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The Shadow of Kong

Posted by Zonk on from the brightness-turn-up-now dept.

The BBC is reporting that the makers of the Kong game recommend against purchasing the 360 version of that title. The article states that an Ubisoft rep, Yves Guillemot, stated that the 360 version is just too dark to play well on a non-HD screen. However, Voodoo Extreme got in touch with Ubi for the official party line, and they had something very different to say. From the article: "Ubisoft is actively investigating isolated reports of resolution issues on specific plasma screens, which should be easily resolved by adjusting/increasing the settings. Ubisoft believes that King Kong offers one of the best gaming experiences available on the Xbox 360 and encourages gamers to check it out for themselves."

2 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The Revo strategy makes more sense to me now by rohlfinator · · Score: 2, Interesting
    "By the time 2007 rolls around, every TV sold in the US (by law) must be capable of receiving an hd signal."
    But not every TV sold in the US will be capable of displaying that signal in HD, which is the important part. Also, ~90% of Americans still have SDTVs, and I'd be willing to bet that when the government cuts the analog signals, a lot of people would much rather buy a $30-40 set-top box for their current TV than a new HDTV for $1000+.

    In addition, these consoles are marketed worldwide. The only country with a remotely significant HDTV acceptance ratio is the US, and even here it hasn't caught on as quickly as many have expected. The "HD era" is little more than a buzzword in Japan and Europe.
  2. Politics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I strongly suspect this issue is 99% political. I have a 360 premium, Kong and a non-HD TV. The game looks absolutely fine to me. No brightness issues at all. Got a few friends in a similar situation, one of whom has a non-HD plasma TV and none of them are having problems either.

    I'd love to see Ubisoft's profit margin on each copy of the game sold for the 360, compared with the other platforms. I'm guessing one of their accountants dropped the ball big-time during contract negotiations and now they're trying to minimise the damage by blowing a bug affecting a tiny proportion of users out of all proportion.

    For what it's worth, Kong's not a bad game at all for a movie tie-in, even if they complaints about it being too short are pretty much justified. I'd say that Kong, Call of Duty 2 and Project Gotham Racing 3 are the only 360 launch titles to really look like next-gen games. The first two look significantly better than their respective PC versions, in fact.