PlayStation2: After the dust settles

Add all the Saturns, Nintendo 64s, and Dreamcasts together, and the sum equals about half the number of PlayStations sold in Japan.

But much of Japan's intoxication with the original PlayStation has worn off. The console game market was down last year, a turn that many analysts attributed to people waiting for the release of PS2. Hence, when PS2 launched on March 4, consumers lined up in droves and inventories disappeared at record speed.

In an interview that took place two days before the launch of PS2, Nintendo Company, Ltd. spokesman Yasuhiro Minagawa described the situation to MSNBC in dramatic weather terms. "The PS2 typhoon is hitting Japan right now. We [Nintendo] just have to wait and see what happens after the typhoon has gone."

It is no secret that PS2 is difficult to program. Having recently finished Code Veronica for Dreamcast, Capcom's Shinji Mikami openly admits his admiration for Sega's easily programmed hardware. He is currently working on multiple projects for PS2, and says working on the powerful new system is problematic.

In fact, when asked which is harder to program for, PS2 or Saturn (even Sega employees complained about trying to access the dual 32-bit processors in Saturn), Mikami responded: "PS2 is harder, hands down." Mikami is not alone. Designers at Namco, Konami, and SquareSoft all mentioned the difficulties of programming PS2. One programmer who wished to remain anonymous pinned his dislike of PS2 on the tools that were created for it. "Sony provided an extensive library with PlayStation. The library would do a lot of the work; but with PS2, there is no library. We need to create our own library, which poses its own set of problems in that there are so many choices to achieve the same effects."

Capcom's Keiji Inafune takes complaints about the PS2 library even further; but he sees it as ultimately positive. "There really isn't a library, so we have to make one up as we go along. Starting a new project means that we start with developing the library first."

While he admits that the tasks involved in creating PS2 games are challenging, Inafune sees the new system as offering new opportunities that must be harnessed.

"Until now, because of the limitations of the hardware, when I asked a programmer if something could be done, they would say it couldn't be done. With PS2, they tell me, 'Yes, maybe, but it will take a long time.' How long, they don't know," says Inafune, who is currently working on Onimusha: Demon Warrior - one of the most anticipated games coming out on PS2.

Of course, Inafune's got it made when it comes to freedom. Capcom executives, realizing that Inafune has an instant audience waiting for Onimusha, have green-lighted him with a blockbuster budget. Asked if PlayStation2 games cost over $4 million to make, Inafune smiles and says he has spent double-digit millions on his.

"So now as a producer, my dilemma is, what do I do?" Inafune says. "Do I let them go with the concept without knowing how long it will take to implement it? In a sense there are no hardware limitations now and there is now a large learning curve for programmers."

Inafune is not alone in noticing the learning curve and the possibilities. Shigeru Yokoyama, Namco Group general manager of the CS product development department, describes programming for PS2 as "very, very difficult;" but also notes the great possibilities.

"To be honest," says Yokoyama, "we don't know how much we can do with PS2 yet. What we know is that we're not utilizing all of its capabilities. This year was the first year that the consumer division has had better hardware than the arcade division. We are now developing software and we are also learning what we can do with this new hardware."

Gozo Kitao, a Konami general manager currently overseeing three PS2 projects, puts it another way. "If you focus on making full use of all the specs, it will be very expensive and time-consuming to produce a game. Instead, if you can focus on one aspect of the game, then I believe you can produce a great game. For example, in an action game, accentuate the gameplay even to the point of compromising other aspects like graphics."

Kitao apparently decided to concentrate on historical accuracy aspects when he and his team created Gradius III and IV, his first PS2 project. The ship in this game looks exactly like the one in the original Gradius - Konami's first game for the NES. Some of the other monsters such as a flock of dragons that appear out of gold metallic jellied orbs look pretty good.

As to the cost of making games for PS2, Kitao says the amount of money it costs to make games depends on what you want to accomplish. "It really depends on where you focus when producing a game. You may spend $10 million producing a very meaningful, good game, and you may spend $2 million. It all depends on the methods used and how you're able to focus. At the PlayStation festival, the game that caught my attention was Fantavision. I believe that if you added just a little something to that, it would be a fantastic game. I don't believe that Fantavision cost much to make."

The next big thing for PlayStation2 is online gaming, which should come via a hard drive/modem peripheral currently under development at Sony Computer Entertainment. When it comes to PS2's future, Capcom and Square are betting that the big bucks will be in multi-player gaming.

"Networking will be the key," says Capcom director of research and development, Yoshiki Okamoto, who was group leader of the team that created Street Fighter II in his earlier days. "Just as Street Fighter II contributed to the success of Capcom due to its head-to-head play, once the network environment of these new platforms is ready, it will open up new possibilities in the next phase of head-to-head gameplay."

Okamoto insists that network gaming will be "vital" to Capcom's future. SquareSoft is taking an even more aggressive approach - launching a Final Fantasy-based PS2 Internet gaming site that may go up even before Sony releases its modem.

"The modem made by Sony Computers may be out by the end of the year or early next year," says SquareSoft executive vice president Hisashi Suzuki. "The PS2 has a slot for PC cards; so it is possible to have a PC card and modem [Suzuki is referring to a modem on a PCMCIA card similar to the modems used by some laptop computers] right away. We may be able to come up with a game that uses it and the two can be sold as a package. The problem is the distribution.

"It's a matter of which to choose: speed [Sony's high-speed modem] or being first [to market]. For example, when we come out with Final Fantasy 10, [the game] won't require a hard disk or, as Kutaragi says, a cable modem since it (the online portion) is a strategic guide provided through narrow band. The question becomes whether we will authorize a card manufactured by Seiko or TDK and just tell the players to plug the phone line into the authorized card and players will be able to enjoy Final Fantasy 10. If we do that, we won't have to wait for Sony to come out with a card."