As the year comes to an end, IGN looks back and tries to make sense of the thousands of news stories, opinions, reviews and comments that have appeared on this site, and around the world. We've come up with ten big themes that characterize the past 12 months, including links to over a hundred of the biggest stories. What's your view? Make use of comments below...
Leaving aside the less-than-blockbuster news of mini and slimmed current-gen systems, there were two significant games machine launches in 2012, both of which employed innovative and interesting game control techniques. PlayStation Vita is a marvellous piece of design, employing multiple input possibilities. Wii U is yet another example of Nintendo’s genius for seizing the moment. While other companies dabble with screen-controls, Nintendo went ahead and launched something with a built-in touchscreen controller. Yet both have major challenges ahead if they are to thrive. Elsewhere, hardware innovations came in the form of Ouya’s announcement, an Android-based games console as well as the unveiling of an interesting Virtual Reality project, Oculus Rift. Valve was in and out of the news with talk of its first foray into games hardware. Cloud gaming had a mixed year with OnLive’s troubles and Gaikai‘s purchase by Sony. So far as the future goes, the games industry throws up a mixture of companies that wait-and-see, and those that jump right on in.
Here’s a quick list of just a few of the things that cost money in 2011, but were free in 2012. Star Wars: The Old Republic; Everquest; Black Ops II: Elite; City of Heroes, This year saw launches and announcements of multiple free games including PlanetSide 2, Phantasy Star Online 2, Dirty Bomb. Sony’s PlayStation Plus service offered so much value in terms of free games, it’s difficult to make an argument against subscribing. Free-to-play is the inevitable effect of digital distribution in which amazing games like Journey, The Walking Dead, Slender, DayZ, Mark of the Ninja and Hotline Miami were able to create enormous success without the aid of boxes and trucks and retailers, when League of Legends exploded and retail releases were available in full and online, day of launch. In 2012, digital really came of age.
This was the year when the most drawn-out console generation felt like, perhaps, it had gone on just a tad too long. True, there were plenty of great games, but an E3 without any new hardware announcements from Sony or Microsoft left a sense of deflation. With sales of boxed games plummeting, games makers and consumers are now demanding clarity on What Comes Next. Inevitably, this absence of news was filled with rumor and conjecture, much of it firmly in the realm of the fantastical. We heard about the arrival of development kits, of multiple names, pricing plans, release dates. We even got to look at leaked documents. But in the end, Sony and Microsoft were content to tinker with hardware pricing and tell us about the achievements of the current generation, which, soon, we will be able to address as the previous generation.
Turmoil is a constant in gaming but, oh boy, 2012 really put everyone through the spin-dryer. None more so than THQ which rocked from one crisis to another and remains ‘most likely to fail’ in the biz’s unofficial yearbook, currently in the Chapter 11 zone of doom. The trouble touched everyone, even Sony, once an unassailable force of growth. There were multiple studio closures and layoffs, far too numerous to name here, but epitomized by the ugly implosion of 38 Studios. Gruesome monthly NPD sales stats kept Wall Street in a perpetual glower and so contributed to endless rumors of buy-outs and acquisitions that enveloped EA and Activision and even Valve. We in the media were not immune as stalwarts like G4TV and (say it ain’t so) Nintendo Power fell away. Well, with a year like that, 2013 is bound to be nice and gentle, right?
These days we, the consumers, are noisy. And if we make enough noise, we get noticed. We might even change things. Depending on your point of view, this can either represent the liberation of the masses from patriarchal domination by power-elites, or it can represent an unholy spectacle of drooling barbarians sacking the sacred temples of culture. Either way, the public has never enjoyed so much power. To shape game worlds by just screwing with them. Or to make a point about corporate power. Or to change a huge game’s narrative. Or to confound venal politicians. Or to get a game published. Or to reverse idiotic DRM policies. Sometimes the public appears, not as a rampaging rabble, but simply as human beings, doing good in the world..
Source : ign[dot]com
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