EVE Online is as close as you can get to Privateer Online.
No, Infinity Online is as close as you're going to get to Privateer Online. (Prototype Download) I am waiting with bated breath for the game's completion.:)
Requiring an additional accessory generally is not an effective business practice historicaly. The only games it has really worked for are the guitar hero series where the controller only works for that game.
Actually, new controllers have been rather successful as of late, but only if they receive first party support from the controller manufacturer. It's pretty much a given at this point that no third party is going to write a game for a potential competitor's controller, so they sort of end up creating mini-markets.
A few examples:
Dance Pads - Bundled with Dance Dance Revolution and competitors. Sell you one pad, then keep chucking out the games in the series.
Guitar Controller - Bundled with Guitar Hero. Again, sell you one guitar, then keep chucking out sequels.
Bongos - Bundled with Donkey Konga/Jungle Beat. Nintendo managed to sell a lot of these independent of the bundles because the two (three in Japan) Donkey Konga games allowed for up to four players. Nintendo continued support with a platform game known as Jungle Beat, and may continue supporting the controller on the Wii with DK Bongo Blast.
Eye Toy - Bundled or sold separately, this gizmo has been well supported by Sony. It's quite popular with players and has over a dozen games available. Sony has even managed to sneak Eye Toy features into dozens of games that are normally played without this gizmo.
Basically, there's a healthy market for alternative controllers, just as long as it's supported by the controller manufacturer. However, the market has been completely closed to the idea of replacing the primary interface on a console with a separately sold controller. These controllers are specialized and will continue to be specialized for the foreseeable future.:)
1.1 million according to NPD's figures. 1.25 million for all of North America by Nintendo's figures. Which means that using your 50,000,000 household figure at 1 wii per household, Nintendo currently has about 2% market penetration. Not too shabby for a brand new console.:)
One of the biggest reasons why I won't be picking up a Wii any time soon is Nintendo's reliance on Mario/Wario spinoff titles
You forgot Metroid, Starfox, Donkey Kong, Zelda, Kirby, and a half-dozen other characters/franchises I'm probably forgetting about. All of which are available for the Wii NOW as Gamecube games. (See if you can pick up the $10 DK: Jungle Beat from Gamestop. The bongos make the game a blast to play!) If you wait a few months, they'll also be available as Wii games.
While you're understandably tired of Mario, you do have to admit that Nintendo knows how to run a franchise. They have consistently produced some of the most desirable games in the industry by utilizing those properties. Save for Sega's success with Sonic (which they promptly drove into the ground), I don't think you can claim that of any other game maker.
The dizzying array of visual styles is one of the game series' signature elements, and Smooth Moves delivers in spades.
Besides, who wouldn't be charmed out of their socks by a giant R.O.B. the Robot waving a Nintendo Zapper at your Starfox Arwing fighter? I mean, can you get any geekier?;)
BTW, it's worth noting that the Wii does have a few non-minigame games. Call of Duty, for example, is apparently a well liked FPS even if the graphics aren't quite as nice as the 360 version. Also, by the time that most people get their Wiis, Metroid Prime 3 will be blasting on the scene, ready to kick some Space Pirate booty!
That's right. It's coming back to me now. It wasn't Westwood that was the problem, it was Ultima Online. EA decided that they'd rather sink the money into the Ultima series than into the Wing Commander series, which they felt hadn't been doing so well since they took over Origin. (Gee. Surprise, surprise.) So they killed Privateer Online in favor of doing the sequel (WTF?) Ultima Online 2. In the process, EA made a huge mess of things.
The accelerometers they're using were only introduced in November 2005.
Manufacturers introduce new parts all the time. They usually take over the manufacturing facilities of the parts they're replacing. Accelerometers have been around long enough to where supply shouldn't be that big of a problem.
The drive also has to be custom; remember, it reads GCN disks as well.
Actually, the Wii/GCN optical discs are the exact same technology as DVDs. The only difference is in a firmware update that allows the drive to read discs in Nintendo's custom format. (Nintendo didn't want to pay DVD licensing fees.) The GCN discs are mini-DVD sized, which are very similar to the 3" CDs from days gone by. They're often used in digital video cameras, and should fit in most standard DVD drives. The loading mechanism is probably custom, though. Very few slot-loading designs support the smaller CD/DVD formats. Of course, that's just a matter of mechanical parts.
And the CPU and GPU set, though not designed for speed, are new custom designs.
"Broadway" is a pretty straight-forward update to the "Gekko" chip used in the GCN. It's manufactured by IBM, one of the largest chip manufacturers in the world today. Similarly, "Hollywood" is an update to the "Flipper" chip used in the GCN. It's manufactured by ATI, another company with massive manufacturing capabilities.
If I were to hazard a guess, the problem is not with Nintendo's partners. The problem is getting caught with their pants down, expecting that the Wii would sell only slightly better than the GCN did at launch. As a result, they're months behind on scaling up their manufacturing to meet demand. They may even be cautious about doing so, just in case demand were to suddenly drop off just after Christmas. Now that they know that demand is holding steady, expect Nintendo to get their act together something around... oh... June. Maybe July.
Assuming a 10% tax rate in the U.S (which is higher than most places), you're looking at $660 total for a PS3, still far less than what it is in the EU after exchange.
VAT runs a LOT higher than 10%. It's a unified tax structure that pays for all the health care, schools, and social programs. Several countries have VATs as high as 20% or more.
IMHO, 3D Realms drove Apogee's Duke Nukem into the ground. Apogee's Nukem was a really good platform series. 3D Realm's Nukem is a ripoff of the name just to make a 3D title with blood and porn.
Star Trek - Activision finally pulled Star Trek out of its gaming gutter with smash hits like Armada and Elite Force. Then Paramount drives the franchise into the ground, Activision sues, and we fans get no more Trek games. (Boo! Hiss!) I've heard that Bethesda Softworks is picking up the torch, but I'm not holding my breath.:(
Wing Commander - We should have had Privateer Online. Instead, EA dropped it for their new hotness over at Blizzard. Thus one of the greatest series of all time ended.
Command & Conquer - C&C was good. I mean, darn good. But then Westwood failed to deliver Tiberium Sun as promised, and gave us Red Alert instead. Ok, fine. A lot of people liked Red Alert even though it wasn't as good as the original. So we kept waiting for Tiberium Sun. 4 and a half years later, Westwood just kicked it out the door, merely a shadow of what it was intended to be. From then on out, C&C was nothing more than a "property" in which vaguely related games were released one after another, with no real connection to the gameplay that made the original famous.
Graphical Adventure Series - While not really a game series in of itself, the concept of Graphical Adventures has been mostly dropped by the industry, depsite the fact that it was a great way to tell a story. Nearly all the Lucas Arts games sold well, and never really showed a decline in the market. The concept just... fell into the ether, seemingly in favor of "more adult" gameplay. (Boo! Hiss!)
I find it strange that Nintendo has not been able to produce more Wiis, given that most of the technology in the system is rather old.
It's a manufacturing capacity problem. Nintendo's business is sized according to the requirements of their previous generation of hardware. This unexpectedly high demand for Wiis has left them in dire need to increase their production capabilities. Unfortunately, it takes months to tool up a new factory and begin moving parts to that factory. And that factory won't even be able to work at full capacity if there's a shortage of some particular part. For example, the Wii cases are highly customized pieces of plastic. If the provider of those cases can't make enough to meet production needs, then the entire pipeline won't be able to operate at maximum capacity.
All I can say is that it's a good thing that Nintendo gets their chips from IBM. IBM is probably the only company that could provide Nintendo with enough customized microprocessors to scale with their needs.
"yeah, jump around, get fit!" but its not long before you work out how to play Sports with mere flicks of the wrist, while sprawling back on the sofa in traditional pose.
At least in the case of Wii Sports, that doesn't work as well as it sounds. You *can* do it, but the movements are a lot less natural. Getting up and moving around makes the games a lot easier to play, which helps keep you on your feet.
The other thing that Wii Sports does is that it ramps up the challenge as you play. (Make sure you make yourself a Mii, or you won't have a save file!) So while you may start playing Wii Sports Tennis using leisurely swings, it won't be long before you find yourself concentrating hard on making more powerful swings in the direction you need the ball to go.
Last but not least, play some boxing. I know the "exhaustion" of your character takes some getting used to. Especially when he fails to punch for seemingly unknown reasons. But once you play it enough, it starts to make sense. You need to dodge the blows of your opponent, then knock him from the inside when his glove whooshes by your head. A nice strong punch followed by various jabs usually has him down on the ground in no time flat. Since there is no better cardiovascular workout than Boxing among the Wii Sports games, I highly recommend that you get acquainted with the gameplay. It will leave you breathing heavy and drenched in sweat. But you won't care because it feels just so darn good to get the exercise!;D
I understand that. However, North America gets a lion's share of that. We were promised about half of the Wii shipments, when NPD reports that we only received about a third of them. No worries, though. I figured it out. Look at my response to myself right below your post.
Ah hah! Found the exact Nintendo number in their PDF:
Apr-Dec '06 (Sales Units in Ten Thousands) Japan 114 Americas 125 Other 80 ------------ Total 319
Actually, NPD didn't give the numbers for our 51st state* to the North, did they? So I suppose that would explain the discrepency between their numbers and Nintendo's. Nintendo tracks by North America as a whole while NPD only gave the US.
P.S. Can we fix the ecode tag so that it's no longer broken? It's annoying to no longer be able to lay out tabular data correctly.
* Nintendo manufactured 4 million Wii systems by the end of 2006 and during that time sold and delivered 3.19 million to its distributors and retail customers around the world, the other 810,000 are slowly arriving at stores now. So they expect another 2.81 million to be sold in the first three months of 2007.
Sounds like even more evidence that the NPD numbers were faulty. 1.1 million in NA in 2006? I think not!
Your other problem is comparing pre-tax US prices with post 17.5% VAT ones
Mod parent up. The reason why European prices are often higher is not because they're being sold at significantly higher prices. It's because the high tax rates (VAT - Value Added Tax) are computed into the price of the goods rather than rung up separately at the time of purchase. Many Europeans actually prefer this situation as something that costs 200 pounds/euros will still cost 200 pounds/euros at the register. Here in the US we have to calculate the taxes before arriving at the price we'll pay at the register.
well, there is quite a lot of math happening in our brains (and withing human behavior) at any given time
That's not really "math" in the way you mean it. It's a form of computations, yes, but closer to an analog computer than a digital calculator. The brain does arithmetic quite poorly.
"Tuning" in general might be a good thing, but you need to base you optimization on something - why not math?
Because the results of some random calculation will feel "cold" and not at all enjoyable. Or to put it another way, which one is more "fun"?
- Starfox 64 - Microsoft Flight Simulator
Can you calculate what it is that makes Starfox "fun"? Probably not. Can you calculate the necessary parameters to make MFS "realistic"? Sure.
Since there are no equations for the former, the game designer has to go by "feel" instead. Attempting to apply any sort of real models to the game would cause the Arwings to fall out of the sky as, I assure you, they are quite impossible to fly.
What was done here was not a matter of tuning the game via a mathematical model. It was a statistical sampling used to determine the best adjustments for the Easy, Medium, and Hard settings. Which works quite well given that the designer often has no real "feel" for these settings and has to make a best guess.
And then there are the scumbags advertizing wii sports as 5 games.....
Amazingly, it seemed to work. Before I got my Wii, I kept an eye on the eBay prices. The Wiis that were advertising "Wii + 5 Games!" consistently sold higher than the Wiis that didn't.
All I can say is, I'm constantly surprised at how many gullible people there are in the world.
The essential element that was missing until the last minute was tuning: The approach to game design that Maxis brought to the table is called "Tuned Emergence" and "Design by Accretion". Before it was tuned, The Sims wasn't missing any structure or content, but it just wasn't balanced yet. But it's OK, because that's how it's supposed to work!
Long story short: you throw all the game elements in a pot, then figure out how to fit them together in a way that's "fun". Failure to do this results in a failure to make a game.
While I really have to apologize to the author of the game for using it as an example, 2H4U (Too Hard for You) demonstrates exactly what happens if you throw all the elements in the pot, but don't take the time to balance and tune them. All you get is a lot of game elements in play, but with gameplay that is more of a chore than anything entertaining.
What I like even more is games that lower the difficulty of a given task after each, say, 3 failed attempts, and then return you to whatever difficulty you were at beforehand afterwards, or else allow you to switch the difficulty up and down without starting a new game.
You mean like in Crash Bandicoot where you get a free Aku Aku to protect yourself if you die too many times before reaching the next checkpoint?
Yes, that is a nice feature. Of course, I wouldn't have needed it if I had figured out earlier that I could use the double-jump on Dr. N. Tropy rather than trying to navigate the floating platforms.:P
I mean, there has to be a better way of balancing a game than just plugging in numbers by trial and error.
It's not trial and error. It's a binary search algorithm that executed within O(log n) time.:P
Think of it like turning a knob back and forth, getting closer to the setting you feel is best. The "best" setting is the one with the most appeal to humans, and may not be the most realistic. Unless you're programming an accurate simulation, that is. In which case the players are usually willing to put up with the "coldness" of the interface in exchange for learning about the physical reality.
"Tuning" makes games better. Period. End of story.
Since tuning is all about improving the feel of the game to the humans who will interface with it, it all depends upon the creator for how he wishes to accomplish this. In this case, the creator was looking for sweet spots that he was able to find through mathematical manipulation of sampled data. In other cases, using math to tune the results might give the game a clinical feel; something that's generally bad for video games. (Unless you're playing Trauma Center.:-P)
So the question is pretty much moot. Creating a good game is an art form, but even art can benefit from a few structural calculations.:)
Slashdot Mirror
No, Infinity Online is as close as you're going to get to Privateer Online. (Prototype Download) I am waiting with bated breath for the game's completion.
Actually, new controllers have been rather successful as of late, but only if they receive first party support from the controller manufacturer. It's pretty much a given at this point that no third party is going to write a game for a potential competitor's controller, so they sort of end up creating mini-markets.
A few examples:
Dance Pads - Bundled with Dance Dance Revolution and competitors. Sell you one pad, then keep chucking out the games in the series.
Guitar Controller - Bundled with Guitar Hero. Again, sell you one guitar, then keep chucking out sequels.
Bongos - Bundled with Donkey Konga/Jungle Beat. Nintendo managed to sell a lot of these independent of the bundles because the two (three in Japan) Donkey Konga games allowed for up to four players. Nintendo continued support with a platform game known as Jungle Beat, and may continue supporting the controller on the Wii with DK Bongo Blast.
Eye Toy - Bundled or sold separately, this gizmo has been well supported by Sony. It's quite popular with players and has over a dozen games available. Sony has even managed to sneak Eye Toy features into dozens of games that are normally played without this gizmo.
Basically, there's a healthy market for alternative controllers, just as long as it's supported by the controller manufacturer. However, the market has been completely closed to the idea of replacing the primary interface on a console with a separately sold controller. These controllers are specialized and will continue to be specialized for the foreseeable future.
1.1 million according to NPD's figures. 1.25 million for all of North America by Nintendo's figures. Which means that using your 50,000,000 household figure at 1 wii per household, Nintendo currently has about 2% market penetration. Not too shabby for a brand new console.
You forgot Metroid, Starfox, Donkey Kong, Zelda, Kirby, and a half-dozen other characters/franchises I'm probably forgetting about. All of which are available for the Wii NOW as Gamecube games. (See if you can pick up the $10 DK: Jungle Beat from Gamestop. The bongos make the game a blast to play!) If you wait a few months, they'll also be available as Wii games.
While you're understandably tired of Mario, you do have to admit that Nintendo knows how to run a franchise. They have consistently produced some of the most desirable games in the industry by utilizing those properties. Save for Sega's success with Sonic (which they promptly drove into the ground), I don't think you can claim that of any other game maker.
Besides, who wouldn't be charmed out of their socks by a giant R.O.B. the Robot waving a Nintendo Zapper at your Starfox Arwing fighter? I mean, can you get any geekier?
BTW, it's worth noting that the Wii does have a few non-minigame games. Call of Duty, for example, is apparently a well liked FPS even if the graphics aren't quite as nice as the 360 version. Also, by the time that most people get their Wiis, Metroid Prime 3 will be blasting on the scene, ready to kick some Space Pirate booty!
*snaps fingers*
That's right. It's coming back to me now. It wasn't Westwood that was the problem, it was Ultima Online. EA decided that they'd rather sink the money into the Ultima series than into the Wing Commander series, which they felt hadn't been doing so well since they took over Origin. (Gee. Surprise, surprise.) So they killed Privateer Online in favor of doing the sequel (WTF?) Ultima Online 2. In the process, EA made a huge mess of things.
Manufacturers introduce new parts all the time. They usually take over the manufacturing facilities of the parts they're replacing. Accelerometers have been around long enough to where supply shouldn't be that big of a problem.
Actually, the Wii/GCN optical discs are the exact same technology as DVDs. The only difference is in a firmware update that allows the drive to read discs in Nintendo's custom format. (Nintendo didn't want to pay DVD licensing fees.) The GCN discs are mini-DVD sized, which are very similar to the 3" CDs from days gone by. They're often used in digital video cameras, and should fit in most standard DVD drives. The loading mechanism is probably custom, though. Very few slot-loading designs support the smaller CD/DVD formats. Of course, that's just a matter of mechanical parts.
"Broadway" is a pretty straight-forward update to the "Gekko" chip used in the GCN. It's manufactured by IBM, one of the largest chip manufacturers in the world today. Similarly, "Hollywood" is an update to the "Flipper" chip used in the GCN. It's manufactured by ATI, another company with massive manufacturing capabilities.
If I were to hazard a guess, the problem is not with Nintendo's partners. The problem is getting caught with their pants down, expecting that the Wii would sell only slightly better than the GCN did at launch. As a result, they're months behind on scaling up their manufacturing to meet demand. They may even be cautious about doing so, just in case demand were to suddenly drop off just after Christmas. Now that they know that demand is holding steady, expect Nintendo to get their act together something around... oh... June. Maybe July.
VAT runs a LOT higher than 10%. It's a unified tax structure that pays for all the health care, schools, and social programs. Several countries have VATs as high as 20% or more.
Here's a list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAT#VAT_Rates
IMHO, 3D Realms drove Apogee's Duke Nukem into the ground. Apogee's Nukem was a really good platform series. 3D Realm's Nukem is a ripoff of the name just to make a 3D title with blood and porn.
Star Trek - Activision finally pulled Star Trek out of its gaming gutter with smash hits like Armada and Elite Force. Then Paramount drives the franchise into the ground, Activision sues, and we fans get no more Trek games. (Boo! Hiss!) I've heard that Bethesda Softworks is picking up the torch, but I'm not holding my breath. :(
Wing Commander - We should have had Privateer Online. Instead, EA dropped it for their new hotness over at Blizzard. Thus one of the greatest series of all time ended.
Command & Conquer - C&C was good. I mean, darn good. But then Westwood failed to deliver Tiberium Sun as promised, and gave us Red Alert instead. Ok, fine. A lot of people liked Red Alert even though it wasn't as good as the original. So we kept waiting for Tiberium Sun. 4 and a half years later, Westwood just kicked it out the door, merely a shadow of what it was intended to be. From then on out, C&C was nothing more than a "property" in which vaguely related games were released one after another, with no real connection to the gameplay that made the original famous.
Graphical Adventure Series - While not really a game series in of itself, the concept of Graphical Adventures has been mostly dropped by the industry, depsite the fact that it was a great way to tell a story. Nearly all the Lucas Arts games sold well, and never really showed a decline in the market. The concept just... fell into the ether, seemingly in favor of "more adult" gameplay. (Boo! Hiss!)
It's a manufacturing capacity problem. Nintendo's business is sized according to the requirements of their previous generation of hardware. This unexpectedly high demand for Wiis has left them in dire need to increase their production capabilities. Unfortunately, it takes months to tool up a new factory and begin moving parts to that factory. And that factory won't even be able to work at full capacity if there's a shortage of some particular part. For example, the Wii cases are highly customized pieces of plastic. If the provider of those cases can't make enough to meet production needs, then the entire pipeline won't be able to operate at maximum capacity.
All I can say is that it's a good thing that Nintendo gets their chips from IBM. IBM is probably the only company that could provide Nintendo with enough customized microprocessors to scale with their needs.
At least in the case of Wii Sports, that doesn't work as well as it sounds. You *can* do it, but the movements are a lot less natural. Getting up and moving around makes the games a lot easier to play, which helps keep you on your feet.
The other thing that Wii Sports does is that it ramps up the challenge as you play. (Make sure you make yourself a Mii, or you won't have a save file!) So while you may start playing Wii Sports Tennis using leisurely swings, it won't be long before you find yourself concentrating hard on making more powerful swings in the direction you need the ball to go.
Last but not least, play some boxing. I know the "exhaustion" of your character takes some getting used to. Especially when he fails to punch for seemingly unknown reasons. But once you play it enough, it starts to make sense. You need to dodge the blows of your opponent, then knock him from the inside when his glove whooshes by your head. A nice strong punch followed by various jabs usually has him down on the ground in no time flat. Since there is no better cardiovascular workout than Boxing among the Wii Sports games, I highly recommend that you get acquainted with the gameplay. It will leave you breathing heavy and drenched in sweat. But you won't care because it feels just so darn good to get the exercise!
* Those of you from Canadia can relax. I'm just kidding. :P
I understand that. However, North America gets a lion's share of that. We were promised about half of the Wii shipments, when NPD reports that we only received about a third of them. No worries, though. I figured it out. Look at my response to myself right below your post.
P.S. Can we fix the ecode tag so that it's no longer broken? It's annoying to no longer be able to lay out tabular data correctly.
Sounds like even more evidence that the NPD numbers were faulty. 1.1 million in NA in 2006? I think not!
Mod parent up. The reason why European prices are often higher is not because they're being sold at significantly higher prices. It's because the high tax rates (VAT - Value Added Tax) are computed into the price of the goods rather than rung up separately at the time of purchase. Many Europeans actually prefer this situation as something that costs 200 pounds/euros will still cost 200 pounds/euros at the register. Here in the US we have to calculate the taxes before arriving at the price we'll pay at the register.
That's not really "math" in the way you mean it. It's a form of computations, yes, but closer to an analog computer than a digital calculator. The brain does arithmetic quite poorly.
Because the results of some random calculation will feel "cold" and not at all enjoyable. Or to put it another way, which one is more "fun"?
- Starfox 64
- Microsoft Flight Simulator
Can you calculate what it is that makes Starfox "fun"? Probably not. Can you calculate the necessary parameters to make MFS "realistic"? Sure.
Since there are no equations for the former, the game designer has to go by "feel" instead. Attempting to apply any sort of real models to the game would cause the Arwings to fall out of the sky as, I assure you, they are quite impossible to fly.
What was done here was not a matter of tuning the game via a mathematical model. It was a statistical sampling used to determine the best adjustments for the Easy, Medium, and Hard settings. Which works quite well given that the designer often has no real "feel" for these settings and has to make a best guess.
Sounds like you got the point. :)
Amazingly, it seemed to work. Before I got my Wii, I kept an eye on the eBay prices. The Wiis that were advertising "Wii + 5 Games!" consistently sold higher than the Wiis that didn't.
All I can say is, I'm constantly surprised at how many gullible people there are in the world.
Long story short: you throw all the game elements in a pot, then figure out how to fit them together in a way that's "fun". Failure to do this results in a failure to make a game.
While I really have to apologize to the author of the game for using it as an example, 2H4U (Too Hard for You) demonstrates exactly what happens if you throw all the elements in the pot, but don't take the time to balance and tune them. All you get is a lot of game elements in play, but with gameplay that is more of a chore than anything entertaining.
You mean like in Crash Bandicoot where you get a free Aku Aku to protect yourself if you die too many times before reaching the next checkpoint?
Yes, that is a nice feature. Of course, I wouldn't have needed it if I had figured out earlier that I could use the double-jump on Dr. N. Tropy rather than trying to navigate the floating platforms.
It's not trial and error. It's a binary search algorithm that executed within O(log n) time.
Think of it like turning a knob back and forth, getting closer to the setting you feel is best. The "best" setting is the one with the most appeal to humans, and may not be the most realistic. Unless you're programming an accurate simulation, that is. In which case the players are usually willing to put up with the "coldness" of the interface in exchange for learning about the physical reality.
"Tuning" makes games better. Period. End of story.
:-P)
:)
Since tuning is all about improving the feel of the game to the humans who will interface with it, it all depends upon the creator for how he wishes to accomplish this. In this case, the creator was looking for sweet spots that he was able to find through mathematical manipulation of sampled data. In other cases, using math to tune the results might give the game a clinical feel; something that's generally bad for video games. (Unless you're playing Trauma Center.
So the question is pretty much moot. Creating a good game is an art form, but even art can benefit from a few structural calculations.