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Crazy Taxi Arrives For PSN, XBLA Version Coming Soon
Today a remake of the Dreamcast classic Crazy Taxi launched on the PlayStation Network, with the Xbox Live Arcade release coming November 24th. The graphics have been updated to 720p, but licensing issues for the soundtrack and some in-game locations resulted in noticeable changes. Quoting the Opposable Thumbs blog:
"The Offspring, along with Bad Religion, provided the game's soundtrack in the original release. These songs, along with the sound of that announcer, went a long way toward creating the game's mood. In the new version, they have been replaced by completely forgettable pop-punk tracks, and it's a downgrade. ... That's not the only thing that's missing. The game originally featured licensed locations. Customers would need to be dropped off at the Pizza Hut, for instance. These companies didn't spring for the advertising in the game's rerelease, but the buildings weren't updated to look like anything else; the result is a game that looks like its filled with closed-down fast food restaurants. ... this is an interesting look at what went on to become a cult classic. Still, this is no replacement for my original copy."
Real risk-taking game development (all games that strongly adhere to established genres do not fit this category of games) is still happening today. Just check out indie games (some indie games do adhere to established genres closely, however, but there's no "$50 million mega sequels"). The platform(s) is/are different, of course: It's some non-empty subset of Windows, GNU/Linux (and maybe even Linux sans GNU, on some embedded systems) and the Mac, and pirating of indie games is actually very often possible (as implementing DRM always increases development costs and higher costs are not very tolerable for indie game developers, with some individuals thinking it leads to greater profits, but I'm not here to claim whether or not that's true), but developers still see profits; I have to guess the reason why profits are seen is that gamers realize game-development-effort/time/talent is scarce (not copies of games; progressively cheaper-to-make-and-distribute, perfect copies, or "digital distribution," shatters the idea information is necessarily scarce), as resources must be given to these developers for continued development and support to happen. (the source of such resources may not necessarily be the individuals that enjoy the benefits, however; for those crazy self-driven developers, their economic support comes from their occupation unrelated to such development and/or resources simply provided to them by someone that doesn't enjoy the benefits, like their parents)
I'm also guessing that in that era of the Dreamcast, fewer gamers (or none, but the statement preceding the first comma in this sentence is redundant, as is this, and this whole sentence in parentheses and the parentheses around it) were aware of what's actually scarce (and many may have thought that there really is nothing scarce connected to the creation of Dreamcast game discs that work in a Dreamcast, the discs containing fun-to-play games), and the necessity to support what's truly scarce for game development of games gamers want to play to perpetuate.
I realize this post is somewhat difficult to read. You can try harder to understand it all or ignore it as you might think it's not worthwhile to understand.