For reasons best left unexplained, deals between them and the mega-gaint EA have gone sour. Resulting in a couple of EA titles not being stocked in store. This was a massive blow as one of the titles was the higly anticipated Mass Effect 3. Easily the big release of the month, Quarter and so far, the Year. This has also resulting the the company going into administration, but that’s another story for another day.

This doesn’t mean people in the UK weren’t able to buy Mass Effect 3, Good old fashioned supermarkets still stocked it (although usually at a much higher cost) and of course independent game retailers had their copies ready and waiting, much to their delight. However, it seems most people purchased it online. The most popular online retailer for video games in the UK is Play.com.

“Where are you going with this?” I hear you saying on the other side of your screen. Well since it was announced that Game and Gamestation wasn’t supplying the game, the price of online retailers shot up in the uk. Mass Effect 3 was looking to be around £30-35 online upon release, But suddenly the price on Play.com jumped to £45. Online retailers have always offered games at a reduced price. Possibly because they don’t need to pay rent, Possibly because they are competing with high street retailers. But this move by play.com has made us question if they would always stay cheap if the high-street retailers disappeared.

Of course if brick and mortar stores suddenly dissapeared…..somehow, Purchasing from an online retailer wouldn’t be your only option. Digital distubution is now not only here, but here to stay. Services like Steam, Origin and Direct to Drive will always be another way to aquire the games you wish to play. But their costs too can be a bit odd at times. Sometimes they are the same and a retailer, Sometimes cheaper and even in odd cases more expensive, due to deal game developers have with high street stores.

Now a few weeks later, The price online has dropped to its usual standard. But it all gets very confusing very quickly, But one thing is for sure, as long as there is competition, prices will remain “low”. But as soon as it becomes a 1 horse race……. Actually, its best not think about that.

Please leave a comment below, I would love to know what peoples opinions on this are. Do you think online purchases would become more expensive if they didn’t have high street retailers to keep them in check?

This year could almost be known as the year of the hack. Off the top of your head, can you name games companies that were hacked this year? …. I’ll give you some time to think……………..OK that’s enough of that. You properly thought “Sony, yeah that was a big deal” true, it was. you may also have thought of steam. But if that’s all you can think of, you may be surprised to know that, EA, Sega, Bethesda, Nintendo, Codemasters, Epicgames and Square-enix were all compromised this year. That doesn’t really leave that many companies uncompromised.

That isn’t all the problems the games industry have been having. The world economy have hit the games industry much harder others. In this age, people are cutting back on luxuries and the video game is most certainly a luxury (an expensive one at times). This has resulted in the UK games market being at a 10 year low (in terms of weekly sales). Even game franchises that seemed unstoppable have come to a grinding halt from this turn of events. The Guitar Hero franchise, one of activations strongest IP’s, was official canned in January of this year, and quickly slipt from peoples minds.

It almost seems like there is no hope. we might as well enjoy games while we can, because one day they will simply go away. DON’T BE STUPID. The thing that makes the games industry so powerful is the gamers. We are always on the look out for new innovations, new game directions and new ways to play out games. This is what the games industry have latched onto this year. The 3DS hit in early April and added a new dimension to gaming. Whether you hated it or loved it, you can’t deny that it have given 3D gaming to the next generation of gamers. This console seemed to be far more popular with the younger generation that the vintage gamers. So expect the next 10 years of gaming to come with 3D glasses attached.

But thats not all that has changed for gamers. This year was also the year of the Ipad2. “Thats not a gaming platform” you say. 100Million sales of Angry birds would say otherwise. This truly was the year that mobile gaming took off. If you have an android or iPhone, Its hard for you to be reading this article and not have played at least 1 game while on the move.

All that and i didn’t even mention the games that came out this year. I could name some of the best, but really, you already have a short list in your head.

So where does that leave us? What does the future hold. The PSP vita just released in japan and the Nintendo wii-U will be arriving some time this year, Microsoft have also been advertising for next gen console devs, as have Sony. So it looks like the near future might just be all about the hardware. Maybe 2012 is going to be the birth of the next generation of gaming platforms, engines and technology. What ever it holds, we welcome it with open arms.

You remember that trailer for dead island. Not the one showing game footage. The one of the family being torn apart but the horrific events of the game. That’s the one. Slow motion, playing backwards, deeply emotional. Well lionsgate have teamed up with the producer of “the mummy” to turn that trailer into a feature length film.

Just to explain why, the trailer in question was viewed over 10 million times within the first 48 hours. The game to date only has sold 2 million copies. People latched onto the style of that trailer far more than the style of the game. But really can you blame them.

“This is exactly the type of property we’re looking to adapt” Lionsgate said “it’s sophisticated, edgy, and a true elevation of a genre that we know and love. It also has built in brand recognition around the world, and franchise potential.“

It all started with the NES. The Japanese market got far more games that the English speaking world. but if a game did exceptionally well then it was translated and shipped over to the US. If it then continued to succeed, it was shipped world wide. Just imagine being a resident of the UK or Austria in that scenario. You tend to get the games upwards or 2 years later than their actual release. This is what started the import trade in games. To combat this, Nintendo made each regions NES support different shaped cartridges. This trend carried on through the SNES and even the N64. But all that was required to get around it was a cartridge adapter.

Don’t think I’m picking on Nintendo, Sony did the same thing with the PS1 and PS2. In fact, Sony Invented the DVD region locking technology to prevent the importing of both games and DVDs, resulting in the now familiar Region number. But this too had a work around. As with everything made by man, it will one day be broken by man (My watch for example ARRRGHHH). The work around for Sony was a bit more drastic though. People had to open up their machine and add extra chips to be able to bypass said region locking. A big task with many risks. But gamers were still willing to do it to get there hands on the games the publishers were not willing to give them yet.

When it comes to other companies the attitude it a little different. Although the original Xbox had the same standard region locking as the PlayStation, The Xbox 360 has no built in region built into the machine. It was and still is done on a case by case basis. As the game designer, you choose if you wish for your game to be locked to a single region or region free. It works out around just over 50% of games not released in the US will be playable on US systems. Sega’s last console, The Dreamcast, had an odd attitude towards region locking. Although you couldn’t natively play another regions game in the console, By copying the game and running a copy, it would work perfectly. This has for a long time been speculated as a “secretly intentional” move by sega as a way to get people to buy more games directly from sega even if they were locked to a different region.

Modern systems are very different. If a system wants to remain locked to a region, it can do so quite happily with out people breaking it. How ever the industry seems to remain split as to if region locking even required. The PS3 simply has no region locking at all. Nintendo on the other hand insist that region locking is required and continue to add it to the Wii and presumably the WiiU when it arrives. But more importantly is the addition of region locking on the 3DS. Traditionally Handheld consoles have been region free. In fact the DS is host to the offically more imported game series of all time. The pokemon games. This move with the 3DS has upset a large number of people, leaving us to question why region locking is even required to begin with.

Well, really, its to do with that first paragraph that i didn’t write. Profit margins and international shipping laws really force the industry into a situation where they feel they need to lock the regions on their games. But I would like to make a quick surgestion. Why not have all games on all console region free. If there is a game that normally would be imported, then sell it directly from the publishers website with a cheaper P&P than the people who import the games. If you think it is a problem, then beat the at their game, rather than trying to change the rules of the game.

The best part is that when I mention what type of gamer they are, you are going to shrug it off and say “don’t be stupid, that doesn’t count as a gamer”. But after you do so, please continue to read the rest of this article, as it may change your mind.

The type of gamer I am refering to, is one who plays social games. Namely Facebook games.

See, there you go, rolling your eyes, already tempted to close the page down. But let me just throw a quick fact at you to keep you intrested. At the time of writing this, There are more people who have a farmvile account than Twitter account. Yep, that right, twitter, the social network tool that has changed the way some people live their very lives and the way media is distubuted, Out down by a simple flash game.

The reason for this new trend in hidden gamers is all about the social aspect of these game. Suddenly when you play this game, your not playing against yourself or playing against some random name aggrogated from the web. No, your playing against your real life friends, co-workers, family. Everybody who you interact with on a daily basis, has suddenly become your competion.

I’ll give you an example, a case study if you will. One of my friends plays a game on facebook called “lucky trains”. In this game you have a small county with a train line going through it. Each time you put a passenger on the train you get money, exp and a score. You can spend your money and exp on building better houses, generating people and getting faster trains. A fairly simple game with a limited lifespan. But because everybody on your facebook friends list has the ability to play this game for free and be ranked, The person in question feels the need to play as offten as possible to stay on the top ranking of all her friends.

An additional element of the game, is that you have to wait in real time hours for resources to generate (trains take time to return, passengers take time to generate, etc) So what does she do, She creates an account for her daughter…aged 2, She creates one for her 2 dogs, She creates one for people who have no intrest in facebook, just so she can play and feed all the resources into her main account. Her day involves, going to work, Playing this game, Eating some food, Playing the game, Sleeping, then….yep you guessed it, Playing that damn game.

I wish i could say that she is an expception, a gamer that might have gone too far, But i can’t. Because on her friends list, there are several people who have a higher score than her. If she were playing World of Warcraft, She would have had an intervention by this time. She would have been dragged away from the computer kicking and screaming.

But wait a second, do i hear the words “this is a free game right, why don’t they charge for it and make a pile of money off her” ?. Well, they are already making money of her with out having to charge her a penny. If you do get a chance to play said game…or any other games on facebook (I highly advise against it) you will notice advertisments everywhere. Not only that, but on some of these games there is an option to buy in game money for real life money. If you are sooooo close to beating all your friends and getting the all time high score, But then suddenly you have to make a trip away for a while, Then buying the cash and EXP in game seems like a good investment.

Yes thats right, Microtransactions in a simple flash game. Not only is it real, but highly common. All of these things not only make money for the developers, but also feed the addiction of the player. Your not going to put this game down now…not after you spent money on it. No, your in it for the long run. In fact, it makes sense for you to pore more money into it. It suddenly becomes an investment.

Before I leave you, I want to throw one more thing your way. The big leagues have noticed. This rapidly accelerating new gamer has made the larger game developers stop and take notice. Deus Ex: Human revolution has just implemented a new system where playing a facebook game will unlock items in the real game. Is this the shape of things to come? Only we the user can decide.

In days gone by, it wasn’t out of place to casually wander into your local gaming store, browse through the shelves and walk out with a moderately priced game. Not an amazing game, just something you would have played three of four times then put on the shelf to collect dust. Now think hard, when was the last time you walked into a game store and picked something up on a whim? It seems when purchasing games now we tend to go for one of two extremes. It’s either the Triple-A title on the day its released or the cheap indie the game that nobody can stop talking about. But that middle section seems to have disappeared from everybody’s vision.

Last week at the GDC (game developers conference) Cliff Bleszinski (maker of Unreal & Gears of War: Pictured below) made a passing statement in the middle of one of his seminars. He said “I believe the middle class game is dead”. A statement that at the time most people didn’t really understand and was brushed over. Over this last week, the more I’ve thought about this statement the more it seems blatantly obvious that the middle class of gaming has suddenly disappeared without anybody noticing. I personally can’t remember the last time I purchased a game that wasn’t either from an independent company or a AAA title

The more I’ve been thinking about it the more I’ve been pitching the blame in two directions The first is that the brick and mortar store seem to be a dying breed in the eyes of gamers. Using digital distribution systems like Steam or Gamersgate is much easier than walking into a store. Then places like Amazon and eBay make it much cheaper than the bus ticket to get to the store. So no longer do you wander up and down rows of games judging each of them by their cover and blurb. It’s all about the online marketing. If your game doesn’t have any, then you have no game.

The second is the financial climate. It’s been awhile since I went into any shop and casually bought anything without prior understanding of the product. Reason why my bank account won’t allow me to, And I know I’m not the only one in this situation. Many other people are feeling the crunch on their wallets and are choosing to only purchase things that they WANT rather than they would LIKE. If this fact is true, then this problem of middle-class gaming being a dying breed, should hopefully disappear as the recession does.

Less than 10 years ago, there were a large quantity of small companies thriving off the middle-class games market. Now it seems those companies are under threat and their employees potentially jobless. What many people don’t seem to understand is that nobody starts at the top in the games industry. Today’s indie developers are tomorrow’s small games developers and today’s small games developers are tomorrow’s AAA developers. But if the middle-class dissapears, then somehow indie developers need to make a giant leap into AAA titles with no understanding of how the industry works.. This will be the same as hiring the manager of your local computer store to run Microsoft’s head office.

With out the middle ground for developers to learn the tricks of the industry as well as the tricks of developing, there is a distinct fear in my head for the future of game developers. Yes franchises will go on, yes technology will advance, but without the people with the passion and desire to create these games and the industry know-how to get them to that point, the future of gaming could be built up on unstable foundations.

Fuelled by that information, Nintendo has pledged to have 900,000 units available for just the European launch alone. They have already organised hundreds of midnight openings (march 24th) in conjunction with Game and GameStation Stores across the UK. Put simply, Nintendo are really trying to make this truly be a landmark in handheld gaming. But is it really? The huge pricetag, around £220 depending on the store, is a big deterrent from most people. The small quantity of games upon release is also an issue for most, leaving most people with a “wait-and-see” attitude towards the console.

To combat this Nintendo are promising to have a much larger repertoire of games available upon release to the rest of the world, including some big names. Nintendogs and cats, for example, will be available for purchase just before three DS itself. The Lego franchise makes an appearance with LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean and even streetfighter gets in on the action with streetfighter IV for 3D. I must admit that prospect of playing streetfighter on a handheld 3D does sound awesome, especially if wireless multiplayer is involved. One of the strangest games that will be on release is a sudoku puzzle game. I can’t particularly imagine sudoku being more immersive in a 3D environment.

But one of the most amusing revelations to come with the 3DS, is that it is already been cracked, Kinda. The R4 DS, for those of you who don’t know, is a cartridge the same size as a DS game but with a micro-SD card adapter. Meaning you can quite easily play backups DS games. This popular device has been around for the standards DS for years. It seems like its already been tested on the 3DS and has been confirmed to be fully functional. Currently only copies of the original DS games have been tested on it, but I’m sure as soon as somebody makes a backup of a 3DS game it won’t be too difficult to get it working on a machine. Unfortunately for Nintendo this may spell doom for their famed region locking which is going to be their number one way of tackling piracy.

All in all, the launch of the 3DS has been filled with both highs and lows for Nintendo. As for the general public, it’s left us wondering whether or not we should drop the old system and pick up the new. If only 3DS games are going to be in development from here on out, your DS may become redundant within the year. At the same time the three DS might just be a gimmick that will be forgotten in a couple of months. Only time will tell. But if Nintendo want a way to secure its place in handheld culture, then it seems the price cut is the way forward.

This is something that gamers are being wanting for years. The ability to play across multiple platforms. But why has it taking so long to get to this stage? We’ve known for a long long time that the technology has been available. Recently valve has also managed to successfully merged both Mac and PC players interacting on the same playing field. But we’ve known for a long while but the technology is available for this to happen. There is nothing to stop console and PC players interacting on the same servers, especially if using valves source engine. So why is it never been done before?

A while ago Microsoft toyed with the idea, they even went as far as to implement a prototype version of gears of War two where the PC players could directly interact with the console players. But this idea was scrapped very very quickly due to one massive floor in the system. The PC players were better. Now I know you’re about to say, “this is just you saying you’re better than people who play Halo”. Not in the slightest. Microsoft came to the conclusion that no matter how good the console game was they couldn’t beat the precision of a mouse and keyboard combination. This is something that the PC gamers have been ranting about for years. So it came to no surprise that Microsoft came to the same conclusion.

So what makes valve think that they can get away with it in portal 2? What makes them think that they can succeed where Microsoft failed. What makes them think they can successfully integrate PS3 and PC players into the same environment without it being insanely unfair and inbalanced. Well once again, valve did the smart thing by not pitching the two players against each other. The interaction between the PS3 and the PC is only the cooperative level, so the weaknesses and strengths of each system do not directly conflict with each other. Sure there may be a few times where PC player may be waiting for the PS3 player to do something correctly. But hopefully valves level design team working on overdrive, those should be few and far between.

So what will it take them to gaming mediums to finally interact in a competitive and regular basis. Well at this point, nothing short of a miracle. But seeing as valve is pushing it in the right direction maybe, just maybe, we might see console players and PC players directly interacting on a regular basis. For you see….

I have a dream of PS3 and Xbox Players Gaming hand in hand with players on the Mac and PC. I have a dream that one day gamers will rise up and live out the true meaning of our creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all gaming mediums are created equal.