LittleBigPlanet 2 [review] kicks off Sony’s PS3 exclusive push for 2011 in a matter of days now, and it’s going to be swiftly followed by the wonderful Killzone 3 [hands-on]. These two games alone will keep many gamers busy for a good few months – the former especially.
But that’s not all that’s lined up for the PlayStation 3 this year – look out for Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, inFamous 2, The Last Guardian, Motorstorm: Apocalypse and Resistance 3 as big hitters, with the likes of MLB 11, Disgaea 4, PlayStation Move Heroes, SOCOM 4, Sorcery, Twisted Metal and a new Yakuza bringing up the rear.
It’s an impressive line-up, arguably, in fact, the strongest set of games that Sony and their third parties have pushed out this generation – something presumably spurred on by competition from the currently on a roll Xbox 360. The problem on that count, though, is that Microsoft don’t really seem to like talking about anything lined up themselves this year apart from (the admittedly massive) Gears of War 3, Forza 4 and a few other titles that run the gamut between potentially mind-blowing and ‘still codenamed’. We want to know what’s coming.
Sure, there’s the rather vague Panzer Dragoon-esque title, a new Steel Batallion, a Kinect survival horror from SEGA and the Crytek developed Codename Kingdoms, but what we want are the likes of Halo, guys, the stuff we find familiar and can get excited about. Halo sells consoles, it ignites gamers and – yes – we’ll happily settle for a HD remake of Combat Evolved this year if you’re taking a year out.
Exclusives are big business, the whole concept of having games that only play on your console (we’re, for the sake of this blog, ignoring PC and Windows phone releases) goes towards how one console manufacturer sets themselves apart from the others; and on that aspect alone it seems Sony have got this year all sewn up, at least going off what we know from the two houses.
For the first time, too, some might say – the PS3’s had a rather uneven release schedule ever since it was released with delays and misfires peppering what has actually at times been an underwhelming few years – but for the next twelve months we’re struggling to find what Microsoft are up to.
Maybe it’s the new emphasis on Kinect that’s absorbing all their energy. Certainly, the brand new motion control device has meant that the 360 has seen far more TV-time than anything else this Christmas – the games are fresh, massively fun with mates and require no grasp of traditional games to enjoy: put your Granny in front of Kinect and fire up Bowling and she’ll be off – the line-up has actually resulted in a solid set of highly playable games that are far weightier than we first thought. Dance Central is, by all accounts, bloody fantastic.
But are Gears of War 3, Forza 4 and some unknown quantities going to be enough to convince Microsoft’s hardcore following that they’re still the company’s focus? Of course not – and we don’t think for a second that there’s only going to be the games mentioned (and don’t forget that there’s still loads of multi-format games coming out) – and Greenberg’s already talking about how 2011 will be big for Xbox 360 exclusives. But that’s the point of this article – with Sony having already announced a good deal of their 2011 exclusive offering (and they’re still not talking about Starhawk) we have to wonder why Microsoft are being so cagey with their games.
Are they holding off for a massive bout of list-wars E3, or is there something else set for Los Angeles that’ll blow us all away…? Microsoft, we’re all ears.
cam_manutd
Could not agree more with this article…I own a PS3 and people in my area not so much now hav slagged it off because off lack of decent games…well how the tables turn…god I hate fanboy/girlism’s :’)
minerwilly
I had good few hours with the Kinect at a mates last weekend and though i pretended that i thought it was great to his face , i have to admit i thought it was pretty pathetic .
I’m much happier with my Move controller for a total set up of £27 ,and had some great nights playing Bocce on Sports Champions and a few crates of lager. The games i played really sucked on Kinect and i sort of felt like what i did wasnt really having an effect on the on screen actions and it was all kind of very clever smoke and mirrors .
hazelam
ms seem to have put all their eggs in one basket for 2011, and that basket is called kinect.
they should really say most of you is the controller, because the parts that give you fine control, like your hands and fingers, are readable by kinect.
in my opinion, kinect is a bit of a step back, kind of like a slightly more advanced version of the eyetoy.
they’ve seen how much money the wii has made and they got the dollar signs in their eyes, cha-ching, and now that seems to be all they care about.
yeah i know sony jumped on that bandwagon too, but they don’t seem to be solely focused on that one thing like ms are.
one of the only big exclusives anybody knows about for this year for the 360, and they pulled the big reveal from the VGAs for some recycled footage of forza.
maybe they’re holding back some big guns for e3 this year or something, but if they pull another kinect dominated presentation, even the most hardcore fans will start to question them.
Raen
Hands and fingers are readable, the open source community has shown that. It’s just not in MS’s software yet, but I’d expect to see an update at some point.
bunimomike
Have they? That’s superb. I knew that hands were fine but fingertip manipulation was simply not going to happen (when looking at the matrix of dots with night-vision, it’s easy to see why). Although, when you mention “fingers are readable”, are you talking about hand gestures or genuine finger(tip) control?
cc_star
Genuine finger tip control on a virtual keyboard
The Kinect hacking community is doing everything people have moaned about being missing from Kinect, its amazing.
I’ve always wondered that developers working on Kinect projects must have played around like the Kinect community has done over the past few weeks, and if they’d have shown videos of their ‘research’ it would have done for Kinect, what Richard Marks’ videos did for PS Move and appeal more to the core
jimmy-google
It’s unlikely we’ll be seeing many more announcements for games releasing before E3. The ps3 has planty already on the way for that period, I can’t make a strong case for the 360 though.
MS may be saving some big announcements for E3 but I fully expect a big focus from MS and Sony will be on the 2nd wave of Kinect and Move games in preperation for Christmas.
I believe Sony have been getting many of the big releases announced early this year to allow either E3 or TGS to focus on a PSP2 announcement.
I’m not sure MS can have much in the way of “core” games to be announced for release between E3 and Christmas. Once you have the likes of Forza and the usual big hitters (COD, Fifa, NFS etc..) there’s not much room for lots of exclusives. Though I think there will still be a few more big games to be announced this year on all the main platforms. No one shows all their cards too early.
E3 announcements usually focus on games being releases the following year or beyond. Maybe someone will come out with an exclusive (or timed) deal for GTA V or Metal Gear Solid Rising but these could still be a couple of years away.
The 3DS and probably PSP2 will dominate the conferences this year so all 3 of the home consoles will need something big to steal those shows.
stueeeee
I think 360 owners are loyal atm, but If they don’t make any big announcements soon that’s not to do with Kinect they might start lookin at ps3 as an option. Now ps3 needs one more price drop and it might even beat xbox overall. Besides, Microsoft are probably leaving the 360 and Kinect to bring the money in while they prepare to announce the next xbox at some point. (maybe not this year).
InternationalGamer
I doubt Microsoft will announce a lot of exclusives in 2011. Greenberg always gets in the air of fantasy by saying Microsoft’s E3 2010 went well or similar stuff by bashing the PS3, I mean nearly everyone including 360 only owners agreed that MS E3 was shit. So is Greenberg again exxgarating its ”unannounced” exclusives?