “album,” in that the rules – like music of the game – change from level to level. While the first level teaches you how to shoot certain enemies to create an explosion which, when other enemies make contact, causes another explosion, encouraging chain reactions, another level dispenses with these rules entirely and has you simply avoiding a giant central eye and spits out dozens of tiny eyes out to get you. On top of this is the unique audioscape of the game, which is partially a programmed melody of simple electric guitar riffs, and partially created by the player him or herself as every action and explosion is actually another guitar riff which counterpoints the basic melody. In effect by playing the game, the gamer is creating part of the score, and no game session will ever sound exactly like the previous one.

Everyday Shooter is, one sense, easy to think of as art, because like some works of art, it leaves the audience baffled and unable to easily explain away what they’ve just experienced. Of course, the game isn’t for everyone and some will find the constantly changing game mechanics to be repelling, while others will ignore it simply because its functional, colorful -- and yes, even psychedelic – graphics will bore them because of the lack of photorealism. But for people willing to give the game a chance, Everyday Shooter offers an experience at once familiar and at the same time quite original. The simple mechanics of gameplay are challenged by a sense of discovery with every new level as gamers must puzzle out what the new rules of this “song in the album” are. The visuals, bold, colorful and largely randomized, react violently to the player’s actions with sudden changes in color and massive “explosions” that could be interpreted as rays of light or streaks of paint. Much to Mak’s own dismay, while he finds the actual gameplay to be tense and still very twitch-based, many critics have hailed Everyday Shooter as one of the most original, and strangely relaxing shooters they’ve ever played. The game is probably the closest thing that gamers have right now to being able to “play” an abstract painting in that the collision of sound and colors often resembles something out of the collection of a modern artist. At the same time, even when all the levels have been conquered there is still replay value here as points acquired during a session – even a failed one – can be spent on unlocking additional features or even buying extra lives to make the next game a little easier. Even though it’s easy to get caught up in the almost hypnotic visuals, music and simple movement of “move, shoot, kill or be killed,” there is still a sense of fair play in Everyday Shooter, and it never forgets that first and foremost, it is a game that should be fun.

Bioshock

Xbox 360, Playstation 3


Once again, Bioshock makes an appearance on High-Def Digest, with its first appearance being the second article for 5 HD Games, and a brief mention in that previous article, and now, for obvious reasons here. The most recent game out of all the titles mentioned so far, it’s also the only one mentioned capable of being played on both consoles, or will eventually be, as the Playstation 3 version has been slated for release in winter with hinted at “new content” including all the previous add-on content included in the earlier Xbox 360 version. Bioshock is the biggest game on the this list in more ways than one, not only is it the most critically acclaimed, widely covered game in this article, it’s also the most commercially successful, pulling in numerous awards and making its creators, 2K Games Boston extremely visible amongst both the fans and the industry right now. It’s the kind of game that is that most rare of convergences, a mix of mainstream first person shooter gameplay with enough thematic and narrative material that it actually gives academics something to chew over.

The story itself starts out similarly to most games. You play Jack, a seemingly innocent traveler in the year 1960 who is caught in a plane crash over the Atlantic. Swimming through wreckage of your former transport, you spy a lone lighthouse out in the middle of the water. Upon exploring the lighthouse Jack finds a bathysphere – basically an elevator designed to work underwater – and entering, descends to an underwater city called Rapture, originally conceived as a secluded utopia for the great thinkers, artists ,and scientists of the world to work free from the constraints of authority or popular opinion. What Jack finds, however, is a ruin of buildings inhabited largely by hideously mutated people that are violently out of their minds. Paradise, in this case, has already been lost, and Jack must fight to survive the experience.

This initial set-up may sound typical of an FPS plot in that there’s mystery, atmospheric environments to explore, and plenty of things out to kill the player. But where Bioshock takes such a massive step away from established convention in the FPS is its commitment to exploring WHY Rapture failed and constantly challenging the player with questions about its inhabitants and their motivations. For students of contemporary literature, it doesn’t take very long to recognize that Andrew Ryan and his philosophy is a dead ringer for Ayn Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism. But where Ayn Rand proposed a similar fictional utopia in her novel Atlas Shrugged which showed the slow decay of society without great people tied down to it make it prosper, Levine shows the flipside. Here the great people who are theoretically the intellectual, moral, and emotional superiors of the people back on the surface have gotten away from the blandness and restrictions of political/religious authority… and they have still succumbed to ambition, corruption, war, and ultimately, ruin.

From an art perspective, Bioshock is obviously the most ‘literary” of the games presented here. Beautiful Katamari is like pop or performance art, Okami is an exercise in classical, painterly art, Everyday Shooter is very modernist in its geometric style and execution, while Bioshock handles narratives and themes, the province of novels and film. It is one of the few games on the market that was not afraid to make the basic conflict at its heart a philosophical one, forcing gamers to see the possible consequences that come with greatness and striving for greater things. While some players may simply get an atmospheric, perhaps even frightening FPS experience out of the game, others willing to listen to the audio recordings scattered throughout will get a wealth of detail about the basics of Objectivism. They can then decide for themselves whether the game’s exploration of a failed Objectivist paradise is an interesting criticism, or an unjustified attack on the philosophy. The game itself doesn’t make any deliberate declarations one way or the other. Like a novel or a movie, Bioshock is meant to provoke thought by presenting the question, and then leaving it up to the individuals themselves to find an answer. This is a very far cry from the usual good/bad dichotomy of most game plots that leave little doubt as to right, wrong and who should die. In the end, Bioshock is a bizarre fusion that somehow works. The FPS is often considered the “brainless” genre of gaming and yet here very complex concepts and questions about philosophy and humanity’s purpose (self-determined or not) are presented to players while they attempt to survive everything from crazed genetically mutated lunatics to gigantic men in armored diving suits out to prevent the execution of little girls that run about the ruins salvaging bodies. It is a strange world with very familiar ideas, and for those willing to seek it out, it provides challenging questions.

Unfortunately, for the scope of this article, we can only limit the games presented here to the ones that are appearing on the current generation of consoles. There are many more titles equally deserving of attention for the steps they’ve taken in advancing the medium artistically. Shadow of the Colossus is still probably the closest that games have come to approaching art, and the PC has seen the birth of many kinds of artistic games, particularly adventure games like The Longest Journey which was so far ahead of its time in terms of narrative and thematic complexity that to this day it’s still ahead of the curve for storytelling in games. The current generation is still pretty young, and there is plenty of time for more statements to be made, but for now, these are the games that – if you own the appropriate console – you can go out, buy, and enjoy right now.

Wayne Santos's opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of this site, its owners or employees.

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Feature Article: Have Games Grown Up Yet?

Thu May 29, 2008 at 01:00 PM ET
Tags: High-Def Gaming, Wayne Santos (all tags)

Editor's Note: Columnist Wayne Santos is a dedicated gamer from the infancy of the medium. He is a contributor at IGN and associate editor of Southeast Asian gaming publication GameAxis. In this new, semi-regular column, Wayne will be discussing a broad range of topics related to High-Def Gaming.

By Wayne Santos

This article is going to be a little different in that it won’t look at the technical aspect of HD Gaming, but rather the cultural aspect of gaming in general. It’s a personal hobby horse of mine, as, having grown up with games and received many fond memories over the years from the medium, I tend to take the optimistic view that games are just that, a medium. And like any medium, such as film, literature or paint, it has the potential to make positive artistic contributions. Of course, the current mainstream cultural perception is at odds with this opinion, and whether it's lawyers, politicians or various “scientific experts” commenting for popular news outlets, the prevailing opinion seems to be that games – particularly violent ones – are an unhealthy hobby at best, and a training ground for future psychotic murderers at worst.

Yet, at the same time Grand Theft Auto IV recently launched to the public at large, and in the span of 24 hours, it made more money than any other single piece of entertainment in the history of the entertainment industry as a whole. In the span of one week, the game made US$500 million and was prominently featured on everything from talk shows, to no less an institution than the New York Times referring to it as the “entertainment event of the year.” Even the same news stations that revile violent games gave the launch of GTAIV extensive coverage that wasn’t necessarily all focused on the corruptive influence of the game. And finally, in a telling sign of the growing influence of the gaming industry, financial analysts even speculated that GTA IV’s April 29th release could impact weekend attendance to the opening of Paramount’s 'Iron Man' which debuted in movie theaters just a few days after the game hit the stores. Gaming, for all the vitriol being directed at it, can’t be ignored.

The Growth Of Games

So what does this mean for games as a medium and the people that enjoy it? At the moment games occupy a strange position. The popular view of gaming is that it is a toy, something meant for children, and a subversive element. At the same time, the industry itself continues to grow, its consumers continue to spend and in the span of just 20 years, it’s proven to be a large threat not to children, but to film, television, and literature in terms of its popularity. One thing that almost everyone agrees on however, is that games lack the legitimacy of established art forms. Cinema, the stage – and recently even comic books, ie graphic novels – have all been recognized as making worthwhile contributions to culture, where the very best examples of these mediums make worthy insights about the human condition, comment on social concerns and educate and enlighten their audiences. The prevailing opinion is that games do none of these things and never will, despite the fact that at one point in the infancy film, theatre and comics, exactly the same perception was held, that they were common entertainments devoid of cultural value.

Is this current popular view of games always going to remain the dominant one? It seems as though games as a medium have a lot of similarities with two other mediums that emerged largely in the 20th century, namely film and comics. Aside from the initial perception as a “vulgar entertainment,” games take much of their advances in craft from technology, pretty much like film. From comics, games have created their own version of an arch-nemesis opposed to their proliferation. For comics, it was a doctor known as Fredric Wertham who, in the 1950’s went so far as to write a book called Seduction of the Innocent as he made a correlation between children reading comics with anti-social behavior depicted, then going on to imitate those actions in real life. In the 90’s and now at the turn of the new century, that role for games has been taken up by the lawyer Jack Thompson, who also wrote a book in 2005 called Out of Harm’s Way in which he also makes assertions of anti-social behavior depicted in games being played out in real life by people who play these games, but are either of these perceptions really true? Are games really only fit as distractions for children or the ignorant, or are they somehow more culpable than other mediums of infecting the impressionable with potentially anti-social behavior?

To the second point, the answer is much more clearly turning out to be “no.” A book was recently released in April of 2008 that went by the mouthful of a title Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Videogames and What Parents Can Do. In the book, authors Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olsen reveal the final conclusions reached by a long term research project conducted by the Harvard Medical School Center For Medical Health and Media, at the request of the US Department of Justice. Their findings were that videogames pose no more of a corrupting influence than any other traditional media like films or comics. Their results even indicated that while some youth who play violent videogames for more than 15 hours a week might be prone to more violent behavior in reality, that tended to be more a result of home conditions and general behavior problems, and the videogames were merely the symptom of a larger problem. Surprisingly, the study found that children who don’t play videogames at all actually had a larger percentage of behavioral problems. The earlier so called scientific studies that anti-game proponents such as Jack Thompson usually cited as their evidence of the harmful effects of violent games were found to have questionable results. The studies were either conducted with too small a research sample, had vague interpretations of violent behavior, and some of the research doesn’t make any distinction between short term behavior and long term behavior, which can be the critical difference between a child talking about how a cool an explosion was, and actually thinking for years and months on end about that explosion in a game and going on to replicate it, rather than simply moving on after getting distracted by something else. In short, after a proper, government funded study was finally conducted on the more controversial aspects of games, they were found to be no more harmful to children than the comics and rock and roll that previous generations had condemned as threatening the very foundation of society.

The first point however, the actual social or cultural value of games, is one that, until recently, had a certain amount of merit to it. Like film, games were limited by the technology of the medium, and while films could aspire to moments of art even in the Black & White era, it was really the advent of sound, then advances in cinematography and color that unleashed the creativity of storytellers in film to tell tales that would engage audiences and make a lasting impression on them. In this sense, Games themselves have only recently entered their own “Talky phase,” as the graphical limitations finally begin to fall away, and higher production values are dedicated to such traditional media as writing and acting in games. Over the course of the last several years, a few games here and there have come that have skirted “dangerously” close to making a worthwhile or even artistic statement. Shadow of the Colossus on the Playstation 2 is perhaps the greatest current example games have of art in a unique, interactive way that only games can achieve. With only stellar – for the time – graphics, beautiful animation, music, and sparingly used cinematic cut-scenes, Shadow of the Colossus created a rich, unique experience for players who were tasked with killing the 16 “Colossi” of the game’s name, as part of a bargain to resurrect a dead, lost love. However as the game continues, players begin to question the seemingly straightforward task as it becomes obvious through the player’s actions that the Colossi may not in fact be evil. The game never makes any judgments about the player’s actions, or even give the player any kind of direct reassurances about the rightness or wrongness of the actions, instead leaving it up to the player themselves to decide if taking of these lives is worth it to bring back the girl. In the end, the answer to that question is still left entirely up to the player, but Shadow of the Colossus managed, in completely interactive manner, to make players experience complex, difficult to articulate emotions and conclusions over the many hours of gameplay that lead to its conclusion.

On the other end of the spectrum far less abstract and far more cerebral is the game Bioshock. If Shadow of the Colossus is an attempt to bring an artistic experience through interactivity Bioshock is a marriage of all the best traditional elements brought together into a game to provoke debate in a much more straightforward, intellectual way. The game, by Kevin Levine of 2K Games Boston is, on the surface a first person shooter of the Doom or Halo variety, in that corridors are wandered, strange opponents are fought against and combat is the very foundation of the gameplay. However, outside of those seemingly simple mechanics is a startlingly in depth examination of the question, “Does Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism taken to its final conclusion actually make sense?” Over the course of the game, players will find that Levine and his crew have crafted an experience that dissects the ideas proposed in famed philosophical novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, giving them a chance to explore an undersea city constructed by a prototypical Randian Superman who tired of having his genius used by the mediocre, and created an undersea utopia where he and other similarly gifted individuals could get away from the vast numbers of the average that relied on their genius to survive. Bioshock in very direct fashion explores complicated ideas of greatness, ambition, and how these factors can lead to riches or ruin and by the time the player is through with the game, they will doubtless have questioned for themselves whether or not genius is something that should be spirited away from the “dirty unwashed masses” to maintain its purity, or whether this is simply another form of pride that is prone to the same kind of hubris as any other.

There are plenty of other examples in gaming, of course, but these are two of the most celebrated in recent years. Even Grand Theft Auto IV has been making some progress with institutions traditionally aligned against games. Once again, it was the New York Times that called GTA IV a “Violent, intelligent, profane, endearing, obnoxious, sly, richly textured and thoroughly compelling work of cultural satire disguised as fun.” If a fixture of American journalism like the New York Times can make a statement like that about a videogame, of all things, then it makes one thing very clear. The times are definitely changing.

Time Of Transition

In one sense, it’s a strange time to be coming into games, because modern society seems to be shifting over from one perception of gaming to another. On the one hand, the previous generation which grew up largely without the presence of games finds (like other generations that hadn’t been exposed to movies, comics or rock and roll) that games are an unwelcome new cultural artifact that threatens the traditional perspective of the world that they are familiar with. On the other hand, there are already two generations of people that were either introduced to games at a very early age, or were born into a world where videogames were already a growing hobby, and don’t know a time without them. These people are already easing into the reigns of power in society, and there will come a time when politicians who condemn gaming will be offending their voters, in the same way it was once acceptable—and now not—to denigrate African Americans or homosexuals. For now, there is a very practical, political consideration to taking an anti-gaming stance, as there is still a significant percentage of the population that – again as with comics, rock and roll and Dungeons & Dragons – feel their concerns are represented by someone with a publicly hostile position to what they feel threatens society. However, times do change. Racism moved from an officially state sanctioned policy to an illegal practice. Homophobia has been dwindling in society as time passes. And, most telling of all, rock and roll is no longer viewed a destructive social element for one very simple reason; all the people that listen to rock and roll and enjoyed it are now in charge and are dictating political and public policy. What they fail to realize now, is that they are making the same mistakes their elders did when they were young, fighting to listen to rock music while they couldn’t understand the threat the older generation saw in that music. The rebels of rock have now moved into the channels of power and are fighting against games because they have become the stodgy, conservative elders they once fought against in their youth, similarly threatened by something new they don’t understand.

So does any of this answer the question first asked by the article? Have games grown up yet?

For now, I think the answer is “No, but growing up is happening.” It will take a certain combination of elements before games can be accepted as a “mature medium” with the same cultural legitimacy that film lovers with high definition theaters enjoy today. The technology of games still has a lot of room for expansion, and games need to get over their particular holy grail, namely photo realistic visuals, before they can finally concentrate on their greatest strength, interactivity, a quality that no other media before games has ever possessed. Games also need to be completely embraced by society – or at the very least, not viewed as a threat – and this is only going to happen in the next 20-30 years as the generation the came before games either dies, or retires from the sphere of policy-making and lets younger generations that have grown up with games simply as a fact of life take over the reigns of power.

Finally, the other thing that games need, perhaps the most crucial ingredient, is the unpredictable combination of artist and art. In every other medium, there an artist and work that somehow finally elevates that medium into public acceptance. In the case of the most recent “inductee” into legitimate artistic mediums, comics have the likes of Frank Miller, Alan Moore and perhaps Neil Gaiman as key figures that created works so potent the critics could no longer keep dismissing comics as children’s distractions. In film, it was the work of greats like Orson Welles, and before him, Sergei Eisenstein or D.W. Griffith that took film from something merely amusing to something that could act as a vehicle for artistic and social contribution. Do games have a Frank Miller or Orson Welles yet? Some would argue that the likes of Hideo Kojima of Metal Gear Solid fame or Shigeru Miyamoto who has recently unleashed the Wii and Wii Fit upon the world are luminaries in the industry that could conceivably push gaming into a much more publicly celebrated sphere of perception. But games have yet to have that combination of a brilliant creator coupled with a brilliant work that makes the mainstream fall all over themselves to embrace the medium the way comics and film eventually did. There are great games, yes. And there are certainly great game developers, but neither of these two factors have yet impress the established critical, academic and pop culture spheres simultaneously, but at this point, it’s probably just a matter of time now. Games may not be considered a serious, mature art form, but they’ve come a long way from simply being regarded as something only kids play in the family basement, and their entrenchment in the culture is only going to become more secure with the advancing of the years and the technology.

Wayne Santos's opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of this site, its owners or employees.


Feature Article: Graphic Glitches 101

Wed May 14, 2008 at 01:00 PM ET
Tags: High-Def Gaming, Wayne Santos (all tags)

Editor's Note: Columnist Wayne Santos is a dedicated gamer from the infancy of the medium. He is a contributor at IGN and associate editor of Southeast Asian gaming publication GameAxis. In this new, semi-regular column, Wayne will be discussing a broad range of topics related to High-Def Gaming.

By Wayne Santos

High-Def Digest already has a rigorous system in place for evaluating the picture quality of movies, documentaries, and concerts that are presented in High Definition. Over the course of the mainstream transition to HD, this has given a lot of neophytes to the world of visual fidelity a good grounding in what they should look out for to discern the difference between a quality transfer and ones that sport minor or even major flaws. With a little information, more and more people can now make out the distinctions in picture quality for themselves, and make more informed decisions about which movies really make the most of their televisions. The same also holds true for games, although the criteria for judging the visual quality of a game does differ. Movies have issues such as artifacts, banding and color. Games have their own issues like frame rates and collision detection, for example.

For many years, the graphical quality of games was severely hindered by the constraints of the hardware, and this was particularly true for consoles, where earlier hardware such as the Nintendo Entertainment System – or even the original Playstation – while considerably more advanced than the clumsy, colored squares of consoles in the 70’s (like the Atari 2600), still required a lot of imagination on the part of the gamers to create a sense of realism and suspension of disbelief that film found so easy to instill in audiences. This is gradually changing now with the introduction of more powerful consoles into the home and the transition into HD gaming, but that doesn’t mean that gaming is anywhere near achieving a degree of photorealism that will instantly fool the human eye. While the visuals in games get more polished and refined, with developers getting a better understanding of the machines they work on, or developing new graphics engines, there are still things that can – and frequently do – slip through the cracks of visual presentation. In this article, we’ll look at the deficiencies or “glitches” that can separate top tier graphical work from more functional efforts. This is meant to be a general introduction, so nothing will get too technical here, and it should help those new to gaming as the result of obtaining a 360 as an HD-DVD player, or a PS3 as a Blu-Ray player, get more familiar with the interactive aspect of their machines.

Frame Rate

When it comes to film, the accepted convention very early in the inception of the medium was 24 frames per second. That is to say, the illusion of movement was created when 24 images were played back in the space of one second. For years this has been the standard, although in recent times with the introduction of HDTV broadcasts, this is starting to change to rates like 60 frames per second. In games however, the frame rate is nowhere near the universal standard that film has enjoyed for decades, and this is chiefly because of the limitations of the technology. While film generally manages to create a sense of movement from 24 frames per second, or fps, that illusion is maintained because of the consistency; except for deliberate camera choices such as slow motion or fast forward, a viewer can generally expect the film to run at 24 fps without ever noticing a dramatic change.

The same however, does not hold true of games. Unlike a digital disc, film reel, or tape, which is used as a playback device, a game console takes the data of the game and must virtually recreate that information as objects and environments that the player can interact with. As a result, the processor of a console is constantly “creating the world” around the player, and depending on how intense the action is – or simply depending on how well the game has been programmed – there can be some variance from the 30 fps or 60 fps that are generally accepted as the standards for the gaming industry today. For example, Grand Theft Auto IV the game which recently took the record for best selling piece of entertainment in a 24 hour period, normally runs at 30 fps. However, the scale of the world the game is trying to create, or “render” can be quite taxing on consoles, and if things get too hectic, for example, causing a gigantic firefight with helicopters, police teams, S.W.A.T. vans, explosions and screaming pedestrians in the virtual equivalent of Times Square, with neon, lights and the occasional explosion from rocket propelled grenades… this much chaos can occasionally strain the 360 or PS3 and will have a noticeable drop in its frame rate, though this doesn’t carry on for very long. On the other hand, games with fewer variables to consider, such as Gran Turismo 5: Prologue have an easier time with more controlled conditions. In the case of GT Prologue, the fact that its resources are devoted to simulating only a track and the behavior of the cars on the track means that it was optimized to display at 60 fps during gameplay and it never drops from this. .

Spotting a drop in the frame rate is one of the easiest glitches to identify as the human eye immediately notices the change in movement. One moment everything is relatively smooth, but as soon the frame rate drops, the eye sees the change as a “stuttered” motion. Depending on the severity of the drop in frame rate, this can even be as serious as the movement no longer appearing to be movement, but instead bearing closer resemblance to a slide-show, with images present for a second or more before moving onto the next. Games today rarely – if ever – experience a drop in frame rate this serious, although in the infancy of gaming, some games actually functioned at far lower frame rates – as low as 6fps – for the simple reason that that was all the retail processors of the time were capable of.

Screen Tearing


Screen Tearing is a relatively recent phenomenon for consoles, although PC gamers have been familiar with this particular glitch for a number of years. The glitch gets its name from the effect it has on the visuals, such as the shot of the original Halo: Combat Evolved shown above. Take careful notice of the area between the player’s gun and soldier to the left. What should be a view of the shore with the water washing up has a section that doesn’t match with the rest of the image, as if the individual section has been shifted or “torn” from the fabric of the rest of the image and isn’t aligning correctly. Screen Tearing is related to frame rate issues in that it’s a conflict between one image and another. In this case, the glitch occurs when a new image is being displayed, but the older image is also still being displayed.

This issue is normally addressed by a technique known as Vertical Synchronization, or Vsync, which is essentially a “gatekeeper” that ensures one image is fully rendered and ready to discard before another image is rendered. However, the dynamic nature of games can still occasionally cause screen tearing to occur, particularly if the action on screen forces the processor to make a choice between keeping the frame rate smooth and displaying some screen tear, or eliminating the screen tear at the cost of dropping the frame rate. This can happen to varying degrees on graphics intensive games, indicating that either the software is pushing the hardware to the limit, or the hardware itself is not being fully utilized. For example God of War 2 on the Playstation 2 had moments of screen tearing, but it was widely accepted that this was simply because the Sony Santa Monica team had pushed the PS2 about as far as it could go, and were using nearly all the resources the machine had with little leeway left for flawless Vsync. On the other hand, early launch efforts like the Xbox 360 First Person Shooter Perfect Dark Zero showed screen tearing simply because the technology was new and the game was rushed out in order to release in time for the launch of the console. It’s usually normal for the first wave or generation of games on a new console to display the most obvious graphical flaws because of the lack of familiarity with the hardware at the time. However, it all rests in the hands of the developer, their understanding of the hardware, and how hard they push the boundaries when it comes to this issue. Even today there are still some high profile games that are occasionally prone to this glitch, such as Gran Turismo 5: Prologue, which has extremely rare occurrences of this glitch, while other games such as the critically acclaimed Mass Effect on the Xbox 360 suffer from it on a regular basis.

Pop-Up/Draw-In

This is a graphical glitch that will probably remain an issue for this generation of gaming and beyond. The simple fact of the matter is the current hardware, while impressive, is not all-powerful and it will still hit definite limitations in terms of what it’s capable of displaying. In order to not tax the resources of a machine, developers will normally set a “draw distance” which – in virtual world terms – is the area that game is instructing to the console to display or render. After all, if a player is only going to see, say, the first 30 yards of the environment around him, it’s more economical for the hardware to concern itself with only creating that 30 yard radius the player sees to the fullest possible detail, rather than creating the whole environment to that intricate level for miles around.

This is also where the problems come in. Once again the understanding of the hardware, the quality of the programming and the dynamic nature of games all conspire to make the issue of draw distance a less than straightforward affair, and when things go wrong, that is where pop-up or draw-in can occur. Put simply, this glitch occurs when players are interacting with the world too quickly for the game to keep up, and when the game does finally get back on track with where the player is and what they are doing, the game must suddenly make up for lost time and start rapidly populating the area with the things that are supposed to be in that environment. The clearest example of this is something like Grand Theft Auto IV where the world is truly massive. If players manage to get a good run in a car, hurtling down roads at breakneck speeds, they can be traveling so fast that elements of the game world no longer gradually appear in the distance and get closer as the player approaches. Instead, objects – like trees, lamp posts and even pedestrians – can magically appear out of nowhere as the game finally “catches up” with the player and starts populating the area once it realizes where the player is. Obviously with the previous example of a high speed race, this can mean the player colliding straight into buildings or other obstacles that weren’t there a split second before and have seemingly “teleported” into place before the player’s very eyes. This is pop-up. Draw-in is a similar glitch, which works at a slower pace. Instead of magically appearing in front of the player with no warning, draw-in usually works somewhere in the distance, where the environment actually appears to be quickly “drawn in” before the players very eyes, as if a construction crew were rapidly building up the world a short distance away, trying to finish in time before the player arrives.

Here’s a good example of pop-up courtesy of GameSpot, from the game Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion


For the example above, imagine that the player has just teleported into the area, and this what they see when they first arrive; a hut and a fence. However, a second later, this happens:


The world has suddenly become more populated with trees, horses, even a sign on the hut. The game has finally caught up with the location of the gamer, and in a hasty effort to get back on track with what the player is supposed to see in this area, it has made all the extra objects instantaneously appear. This is not a problem that is going to go away any time soon, as developers are constantly pushing the hardware to create bigger, more detailed and expansive worlds. Pop-up and draw-in can be hidden to some degree, something that racing games excel at, by hiding the places where these glitches occur thanks to natural obstacles such as turns or even mountain walls that can obscure the objects normally viewable at a distance. But as consoles get more powerful, developers will be constantly encouraged to push the limits of that hardware, and as such the pop-up and draw-in issues will likely still be with us for a while until developers either truly master the “cheats” to hide it from players, or else hardware becomes powerful enough that it’s feasible to simply render everything in high detail within the viewable distance in real time.

Aliasing/”Jaggies”


The above screenshot is from 1998’s Ridge Racer 4 on the original Playstation and is an extreme example of an issue that still occasionally crops up in games today, aliasing or “jaggies.” This is the clear, “stair step” effect that registers on our eyes when we see something displayed at lower resolution. Of course, higher resolutions have helped clean this up considerably in recent years, but the feature most responsible for giving us cleaner images is called Anti-Aliasing, which is simply devoting more processing power and specific programming techniques to “smoothing out” those edges and giving images a more naturalistic look in line with what we’re accustomed to seeing in real life. Compare the above image from 10 years ago that had no Anti-Aliasing on the original Playstation with Gran Turismo 5: Prologue on the PS3 to see what a difference “AA” as well as increased polygon counts and a host of other graphical upgrades can have on a game’s visuals.


Aliasing is another glitch that has become less pronounced in this new HD generation of games, although, surprisingly, it can still crop up. AA, like everything else about a game, will demand certain resources from the system, and as a result, sometimes developers will deliberately choose not to maximize this feature for a particular game if it means compromising the game in some other way, such as dropping the frame rate as the hardware struggles to smooth out everything on screen. It is this delicate balance between all these graphical considerations that forces developers to perform a juggling act of sorts, deciding on draw distances, AA and many, many other considerations to keep the game playable versus keeping the game beautiful. Games with longer draw distances and little pop up or draw in might suffer from more aliasing issues. Games with smoother frame rates and lots of anti-aliasing might suffer from smaller environments, etc, etc. In a sense, aside from the actual monetary cost of developing the game, the game developers have the additional worry of a “technological budget” where they must consider what sacrifices they make – and to what degree – in order to create a game that the audience will find both visually pleasing but also fun to actually play. Frequently they fail to strike the right balance, as evinced by the wealth of games that don’t meet up to either playability or graphical quality, whereas games that successfully do both are rare indeed.

Collision Detection/Clipping


The final glitch is one that doesn’t necessarily detract from the overall quality of the visuals, but has a tendency to break immersion more noticeably when it occurs. One of the fundamental rules of Newton states that – at least on the level of reality we’re familiar with – two objects cannot occupy the same space. Poor collision detection ( or “clipping” a nick name picked up from the game Doom from a built-in developer cheat called “No Clip”) is when for reasons of time or simple neglect, developers release a game in which virtual objects break this fundamental law. If you look closely at the above screenshot from famed online virtual reality Second Life, you’ll see a few examples of this in action. The man with the sunglasses has his right hand passing into his thigh, and to his left, the Smurf’s TNT is actually sinking into his thighs as well.

Poor collision detection is a fairly common glitch because it requires an enormous amount of time and care to properly address it. Usually game developers simply don’t have the luxury of that time or attention to detail because it would mean delaying a game that people are already screaming for in order to address what most would regard as a small nit-pick. These days, the most common times you’ll see poor collision detection in action is during shooters where players must kill other opponents. Usually collision detection is spot on and works as expected when everyone is alive, but when characters are killed, it’s not unusual for the game to no longer regard the victims as “objects” and often heads, legs and other extremities will now pass through walls in ghost-like fashion, since the game no longer deems it necessary to pay the same amount of attention to detail to an essentially “finished” asset of the game. It’s not the kind of thing that normally interferes with gameplay, at least not to the extent that a drop in frame-rate can, which is the most serious glitch, but poor collision detection is the one that most pulls the gamer out of the world the developers are trying to immerse people in, and remind them of the artificial nature of the game they are playing.

As with movies, these visual flaws are normally very minor things that don’t necessarily detract from the overall quality of a game, unless they reach serious levels. It wasn’t even until the last two generations that Anti-Aliasing was even a practical feature for console games, and plenty of games received critical acclaim without AA. But, as with film, the additional technology can enhance the gaming experience and contribute to the sense of suspension of disbelief, provided that the fundamentals – that is a strong game, with a compelling mechanics – is there to begin with. Like film, games are a marriage of elements, and if the gameplay isn’t there, the character isn’t there, and the story isn’t there, then all the visual fidelity in the world is not going to save that game from being a critical and commercial failure. Glitches such as the ones listed above can either be minor blemishes to an otherwise masterful game, or be more damning flaws in an already poor one.

Wayne Santos's opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of this site, its owners or employees.

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Digital Leisure Grounds 'Space Ace' HD DVD

Fri Mar 14, 2008 at 09:00 AM ET
Tags: Street Date Changes, High-Def Gaming, Digital Leisure (all tags)

Citing Toshiba's "cessation of support for the format," Digital Leisure has pulled the plug on its planned HD DVD port of the arcade classic 'Space Ace.'

As previously reported, Digital Leisure had announced a dual-format release for 'Space Ace,' with both the HD DVD and Blu-ray due to touch-down on April 8. The company's decision now leaves only the Blu-ray still on track for release.

Also blasted like an asteroid is the "head-to-head" online gaming feature that was to be an exclusive to the HD DVD version. (At press time, Digital Leisure says the Blu-ray version of 'Space Ace' will not be BD-Live enabled. Whether the company plans to reissue the title in the future in a Profile 2.0-compliant version that includes the online gaming component remains to be seen.)

Although the company says it does not plan to issue an official statement regarding its HD DVD support, a company rep tells us that with the cancellation of 'Space Ace,' Digital Leisure is no longer planning any future titles for the format. That leaves 'Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp' (which the company had previously indicated in press materials would see a dual-format release sometime in 2008) also DOA on HD DVD.

As always, we'll keep you posted on all future Digital Leisure announcements as they come to us.

In light of the nixing of 'Space Ace,' we've removed the title's listing from our HD DVD Release Schedule. You'll find complete specs for the Blu-ray version in our Blu-ray Release Schedule, where it's indexed under April 8.

Discs mentioned in this article: (Click for specs and reviews)
Space Ace (Blu-ray)
Dragon's Lair (Blu-ray)
Dragon's Lair (HD DVD)
Earlier on High-Def Digest:
'Space Ace' Rockets to Blu-ray, HD DVD (Feb 06, 2008)

'Space Ace' Rockets to Blu-ray, HD DVD

Wed Feb 06, 2008 at 11:00 AM ET
Tags: Disc Announcements, High-Def Gaming, Digital Leisure (all tags)

Digital Leisure is making a return trip to the '80s arcade, announcing an April Blu-ray and HD DVD release for the videogame classic 'Space Ace.'

Following the company's high-def success with 'Dragon's Lair' (which it released on blu-ray and HD DVD last year), Digital Leisure is now readying its 1986 successor, 'Space Ace,' for a simultaneous April 8 release on both high-def formats.

Utilizing the same gameplay format as 'Dragon's Lair,' 'Space Ace' combines hand-drawn 2-D animation from the Don Bluth Studios with disc-based technology, allowing gamers to pilot the heroic Ace on a series of adventures using simple joystick commands.

Fully remastered for high-def, 'Space Ace' will be presented in identical 1080p transfers on the Blu-ray and HD DVD, with the option to play the game in both the original 1.37:1 aspect ratio as well as recomposed 1.78:1. Audio options include remixed English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround, plus subtitles in English, French, Spanish, Italian and German.

Extras shared across both versions include a picture-in-picture video commentary with game creators Don Bluth, Gary Goldman and Rick Dyer, additional interviews excerpts, as well as a "Watch Mode," which allows you to view the game's complete animation without playing.

Exclusive to the HD DVD version will be "Leisure Online," a format-first online player experience that includes "Head 2 Head" gaming, allowing multiple web-enabled users to play simultaneously.

Digital Leisure has set a suggested price of $29.98 a peice for the Blu-ray and HD DVD.

As always, you'll find disc details for 'Space Ace' linked from our Blu-ray Release Schedule and HD DVD Release Schedule, where it's indexed under April 8.

We've also set up dedicated threads for Digital Leisure's latest in our Forums area -- click the following links to discuss the 'Space Ace' Blu-ray release and the 'Space Ace' HD DVD release.

Discs mentioned in this article: (Click for specs and reviews)
Space Ace (Blu-ray)
Space Ace (HD DVD)
Dragon's Lair (Blu-ray)
Dragon's Lair (HD DVD)

'Space Ace' to Race to Blu-ray, HD DVD in 2008

Fri Oct 05, 2007 at 08:00 AM ET
Tags: Disc Announcements, High-Def Gaming, Digital Leisure (all tags)

Following up its next-gen success with 'Dragon's Lair,' Digital Leisure has announced plans to bring 'Space Ace' to Blu-ray and HD DVD in 2008.

There are no details or even a street date yet, but the distributor has confirmed that next-gen versions of the arcade classic are a go for "sometime in the first half of 2008," following a new PC version (due this fall).

As was the case with 'Dragon's Lair,' Digital Leisure says it has gone back to the original audio and video elements of 'Space Ace' and produced a brand-new 1080p video master, as well as a 5.1 multi-channel surround mix.

Specs for the PC version of the game also indicate new making-of material featuring original creator Don Bluth and his animation team. We can only expect that this material will find its way to the next-gen versions as well.

As always, we'll let you know as soon as release dates for the Blu-ray and HD DVD editions are announced. In the meantime, we've added 'Space Ace' to the "Release Dates Pending" sections of both our Blu-ray Release Schedule and HD DVD Release Schedule.

We've also set up a dedicated threads for Digital Leisure's latest in our Forums area -- click the following links to discuss the 'Space Ace' Blu-ray release or the 'Space Ace' HD DVD release.

Discs mentioned in this article: (Click for specs and reviews)
Dragon's Lair (Blu-ray)
Dragon's Lair (HD DVD)

Digital Leisure to Unleash 'Dragon's Lair' on HD DVD This August

Mon Jul 02, 2007 at 11:45 AM ET
Tags: Disc Announcements, High-Def Gaming, Digital Leisure (all tags)

Lagging behind its Blu-ray counterpart by several months, 'Dragon's Lair' will finally hit HD DVD on August 15 from indie developer Digital Leisure.

The hybrid animated film/video game was one of the big hits of the arcade boom of the early '80s. Combining hand-drawn 2-D animation from the Don Bluth Studios with laserdisc-based technology, 'Dragon's Lair' allowed gamers to pilot the heroic Dirk the Daring on a series of adventures using simple joystick commands.

Digital Leisure has since released the trend-setter on several different home platforms, including standard-def DVD and DVD-ROM for PCs, before finally debuting the Blu-ray version earlier this year on April 9. (You can find out more info about the various permutations of 'Dragon's Lair,' and other background on the game, at www.digitalleisure.com.)

Though the company had always listed an upcoming HD DVD version in their promotional materials and website since announcing the Blu-ray, an official date had not been issued until now.

No specs nor supplemental details have yet been revealed, although this HD DVD edition is expected at least all of the extras found on the Blu-ray version.

Retail price will list for $29.95 (also mirroring the Blu-ray).

We'll keep you posted as soon as official specs are announced for 'Dragon's Lair.' In the meantime, we've added a new listing for this HD DVD edition to our HD DVD Release Schedule, under August 15.

For a complete review of the Blu-ray edition of 'Dragon's Lair,' you can read our review in full here.

See what people are saying about this story in our forums area, or check out other recent discussions.

Discs mentioned in this article: (Click for specs and reviews)
Dragon's Lair (HD DVD)
Dragon's Lair (Blu-ray)
Earlier on High-Def Digest:
Digital Leisure Adds BD-Java Interactivity to 'Dragon's Lair,' Sets April Release Date (Mar 26, 2007)

New Disc Bundle Offered For Xbox 360 HD DVD Add-On

Thu Jun 14, 2007 at 08:15 AM ET
Tags: Xbox 360, Microsoft, High-Def Retailing, High-Def Gaming (all tags)

The latest in a seemingly endless parade of discounts and promos for HD DVD and Blu-ray over the past few weeks, both Best Buy and Circuit City are offering a new free disc bundle with purchase of the Xbox 360 HD DVD player add-on.

Now through June 16th, consumers who buy Microsoft's add-on player at either big box retailer will receive not only the free 'King Kong' HD DVD (which has long come bundled with the player), but also an additional two free HD DVD discs.

The two deals seem to differ slightly in terms of the two additional free HD DVDs: while Circuit City is allowing consumers to choose any two HD DVDs up to a $59.98 value, it appears that Best Buy has pre-selected 'The Bourne Supremacy' and 'Breach' as their two additional discs, at least for online sales.

Both retailers are selling the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on for its list price of $199.99.

This bundle deal is the latest in a series of price cuts and promotions to hit HD DVD and Blu-ray in the weeks leading up to Father's Day. On the hardware side, Toshiba and Sony have both dropped prices for their respective next-gen disc players, with Sony launching its BDP-S300 Blu-ray player at a record-low $499, and Toshiba offering a limited time $100 rebate program for its line of HD DVD players. On the software side, price cuts on high-def discs have been spotted at various retailers, including (most recently) Amazon.com, which is offering up to 42% off list price for a selection of HD DVD and Blu-ray titles

See what people are saying about this story in our forums area, or check out other recent discussions.

Related links:
Weekly Ad [Circuit City]
2 Free HD Movies Offer [Best Buy]
Discs mentioned in this article: (Click for specs and reviews)
King Kong (2005) (HD DVD)
Breach (HD DVD)
The Bourne Supremacy (HD DVD)
Earlier on High-Def Digest:
Amazon Drops Prices on Select Blu-ray, HD DVD Discs to 42 Percent Off List (Jun 12, 2007)
Sony Launches BDP-S300 Blu-ray Player, Drops Price to $499 (Jun 04, 2007)
Toshiba Offers $100 Rebate on New HD DVD Players (May 16, 2007)
Microsoft to Bundle 'King Kong' with Xbox 360 HD DVD Player (Sep 27, 2006)

Microsoft, Comedy Central Team Up for 'South Park' Xbox 360 HD DVD Exclusive

Tue Mar 06, 2007 at 04:57 AM ET
Tags: High-Def Gaming, High-Def Disc Marketing, High-Def Retailing, Xbox 360, Microsoft, Best Buy (all tags)

In the first-ever HD DVD release exclusive to a videogame platform, Comedy Central and Microsoft are teaming up to bring a special 'South Park' episode in high-definition to new Xbox 360 buyers.

In the first of two Xbox 360 promos, Comedy Central will offer users of the Microsoft game console a free download of the 'South Park' episode "Good Times with Weapons." The episode, which originally aired in 2004, has now been retooled in high-definition, making it an HD-first for the long-running, potty-mouthed cult series.

The download will be followed by a second promo. Exclusive to retailer Best Buy, a free HD DVD of the same "Good Times with Weapons" episode will be given to anyone who buys an Xbox 360 and/or HD DVD add-on peripheral at its stores. The promo will run for only two weeks, from March 20 to April 3.

Comedy Central is owned by Viacom, who is also the parent company of Paramount Pictures. Though the studio is currently format agnostic in the high-def war, supporting both Blu-ray and HD DVD equally, Microsoft supports only HD DVD via its Xbox 360 console.

Currently, 'South Park' episodes and season sets remain unreleased on either next-gen format. Outside of this Xbox promo, Paramount has made no formal announcement of any plans to bring the show to either Blu-ray or HD DVD.

Episodes from 'South Park' seasons five through nine are currently available for download (in standard-def) via the Xbox Live network. They rank among the most popular downloads on the site, according to Comedy Central.

Though the idea of 'South Park' in high-resolution is an amusing one, we must admit that using the show -- whose animation style consists largely of construction paper cut-outs -- as a marketing tool for HD DVD seems somewhat odd. Of all the popular shows on Comedy Central that would most benefit from a high-def release, 'South Park' is probably at the bottom of the "wow factor" list, however huge its audience.

Still, we remain intrigued at the marketing possibilities of format-exclusive releases, especially those tied to videogame consoles. We can't wait to see if Sony retaliates with some Blu-ray retailer exclusives tied to sales of its PlayStation 3 rival. How about a couple of old 'Charlie's Angels' episodes in HD, huh, Sony?

Stay tuned for more on this story as it develops...

See what people are saying about this story in our forums area, or check out other recent discussions.

Related links:
'South Park' Downloads to HD DVD [Video Business]

First PS3, XBox HD DVD Add-On Sales Numbers

Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 02:25 PM ET
Tags: High-Def Gaming, Industry Trends, Hardware, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 (all tags)

The first sales numbers for the Blu-ray-backed PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on have come in, with encouraging results for high-def.

GameDaily Biz is reporting new data from industry tracking firm The NPD Group, which shows an expected console sales bump of over 69 percent for the year ending in November.

For us high-def enthusiasts, of course, the bigger news is the actual number of Blu-ray-driven PS3s and Xbox HD DVD peripherals sold. NPD reports that the PS3 has sold 197,000 units in the U.S. so far -- a total sellout of all domestic shipments Sony was able to deliver to retailers through November.

Meanwhile, Microsoft's HD DVD add-on for the Xbox has moved 42,000 units since its launch in mid-November (the company has not released total number of units delivered to retailers, preventing any sold-versus-shipped comparisons).

On the surface, this data would seem to indicate that Blu-ray's game console footprint (via the PS3) has a sizable lead over the Xbox/HD DVD combo by a healthy five-to-one margin. But in the add-on camp's favor is that those purchasing the drive are much more likely to be high-def movie watchers -- why buy the HD DVD drive otherwise? The same is not necessarily so for the PS3 -- there is no telling how many of the eager gamers who plunked down over $500 for a new console are actually using it to watch Blu-ray movies.

As far as we're concerned, the real proof will be in the software pudding. Though it is good to finally get some hard PS3/Xbox HD DVD add-on sales numbers, it will be disc sales over the next weeks and months that will paint a far better picture of who's really "winning" the high-def format war.

In any case, this is all encouraging news for high-def in general, as in the space of only a few weeks, we've seen the installed base for Blu-ray and HD DVD jump significantly. And the strong hardware sales should only continue as Sony and Microsoft ship more units of their consoles and add-ons this month and over the next year. Stay tuned!

See what people are saying about this story in our forums area, or check out other recent discussions.

Related links:
Game Industry Up 16% through November [GameDaily Biz]


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