Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Reggie slams Sony's Home plans

I generally don't read Gameinformer, but I do shop at Gamestop... and I do enough used game purchases that I benefit from the discount a GameInformer subscription gets.

Most of the time the Gameinformer goes straight in the trash. I don't think much of their editorial or review staff. For example, in the latest issue, GameInformer rated Nintendo's E3 Business Summit press conference with a C, and stated that the lineup of software wasn't good enough to make it the number one new console. Nintendo passed the Xbox 360 last month to become the Number 1 new console sold. Instead of stopping the presses and saying "oops, we was wrong yet again" GameInformer went to press.

So, I'm glancing through and I see that they are interviewing Reggie. Like other reporters, GameInformer is hung up on the perception that Nintendo isn't serious about online. After saying that Mario Kart, Strikers, FIFA, and Madden were nice steps, they pursued the social networking angle.

The question was "But what about something like Home? That would seem to be more tailored to a casual audience".

Reggie's Response: I think it's been done before, right? It's called Second Life.

wow.. I would have never guessed that Reggie was so good at throwing Insults...

The thing is, Second Life is kept alive by the Furry Fandom, discussed already in a previous post, and only by a few dedicated people at that. Second Life barely has a 10th of the number of regular players as even low-end free online RPG's, and is dwarfed by titles like City of Heroes, and Everquest, not even thinking about the order of magnitude difference moving up to current MMO titan World of Warcraft.

From the perspective of a profitable game, Second Life is anything but.

In the MMO market, or social networking, there really is no greater insult than comparing a product to Second Life.

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