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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级大作的人
吉田修平：我不懂为何人们只想要3A级大作 (旧的错误标题)
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.
(引战文就不翻了)
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.
纵使SONY王朝持续，但在E3时也遇到不少批评－主要是针对过多的血腥与暴力，就连最不
管事的Google搜寻也传回了Polygon、Game Informer、the San Jose Mercury以及
GamesRadar等媒体的怒吼与悲叹之声。这情势看起来在过去几年似乎愈演愈烈，但我询问
吉田修平的看法时，他只是摇著头，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."
“我知道有这些反应，但对我而言不是太新鲜的事。重点是我们台面上商品的多元性。”
在结束前一晚巴塞隆纳Gamelab研讨会后，吉田修平有点摇摇欲坠的说著。
“我对我们在发表小小大3时所获得的正面回馈感到很高兴。当我们在做这游戏时是有点
担心人们的反应，因为大家想要大成本、写实、军事射击游戏。但在发表当下我们得到了
许多掌声和欢呼。”
“或说人们对任天堂游戏的反应，或说像Splatoon这款游戏的反应；如果你看看整个游戏
产业，再看看任天堂，我想整体的平衡度已经比过去几年好了。”
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.
在对E3中出现的人头数比女性讲者还多的歇斯底里反应中，很容易就忽略掉了是哪些游戏
占据了SONY当下的舞台。若是三、四年前，No Man's Sky有机会在Call of Duty、Far
Cry等游戏身上抢到一点版面吗？再更往回一点，更值得问的是，像Hello Games这款和平
的太空探险游戏是否有诞生的机会？
对吉田修平而言，倾听大众的抱怨始终是工作的一部份，
但是总体来说，他认为家机玩家比以前有更多值得高兴的理由。
然而，有进步不代表够好，无远弗届的传播管道让原汁原味的批评更容易被听到。对E3暴
力游戏的显著不满传达了新世代主机上3A级作品的一个普遍问题：简单来说，本家大作不
足，擡面上看到的又感觉太相似了。
在这情况下，SONY对独立开发者的积极接触提供了难以衡量的价值。若PS4上没有
Transistor、Don't Starve、Outlast等游戏，那此时此刻买PS4会是个好决定吗？确实，
秘境4和The Order: 1886，两个PS4最受瞩目的3A独占大作，要到明年才会发行；这是否
表示SONY过去12个月来大力推行独立游戏是为了填补空档？
吉田修平再次摇著头、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."
“不是为了什么，而是因为它们是很棒的独立创作。你可以在PS4上每周都看到一款数位
版的独立作品出现，其中有些相当有趣、美丽；我们很幸运在PS4上面拥有它们，而且有
些创作者选择在家机平台上优先发行PS版。我们感到很荣幸，也很感激。”
“与PS3发售时相较，当时我们的数位版游戏很少，而且多数都是过去的经典大型电玩；
如今，上面的作品都是些创新的游戏概念。”
“我知道那些对缺乏3A大作的抱怨，我了解有些人只对大成本作品有兴趣。但我真的不太
了解这些人，不知道他们是否真的尝试过这些独立作品，然后再说它们不有趣，也许没有
，这就是重点。像Resogun，我们在PLUS上提供了很长一段时间的免费游玩，但不是每个
PLUS会员都有下载。它是很棒的游戏，而这件事也成为我们必须面对的重要问题。”
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.
新的硬件代表了全新的体验，而当我们习惯从大成本作品去寻找这个体验时，有个愈发强
烈的共识是，这个全新体验会更加的源自其本身。吉田修平与我的讨论是，这个世代全新
体验的来源在于选择上：要玩什么、要怎么玩、要花多少、与谁分享等；或许游戏本身变
化不大，但环绕在它周围的结构已经产生了不可逆的变化。
循着这个概念，PS NOW似乎是SONY再往前一步，提供用户广泛且直接选择的绝佳机会，而
这是任天堂或微软都尚无计画之事。PS NOW在这个月底即将于美加公测，这项云端服务有
机会成为游戏界的Netflix或Spotify；至少，吉田修平表示这是SONY的目标。
"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."
“我们的愿景是把众多的PS游戏带到每个萤幕上，但我们会一步一步来，会投资服务器、
技术、网络延迟与频宽，我们必须先有个开始。”
“Wifi是个挑战。一般来说，我们建议720p要有5mbps，但这是个挑战，特别在某些地区
；不过我们也认为这个随着时间解决，因为基础建设只会愈来愈进步。”
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.
这看来没什么问题，但PS NOW的商业模式仍有个显著且重大的问题－Beta版的订价可以说
是"精神分裂"，有一款一款算的，到依租期订价；最夸张是，租一个游戏几个月比在PS商
店上买数位版还贵。吉田修平表示，PS NOW仍在测试中，而在这个阶段很明显的还有许多
事要做。此外，由于发行商也积极的参与了订价，在此可以合理的怀疑整个产业是否有这样
的信念。
Spotify和Netflix证明了在娱乐串流服务中，有大笔的用户倾向吃到饱的方案，游戏产业
看起来也不太可能会是例外。老实说，市场已经反应了，而吉田修平也坚持认为SONY有在
倾听。
"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."
对于PS NOW是否会采用Netflix的商业模式，吉田修平说到“我们还在研究。我们正试着
在租用外，建立订阅模式，或是在订阅外，建立租用模式。即便在美加登场后，它仍是测
试版，因为我们期望它能持续改变，人们太快就跳到结论去了。”
“我看到有些人说PS NOW还未上场就挂了。嗯，这也是意见回馈，PS NOW是我们的长期策
略，所有的回馈都是重要的。”他再次摇著头，笑一笑。