作者:
GayBowl (............)
2014-07-04 18:22:07Yoshida: I don't understand people who only want AAA
吉田修平：我不懂只要3A級大作的人
吉田修平：我不懂為何人們只想要3A級大作 (舊的錯誤標題)
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/
2014-07-02-yoshida-i-dont-understand-people-who-only-want-aaa
http://ppt.cc/54AE
Matthew Handrahan
02.Jul.2014
Another E3, another victory for Sony in its battle with Microsoft. In the
past, it has been easy to dismiss the so-called 'console war' as a
confection; a narrative created by and played out in the media to keep its
audience engaged.
There may still be some truth to that idea, but in both this E3 and the last
Sony has been all too happy to compare and contrast its policies to those of
its rival, even as the team in green largely abstained from doing so. As a
journalist, you get used to companies refusing to comment on their rivals as
a matter of policy. Well, not any more. It may not be a war, exactly, but
whatever it is Sony has a strong sense that it's winning.
(引戰文就不翻了)
Despite Sony's ongoing supremacy, however, the E3 press conferences were met
with a good deal of criticism, with the levels of violence and brutality on
display chief among the concerns. Even the most cursory Google search returns
rants and jeremiads from Polygon, Game Informer, the San Jose Mercury and
GamesRadar among many, many others. This sort of analysis seems to have
intensified in the last few years, but when I put that idea to Sony's Shuhei
Yoshida, president of Worldwide Studios, he just smiles and shakes his head.
縱使SONY王朝持續，但在E3時也遇到不少批評－主要是針對過多的血腥與暴力，就連最不
管事的Google搜尋也傳回了Polygon、Game Informer、the San Jose Mercury以及
GamesRadar等媒體的怒吼與悲嘆之聲。這情勢看起來在過去幾年似乎愈演愈烈，但我詢問
吉田修平的看法時，他只是搖著頭，笑一笑。
"I do realise there are certain reactions like that, but that's nothing new
to me. What's important is the variety that we're offering," he says, still
buoyant after being presented with the Award of Honour at Barcelona's Gamelab
conference the previous night.
"I was very happy to get a very positive reaction when we announced
LittleBigPlanet 3. We are concerned a little bit when we work on a game like
LittleBigPlanet 3, about how people will react, because people want those
big-budget, realistic, military shooters. But there were lots of cheers, a lot
of affection.
"And the reaction to Nintendo's games in general, or a game like Splatoon. If
you look at the whole industry, and you consider Nintendo, I think the
balance is actually better than past years."
「我知道有這些反應，但對我而言不是太新鮮的事。重點是我們檯面上商品的多元性。」
在結束前一晚巴塞隆納Gamelab研討會後，吉田修平有點搖搖欲墜的說著。
「我對我們在發表小小大3時所獲得的正面回饋感到很高興。當我們在做這遊戲時是有點
擔心人們的反應，因為大家想要大成本、寫實、軍事射擊遊戲。但在發表當下我們得到了
許多掌聲和歡呼。」
「或說人們對任天堂遊戲的反應，或說像Splatoon這款遊戲的反應；如果你看看整個遊戲
產業，再看看任天堂，我想整體的平衡度已經比過去幾年好了。」
Amidst the hand-wringing over the ratio of severed heads to female presenters
it's easy to lose sight of the kind of games that now occupy space on Sony's
stage. Would No Man's Sky have been given the opportunity to steal column
inches from the likes of Call of Duty and Far Cry even three or four years
ago? Go back another four and it's worth asking if something as peaceable and
sanguine as Hello Games' widely lauded space exploration title would have
existed at all.
For Yoshida, gathering and understanding the complaints of the press and
public has always been a part of the job, but, in general, he sees more
reasons for console gamers to be cheerful than ever before.
Nevertheless, 'better' doesn't necessarily mean good enough, and the sheer
ubiquity of communication channels has made it easier than ever for the press
and the public to air unvarnished, unbridled criticisms. The apparent
dissatisfaction with the prominence of violent games at the E3 conferences
speaks to a larger perceived problem with AAA games on the new generation of
consoles: in simple terms, there aren't enough of them, certainly not from
Sony and Microsoft's first-party studios, and those that are coming feel all
too familiar.
In that sense, Sony's very public outreach to independent developers has
proved invaluable. At this point, just how smart a purchasing decision would
the PlayStation 4 seem without Transistor, Don't Starve, Outlast and their
ilk? Indeed, with Uncharted 4 and The Order: 1886 - arguably the most
anticipated of the PS4's AAA exclusives - not due for release until some
time next year, it's worth asking whether Sony's concerted effort to push
indie content over the last 12 months was in part down to filling the gap.
Once again, Yoshida shakes his head and smiles.
在對E3中出現的人頭數比女性講者還多的歇斯底裡反應中，很容易就忽略掉了是哪些遊戲
佔據了SONY當下的舞臺。若是三、四年前，No Man's Sky有機會在Call of Duty、Far
Cry等遊戲身上搶到一點版面嗎？再更往回一點，更值得問的是，像Hello Games這款和平
的太空探險遊戲是否有誕生的機會？
對吉田修平而言，傾聽大眾的抱怨始終是工作的一部份，
但是總體來說，他認為家機玩家比以前有更多值得高興的理由。
然而，有進步不代表夠好，無遠弗屆的傳播管道讓原汁原味的批評更容易被聽到。對E3暴
力遊戲的顯著不滿傳達了新世代主機上3A級作品的一個普遍問題：簡單來說，本家大作不
足，擡面上看到的又感覺太相似了。
在這情況下，SONY對獨立開發者的積極接觸提供了難以衡量的價值。若PS4上沒有
Transistor、Don't Starve、Outlast等遊戲，那此時此刻買PS4會是個好決定嗎？確實，
秘境4和The Order: 1886，兩個PS4最受矚目的3A獨佔大作，要到明年才會發行；這是否
表示SONY過去12個月來大力推行獨立遊戲是為了填補空檔？
吉田修平再次搖著頭、笑了笑。
"That's not why, but that's the end result of having great indie games as
well. Almost every week you see an indie game coming out digitally on PS4.
Some of them are really, really interesting, beautiful games," he says.
"We're fortunate that they're creating games on PS4, and some of them are
choosing to launch their console versions on PlayStation first.
It's fortunate. It really helps.
"When you compare it to the launch of PS3, we had a very small number of
digital games. They were very limited in terms of numbers, and many of them
were arcade classics at that time. Now, they're original concepts.
"I hear complaints [about the lack of AAA games]. I do realise that some
people are only interested in big-budget AAA games. I don't really understand
those people. I don't know if they've tried some of the indie games and
decided they're not interested. Maybe they haven't even tried. That's a key
question. With Resogun, which we offered for free for a long time on PS Plus,
not every PS Plus member downloaded it, and that's a great, great game.
That's a key question for us."
「不是為了什麼，而是因為它們是很棒的獨立創作。你可以在PS4上每周都看到一款數位
版的獨立作品出現，其中有些相當有趣、美麗；我們很幸運在PS4上面擁有它們，而且有
些創作者選擇在家機平台上優先發行PS版。我們感到很榮幸，也很感激。」
「與PS3發售時相較，當時我們的數位版遊戲很少，而且多數都是過去的經典大型電玩；
如今，上面的作品都是些創新的遊戲概念。」
「我知道那些對缺乏3A大作的抱怨，我瞭解有些人只對大成本作品有興趣。但我真的不太
瞭解這些人，不知道他們是否真的嘗試過這些獨立作品，然後再說它們不有趣，也許沒有
，這就是重點。像Resogun，我們在PLUS上提供了很長一段時間的免費遊玩，但不是每個
PLUS會員都有下載。它是很棒的遊戲，而這件事也成為我們必須面對的重要問題。」
New hardware implies new experiences, and while we're used to looking to the
biggest, most expensive games to find that originality, there's a growing
sense that, this time, the new experience will be more fundamental. As I talk
to Yoshida, the most distinctive new experience of this generation seems to be
choice: what to play, how to play it, how much it costs, and who you share it
with. The games may well be familiar, but the structure around them has
changed irrevocably.
With that in mind, PlayStation Now seems like a gilt-edged opportunity for
Sony to pull even further away from the pack, offering its users a breadth
and immediacy of choice that neither Nintendo nor Microsoft has any obvious
plans to rival. Already in closed beta and scheduled to enter open beta in
the US and Canada at the end of this month, the nascent cloud service has
the seductive potential to be the Netflix or Spotify of gaming. At the very
least, Yoshida says, that is Sony's intention.
新的硬體代表了全新的體驗，而當我們習慣從大成本作品去尋找這個體驗時，有個愈發強
烈的共識是，這個全新體驗會更加的源自其本身。吉田修平與我的討論是，這個世代全新
體驗的來源在於選擇上：要玩什麼、要怎麼玩、要花多少、與誰分享等；或許遊戲本身變
化不大，但環繞在它周圍的結構已經產生了不可逆的變化。
循著這個概念，PS NOW似乎是SONY再往前一步，提供用戶廣泛且直接選擇的絕佳機會，而
這是任天堂或微軟都尚無計畫之事。PS NOW在這個月底即將於美加公測，這項雲端服務有
機會成為遊戲界的Netflix或Spotify；至少，吉田修平表示這是SONY的目標。
"We have the vision of bringing hundreds and thousands of PlayStation games
to every screen," he says, cautiously. "That's the vision, but we're taking
one step at a time. There's investment in the server farm, the tech, internet
latency and bandwidth. We have to start from somewhere.
"Wifi is a challenge. Typically, we recommend 5mbps for 720p quality. That's
a challenge, especially in some markets. But we also view it as a matter of
time, because the infrastructure just gets better and better."
「我們的願景是把眾多的PS遊戲帶到每個螢幕上，但我們會一步一步來，會投資伺服器、
技術、網路延遲與頻寬，我們必須先有個開始。」
「Wifi是個挑戰。一般來說，我們建議720p要有5mbps，但這是個挑戰，特別在某些地區
；不過我們也認為這個隨著時間解決，因為基礎建設只會愈來愈進步。」
That's almost certainly true, but PlayStation Now's business model remains a
prominent and potentially ruinous issue. Reports of pricing in the beta have
been what can be charitably described as "schizophrenic," varying from game
to game and with price-points for everything from a few hours to three months'
rental. In the most egregious examples, renting a game for a few months
actually costs more than buying it outright on the PlayStation Store. Yoshida
quite rightly describes PlayStation Now as a work-in-progress, but even at
this early stage it's clear that a lot of work needs to be done, and, with
publishers heavily involved in setting the prices, there is reasonable doubt
over whether the industry has the courage of its convictions.
Spotify and Netflix have proved that, when it comes to entertainment
streaming services, there's a huge audience out there for the one-price,
all-you-can-eat approach, and it seems unlikely that games will be treated as
a special case. To put it bluntly, the market may already have spoken, and
Yoshida insists that Sony is listening.
這看來沒什麼問題，但PS NOW的商業模式仍有個顯著且重大的問題－Beta版的訂價可以說
是"精神分裂"，有一款一款算的，到依租期訂價；最誇張是，租一個遊戲幾個月比在PS商
店上買數位版還貴。吉田修平表示，PS NOW仍在測試中，而在這個階段很明顯的還有許多
事要做。此外，由於發行商也積極的參與了訂價，在此可以合理的懷疑整個產業是否有這樣
的信念。
Spotify和Netflix證明了在娛樂串流服務中，有大筆的用戶傾向吃到飽的方案，遊戲產業
看起來也不太可能會是例外。老實說，市場已經反應了，而吉田修平也堅持認為SONY有在
傾聽。
"We don't know yet," he says about the possibility of a Netflix-esque model
for PlayStation Now. "We have been saying that we're looking at doing a
subscription model, in addition to rental. Or vice versa: rental in addition
to subscription. We're calling it a beta still, and we'll call it that even
after it launches in the US and Canada at the end of July. It will still be
called an open beta, because we expect it to keep changing in many ways.
People are jumping to conclusions.
"I saw some people saying that PS Now is dead on arrival," he laughs, then
there's that shake of the head again. "So... it's feedback. This is a
long-term strategy for us, and every reaction is valuable."
對於PS NOW是否會採用Netflix的商業模式，吉田修平說到「我們還在研究。我們正試著
在租用外，建立訂閱模式，或是在訂閱外，建立租用模式。即便在美加登場後，它仍是測
試版，因為我們期望它能持續改變，人們太快就跳到結論去了。」
「我看到有些人說PS NOW還未上場就掛了。嗯，這也是意見回饋，PS NOW是我們的長期策
略，所有的回饋都是重要的。」他再次搖著頭，笑一笑。