There's a sequel to Viva Pinata coming, which, at this point, is more licensed material for the animated series than anything else. Since its release in November 2006 (and it was hyped as a BIG release, even though Bill Gates would later refer to the game as something they made for young girls), it's only sold a million copies. For comparison, Animal Crossing, perhaps its nearest conceptual cousin, sold almost 3 million on GameCube and over 9 million on DS. Although selling a million on the 360 puts you in the company of Dead Rising, Saints Row and Crackdown, (according to Wikipedia), so it's not like there's nobody asking for a sequel.
No, what pissed me off today was this section of the Viva Sequela one sheet:
A never-before-seen feature called Pinata Vision allows players to plug in an Xbox LIVE Vision camera and interact with the game through the use of printed cards that feature a unique barcode. With Pinata Vision, gamers can simply flash a pinata card up to the Vision camera, and the content will drop directly into the game.
Seriously you guys? "never before seen"? Never before seen on the Xbox 360 I suppose. Because I've been playing Eye of Judgment for a while now. Where I flash cards at the PlayStation Eye and content drops directly into the game.
Oh, oh, oh, and a couple years ago? I was scanning barcode cards on my Nintendo eReader back on the GBA. That would drop content directly into Animal Crossing, Super Mario Advance 4, and Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire. Ho ho, those were the days.
But I get that it's PR craptalk. I get that companies lie. What totally galls me is that people hated the eReader. Utterly despised the poor thing. "Nintendo is making us buy cards to unlock content that's already in the game!" "I'm paying $30 for Mario Advance 4, and I'm not getting all the levels on the cart unless I pay another $5 for a pack of lousy trading cards!" Sure, I defended it. I bought the cards. In some cases (like Mario Advance 4), the cards genuinely did add content not found on the original game pak. In others (like Animal Crossing), you were simply receiving items that were in the game but difficult to find. And in the case of the super-sweet Pokemon-e TCG expansion sets, scanning the cards unearthed a whole new dimension of mini-games, pokedex data, even secret card attacks. I'm still upset that didn't take off.
People hated the eReader. To the critical eye, it was a sign that an ailing Nintendo was desperately grasping for a new revenue stream... that of trading cards. People said it was a foul portent of micropayments, and developers holding back on content so they can charge a premium for it in card form. It would unbalance online modes (or would have, if Nintendo 2003 had any kind of online presence).
Does any of that apply to the 360? Or is it all OK now... after all, we've had a couple years to warm up to Horse Armor-style micropayments and pay-to-play levels that are indeed secretly locked on the disc.
Anyway, does anybody harbor any illusions that people will embrace this scheme in the year 2008? Hardcore Pinata-heads (like I was with AC and Pokemon) will love it, I guess. If Nintendo could not make this idea work with Pokemon, if Sony is pretty much failing with Eye of Judgment, Microsoft is not going to magically strike gold with Viva Pinata. But the job of press releases is to make you think they are.
