Sony have forged their reputation on superb press conferences. In the last half decade, the company have had a succession of golden showings, the results of which have unquestionably helped to elevate the current PlayStation iteration to its unrivalled commercial success. The industry buzz around the initial PS4 reveal, the amusing demonstration of unrestricted second hand games exchange, the tremendous software showings at both the 2015 and 2016 E3; Sony’s stage performances have all been raving success stories that have helped to elevate the PS4 to an unrivalled top dog status.
Cyberpunk: a dark vision of the future in which technology has shaped social order. The thematic concept of “high tech low life” was first pioneered by authors such as William Gibson and Philip K. Dick with their respective novels Neuromancer and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Blade Runner), but the genre has since spilled over to other mediums including video games, resulting in some of the most grimly fascinating and atmospheric games of all-time.
The video game industry is unforgiving. Indeed, of all the big players in the home console market during the 1980s - an era that saw the market both boom and flop - Nintendo remains the only one still in the business of making hardware, and for that they deserve a huge amount of credit. After single-handedly ensuring for the continued prosperity of the home console after the success of the NES, Nintendo has forged a legacy of iconic characters and video game hardware that extends to every corner of both the industry and the entirety of pop culture.
Ever since video game consoles were capable of producing 3D graphics, gamers have dreamt about the potential of photo-realistic visuals. Especially during the early 2000s, as the increased horsepower allowed for a more crisp aesthetic, immersion was often quantified by how realistic a game’s graphics were. In fact, it is only fairly recently - perhaps due to the influx of indie games available on console - that the mainstream appreciation of video games has become less heavily associated with aesthetics.
Nowhere else was the influx of solid game design during the 1990s more evident than among Japanese role playing games (JRPG). Scores of superb titles such as Wild Arms, Chrono Cross, Final Fantasy Tactics, Dragon Quest VII and Vagrant Story forged a legacy of quality; an era arguably unrivalled by any other genre era in gaming history.
Thanks to the connectivity afforded to console hardware, purchasing and playing video games has never been a more streamlined and easy process. Digital gaming has made available every single new title at the click of a button. It's generally a better experience, too; there's no laborious changing of CDs, and no tedious waiting in line for new releases. Digital games tend to load faster also, and the convenience of storing our games on centralized hubs such as PlayStations online network or Xbox Live can't be overstated.
Younger gamers won’t necessarily remember the days when we used to call DLC an “expansion pack,” especially those that didn’t venture into PC gaming. Of course, back in the day PCs were really the only hardware with which additional content was viable because of the nature with which they were installed and saved on hard drive. But consoles have since caught up, and thanks to the connectivity afforded by online networks such as Xbox Live and PSN, substantial additional content has become common place for most AAA titles.
While Uncharted 2: Among Thieves’ might put Naughty Dog on the map, few would disagree that the smash hit post-apocalyptic action game The Last Of Us is the studio's finest work. In fact, The Last Of Us is arguably one of PlayStation’s greatest ever exclusive games and one of the must-play essential titles of the last generation. No surprises then that a sequel to that much revered game is eagerly awaited, and now that the critically acclaimed final chapter to the Uncharted series, A Thief’s End, is done and dusted, many gamers are frantically scouring the internet for any details or clues to its release date.
Augmented reality, urban spaces, social anthropology, economics, meta; since Pokemon Go launched earlier this month the internet has been awash with buzz words to describe and make sense of its unprecedented popularity. Indeed, Pokemon Go hasn’t even released globally yet and it is already a phenomenon so massive that it has reached its way into all corners of everyday life, a near unavoidable facet of social media and news reporting.
We're in the middle of a big year for the video gaming industry; scores of titles are launching in unprecedented numbers, numbers that we haven't seen since the glory days of the 8 and 16 bit era of console gaming. It's great to see, especially considering the naysayers and doom mongers that would have had us believe that console gaming was on the way out when forecasting the potential success of the 7th generation PS4 and Xbox One consoles.
