Cliffy B way over his head? about PC Market 'Disarray'

First of all everyone should be known to Cliff Blenszinski. If you haven't, then I suggest you go and buy this for the PC : Gears of War. Play through it and, obviously, you'll see him in the credits

If you know already and smart to figure out what I'm trying to say, then well done, but I will explain anyways.

Recently found this interview of lead creator of GoW: Cliffy B while he was at DICE gaming summit. The article can be found here: http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/02/13/gears-of-war-creator-update/ .
First half of the article meantions some personal aspects of his life, but what caught my attention was the second half of the content.

Cliffy pretty much stated that their primary focus now is in console gaming, pointing out that the PC market was in "Disarray". Point to that he gave was that Gears of War sold almost 4 times as much as PC the version, so we'll probably end up seeing less Epic games in the PC.

Although, console market right now is huge, I just thought that his point of view at that moment was partly irrational. Initially PC gaming market was hard to get into, but monster games like World of Warcraft are what Cliffy B stated is partly to blame for the overall drop in PC gaming. He has a point, but Cliffy also forgot that Gears of War was pretty much "the" next-gen game for the Xbox 360 and it was made initially exclusive. With EPIC changing over to console, we'll probably see more of this occurring during the year. I don't know about you my thought are that VALVE are also showing signs...maybe.

The artcle got me also thinking about PC gaming market prospect. The future is slighlty bleak. I mean as last year stated that 14% of total games sold was for the PC: http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/01/pc-games-hit-ma.html. Initially my thought, in general was, that big games like the Sims and World of Warcraft made it difficult for other genres to get it's spotlight in the scene, but what these are also doing a good job of keeping the PC gaming market intact.

I think what this effects are mostly the hardcore PC players. There will still be gaming in the PC but more as casual Bejeweled players rather than your PC overclockers nerds, like me I admit, trying to squeeze extra processing power for a few extra framerates, and I think that's why it has it's effects on me.

My tuppence worth.

So please buy some PC games. *smiles*

Master Chief-ness of the Halo Movie

Well as far as I am aware of the Halo movie directed by Neill Blomkamp is still on the go. The pre-production is on the way and we should see this movie coming out around 2009/2010.

But that's not was this post is about. Recently N'Gai got exclusive interview with Joseph Staten who's the writing director for Bungie, talking about how our enigmatic Master Chief will be portrayed in the film.

To a certain degree of surprise Joseph stated, during the Q&A interview, that the exclusive main role for the movie would not circulate around Master Chief as it is highly that his role become more as a supporting character.

To my understanding and knowledge playing through Halo series, portraying Master Chief would be very difficult just as Joseph stated:

"Where the Master Chief doesn't have a face, but he has a whole body to emote with, whether it's his spine, or his shoulders. or the tilt of his head, or the way he slumps or reloads his weapon. There are these kinesthetic responses that he'll have which will really easily communicate the character and what he's feeling. That's hard to carry as a main character for an entire film."

Then explains that the role would best suit him as supporting character, where the people (Marines) around him will have better focus.

Real live clips released in conjunction with the release of Halo3 focuses more on the Marines that try and die to help Master Chief on his mission and ideally that's my thought on where this movie will be going towards. If you think about it Master Chief would not be a legend himself without the help of his Marines, although game-wise portrayal they just seems to be of a nuisance and cannon fodder. What I'm saying here is that if the sophistication of the AI meets our standards as humans we here would be praising the Marines.

Keeping Master Chief's anonymity is better here in my own opinion. First of all Master Chief deserves a good rest. Secondly, some people might be as sick as hell seeing Master Chief through the trilogy and having him in movies gun-blazing down isles decimating grunts, may feel like that they're just playing the game again in real vision.
But, for me personally, keeping his real identity anonymous allow peoples creative juices to run. We all know Master Chief, and having his name pop up on other Halo franchise is great for the game and for fans. When you put a line to his story then that could eventually end Master Chief's reign.

In the end, what approach the film will take I'll take in with no effect as long as the film is good itself, and in conclusion and a slight respond to N'Gai's article, I would prefer the movie to go this way rather through Master Chief's visor assuming that Neill continues to use his camera-vérité filming technique were everything seems to feel as though it's filmed like a documentory or through a reporters camera.

Links:
- N'Gai Joseph Staten Halo Movie Q&A
- Halo3 Real Life Movie Clip (Youtube)