Where are the 360’s ICO and Shadow of the Colossus?

With the first Xbox and now the Xbox 360 being well received, one question has been nagging me and that is “Where is Microsoft’s Ico?”

There are two games on the Sony Playstation 2 which are truly unique in game play, scope and art direction. Both of these games are created by Sony themselves so we know unless pigs fly, we will never see them on a Microsoft platform.  These games are Shadow of the Colossus, a game where your goal is to climb, jump and swing your way to key points on colossus so you can kill them and Ico, a game where you must escape from a castle while guiding a lost girl. So the question begs, with all of the talented game developers out in the world, why do we not have a similar title or two on our Xbox’s?

My theory is simple, game developers have been very lazy for the last decade with zero real innovation across all genres except for a few cases when brave publishers allowed a unique vision to move forward. I for one love both games ranking both in the top 10 of all Playstation 2 games, with Shadow of the Colossus being one of my favorite games ever.

Is it not time for publishers to take bigger chances and stop churning out a FPS (First Person Shooter) clone followed by a FPS clone? UBI Soft almost won my heart with releasing Beyond Good and Evil, one of the best action platformer games ever and it had a talking pig. Majesco released Psychonauts another platformer which was unique and had a sense of humor rarely ever seen in a video game. But they both tanked in sales due to many reasons, being released along side big name games, lack of marketing and people not willing to give a game a try if it doesn’t have Sam Fisher or a machine gun in it.

Both of these games were great, but they were not the Ico or Colossus for the Xbox, but are part of the problem with the gaming industry and there is a very simple solution.

The amazing Xbox Live Marketplace, developers have a huge opportunity, a chance to get a demo game out to more people and start the buzz early. Imagine how Psychonauts would have sold if a demo would have been available for the original Xbox? We might see a sequel to it for the next generation, but the chance of that is less then none now.

I hope that with online gaming services such as Xbox Live Marketplace and the ease of development with XNA Studio, we will see more unique games coming, with the flair of Ico and jaw dropping game play of Colossus more often now. Hopefully when the next Xbox is released we wont be wondering where the great games have gone and wonder where their sequels are.