The Splinter Cell Essentials Marketing Fracas

Videogame Media Watch has a breakdown on a developing story, yet another example of the sometimes less than stellar relationship game reviews/previews have with game marketing. In essence, Ubisoft used language from a GameSpy preview in their marketing, combining words to get the result they wanted. From the article: "As the 1up article notes, the UbiSoft ad probably does need an ellipsis to note where words were removed from the GameSpy preview. This is hardly the main issue, though, as the difference between 'one of the best games on the PSP' and 'one of the best games we've played on the PSP' is not all that important. A somewhat more salient question: how can a game turn from '...one of the best...' on a system to a 2 out of 5 review in a matter of two-and-a-half months between preview and review? "

Comments

Re:Because all the games are shit?

[iocat]

Loading is strictly a feature of individual games, not an inherent fault. My company made a game for PSP (Death, Jr.) which featured levels of >60MB (on a system with 24MB usable RAM) with no perceptable in-level loading times, and loading times ~5 seconds to start the levels. A lot of time with launch software, there's not enough time to focus on optimizing elements like loading, so launch titles have very long loading times. But titles like GripShift have almost no load times. So you can't blame the system itself for this.

Further, Metal Gear Ac!d was pretty clearly a card game if you look at the back of the box. You've bought maybe 5 games out of a library of 100; I'm sorry your results haven't been great, but if we're just offering anecdotal evidence here:

I bought MGA knowing exactly what to expect and enjoyed the game

I loved Lumines and wasted many hours playing it

I spent many, many hours leveling enjoyably in Untold Legends. Load times weren't great, but not bad enough to keep me from playing it

I had a great time, with fine loading times, playing the decidely old-school RPG Legend of Heroes.

Capcom Classics Remix is fantastic, as is Powered Up.

So from my perspective, PSP is pretty good!