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Eidos May Have Set Bad PS3 Precedent
Ars Technica opines on Eidos' decision to hold off on PS3 games until 2008. Though they make a point of mentioning all of the great steps forward Sony and the PS3 have taken in the last month or so (LittleBigPlanet, Home, the EU launch), they feel this decision may have ramifications for the console. "Though Eidos isn't the most prominent European developer--noteworthy releases for 2006 included the surprisingly decent Just Cause, Tomb Raider: Legend and Hitman: Blood Money--this may set a dangerous precedent for other developers. If Sony doesn't step up to become more proactive at keeping the flow of good games steady, the installed base may not continue to grow quickly enough and developers may begin to pull support, creating a lack of games. This vicious cycle is hard to escape, as Sony has previously learned with the PSP's port problem."
The actual article says "dangerous" precident, not "bad". In this particular case, there's a world of difference. This news may be "bad" for Sony et al, but it's actually quite "good" for the shareholders of these companies.
It's well known that the opening weeks of a game's release are the most important, as the period that follows causes the game to be overshadowed by competitors. If I were a shareholder in Eidos, I wouldn't want them releasing hot properties (e.g. Tomb Raider) to a system that can't sustain record or near-record sales in its opening week. Better to delay the games by a few months, then announce them to a much larger fan base.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
This is very much what we have been speculating about for weeks now. If Sony can't keep developers interested, then they can end up in serious trouble. One mid-rank games developer (as an aside, I remember when I would see Eidos' name in the intros and actually get excited) holding off for a year does not mean a whole lot - yet. But it may indeed be a sign of greater things to come.
The PS3 is an exciting system but it's looking more and more like Sony has reached too far in a variety of ways, not least the many indignities they've inflicted upon their customers over the last several months.
I'd have to say that the continued failings of HD-DVD and the success of Blu-Ray, inflated as it is by the media and certain individuals with an agenda to push, is looking like the only saving grace for the PS3. It remains to be seen if Blu-Ray is indeed going to win the HD video race; even if it does, can it save the PS3?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Remember, porting to the PS3 is a huge pain, because of the weird Cell architecture, with very limited memory per CPU. As the tools get better, the costs of porting decline. From a developer perspective, it makes sense to wait.
Let me know when a developer with any good titles coming out does this.
God Fucking Damnit
Lots of games have been held back for a year. Usually because of development deadlines having to get pushed back for a year. It's a different reason here, but the same effect. If the PS3 does badly over the course of its lifespan I don't think people will look back at Eidos's announcement as a key event. It already comes after a succession of games going multi-platform, which may be bad for the console, but good for the gamers.
The problem between development and install base has been discussed pretty thoroughly.
The Wii has some pretty nice games out, but it has a similar gap in games coming up. Though there was much speculation on how good the Wii would be, it doesn't seem like anyone had bet on it being the success that it is. Nintendo included, in light of the tight supply. So while it seems that there are a lot of developers interested in making Wii games, they would have had to begin developing a year or more ago to have a chance at filling the upcoming gap. But at least the games will come someday.
I'm imagining a 33%-ish share for each console after 4 years.
Your pretty good at pretending. I was just thinking, oh great anther kid without a clue commenting about nothing.
If most people think that stretched SD shows on their new HDTV is HD, then no, Blu-Ray won't save the PS3.
Sony delays the consoles release 6+ months in Europe (we'll ignore hardware differences)
so developers there delay games 6+ months more... sounds fair to me.
You can call me a fool as soon as you figure out how HTML works.
By the way, it's still an indignity to make people into sheep. So what if there are others that are worse? It doesn't permit you to change the meaning of words to suit your own arrogant idiot ass.
If you want me to stop existing, then come and try to do something about it. Otherwise, shut your fucking cocktrap. If you had balls big enough to say shit like this to people in real life you would have had your head snapped back already.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Sony really needs to get in gear. Playstation HOME and LittleBigPlanet were a *Start*. They need more announcements of top tier exclusives, not defection and waffling on the part of developers.
Mass market HD video is a very dangerous thing to bet on. Most people are not videophiles. DVD is "good 'nuff" for the majority of people. Communicating the benefit of ever escalating resolutions when most consumers are still squinting at a 25" to 30" screen from 8' to 10' is really, really hard. Big Screens just don't have the market penetration to make HD an easy sell, and if the people backing the HD formats don't watch it, DVD and digital distribution may eat their lunch before breakfast time.
Eidos has to weigh the larger returns in later releases to an increased market against the loss of all revenue until then from holding back.
They should release whatever they can now to make what they can now, while rolling out the next generation game for 2008's expanded market. The development and marketing resources aren't both needed for each of those tasks by the company. Unless perhaps the current market can't return enough profit to pay to market to it. Which would really mean Eidos has terrible marketing profitability, which it should fix before a big 2008 launch, anyway.
Or they could just let their cowardly marketers promote a 2006 game in the field with the others with flashy 2008 games.
--
make install -not war
What goes around comes around. For years, Sony treated its developers like crap because it could (and it stills holds its customer in mild contempt). Now they are surprised that devs aren't showing any loyalty? They are getting what they deserve. Devs aren't buying Sony's pie-in-the-sky projections and press releases. Blu-ray is BEHIND where UMD was at this point in history! The percentage of PS3 owners (a pathetically small number) that actually will use Blu-ray is going rapidly down as they move out of the early adoptor area and sell more and more (but not much more) to mainstream gamer and the non-videophile. Imagine "Earl" pops in his Casino Royale disc into his PS3 and says to "Martha" something like "I don't know why it cost twice what the DVD do. It don't look no better." This is of course because he has it hooked up to his 27inch CRT with the COMPOSITE cable that Sony gave him with his $600 purchase.
Home is going to be the savior? It doesn't even solve the fundamental problems with Sony's networking (no unified friends lists, no in-game invites, no cross-game chatting, etc.) It's just Phantasy Star Online with a smaller lobby and no actual gameplay. Maybe Super Extreme Rubber Ducky will be their system seller (since it's the only exclusive they'll have left by next month).
Like yourself? Of all your PS3-related comments, you seem to have an agenda to push. Are you being paid by Microsoft?
Marketing takes a key role in how well a game sells, and so if they stagger their releases, they'll either have to split the marketing budget up, or just not do any marketing for the later release. Either way, it's better to avoid multiple release dates. The only exception is if a product isn't ready, but if they don't have the resources, then it's the next best thing.
That's pretty unlikely given that a Final Fantasy title has never sold more than 10 million copies. Some Final Fantasy fans will buy an expensive console just to play an exclusive Final Fantasy, but not all of them.
You had me fooled.
I probably should have known better. Any astroturfer who writes that little generally can't speel or gramer. Anyone who can writes incredibly long multi-point horrors of fanboyism.
I don't know about you, but it honestly scares me when I find myself able to impersonate idiocy to near perfection like that.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
I find this eerie, as it's generally what people cite as the reason behind everyone ditching Nintendo when the Playstation came out. There are much finer details to be had (such as why Nintendo acted as it did), but the similarity remains.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
Just a heads up, since it seems from your post that you haven't heard. FF13s exclusivity has already been called into question, with the president of Squeenix's European division stating that the title's exclusivity is not assured. Although, if I were S-E, I'd probably be more interested in talking with Nintendo than with Microsoft, due to the much higher sales of Wiis in Japan. Sure the graphics might take a hit, but the game would still be about 10x prittier than FF12, if it were on the Wii. Both systems would be about equally as difficult to port to (ie: much easier than porting to the PS3). Then again, if exclusivity is openned up, why not just port to all 3? Coding is only a very small part of the process of making an RPG, anyway. Once you have all the models, writing, and design completed, you may as well shoot them over to all systems.
Square made Sony what it is (with FF7)... and they can break them just as easily.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
I think you're spot on concerning HOME and LBP. They are a start but little else.
However, there are two factors relating to games that can push systems: Quality and Quantity. The AAA titles push systems, but so does the security of knowing there is a vast selection (even if most of it is crap).
Eidos may not have GTA4, MGS or FF quality titles, but they and those like them are just as important to the PS3's success.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
I don't understand all the doomsday talk of the PS3. The Xbox 360 had extremely mediocre games at first, and not too many to choose from. The PS3 is selling better then the Xbox 360 did at the same time since release.
So I don't get it. They've sold an assload of PS3's and they're still selling an assload of them. Just because one game developer, that only has a couple titles anyways, is going to wait doesn't mean Sony "needs to get in gear."
The PS3 is a captive market and any company that doesn't release titles for it is simply paid off by the other guy, or doesn't have the ability to do it. It's not about the system itself.
I'll agree that there's some shortcomings to the PS3's interface and such, but overall I've been having fun with my PS3 and I don't really like game consoles very much.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
You do realize that the Wii is basically an overclocked GameCube?
Final Fantasy has always been about the graphics, as well as progress-quest style gameplay. If you put it on GameCube, I mean Wii, it will only look marginally better then older GameCube titles.
It just won't happen, unless they say "screw the graphics" and go for the easy cash that might blemish the entire franchise.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Nintendo's major 3rd part issues came from two ligitimate concerns that had more to do with their overall vision of video gaming, than any immediate bottom line return. The first was closed licensing, which is hard to debate, at this point, was a bad thing... in fact, it pretty much saved video gaming. The more controversial (even today) decision was to continue with cartridges for one more generation. While some great things came out of CDs, there was a very ligitimate concern that Nintendo had about having immediate, and not fragmented, gameplay due to the slow speed of optical drives. It did bring a new problem to the game industry that is just as much an issue now, as it was then.
In the long run, however, Nintendo was able to hold back, and teach developers how to properly impliment memory storage routines in order to mask load times. The result is two systems, now, that use optical media and have almost no wait times. Furthermore, it tought developers how to be creative with in-game 3D engines, instead of always resorting to prerendered FMVs to do the work for them. They may have fallen from the lead spot for two generations, but it may end up paying off in the long-run. I don't think Nintendo would be as solid as it is today, had they abandoned cartridge media and gone optical. Someone had to go optical (Sony and Sega did) in order to innovate on that front, but I think it was very wise for one company to remain behind for one generation, in order to fix all the details first.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
unless they say "screw the graphics" and go for the easy cash that might blemish the entire franchise.
That's called "making Final Fantasy DS games". FF3 port was horrible. I haven't met a person yet who didn't regret the purchase, seriously. And they are releasing a FF12 snip-off which looks childish at best.
I'll repost my reply from the linked story as well:
By 2008 both Final Fantasy and Metal Gear titles have been released. Also in a shorter time frame: Assassin's Creed, Heavenly Sword, Ninja Gaiden Simga, Lair, and a dozen other AAA titles will already be out there on shelves. I don't think anyone will care much about Edios not publishing PS3 titles in 2007. Other publishers are already launching 'big name' titles in the mean time.
I still find it odd Team Ninja don't get as much flak as Capcom did for being 'turncoats' -- haha fanboys. Speaking of Capcom they'll release all their major titles cross platform from here on out. Personally, I think DMC jumped the shark in DMC2 -- but it's hard to knock a game that values form over function -- it's entire subjective. I do like the fruit looped colored enemies in DMC4, since fanboys can't bitch about it being 'brown'. That's a fact to take to the bank.
As for first party Xbox vs first party SONY, I don't even care for halo or fable so it's not a contest. I will be playing Enemy Territory and Oblivion, which are multiplatform including PC. I can't wait for the new ET release. The PS3 version will support kb+mouse last I checked just like UE3-UT. I can see a controller for GoW, but for an FPS -- and even worse a tactical FPS? I guess if you like to respawn a lot it's fine. Got a little ranty there. ^_^
-- March 30, 2007 @ 12:45PM
"Developers! Developers! Developers!"
>Most people are not videophiles. DVD is "good 'nuff" for the majority of people.
People looked realistic back on broadcast tv at 440 x 480.
Jumping the resolution up doesnt make games more realistic, good texturing does.
You do realize that the Wii is basically an overclocked GameCube?
NO, I DIDN'T REALIZE THAT. I HAVEN'T BEEN HEARING PEOPLE VECTOR THAT SAME FACTOID FOR THE PAST YEAR AND A HALF.
Final Fantasy has always been about the graphics, as well as progress-quest style gameplay.
You must not remember Final Fantasies I through VI. The graphics of the first few games were blocky even by NES standards!
The biggest problem is that even without Sony's hype, everyone expected the PS3 to surpass the PS2 and once again dominate the market.
That hasn't happend.
Worse still, it probably won't happen.
The PS3 isn't a bad machine per se, but again, it's the games that sell the hardware. Sony has forgotten this by mainly emphasizing the PS3 as a Blu-Ray player to a market that doesn't quite care about that. Meanwhile, the PS3 suffers from a lack of good exclusive titles. Most of the good games for the PS3 are also playable on the 360 - with identical graphics/gameplay, on a platform that costs less money, and arguably has a better online service. That's a tough position to be in if you're Sony.
With no single console poised to totally dominate the market this time around we're probably going to see much fewer exclusive titles this time around. If exclusives made the PS2 a success, their lack can mean failure for the PS3. Fewer exclusives will mean fewer consoles sold. Fewer consoles will make more developers hesitate (at best), make an exclusive title a multi-platform release, or even move an exclusive title to another console. We've seen all 3 happen for the PS3 so far. Many developers, including EA, announced they were going to take a 'wait and see' policy with some games. Meanwhile, other titles - most notably GTA4 - have announced they'll be doing a simultaneous release across the PS3 and 360. Another Playstation exclusive, Ace Combat(?), has moved to the 360 and won't release on the PS3 at all.
While none of these individually will doom the PS3, it's a culmulative effect. The more developers hold back for the PS3, the greater the chance that other developers will also hold back, leading to there being fewer PS3 titles which will result in fewer sales, and even MORE hesitant developers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4218320.stm
The Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) has broken records to become the fastest-selling games console of all time in the UK, according to figures.
More than 185,000 were sold in its first four days in UK shops, say official Chart-Track figures.
Rival handheld, the Nintendo DS, sold 87,000 in its launch week in March. The PSP sales account for about £33m.
------------
Sony has nothing to worry about - if Eidos doesn't want to release Tomb Raider 17 until next year it's entirely up to them. I can't see Sony giving much of a shit about it.
Sometimes I wonder why people don't think before they start typing.
Actually, seeing as though the GameCube is about twice as powerful as the PS2, not to mention that the hardware anti-aliasing made it look even more than that, an FF game on just the GameCube would be a huge step up. All people really care about is progress in graphics, and having the next FF game on the Wii would be exactly that, and by quite a bit. Actually, the differences between 8-12 have all been fairly minor, even the graphics of FF9 are not too far behind that of FFX. FF12 looked extremely glitchy, because the PS2 was fairly inferior, graphically, that an "overclocked GameCube" (of which the Wii is actually quite a bit more than just that), would be a huge sigh of relief. FF12 sold JUST FINE, just 6 months ago, on a system that was able to produce graphics that were about the quality of the GameCube's launch titles.
I think you underestimate the jRPG playing community, graphics are really not as important as you might think. This is a genre that began with text-based gameplay and progressed to sub-standard NES and SNES graphics, and on to extremely block and subpar 3D graphics (FF7 was a hit, but no one claimed that it was a graphical wonder). The important thing is immersion, and that comes from a host of things, but mostly: story, characters, writing, design, music... and yes, graphics. But the graphics of an overclocked gamecube would be more than suitable for the next release. You can bet that if it went to the Wii, people would snatch it up like you wouldn't believe, I don't think you'd hear much complaining. Remember that this is largely the same audience that snatched up Twilight Princess and, for the most part, absolutely loved it.
People remember the graphics of a game, mostly, for its most dazzling graphical moments... all of which are done with pre-rendered CG that will look identical on all consoles (under ED resolution). Snazzy real-time graphics are far more the baby of the FPS community than of the RPG playing community. After all, a lot of the time we're content being burried beneath menus, or reading text boxes, anyway. You're just putting way too much stock in it. Yes, an OverClocked GameCube will more than suffice.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Ummm..so on the news that the PS3 has actually now sold 3 million consoles worldwide, this really looks like a dumb decision by Eidos, especially when considering that in March 2006, the 360 had sold less than half that. This idiotic "PS3 is dead" banter from the Nintendo and 360 fanboys is kind of old. To say that a console isn't selling well and stop releasing titles at this point is a dumb business move, especially when the growth rate of hardware sales is trending upwards and the big selling points are still coming. So, they can delay but at their own peril. This is especially highlighted by the fact that they really don't have any new properties. I didn't know Tomb Raider was still "hot" - only the first two games even appear on the top 200 titles of all time in sales on vgcharts.org.
In a big way. Not that i'd expect FFXIII or XIV on the wii, but theyre doing another crystal chronicles game for the wii, they already released the highly successful FFIII remake on the DS (which they chose over the PS2), and theres a sequel to FFXII coming out on the DS later this year. Also outside FF, the next full dragon quest game is going to be a DS exclusive.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Yea well the reason I re-hashed the same "factoid" is because it REALLY is not fast machine. It's $250 and what are we really getting for that money?
But it's not about the price, it's the fact that yes, FF has been about graphics as much as any other big title for years now. I don't think the original games were any worse off on graphics then other games - in fact I remember Final Fantasy for the SNES being really cool in terms of graphics and sound.
I think it could be a mistake to release it for the Wii for that reason.
I didn't claim it was anyone else but myself with that opinion.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Games are quickly moving away from the pre-rendered cut-scene plot advancements in a major way. If they had to supplement bad graphics with big CGI cut scenes it would be a big step backwards.
You shouldn't assume that I don't know what an RPG is, or where they came from. Final Fantasy is no longer one of them. They've become action-adventure, where you advance from one scene to the next, in a very linear fashion. This game is still fun to play, but it's not really roll playing anymore then a Super Mario Brother is roll playing.
You really don't make the series sound very good, in all honesty. It sounds like they just pump out the games with no concern about the quality of the product. There will be a point when the name "Final Fantasy" just won't do it anymore. Let's be realistic here: if nobody cared about great sound, great graphics, and the advancement of the video game genre, then why aren't we still playing text-based RPG's or the Ultima V (My favorite RPG of all time) tile-based graphics games?
An overclocked GameCube game might suffice THIS time, but then what? The name itself might be enough to keep the Japanese fans happy but I don't see it keeping everyone else as happy (Final Fantasy isn't nearly as popular elsewhere.)
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
And that might work if Square-Enix was an American company. But it's not. It's a Japanese company run by Japanese businessmen. And you know what one thing Japanese businessmen hate the most?
Suggesting that they might break a deal.
If Microsoft even approached Square with an offer like that, they would find that Square never spoke a word to them again. In American terms, it's as if somebody came to you asking to partner with you, and said "it's because your mother is a really fat whore, and I had such a great time with her that I wanted to work with you". An offer like that, implying that they would break faith with their current partner, would be taken as a direct and personal insult. No Square title would run on a Microsoft platform, ever.
FF13 is sold. It won't be un-sold for any amount of money.
So:
- Sony don't like this - they want exclusives.
- If they can't get exclusives they want the best version which is difficult as the PS3 graphic capability is currently on par with the Xbox360
So basically Sony have shot themselves in the foot with their ridiculous pricing and then they proceed to blow their (few remaining) brains out of their arse.Games are quickly moving away from the pre-rendered cut-scene plot advancements in a major way. If they had to supplement bad graphics with big CGI cut scenes it would be a big step backwards.
Oh, the irony of implying that because cut-scenes are moving away from pre-rendered graphics, that a Nintendo console is insufficient to produce them.
Nintendo has *never* done pre-rendered cut scenes to advance a story. There are a couple of shitty videos at the beginning of stuff like Mario Party and some of the Mario Sports games, and the one in the beginning of Marion Sunshine. But largely the games have all had their stories told within the rendering engine of the game itself. Wind Waker: No videos. Metroid Prime: No videos. Eternal Darkness: No videos (well, except for the kind of crappy cuts during the final boss battle, and yes, it was also Silicon Knights). Twilight Princess: No videos. These are all games that were extremely story heavy and didn't bother with pre-rendered cut scenes.
And nobody with a clue calls Final Fantasy an RPG. It's a JRPG. There's a big difference. Also, please point out more than a tiny handful of games where you can truly play a role. Deus Ex, a FPS, is probably one of the best examples of a "role playing" game in recent years.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
The reason you don't understand that is that you don't understand this: Selling better than another console did at the same delta from the release date is utterly and completely irrelevant. It matters to NO ONE. What matters is where the PS3 is compared to the Xbox 360 and the Wii today. If it's not there today, then the market isn't there today, and game developers will be planning to bring out their titles for a console that actually has been adopted by players today.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Sony revealed that they haven't signed FF13 as an exclusive yet, so going multiplatform would hardly be breaking the deal.
Hironobu Sakaguchi mentioned in passing in an interview that he believed that Squenix had ported the White Engine (the engine behind FFXIII) to Xbox 360. Granted, he left the company, but as the founder of the whole franchise and essentially the only reason that Square survived the NES era at all, you'd imagine he probably still knows some of the Square team.
Additionally the other FFXIII (Verus) is running Unreal Engine 3, which as we're all aware is running quite nicely on 360 hardware too.
There's another factor which you need to consider as well, and that's that generally speaking the Final Fantasy games have done better overall outside Japan, and that the PAL and US markets are both substantially larger. If 360 has a decent lead there, then Squenix may well decide that it's smart business to mutliplatform the game for PS3 and X360 so that they can tap all the markets, rather than just do well in Japan. In the greater scheme of things, Japan is less important than you're making out.
I mustn't be as much as a gaming freak as .. apparently everyone else, because I don't really remember Sony hyping the system any more then any other system or company.
I also think it's naive to believe that the PS3 would be able to capture any big market this quickly. Think about it - the original Playstation was like a sleeper hit. It came from nowhere and stormed the market because nothing could touch it's performance or capabilities, and it wasn't too expensive. Sony stepped in and captured the market when the market was beginning to stagnate.
The PS2 built on that success because again, nothing could really compete with it. Microsoft's Xbox is a nice machine but came in a year later, two for Japan. The Playstation 2 had a stronghold, and especially in the Japanese market.
So it's several years later now, and when you're up against a company like Microsoft in a major way (MS put a lot more effort and R&D and marketing on the 360) it just won't happen like that again, not this time. The PS3 is the late-entry.
It's selling well, and it's a good product. It's really not much more expensive then the Xbox 360 and it can do some really cool things. But it's not about single platforms anymore - the last set of systems (GameCube, PS2, Xbox) showed that there's enough room for multiple systems. Games are often released on all systems.
So you can own whatever you want, it doesn't matter. The PS3 won't be a flop; Less then the original Xbox and that was actually a pretty big hit.
It's a joke to think that any of this petty shit will affect the platform's viability in the long term.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Riight, leaving aside your relentless anti PS3 flamebait rants on slashdot for the last X weeks now for the time being (what is your mission anyway, crusader?), how stupid do you suppose game developers are? Do you honestly think any company would base their development plans on a momentary snapshot of installed base numbers alone? Development plans stretching one or two years in the future are something that our wise drinkypoo would solidly anchor on TODAY'S cosole sales numbers. Which is (concerning PS3 vs. x360) something like 3 million vs. 9.5 million.
Drinkypoo, time to read up upon and learn about a concept seemingly completely unbeknownst to you: m-o-m-e-n-t-u-m. Just to take an extreme example: if PS3's sales numbers were rising constantly and gaining momentum all the time (which one could argue they are, depending on where you look), and x360's being stuck at just below 10 million (which also is not all that far from reality) and not selling ANY MORE consoles from now on (this is not the case, obviously, but let's just suppose it were), where would that leave your business plan based on aforementioned snapshot? If drinkypoo were a product manager at a game development company and said, 'Hey, let's put all our efforts on the 360 for the next two years because the numbers are looking good just now!!', while next year it might just as well be 12 mio (x360) vs. 20 mio (PS3), that might still be funny in a Dilbert strip, but out here in the wild, I don't know.
With that kind of business sense, you better stay away from the stockmarket (and a couple of other things). On a related note: the 'not-selling-at-all' PS3 venture and the fact that there are hardly any titles out (= low competition) hasn't been all so bad for a small company like SEGA, don't you think? It's all about timing, and SEGA definitely had it right this time, before EA has figured out how to code for the CELL and floods the market with some rehashed crap and some pearls in between.
I agree to the other poster, though, if Square/Enix were to sell out to Microsoft, that might mean peril, but not only to SONY, ultimately. It doesn't work that way, luckily, because S/E know that intellectual and moral bankruptcy would loom just around the corner. And maybe they'd misinterpret PS3's momentum just the same. In which case they'd follow the x360 down the drain, which would be a pity, because I really want some more Frontmission games to see the light. On PS3, preferably.
A World in a Grain of Sand / Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Infinity in the Palm of your Hand / And Eternity in an Hour.
Well then you're a complete moron, because if it were ALWAYS and EVER about TODAY, then the only games produced would be on the fucking Atari 2600. There's a shit load of them out there! Or the SNES!
A product needs to be produced and sold. Sony is doing that. What I don't understand is how you don't understand that you can't magically produce 20 million of ANYTHING - it has to be produced and sold, which IS HAPPENING, and stronger then the 360 did.
That doesn't tell the whole story surely, but more sales might equal more installed base moving forward.
You make zero sense. By your logic, all products are doomed to fail.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Those games suck. As long as Namco, Capcom and Square keep kicking out the jams we should be fine for the next year without them.
-makoffee
ahahahhahahahahhahhhHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHA
Let's see, the PS3's been out for, what, five months now? So, Captain Video, tell us what the PS2 had five months into its launch. As I recall, there was SSX, DOA2:HC, and maybe Madden and possibly the Final Fantasy game.
Face facts - every console since the NES has been a disappointing failure five months after it's out. Stop inflicting us with your deranged wishful thinking, and face reality.
What exotic drugs did it take to come up with that, and in what amounts were you huffing them?
This whole "Nintendo SAVED the video game industry (which had been "dead" for nearly one whole year if you squint right) with their zany and uncanny Japanese cultural business practicess" myth that you (and many others) seem to have swallowed really needs to die, fast.
Nintendo had an open licensing policy in Japan, and last I checked the Famicom did pretty well over there. So the lack of this alleged "good thing" doesn't seem to have hurt the Japanese market much.
Nintendo's closed license policies in America probably hurt Nintendo in the long term, and the effectiveness in the short term is still open to debate. The only way I can make an argument that it was a good move at all was that it somehow enforced some vague notion of "quality control" - but come on now. A good portion of the games released in 1986 still blew ass (M.U.S.C.L.E. may have been borderline entertaining, especially given the time, and Dragon Power could also fall into the "good... for its time" category, but... King's Knight? Tag Team Wrestling? Deadly Towers? Jesus Christ!).
As I see it, and until a convincing argument is made otherwise, this policy was good for one party, and one party only: Nintendo. And specifically, the megalomaniacal control freaks within Nintendo. Not the video game industry as a whole, and certainly not good for the Nintendo Entertainment System or the shareholders/parties involved therein (think of all the money that could have been made had those "chip shortages" not existed - and think of all the consumers who were possibly put off by this, and turned to the competing systems which may not have been as "cool", but at least had games on the shelves).
Why do you think so many developers (EA in particular - back before they turned into Madden Nation, those guys could code) fell over themselves to program for the Sega Genesis, and propel it to a position where it managed to end up pretty much even with the Super Nintendo, seven years down the road? It had nothing to do with immediate market share in 1989, I can tell you that for sure.
Anyway, feel free to ignore this post and go back to your paper bag full of God-knows-what and those fantasies where every developer in the entire world develops for every system ever made, and where every developer learns the same thing from the same experience, and where the principles of proper memory storage routines weren't thought about at all in the twenty years of computing prior to the N64, but in "actuality" just happened to fall out of Nintendo's jewel-encrusted asshole around 1997 or thereabouts.
Like yourself? Of all your PS3-related comments, you seem to have an agenda to push. Are you being paid by Microsoft? 1. Pay people to go online and post anti-PS3 comments in web forums. 2. Wait for other people to grow very irritated by the paid shills. 3. ??? 4. PROFIT!
just to be the devil's advocate, Metroid Prime: Hunters had pre-rendered cutscenes (and it's really obvious too)
;)
never is a big word
being vague is almost as cool as doing that other thing...
/me waits for GP to post "irregardless, you still understood what I was inferring to".
In the world of politics (such as presidential campaigns), there are candidates who foolishly believe that winning news cycles is the key to winning elections. Of course, the key to winning elections is campaigning effectively through your territory and talking sense to voters rather than nonsense to newspapers.
Ars Technica is saying that this is 'bad' because Eidos ruined a 'good' news cycle for the PS3 (GDC announcements). But, of course, good or bad news cycles won't make or break the PS3. What will make or break the PS3 is how it plays to the market (its "voters").
Actually, this obsession to win the 'news cycle' is part of the problem. Sony used cgi to create false hype at E3 2005. They were winning news cycles left and right. Does that matter today? No. Contrast this to the Wii which was constantly mocked and was 'losing' news cycles all the way up to E3 2006. When people could actually play the systems (the market itself), perception fast changed.
The future of game systems do not revolve around news cycles but around Joe Six-Pack and his market. If Nintendo suddenly had a bad news cycle ("Iwata turns into a chicken and flaps like a duck!"), it wouldn't change the market. Journalists need to realize that news cycles are not reality.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
I don't have problem with cutesy RPGs, but this one is just too much. I felt retarded playing this game. Also, the combat is bland, since it's most of the time 1 or 2 enemies and there's no real challenge. FF battles have never been too complex or clever, but in this case I could play the game doing the exact same spell and weapon sequence over and over again. That's true of most RPGs towards the end of the game, where the characters have a few very powerful and usefull skills. In the case of FF3, you start doing this early on and there's no need to change your tactics throughout the whole game really (not that I have finished it, I've suffered 15 hours of it and that was enough). So I switched back to the GBA ports, which, apart from FF2 (the Japanese version, not FF2 ka FF4), were pretty good.
Actually Wind Waker and Metroid Prime use videos but only for e.g. quick scene changes that would take too long to load or scenes with too many characters in them (e.g. MP2's Ing assault on the Federation troopers cutscene).
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Dude, if you've been paying attention to my endless rants then you surely have seen the explanations. I am simply anti-Sony. They have shit upon me for the last time - well, probably not. They will probably continue to shut down businesses doing entirely legal things by filing enough lawsuits against them that they cannot stay in business. They will probably continue to try to push bullshit DRM on people left and right.
However, I honestly believe every anti-PS3 thing I am saying. I DO NOT TROLL. PERIOD. END OF FUCKING STORY. The closest I get is exaggeration.
Uh, I've played a lot of games, and the answer is that I think some of them are pretty fucking stupid.
I think you're missing something important here. If you want to sell games and make money today, then you need to compare the number of platforms installed today. Obviously, for games coming out in a year, you want to know how many consoles will be installed there. But the number of installed systems next year depends highly on how many are installed right now, too.
Yeah, let's see if this very simple concept is above you or not: The Xbox 360 and the Wii each have more momentum than the PS3. Sony's gaming momentum hasn't allowed them to convince consumers that the PS3 is "probably too cheap", for example. If you don't have enough m-o-m-e-n-t-u-m to get over the h-i-l-l then you are f-u-c-k-e-d.
If you want to rail against people declaring early victory or defeat (although I have not drawn conclusions yet! I have made some conditional predictions and that is all) then why don't you go attack the people claiming victory for Blu-Ray at this early date? Oh wait, because while I am anti-Sony, you are apparently pro-.
Even if Sony were consistently 10% ahead of Microsoft per month on sales, they would still be a long time catching up.
Then there's Nintendo, which is gobbling up market share as rapidly as they can make consoles.
Let me put it another way for you. It doesn't matter if you catch up if you do so after the finish line.
Too bad Sega didn't figure all this shit out before the Saturn or even before the Dreamcast. But then, Sony stuck the knife into the Dreamcast. Another thing for which I will not forgive them, their release of fraudulent specifications. I don't like being out and out lied to.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
People mistake "not first place" for "not doing very well". Yes, Dragon Quest is Japans favorite jRPG series, and Final Fantasy is the favorite jRPG of the rest of the world, but don't mistake that for "Final Fantasy doesn't do as well in Japan". Final Fantasy does extremely well in japan, at something like the 5th best selling games in the country (mostly after DQ, Pokemon, and Mario).
Per capita, Final Fantasy does even better in Japan than it does in the rest of the world, it just so happens that one other jRPG tops it there. In the US, about 20 or so other series top it in sales, but it happens to be our favorite jRPG. Keep in mind that Japan has quite a large population (something like 1/3rd of the US), with a much larger percentage of gamers. So, to brush off Final Fantasy's sales in Japan as being "not very important" simply because Dragon Quest outsells it, is to really miss the big picture.
There's a good reason why they're always written, first, in Japanese, and then translated. Square is big enough, with enough english writers, that if they thought Final Fantasy was more important to the US, they wouldn't hesitate to do them first in English, and then translate them over to Japanese. But the fact remains, Japan is still the capital of the world when it comes to the Final Fantasy series.
That said, and because of the high popularity of the series, it could practically make the 360 the system of choice overnight. Not only would it give the Japanese one of their favorite series, it would tell them that the 360 is now a system ripe for Japanese-style games. Currently, it's still viewed as the meathead, baka gaijin (stupid westerner) system with a completely un-japanese aesthetic. But with Mistwalker and Squeenix, that might be viewed as a turning point.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.