More and more rumours emerge about the videogame console from Valve. Famous about their online game store Steam, Valve is a some time investing in emerging technologies and ideas. But is a new videogame console needed? There are already three players now with major investments in hardware and the dispute is famous for being very, very hard. Sega, Panasonic and even Apple tried and can tell you more about it.

Valve has being preparing it’s terrain for some time now. It recently launched (which means that they were already working internally long before) the Bigpicture feature. It transforms the classical Steam interface in a more Television fashion. It is also designed to be controlled via a remote control. But they have never satisfactorily answered the question: who would put a giant PC case in the living room, right next to the TV, just to be able to play?

According to these news, the machine will feature a Linux. It is aligned with recent declarations of the Valve president, Gabe Newell, saying bad things about the new Microsoft Windows. Linux is free and flexible and recently is gaining an unprecedented track with Android phones. Also, Gabe knows that Microsoft plans to launch a service very similar to his Steam, selling software in a centralized way. Survival measures.

Valve has also working with Linux. They recently announced that Steam itself will work on Linux and accept Linux games. A beta is in progress. But except for indies, there are no relevant games for the system. Valve must itself to port some own games (Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress, Half Life and DOTA franchises) to show the path and prove the market viability. Once they do this, many other developers might be encouraged to follow. But it will take a while though. Unlike Windows and closed console systems, Linux on a broadly used machine is yet a niche.

Game engines and middlewares must be prepared also. Valve probably is working on porting it’s Source engine to Linux. Rumours say that a second version of their famous middleware is being cooked. Another demonstration of commitment of this strategy. Epic’s Unreal engine, Unity, Id and other middleware players are announcing compatibility with Linux. They noticed the movement, lead by Valve’s Steam but not exclusively attached to it.

But how a traditional software company will enter in the computer market? Well, Microsoft already followed this path creating a whole hardware division to actually manufacture Xbox. It is a very risky and difficult movement. Electronic manufacturers like Samsung or Nvidia have much more expertise and would have much more success doing this path. Rather, I predict that Valve would follow a similar strategy adopted by Google and its Nexus brand: designed done in house but the actual machine is done by third parties. Valve would just set partnerships with pc manufacturers to create stylish mini PCs with top notch pieces like graphic card and processor. We would see several versions of Steambox shipped in waves, like smartphones and tablets, experimenting new features on each iteration.

PC should finally be considered a first class console.

The gaming industry is a very risky business, just like any other entertainment industry. Generally, players have to bet on a very narrow set of products, which demand high volumes of investments. If we think it through from a project manager perspective, we have a very, very, very risky business to invest in. These companies invest mountains of money in very few products that narrow correlations between quality/sales.

Big investments

The latest graphics, motion capture, and Hollywood actors for voice-overs all cost money. Trucks of money. Like films, AAA titles consume millions of dollars to be built.

Small portfolios

Because the volume of money required to create a game is very bulk, the companies that want to create a portfolio (publishers) have to choose the projects with care and criteria. Even that, they can only concurrently create a very narrow range of games. Essentially they have to bet on very few horses to generate a very large amount of money to finance another cycle. The problem relies on the worst scenario: the current bet does not pay out. The whole company puts itself in a very dangerous financial position.

Game is Art

But the final analysis must consider games as art products. You cannot follow a formula to make people fall in love with your product.

Now always they pay off. The recent cases of THQ and 38 Studios illustrate this.

38 studios, the makers of the excelent Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, recently bankrupted. The company took around 100 million from the government to create an AAA title, but the game, while selling well, didn’t sell the amount needed to stay afloat.

THQ invested in a few AAA titles that demanded loads of money. When the failure rate rises a bit, the whole operation starts to be financially compromised.

Homefront, unfortunately, will be remembered as the milestone for THQ’s potential fall. Unfortunately, because it was a critically acclaimed game (at least it receive good greats), due to external reasons it didn’t sell well to the point that compromised the THQ cash flow. Homefront was being considered the cash cow internally, the new IP that would generate loads of money, and safety. But the forecasts were nothing but dust.

It answers the question several gamers make: why do game makers keep building sequels? Now you know…

The traditional Elder Scrolls game is now back with Skyrim. This takes place in northern lands. Snows in a lot of places. But the fire of the dragons might warm the players.

tES 5 is the Bethesda masterpiece. Every single aspect was updated and enhanced. Combat is more fun. The story infinitely much better than Oblivion, while still feels very cliché. It’s an improvement. However, it is still very, very awkward and worse, totally dull sometimes. It is for me the biggest weakness in the Bethesda Softworks team.

The game so big that you can spend days, weeks and even months without exploring the whole map. It adds a lot of value to the final offer. However, I bet that less than 25% of all players will see the end of this game. It’s so huge than at some point you will be tempted to restart and make different choices. Graphically, it is amazing. With all settings at the max, you will definitively be impressed. I was more shocked when Oblivion was released; it was more ground breaking. But Skyrim is beautiful and you will face some situations in which you will catch yourself with your jaw opened.

The same can be said about he bugs. The programming could not foresee he amount of situations that players put the character into. The result is an YouTube full of funny videos. But it is another Elder Scrools tradition: crazy and sometimes irritating buggy situations. It’s almost a positive feature.

Most of the mini-games are now fun. But I still feel that the most of the decisions that we make in the game, in terms of the storytelling aspect, are quite inconsequential. In the gameplay, however, is creates amazing branches based on what gamestyle you prefer.

It is a masterpiece. A bit of the same, if you already played tES game before, but is still amazing. And it have dragons!

Gamespot:

• Better Than the Sum of Its Parts
• Get More Than Your Money’s Worth
• Great Sequel, Great Story
• Outstanding Visual Design
• Sucks You In+ Variety

Jezz, what a great game. I must confess, flat, that it impressed me much less than the first installment. Several features, scenes and the general feeling was already known. Is takes a lot of the buzz and the fun, but what is left is so good that it is still one of the top games I ever played. What impressed me upfront is the level of detail. Batman Arkham City is a product of a gigantic effort and thought. The city is full of small surprises.

The story now is less impressive than the first game. Too many characters, villains in fact, are presented and compound the main story. But to patch all then into a single thread, the rationalization is left aside. The human villains are very plausible, like joker and penguin. But the more bizarre and monster like guys forces the story into a more a too much incredible way. Suddenly Batman stops chasing a psycho mass murderer and stats dealing with an assassin from centuries back, living by a coincidence in the city undergrounds.

Graphically the game is top notch. I would question a bit the excessive amount of colors that populate the city, regardless the argument that a place like that would normally be full of neon colors. The rest is gorgeous. I loved the humor -sometimes a bit dark- of the dialogs. Alfred almost always mocks Batman for being so good so smart so invincible. Joker, probably my favorite bad guy ever, is also a star.

The voice performances are amazing and convincing. In the artistic point of view, there is not much more to say than WOW.

The gameplay is very, very good. Easy enough to not let the flow stops but hard enough to keep you engaged. The plethora of gadgets is a bit confusing, but they make sense in the general situations. Puzzles are rational, challenges are well places and well executed. I tend to buy and play great games due to the fact I do some research before the acquisition. This game is a candidate to be one of the best games I ever played.

PS: Time to time I give my computer a clean installation of everything, formatting the hard drive. Guess what? I lost the saved game coz I forgot to backup this one! jezz, I’m soooo pissed. I was really near ending.

Gamespot:

• Just Right
• Oh Snap!
• Outstanding Gameplay
• Outstanding Visual Design
• Sucks You In
• Superior Animation
• Terrific Voice Acting

You can read my review about The Witcher. I loved the game, mostly because the huge personality that the whole product. Characters with a unique spirit, non-conventional story, choices that cannot be placed in the simple black-white gradient, adult theme, and the complements go on… For those that agreed with me, great news! The Witcher 2 is all of that, bigger and better.

The polish developers Projeckt CD printed a hollywoodian tone to the game. The storytelling element (both in game and kinematics) is superb. You really care about the characters and their motivations. Some characters that in the first installment were not that relevant in the game (but are in the book series that the games are based on), like Zoltan and Triss, in the second game they are relevant and very likable.

Since Bioware basically imposed the good/evil dynamics, several games were created using the formula. But the Witcher universe is nothing like that. Like in the real world, people are moved by complex motives: religion, politics, economics and even the mundane takes place. that, allied with (spoiler alert) the possibility of multiple endings (in fact, more than 1/3 can be different, depending on your decisions), and you will fill quite tempted to play the game a second time, just to see how things play out if you take other choices.

Graphically the game is nothing but true beauty. The same can be said about the sound and music. And all of them are relevant -so there is no filler stuff- and very well done. Textures, models and visual effects are top-notch. Famous RPGs like Mass Effect, Dragon Age are not even close.

But it’s not perfect. The menus are slow, difficult to select, the game generates hundresds saved games automatically and the turorial… the tutorial … the Trial by Fire, as they call it, was a wrong decision. It seems you are facing a boos as the very first contact with the game. I could also talk about the difficulty, that in the first thrid of the game is really hard.

Have no doubt! The Witcher 2 is problably my favorite RPG game ever. I can go even further? Top 10 games ever. Simply that.