Slashdot Mirror
Epic's Mark Rein Expounds On The Revolution
nb caffeine writes "Epic's Mark Rein is shooting his mouth off again, this time bashing the Revolution controller and EA's management style. This seems to be a recurring theme with him." From the article: "I guarantee you there's going to be lots of people who say the whole reason for this game is this controller, we made the perfect game for the controller. And all it'll be is about the controller, and not necessarily a great game...I've heard EA and Activision make absolutely ridiculous statements about, 'Oh, it's going to take 30 million dollars to make a game and we need 300 people' - that's just a bunch of bullsh... They're just covering up for their own management and incompetence. Or mismanagement I should say."
Why do you have to make your business be only about those who own ONLY your console? That's like asking PS2 owners how many of them don't also own a gaming pc and saying it's hard for Sony to make a business on that percentage.
That's just what I want to think when I am going to drop half a grand on a new video game console. Just fine is another way of saying, "nothing new." And that begs the question - why not just stick with the current XBox?
Another gem on the completely unscientific sampling method of who in attendance only owned Gamecubes: "Hard to make a business on less than 10 per cent,"
Nintendo is in the black. Sony and MS have not made money with the PS2 or the XBox. I would say that making a business doesn't have to be measured by market share - instead focusing on profitability. Nintendo profits. That's a good business.
He says it's hard to make a business on 10 percent of people owning your console exclusively. Why? If all the people from the first call paid Nintendo their money for the Gamecube, what does Nintendo care if they own other consoles? To claim you need to be the exclusive console to be successful is asinine.
The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
So, the company that basically MADE the controller what it is today is getting flak about its new controller? Don't you think you should give Nintendo just a LITTLE credit?
You know that D-pad on the 360 controller you're holding? Nintendo did that. Vibration? Nintendo. Shouder buttons? Nintendo.
Just a thought.
"Apparently so, but suppose you throw a coin enough times. Suppose one day, it lands on its edge."
His comment on the FPS's I'm not so sure about. All the consoles currently handle FPS's relatively the same, the XBox trigger buttons may give it a slight advantage. As for the Revolution though, companies could make their own attachments for FPS's. The shotgun mockup from IGN is an example of something companies could (in theory) do. Hopefully game companies will take advantage of controller add-ons, but somehow I doubt it will be as magical and widespread as I hope. I'm worried that without the right addon for the controller the user will get a "magic wand" feeling with Revolution FPS's.
In the end I will side with the majority of the comments, and agree that he is just trolling anyways.
Oh crap, I'm on fire again.
Rein then conducted a quick audience survey to find out how many people present owned a GameCube - and found that rather a large number of hands were raised.
He then asked everyone who also ate at McDonald's in the past week to put their hands down - and concluded that under ten per cent of the audience were Cube owners who hadn't eaten at McDonald's recently.
"Hard to make a business on less than 10 per cent," Rein said.
Of course, the next big cross-platform game could always be a FPS or some sort of RTS-type game that would work better with the Revolution controller than an analog stick setup.
For that matter, if more developers start making these types of games for next-gen consoles, it's possible that the Revolution version could be the version created first and then the PS3 and 360 versions are just ports with higher res textures/higher poly models. I'd imagine that'd make it a bit easier to go cross-platform instead of then having to try and downgrade the visuals for the Revolution (if it does turn out to be graphically inferior), then just change the controls for looking around/selecting units to work with an analog stick and you'd have a prettier but (most likely) more difficult to use version of the game.
This of course is just speculation, but at least for me I'd probably pick up a cross-platform FPS on the Revolution over the PS3 or 360 if the controller works as well as is being claimed.
Epic Games today announced that its Unreal Engine 3 technology will be used in games from Microsoft's internal development team, Microsoft Game Studios ...
While no specific titles were mentioned, Epic confirmed that the technology will be used for "the next-generation Xbox platform." ...
"We are hugely excited that Microsoft Game Studios have selected Unreal Engine 3 for its next generation Xbox platform games," said Epic Games president Mark Rein.
QUOTE
/QUOTE
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
Rein then conducted a quick audience survey to find out how many people present owned a GameCube - and found that rather a large number of hands were raised.
He then asked everyone who also owned a PS2 or Xbox to put their hands down - and concluded that under ten per cent of the audience were Cube owners only.
"Hard to make a business on less than 10 per cent," Rein said.
Who would listen to someone who has such poor logic skills? If he were to switch the systems around would he be saying "Hard to make a business on less than 15 per cent" (in reference to the PS2 or XBox) because that is the reality; if you throw in a gaming PC I bet the number would be under 10% for any system you choose. [And don't say that the PS2 has sold uber-billions of units more than the XBox or Gamecube, If you look at the number of PS2s that have had a new game (rented or purchased) played on them in the past 12 months it would likely only be 1.5-2 times as many as there are Gamecubes/XBoxes. This is because a lot of PS2s were sold as cheap DVD players, are only used by pirates, or have died from the famous disc-read error]
Any developer who is worth listening to should be supporting Nintendo (at least in spirit); at one point in time every new game style was just a gimick.
Grand Theft Auto was just a gimick
The Sims were just a gimick
Tomb Raider was just a gimick
Mario 64 was just a gimick
Starfox was just a gimick
Wolfenstein 3D was just a gimick
Super Mario Bros. was just a gimick
Donkey Kong was just a gimick
Pong was just a gimick
It is through time and refinement that a gimicky game becomes a whole new genre all to itself
I'm having so much fun with my DS I'm going to have to try out the Revolution. The Metroid demo is just amazing, it works so much better than I expected. I'm very curious to see if they can make that TV remote like controller work.
Notwithstanding the rude comments by the other ACs, my thoughts are that you should do a little research into the subject. First of all, the Revolution controller isn't an IR pointer. The comparisons to TV remote controls are based on shape, not technology. Nintendo hasn't said a whole lot about how the thing works, but they have revealed that there will be two small devices beside the TV. These presumably let the system know where the TV is relative to the controller(s), which suggests some form of motion detection is going on. Anyone in the know, please offer corrections.
You should also look into how the Zapper (the "Duck Hunt gun") worked. "Accurate" isn't how I'd describe it. When the trigger was pulled, the screen went black, then flashed a white rectangle around each target sprite, one frame at a time. The Zapper detected a sudden drop then spike in light intensity, which, combined with timing, indicated a hit. Modern light guns make use of the scan line, instead. The entire screen is brightened (to make sure every phosphor is lit), and the system times how long it takes for the electron beam to hit the phosphor the gun is aimed at. Obviously, this method only works with CRT televisions. The less accurate Zapper method will work with any display. I'm hopeful that the Revolution will do away with both the CRT requirement and the annoying flashing. (Note: Most of what I know about light guns I learned from Wikipedia, so corrections are welcome.)
Also, and I admit I'm nitpicking, to the best of my knowledge there has never been a two-handed D-pad. The D-pad isn't the entire controller, or the sticks, or whatever you were trying to refer to, but the cross-shaped multi-directional switch. I'm afraid I can't think of a better description than that other than "d-pad," so I apologize if that sounds wordy.
But I think he's right, that in the beginning the controller will simply be a gimmick, much like Sony's Eye-Toy. Yes, it's fun and yes they are fun diversions, but these aren't "great games." They are party gimicks.
That's not to say the controller won't eventually be used well, just that launch titles will likely be gimicky.
Second of all, his comment about the 10% of Game Cube owners seems to be missed by everybody here. He has a valid point - if you own a Game Cube and a PS2 and an Xbox, yes you certainly have given Nintendo money, but you haven't increased their market share at all since you have negated that by buying their competing product as well. Since only 10% of the audience had ONLY a Game Cube, he's inferring that Game Cube has about a 10% marketshare. As a shorthand, it works. The same would be true if he did the poll for Xbox and found that only 10% of the audience owned ONLY an Xbox. These are competing products. They compete in the same market. If you own only a PS2 you are helping to boost Sony's marketshare. However, if you own all three, you aren't.
Also, I personally have no qualms with the existing Xbox controller (or GameCube controller) when I've used them, but if his comments about FPS sales are false, then feel free to disprove them. He said: "It [Xbox controller] works just fine for playing games, and it works fine for first-person shooter games, as evidenced by the fact that they sold more first-person shooters on consoles than anybody's ever sold on PCs." Show how this is wrong if you believe it is false. Obviously people don't much mind playing Halo on the Xbox or they wouldn't be buying it.
In the end, his comments aren't really controversial and the only "troll" as I see it is the OP he said he was "shooting his mouth off." He's a company exec. They prognosticate all the time. They compete with other firms. He may have better insight into the industry than any of us.
God Bless America. Why? Did it sneeze?
He may have better insight into the industry than any of us.
The same thing could be said about Generals in WWI. Just because this is your profession, may not automatically mean you know what the front line conditions are like unless you participate in it.
When he has actually played a Nintedo revolution FPS game using the controller then he may judge it.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
is the fact that Nintendo hasn't licensed the Unreal Engine for the Revolution.
Descent is 5D. 3D locator for your ship, and 2D locator for your ship's angle. Having more than one way of changing your ship's angle or position doesn't add any more D's, it just means there are more buttons to push, or the controls are more versatile. (Think of it this way: The space you move in is three dimensional, but choosing your angle is the same as locating a point on a hollow sphere with a fixed radius. Select any point on the sphere and it determines your angle. You would have 6D controls if said sphere was filled, and you could choose any point on the exterior OR interior to aim at.)
Also, I'm sorry if you misunderstood me. I wasn't trying to say that it was impossible to emulate n-dimensional controls using a PC (for relatively small n). Of course it's possible. I can divide the keys on the keyboard into pairs and map each pair to a dimension and wind up with something like a 40D game (I didn't bother counting keys). My point was that the Revolution Controller has all of the mechanisms that one would need to play your average FPS (FPS, not flying-around-ship-shooter, since Mark Rein was talking about FPS's.), and that it actually provides new functions that aren't easily emulated by a PC. On a PC, if you wanted to reach into your screen, you could either get a 3D mouse, map two keyboard buttons to handle the task, or use your mousewheel. 3D mice aren't pervasive (meaning that your average game developer could not assume that their customers possessed the hardware), and mapping the keys splits your aiming mechanisms between two hands (and may also interfere with moving and aiming at the same time). The only plausible solution I can see is to use the mousewheel, but there are still some serious problems with it if you want to do anything more complicated than zoom a sniper rifle.
This isn't so with the Revolution Controller. You can use it to draw a circle in 3D space in any orientation you can move your hand in. The best you could get with your mouse/mousewheel is a sort of ovally-diamond, and that's if you're particularly coordinated and the circle was rectilinearly aligned to an axis. Many FPS's also have fluid posture and buttons mapped to make your character lean in certain ways. Since the Revolution Controller can also determine its orientation in 3D space, these functions can also become much smoother and more intuitive.
Mark Rein was also specifically talking about consoles. Even though it is possible to create a 40D game on a PC, you are going to have a lot of trouble replicating the experience on an XBox. You don't have any sort of 3D locating device on a normal console controller without pressing non-control stick buttons. (The PS2 clicky analog sticks don't count since you can only move in one direction in the third dimension with them. Also, it's difficult to press them in and move the stick at the same time.) The out-of-the-way buttons can substitute as the third-dimension controls, but normally you have your thumbs on the control sticks and your index fingers on both triggers so that you can fire, so pressing those buttons approaches being ergonomically impossible. The PS2 controller may be able to pull it off (using the secondary triggers), but the index fingers would have to choose between movement or shooting.
There's a reason game devs don't often try to impliment these control schemes.
You say you want the control system that allows you to spin around in circles forever without lifting your hand. Are you sure that's better than the one that can only do one and a half spins, but will never drift or overturn, and which responds instantly and accurately to your hand movements?
People who have actually used the controller have said that it feels completely natural and that they could detect no lag or discrepancies in how it responded to their hand movements. Of course there will be problems if the controller doesn't react quickly or accurately enough, but according to testimony I've read, it w
Light is filtering down from above. Would you like to use DIVE?
Or maybe you missed it. The point against this point is that the 10% quote holds true for all consoles, since most households own more than one console by now. If he had asked his audience who owned an Xbox, and then discounted those who also owned either a PS2 or a Cube, he'd have gotten the same 10% result.
And yeah, you can play FPS with current gamepads. It's just that you can play them better with a keyboard and a mouse.
Lastly, as others have pointed out, Epic gets money from Microsoft. So maye you're right about his being a businessman.