GZ: We can't predict the future. We'll see what happens. The key thing is we now plan on making thirteen thousand Mass Effect games, and we've got a great story arc.
Apple never really needed gaming, it would've been neat and dandy for them but what they really needed was consumers who want laptops rather than desktops because they play their games on consoles. Which they're getting rather fast these days, and what do you know? It's timed fairly well with the huge lift in brand hype Apple has been building over the past few years with things like the ipod.
I walked in on a conversation with two Japanese exchange students who were talking with our very own household Sony fanboy about how far away the great games were. This at first seemed pretty odd to me because games like Assassins Creed and GTA IV aren't too far out and they look fairly awesome to me; but apparently they don't hold much appeal to these Japanese guys in particular. Of course these are just two guys, but if that's the trend in Japan then it's frankly not a big surprise and perhaps not due to change anytime soon.
Of course the PS2 didn't launch with a great line-up either, but I think that is where the price plays into the picture. It's one thing to expect your loyal fans to buy a console where the really awesome games are months/years out when it's cheap and also functions as a dvd player; it was a risk that but it sure worked out for Sony in the end. Maybe this time they pushed it too far, with the console being expensive, the great games being even further out and perhaps high definition formats aren't as big as expected just yet?
Despite all the doomsaying and ranting it turns out that he probably did it for the money; as Joystiq.com is running an story saying the following: An SEC filing has revealed that EA dropped a $1.5 million bonus on Peter Moore to help lure him into heading up their sports division. The Tattooed One got the check in recognition for the money he'd be missing out on by leaving Microsoft, though he'll have to give it all back if he leaves EA in the next two years. This is in addition to a more than half-million dollar annual salary.
Being head of EA sports is not really a bad move either and likely quite the challenge if he is to reinvent their image in the public eye.
It's no secret that sales on pc games are on a downward spiral while sales on console games reach new heights every year, and in my eyes it looks like Microsoft is going to depend on their xbox brand if they want games for Windows Vista. Some games like Mass Effect (and KOTOR before it) are already going exclusively for consoles, atleast in the beginning; but if it wasn't for the 360 I think you'd see many of the games that have become cross-platform inorder for them to reach a wider audience going exclusively for the PS3.
The 360 is going to be a rather wonderful tool for Microsoft gaming since it's now possibly to play with Windows Vista because Live works on both systems. One example being Age of Conan which might get cross platform servers allowing console gamers to play with their pc gaming friends - something that none of the other Consoles will offer anytime soon.
"So what, if it wasn't for the 360 all the freaks who got it would be playing on Windows." you might think, and you might be right - but I know that I personally prefer gaming on a console because of the whole Sofa aspect and if Microsoft had axed the xbox brand early, never releasing the 360 I'd own a PS3 instead now.:p Of course I might be the only one who thinks that way and thus completely wrong about Vista depending on the Xbox; but I doubt it.
I have the exact opposite feeling really, I watched all the press conferences live and Sonys was by far the worse of them. Not so much because it was actually worse, but because it obviously wasn't ment for a live stream unlike both the Microsoft and the Nintendo conferences.
Both Microsoft and Nintendo wanted to give everyone sitting at home fullscreen showcasing of all the games the ywanted to show off, Sony didn't. Aside from, I think, four games games only two of them with actual gameplay footage (nba08/killzone 2) and two trailers (MGS4/Infamous) everything they showed off ended up being about 7x5 pixels on the live stream because it was footage of the 4 presentation screens... This of coruse resulted in it being absolutely imposible to see any of the things you really wanted to see from the Sony conference, made worse by the fact that all they did for games like Assassins Creed, GTA4 and so on was to line them up in a long continuesly row of trailers that you couldn't see unless you were there.
They made a huge deal out of things like Killzone 2, which I wouldn't personally dream of playing, and that might be parto f the reason but I frankly went meh over the whole thing, sometimes alt tabbing away because I couldn't see what was going on anyways...
I don't know about it being a waste of time, it seems like they are getting through to their customers on a completely different level this year. Usually E3 hasn't been the big thing it was hyped up to be, it was a conference where everyone who went were in for all the treats while for everyone else it just ment that the big gamesites would have more trailers/interviews/previews and a photoseries of boothbabes...
This year it's completely different for people sitting at home, and it's different because of things like Gamespots live E3 studoe where they are inviting developers in to talk, and play, their games and it frankly shows both developers and their games from a very different angle than the typical over hyped trailers - which is nice.
Hopefully both E3 and other gaming sites will pick up on what Gamespot are doing next year, because it's frankly very neat to jump right into it on a live stream rather than reading about it later in an article of which half is about the gaming "journalist" telling us he had an awesome time at E3...
I've never been a big fan of FPS games on consoles because their gameplay simply isn't suited for a gamepad controller, not in my hands anyways. So the first, and only, console FPS that really did something for me was Gears of War - which I hoped would spark a trend in Console FPS games. Well it sure doesn't look like Sony has picked up on that yet, because it sure seems like Killzone 2 will be doing every single mistake in terms of gameplay that puts me off the gameplay.
The ps3 won't have pricecuts in Scandinavia because the distributer doesn't feel a need since they don't consider the competition to be as strong as it is in America.
I didn't buy an xbox 360 because I'm a fan of xboxes or microsoft and somehow hate everything else, I bought it because I took a good look at the upcomming games for all consoles and the one to carry the most that I wanted to play was the xbox 360. Some of those games are comming for pc or ps3 aswell, but some like Mass Effect aren't (in a good long while anyways) and there is something to be said about sitting in your comfy couch playing with a nice controller. But if any of those games I favor were comming out for the ps3 and not the xbox 360 I'd have gotten that instead. Those brand doomsayers and fanboys should get a grib on themselves and reality if you ask me, all the freaking brands exist solely to cash in on us and why on earth do you want to be a fan of that?
Microsoft went too cheap this time and now they have to make amends, but so what? It's not like Sony or Nintendo couldn't be the next in line for that since they all do things like it if they believe they can get away with it and still have happy customers.
I agree.
I have to admit that I was rather interested in Hellgate: London until they came up with that nonsense, and the more marketing blurb they spin on it to make it sound decent the less interested I become. This is obvioussly guessing, but I think there is a real risk that you would end up paying more for less through a subscription system like this compared to regular expansions - at the same time having less knowledge about excatly what it is you're paying for because things are added gradually.
I'm sure they'll sell a lot of copies and subscriptions, but I won't be one of them if they stick with their current business model.
I like that they are not going to make RMT illegal, at least in South Korea - because with all the negative focus on RMT recently I frankly had a scary feeling that it'd end up being just a nother limitation on a long list of unnecessary subduement. Let's hope our own politcians are just as wise.
In fact I barely notice, I've played a few games with ingame adds for a while but I can't tell you about a single one that I remember having seen. I don't really mind if it benefits me like papers/magazines that are free because they are advert funded - of course after so many years of adverts I manage to mentally block almost everything to the point that you can ask me about an add on the previous page in a magazine and I won't have seen it so I guess it's easy for me not to care.
I used to think the ESRB ratings were there to help parents who don't have all the time in the world to keep up on their childrens hobby set a limit for their children. They never really enforced the ESRB ratins on video games in Denmark though but cinemas does something similar on movies, and while it's still not a law it ment my parents had to buy me alien tickets when I was a child.
But lately it seems these kinds of ratings are getting out of hands, I mean, I think it's fine that parents have to approve and thus care about what their children are doing - but it used to be that you could buy a game like Fallout and do all the gay weddings and morbid murderings you could possibly want without any organisation telling you not too if you were an adult. Not so much anymore apparently, because the AO stamp is more or less a ban of games forcing developers to self-censorship which in terms renders things like the ESRB ratins dangerous.
Basicly they, and other rating systems like them have moved from helping people raise their children to telling everyone how they think we should think. What gives them the right to do this? I'm sure not going to think very highly of the ratings or the politicians who support them in the future if they keep this nonsense up.
I buy my music online mainly because it's much easier I chose the direct download option because it's quicker, of course I don't have a system where you can actually hear the difference so what? Of course there is more too it than quality, because I'm much too lazy to actually change cds everytime I want to listen to something differently - so I'd end up compressing the music myself anyways.
But I think there might be something to the first part aswell because when I look at my music collection the majority of my albums have been released before 2002, maybe even further back, and 95% of it comes from bands that excisted before 1995 so if anyone is like me well... I do have some new music but it's surely not mainstream and much of it would be nearly impossibly to get on CD in Denmark, at least if I want it at a reasonable price compared to what it'd cost me as mp3.
I want to be able to take my time and pick out my morbid strategy before I proceed to blow someone innocent childs ribs out, and I'm not sure if that is truely plausible with this new combat system. But it's been a long time and I guess we have to accept some changes and the combat system is minor changes in my eyes. At least it's minor changes if the new system owns up to what combat is supposed to be in a Fallout game, because while combat is very important it's as a tool you apply (like dialog) as you proceed through the game. This is probably much easier achived with turn based combat though, and if this new combat system turns combat from tool into gameplay feature then it probably won't deserve the Fallout label - and then again if they do it right maybe it will. VTM Bloodlines had real time combat, and that never turned into anything like the monotome AI bashing most elderscroll games have been.
Also, if the game is half as good as Oblivion it'll be one of the worst games ever because Oblivion was upright horrible.
Slashdot Mirror
It does have some merit, a lot of Bioware's community users are pretty much attending one big funeral on several of the official Bioware forums.
GZ: We can't predict the future. We'll see what happens. The key thing is we now plan on making thirteen thousand Mass Effect games, and we've got a great story arc.
Fixed
Didn't you hear? They've changed the design of Dragon Age to a pod-racing type game with dragons.
This is horrible news.
The release of Mass Effect is approaching?
Apple never really needed gaming, it would've been neat and dandy for them but what they really needed was consumers who want laptops rather than desktops because they play their games on consoles. Which they're getting rather fast these days, and what do you know? It's timed fairly well with the huge lift in brand hype Apple has been building over the past few years with things like the ipod.
I this loss on the x360 hardware alone or hardware and software?
I walked in on a conversation with two Japanese exchange students who were talking with our very own household Sony fanboy about how far away the great games were. This at first seemed pretty odd to me because games like Assassins Creed and GTA IV aren't too far out and they look fairly awesome to me; but apparently they don't hold much appeal to these Japanese guys in particular. Of course these are just two guys, but if that's the trend in Japan then it's frankly not a big surprise and perhaps not due to change anytime soon.
Of course the PS2 didn't launch with a great line-up either, but I think that is where the price plays into the picture. It's one thing to expect your loyal fans to buy a console where the really awesome games are months/years out when it's cheap and also functions as a dvd player; it was a risk that but it sure worked out for Sony in the end. Maybe this time they pushed it too far, with the console being expensive, the great games being even further out and perhaps high definition formats aren't as big as expected just yet?
Ooopsie forgot the link.g et-1-5-million-bonus-550-000-salary/
http://www.joystiq.com/2007/07/18/peter-moore-to-
Despite all the doomsaying and ranting it turns out that he probably did it for the money; as Joystiq.com is running an story saying the following:
An SEC filing has revealed that EA dropped a $1.5 million bonus on Peter Moore to help lure him into heading up their sports division. The Tattooed One got the check in recognition for the money he'd be missing out on by leaving Microsoft, though he'll have to give it all back if he leaves EA in the next two years. This is in addition to a more than half-million dollar annual salary.
Being head of EA sports is not really a bad move either and likely quite the challenge if he is to reinvent their image in the public eye.
It's no secret that sales on pc games are on a downward spiral while sales on console games reach new heights every year, and in my eyes it looks like Microsoft is going to depend on their xbox brand if they want games for Windows Vista. Some games like Mass Effect (and KOTOR before it) are already going exclusively for consoles, atleast in the beginning; but if it wasn't for the 360 I think you'd see many of the games that have become cross-platform inorder for them to reach a wider audience going exclusively for the PS3.
:p Of course I might be the only one who thinks that way and thus completely wrong about Vista depending on the Xbox; but I doubt it.
The 360 is going to be a rather wonderful tool for Microsoft gaming since it's now possibly to play with Windows Vista because Live works on both systems. One example being Age of Conan which might get cross platform servers allowing console gamers to play with their pc gaming friends - something that none of the other Consoles will offer anytime soon.
"So what, if it wasn't for the 360 all the freaks who got it would be playing on Windows." you might think, and you might be right - but I know that I personally prefer gaming on a console because of the whole Sofa aspect and if Microsoft had axed the xbox brand early, never releasing the 360 I'd own a PS3 instead now.
Buys a series of big trucks!
I have the exact opposite feeling really, I watched all the press conferences live and Sonys was by far the worse of them. Not so much because it was actually worse, but because it obviously wasn't ment for a live stream unlike both the Microsoft and the Nintendo conferences.
Both Microsoft and Nintendo wanted to give everyone sitting at home fullscreen showcasing of all the games the ywanted to show off, Sony didn't. Aside from, I think, four games games only two of them with actual gameplay footage (nba08/killzone 2) and two trailers (MGS4/Infamous) everything they showed off ended up being about 7x5 pixels on the live stream because it was footage of the 4 presentation screens... This of coruse resulted in it being absolutely imposible to see any of the things you really wanted to see from the Sony conference, made worse by the fact that all they did for games like Assassins Creed, GTA4 and so on was to line them up in a long continuesly row of trailers that you couldn't see unless you were there.
They made a huge deal out of things like Killzone 2, which I wouldn't personally dream of playing, and that might be parto f the reason but I frankly went meh over the whole thing, sometimes alt tabbing away because I couldn't see what was going on anyways...
I don't know about it being a waste of time, it seems like they are getting through to their customers on a completely different level this year. Usually E3 hasn't been the big thing it was hyped up to be, it was a conference where everyone who went were in for all the treats while for everyone else it just ment that the big gamesites would have more trailers/interviews/previews and a photoseries of boothbabes...
This year it's completely different for people sitting at home, and it's different because of things like Gamespots live E3 studoe where they are inviting developers in to talk, and play, their games and it frankly shows both developers and their games from a very different angle than the typical over hyped trailers - which is nice.
Hopefully both E3 and other gaming sites will pick up on what Gamespot are doing next year, because it's frankly very neat to jump right into it on a live stream rather than reading about it later in an article of which half is about the gaming "journalist" telling us he had an awesome time at E3...
I've never been a big fan of FPS games on consoles because their gameplay simply isn't suited for a gamepad controller, not in my hands anyways. So the first, and only, console FPS that really did something for me was Gears of War - which I hoped would spark a trend in Console FPS games. Well it sure doesn't look like Sony has picked up on that yet, because it sure seems like Killzone 2 will be doing every single mistake in terms of gameplay that puts me off the gameplay.
The ps3 won't have pricecuts in Scandinavia because the distributer doesn't feel a need since they don't consider the competition to be as strong as it is in America.
I didn't buy an xbox 360 because I'm a fan of xboxes or microsoft and somehow hate everything else, I bought it because I took a good look at the upcomming games for all consoles and the one to carry the most that I wanted to play was the xbox 360. Some of those games are comming for pc or ps3 aswell, but some like Mass Effect aren't (in a good long while anyways) and there is something to be said about sitting in your comfy couch playing with a nice controller. But if any of those games I favor were comming out for the ps3 and not the xbox 360 I'd have gotten that instead. Those brand doomsayers and fanboys should get a grib on themselves and reality if you ask me, all the freaking brands exist solely to cash in on us and why on earth do you want to be a fan of that?
Microsoft went too cheap this time and now they have to make amends, but so what? It's not like Sony or Nintendo couldn't be the next in line for that since they all do things like it if they believe they can get away with it and still have happy customers.
I agree.
I have to admit that I was rather interested in Hellgate: London until they came up with that nonsense, and the more marketing blurb they spin on it to make it sound decent the less interested I become. This is obvioussly guessing, but I think there is a real risk that you would end up paying more for less through a subscription system like this compared to regular expansions - at the same time having less knowledge about excatly what it is you're paying for because things are added gradually.
I'm sure they'll sell a lot of copies and subscriptions, but I won't be one of them if they stick with their current business model.
I like that they are not going to make RMT illegal, at least in South Korea - because with all the negative focus on RMT recently I frankly had a scary feeling that it'd end up being just a nother limitation on a long list of unnecessary subduement. Let's hope our own politcians are just as wise.
In fact I barely notice, I've played a few games with ingame adds for a while but I can't tell you about a single one that I remember having seen. I don't really mind if it benefits me like papers/magazines that are free because they are advert funded - of course after so many years of adverts I manage to mentally block almost everything to the point that you can ask me about an add on the previous page in a magazine and I won't have seen it so I guess it's easy for me not to care.
I used to think the ESRB ratings were there to help parents who don't have all the time in the world to keep up on their childrens hobby set a limit for their children. They never really enforced the ESRB ratins on video games in Denmark though but cinemas does something similar on movies, and while it's still not a law it ment my parents had to buy me alien tickets when I was a child.
But lately it seems these kinds of ratings are getting out of hands, I mean, I think it's fine that parents have to approve and thus care about what their children are doing - but it used to be that you could buy a game like Fallout and do all the gay weddings and morbid murderings you could possibly want without any organisation telling you not too if you were an adult. Not so much anymore apparently, because the AO stamp is more or less a ban of games forcing developers to self-censorship which in terms renders things like the ESRB ratins dangerous.
Basicly they, and other rating systems like them have moved from helping people raise their children to telling everyone how they think we should think. What gives them the right to do this? I'm sure not going to think very highly of the ratings or the politicians who support them in the future if they keep this nonsense up.
I buy my music online mainly because it's much easier I chose the direct download option because it's quicker, of course I don't have a system where you can actually hear the difference so what? Of course there is more too it than quality, because I'm much too lazy to actually change cds everytime I want to listen to something differently - so I'd end up compressing the music myself anyways.
But I think there might be something to the first part aswell because when I look at my music collection the majority of my albums have been released before 2002, maybe even further back, and 95% of it comes from bands that excisted before 1995 so if anyone is like me well... I do have some new music but it's surely not mainstream and much of it would be nearly impossibly to get on CD in Denmark, at least if I want it at a reasonable price compared to what it'd cost me as mp3.
I think the politicians who come up with silly bans like that are much more likely to provoke violence than the games they ban.
Violent revolution is a response to tyranny!
Politicians who think they know better than their people provoke violent revolution and should be censored!
I want to be able to take my time and pick out my morbid strategy before I proceed to blow someone innocent childs ribs out, and I'm not sure if that is truely plausible with this new combat system. But it's been a long time and I guess we have to accept some changes and the combat system is minor changes in my eyes. At least it's minor changes if the new system owns up to what combat is supposed to be in a Fallout game, because while combat is very important it's as a tool you apply (like dialog) as you proceed through the game. This is probably much easier achived with turn based combat though, and if this new combat system turns combat from tool into gameplay feature then it probably won't deserve the Fallout label - and then again if they do it right maybe it will. VTM Bloodlines had real time combat, and that never turned into anything like the monotome AI bashing most elderscroll games have been.
Also, if the game is half as good as Oblivion it'll be one of the worst games ever because Oblivion was upright horrible.