Jun 24
EA plans to include peripherals with their sports titles
Speaking at the Paris Game Developers Conference, EA’s David McCarthy revealed that within the next year, EA Sports games will be bundled with peripherals. McCarthy said “I think you’ll see games using that Rock Band peripheral strategy from EA Sports, even within the next 12 months,” so long as the accessibility of a game isn’t compromised. McCarthy did not expand on whether or not the peripherals would reach all three major consoles, or even what specific games they are being developed for.
Regardless of the game, I think we can all agree that this console generation’s obsession with peripherals is getting a little out of hand. Whatever happened to picking up just a disc whenever we wanted a new game? Now I have to get an entirely new controller. The recently announced Guitar Hero 4 is supposed to have drums as well, and I sure as hell don’t need two drum sets.
This leads me into a greater argument about sports games as a whole. I feel that if you really want to play a sport, then go out and play it! There is some rationality to using a standard controller and playing online, but if someone is already swinging a virtual bat, that’s just one step away from actually playing baseball. Some may argue that music games such as Rock Band should follow the same guidelines, but learning the basics of an instrument is definitely more time-consuming than learning the basics of a sport. If you’ve ever had gym class, you should know how to play basketball.
Hey, EA, why not get to work on a new SSX instead?
[Via Gamesindustry.biz]
Categories: Failure, GDC, Sports, WHY??5 Comments so far
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ROFLMAO at the pic. I saw that before even reading the headline, and I knew it had to deal with peripherals. And I knew that with the advent of Guitar Hero games and the Wii, that suddenly developers are going to start getting peripheral happy.
I will completely disagree with the “just go out and play it” rule of thumb concerning sports games. Very few gamers will be playing pro ball of any kind, and almost just as few at the collegiate level. Going out and playing the sport well takes practice, despite your assertion that it doesn’t. Any dumbass can go out and swing horribly at a 90 mph fastball, much in the same way that any dumbass can flail on an out of tune guitar for five minutes. Using peripherals can at least make it a little more forgiving than lugging a bat that is probably too heavy for most gamers to hold (I’m looking at everyone who said the original DS was too heavy…pfft), or having to deal with the force of hitting a 90 mph fastball, or catching one.
I was going to say that the “just go out and play for real” attitude should be no different for rhythm games (or racing games or shooters or anything else for that matter) as it is for sports games, but Morty pretty much summed it up. I’ll put it differently.
Sports games: play with your friends in the park or play in the Super Bowl
Rhythm games: play with your friends in your garage or play in front of millions of fans in a huge arena.
Racing games: drift your Honda Civic around your suburban neighborhood or race a McLaren F1 on the Nürburgring.
Shooters: play paintball with your friends or shoot aliens and/or terrorists in the face.
With each case, there is the “go out and do it in real life” option, and then the video game option, which you have almost no chance of ever doing in real life.
Maybe it’s different for you guys, but getting a group of people together to play a pickup game is a lot easier to me than having a jam session or street racing. I think sports having a greater “happy medium” than any other activity that is portrayed in a video game.
Games r funzorz!!1!!111!