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The only claim I made is that the DS sales got a huge boost from Nintendogs (which sells out as fast as the Labrador & Friends version ships). The data is very clear on that in Japan, press releases say the same is true for North America and Europe.

There's no reliable data on the PSP or DS for NA (NPD stopped the public release of these figures), there are quite detailled graphs for Japan, though:

In hardware sales, there was again little change, with the Nintendo DS enjoying a 40.72 percent market share with 48,342 unit sales. The PSP was next with a 26.18 percent market share and 31,078 unit sales http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?st ory=7231
complete chart: http://www.codepoetsolutions.com/myth/dsvspsp.html

The only claim I made is that the DS sales got a huge boost from Nintendogs (which sells out as fast as the Labrador & Friends version ships). The data is very clear on that in Japan, press releases say the same is true for North America and Europe.

There's no reliable data on the PSP or DS for NA (NPD stopped the public release of these figures), there are quite detailled graphs for Japan, though:

In hardware sales, there was again little change, with the Nintendo DS enjoying a 40.72 percent market share with 48,342 unit sales. The PSP was next with a 26.18 percent market share and 31,078 unit sales http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?st ory=7231
complete chart: http://www.codepoetsolutions.com/myth/dsvspsp.html

Read this one instead: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?st ory=7388

A Banc of America analyst has found November 2005 game sales to be "surprisingly bad" in this report: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?st ory=7345. I think it'll be interesting to see how the new consoles fare in the current economic climate. Iraq, layoffs, the impressive American response to the tsunami, and Katrina hurt personal incomes a LOT. The current administration's benefit-cutting (whatever your political inclinations) also reduces the wiggle room in consumers' pockets.

Plus, the new consoles have exponentially less to offer than the Xbox and the PS2. I don't want to ramble about it here, but you can find my specious argument at this KQED blog.

It's a bad time to be launching a console. On the other hand, people do want their circuses when they are surrounded by adversity and death.

We feel that the emotions involved with losing something of value is just as important as gaining something of value, it makes a very immersive experience. There have to be lows to make the highs more enjoyable. PvP allows us to achieve that.

The Guiding Hand players (and even the scammers from the earlier escapade aka "The Great Scam"--the long write-up by one of the participants in that was very good reading) were doing what the developers intended, within the framework of the game. The Guiding Hand players were definitely not griefers as they continued to play. The "Great Scam" duo may border on griefers, since at least one of them gave away the profits and left the game.

the PS2 lags pretty significantly in its technology (long loading times, framerates, jaggies).

I will admit very few people have put it all together but the PS2 has prove to be very compenent in all three areas you mentioned. JAK 2 and 3 showed that load times where unecessary, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus and God of War shows that Jagies are no issue (oh and they have no load time issues), God of war showed slow down is a thing of the past , and GT4 showed that when you can sustain 1080i then frame rate is really insignificant. It's interesting that PS2 games get better while XBox games stay pretty so so. Most Xbox fans will tell you that beyond a few minor things like downloadable content, Halo is superior to Halo 2. Oh and by the way does XBox even have any games other than the Halo series? I just realize I can't recall any other Xbox games that get the kind of talk that Katamari Damashi, Disgae or the obvious Final Fantasy get.

So lets try and nip the fan boy thing in the bud once and for all.
Game Critic Awards for 2005 show not one XBox exclusive winner, where ps2 has 2 and heck ps3 grabs 2.
We can make it 2 to 2 at Game Developers Choice awards, and that's including one given to xbox the the I love bees thing.
Over at spike tv Xbox gets the lead with two exclusives where PS2 gets none.
Ign in 2004 (because 2005 is not out yet) give 5 best ofs to PS2 and 2 to Xbox.
I would have put of Gamespots best of but with the buzz I have going it was to hard to calculate.

I guess if you are interested in spending $400 (I'm talking earlier adopters) for the one game worth playing on XBox, then that's fine with me.. I mean there were a few people that shelled out over $200 a pop for neo-geo games.

Judge Steeh seems more than just a bit skeptical, IMO. Here are some of his words: "the Act will likely have a chilling effect on adults' expression, as well as expression that is fully protected as to minors. The response to the Act's threat of criminal penalties will likely be responded to by self-censoring by game creators, distributors and retailers, including ultimately pulling 'T' and 'M'-rated games off stores shelves altogether." There's a very good article at Gamasutra on this.

Not exactly same article but has pictures too:

http://gamasutra.com/features/20050712/sheffield_0 1.shtml

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20040211/olsen_0 1.shtml

I see alot of people writing off the data in the article based on their own anecdotal evidence or their dislike of IGN. If anyone would take the time to research other sources of data on game industry salaries, you would see that the figures quoted in the article are reasonably correct. As of the 2003 Gamasutra salary survery(registration required), a programmer with less than 2 years experience made an average of $59,400. The average design salary with a similar level of experience as $41,652. An artist out of school could expect around $40,573.

If I remember correctly, the 2004 survey hovered around the same figures, with the average design salary falling a bit.

And while we're at it, most people seem to take their opinions on the hours we work from ea_spouse, rather than surveys and data. Only 35% of those surveyed by the IDGA reported working a crunch time, and a mere 13% work over 80 hours a week during crunch time.

So while yes, there is room for improvement in the hours that we put in, there are factors invovled which are purely anecdotal and immeasurable. The primary one for me being the I love what I do, and I often look forward to coming to work, which is something that I've never experienced in any other industry I've worked in.

A 2003 copy of the survey the IGN article refers to:

2003 Game Development Salary Survey
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20040211/olsen_0 1.shtml (free registration required)

This one is based on data for U.S. developers. All main positions are covered from entry to "director" for programming/engineering, production, art, etc. They do this annually around Fall and report in Winter/Spring of the next year. IMO, one of the regularly anticipated features each year just to see how you'd stack up against folks in/among the industry.

With some digging around I'm sure someone can find the 2004 survey.

Well bad link but check this...
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?st ory=6864

For every bad link, there's one good story :) And this is one of the original gods of gaming.

Gamasutra has more details on the Nintendo US WiFi plans. "As for software, the American announcement of Wi-Fi for the DS specifically mentioned Mario Kart DS, for which four players at a time can race over Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, and which launches November 14, in addition to Animal Crossing: Wild World, in which players can travel to other players' towns or invite up to three other players to visit their own towns, interacting and playing together simultaneously in one town - this title launches December 5th. "

He has a problem with secondhand games, and I see his point - support and infrastructure costs going to customers who haven't paid the developer.

On the other hand, though, he's not going to have any luck convincing me or anyone else that we can't resell something we've bought - games, books, music, teddy bears - no one will accept limits on the First Sale doctrine.

But, there is a way out. An article recently on Gamasutra here talked about how the pricing strategy for games and the entire sales model is based on an old, old way of doing things that's far more suited to cabbages and sealing wax than digital information. If game companies got over the retail model, and instead did interesting things like web-based delivery, episodic content, subscription-based models, and so forth, they would solve the secondhand-games problem and make more money to boot. This becomes more possible as game consoles and even handheld systems gain Internet connectivity.

Steam (as badly implemented as it is) is a glipse of the future.

"With DVD, ticket sales down, Sony's portable might not be much of a savior."

Seriously, who actually wants to watch a movie on a tiny screen?

Now that we've established that Dan doesn't know where to look for jobs in the game industry, let's talk about some of the other things he doesn't seem to get.

For one thing, the "programs" Dan is talking about are primarily things that I've discovered through years of experience (for example, real world Database Design), or things that I've picked up in a weekend over the course of my employment (for example, a second 'Big' language, a scripting/'agile' language or two, XML (and why it's actually a pretty terrible file format), and common protocols).

But they all share one thing in common: the courses that Dan are suggesting would be great at somewhere like ITT Technical Institute, or at Devry "University," but they do not belong at an academic institution--by and large. The things he is proposing are largely vocational. They'll make for an okay programmer, and probably only a okay programmer in one field. They do not make a well-rounded computer scientist, nor do they help you out when you decide that you don't want to do database design anymore, you want to write commerical shrinkwrap software instead.

My well-rounded CS education has allowed me to run the gamut of employment in computer science related areas. I started out in Telcom, moved to commercial shrinkwrap, wrote several video games for very large video game publishers, and now I design graphics hardware for the market leading graphics chip company.

Which of the courses there in Dan's suggested curriculum are going to allow me to do all of that? I'll give you a hint; they aren't there.

Without advanced mathematics (Calc II, Linear Algebra), I would've never been able to do graphics programming, which would've kept me out of the commercial shrinkwrap business (where I did image editing software). It would've further kept me from doing 3D grapihcs applications, which would've kept me out of the game industry as well as my current position. Without Advanced Data Structures, and Automata theory, I would've been unable to write code that was efficient enough for the high performance needs of the games I worked on.

In short (too late), Dan's proposed course load (of bullshit) would lead you to be a moderately acceptable programmer. You would be able to make a living, but you would always be one of the first to be laid off. Get a real education from a real institution of higher learning, and bring me good fundamentals. Because for pretty much all junior level positions, it's on-the-job-training. Without good fundamentals you will be unable to learn quickly enough to be of any use to an employer.

We see a lot of evolutions in games, some good, some bad. But, the one thing to think about is where do the money come from ?
The game industry is a business, there are clients who buy goods with earned money. If you don't produce anything who appeals to the ones who have money, you are then a dead company
The problem, as stated in this article about interstitial gamer http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050809/eilers_ 01.shtml is the gap between the people who buy games and the people who evaluates games (and later write articles).
I was an hardcore gamer, but now, if I can play 3 hours during the week, I consider myself happy (and I don't have a kid yet !).
Random difficulty, sparse savepoint, limited continue are just a mean of frustration. Think about one of the greatest game ever : Monkey Island. You can save when you want, you cannot die (unless you really want it, but you have been warned) but it is challenging and fun The real difficult game is the one who is challeging you and it is not about limited continues but about player profiling, configuration and choice. The player shouldn't have to learn difficult combination or replay the level 42 times if he don't want too (or don't have the time to).
Another reference :
Games Are supposed to be fun ? http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/20/ 2032203&tid=10

Exactly. The author seems to forget that games are meant to be fun, not frustrating. A game can be challenging without having to be frustratingly difficult purely because it requires some action to be performed with perfect accuracy - it's the essence of good game making. There's an far better article about the subject on Gamasutra.

By the way, read this:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050815/sheffie ld_01.shtml
And play this:
http://agtp.romhack.net/doukutsu.html

Steve Purcell is not giving up hope, so we definitely shouldn't! It's a month-old link, but I noticed it a few minutes ago on TTG's site.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?st ory=6021

Here are the last two paragraphs, bold emphases mine for those who don't want to read through the whole article.

Regarding the recent kerfuffle over a new Sam & Max title in development at LucasArts but subsequently cancelled, Purcell is relatively sanguine: "While at Pixar I was consulting on Sam & Max 2 after hours. I got word that it was cancelled from the team but the subsequent fan backlash was an unexpected side effect. Thirty thousand people signed the online petition protesting the decision. I had no idea there had been that level of anticipation for the game."

That would seem to bode well. I'm sure that if he had gotten no response he would have just assumed "Well, I guess no one is interested." (I hope that that I didn't just do a TripMaster Monkey, inane summarization there. Immense apologies if I did.)

Finally, Steve concludes his comments with equivocation about whether his involvement in the game industry is completely behind him: "Would I get back into games? Sure. The [Sam & Max] license is back in in my hands now so we'll see what happens in the near future."

Oh, sweetness!

They have announced the price drop already. DS will be USD129.99 now.

Sony posted a loss in this past quarter (the first quarter in this fiscal year) and cut their projected full fiscal year profit by... get this... 87.5%.

To quote the Bloomberg article:

The Tokyo-based company said in a statement today that net income will be 10 billion yen this fiscal year, compared with an April forecast of 80 billion yen.

Nintendo, on the other hand, has not cut their full year forcast.

From the Gamasutra article the parent linked to:

Despite the apparently significant downturn in results both the company and independent analysts contacted by news agency Reuters appear unconcerned by the results, with Nintendo's share price falling by only 0.1 percent in initial post- trading. "I think the results came in pretty much as expected," said Yuta Sakurai, senior analyst for Nomura Securities. "This is a seasonally volatile industry and Nintendo's biggest games will come later in the year. They didn't change their full-year forecast, so I'm not worried," he said.

And:

Nintendo officials claim that operating profits for the whole year are expected to rise by 3.1 percent from ¥111.52 billion ($991.73m) last year to ¥115 ($1.02bn) this year.

But of course, no self-respecting, mass media, gaming site is going to report on such fiscal trivia. Nintendo, as always, appeals only to children under 12 and is teh doomed1

1up the FOX News of gaming.

"Nintendo's been on about the overall decline of gaming in Japan for a while now"

I was going to respond and say - well, how come the 10 ten lists in Japan are full of Nintendo games - but then I did some searching...

They are only half-full...

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?st ory=6001

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?st ory=6051

re Shacknews: "Gamasutra points out that while Nintendo is suffering from reduced profits, neither Sony nor Microsoft's Xbox division are currently making any profit."

On the contrary, I disagree with you. If you FORGOT to remove the images from the server that is hosting the website, you could very well be at risk for leaving them on there in the first place. Leaving that media there for a hacker to LINK to, and not forcefully put ON the server, is simple negligence, and negligence is what often gets you FIRED!

However, a server is a lot easier of a problem to fix than 6 million hard copies of video game disks. If the images were on the server and needed removing, changing the links in the code back to where they were and also removing the pictures is relatively harmless, and can be covered up if acted upon quickly.

Rockstar however has put out MILLIONS of copies of GTA:San Andreas which equates to MILLIONS of "Servers" that any one modifier can go into and unlock by changing codes with a patch or cheat device. Leaving harmful material like that in a magnitude such as this, is a DISASTER!

Negligence for the server is one thing as that can be forgiven and fixed quickly. Leaving this content on disks KNOWING that people are going to most likely play around with it again and again is simply naieve if they think no one will find that code.

Rockstar has often drawn the eye of politicians and news reporters alike, and this time there is no escape from persecution because even the game industry agrees that Rockstar has gone too far this time.

Besides, the worst lie they told was in that press release stating that they did not make the code, and then later full out admitting it.

Either way, the news has just come out that they are being sued:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?st ory=6045

This may determine if what they did is considered fraud or not, no?

~Otaku-Man

I have had it up to here with people knocking at Hilary Clinton for her role in the whole Hot Coffee/ESRB thing. What shocks me most are the people who start talking politics here more-so than ethical standards discussions and GAMES! I came here because I was under the impression that this was part of the Slashdot games section, but apparently I've been hoodwinked and led to the politics part. (Wait, I AM in the Politics section?! How did THAT happen!?)

But no matter, as I intend to NOT discuss politics or anything of the like here, but speak as a student who has been studying the game industry in pursuit of a career there as a Creative Director.

What's a Creative Director you ask? This is the person who is considered the BRAINS of the game, the author of a book or director of a movie if you will! The game is considered this person's baby and when the credits role, this person is usually the first one listed. Right now, we have several different parties thrown in here for what's going on with this event, but the Creative Director is not one of them! So who is involved in all this:

The Game Makers:

Take-Two Interactive
Rockstar Games

The Political People:

Hilary Clinton
Jack Thompson
Leland Yee

The Video Game Lobbyists:

ESA (Entertainment Software Association)
ESRB (Entertainment Software Ratings Board)
IGDA (Independent Game Developers Association)
VSDA (Video Software Dealers Association)
IEMA (Interactive Entertainment Merchants Association)

Quite a few more people on the side of games than I bet most of the folks here expected! Not surprised though as they are usually very quiet in regards to their actions and rarely peak on the headlines, if in the news at all!

But they are there, and they have been challenging legislation left and right in regards to censorship and overly strict legislation on video games.

Hot Coffee is not the current fuss that has the attention of these groups.

The current fuss that's going on is the law in Illinois that requires state enforced labels on video games and places a large fine on stores that sell state-considered "Mature" games to minors. This law is slated to go into effect on the first of 2006, but that gives lots of time for the groups to challenge the law, and most likely win!

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?st ory=6018

Already similar laws have been overturned in Washington State, Indiana, and Missouri. The laws have been marked as "Unconstitutional" and violate first amendment rights. Rightly so, since treating video games different from movies, books, comics, and television is a major hypocrisy. So why video games? Because it's the newest media to earn the ire of the government because of its "new-ness" and the lack of knowledge held by people in power.

That's not to say that there are no politicians on the side of video games. Quite a few listen to the ESA, ESRB, and take measures as necessary.

Hilary Clinton is NOT an avid anti-video game fanatic like Jack Thompson is. One look at her website, and you can see that she focuses on lots of topics regarding human well-being, and does a lot for her New York constituents. But then what DID she say regarding the video game business then?

http://clinton.senate.gov/news/statements/details. cfm?id=240603&&

http://clinton.senate.gov/news/statements/details. cfm?id=241138&&

And that's all she wrote! The fact that this is ALL she has to say on the matter is actually COMFORTING to me as a gamer! She does NOT claim that the ESRB is a faulty institution, and applauds it for taking action on GTA:SA.

I AGREE with the ESRB with their ratin

It's pretty obvious that parents on some scale are refusing to take enough of an active interest in the lives of their children to prevent them from acquiring content that may not be suitable for them (or anyone else for that matter). Rather than policing their children, some people would rather have the government do it. If Bob and Jane won't stop little Billy from getting his hands on a "murder simulator" then someone has to, obviously. The government could say, "No! Raise your own damned kids," but would likely find themselves replaced by a government that says "Sure, we'll raise your kids." Some would argue that holding the parents responsible as a good alternative, but which is easier for a government: Give in to the voting public and stay in office or alienate the voting public and get replaced by someone who will give in anyway?

If anything, the Federal government should stay as far away from this as possible. If California, New York, or Illinois wants to do something about it within their own state, they can go right ahead. What those particular states might want isn't necessarily something that my state might.

If the government did have to do something on a national level, I'd suggest creating an organization to replace the ESRB, which really has little to no authority or power to do anything other than assign a largely inadiquate lable to any game that is given to it for review. I'd like to see three primary elements of a game catagorically rated: violence, profanity, and sexuality. Games like GTA would score quite high in violence because of the ability to kill anyone in almost any manner, moderately high in terms of profanity, especially given the more recent installments, but on the low end in sexuality even with the Hot Coffee mod. Although I've never played Playboy Mansion, I'm sure that while it would score high in sexuality, violence would probably be a big zero.

A rating system that scored games based on individual attributes rather than taking it all into consideration and giving it a broad rating that encompasses several different factors. For instance, as one of the comments in the article mentions: "Finally, the ESRB's rating system has a fatal flaw of not distinguishing between games like Halo (scifi, shooting aliens) and games like GTA (shooting cops, sex with hookers, drugs, etc.). They're both rated M. Since AO is retail suicide, everyone avoids it like the plague and it has become useless."

Having such general ratings really limits an easy method of choosing content that might be suitable for you or your children. An M rated game about bashing someone with profane language and various racial/religous slurs is much different than an M rated game about bashing someone's head in with a claw hammer. you might not mind some raunchy language but violence might sicken you. It's much the same way with movies. A movie can be rated R for excessive violence, language, or sexuality. In a similar fashion you might not mind if your children of age 16 see a movie with a lot of fowl language, but you might not want them to see anything with a lot of sex or violence. A rating system that breaks a game into a few core catagories and gives rating for each catagory would better serve parents and people in deciding which content would be suitable for them or their children.

"A UK-centered study carried out by Swiss research firm Modulum, and reported on by BBC Online, shows that one of the biggest problems with the video game rating system in the UK may be parents' inability to take it seriously.

The survey, which canvassed 1,000 adults by phone and 100 customers in stores, indicated that, despite awareness of the 18 rating (the UK's equivalent of the ESRB's North American M rating), parents would often let their under-age children play games marked as such." - http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?st ory=5758 [gamasutra.com]

SOE will also develop a DC Comics MMO for the PC and next generation consoles.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?st ory=5724

Mythic Entertainment, developers of Dark Age of Camelot and the upcoming Warhammer MMORPG, have announced the indefinite delay of Imperator, a third massively-multiplayer project announced in October 2004. The futuristic game, which also integrated elements of the Roman Empire and was originally scheduled to be released in June 2006, has been put under review regarding its future at Mythic.

All Imperator staff will be moved onto existing projects, such as a new Dark Age of Camelot expansion titled Darkness Rising, as well as the just-announced Warhammer-licensed online game, being created following the cancellation of a similar project at developer Climax. However, none of the developers that were formerly on Mythic's Imperator project will be laid off.

Nonetheless, the move will not come without a slowdown to proposed expansion plans: as a result of the delay, Mythic is holding off on establishing a previously announced European office until the 2007 release of Warhammer.

Since TA Associates completed a $32 million venture capital investment in Mythic in March 2003, the largest ever granted to any independent game developer, the company, which is privately held and does not need to publically report financial results, can likely support the added financial burden that this cancellation brings.

Speaking on the reasons for the postponement, Mythic CEO Mark Jacobs said: "Our team made a tremendous effort with the game and the praise it drew at E3 and in previews reflected their skill and dedication. But in the final analysis it just wasn't great enough to be a Mythic game at this time."

Article by Nich Maragos

There are some amazingly good composers out there that really deserve some credit. Some of my favorites include Yuzo Koshiro (Actraiser), Rob King & Paul Romero (Heroes of Might & Magic III) and Ben Houge (Arcanum - full score to the music is available from the link!).

Yeah, it doesn't sound very exciting, especially when Will Wright seems to be doing everything you'd ever want in a Black & White type of game.

From Gamasutra.com Article:

George Harrison, Nintendo of America's senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications, commented: "... Because of its diminutive size and industrial-hip look, Game Boy Micro immediately identifies the person playing it as a trendsetter with discriminating style."

I've always wondered what it takes to be a trendsetter. Now I know, its some corporate businessman simply saying "if you buy our product, you are a trendsetter!" I can't wait to get mine and set some trends with my disciminating style.

Oh crap... I just realized my joke isn't funny because its the truth.

You can go straight to the source at Media Create, http://www.m-create.com/ or wait for The Magic Box's console charts to get updated: http://www.the-magicbox.com/

These are for Japan only, though, and I've had trouble finding better results for the US (only other place that the PSP is out, I think) on http://www.gamasutra.com/ --search the news section for recent sales charts.

This page mentions some of the specs: here.

If you've got real skillz, you can win real prizes here.

In the mean time, stop complaining that it doesn't reach Slashdot's high standards of journalistic quality and let the kids have their fun.

I have a friend who did some character modelling for Prey recently... Yes, it's coming out soon, just as hinted at on Gamasutra. It only took them what 10-15 years?

Sony filed an appeal and apparently got a stay on the injunction that would have forced them to stop selling their consoles and infringing software. You can read about it here.

Unfortunately, it is quite risky to develop and market a downloadable (under 15mb or so) Windows game using OpenGL, at least for the time being. A significant portion of the marketplace has computers that do not have working, hardware-accelerated OpenGL drivers. [1] They have decent enough video cards, ones that have reasonable OpenGL drivers written for them, however they haven't been installed. Furthermore, Windows Update does not seem to update one's OpenGL stack. This has caused a lot of downloadable developers to either use the better supported Direct3D API, or stick to software rendering (with DirectDraw, and more increasingly, with SDL.) [2]

[1] Reflexive attempted to use hardware-accelerated OpenGL in their downloadable game, "Wik: Fable of Souls", however they switched over to full software rendering after encountering numerous driver issues. More information on this can be found in the game's postmortem, available at: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050214/hallam_ 02.shtml . More info on using OpenGL in downloadable games can also be found on the http://indiegamer.com/ message board.

[2] PopCap's framework uses both Direct3D and DirectDraw-based software rendering.

Yeah, that seems to be the case. Gamasutra's take on the story meshes perfectly with that.

Thanks.

We may not be able to stop the pirates, but we can have enough of an impact to make pirating a much less attractive option. Given the choice of buying a game or waiting two to three months for a pirated version, a lot of pirates are going to start buying games. Or at least they'll buy their favorite ones.

Those of you with subscriptions to Game Dev Mag or the Gamasutra website (free for industry) can read their article on the same theme.

That author claims that a "teaching game" is an oxymoron, based on a narrow semantical interpretation: games can illustrate concepts, not teach them.

Oops! Sorry, the NY Times article wasn't the one I was thinking of. The contrasting view I meant to post was "Educational Games Don't Have To Stink!", (also requiring registration), which argues that games don't teach; they just "illustrate."

Personally, I think Koster is closer to the mark. Games teach something, but they may not be very good at teaching the sorts of things that are often crammed into eduware.

Forget Trading Spaces ... this clearly is a tie-in to the new Tron movie. Right?

Don't forget http://www.gamasutra.com/ and the PCGPE, even if it's older than dirt.

Ratchet & Clank 1's levels had about 500k polygons total in each (reference found here, free login required). Assuming you see about a third of those polygons at all times (which is ridiculously over-the-top, especially since the game used an advanced Level of Detail system), and that maybe enemies double that polygon number (again, no way is that a realistic number), you still only get around 15 million polygons a second. Impressive, but a far cry from what Sony promised! (And more realistically, it is probably closer to half of that.)

I don't think things were particularly bumped up for the sequels, either. If anything, the LoD system was probably optimized further than anything else, decreasing polycounts. There is only so much optimization you can do in one year of development!

I think the Ratchet & Clank games do look great, don't misunderstand me here... But Sony lied about the PS2 hardware's capabilities, big-time.

And in software they also did well(registration required).

The fact is, that west is stupid enough to care about "mature" games, instead of fun and good games. Those Nintendo has in droves. I've got news for those who like their games "mature"...You are not mature yet. When you are, you do not care for such things.

There's a good article on Gamasutra (reg. req.) about game rentals, arguing that rentals may actually be hurting developers.

Right. Only one game that runs on a PS2. THREE pc-only games. Yeah, these are the titles raking in the big money. PS2 -- One Hundred MEEllion units sold. Publishers make their money on the ps2. period.

And if you notice, both MP2 and Halo2 are first-party titles... how many more units would they move if they released those on ps2? Just imagine.

It's hard to find real sales numbers, so here's the latest I could find... from the UK, december 11. The only title that isn't PS2 is Halo 2. at #10.

1 Need for Speed: Underground 2 EA All 4
2 Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Rockstar PS2 7
3 Call of Duty: Finest Hour Activision PS2/Xb/GC 2
4 The Incredibles THQ All 6
5 FIFA Football 2005 EA All 10
6 Prince of Persia: Warrior Within Ubisoft PS2/Xb/GC 2
7 GoldenEye: Rogue Agent EA PS2/Xb/GC 3
8 The Getaway: Black Monday SCEE PS2 5
9 Pro Evolution Soccer 4 Konami PS2/Xb/PC 9
10 Halo 2 Microsoft Xb 5

here

If you're a publisher, if you're talking $$$, it's a Sony world.

Three recent trends lend credibility to the image of those modest studios (indies) developing games: 1) the fact that many such developers are are coming from industry proper; 2) the actual nomenclature "Indie" being a positive term; and 3) small studios' newfound ability to create games that are visually appealing.

First: An interesting but not-well-known fact is that many members of the indie gaming community come from a background of well-known companies. Take, for example, the Moonpod team, which had experience at Gremlin and Infogrames before starting out on their own. Monkeystone is headed by none other than id's John Romero. I would argue that games industry experience is not a prerequisite for the development of a good game; but the recent movement of folks from big gaming companies to their own studios makes independents more credible. Put simply: if folks who have worked on shipped, big-budget games are now part of the indie community, there must be something to the indie community.

Second: The actual term used for smaller studios (Independents or Indies) is an important one. You could call many of the products in this category "Shareware Games," but there's a horribly negative connotation to that term. "Indie Games" evokes the notion of a small, dedicated team of professionals crafting out something new and interesting. By contrast, the term "Shareware Games" evokes the notion of some dude in his basement churning out a buggy arcade clone that looks like it was written for the Intellivision. To parahrase someone, (I want to say Chris Barrie): A rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but may be less appealing if it were called "sewage-weed." The adoption of the "Indie" label has helped legitimize games made by smaller studios.

Fifth (20 years from now, we'll be those old farts still making Python references to people born in twenty-oh-one): Independents can make games that look good. It may be because indies now have access to tools that would have made Pixar cry during its formative years. (Maya, for example, can be had for about $2k, and is even free for personal use.) It may also be because there's great talent now available. Either way, I think indie titles, taken as a whole, have become visually appealing. During the '90s, shareware titles had a bad reputation for being ugly, because they lagged so far behind the cutting-edge. These days, titles like Starscape, Dark Horizons: Lore, and Wik & The Fable of Souls are (IMO) looking pretty good. And, while indie titles may not be as spectacular as those developed by a major studio, (our own Inago Rage focuses on bright colors, but doesn't quite outdo Tron 2.0, for example), decent sales suggest that gamers like what Independents are doing.

However, given the dearth of posts in this thread, I still believe we have a long way to go. :) So, if you haven't already, check out the DIY and Game Tunnel coverage of the 81 IGF entrants. You may find that precious diamond in the rough.
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