Network now...FEATURE
The Best Of 2000-2009
Subscribers are now receiving their copies of E210, in which we recognise a decade of endeavour in videogames. For the full account of why we've made these picks, it's all in the issue, which hits UK newsstands December 22.
The years 2000 to 2009 lend themselves unusually well to breaking into a discrete and emblematic chunk. It was the decade that finally separated the old firm of Nintendo and Sega, as one took the blows and reinvented itself beyond recognition, while the other withdrew from hardware entirely and became a thirdparty developer. It was the decade that seemed to belong to Sony, with its PS2 smashing all-comers, before hubris caused a face-first fall from grace from which the company is still in the process of recovering. It was the decade that saw Microsoft making its debut with Xbox, a name that encapsulated its gruesome aesthetics and sheer grunt, a console that lost possibly billions of dollars but gave the company a crucial foothold in the market. And it was the decade of the PC, as technologies like Flash and companies like Playfish and PopCap made developers and gamers out of anyone.
The years 2000 to 2009 were when gaming finally became ‘normal’. The stereotype of anti-social nerds is still dragged out every so often, but nowadays it tends to be with more affection. From Diner Dash to Halo to Ico to Peggle to Wii Sports to World Of WarCraft, the common theme here is this: everyone’s playing. Your grandmother having a lash at Wii bowling isn’t just funny, it’s profound. Gaming is now the hobby of countless hundreds of millions the world over, and the revolution feels good.
The following gongs credit the companies, games, people and hardware that made the decade what it was (oh, and feature some of the worst bits about it, too). Let us know what you think of our take on these ten years, and make sure you read exactly why we've made these decisions. The next decade certainly has a hell of a lot to live up to.
Game Of The Decade
World Of WarCraft
Halo
Half-Life 2
Grand Theft Auto III
Resident Evil 4
Hardware Of The Decade
PlayStation 2
Nintendo DS
Nintendo Wii
Developer Of The Decade
Nintendo
Rockstar North
Valve
Publisher Of The Decade
Nintendo
Sony Computer Entertainment
Activision Blizzard
Person Of The Decade
Satoru Iwata
Shinji Mikami
J Allard
Failure Of The Decade
Xbox 360 RROD
PlayStation 3 marketing
Gizmondo
Contact Us / About Us / Advertise With Us /
Subscribe To Edge Magazine
Corrections / Terms & Conditions / Privacy Policy
Copyright 2006 - 2010 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court 30 Monmouth Street Bath, UK BA1 2BW
England and Wales company registration number 2008885
I agree with the article that the most significant change in gaming this decade is bringing it mass accessability to a more diverse userbase. That probably coupled with the onset of online multiplayer. But do these elements match up with the game selection?
No arguments with WoW in terms of changing the industry from an online gaming perspective.
GTA 3 for it's penetration to popular culture? Ok
For me Res 4 and Half life are just great games though.
Given it's penetration into popular culture and online I would have thought COD4 would have been in the top 5 and prob ahead of Halo.
Maybe Wii sports/brain training should have been inlcuded because of their inlusiveness across generations.
I think with the Halo ahead of COD4 arguement, you have to look at what the FPS was before Halo and before COD4.
Halo really made FPS titles a viable genre on home consoles, and competitive evn to PC Fps's. Halo established a control system still not surpassed today, not to mention its incredible multiplayer.
Cod4 is an superb game, which im sure anyone on here would agree, however it refined the genre rather than re-inventing it.
To me it has as much justification to be in the top 5 as Res 4, which again refined rather than re-invented a genre. After that it just comes down to taste i guess, personally resi 4 blew me away so i would pick that.
Am I the only one who thinks World of Warcraft is unspeakably boring?
I played the 10 day free trial which I thought was monotonous and soporific
However conceptually I do agree that it is the biggest leap of the decade
Am I the only one who thinks World of Warcraft is unspeakably boring?
I played the 10 day free trial which I thought was monotonous and soporific
However conceptually I do agree that it is the biggest leap of the decade
It's alot more fun when you play with a bunch of friends. You don't really get that in the 10 day trials. It is boring without friends to play with, though.
PS3 Marketing? I would've merely said PS3 price, plain and simple. Even with the bad marketing, it would've performed fine if it launched at $300 or $400 instead.
RRoD is pretty damn terrible though. Damn you M$...
Hmmm let's see...
Game of the decade, agreed completely. WOW has outshone the online experience of all 3 current gen consoles on it's own. That is some feat. Playstation 2, again no argument for hardware there. Then it starts getting fuzzy....
Developer of the decade, Nintendo? That pretty much accuses the previous category of being a liar. The Playstation brand came to ascend to it's incredible height by learning from Nintendo's arrogant and idiotic mistakes. And Nintendo, like Apple do both software and hardware as a complete package. So no cigar there boys.
Publisher of the decade should be who is best at publishing games, not who delivers games you like personally. So where is EA? As much as I hate their product, they are better than anyone alive at publishing games. The person of the decade is a 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder' situation. Seriously how do you compile the variables to make that call?
The last one, sorry but you made a bad judgement there. Yes the RROD was the hardware failure of gaming history, but the brand was not damaged that much by the fiasco. They are still in second place. However, for Sony to go from the unbeatable achievement of the Playstation 2 to dead last in one generation, beggars not just belief, but utter astonishment. This would be analogous to the United States in a single presidency going from current status to being poorer that Peru. (no offence to Peru btw)
"This would be analogous to the United States in a single presidency going from its..." status before its election on GW Bush for a second presidency to its status after the economic crash that caused many American owned and run banks and insureers to go bust, invading 2 countries on very questionable grounds and still not attempting to deal with its carbon emittions in the time scale required but rather telling 3rd world countries they must grow in a green and sustainable way whilst still importing more oil daily than is used in Europe and still drilling for more on land.
I for one think that is a better analogy
Well the Playstation itself doesn't develop games Sony does. And if I'm not mistaken Sony most of the time has 2nd party studios doing the development not themselves. Most of the most famous Playstation games over the last ten years were not developed by Sony themselves. FF series (SquareEnix), Gran Turismo (Polyphony), GTAIII (Rockstar), Ico (Team Ico), Resistance Series (Insomniac), Uncharted Series (Naughty Dog), just to name some of their most famous console exclusives. God of War did come out of Sony in-house though and I'm not sure if Team Ico is another branch of Sony in-house.
On the other hand Nintendo does develop most of their own games and over the last ten years have made some of the highest rated titles as well as the most commercially successful. I think that's why Nintendo got developer of the decade and not the Playstation 2.
Hey Nick, how's tricks? Merry Christmas.
No bearing on anything above and sorry to be a pain, but just gonna point this out as everybody seems to get confused by this.
Polyphony Digital, Team Ico and Naughty Dog from your list are all 1st Party studios. Sony owns substantially more 1st party studios than MS or the Big N.
Insomniac is a 2nd party dev, but they have worked with Sony for a long time, and the other 2 on your list are 3rd party studios!
They don't have to have the word Sony in the title to be a 1st party.
1st Party Studios.
=============
Japan Studio
Team ICO
Polyphony Digital
Naughty Dog
Santa Monica Studio
San Diego Studio
Sony Bend
Sony Online Entertainment
Incognito Entertainment
Zipper Interactive
London Studio
Studio Cambridge
Studio Liverpool
Evolution Studios
Bigbig Studios
Guerilla Games
They are also partenered with "around" 21 2nd party studios.
Well that is an impressive in-house list. I stand corrected. And Merry Christmas to you, too.
Naughty Dog is a subsidary of SCE, and so is 1st party.
The fact that so many companies have an informal relationship with Sony says something great about its ablilty to work and foster outside talent without having to buy out the company (we are looking at you Microsoft). So many 2nd party studios continuing to work with Sony must say something about the company's ethos to the industry. I don't think Sony had people "doing the development" more the people saw a successful company with 2 successful platforms to develop on (PS1 and PS2).
There's nothing wrong with buying 1st party studios as long as you nurture and look after them, that's where the true exclusives come from.
Buying them up, letting them do 1 game and then closing them down isn't right though. *Now we're looking at you MS*
Sorry, couldn't resist! :)
To be fair, Ensemble, Rare, Lion Head and Turn 10 each produced far more than one game (and the studio that used to do the flight sims - I forget it's name). It is true, however, that MS made a major shift in it's strategy the past 2 years away from owning studios and veering heavily towards relying on third parties. They'll likely keep this core of 1st party studios (and 343 studios), but given the success of their third-party strategy, I don't expect to see MS buy or develop additional first party studios anytime soon.
There are some very tangible benefits to a third-party strategy as the publisher (MS in this case) can use financial incentives/penalties to ensure that the games develop at a steady pace - something Sony's 1st party studios are seriously lacking. Sony needs to crack down on studios like Guerilla and Polyphony and let them know that 4-5 years to make a game is unacceptable - their needs to be more accountability.
This so called strategy of 'cracking the whip' hasn't really worked with Alan Wake producers Remedy, has it? (and that's not a statement of if the game is going to be good or not) I'm not a business man but I would imagine that you have more control over your product, how it's produced and time scales when you actually own the means of production.
Sure you can introduce financial incentives to third parties for meeting deadlines but you can also do that with first and second party studios. I would also think that the benefit to first party studios is ownership by one of the big three allows them to get on with the business of making games and some of the best games this gen and last gen have been produced by developers that are first party owned. Viva Pinata, Uncharted 2, Shadow of the Colossus and the Halo franchise have all been held up as fine examples of top quality gaming and are from first party studios (or in the case of Halo were for some of the titles).
I think at the end of the day it really doesn't matter (so much to me anyway) how long a developer takes to produce a game, if it's a good quality product I'll play it. I do realise however that the broader picture is that many people look at development cycles and the game produced and make a judgement based on a "is that all we've been waiting for" mentality. Something I fear may well dog the likes of GT5 and Alan Wake and prevent them from being properly appreciated without their development times hanging over their heads.
I'd think the greater danger is rushing a game before its ready, I wonder if the likes of Mass Effect 1 or Too Human could have done with a little longer in development?
My post was meant to be a joke. I knew I shouldn't have posted that.
But yeah, you're right MS are perfect, they could never do any wrong. Those studios totally should have known better than to release good games!
Oh yeah, obviosuly Sony know nothing about publishing games, they're really going to regret having so many first parties and Polyphony digital should know better than spending so much time perfecting their games etc etc.
BTW. On a more serious note I'm pretty sure Rare, Lion Head and Turn 10 haven't been closed so I fail to see what they have to do with anything... Did I say that MS buys and then closes EVERY deveoper they aquire?
The downside to 3rd party developers is they're not always/usually permentantly "exclusive".
Name me some recent 3rd party exclusives... (By exclusive I mean only available on 360 or PS3, if it's out on PC, it's hardly exclusive).
No offense intended, Andy. I know you meant that as a light-hearted jab, but thought it did illustrate an interesting shift in MS' publishing strategy and I just wanted to expand upon that.
No worries bud. Sorry if that seemed a bit much, was having a bad day at work!
It's snowing really, really heavily now though which has cheered me up no end. Shame I've got a long drive home, good reason to work from home tomorrow though. :)
I can certainly empathize. We had 15 inches yesterday and my driveway is over 20 yards long - I feel like I'm 80 today after all that shoveling (no snow blower). :(
15 inches! Wow! We don't get anywhere near that much this it the first time I can remeber snow before XMas in about 15 years!
Shame the council seem to have only enough grit to do the roads once! -lol-
You guys are lucky, I'm in the Phoenix area and we get no snow, ever.
Yeah but you get nice hot summers and I wouldn't say no to winters that range from 18-22 Celsius. Thanks you very much!
EA?Sorry but i think we're talking about quality not quantity...besides they're losing serious money this gen...
Hum, I'm not so sure of myself here but isn't there a mistake in Shinji Mikami's picture? Isn't that Masachika Kawata, the RE5 producer? ...
Game Of The Decade
World Of WarCraft
Halo
Half-Life 2
Grand Theft Auto III
Resident Evil 4
Jesus, there's only one good game here.
Jack, I think you meant to say you didn't agree with their selections and not, "There's only one good game." Because although I also don't personally love all those games I've played all of them but one and can't honestly say any of them were "not good". You must have a finer taste in genres or are more into the independent scene (which is fine of course). I think we can all agree that all the games mentioned had a significant impact on gaming and gaming culture over the last ten years. Of course there are games potentially more deserving, but that's the nature of the beast when it comes to lists.
.........is a retarded comment.
Those games picked by Edge do certainly not match my taste or preferences either, but I can accept that all of them are of outstanding quality and hence the above comment is just stupid. Nevertheless, I am amazed Edge picked games from genres so narrowly and in a way hardcore. In my humble opinion, there should be at least one more mainstream game on that list, as titles like WiiSports, WiiFit, RockBand, GuitarHero and BrainAge certainly left a huge mark on the industry during this particular decade. And because handheld gaming really became the dominant form of gaming over the last few years, NewSuperMarioBros DS and co should have made the list...
I'm fairly certain that Edge picked games that were not necessarily "the best" but part of the whole "cultural phenomena" (Halo spawned Halo 2 and Halo 3, along with many camp-outs), World of Warcraft is ... well, it's Wow. Half-Life 2 was what launched Steam from a hated serverbrowser/patch delivery software to a content delivery platform, GTAIII lead to Vice City, San Andreas (and Hot Coffee), as well as GTAIV, but it was GTA III that did the whole "sandbox game" so well.
I can't justify Resident Evil 4 as being a game of the decade, but I don't know anything about it really. COD4 or maybe even Starcraft (though it was released in '98 it is still played competitively to this day and has influenced RTSs still, if you wanted to nit-pick WarIII would be a better replacement for it, it did the whole DOTA thing along with the tower-defence mods), perhaps even Bejewled or one of the first PopCap games that went huge.
/my 2c
I would say resi 4 is one of those games that is just, well, right.
For what it is and when it was made it is as close as you can get to perfection, in some peoples eyes. (myself included).
To pay it for the first time now is to not do it justice, as they say in the mag it is a game of its time that just felt so brilliant. Its hard to describe. If i was to marry a game Resi 4 would prob be top of the list, its not the super model trophy bride, or the stepford wife, just lovely (and i bet capcom would never have heard t decribed as that)
Has everybody in print media become retarded when it comes to basic math? First it was Entertainment Weekly (although they already were retarded), then TIME magazine (at least one would think they'd know) and now Edge? The current decade started in 2001, not 2000. The decade isn't over until 0:00:00 on 01/01/10. There was not a year zero. The easy way to explain it is to count out loud to ten. I start with "one." If you start with "zero," you are either retarded, or work in the print media.
The sad thing is, that I'm sure somebody in editing knew this, and the cover story could have put "past ten years" in place of "decade."
On to the topic, cianchristopher said: "It was the decade that seemed to belong to Sony, with its PS2 smashing all-comers, before hubris caused a face-first fall from grace from which the company is still in the process of recovering."
I don't think it was just hubris. No console maker has ever had a triple play when it comes to generations, in any territory, when there was meaningful competition.
This is from a North American point of view. Atari had Home Pong and the Atari VCS (a.k.a Atari 2600) then the disastrous Atari 5200. Nintendo had the NES and Super NES and then came the N64. Sony had the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 and then history snuck in with the PS3. Now these days, Nintendo is back on top with the Wii.
Your argument only really works if you're pedantically obsessed with counting integer decades from the year Christ was supposedly born. But it's perfectly fine to offset the decade counting by one year to make things easier for ourselves - after all time existed before that year and what does it really matter if we count decades from one year earlier - we don't gain any information or simplicity by being pedantic over it. So everyone KNOWS that, strictly speaking, the decade of the noughties runs from 2001-2010, but everyone CHOOSES to not be unnecessarily pedantic, and to make things easier for themselves, by not worrying about counting integer decades from year 1 AD over 2000 years ago - we simply say that the decades run from ***0-***9 - it just reads nicer.
Ha ha!! You be sure of your facts before you lecture others. Lessons learnt hey/
You lost me at "The current decade started in 2001".
Ten years is a decade no matter when it starts. That's why I can say: "see you in a decade!" (hint: I don't mean next year).
Huh? Sorry bud but this decade began in 2000 not 2001. Maybe you're good at math but you don't understand dates.
Its done by the third number in the year. e.g 19*9*3
Believe it or not, and this will come as a shock to you but 1990 wasn't in the 80s, much like the 1930s didn't contain any years called 1940.
and no there was no 'year zero' because the calender we use was created around a rough estimate of when Jesus was born, hundreds of years after the supposed event. Put it this way when a baby is born, they aren't born as 1 year olds there are these other things called months, weeks and days.
Why is it that the magazine seems so sensible while the website is Xbox Fanboy Central?
Hmm...Dubs it seems you're just trying to elicit responses from 360 owners, a trap I fear I fell into. You've lost the small amount of credibility you had left (in my eyes anyway) with this comment. Only 3 things "Xbox" related made their list with one of them being a negative. Only 1 title made the list that was a proper Xbox game (HL2 and GTAIII were far more well-known as PC and PS2 titles respectively). J Allard made the list as a person of the Decade being largely involved with the creation of the Xbox brand which outdid Nintendo in its first iteration and is currently comfortably ahead of the PS3 world-wide with its second I think that's more than deserving recognition. How you see that as, "Fanboy Central' is beyond rational and reasonable thinking.
I think you misunderstood me: I was lauding the above-summarized magazine-derived list while lamenting (for the umpteenth time) the day-to-day slant of the (non-magazine-derived content on the) website.
I don't subscribe to the magazine (maybe I should?) but based on what gets reprinted/excerpted here, it and the website really come across as two different entities with two different editorial agendas. Is the magazine's tagline "the global game industry network," too? If not, maybe that explains the difference...?
(I also think your J Allard worship is horribly ill-considered but that's a whole other rant. At least he didn't win that category!)
Got it. My bad. Now I look like an ass-hole.
J Allard worship? I just was trying to justify EDGE listing him as one of the most important persons (people?). I was more or less playing the devils advocate. I could care less about J Allard.
Glad to hear it!
Spot on DubsTF, the discrepancy between the quality of the magazine and the irrational rantings of fanboys (of both the Xbox and PS3, and even Wii) on the website is quite startling. I can only assume that the majority of people who post on here are not the same sort of people who would actually buy and read the magazine - they probably read the "tabloid" equivalent magazines/websites.
Some people would say that you've got you're wires crossed. Many people have slated EDGE for being the voice of MS; EDGE's Killzone 2 review was one of the biggest reasons for this shift in perception, well that and the fact that their readership thought that the majority of their review scores swayed toward MS (what I mean is that EDGE scored Xbox games higher than PS3 titles, however this myth was dispelled earlier in the year)
Many people have slated EDGE for being the voice of MS
You're talking about the magazine?
"It was the decade that seemed to belong to Sony, with its PS2 smashing all-comers, before hubris caused a face-first fall from grace from which the company is still in the process of recovering."
Hahahaha!!! I'm quite happy with my PS3, but I agree with you - the way they've blundered about these last three years has been unlike anything I've seen from them before...
Poor Sony, they just can't get it right this time! Home, Lair, Haze, piss-poor ports, no rumble then rumble, "the next gen starts when we say so", the sloppy start of PSN, Resistance as a "Halo killer", no GTA IV DLC, FFXIII on Xbox 360, the state of Bayonetta on PS3, etc. etc. etc.
But despite these major setbacks, it's still a nice little machine - it would have benefitted greatly from a serious restraint on the hype...
So far I only have a 360 and have yet to buy a PS3, not because I didn't want to but because of its initial price and arrogance at first, sorry master Kutaragi I am very lazy and I couldn't gather the strength of working extra hours to buy it :( now with the slim and the new price point is gonna be a very Sony Christmas at my HOME... get it?? Now I can finally catch on some awesome titles like LBP, MGS4, Kill Zone 2, play God of War in HD and so much more. I always thought the PS3 is a great and amazing console but the marketing at Sony kept me at bay for quite a while.
And who could forget the "giant enemy crabs"? That was a classic. I loved that one. It should have got a mention...