ugachaka :: Jacob was here

Will Wright has already called Wii the only truly innovative system out of all the current platforms, and now he has chosen to reward it by bringing Spore–the always in development life-cycle title from Wright–to the Wii and only the Wii, besides PC that is.

In a recent interview with UK’s Guardian Unlimited, Will Wright has finally confirmed that a version of Spore is being developed for the Wii. And despite the different controls, Wright seems to like working on the platform.

Sounds like a cool addition to the Wii game library. My own Wii feels lonley and dejected lately since I haven’t turned it on since the shine of Wii Sports wore off. Tragic.

EA wants a single platform. Like several other outlets, I wouldn’t have seen the comments coming to the BBC.

Gerhard Florin, Executive Vice President and General Manager International Publishing for Electronic Arts, recently told the BBC that incompatible consoles make life harder for developers and consumers and that he can see a day when set-top boxes replace the PS3, Wii and Xbox 360.

His argument that individual consoles will eventually be replaced is based upon online gaming’s take off recently. Florin thinks that we will one day be able to boot up a single unit and stream games to our console. I doubt the success of a completely streaming game delivery system for all gaming. Just look at the Apple iPhone community that tried to get everyone to work with online widgets. Users are crying out and hacking their individual iPhones just to be able to take advantage of actual third-party software.

I like the fact that there are multiple hardware companies simply because it drives innovation and competition for that killer app game. I think having all games streaming online would make the industry stagnate–worthless.

Besides, console-makers and techies in the gaming industry are always looking to make things bigger and better. Right now, we have developers and media outlets debating whether Xbox 360 can continue to dominate the hardcore market with PS3’s having the ability of BlueRay storage. There are rumors now of an HD-DVD 360 hitting the market in the future. Streaming games would take some time to become the preferred delivery method. While they compliment the catalogs of current gaming stations, there is no way they could take over without significant improvements on Internet speeds and hardware.

The topic might be worth revisiting years from now, but maybe EA is just looking far beyond their 10 year plan.

It is good to see some shake up in the videogame industry. Activision just recently took the top spot as the most profitable third-party publisher.EA held the title for the last ten years, so it is good to see that they can share and play nice.

With movie games coming out of all orifices, the main money maker for Activision this year has to be given to the Guitar Hero franchise. Casual gaming is exploding and Guitar Hero is head of the pack.

Congrats, Activision, but let’s hope it is not another decade before there is a battle for the top of the class.

All of you who follow gaming should know by now that Peter Moore is moving from head of the gaming division at Microsoft to head up the EA Sports division for EA. The new organizational structure of EA opened up this position, and supposedly, the move is only because of Moore’s desire to move back to Cali.

The first in-depth interview with Moore that I have seen happened yesterday on Major Nelson’s podcast. He explains the move and it’s complete disconnect from any problems with Xbox 360.

I don’t think this does have anything to do with the Xbox 360 warranty problems. For all the trouble, they still aren’t doing bad enough to be sending their executives away.

Microsoft could have done a better guy in building up the new guy if they knew during E3 that he would be taking over. Much speculation now is about what he will bring to the Xbox 360 brand, and many game journalists are concerend…or even calling for J Allard to come back.