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7 Games You Might Miss This Fall

Posted by Zonk on from the why-do-they-hate-us dept.

Games Radar has up a piece trying to point out the top seven games you're likely to miss thanks to the many high-profile launches coming this fall. How can a quirky title like Eternal Sonata hope to survive opposite Mass Effect and Blue Dragon? Likewise, will cult status be enough to save NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams when it goes up against the likes of Mario Galaxy on the Wii platform? A list of titles to come back to early next year, or something to help if none of the big names are turning your head.

46 comments

  1. Eternal Sonata by atomicstrawberry · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Hopefully Eternal Sonata will survive against Blue Dragon by the simple fact that it appears to be a better game. At least, that was my judgement based off the two demos.

    1. Re:Eternal Sonata by Wiseman1024 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Quirky? Eternal Sonata is awesome. Awesome music, awesome visuals, awesome setting, and for what I could see, awesome gameplay. On the other hand, the Blue Dragon demo confirmed why I'm not so interested in the game: nothing's really bad about it, but it doesn't fascinate me like Eternal Sonata does. The later looks and feels like a mix between a fairy tale and a Thomas Kinkade painting, and few settings can be more interesting than the dreams of a genius. The Chopin theme works wonderfully, and the 4 CD soundtrack is one of the best I've ever seen or heard. The visuals are beyond comparison, at least if you like this style, and the gameplay is simple, fast and addictive, so how could this game be considered "quirky"? It's a damn blessing they even decided to release it in Europe; games this good tend to be Japan-exclusive, who knows or dares to guess why.

      --
      I was about to say 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, but it appears this number is private property.
    2. Re:Eternal Sonata by atomicstrawberry · · Score: 3, Interesting

      RPGs never used to turn up in Europe because companies like Sony had a rule that the game had to be localised into French and German at least, and often Italian and Spanish as well. For your bog-standard shooter or similar that is not a major hurdle, but for a text-heavy RPG that's a huge (and expensive) undertaking. Additionally RPGs have traditionally not done as well here (though I think this is a bit of a catch-22).

    3. Re:Eternal Sonata by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Which really sucks in Australia, where we couldn't give a fuck about translation.

    4. Re:Eternal Sonata by lukas84 · · Score: 1

      People in Australia speak Japanese?

      Wow, you learn new things on Slashdot every day :P

    5. Re:Eternal Sonata by TrevorDoom · · Score: 1

      Who's to say you can't buy, play, and enjoy both?
      To me, Eternal Sonata is a bit more appealing because I am enamored with Tales-style Action RPGs...which Sonata brings quite effectually to the table. ...but that doesn't mean that I'm not picking up Blue Dragon.

    6. Re:Eternal Sonata by edwdig · · Score: 1

      Additionally RPGs have traditionally not done as well here (though I think this is a bit of a catch-22).

      RPGs don't do nearly as well in the US as they do in Japan. The European game market is generally considered to be more like the US market than the Japanese market. I think that's the line of thought leading to less RPGs in Europe.

    7. Re:Eternal Sonata by teflaime · · Score: 1

      I know a guy who works for Sony on this stuff. It appears that locallization is quite a bit easier (if quirkier) using XML. His entire job is writing the XML to change "Sword of Manifest Destiny",etc. into what ever it's supposed to be in the other languages they want to sell in.

    8. Re:Eternal Sonata by ookaze · · Score: 1

      Eternal Sonata is NOT awesome. Every time I hear that, I see only 2 possibilities on why someone said that : he's astroturfing, or he never played a good RPG before.
      Trusty Bell (Eternal Sonata) had the potential to be awesome, but it's not. Perhaps it is to you, but it's far from being awesome for everyone (it highly interests me though).
      The music has nothing awesome in it, the visuals are very good, and the settings is included in the visuals.
      The gameplay is not awesome either. Basically, this game plays like Tales of Symphonia with some tweaks, and better and more beautiful cel-shaded graphics.
      Unfortunately, the story is too short and bad, while it could have been awesome. The pacing is bad too.
      And that's what counts most in a J-RPG.

      Besides, I'm not sure the western XBox 360 audience will like these kind of games. I already heard complaints about the camera not being free, but that's on purpose and part of the gameplay! Seems to me the audience of XB360 treats every genre (apart from racers) like they should be shooters.
      And that's why I think it will fail, besides its other flaws. If Trusty Bell had an average story, it should have sold at least as much as Blue Dragon in Japan, which is far from being the case, despite the higher installed base at the time it went gold.

      As for Europe, we rarely get RPG, it mainly depends on US sales, and even then we usually get a badly translated from english version, with english voice over, even for non english speaking countries. Which is why RPG don't work in Europe: they are complete joke by the time they get there.
      What I think is worse, is that we don't even get the original japanese voices, but the crappy english ones, with bad subtitles.

      As for why we get RPG or not, it never depends on how good they are, rather on how much they sell, be it in Japan or in the US.

      To illustrate what I said, we never got Tales of the Abyss, and we got Tales of Symphonia with the crappy english dubbing, which was lacking the dubbing of some scenes. It's so terrible that J-RPG fans (like myself) are forced to mod their console to play most RPG.

    9. Re:Eternal Sonata by Wiseman1024 · · Score: 1

      XML is the enterprise way. Which means bad, but gets the job done. INI files are just as good, only simpler.

      --
      I was about to say 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, but it appears this number is private property.
    10. Re:Eternal Sonata by Wiseman1024 · · Score: 1

      English as well. Games getting released in America don't always get released in Europe and Oceania, and they have AIDS to region-lock them in order to discriminate against and piss on Europeans.

      Not releasing a game because it won't be profitable, ok. But then why the heck do they region-lock it so that others can't even import it? Is it some kind of penis size complex?

      --
      I was about to say 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, but it appears this number is private property.
    11. Re:Eternal Sonata by Wiseman1024 · · Score: 1

      I love Japanese RPGs, and I have played about two dozens of them since the SNES era, including the rarer, fan-translated ones. And I can say Eternal Sonata is awesome to my personal standards.

      The 4-CD OST by Motoi Sakuraba is easily one of the best in the genre, all orchestral, inspired and complete with 40 minutes of Chopin performance by Russian pianist Stanislav Bunin, a Chopin specialist.

      The gameplay, as far as I could see in the demo, is simple and addictive, and the story sounds good enough to keep it interesting, but I haven't played it. The combat system is also interesting, as it evolves from mostly-strategy to mostly-action as you play.

      "Seems to me the audience of XB360 treats every genre (apart from racers) like they should be shooters." --- In fact one of the things I don't like from the Xbox 360 game catalogue is that 9 out of 10 games are boring Quake clones about ugly monsters and dark rooms made of black and obscure. Eternal Sonata is exactly what the Xbox 360 needs: a colourful fantasy game.

      As for RPGs not getting released in Europe, what I wonder is why they still region-lock the American versions. At least we could play and buy the product. Sure, English is not my native language, but I'd rather play a decent English translation than a crappy Spanish one, and I can do just fine, so if there's not enough budget to properly localize it (subtitling shouldn't cost more than $3000 per language though, which is pretty cheap), they should at least let us play in English-only. As for the voices, more retardation from Japanese companies: they think they suck and very rarely do, and replace them by English voices which usually suck. Why not release the games with Japanese voices anyways? In a game like Eternal Sonata, which features anime-style characters, some even prefer the original Japanese voices, not only because of the better voice actors, but because of the better, genuine anime atmosphere.

      --
      I was about to say 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, but it appears this number is private property.
  2. Thanks to Xbox Live! I have the answer. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Blue Dragon is ass, it is a turd in need of polishing. Eternal Sonata on the other hand looks like a little bit better than average JRPG fare. Blue Dragon was literally without redeeming quality. Eternal Sonata has the little twist of its combat system is a turn-based realtime hybrid, which isn't something totally unalike Blue Dragon, but in the combat areas of shadow and light change monsters and your characters attacks. Which is semi-something. IE more than Blue Dragon is bringing to the table.

  3. NiGHTS Journey of (Broken) Dreams by Psykechan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    NiGHTS Journey of Dreams is on the list.

    I love the original NiGHTS game and its spin-off Christmas NiGHTS. I will regularly hook up the Saturn and give it a good play through because it is that good of a game. Years ago I would've loved to have a sequel/remake on a newer system.

    However Sega has done such a bang up job at destroying practically every one of their franchises that I have very little hope for this game. I would love it if I'm wrong but I'm going to be reading many reviews before I even attampt to play this game let alone buy it. Sega has broken my heart too many times recently.

    1. Re:NiGHTS Journey of (Broken) Dreams by aichpvee · · Score: 1

      I actually thought Christmas Nights was cooler than the full game. They should really include a similar mode in this new one so you'd have more to play than just the one level.

      --
      The Farewell Tour II
    2. Re:NiGHTS Journey of (Broken) Dreams by G+Fab · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Don't get too down, pal.

      The cool thing about this business is that it's not hard at all to rise from the ashes. Sega has fallen painfully, but that's what it takes sometimes to get some kid in there with some good ideas and a soul to make some new content. They have the brands, all they need are the ideas.

      Look at Nintendo. Barely holding on five years ago. If Nintendo had succeeded witht he Gamecube and N64, there would be no Wii. You take risks when you have nothing to lose. EA will never release that awesome ground breaking game - the most they can hope for is frames per second on the 2 point conversion. Is EA going to take manpower off of Nascar 2009 to make the next Katamari? It's profits per quarter might suffer!

          But Sega... Sega has nothing to lose and might just take a low budget risk that adds something to the industry. It's only a matter of time.

      I may sound like an idiot hippie, but I'm right. The losers become the winners in this industry.

      It's like Olivia. She had no body, but she gave me all she had. What she was, actually. And if you ask Seth Able to sing, your bank account might double. Those with less produce more. The zen is the dao is the buddha buddie (holy shit, I'm drunk).

    3. Re:NiGHTS Journey of (Broken) Dreams by Khuffie · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Two points to note: - EA is working on Spore, and while I can't pass judgement on that, you can't say they are not taking a risk - Nintendo was far from 'barely holding on'. They've made healthy profits in the N64 and GameCube days.

    4. Re:NiGHTS Journey of (Broken) Dreams by Pxtl · · Score: 1

      Sonic Team has, according to some reports, redeemed themselves a little recently. Their Wii and DS offerings are actually quite popular. Still, I don't have high hopes for this. Looks like my Wii shopping will be Mario Galaxy and Smash. No interest in single-player Metroid, and no interest in more minigames (even Olympic-themed ones).

    5. Re:NiGHTS Journey of (Broken) Dreams by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Look at Nintendo. Barely holding on five years ago.

      Nintendo as of August 2002 was kicking just a little more ass than you might be capable of remembring in your current intoxicated state. GBA was going like a freight train and GameCube was closer to head-to-head with Xbox than it ended up being when Xbox production stopped completely. Not to mention that their first unprofitable ever was yet to occur. High times, actually.

      Nintendo's "comeback story" with the Wii is nice. They zigged when the rest of the industry was reading the final chapters of The Zag Handbook Volume IV, copyright 2001 Nintendo Corporation Limited. But it actually represents a return to the undisputed top of the industry, not a revival from the ashes.

      Sega has been in steady decline since the end of the Dreamcast era, which is really just a continuation of past errors that extend back to the Mega CD and Super 32X time period. Nintendo has never been in their situation, and Sega can't look to them for an example of how to cheat death. Too few of the old Sega fans can look at any of their offerings and honestly feel like the Sega of today is capable of much any more. That's the perception that Sega has to combat if they don't want to be considered in the same light as other companies like Namco. (They're fine and all, but something beautiful and nostalgic is lost when you speak of Sega in the same way one might speak of Namco, as opposed to the same way people speak of Nintendo.)

    6. Re:NiGHTS Journey of (Broken) Dreams by Intellectual+Elitist · · Score: 2, Informative

      > However Sega has done such a bang up job at destroying practically every one of their franchises that I have very little hope for this game.

      Virtua Fighter and Virtua Tennis seem to be chugging along just fine, and Shinobi & Nightshade on the PS2 have a strong cult following. True, Sega screwed the pooch with the Sonic franchise a long time ago, but I can't think of any other botched franchises off the top of my head...

    7. Re:NiGHTS Journey of (Broken) Dreams by thetagger · · Score: 1

      Long time I don't see a LORD joke in the wild.

    8. Re:NiGHTS Journey of (Broken) Dreams by G+Fab · · Score: 2, Interesting

      oh yeah, the gameboy.

      good point, good point.

      Nintendo was doing a lot better than "barely holding on". That was lame hyperbole on my part.

      Not to rain on Nintendo at all, I love Nintendo, but your comment that they have returned to the top is simply wrong, I'm afraid. Nintendo is a game maker, ans Sony is just an electronics company, so it's easy to have nostalgia and think Nintendo is the true leader over the course of consoles. But Sony is (which makes their current console a shocking failure). The wii is supposed to sell to people who don't play video games, but that's what the playstations actually did.

      You can't understate what the Playstation 1 and 2 did in the industry. You can add all the SNES and NES systems sold together and come millions short of the Playstation, and tens of millions short of the Playstation 2. Sony has obvious dropped the ball with the PS3, but they are still the king as long as the Playstation 2 dominates. Part of Sony's problem is that, for most people, there is no reason to replace a PS2. No Gameboy brand has approached 100 million either. The game industry that we have today exists on the back of the playstation, even many of the wii third party games are PS2 ports. That's not to diminish the wii as the dominating winner of the new three, but Sony is still selling more consoles than Nintendo.

          And think about this, all those Playstations could have been Nintendos. Nintendo rejected the playstation idea, and left Sony and NEC with investment spending they had to try to recover.

        Nintendo was dominating with NES, didn't innovate much with SNES and barely held the lead (even lost it for a while), and completely failed with their next two consoles, only to finally have no reason at all to make another standard console and then found some success. You can say that Nintendo made money anyway, but as am atter of potential, Nintendo truly has risen from the ashes. The wii could eclipse the Playstation 2, and certainly proves that Nintendo was far below its potential for the past ten years.

      My overall point was that Sega could easily think their way to better games. Look at the string of great Mario games. They are usually very interesting, and that takes creativity more than technology. Sega has intangible assets in copyrights and it's only a matter of time before they get desperate enough to invest one of them in a truly innovative designer.

      So yeah, the gameboy proves that Nintendo wasn't dead. But Nintendo had to get its ass kicked before it got into gear. I think it's much easier to come back in this industry than in others. I think it's only a matter of time before Sega figures out how to do that.

    9. Re:NiGHTS Journey of (Broken) Dreams by freezingweasel · · Score: 1

      > However Sega has done such a bang up job at destroying practically every one of their franchises that I have very little hope for this game.

      Shining Force:
      started as a standard dungeon crawl, spawned a bunch of awesome (at least to my friends and I) at the time tacticsy games. Shining Force 1, 2 and Sword of Hajya (GG), then the slap in the face. You can have 3 part 1, but not parts 2 or 3. Shining Force 1 has been re-released how many times now? Shining Force 2 has been rereleased at least 2-3 times. It's long past time for a complete Shining Force 3 in America. Why are all the Shining games action games now? Clue for Sega: there's a reason Shining Force made it to 3 and Shining Wisdom didn't make it to 2. Tactics games are still selling.

      Sonic:
      Part of me thinks he was better not talking. While on one hand I have no idea with the CONCEPT of characters talking, watching them clumsily ape what some focus group thought was "cool" is painful. Mario games do this is a little, but not as obnoxiously and sometimes self conciously. I think in "Partners in Time" they utterly bash 1337. Sonic's a great action game, and I loved Sonic Adventure 1. Sure Big's fishing was boring, you didn't have to play it. (Unless you wanted to unlock the final battle.) Sonic Adventure 2 FORCED you into every gameplay style, whether you cared to deal with it or not. Clue for Sega: People buy SONIC games to play as SONIC. You got it right when you gave Shadow his own game instead of making a game with two play-styles, causing people to put it away before the half-way point. Make 2-3 games with different mechanics and let people choose instead of forcing them all down our throats. As for the RPG? This sounds crazy, but I'll reserve judgement till I see it. Mario RPG was awesome (and still beats the later Mario RPGs) Perhaps also try a choice of soundtracks, either a traditional Sonic music scheme (instrumental please) or something "gritty" or "brother-ish".

      Phantasy Star: good, but why strictly action? We could use some more RPGs. Also, there's no reason to not include a pause in single-player mode. Like it or not, the bladder and the phone are real concerns for which a user should NOT be punished. Clue for everyone: PSO's use of a shoulder button for shift was brilliant, and should be imitated. An option like this on Zelda (allowing you to have more assigned items at once) would be quite welcome. Constant pausing and item swapping takes away from the experiance.

    10. Re:NiGHTS Journey of (Broken) Dreams by ookaze · · Score: 1

      The cool thing about this business is that it's not hard at all to rise from the ashes You got to be kidding... There are rare examples of that (Squaresoft mainly), and no, Nintendo was never a company that's gone to ashes.

      Look at Nintendo. Barely holding on five years ago. If Nintendo had succeeded witht he Gamecube and N64, there would be no Wii Your premises are flawed and clueless. Nintendo was never "barely holding" on any year. They were making profits all the time.
      And the Gamecube is not the reason the Wii appeared, Nintendo explained why. The Wii appeared, because while the GC was disappointing sales wise, they had time to look at the market, and saw that the japanese videogame market was dangerously declining. It's their core market, so they had to do sth.
      That lead to the DS and then the Wii, once they saw their tactics were working.
      And Nintendo always dominated the handheld market, so they took risk with the DS, despite being the leaders (with the Gameboy brand).

      I may sound like an idiot hippie, but I'm right. The losers become the winners in this industry No, you're wrong and sound like a clueless hippie.
    11. Re:NiGHTS Journey of (Broken) Dreams by Orion_ · · Score: 1
      You really should do a little research before you invent statistics to back up your claims.

      You can add all the SNES and NES systems sold together and come millions short of the Playstation, and tens of millions short of the Playstation 2. SNES+NES: 110.87 million shipped
      PS1: 102.49 million
      PS2: 117.89 million (as of March)

      Of course, they are still selling PS2's. So it appears that, by the time the PS2 is retired, the difference between PS2 and SNES+NES will be in the tens of millions. So you're right on that point, at least.

      No Gameboy brand has approached 100 million either. False. In fact, if you count the DS as a "Gameboy brand", then there are significantly more GBs out there than Playstations.

      Sony is still selling more consoles than Nintendo. Even if you discount the handhelds, that's still not true. The Wii (and Wii software) has been outselling PS2/3 combined for months. Of course, we won't really know until this December, but for the moment it appears that the PS2 has slipped.

      Nintendo ... didn't innovate much with SNES and barely held the lead 50 million SNES units shipped vs. 30 million for Genesis/Mega Drive, its closest competitor.

      Nintendo ... completely failed with their next two consoles N64 was easily in second place in terms of units shipped, and GameCube was a few million away from second place. True, the GC figures look a lot worse if you discount Japan (where Xbox was practically nonexistent) but obviously they didn't "completely fail" unless you think that the market is only big enough for the dominant console.

      Anyway, I think these data put the lie to the claim that Nintendo was somehow in trouble, especially if you also bring in their pretty much continually bright financial picture.
    12. Re:NiGHTS Journey of (Broken) Dreams by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Did someone poop in your cheerios this morning?

    13. Re:NiGHTS Journey of (Broken) Dreams by 7Prime · · Score: 1

      Not to mention, we're talking "creative bankruptcy" not financial bankruptcy. Nintendo, as far as I'm concerned, has NEVER been in creative bankruptcy. SEGA, on the other hand, has just been going downhill ever since the Genesis left us. It poked its head out of the clouds (no pun intended) once to give us Skies of Arcadia, and maybe a few other times. But for the most part, they've shown themselves to be entirely creatively bankrupt. ESPECIALLY the Sonic Team (who I believe is doing NiGHTs).

      --
      Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
  4. Re:wtf are they thinking? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    Some day when you move out of your mom's basement and save up to pay a hooker you might realize that there are in fact two holes, one's for the pee and the other's for the cock.

  5. Re:wtf are they thinking? by G+Fab · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This actually is News for Nerds, unfortunately.

    Stuff that matters.

    (cue that "The more you know" jungle)

  6. Re:wtf are they thinking? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    omg i may fuck a hot girl soon.

    Yay!!

  7. Finally the Holiday season is here by Tol+Dantom · · Score: 2

    The truth is most of the games on this list would never get notice, and frankly the Wii and DS selections were a little weak. Come on guys, tell me how you managed to guess Radar Readers wouldn't be buying kiddie and tweener rhythm games.
    Nights and Fred are pretty obviously going to get trampled.

    They actually have interesting points about the shooters though. 51 looks like the next FEAR, which did great, and there's no reason it couldn't kill if released in Jan-June. More than any other game 51 is caught in the undertow. The biggest hype of this season is feeding into shooters with Halo 3 ready to split open the earth to make way for end times-like gushers of money in Redmond and 51 wants to get right in the goddamn way. Same with Army of Two and Kane and Lynch. These games sound really interesting but not only are they throwing their hats into the November mudslide, they're also climbing over each other and releasing on the same day in what may be the stupidest release timing I've ever heard of. I understand they're trying to cut each other off but it just seems so stupid to slit each other's throats for some of that holiday cash. If the developers would just wise up they could own a month from the second quarter. A triple-A game released in March is the only thing for the obsessive compulsive gamer media to talk about during that time.

    1. Re:Finally the Holiday season is here by donaldm · · Score: 1

      It appears "Kane and Lynch" and "army of Two" are cross-platform games and since Halo may take the lions share of the Xbox360 market in the months leading up to Christmas this may result in poor sales for this game on the Xbox360 (although it may pick up in the New Year). These games may actually do well on the PC and the PS3 platforms which could make developers think twice before developing on a console that does not return a profit. Still releasing on the Xbox360 at a similar time to Halo is IMHO asking for poor sales.

      Still preference of a game depends on the individual and while games like Halo and Mario will do well not everyone likes (shock horror) those types of games so the wider the selection of games the better as far as I am concerned. The problem I see at the moment for all the so-called next-gen consoles is there is not a great variation in unique and innovative games although I am quite sure that many would disagree with me.

      --
      There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
  8. Sweet! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You mean to tell me that we're not missing out on Duke Nukem Forever?

  9. Chance by dunezone · · Score: 1

    These games might have a chance if they sold them cheaper then the competition. The problem with this quarter is that these games are coming out one week after another. And at $60 a game you can easily kill through your spending cash quite fast.

    Heck, if your just shooting for the Guitar 3 and Rock band, your down almost $300.

    1. Re:Chance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow! You really need to spend less time playing games and more time learning English.
      I'm not normally one to flame grammar, but your post comes across as 'illiterate 13-year-old' rather than 'imperfect ESL.'

  10. Who wrote this list? by Khuffie · · Score: 1

    While some of those games I've genuinely never heard of (Dead Head Fred looks cool), quite a few games on that list are high-profile titles that are bound to sell well. I don't know about you but anyone I've seen who has a 360 and is into RPGs is looking forward to Eternal Sonata over Blue Dragon. Heck, I rarely buy JRPGs, and I might pick up Eternal Sonata. I think NiGHTS has enough fans to allow it to be a success, as for BlackSite, I played the demo, and in terms of frame rate, it was one of the worst games I've seen on the 360.

  11. Great times by p4rri11iz3r · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Right now is indeed a great time to be a gamer. The only problem is, come December, I'm going to be so broke it'll be sad. Heck, even the most spoiled, rich kids are going to have a tough time. Right now I have plans to buy the "big 3" for the Wii and maybe a few others. I really wish I could afford a 360 so I could pick up many of the games for it as well.

    Naturally, the fanboys will argue which console has better games, but my question is: does that even matter? Just enjoy the plethora of good games available for your console(s) and let the others be. We need to unite as gamers to encourage this kind of greatness in our games.

    I do feel sorry for some of these "lesser knowns." To be honest, they probably would have been better off waiting for Q1 or Q2 to release when gamers have finished their holiday games and are looking for something new. I'm hoping that we'll have another dry, boring Spring (which is sad, really) so that I can catch up on all the games I missed.

    --
    "Now I'm seriously serious!" - Serious Sam
    1. Re:Great times by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Heck, even the most spoiled, rich kids are going to have a tough time.

      Those of us who live in the real world and have decent jobs will barely be phased. I can pick up a few games every month and my bank account hardly notices it.

    2. Re:Great times by BarneyL · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No rush, it's cheaper if you take your time rather than buy more than you can play. I'm just playing through a cheap copy of Prey right now, and have FEAR plus the last two Broken Sword adventures on the the shelf after that.
      All good games and cost me less than one new one would.
      Staying a year out of date save a fortune on hardware upgrades too...

  12. One game we're likely to not see this fall... by denelson83 · · Score: 1

    ...would be Duke Nukem Forever! :p

  13. Eternal Sonata will do fine... by 7Prime · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We're talking about ALL huge titles by large game developers, here. The buzz behind Eternal Sonata (Trusty Bell) has been huge, possibly almost as much as Blue Dragon. In fact, it's Blue Dragon that's by a fairly small, indy company: Mistwalker (and no, Mistwalker is not owned by Microsoft). Eternal Sonata is made by Tri-Crescendo, a branch of Tri-Ace, which is a huge company, comparitively. In the RPG community, you don't hear much about Blue Dragon these days, but ES is getting more hype than anything else. It'll do fine. I, for one, am buying an XBox360 the day ES comes out.

    And NiGHTS? That's being produced by Sega's Sonic Team, one of the most (in)famous console development teams in the history of gaming. Yes, it won't outsell Myamodo's franchises... and really, can you really justify that happening?

    --
    Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
  14. Taking life too seriously. by G+Fab · · Score: 1


    The gameboy isn't relevant. If you want to compare sales of audio players or game playing laptops, I'm sure Sony wins, and if you want to use sales of handhelds, of course Nintendo wins. It's silly to bring them up unless you have confirmation bias and just want to bolster a company, which is cute but not for me. Nintendo is in two markets, and has done better in one than the other lately. I think we can agree that Sony sells far more stuff than ten Nintendos. We're just talking about consoles right now.

    yeah, your data is obsolete and certainly not verifiable. They are reported estimate, guesses, etc. They are marketing tools. You source doesn't even include Europe, which obviously favors Nintendo heavily. But they still clearly indicate that Sony is selling far more consoles than Nintendo. Did you even look at this stuff before linking? Sony makes two consoles that are selling right now. You have to add them together to find how many consoles Sony is selling. Your data claims that about 6.64 million playstation 2s and 5.5 million PS3s where shipped (sorry, your data sucks and cites only shipped) in the most recent month on that site's record, but the Wii sold less than 6 million.

    I guess I could point out that dollar for dollar, Sony is winning by double even without the PS2. If I sell a BMW 760i, and you sell twenty hamburgers, I have higher volume sales.

    So your citation of data you don't even understand is obnoxious and pathetic. It indeed only proved me wrong in that the Wii isn't dominating as much as I claimed, but I think your data sucks and the wii is dominating and in much higher demand than the competiton.

    Anyway, you can pull statistics that say whatever you want. I can pull some too, but your numbers are so close to my claim that I'm happy to stand with those numbers.

    NES+SNES = PS1. NES+SNES is millions shy of PS2.

    That's only slightly different from what I said, right? Obviously my point wouldn't be any less true with the revision. Figuring that the N64 and Gamecube sold about 50 million combined, Sony has sold far more consoles than Nintendo has in its entire history, in less than half the time. I hate to keep defending Sony like this, since I'm not really that interested in discussing them.

    I guess I will just explain my point one more time... more carefully so the knuckleheads can follow.

    With each generation of console, Nintendo sold fewer and fewer. They only sold about 20 million gamecubes, for example. This round, Nintendo has risen from the ashes of mediocre to absolutely dominate. (but but but, I said that Sony is grossing more, selling more, whatever... Doesn't matter. The Wii is a huge improvement and Nintendo can't meet demand because they have a great product).

    According to you, NES and SNES together are (according to your errant numbers) about ten million shy of PS1+PS2. In other words, the memories of a dominating Nintendo followed by a less dominating Sony are simply fictive. Nintendo's goal of reaching more players with the Wii is an ambitious one. That follows the Playstation, which reached new gamers too. But I wasn't trying to bolster Sony or diminish Nintendo.

    Nintendo is a great example of a company becoming mediocre in one market and getting fed up with it and returning with something excellent... to explain why I think Sega will make great games in the future. I should be attacked for making retardedly obvious comments, perhaps.

    Further, in the parent, I did not say that Nintendo was in financial trouble. Read entire comments before freaking out and replying. They were sucking only in comparison to what they once were and what their potential was (And they know that). Note where I say Nintendo was making money and how that isn't my point. I'm not trying to troll by saying Nintendo is some crappy company. Like I said, I like Nintendo. Everyone who likes games probably likes Nintendo. Can anyone claim to never have enjoyed any nintendo brand game? But the