Slashdot Mirror
Starcraft Ghost Off The Cube
Gamespot has the news that Blizzard's upcoming action/stealth title Starcraft: Ghost is officially no longer in production for the Gamecube. From the article: "Speaking to GameSpot, a Blizzard staffer confirmed that the game is now only being released for the Xbox and PlayStation 2, meaning the previously announced GameCube edition has been canceled ... Unfortunately the GameCube has no online service and since so much work is going in to the online portion, it would be additional work to release only part of the intended game."
Considering when it was announced years ago, you have to wonder a bit. Does this matter? It's like saying that Duke Nukem Forever won't come out on the GameCube -- it's sure as shit not coming out on anything else, either!
After 3 years, it's not going to live up to expectations anyways. The edge of gameplay is further out, and whatever monetary hit they took developing a game in 2002 and 2003 is 100% wasted money. Some of the code and art may transfer, but the gameplay and graphics standard have been raised in the meantime. Anything over 18 months is wasted money in game development.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
And how many games make use of it? How many consumers are likely to own one? How does the market penetration compare to X-Box Live and the PS2's online services?
While it's technically wrong to say that the Cube has no online services, in any serious business decision, you cannot include the Cube's network adaptor as a factor. It's sold far too few and it's not going to start selling them now, so late in the cycle.
Blizzard's decision makes perfect sense and I doubt most people outside of slashdot games will even notice.
There is far more consoles that do not have online than there are that do. It makes perfect sense to sell more games to more users to make more money. If the game was any good they would come out with a robust single player to sell to the majority of console users. This shows their lack of confidence in the game over all and in the single player mode.
The single player mode is not good enough to sell the game to enough Gamecube owners to make it profitable for that platform. That says much about the game for any console owner.