Peter Skerritt's blog

Although we're officially into 2011 now, it's not quite time to turn the page when it comes to sales numbers as figures for December 2010 should be trickling out over the coming week or two.

Some of you may view this as a cop-out, but rather than do a fairly common Game of the Year piece, I'm doing things a little differently. I'm going to run down a list of great games that I played this year. I'm not going to say that one was necessarily better than the other, but I hope this gives you some idea of the games that got me to believe that 2010 was a very good year for video game software.

Since NPD stopped sharing its domestic sales figures with the press (and therefore the general public), it's very difficult to pinpoint numbers and interpret larger trends. Over at NeoGAF, fellow armchair analysts have taken the time to sift through press releases and have posted what available information that's been released regarding November's sales numbers. I'm going to borrow from that data to forge a bit of analysis.

As we talk about almost every year at this time, the 2010 Video Game Awards are in the books… and I didn't watch it. After having watched the show for the last two years, and with my karaoke job coinciding with the event, I was fine trying to follow the event via Twitter. I didn't miss much.

EA Games' Frank Gibeau is quoted in the piece as saying that single-player games are "finished". It's funny to me how the desire to play a game alone is now perceived by the industry to be some sort of cancer that needs curing. It's obvious that the single-player model doesn't appeal to the industry any longer because it's far easier to produce DLC for multiplayer functionality.

It was 10 years ago this past week that the PlayStation 2 launched at retail to long lines, tight supply, and excited consumers.

I don't get it, 2K Games and Gearbox Software. I spent $60 on your Game of the Year Edition of Borderlands for the PlayStation 3. I was happy to double-dip on Borderlands, given how much I enjoyed it on the Xbox 360. In fact, according to my Raptr data, I spent 55 hours playing it. I was looking forward to playing it again on my PlayStation 3, with all of the downloadable content (DLC) this time. I was a little concerned when I opened the case and saw a DLC voucher inside; after all, a Blu-ray disc has a ton of room… so including the extra 4.41GB of DLC on the disc should not have been a problem. Still, I was fine with letting the download go while I slept overnight.

As I write this entry in the wee hours of Monday morning, there are literally dozens of reviews of Medal of Honor that have been completed and will not be read for another day or so. Meanwhile, many more consumers are looking for some sort of indication as to whether Medal of Honor is going to be worth spending $60 on… and they won't find out with much notice before the game's release. See, Electronic Arts is holding reviews hostage by way of embargoes—which basically seal away all reviews until a specified time of the publisher's choosing.

Now that we're into the key final quarter of 2010, it's time to gaze into the Consoleation Crystal Ball and make some predictions as to how key hardware and software players will perform.

May I ask what this action is supposed to accomplish when parents already have shown signs that they don't care and when there's a decent level of ratings enforcement and ID checks already in place? Is it a retailer's responsibility to shield children from games that may or may not be right for them?