By Nelson Schneider - 12/31/12 at 02:36 PM CT
The year 2012 has come and gone. Every year has its great successes as well as things that didn’t quite go as planned. Let’s take a look back at what the past year brought us:
Top 5 Fails
5. OnLive Goes Bankrupt, Nobody Cares
OnLive, the little game streaming company that couldn’t, went bankrupt in 2012. The 1600 concurrent players who enjoyed streaming video of high-end games over the Internet to dumb terminal consoles or underpowered netbooks may have let out a collective whine of despair, but if they did it was entirely drowned out by the sounds of apathy or queries of, “What’s an Onlive?” by the majority of the videogame playing public. Unfortunately, attempts are still being made to save OnLive, and, even worse, Sony apparently wants to copy OnLive’s model and purchased Gaikai for $380 million (money they don’t have).
4. New PlayStation Store Makes Shopping a Chore
Sony getting hacked is soooo 2011. What really made 2012’s PlayStation hack so horrible is Sony’s implementation of a new PSN Store interface. It’s cluttered. It’s disorganized. It makes it impossible to browse for specific content. It has an unusable search interface. Is there any way Sony could have made the new PSN Store worse? Maybe if they required PS+ membership to even access it…
3. Windows 8/Xbox Live Crossover is Unimpressive
With Windows 8 and the Windows Store, Microsoft had an opportunity to unite PC gaming and console gaming in a way they SHOULD have been striving towards since they released the original Xbox. Even if it didn’t support retail Xbox 360 games, the ability to download the entire Xbox Live Arcade library for play on Windows 8 would have been amazing. Except Microsoft didn’t do that, instead limiting the cross-compatible games to a tiny handful and appending the Xbox Live moniker onto casual smartphone/tablet games that DON’T EVEN APPEAR ON XBOX LIVE! Even worse, cross-compatibility, in Microsoft-speak, doesn’t mean “buy once, play anywhere,” requiring would-be gamers to buy copies of games for both their Xbox and their Windows 8 PC.
2. WiiU Requires Massive Updates to Do Anything
After months of delays, the WiiU, which was supposed to launch in June 2012, hit the market in November 2012. But that was just the hardware. The software, aside from bare-bones game launching capability, wasn’t actually installed on the WiiU launch hardware. Instead, new WiiU owners were required to immediately connect to the Internet to download a huge system update, which took forever due to every new WiiU owner pounding Nintendo’s servers at the same time, and could brick consoles if users weren’t patient enough to wait it out without pulling the power plug. Disgruntlement about this update got so bad that Nintendo issued an official “Pro-Tip” to parents giving their kids a WiiU for Christmas: Open the console and download the update ASAP, then re-box it and wrap it up for the kids. And that was just the first update! Other promised functionality, like the TVii app, weren’t added until a month after launch.
1. Sony Launches Vita, World Says, “Meh!”
Last year, the world said, “Meh!” to the launch of the 3DS. After a conciliatory price-drop and the release of a few non-garbage games, the 3DS has recovered partially. In 2012, the PlayStation Vita is the target of all gamer apathy, and the “Meh!”s are resounding even louder. Maybe by next year the Vita will stage a similar recovery to the 3DS… but I wouldn’t get my hopes up. Sony is too proud (or too broke) to issue a head-bowing price-drop/apology, and their first party titles are never anything to get excited about. Even worse the promised “PlayStation Passport” program that was supposed to give every Vita purchaser a copy of their entire PSP library to play on the Vita was cancelled (naturally because of irrational piracy fears). All signs point to the Vita being a complete and utter flop.
Top 5 Wins
5. “Wreck-It Ralph” Proves that Good Videogame Movies ARE Possible
After decades of terrible adaptions of videogames into movies (frequently involving Uwe Boll), Disney finally made a good videogame movie… by not basing it on any real-world game! “Wreck-It Ralph” is the “Toy Story” of the videogame generation, creating an evocative imaginary world tinged with just the right amount of nostalgia and cameos.
4. Throwback Comeback, Thanks to Kickstarter and Indies
2012 was a big year for Indie gaming. The ability for small development groups (or individuals) to create excellent games that, in their simplicity, manage to compete favorably with overwrought, big-budget “AAA” games really came to the forefront this year. What was especially noteworthy is the number of older intellectual properties that have had sequel or spiritual successor ideas pop-up on Kickstarter. Tim Schafer of Double Fine had over $3 million thrown at him via Kickstarter to make a new adventure game (perhaps a “Monkey Island” sequel, perhaps a “Grim Fandango” sequel, or perhaps something else), the original BioWare crew (no longer affiliated with EA’s BioWare) want to create a successor to their amazing Infinity Engine games, and the original developers behind the classic adventure “Shadowgate” want to create a 25th anniversary remake that will expand upon the game’s world in ways that weren’t technologically possible in 1988. And that’s just scratching the surface of what’s going on via Kickstarter. Sure, some of these games might turn out to be vaporware, but the simple fact that there is still demand for them from the gaming public means that not everyone has been seduced by last year’s Shooter Domination 3.
3. Ouya Indie Console Sets Kickstarter Record, Actually Ships Dev Units
Retro IPs and Indie games weren’t the only things to benefit from Kickstarter this year. No, 2012 also brought us the world’s first Indie CONSOLE! The Ouya obliterated its funding goal eight times over by promising a small, hackable, Android-powered console for less than $100. And unlike some vaporware hardware of the past, the Ouya actually has shipped developer units. If all goes as planned, I’ll be grabbing one of these little cuties off Amazon in March.
2. Valve Brings Steam Big Picture Mode Out of Beta
In 2011, Valve announced that they were working on a “Big Picture” Mode for the Steam PC gaming client. Usually, people who are familiar with Valve and the way the company works expect things to happen on “Valve Time.” Much like the release of “Half-Life 3,” things that are scheduled in Valve Time never actually happen. Lo and behold, though, a mere year later and Valve not only had Steam Big Picture Mode in public beta testing, but actually finished it and released a final version! While it’s not quite perfect yet, Big Picture Mode is an amazing complement to an Xbox 360 controller and a dedicated Home Theater PC with enough horsepower for gaming.
1. SOPA/PIPA Defeated by Citizen Outrage
The Internet has become increasingly entwined in our daily lives, including our gaming lives. When bought, bribed, and owned politicians try to pass outrageous laws to limit what the Internet can do in order to protect their own grip on power and their owners’ grip on wealth, it really makes them look bad. And thanks to the Internet, everyone in the world can see how bad they look! The Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect Intellectual Property Act were two overbearing bits of legislation that would have destroyed the greatest invention of the 20th century. Thanks to wide-ranging online protests and hellraising, including such leading Internet residents as Google and Wikipedia, these two vile laws were stopped dead in their tracks. Unfortunately, despite this momentous victory, the enemy still lives. We citizens of the Internet must remain vigilant.
