.:Out-of-the-box:.

Edge Magazine published opinion of their readers about best of the decade 2000-2009 in gaming. There is something missing in that summary.

If I looked for best examples in each category Edge mentioned, I’d look for something that has changed our perception and shaped the industry. Saying so it’s really hard to say who is the winner. That should not be the point. Good examples with comment why it has mattered is more fruitful for further discussion.

In games category, I somehow agree with World of Warcraft as a great example of a game which unblocked the MMO business. Before WoW we had many MMOs but none of them were so successful. In fact each MMO creator was struggling to motivate players to pay for the experience. Many good titles failed because players were not used to adopt subscription model. World of Warcraft was first where more and more gamers wanted to pay for. Now we can reckon about ten millions WoW players around the globe. If next after WoW had 1/10 of that it’s still success, because thanks to Blizzard gamers are already educated to pay monthly fees if game is good. It wasn’t that easy during Ultima Online period.

Beside WoW phenomena, I’d add Indie Games as nominee to best games of decade. Particular examples like Braid and World of Goo encouraged people to start commercial garage projects again. Last years of 90′ties was killing period for that. With companies growing strong, platform and projects being more and more expensive in games production home-brew projects were pushed to free, open source projects usually not complete, usually not giving that experience as I see in above two examples. Most important – similar problem as with MMO – customers were not educated to pay for small games. Expectations have changed and amazing Indie games blossom both in quality as well as in quantity.

As for the hardware, it seems that Edge and its readers have celebrated sold units not innovation. PS2 was really successful, but aside of bigger hardware capacities than PS1 and already established brand that helped sell zylions of units, I see Sony’s competitors more innovative during this decade.

First Xbox in 2001 revealed network gaming on the console platform like none other before. I know that Sega Dreamcast was first, but Xbox and Xbox 360 with XBL, Achievements, True Skill matching and other little details showed to competitors how to approach hardcore console gamer who wants to be on-line.

I agree on Nintendo, both Dual Screen and Wii were experiments nobody believed in at the beginning. Yet Nintendo sells it like crazy all the time. These two devices have been really important to the industry, because they defined so called casual gamer and brought to the community massive amount of new customers.

For the same reason Apple’s iPhone is also this decade’s phenomena. They enabled higher and higher quality mobile games, unblocking Internet usage on the mobile platform and showed really well how successful digital distribution can be.

In hardware category, during this decade, I believe industry has learned much more from Microsoft, Nintendo and Apple than Sony itself.

I don’t want to discuss and propose my types for the developer and publisher category. Too many of them have made genuine games. As for most important people, whole teams worked hard for these games I believe. Who we know in the industry is only a tiny fragment of that, persons self-promoted or promoted by their employers to speak. Part of the marketing story, games are not movies I don’t see the point in Games Industry Celebrities culture.

Last thing mentioned by Edge is biggest failure of the decade. I’d not go that extreme as it’s done there. Xbox 360′s RROD was epic, indeed, but company’s approach how to solve it was also perfectly balanced, gentle bow toward its customers. Door to door support, fast console replacement, warranty extensions. All these activities I had seen before, but in car industry when some fatal and deadly malfunctions appeared. Microsoft proved that even being relatively new on this market, they treat customers responsibly and seriously. I hope all other platform vendors would make the same if they encountered similar issues.

Sony’s marketing was also funny during PS3 early days, but if it was the biggest failure of the decade. I’d not say so. Big disappointment for many fans, yes, but failure? That’s too strong judgment for bad execution on not so bad strategy.

I won’t comment Gizmondo, because that was just a curiosity which had little chances to win by design.

All these examples show me that we have not had big failures in this decade. Instead of Gizmondo I’d rather say that Nokia has failed with NGage idea. Apple accidentally proved that Nokia’s concept to go with mobile gaming was right. Why Nokia couldn’t not execute that well? That’s the failure I’d definitely like to investigate if I was them.

In this decade I didn’t notice any bankruptcy that would impact the industry. In 90′ties Commodore failed big time. Nothing like that happened in last 10 years, even though many companies made numerous errors in their strategies and execution. The only example I remember is Interplay. Once huge player with many great IPs now a shadow of its greatest glory fighting with Zenimax over lost rights for Fallout.

In the summary, I like the idea Edge proposed, but results of their survey miss the point. They look like sales celebration and opinions of particular gamers who have their disconnected preferences they voted for. I miss comments that would cover bigger picture. You have just read mine.