LittleBigPlanet 2 [review] kicks off Sony’s PS3 exclusive push for 2011 in a matter of days now, and it’s going to be swiftly followed by the wonderful Killzone 3 [hands-on]. These two games alone will keep many gamers busy for a good few months – the former especially.
But that’s not all that’s lined up for the PlayStation 3 this year – look out for Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, inFamous 2, The Last Guardian, Motorstorm: Apocalypse and Resistance 3 as big hitters, with the likes of MLB 11, Disgaea 4, PlayStation Move Heroes, SOCOM 4, Sorcery, Twisted Metal and a new Yakuza bringing up the rear.
It’s an impressive line-up, arguably, in fact, the strongest set of games that Sony and their third parties have pushed out this generation – something presumably spurred on by competition from the currently on a roll Xbox 360. The problem on that count, though, is that Microsoft don’t really seem to like talking about anything lined up themselves this year apart from (the admittedly massive) Gears of War 3, Forza 4 and a few other titles that run the gamut between potentially mind-blowing and ‘still codenamed’. We want to know what’s coming.
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Sure, there’s the rather vague Panzer Dragoon-esque title, a new Steel Batallion, a Kinect survival horror from SEGA and the Crytek developed Codename Kingdoms, but what we want are the likes of Halo, guys, the stuff we find familiar and can get excited about. Halo sells consoles, it ignites gamers and – yes – we’ll happily settle for a HD remake of Combat Evolved this year if you’re taking a year out.
Exclusives are big business, the whole concept of having games that only play on your console (we’re, for the sake of this blog, ignoring PC and Windows phone releases) goes towards how one console manufacturer sets themselves apart from the others; and on that aspect alone it seems Sony have got this year all sewn up, at least going off what we know from the two houses.
For the first time, too, some might say – the PS3′s had a rather uneven release schedule ever since it was released with delays and misfires peppering what has actually at times been an underwhelming few years – but for the next twelve months we’re struggling to find what Microsoft are up to.
Maybe it’s the new emphasis on Kinect that’s absorbing all their energy. Certainly, the brand new motion control device has meant that the 360 has seen far more TV-time than anything else this Christmas – the games are fresh, massively fun with mates and require no grasp of traditional games to enjoy: put your Granny in front of Kinect and fire up Bowling and she’ll be off – the line-up has actually resulted in a solid set of highly playable games that are far weightier than we first thought. Dance Central is, by all accounts, bloody fantastic.
But are Gears of War 3, Forza 4 and some unknown quantities going to be enough to convince Microsoft’s hardcore following that they’re still the company’s focus? Of course not – and we don’t think for a second that there’s only going to be the games mentioned (and don’t forget that there’s still loads of multi-format games coming out) – and Greenberg’s already talking about how 2011 will be big for Xbox 360 exclusives. But that’s the point of this article – with Sony having already announced a good deal of their 2011 exclusive offering (and they’re still not talking about Starhawk) we have to wonder why Microsoft are being so cagey with their games.
Are they holding off for a massive bout of list-wars E3, or is there something else set for Los Angeles that’ll blow us all away…? Microsoft, we’re all ears.