Many Still on Sidelines

3D Takes a Back Seat to Social, Mobile Gaming at GDC

March 11, 2010 by Jeff Berman|Top News

SAN FRANCISCO -- After dominating CES in January, 3D isn’t playing much more of a role at this week’s Game Developers Conference than it did at the 2009 GDC, with Nvidia again one of the few companies scheduled to discuss or demonstrate applications of stereoscopic 3D. But it was possible that Sony Computer Entertainment America -- one of the most prominent backers of the technology in the game arena -- would say something new about its 3D strategy at a news conference to be held after our deadline. Microsoft and Nintendo have expressed little interest in stereoscopic 3D games.

"The newest thing this year” is the significant presence of games for the iPhone and other smartphones, GDC Director Meggan Scavio, told us Tuesday. It was the first time that Research in Motion, Google and Palm took part in the annual conference, she said. Palm said at GDC that a public beta version of its webOS Plug-in Development Kit (PDK) is available at the Palm Developer Center online, and the company is demonstrating new games from early PDK developers in its booth at GDC (CED March 10 p4). The first iPhone Games Summit, meanwhile, is at GDC Tuesday and Wednesday. A Social & Online Games Summit at GDC the same two days, meanwhile, underscores the significant role that social gaming is playing at the conference this year.

Stereoscopic 3D had yet to be discussed by the GDC advisory board, Scavio said. But she said, “we'll talk about” the technology and its potential role at next year’s conference “this summer.” The board typically meets on the last day of E3, June 17 this time, and discusses plans for the following year’s GDC topics, she said. By then, the first 3D TVs are expected to have arrived and a larger number of game makers will likely have tested the 3D waters. “I expect that will be a big conversation topic” this time, she said. “Videogames look great in 3D,” but she said, “I think it'll take time to get the TVs” into a significant number of U.S. homes. “I'm not sure how much effort the game industry is going to put into” stereoscopic 3D until the compatible TVs start being sold, she said.

Like various game companies, Gameloft isn’t ruling out stereoscopic 3D games, but it’s not developing any yet, Baudouin Corman, vice president of publishing for the Americas, said. The technology “is coming” into the home, but “today our focus is the downloadable business,” including mainly games for mobile platforms, but also for the DSi, PSP, PS3 and Xbox 360, he said. However, Corman said, “if we have opportunities to use 3D capabilities in this business, we'll do it.” Gameloft’s goal is to take advantage “of the capabilities of the platform we are working on,” he said.

Electronic Arts demonstrated the racing game Need for Speed: Shift in stereoscopic 3D for the PC last year and, more recently, shipped the PC version of Battlefield 2: Bad Company in stereoscopic 3D. But it hasn’t announced plans to ship a console game that uses 3D. The company is “evaluating what the right” console games would be for the technology, said Tarrnie Williams, executive producer of the company’s EA Sports Active franchise. The installed base of 3D TVs is one thing the company will probably weigh in deciding when to release such games, he guessed.

A small number of game companies, including EA, Blitz Games Studios and Ubisoft, took part in the 3D Entertainment Summit in September in Universal City, Calif. The first 3D Gaming Summit will be April 21-22, also in Universal City. But scheduled speakers as of Wednesday didn’t include representatives of any major game publishers other than Sony Computer Entertainment. The slate of speakers was instead top-heavy with analysts and reporters, along with representatives from Nvidia and a few developers. Three keynotes were planned, but the speakers hadn’t been announced.

GDC Notebook…

Electronic Arts is extending its EA Sports Active series beyond the Wii, to the PS3, iPhone and iPod Touch, it said at GDC Tuesday. Pricing wasn’t disclosed. The company will ship EA Sports Active 2.0 (working title) for those platforms and the Wii in the fall, it said. The console versions of the game will feature a wireless control system for the first time that EA said is “powered by new leg and arm straps with motion sensors,” as well as a heart rate monitor that will provide “constant on-screen monitoring throughout the workout.” The PS3 version will include two arm straps -- one with the integrated heart monitor -- and a leg strap, Tarrnie Williams, executive producer of EA Sports Active, told us. But the Wii version will include only two straps with motion sensors, one with a heart monitor, because the Wii Remote will serve the same function as the third motion-controlled strap on the PS3 SKU, he said. The new peripherals won’t work with the current Active SKUs for the Wii, but owners of those titles will be able to shift their saved exercise data to the new title, he said. Williams declined to say why the company decided not to bring Active 2.0 to the Xbox 360. The motion sensor system used in the new title was designed by EA, Williams said, telling us the PS3 SKU doesn’t make use of Sony’s new motion control system. However, EA Chief Financial Officer Eric Brown indicated at an investor conference on Wednesday that the PS3 version does use Sony’s motion control system. Backing up Williams, EA spokesman Jeff Brown said EA Sports Active 2.0 “will include a new controller system unique to that franchise.” EA Sports “has not made any announcements about integrating first-party controller innovations into EA Sports Active,” he said. EA will also introduce an online hub for users to track and share their workout data, it said. EA Sports President Peter Moore told an investor conference last week that such a plan was in the works (CED March 3 p5). Users of the new title will be able to download new workouts and exercises to their online connected PS3s, EA said. Details of Active 2.0 were disclosed at the company’s first EA Sports “Season Opener” game preview event at GDC. There, the company also explained how it’s been taking advantage of the wide online audience for its games to track usage data that’s helped it to make improvements and other modifications to its games. Forum feedback for its Madden NFL franchise, for example, showed that there were many complaints about its pass rush feature, said Philip Holt, general manager of EA Tiburon. Data also showed that the audience for its Madden games is broader than that of its NCAA football series, he said. NCAA fans tend to watch even more sports TV programs than Madden fans, he said. While 82 percent of NCAA gamers are playing online, 76 percent of Madden players are, he said. About 6 million copies of Madden NFL 10 have been sold, said Jeremy Strauser, executive producer. The number of online players of that series “continues to rise dramatically,” he said. While 56 percent of players are playing in HD, 61 percent are still only using analog sound, he also said. Learning that, the company made sure that the game’s audio worked well coming from only two speakers, he said.

Next year’s GDC will be Feb. 28-March 4, again at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The goal is always to avoid as much of February as possible, in part because of other game-related events that month, said GDC Director Meggan Scavio. But she said it can’t always be avoided because the Moscone Center isn’t always available for the five days needed for GDC. There’s “a good mood” at GDC this year, unlike last year’s conference, where the mood was “a little sour” due to the economic crisis, she said. This year feels “like a resurrection … I think people are getting excited again” in the game industry, she said. That could be due in part to the growing number of jobs being created, especially in the social gaming segment, after the many game industry job losses last year. There are also more ways for independent developers to make games on their own due to the relatively low cost and relative simplicity involved in making games for the iPhone and other growing platforms, Scavio said. The growing number of college game programs are also offering “more opportunities” for young people to break into the industry, she said. “There’s a lot of opportunity out there,” she said.

The OnLive on-demand, cloud-based game service will launch June 17, during E3, CEO Steve Perlman said Wednesday at the GamesBeat@GDC conference. That’s later than originally planned, because of delays with some games and a desire to “make the service a little bit better,” he said. OnLive will be available at first only in the 48 contiguous U.S. states and Washington, D.C., but plans for other markets will follow this year, Perlman said. The service eventually will work on platforms including the iPhone and tablet computers, he said, but at first it will be for PCs and Macintosh computers only. The company will then roll out its MicroConsole TV adapter for use on TVs at an unspecified time. The base fee for access to the service will be $14.95 per month at a time, but the company will offer multimonth prices and special offers, to be announced later, Perlman said. The service fee will be waived for the first three months for the first qualified 25,000 people who register online, he said. Buying and renting new games on the service will cost extra, the prices varying by title, he said. Content won’t be available at the maximum 1080p 60 frames per second until 2011 because of the bandwidth that most consumers can get, Perlman said. The service, announced at GDC a year ago, is expected to work as long for anyone within 1,000 miles of one of the company’s five data centers, in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, the San Francisco Bay area and Washington, D.C., Perlman said. Launch titles will be announced ahead of E3, but “a few of the anticipated games” will include Assassin’s Creed II and Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands from Ubisoft, Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect 2 from Electronic Arts, Take-Two Interactive’s Borderlands and THQ’s Metro 2033, OnLive said.

Hi5 President Alex St. John criticized current Facebook games, saying they're “not social” actually, and they're like spam. Poker has been the only truly social game offered on the social network, he said on a GamesBeat@GDC panel about disruptive game platforms. “Facebook will have a million crappy games and two or three good ones,” he predicted. But Jack Buser, director of PlayStation Home U.S. Operations at Sony Computer Entertainment America, said “consumers out there are demanding a range of different experiences and I think there’s room for a variety of different developers and development styles.” Users are “about to see the next generation of social games” on Facebook, said Gareth Davis, its platform manager. New games being developed for the platform have higher production values than current ones and are in advanced in other ways, he said. Buser later said, “The cost of development for PlayStation Home is extremely, extremely low. Teams of four to seven people, in six months, can actually build full” massively multiplayer online games “inside of PlayStation Home.” Separately, Hi5 unveiled a new Game Developer Program at GDC it said is “designed to accelerate user adoption and revenue generation of social and online games.” Social games “have been distributed on open platforms competing against thousands of other titles with nothing but their own spamminess to get them discovered,” St. John said. “As the market has saturated, getting noticed has become more and more difficult and expensive, particularly for smaller developers,” he said. Hi5’s new program “solves this problem by providing great games with free promotion, rapid audience acquisition and favorable revenue share for new content on hi5.com,” he said.

Northwest Venture Partners Principal Tim Chang predicted significant investment to spur consolidation in the social-games business. The “new wave of investment” will be in game technology and concepts that are applied to health and other non-game fields, he said.

The PlayStation Home 1.35 service update being made available Thursday will offer new features that Sony Computer Entertainment America said “make exploring and connecting with friends quicker and easier” in the PS3 social gaming community. The update will lower load times, “enabling users to access PlayStation Home faster than ever before,” it said. The update also replaces the PlayStation Home World Map with a new intuitive navigation system featuring multiple categories to enable users to quickly navigate through Home, locate friends and “go to their preferred spaces in just a few clicks,” SCEA said. The update also “enhances the login process,” it said. Once users have launched PlayStation Home from the XMB (XrossMediaBar) graphical user interface, they will now “be transported directly to the navigator to begin exploring,” SCEA said. Home has more than 12 million registered users worldwide and they average 60 minutes a session, it said.

MySpace launched a Web site that it said “creates a more social gaming environment with new tools and functionality for users and developers.” The company has “been working with our developer partners to understand where they'd like to see MySpace go,” and “based on that feedback we started rebuilding MySpace Games,” it said. MySpace also announced a Neon iPhone application at GDC that it said gives users access to their MySpace games on their iPhones. MySpace showcased various new social games at the conference, including Kingdoms of Camelot from Watercooler and Warlords from BitRhymes. “Nearly one-third of MySpace users engage daily with games,” said MySpace Co-President Mike Jones. “These are the first steps in offering robust tools for developers to help their businesses thrive,” he said, referring to his company’s new initiatives.

Oberon Media expanded on its social connectivity strategies, saying it’s features of that kind available in downloaded games. The company already offered them in smartphone and online games. The latest move underscored its “aggressive push to bring social connectivity to game experiences on every platform as part of their 2010 strategy,” it said. The connected social features allow players to link to their social network via Facebook Connect, “see friends who are also playing the game, suggest the game to others and share achievements as they are earned in-game,” Oberon said. After the initial release, Oberon “will optimize a platform experience that will be rolled out to our Game Center partners and allow for creation of ‘premium social’ games,” it said. The company is also “working with developer partners to test” its new social software development kit, which it said “further leverages this new functionality and will continue to introduce these capabilities to global developer partners in the next quarter."