Newsweek International/ Science & technology/ The Art of the Game/ The power of the PlayStation is challenging designers to match its capabiliti
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Europe Intelligence Wire via NewsEdge Corporation : Past the loading-dock entrance to the Staples Center arena in Los Angeles, past the roadie with the I'm not a redneck... I just needed the job T shirt, Dejan Stanisavljevic's blond dreadlocks sway wildly as he scrambles to set up a PC, LCD monitor and high-tech 3-D scanning camera in a greenroom. His mission: to cyberscan the heads and faces of 15 wrestlers for Electronic Arts' WCW wrestling game designed for the PlayStation 2. For the original PlayStation, he would have simply used drawing software to re-create Goldberg from a picture of the wrestler. But that's so last millennium; for the blazingly fast PlayStation 2, anything less than hyperrealism is unacceptable. As soon as Dejan finishes setting up, Goldberg walks in, fresh from recording his trademark catchphrases "Who's next? Come get some" and "No one escapes the jackhammer!" for the benefit of an EA sound man.
An assistant seats Goldberg in front of a machine that casts thin vertical lines on his face. As they rotate Goldberg, scanning his entire head in four takes, an extremely lifelike 3-D image of the snarling wrestler pops up on the monitor.
If God is in the details, the PlayStation 2 is divine. And around the world, game developers and publishers are treating it like a miracle. "People who have been in this industry for 20 years see this as a paradigm shift," says industry veteran Stan Roach. The audience is more than ready to shift into second gear. At 25 million units sold, one in four U.S. households now has a PlayStation. And what started out as child's play now attracts all ages - 59 percent of console players are over 18 - largely because many games on the PlayStation appealed to more mature players. Yet gamemakers think their industry still gets no respect, largely because many boomers don't play the games that turn on Gens X and Y.
The PS 2 could change that: from football and baseball to strategy and combat, the flagship games for PlayStation 2 are so visually seductive that they may make even confirmed nongamers think about picking up a controller. "I've spent the last 18 years preparing for the next two years," says Roach. "The reason they're calling [the PS2] the Emotion Engine is because we'll finally be able to break the visual barrier so people can identify with the characters." Fortunately for us, the new games shouldn't cost more than the $30-$40 we're paying right now. And to keep broadening the fan base, Sony has adjusted its licensing strategy so that publishers can come out with low-end games for as little as $13 and still turn a profit.
With the PlayStation 2 debuting first in Japan, designers there are much further along with their game development than their U.S. counterparts. A handful of companies in Japan gave NEWSWEEK a sneak peek. Namco's driving game Ridge Racer V is emblematic. "Ridge Racer IV came out in December 1998," says Namco spokesperson Tsuyumi Toyoda as she demonstrates the game running on a current PlayStation. "The background is plain. We couldn't do many things with the graphics." Then she shows the game running on a PlayStation 2; the difference is dramatic. The car's shiny surface reflects the sky, sunlight, clouds. Billows of smoke spill out from the squealing tires. Sparks fly as the undercarriage scrapes the road. A hazy sunset descends as your car tears through the city streets at top speed.
Taking advantage of the new technology requires real money. The average budget to produce a game on Sega's Genesis in the '90s was about $200,000. For today's PlayStation and Nintendo 64, it's around $2 million. Many designers expect development costs for a PlayStation 2 game to jump to at least $4 million. Part of that expense goes to creating "Toy Story 2"- quality computer-generated movies; Capcom hired a film director to handle the opening sequence for Onimusha, its samurai-versus-the-undead adventure game. Its imagery ranges from the dramatic (an army of shambling undead warriors backlit by an enormous moon) to the sublime (a single tear falls from the hero's face and splashes in the dirt at his feet). "I'd like to have James Cameron do our directing in the future," says producer Keiji Inafune, smiling. But the man who pays the bills, Capcom president Kenzo Tsujimoto, isn't laughing at the high production costs. "I have a feeling that out of 2,000 companies that can make these games, only the 200 or so that can afford costly productions will survive." The past few years have seen a lot of consolidation already; just last week, Electronic Arts bought DreamWorks Interactive to boost its own PlayStation 2 development efforts.
One way publishers are managing their risks is by developing two types of games simultaneously. Koei, whose war-simulation game Kessen combines the pageantry of Akira Kurosawa's epic "Ran" with the in-the-trenches combat of "Saving Private Ryan," is also developing a decidedly non-violent mah-jongg game. "There are two ways of thinking about this," says Koei managing director Kiyoshi Komatsu. "You take a game they already like and make it better. Then you take the new machine and do something different."
Others are taking a chance on online games, which are played over the Internet and until now have been the province of PCs. Square, publisher of the hit franchise Final Fantasy, plans to launch its own worldwide network in the spring of 2001. Called Play Online (or POL), it will offer e-mail, chat, sports scores, downloadable music - and, of course, games, with an eye to attracting a wide audience. "Ultima Online and Everquest are good games, but it's difficult for children to enjoy them," says executive vice president Hironobu Sakaguchi. "What we'll do with Final Fantasy [online] is bring in a story line and effects that will draw in all consumers."
So if everyone's playing games on PlayStation 2, who stands to lose out? First victim: PC games. Sales of console games already dwarf those for PCs, and with piracy rampant in Europe, U.S. developers of PC games can no longer count on that market to prop them up. Of course, diehard PC-game developers have no plans to close up shop just yet, even if that means they have to stop worrying and love the console by making PlayStation 2 games as well. "PCs are always evolving - we're never going to lose our excitement about that," says Mark Rein of Epic Games. But publishers, who often hold the purse strings, disagree. "The PC was never meant to be a game box," says Eidos president Rob Dyer, whose company distributes the popular Tomb Raider series starring Lara Croft. Instead of 20 PC titles this year, Eidos plans to ship only 12 in order to focus more on the next-generation console boxes.
Another company threatened by Sony's new machine is Sega, whose Dreamcast did much better than most people expected after being introduced last fall. Yet it's practically dismissed by Dyer as a "transitional platform" that he's taking advantage of before PlayStation 2 hits these shores. "I actually think they [Sega] should have done better," says Mike Wilson, CEO of PC publisher Gathering of Developers, who's releasing his titles for 2000 in both PC and Dreamcast formats. "Sony limited what they could do, with basically a bunch of press releases," he adds, referring to Sony's highly publicized, vaporware-like announcement of the PlayStation 2 last March.
Fortunately, Sega still has some of the world's best game developers. Crazy Taxi is selling very well, and by year-end, Sega will release Seaman, a virtual pet simulation; Shenmue, an ambitious adventure game/ interactive movie; and Chu Chu Rocket, an online puzzle game that will kick off Sega's Dreamcast network - something Sega brags will distinguish it from PlayStation 2 until 2001. Due this fall is arcade guru Tetsuya Mizuguchi's Space Channel 5, in which an MTV VJ-style newsbabe must rescue humans from dancing aliens by mimicking the aliens' moves. (Bonus for '80s-pop fans: rescue Michael Jackson from the little green groovemeisters and he'll join your dance troupe.) Easy to learn yet difficult to master, it's the perfect example of a simple concept brilliantly executed. So if Sega's designers can keep turning out inspired games, they may just survive Sony's onslaught.
Still, game developers are explorers at heart, pushing the limits of each system until the next one emerges. Tecmo's Tomonobu Itagaki is extremely proud of his fighting game Dead or Alive 2, which is coming out for Dreamcast in the United States later this year. But having maxed out the graphics capability of the Dreamcast, Itagaki is psyched for the increased realism offered by PlayStation 2: "I can create a more emotional world with more details and more realistic facial expressions. The physics will be more accurate. I'll be able to do smoke, fire and water. With current technology, the thickness of the fog is even throughout. With PlayStation 2, one part can be thin and another thick." Play-Station 2, the ultimate keepin'-it-real machine, seems like it will satisfy these relentlessly inventive designers... until the next paradigm-shifting polygon powerhouse comes along. PlayStation 3, anyone?
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