One thing I've found particularly surprising over the last week was the rate at which my interest in Grand Theft Auto IV rapidly declined. I beat the game on Sunday night, yet haven't felt compelled to turn it back on since, which is strange, given how much I had enjoyed it. It's really lacking that level of supplementary content we saw in Vice City and San Andreas; much more effort went into the story, and the game is better for it, but I'd have liked more to do after the narrative was wrapped up.

This week's column is the final part of our Grievances series, focusing on Sony. We'll also take a look at the godawful Survivor game from late last decade, and give Guinness World Records' 2008 Gamers Edition the review treatment.

Airing of Grievances: Sony

And people call PCs expensive – ha!

It hasn't really been that long since I last had a bit of a rant about Sony; since the previous column focused on the PSP, this one is going to focus on the PlayStation 3. Sony's latest home console is a powerful piece of hardware, but it's lacking in a number of key areas, not to mention that Sony's methods of handling the system's launch were dreadful.

Obviously, the biggest problem with Sony is the price. The PlayStation 3 launched at $999.95 locally – a price point which was, quite frankly, utterly ridiculous. Sony loves to sock it to the PAL consumers on the price front, in spite of the fact that their European operation is their strongest. For a $250-400 premium over the US model, we received lesser hardware; our backwards compatibility was software based, as opposed to the launch models in US and Japan, which had PlayStation 2 hardware on board to allow for maximum compatibility with that machine's software. Now backwards compatibility is an afterthought with the price reduced 40GB model, which although $300 cheaper still seems overpriced. Price woes continue to the PlayStation 3's peripherals; $79.95 for a SIXAXIS was ridiculous, but it was later topped by $99.95 for the Dual Shock 3. The same peripheral can be acquired overseas for less than $60.

The price of a PlayStation 3 at launch would have been a lot easier to swallow had there been some quality software available. There were two decent launch titles available in March 2007; Resistance: Fall of Man and Virtua Fighter 5, which (graphics aside), did little to show off the system's true capabilities. Many other titles like Genji and Motorstorm were rushed to market, and were poorly optimised and missing key features or large amounts of content which were added back later through downloadable content. All three companies had pretty pathetic launch line-ups, but that's no excuse. We have to remember that Sony delayed the launch of the PlayStation 3 considerably (and then again for PAL regions) – could you imagine how bad the launch line-up would have been if they launched in March 2006? This lack of compelling software continued through to the end of 2007, and when good software came, it suffered from a preconception that the PlayStation 3 had no games – Kaz Hirai spoke about this at the SCEE Gamer's Day earlier this week. 2008 was considered to be the year of the PlayStation 3 because it's the first time that there is a good spread of titles coming out for the machine over the course of the entire year.

Sony's Japanese studios are talented, but they've done very little for the PS3's cause

Sony's Western Studios and partners have been churning away on projects for ages, with a number of games already on shelves, and some big hitters to come this year. Yet outside of Gran Turismo 5, there's nothing but silence coming from their Japanese camp, studios that were responsible for titles such as Ape Escape, ICO and Shadow of the Colossus. It's Sony's Japanese arm that put the PlayStation 3 in the mess that it was in during 2007, but they're relying on the West to bail them out. Sony's Japanese studios are capable of producing amazing software, so their silence is deafening. The problem with Japanese software for the PlayStation 3 just doesn't exist inside Sony – many of the top of the line PlayStation 2 developers such as Capcom, Konami and Namco, excluding Metal Gear Solid 4 and Tekken 6 have very little in the way of PlayStation 3 projects out on shelves or in production. Most Japanese companies just haven't adapted to the HD generation hardware as well as we'd expect.

What's keeping many developers from tapping the true potential of the PlayStation 3 is the system's architecture. The Cell processor is very complex, and has proven difficult for some coders to adapt to. It's even more difficult to port existing code to the machine, as can be seen from the difference in quality between multiplatform titles where the Xbox 360 was the lead format. Games with the PlayStation 3 as the lead format, such as Burnout Paradise, have performed particularly well on both platforms. Sony should attempt to use some of its financial muscle to lure companies over to their side – provide some sort of incentive to make companies use the PlayStation 3 as the lead development format. With Xbox 360 sales levelling, and PlayStation 3 sales continuing to rise, it's possible that the market may sort out this situation for them. Sony could provide better toolsets for teams to use though – many have said that the development kits provided by Sony are sorely lacking.

Home is where the heart is. No hearts til 2009.

The PlayStation Network exists as separate opportunity for developers to market smaller projects on, but Sony is continuing to underutilise the service, particularly in Australia and Europe, where the content continues to lag behind what's available in Japan and North America. It's nice that they went to the effort of making the store easier to navigate, but what was the point if there's nothing new to buy on the store? They need to get the PlayStation Network service up to scratch – more games, better friends list integration, and more dedicated servers. Sony continues to provide very good firmware updates for the machine, but crucial features, such as in-game XMB access are still missing after more than 18 months on the market.

Home is probably the thing that annoys me the most about Sony. It sounds like a pretty good service, but the only time I ever hear anything about it these days is when they're announcing further delays. The problem is that they simply announced it too early, and with Kaz Hirai's latest statement that Home won't be out until he's happy with it, I'm not confident that we'll see Home's first release until late 2009. I'm really hoping that Home integration works out, because it seems like a cool idea. I guess revealing projects too early is a real problem of Sony's; LittleBigPlanet, Killzone 2, Eight Days, InFamous – all big name projects that, for the most part, are unlikely to make it onto shelves this year, yet have been known about by the general public for as long as three years. The other problem is that three of these four titles are from unproven developers or developers with a shaky track record. Perhaps Sony should stick to reliable studios such as Insomniac and Naughty Dog, who not only produce great software, but do so in a timely manner.

Once You've Played It, You Can't Unplay It

For the love of God, vote me off!

Back in the 90s, everybody seemed to think that video games based on game shows were a good idea, hence crap like Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy making their way to your format of choice. Interest in traditional game shows declined with the rise of the reality game show, led by Survivor. Funnily enough, there was a Survivor game released for the PC, but it wasn't as bad as your regular game show video game. No, the Survivor game stunk worse than a mixture of fish guts, sulphur and a truckload of Christina Aguilera CDs.

Survivor: The Interactive Game is based on the second season of the CBS show, which was set in the Australian Outback. Players can choose one of the contestants from the first or second season of the show, or create their own character. You can play a full season of 13 "episodes", from the midpoint where the tribes merge, or from where there are only three survivors remaining. Each episode is comprised of five stages consisting of two survival periods, two challenges and the tribal council. Doesn't sound like a very interesting game, but it quickly gets worse.

Those survival periods consist of you sitting around doing absolutely nothing, waiting for time to pass until the challenges start – you're essentially paying for a simulation of all of the excitement involved in being in the waiting line at the post office or your favourite government agency. Of course, you can have mindless conversations with the other suckers who got drawn into the show to form alliances, but that's no fun. The challenge phase consists of tasks such as the near impossible trivia contest, slingshot contests and puzzles, all with absolutely abhorrent graphics and controls. Eventually you'll make it to the tribal council where you'll likely be voted off, and the pain will end.

Of course, that assumes that you actually managed to get the pain to start in the first place. The Survivor game contains a notorious bug which causes the game to not load if you install it to the default directory – such excellent quality assurance from Infogrames/Atari couldn't possibly be the reason that they're in dire straits financially. Though honestly, I'd rather be tied to a car by the ears and driven through a field of especially sharp cacti than ever have to even think about the Survivor game again.

Egghead Loves His Booky-Wook

Filled with plenty of superfluous crap, just like most games

It's been a while since I've done a bit on some gaming books – I have quite a few to do, but I haven't had the time to read them. Rest assured that more book reviews will be on the way in the coming months. This week I managed to get a hold of Guinness World Records 2008 Gamer's Edition. It's the first time Guinness World Records have put together a book specifically for gamers, and they've teamed up with a number of notable writers from the British press, and high score gatherers Twin Galaxies to assemble a bunch of gaming related records.

The 2008 Gamers Edition is admirable for a first effort, and contains all sorts of information you'd expect to find; what the best-selling video game is in total and for each platform, who holds the highest score on or the fastest run through such-and-such popular game and so on. The rest of the book is filled with a whole bunch of filler facts, related to specific games that the editors have deemed popular. Now of course you'd have your usual Marios, Grand Theft Autos and Gran Turismos in there, but some of the game series chosen and some of those neglected make little sense. Why include Jak and Daxter over Mega Man, when the latter is far more significant?

The book contains a number of problems that harm its claims of being the "Ultimate Gamer's Annual". A lot of the facts included for many games are of a pretty dubious standard, such as the "Fastest selling guitar game" or "Best selling game in the Sim City series" under Sim City. Hardly much competition for that record, eh? Another fatal error of the book is including a very subjective listing of the "Top 100 Arcade Games". Now the whole point of the Guinness Book of Records was that it's a book of facts – surely the inclusion of this list goes against the original vision? The book contains a number of interviews with Walter Day of Twin Galaxies, famed composer Tommy Tallarico and the youngest professional gamer "LiL Poison", but they don't really add anything of note – the book would probably be better without them. The thing that probably bothered me the most about the book is the layout – on some pages, up to three-quarters of the space can be filled up by a picture or game asset; you could probably live with it if it only happened once throughout the book, but it's a frequent occurrence, and just serves to pad the book out more. The book may be 256 pages long, but there's realistically only about 75 pages worth of useful information in there.

Guinness World Records 2008 Gamer's Edition is worth a brief look if your local library has a copy, but I wouldn't plonk down the dough until the book sees a bit of refinement and gains some sort of direction and perspective.

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Quote of the Week

While announcing their 2008 Financial Year results (a $US35.3 million loss, down from $68 million profit), THQ President and CEO Brian Farrell had this to say; "With a tough Pixar comparison to Cars [Ratatouille] and new competition from Nintendo's first-party titles – as well as new music games – our traditionally strong kids' business did not meet expectations." Everybody loves to blame Nintendo when their kids games don't sell on the Wii. Let me spell it out for you, loud and clear – make crappy products, and people will avoid them. The reason Nintendo kicks your arse is because they have a superior product. If you put some effort into making quality software, then you might actually sell some games. That doesn't just go for the kids games – the reason those WWE games used to sell a million units each year because they used to be good. Bring back AKI!

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Next Week

Since I've been ignoring my PC brothers for a few weeks, I figured we'd have a little chat about copy protection.