"Hardcore" gamers only make up a small percentage of console sales. For Joe Public getting a free DVD or MP3 or CD player with their console can be extremely important.
Hardcore gamers also make up the largest percentage of game sales, where the real money is. The only problem, of course, is that you have to sell consoles to get developers interested in making games for your console.
I use my PS2 to play DVDs in the living room, because I gave my old DVD player to a roommate when he moved out, and only have a 4-way switch for the TV (DC, PS2, XBox, GC). I only use it when people come over and want to watch a movie, though, because the DVD player (and TV) in the bedroom is much better (a combo DVD/VHS player I bought for ~$200 around January to replace a VCR that broke in a move back in July '02). Of course, the PS2 was bought as a replacement for the PS1, which I turned around and sold with a bunch of extras (and some games I didn't want) for $100, and not for it's DVD playback. The DVD functionality has just come in handy after the fact (2 years later).
That's the part I really wonder about. How many people didn't consider the DVD functionality when buying the PS2, but later found it useful? I owned a DVD player for quite a while before I could even consider buying a PS2 (because no one had them, and if they did they had a waiting list), and before I bought a DVD player I was using my computer to play DVD movies (when DVD players were expensive but a DVD drive + hardware decoder cost $200, of course now a DVD drive can be found for $30 and software decoding is almost as good as the cards were then (better in some ways, especially with hardware assistance from most current video cards)). In fact, I didn't buy a PS2 until I found a VGA adapter for it, and it turned out that the VGA adapter wasn't very good (compared to the DC's VGA adapter). I inherited the TV I currently use to watch movies (I previously had only a 14" TV), and the TV I play games on now belongs to my girlfriend (I think I might buy another TV before moving this one to another place, though, as it's a giant console TV).
Frankly, I was thinking about buying a pre-modded Panasonic Q (GameCube that plays DVDs, modded to play Japanese or US games and for region-free DVD playback), but the thing costs over twice as much as even a modified imported GameCube (which doesn't really cost much more than a US GC at the moment).
People bought PS2s before DVD players dropped in price - you could spend 200 on a DVD player, or 250 on a DVD player and PS2 combo - no contest really. The DVD option is still attractive even now to those on limited budgets or limited space
PS2s were still $300 and hard to find when you could get a decent DVD player for $100. Sure, you could buy a better DVD player for $200, but then that DVD player would've been better than the one in the PS2, as well, and you could've picked up a DreamCast for $100-150.
'eat mor chikin' is a reference to the advertising of a fast-food chain called Chick-Fil-A (http://www.chickfila.com/) in which cows write various slogans, including 'eat mor chikin' and 'Leefy not Beefy'. Of course, it's not nation-wide, and I never would've known about it had I not moved from one coast to the other about a year ago.
Personally I think its way to early for these kind of games, the horrors of Vietnam is just too close and most games haven't digesed the World War II games yet.
The horrors of Vietnam too close? My dad was too old to serve in Vietnam (by a few months, granted...). I was born a few years after the last troops pulled out, and I'm 25. Even my education on Vietnam was divided based on the views of the teacher I had in a given year (and the only wars they talked about more than Vietnam were WW2 and the American Revolution).
Think about all those children that are struggling to bear the emotional burden of playing these games that in their search for historical correctness displays images that where not ment to be entertainment.
The games are listed M in most cases, it's those children's parents' burden to make sure their children can handle the WW2 games (most of which came out over a year ago).
Why is Vietnam so taboo? Korea was awful and we got MASH.
MASH was a commentary on Vietnam, it's just that Vietnam was so taboo (especially at that time) that they set it in Korea. The simple fact is that helicopters (especially the types depicted in MASH) were not nearly as heavily used in Korea as in Vietnam (not to mention that it's been stated many times by the series' creators that this was the case).
I'm not saying that we shouldn't be able to make games based on Vietnam, just that it does cause some concern when people try to portray it in any medium.
Contrast this with a game, which is explictly supposed to be fun and enjoyable, and I think one could say that playing as an American soldier firing on young armed Vietcong children, is not, or at least SHOULD not be fun. Again, it's the fact that this actually happened that makes it offensive to me; make a game about evil psycho kids from the cornfields and i'll blast em with a laser gun, but the pain and horror this game would try to emulate is REAL.
Here's a fact about another war which is portrayed is portrayed in a large number of games (the war is portrayed, not the fact): children (aged ~10-16) manned the AA guns in Nazi Germany.
Any time the 'homeland' is invaded by attacking forces, it's fairly normal for anyone with the ability to do so to take up weapons in war, even if they don't understand the reasons for the war in question. In the cases of Vietnam and WW2 they simply had no choice, they were forced into it by their respective sides in the conflict (the Vietcong and NVA often threatened teenager's parents/families, the Nazis indoctrinated children from a very young age through the public school system). Fairly young men (teenagers, pre-teen) took part in the American Revolution as well, though generally on a voluntary basis.
The reason people have a problem with Vietnam specifically is because it was opposed by a highly vocal percentage of Americans and there was a large draft and a high loss of life. It was also one of the first wars in which veterans returned home very quickly, and to sometimes hostile (and rarely welcoming) crowds. WW2 vets came home on ships, which obviously took a lot longer to get them home than planes and helicopters (or even the more modern ships of the day). As a result, most of them did not have time to adjust to being out of the war before being returned to their families.
Overall, making games based on Vietnam is not in itself in bad taste, though it's perfectly possible for a particular game to do so in a way that is in bad taste. I doubt you're likely to see that happen, though (and if it does happen, I'm sure we'll all hear plenty about it). There's nothing about the conflict itself, however, that makes it any more likely that a game will be done in bad taste than a WW2 game.
1) didn't stop people from making numerous movies set in the conflict
2) wouldn't that make it a Vietnamese restaurant (as opposed to Chinese), or are you really getting Chinese food from Vietnamese people? (I guess that Vietnamese people can make Chinese food just as well as anyone else, but I don't usually buy Mexican food from non-Mexican people, and most of the Chinese places I eat at specialize in the region of the chef(s) or owner(s))
I remember an excellent interview by well-respected (ie not plastered with EXCLUSIVE on the cover) games magazine Edge with the head of Nintendo Europe. He doggedly insisted that Pokemon Turquoise or whatever colours they're using now, should have taken precedence over AC. He truly believed they knew what the consumer wants, but only be telling them what they want. Doshin the Giant was meant to fill the gap in the GC line-up!
Yet the 2 Pokemon games ARE still #2 and 3 on the UK charts, even if they have fallen behind the EyeToy (who knows, maybe it'll happen in the US and Japan as well, but I know it's not available in the US and I haven't seen it on the Japanese charts at all). Whether or not Nintendo Europe's head knows what the European market wants, it's his job (or someone on his staff's job) to find out what the market wants and get it there. Nintendo Japan isn't likely to step in because they expect him to do his job (although I'd imagine that at this point they should be getting a clue and at least looking into what's going on, with European retailers not selling GCs and the EyeToy out-selling the Pokemon games, though I don't have numbers telling me by how much).
So talking doesn't appear to work with Nintendo Europe either. For some time I've dreamed the same idea you have come up with; Nintendo UK and Australia, whacking on a PAL conversion on most games (not AC of course) then churning them out in a much quicker turnaround. I doubt it'll happen before Nintendo goes the way of Sega.
I really don't know how people would react to that kind of system, though it's arguably better than MS' decision to put out US games as is in the Japanese market (no translation, no need for conversion since Japan is NTSC as well). I'm sure initial reaction would be favourable because it would mean shorter turn-around on the games, but in the long term opinion is likely to turn back around with most people feeling like Europe is being treated like an after-thought (which, in reality, they are).
As for Nintendo going the way of Sega, I doubt it, at least until they start losing money. If Nintendo keeps having problems in Europe, I'd expect a shakeup and then maybe 3-5 years to turn things around before dissolving the division or turning to the simple method (PAL conversion with no localization, or maybe not even PAL conversion, just low-end HDTV support, depending on the capabilities of their next console) with a skeleton crew at Nintendo Europe to handle the legal end of it and the cheap conversions. Either way, unless Nintendo's sales turn around in Europe, I'd expect them to pull out before they 'go the way of Sega', because the market is still good in Japan (which wasn't the case for Sega, though the DC did fairly well in the US).
My parents bought my step-brother the PS2 online adapter for X-Mas knowing that I'd be visiting that week and would probably know how to hook it up to the cable modem (which I convinced them to get when I lived with them, they've been using cable internet access for 7 years now). They weren't completely sure how they were going to hook it up (though my dad's perfectly competant with computers and can put together the cat5 cable (ie put the connectors on a cable cut from a spool) himself if he wanted to), so I pointed out that they could either connect to the hub (which I had left behind when I moved out) and activate another IP address (the method I used when I lived there) for $10-15/month, or buy a cable router and use it in place of the hub, and not pay the extra cost per month for a PS2 which might rarely be used. Needless to say, we went out and bought a cable router and ran cat5 to my step-brother's bedroom and everything else was easy.
For people without broadband but with a computer, if broadband's available in their area, it's often a no-brainer, they just have to see the difference. I've only known a couple of people that were cheap enough to hold out, and eventually they converted, and in some cases it was cheaper for them to have cable internet access.
For people that don't have a computer, it's obviously a tough choice. For people that can't afford (or can barely afford) internet access, the choice not to go that way should be easy.
Personally, I don't have an active phone line in my house, but I have cable internet access for my computer. One day I'll put my consoles online, but at the moment I don't have any games that I want to play online for any of my consoles. Once one of them goes online, all three will go at once, thanks to a 4-port WiFi router to connect my consoles (in the living room) to my cable router (in the office/spare bedroom), but then I have a decent amount of disposable income (obviously enough to have 4 consoles in my living room in the first place; no plans to put the Dreamcast online, though).
I would have to respectfully disagree with that staement. I LOVE a good story in my game. Cut-scenes are often a welcome break from playing and well done ones make me want to keep playing the game. I never truly enjoyed FPSs until Half-Life put a killer story in with it.
Half-Life didn't use cut-scenes, it used scripted sequences (you could still move around during most of the sequences, they all took place in the game engine) built to trigger off a certain event (usually the player entering a particular area).
Cut-scenes can be built using the game engine, but until recently were more often pre-rendered with significantly better graphics than the game engine could produce, and by definition cut-scenes in games take control away from the user and simply display the scene.
.::: Localisation is hardly the problem. EA, Sony, Microsoft they can all handle multiple languages and the like. The problem is that Nintendo wants to do all of that internally. Whereas their competition hires other companies to do that for them.
Let's see: Microsoft decided to release untranslated (ie English-language) non-localized versions of X-Box games in Japan. Many people complain about bad PAL conversion of titles from any number of US and Japanese developers. Many companies other than Nintendo do translation internal, and the choice is often made on a title-by-title basis, rather than as a company-wide policy (and Nintendo leaves those things up to the regional arms of the company, so Nintendo Japan is not making that choice for NoA or Nintendo Europe). I know that Namco's US division hires native-English-speaking Americans (with education in the Japanese language) to do translations of their titles for US release, rather than farming the translation out to other companies.
I also don't know why on Earth some people here wnat to take politcal reasons into consideration. The usual route for a game to be released here (Europe) is to be accepted by Japan as well as America. After those releases, the game is usually evaluated, in which they make judgement how it will sell in Europe and release it accordingly. (we've had two exceptions to that; Doshin the Giant and Shining Soul (GBA)). WHY ON EARTH they want to release both products in Australia and not Europe is beyond me however. Not only does Australia practically hate the GC (it's simply not selling at all there), it's ALSO a PAL territory. We get parallel imported Australian titles in the shops here, which simply work, so we'll get AC eventually anyway. However all of this has caused some strong comments concerning Nintendo. Just about everybody on forums and such that I know of and like Nintendo have condemned Nintendo of Europe for this. Not about AC being released in Oz so they can eventually get their hands on it, more that Europe was just skipped altogether. Whatever the reason might be I hope Nintendo really thought it over. Because when even your most dedicated fans turn against you it might become very difficult.
Personally, I don't understand why Nintendo of Europe wouldn't do at least a UK port of AC if it's already being ported for Australia, unless they have some issues regarding porting a title for just the largest market in Europe, rather than Europe as a whole. That being said, it is still Nintendo of Europe's choice, not Nintendo as a whole (though perhaps if Nintendo really was worried about backlash in the European market they could push it through).
In related news; EyeToy sales have risen above both Pokemon sales for the GBA.
Considering that the EyeToy price in Europe is significantly lower than what they've announced for the US price (it hasn't come out yet here), I'm not too surprised about that, especially since it's been on the UK charts longer, too. Of course, I can't find a lot of information on the UK charts (like amount of sales or units sold), either.
Multi-language? Five main languages isn't that hard, really. You'd need five translators on the payroll. The appliances company I worked for simply used their marketing departments overseas to do the translation of their web sites and sent the translations back to the UK for input. I don't see how hard/expensive Nintendo thinks translation must be.
Given how long it takes for translations of most Japanese games, it sometimes seems like they have only 1 translator working on each game, but the reality is that it takes more than that. These aren't appliance manuals (or game manuals for that matter) we're talking about here, it's all of the text in the game and the voices, at the minimum. Animal Crossing doesn't need voice translations, but definitely a lot of text, and then you'd be stuck with Japanese or American holidays and items if they didn't do any localization beyond language translation.
Different display format? Aussies are quite happy with PAL as well.
Japan and US both use NTSC, Aussies are in the same boat as Europe most of the time.
Different regional legislation? Slap on a blood patch for Germany. Hang on, Nintendo haven't had any blood in their games in the UK since they begun. They haven't been censoring us have they?!
Check the 'M' rated games on the GC. The rest usually don't have problems, though, and I doubt it's much of a discussion for most of them. That being said, it's still something that has to be dealt with by some developers, regardless of what console they're using.
Different cultures This argument I simply couldn't buy. Tastes are different everywhere. UK tastes are different to US, US is different to Japan. I can't name one country that has radically different games they enjoy than the rest of Europe.
Animal Crossing specifically is highly culture-oriented, and requires a great deal of changes in the port. Japan doesn't even port a large number of their games to the US (which still has NTSC so just needs the english translation for the lowest port) because of perceived (and sometimes very real) cultural differences. Anyone that's really interested in those titles either gripes about it forever or imports it.
There are only two answers. Nintendo is incompentant in Europe and arrogant towards Europe. It has always given Europe the shaft; it's not a new idea for them. Seeing as all the excuses they could come up with are as thin as Japanese paper walls, I have to say that the split must be 50:50 between the two issues. They don't need Europe, they're only the third biggest games market. They're a company trying to save cash, when in fact they're pushing themselves further over the edge by cutting out a major territory. Their business plan consists of: "If it ain't no work to convert, then ship it 6 months later and clamp down on importers in the mean time!" No joke, they sent cease and desist letters to all importers last month trying to get them all to stop selling the games that Euro Nintendo users want but can't get.
Total. Bloody. Genius.
Talk to Nintendo Europe, then, just like we in the US bitch at Nintendo of America for not bringing in more games (thankfully they made the decision to bring back Metroid, which doesn't do well in Japan). Nintendo's business plan when it comes to ports is primarily 'let the locals (meaning NoA, NoE, etc) do it'.
As for Europe being the third biggest game market: while it may be that, it's also a fragmented market, because you have to translate to multiple languages and deal with cultural diversity for the sales. If you simply took the US version and made some minor adjustments (and the PAL conversion) for the UK market you could probably get most of the money you're going to get from Europe without the extra cost of translating to French, Spanish, Dutch, German, etc. but then people would still bitch about it.
and DirectX makes the various video cards look like a single platform to the game developers.
In DirectX's early days, developing a game using a 3D card in Windows was like doing cross-platform development anyway, because you had to program in Glide for the 3dfx cards, and use the proper OpenGL extensions for each of the other cards you wanted to support. The renderer only had a very small number of functions that were supported by all cards, and since most gamers had 3dfx cards, you had to rewrite even those for Glide most of the time (or use a MiniGL driver like Quake 2).
Also, DirectX deals with sound, input, and networking in addition to the graphics, and SDL simply hasn't gotten a lot of exposure (not to mention that using SDL rules out platform-specific development, which means hoping that the platform optimizations in SDL are better than what you would write yourself, unless you want to fork the SDL code for your game). A lot of game developers really have no problem with coding in an extremely platform-specific manner (ie coding for specific hardware), but would rather not when it offers no performance improvements (or when it can't be fit in the budget; at the same time if they can't get the performance or features they want without going to the metal, they might look for another API).
If there was an API that made porting to Mac OS a no-brainer, that might justify the investment into not using DirectX any more (remember, they've been using it for some time now, and they know it in and out), and a Linux port might become a byproduct of producing for both the windoze and Mac worlds.
The problem isn't just the investment of time into DirectX, but the very thing that brought DirectX into the front in the first place: that it moves much more quickly than OpenGL/SDL. DirectX has a standard way of doing things even with the newest cards, and is updated almost yearly with features the hardware doesn't even support yet (but is planned for the current/next-generation cards, because the hardware manufacturers and MS work together on DX features), and maintains backwards compatibility, so Diablo (DirectX 3 game) still works today (on a system with a DirectX 8/9 capable video card and DirectX 9.0b installed).
Even if OpenGL and SDL make a quantum leap in their next official versions and become faster/more feature-rich than DirectX, they have to continue advancement without hardware developers releasing their own extensions for support (because extensions just mean the developers have to code to the extension for each card they want to support, instead of the DirectX method, which is to code in the feature and have it fall back or turn off if unsupported).
It seems that 'Hardcore Gamers' is definied as all those CS freaks, but if you look beyond CS you'll find quite a few interesting titles, even for the hardcore gamer.
Usually hardcore gamer is defined as someone that plays a large number of games, meaning more retail games than are released for Linux in any given time-frame.
On the other hand, there are many other ways to look at it, for instance someone that's played CS since it's initial public beta and still plays it today could be considered a hardcore gamer because they've stuck with the game for this long, or because they've worked to improve their skills in that game (or they could be called a hardcore CS player, I guess). Not to mention that there are many games (on Linux, Mac OS, or Windows) that don't cost anything (or are shareware) that could keep even a heavy gaming habit fulfilled for quite some time.
The one thing that makes most people believe that 'hardcore gamers wont run Linux' is the need to be able to buy and play that next great game, regardless of where it comes out, and so far that game hasn't been a Linux exclusive, because game developers want to make money (so they make a game for Windows or 1 or more consoles and consider porting). I've known plenty of gamers that run Linux for everything but games, and keep a Windows partition only for games. Their reason is simple: use the tool that fits the job. Many of them even have a computer (rather than a partition) specifically for games, simply because they have no requirement for the higher end system specs in their normal computer use (and because a 'hardcore' gamer goes through a hell of a lot of hardware if they can afford to, it's easy to put together another system from spare parts and a couple of cheap items (ie floppy drive and a case).
Regardless of your management (as was obviously a problem at Loki), selling ~7500-9000 copies of a port usually means that you're going to stop porting to that platform, especially when the game sold quite well for Windows, and that was the best-selling game for Loki. When one of the most outspoken supporters of Linux gaming ends up being among the creditors that Loki owed money to when they filed bankruptcy, there's a good chance that things are going to dry up for at least a little while.
The Sonic Mega Collection (basically every Sonic game prior to Sonic Adventure) was released for the GameCube, and was never announced as an exclusive title, but I can't find any announcements that state it will be coming soon for XBox or PS2.
I would like to see older Nintendo titles, too, but for now I'm going with the GBA versions of the ones that are available and using the GB Player when I play at home. Of course, with a new console slated for some point in the next year and a half, I doubt they'll go too far into re-releases on the current console unless they plan to have backwards compatibility (and I must say the Ocarina of Time re-release was a pretty good idea, though I wish it had a more general release for those of us that didn't even have a Gamecube when Zelda came out (of course, I picked the remake up used anyway)).
But even reusing characters is, in many ways, a cop-out. Same reason so many TV shows start with a known character from another show (you know, Joni loves Chaci (sp?) Syndrome). Perhaps it's a very novel and creative show, but the point is that people are still banking on that name recognition and brand familiarity.
I'm aware of this, and pretty much stated as much, but again, at least publishers are willing to fund a risky game if it's tied to a franchise. I may not like the fact that this is what it sometimes takes to get original gameplay on the shelves, but I don't avoid a title that is original simply because it's part of a franchise or a sequel.
To me, that's by definition not as original as creating a new game from scratch. I'll readily admit that I haven't tried Wario Ware, but just hearing Wario conjures up certain connotations -- and from the description on IGN Pocket [ign.com], we do have a relatively kid-friendly, arcade action game, as random as it might be.
As I said in an earlier post, Wario Ware is as much a commentary on the state of the game industry as anything else. The entire storyline of the game is that Wario is cashing in on the game industry's popularity by releasing simple, familiar titles. Of course, he does it mostly through ripping off other titles as well as making very simple nonsense titles (of course, my girlfriend is now addicted to Dr. Wario (which is an unlockable game in Wario Ware), as am I, so I may have to buy Dr. Mario just to allow both of us to play).
The bottom line is that Nintendo, even when they have something quite nearly wholly original, has to tag the game with a character simply for name recognition, aka "$$$". This is no Incredible Crisis [ign.com], for better or worse.
I really tend to think that Nintendo tends to innovate within their franchises more than most others. That being said, yes they do tend to rely on their franchises more heavily. At the same time, they also seem to be more willing to let their developers take chances elsewhere (probably especially if it might mean a new franchise/character they can use).
And just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, what does ole johnC do from QuakeCon [gamespy.com]?
John Carmack: I thought it would be kind of neat if we took the DOOM renderer, and we had a team take previous games-don't touch the game, just revamp it graphically. Just take Quake II, and just use the DOOM engine to make brand new graphic models and everything. But don't spend time messing with the gameplay because we know that is pretty good. Just release it as Quake II Remix with brand new graphics technology and sell it at a middle-level price instead of a boutique price.
I thought that was a pretty good idea.
Carmack also stated that he felt id was basically stuck with the FPS genre because of the team they had, and that he felt pressured to keep releasing Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein games, although he's already stated that id's next major title (after Doom 3) will be an unrelated title. He said that because of the amount of money that goes into their games (as well as the talent within the company), they are under a certain amount of pressure to basically continue releasing games under well-known brands that are guaranteed to bring back that investment. In a way, he's basically saying that you're only really going to see original games coming from smaller development houses on lower budgets.
Super. As if updating Resident Evil for GameCube wasn't enough, now we might have the exact same freakin' gameplay from Quake 2 back again.
I really don't have any problem with re-releasing (and hopefully updating) games for new consoles, considering that in many cases the Resident Evil games either don't look as they were intended (PS1/2 versions) or are on systems that are no longer supported (Dreamcast). I have problems with the idea that a development house chooses to cash in on the re-releases, though, and I certainly wou
The only way you'll get a real accurate number would be to get behind the lines at MS and Nintendo
And even that will give you different numbers depending on where you are within MS or Nintendo. You can get the number of units shipped to retailers or the number of units retailers have reported as sold, or the number of units returned to MS or Nintendo (or Sony) for repair. Replacement numbers are almost impossible to get accurately because some number of customers will simply dispose of the old console and buy another one rather than going through warranty and return hassles.
In Japan, from January (of this year) through May 25th they sold 278,800 Gamecubes (more recent charts (8/10) show around 408,000 cubes sold in Japan this year, partially helped by a doubling in weekly sales each time a high-profile title launches, such as FF:CC the week of the 10th).
Your 320,000/yr rate is based on what is typically one of the worst quarters of the year for every console, and for games in general, and the 80,000 units is simply the number Nintendo shipped, which could easily mean that sales over the previous quarter weren't as high as the retailers expected, so reatilers didn't increase stock in a slow quarter (when they still have cubes on the shelves from the previous quarter).
you just couldn't possibly have played ALL the good NES and SNES games out there. I am more than happy to play these "rehashed" games for the first time,
I agree whole-heartedly on that point. I didn't even own an SNES, which only makes it better in some cases because I can get games that play on a current console which I never got a chance to play before, even though I would have if I had owned the system they were originally released on.
and am even happier to see sequels to games I enjoyed.
I think that in some cases the sequels on the GBA may stick a bit closer to the earlier titles than I would normally care for, but overall I haven't come upon a truly bad sequel (w/ 2 Castlevania games, Metroid Fusion, Zelda, Golden Sun the Lost Age, Advance Wars 2 (though I didn't get the first Advance Wars), and even a couple of older GameBoy Color titles (and my gf's Pokemon obsession, though she at least only wants one of each generation (she has Red, Gold, and Ruby at this point))).
I can understand the general idea that it's sad to see the majority of the titles are just franchise titles, but I must say that most of the good franchises are still good, and that it's not much different on the home consoles, either.
Hrm. I hadn't thought about doing that. I check out the local GameStops every now and then, but their used prices tend to be around $20-$30 (paid $20 for RS2, around $25 for Skies). I have a few Blockbusters nearby, so I'll check them for used games next time
Definitely check out Blockbuster, I do it every chance I can get since I found Metroid Prime for $20 new, and have found a few good deals here and there.
Also check out Eternal Darkness, which I found new for $15 at Gamestop (at that price, I couldn't justify to myself renting it before I bought it, but that's just me). I think the only games I have that I payed near normal full retail ($40-50) for were Mario Sunshine and Animal Crossing. I can't give a lot of good recommendations that haven't been heard a million times before at the moment, though, because I've been playing KOTOR every moment I get the TV to myself.
I realize all of that, and frankly, I don't think it would be possible to increase the percentage of original games all that much by considering them individually, unless there was an extremely loose definition of originality. Of course, the simple fact is that over time the number of original titles by either definition decreases significantly, especially in the US market, regardless of platform. Adding in the consideration of gameplay would, in fact, reduce the number of original titles on most platforms (as was stated in the article at one point, iirc, by pointing out that many of the non-franchise / sequel titles are still derivative works; if it wasn't in the article, then it was immediately pointed out in comments).
I don't have a problem with the article itself, but rather with the conclusions it seems to lead people to draw, which is, as the Slashdot story's title would indicate, that the GBA is a platform without creativity. The reality is that you could find similar percentages on many platforms, that the percentage is probably higher on any platform that is descendant of a previous platform (ie the GBA is descended from the GBC, from the GB; PS2 is descendant of the PS1, Dreamcast is descendant of the Saturn, Genesis, SMS, Gamecube of the N64, SNES, NES), and that Nintendo in particular utilizes their franchises much more heavily than most others (for the good and the bad; Wario Ware and the original Mario Golf, Mario Kart, and many other titles all show the good side of this). The flip side is that titles can be innovative and original within a franchise, because publishers are sometimes willing to take a gamble if there's some medium (the franchise) through which the game is likely to sell.
I noticed the article also forgot to mention something else that was blatantly obvious: The top two original titles (Golden Sun and Advanced Wars) both have sequels now.
Of course, he also ignored franchise titles with original gameplay, such as Wario Ware, Inc. which could be viewed as a commentary on the game industry very much in line with the article, if you follow the storyline. It's much easier to simply examine the titles and figure out which are sequels or franchise games than to figure out what titles actually have original gameplay.
The IE tools menu will eventually get you there, but it definitely seems to be taking a different route. Of course, this is the first time I've ever gone to Windows Update that way, I usually just type in http://windowsupdate. (hit down arrow, hit enter) if I have an IE window open or use the start menu link, both of which go to the same old windowsupdate.microsoft.com site.
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"Hardcore" gamers only make up a small percentage of console sales. For Joe Public getting a free DVD or MP3 or CD player with their console can be extremely important.
Hardcore gamers also make up the largest percentage of game sales, where the real money is. The only problem, of course, is that you have to sell consoles to get developers interested in making games for your console.
I use my PS2 to play DVDs in the living room, because I gave my old DVD player to a roommate when he moved out, and only have a 4-way switch for the TV (DC, PS2, XBox, GC). I only use it when people come over and want to watch a movie, though, because the DVD player (and TV) in the bedroom is much better (a combo DVD/VHS player I bought for ~$200 around January to replace a VCR that broke in a move back in July '02). Of course, the PS2 was bought as a replacement for the PS1, which I turned around and sold with a bunch of extras (and some games I didn't want) for $100, and not for it's DVD playback. The DVD functionality has just come in handy after the fact (2 years later).
That's the part I really wonder about. How many people didn't consider the DVD functionality when buying the PS2, but later found it useful? I owned a DVD player for quite a while before I could even consider buying a PS2 (because no one had them, and if they did they had a waiting list), and before I bought a DVD player I was using my computer to play DVD movies (when DVD players were expensive but a DVD drive + hardware decoder cost $200, of course now a DVD drive can be found for $30 and software decoding is almost as good as the cards were then (better in some ways, especially with hardware assistance from most current video cards)). In fact, I didn't buy a PS2 until I found a VGA adapter for it, and it turned out that the VGA adapter wasn't very good (compared to the DC's VGA adapter). I inherited the TV I currently use to watch movies (I previously had only a 14" TV), and the TV I play games on now belongs to my girlfriend (I think I might buy another TV before moving this one to another place, though, as it's a giant console TV).
Frankly, I was thinking about buying a pre-modded Panasonic Q (GameCube that plays DVDs, modded to play Japanese or US games and for region-free DVD playback), but the thing costs over twice as much as even a modified imported GameCube (which doesn't really cost much more than a US GC at the moment).
People bought PS2s before DVD players dropped in price - you could spend 200 on a DVD player, or 250 on a DVD player and PS2 combo - no contest really. The DVD option is still attractive even now to those on limited budgets or limited space
PS2s were still $300 and hard to find when you could get a decent DVD player for $100. Sure, you could buy a better DVD player for $200, but then that DVD player would've been better than the one in the PS2, as well, and you could've picked up a DreamCast for $100-150.
'eat mor chikin' is a reference to the advertising of a fast-food chain called Chick-Fil-A (http://www.chickfila.com/) in which cows write various slogans, including 'eat mor chikin' and 'Leefy not Beefy'. Of course, it's not nation-wide, and I never would've known about it had I not moved from one coast to the other about a year ago.
Personally I think its way to early for these kind of games, the horrors of Vietnam is just too close and most games haven't digesed the World War II games yet.
The horrors of Vietnam too close? My dad was too old to serve in Vietnam (by a few months, granted...). I was born a few years after the last troops pulled out, and I'm 25. Even my education on Vietnam was divided based on the views of the teacher I had in a given year (and the only wars they talked about more than Vietnam were WW2 and the American Revolution).
Think about all those children that are struggling to bear the emotional burden of playing these games that in their search for historical correctness displays images that where not ment to be entertainment.
The games are listed M in most cases, it's those children's parents' burden to make sure their children can handle the WW2 games (most of which came out over a year ago).
Why is Vietnam so taboo? Korea was awful and we got MASH.
MASH was a commentary on Vietnam, it's just that Vietnam was so taboo (especially at that time) that they set it in Korea. The simple fact is that helicopters (especially the types depicted in MASH) were not nearly as heavily used in Korea as in Vietnam (not to mention that it's been stated many times by the series' creators that this was the case).
I'm not saying that we shouldn't be able to make games based on Vietnam, just that it does cause some concern when people try to portray it in any medium.
Contrast this with a game, which is explictly supposed to be fun and enjoyable, and I think one could say that playing as an American soldier firing on young armed Vietcong children, is not, or at least SHOULD not be fun. Again, it's the fact that this actually happened that makes it offensive to me; make a game about evil psycho kids from the cornfields and i'll blast em with a laser gun, but the pain and horror this game would try to emulate is REAL.
Here's a fact about another war which is portrayed is portrayed in a large number of games (the war is portrayed, not the fact): children (aged ~10-16) manned the AA guns in Nazi Germany.
Any time the 'homeland' is invaded by attacking forces, it's fairly normal for anyone with the ability to do so to take up weapons in war, even if they don't understand the reasons for the war in question. In the cases of Vietnam and WW2 they simply had no choice, they were forced into it by their respective sides in the conflict (the Vietcong and NVA often threatened teenager's parents/families, the Nazis indoctrinated children from a very young age through the public school system). Fairly young men (teenagers, pre-teen) took part in the American Revolution as well, though generally on a voluntary basis.
The reason people have a problem with Vietnam specifically is because it was opposed by a highly vocal percentage of Americans and there was a large draft and a high loss of life. It was also one of the first wars in which veterans returned home very quickly, and to sometimes hostile (and rarely welcoming) crowds. WW2 vets came home on ships, which obviously took a lot longer to get them home than planes and helicopters (or even the more modern ships of the day). As a result, most of them did not have time to adjust to being out of the war before being returned to their families.
Overall, making games based on Vietnam is not in itself in bad taste, though it's perfectly possible for a particular game to do so in a way that is in bad taste. I doubt you're likely to see that happen, though (and if it does happen, I'm sure we'll all hear plenty about it). There's nothing about the conflict itself, however, that makes it any more likely that a game will be done in bad taste than a WW2 game.
1) didn't stop people from making numerous movies set in the conflict
2) wouldn't that make it a Vietnamese restaurant (as opposed to Chinese), or are you really getting Chinese food from Vietnamese people? (I guess that Vietnamese people can make Chinese food just as well as anyone else, but I don't usually buy Mexican food from non-Mexican people, and most of the Chinese places I eat at specialize in the region of the chef(s) or owner(s))
I remember an excellent interview by well-respected (ie not plastered with EXCLUSIVE on the cover) games magazine Edge with the head of Nintendo Europe. He doggedly insisted that Pokemon Turquoise or whatever colours they're using now, should have taken precedence over AC. He truly believed they knew what the consumer wants, but only be telling them what they want. Doshin the Giant was meant to fill the gap in the GC line-up!
Yet the 2 Pokemon games ARE still #2 and 3 on the UK charts, even if they have fallen behind the EyeToy (who knows, maybe it'll happen in the US and Japan as well, but I know it's not available in the US and I haven't seen it on the Japanese charts at all). Whether or not Nintendo Europe's head knows what the European market wants, it's his job (or someone on his staff's job) to find out what the market wants and get it there. Nintendo Japan isn't likely to step in because they expect him to do his job (although I'd imagine that at this point they should be getting a clue and at least looking into what's going on, with European retailers not selling GCs and the EyeToy out-selling the Pokemon games, though I don't have numbers telling me by how much).
So talking doesn't appear to work with Nintendo Europe either. For some time I've dreamed the same idea you have come up with; Nintendo UK and Australia, whacking on a PAL conversion on most games (not AC of course) then churning them out in a much quicker turnaround. I doubt it'll happen before Nintendo goes the way of Sega.
I really don't know how people would react to that kind of system, though it's arguably better than MS' decision to put out US games as is in the Japanese market (no translation, no need for conversion since Japan is NTSC as well). I'm sure initial reaction would be favourable because it would mean shorter turn-around on the games, but in the long term opinion is likely to turn back around with most people feeling like Europe is being treated like an after-thought (which, in reality, they are).
As for Nintendo going the way of Sega, I doubt it, at least until they start losing money. If Nintendo keeps having problems in Europe, I'd expect a shakeup and then maybe 3-5 years to turn things around before dissolving the division or turning to the simple method (PAL conversion with no localization, or maybe not even PAL conversion, just low-end HDTV support, depending on the capabilities of their next console) with a skeleton crew at Nintendo Europe to handle the legal end of it and the cheap conversions. Either way, unless Nintendo's sales turn around in Europe, I'd expect them to pull out before they 'go the way of Sega', because the market is still good in Japan (which wasn't the case for Sega, though the DC did fairly well in the US).
My parents bought my step-brother the PS2 online adapter for X-Mas knowing that I'd be visiting that week and would probably know how to hook it up to the cable modem (which I convinced them to get when I lived with them, they've been using cable internet access for 7 years now). They weren't completely sure how they were going to hook it up (though my dad's perfectly competant with computers and can put together the cat5 cable (ie put the connectors on a cable cut from a spool) himself if he wanted to), so I pointed out that they could either connect to the hub (which I had left behind when I moved out) and activate another IP address (the method I used when I lived there) for $10-15/month, or buy a cable router and use it in place of the hub, and not pay the extra cost per month for a PS2 which might rarely be used. Needless to say, we went out and bought a cable router and ran cat5 to my step-brother's bedroom and everything else was easy.
For people without broadband but with a computer, if broadband's available in their area, it's often a no-brainer, they just have to see the difference. I've only known a couple of people that were cheap enough to hold out, and eventually they converted, and in some cases it was cheaper for them to have cable internet access.
For people that don't have a computer, it's obviously a tough choice. For people that can't afford (or can barely afford) internet access, the choice not to go that way should be easy.
Personally, I don't have an active phone line in my house, but I have cable internet access for my computer. One day I'll put my consoles online, but at the moment I don't have any games that I want to play online for any of my consoles. Once one of them goes online, all three will go at once, thanks to a 4-port WiFi router to connect my consoles (in the living room) to my cable router (in the office/spare bedroom), but then I have a decent amount of disposable income (obviously enough to have 4 consoles in my living room in the first place; no plans to put the Dreamcast online, though).
I would have to respectfully disagree with that staement. I LOVE a good story in my game. Cut-scenes are often a welcome break from playing and well done ones make me want to keep playing the game. I never truly enjoyed FPSs until Half-Life put a killer story in with it.
Half-Life didn't use cut-scenes, it used scripted sequences (you could still move around during most of the sequences, they all took place in the game engine) built to trigger off a certain event (usually the player entering a particular area).
Cut-scenes can be built using the game engine, but until recently were more often pre-rendered with significantly better graphics than the game engine could produce, and by definition cut-scenes in games take control away from the user and simply display the scene.
.::: Localisation is hardly the problem. EA, Sony, Microsoft they can all handle multiple languages and the like. The problem is that Nintendo wants to do all of that internally. Whereas their competition hires other companies to do that for them.
Let's see: Microsoft decided to release untranslated (ie English-language) non-localized versions of X-Box games in Japan. Many people complain about bad PAL conversion of titles from any number of US and Japanese developers. Many companies other than Nintendo do translation internal, and the choice is often made on a title-by-title basis, rather than as a company-wide policy (and Nintendo leaves those things up to the regional arms of the company, so Nintendo Japan is not making that choice for NoA or Nintendo Europe). I know that Namco's US division hires native-English-speaking Americans (with education in the Japanese language) to do translations of their titles for US release, rather than farming the translation out to other companies.
I also don't know why on Earth some people here wnat to take politcal reasons into consideration. The usual route for a game to be released here (Europe) is to be accepted by Japan as well as America. After those releases, the game is usually evaluated, in which they make judgement how it will sell in Europe and release it accordingly. (we've had two exceptions to that; Doshin the Giant and Shining Soul (GBA)). WHY ON EARTH they want to release both products in Australia and not Europe is beyond me however. Not only does Australia practically hate the GC (it's simply not selling at all there), it's ALSO a PAL territory. We get parallel imported Australian titles in the shops here, which simply work, so we'll get AC eventually anyway. However all of this has caused some strong comments concerning Nintendo. Just about everybody on forums and such that I know of and like Nintendo have condemned Nintendo of Europe for this. Not about AC being released in Oz so they can eventually get their hands on it, more that Europe was just skipped altogether. Whatever the reason might be I hope Nintendo really thought it over. Because when even your most dedicated fans turn against you it might become very difficult.
Personally, I don't understand why Nintendo of Europe wouldn't do at least a UK port of AC if it's already being ported for Australia, unless they have some issues regarding porting a title for just the largest market in Europe, rather than Europe as a whole. That being said, it is still Nintendo of Europe's choice, not Nintendo as a whole (though perhaps if Nintendo really was worried about backlash in the European market they could push it through).
In related news; EyeToy sales have risen above both Pokemon sales for the GBA.
Considering that the EyeToy price in Europe is significantly lower than what they've announced for the US price (it hasn't come out yet here), I'm not too surprised about that, especially since it's been on the UK charts longer, too. Of course, I can't find a lot of information on the UK charts (like amount of sales or units sold), either.
Multi-language?
Five main languages isn't that hard, really. You'd need five translators on the payroll. The appliances company I worked for simply used their marketing departments overseas to do the translation of their web sites and sent the translations back to the UK for input. I don't see how hard/expensive Nintendo thinks translation must be.
Given how long it takes for translations of most Japanese games, it sometimes seems like they have only 1 translator working on each game, but the reality is that it takes more than that. These aren't appliance manuals (or game manuals for that matter) we're talking about here, it's all of the text in the game and the voices, at the minimum. Animal Crossing doesn't need voice translations, but definitely a lot of text, and then you'd be stuck with Japanese or American holidays and items if they didn't do any localization beyond language translation.
Different display format?
Aussies are quite happy with PAL as well.
Japan and US both use NTSC, Aussies are in the same boat as Europe most of the time.
Different regional legislation?
Slap on a blood patch for Germany. Hang on, Nintendo haven't had any blood in their games in the UK since they begun. They haven't been censoring us have they?!
Check the 'M' rated games on the GC. The rest usually don't have problems, though, and I doubt it's much of a discussion for most of them. That being said, it's still something that has to be dealt with by some developers, regardless of what console they're using.
Different cultures
This argument I simply couldn't buy. Tastes are different everywhere. UK tastes are different to US, US is different to Japan. I can't name one country that has radically different games they enjoy than the rest of Europe.
Animal Crossing specifically is highly culture-oriented, and requires a great deal of changes in the port. Japan doesn't even port a large number of their games to the US (which still has NTSC so just needs the english translation for the lowest port) because of perceived (and sometimes very real) cultural differences. Anyone that's really interested in those titles either gripes about it forever or imports it.
There are only two answers. Nintendo is incompentant in Europe and arrogant towards Europe. It has always given Europe the shaft; it's not a new idea for them. Seeing as all the excuses they could come up with are as thin as Japanese paper walls, I have to say that the split must be 50:50 between the two issues. They don't need Europe, they're only the third biggest games market. They're a company trying to save cash, when in fact they're pushing themselves further over the edge by cutting out a major territory. Their business plan consists of: "If it ain't no work to convert, then ship it 6 months later and clamp down on importers in the mean time!" No joke, they sent cease and desist letters to all importers last month trying to get them all to stop selling the games that Euro Nintendo users want but can't get.
Total. Bloody. Genius.
Talk to Nintendo Europe, then, just like we in the US bitch at Nintendo of America for not bringing in more games (thankfully they made the decision to bring back Metroid, which doesn't do well in Japan). Nintendo's business plan when it comes to ports is primarily 'let the locals (meaning NoA, NoE, etc) do it'.
As for Europe being the third biggest game market: while it may be that, it's also a fragmented market, because you have to translate to multiple languages and deal with cultural diversity for the sales. If you simply took the US version and made some minor adjustments (and the PAL conversion) for the UK market you could probably get most of the money you're going to get from Europe without the extra cost of translating to French, Spanish, Dutch, German, etc. but then people would still bitch about it.
and DirectX makes the various video cards look like a single platform to the game developers.
In DirectX's early days, developing a game using a 3D card in Windows was like doing cross-platform development anyway, because you had to program in Glide for the 3dfx cards, and use the proper OpenGL extensions for each of the other cards you wanted to support. The renderer only had a very small number of functions that were supported by all cards, and since most gamers had 3dfx cards, you had to rewrite even those for Glide most of the time (or use a MiniGL driver like Quake 2).
Also, DirectX deals with sound, input, and networking in addition to the graphics, and SDL simply hasn't gotten a lot of exposure (not to mention that using SDL rules out platform-specific development, which means hoping that the platform optimizations in SDL are better than what you would write yourself, unless you want to fork the SDL code for your game). A lot of game developers really have no problem with coding in an extremely platform-specific manner (ie coding for specific hardware), but would rather not when it offers no performance improvements (or when it can't be fit in the budget; at the same time if they can't get the performance or features they want without going to the metal, they might look for another API).
If there was an API that made porting to Mac OS a no-brainer, that might justify the investment into not using DirectX any more (remember, they've been using it for some time now, and they know it in and out), and a Linux port might become a byproduct of producing for both the windoze and Mac worlds.
The problem isn't just the investment of time into DirectX, but the very thing that brought DirectX into the front in the first place: that it moves much more quickly than OpenGL/SDL. DirectX has a standard way of doing things even with the newest cards, and is updated almost yearly with features the hardware doesn't even support yet (but is planned for the current/next-generation cards, because the hardware manufacturers and MS work together on DX features), and maintains backwards compatibility, so Diablo (DirectX 3 game) still works today (on a system with a DirectX 8/9 capable video card and DirectX 9.0b installed).
Even if OpenGL and SDL make a quantum leap in their next official versions and become faster/more feature-rich than DirectX, they have to continue advancement without hardware developers releasing their own extensions for support (because extensions just mean the developers have to code to the extension for each card they want to support, instead of the DirectX method, which is to code in the feature and have it fall back or turn off if unsupported).
It seems that 'Hardcore Gamers' is definied as all those CS freaks, but if you look beyond CS you'll find quite a few interesting titles, even for the hardcore gamer.
Usually hardcore gamer is defined as someone that plays a large number of games, meaning more retail games than are released for Linux in any given time-frame.
On the other hand, there are many other ways to look at it, for instance someone that's played CS since it's initial public beta and still plays it today could be considered a hardcore gamer because they've stuck with the game for this long, or because they've worked to improve their skills in that game (or they could be called a hardcore CS player, I guess). Not to mention that there are many games (on Linux, Mac OS, or Windows) that don't cost anything (or are shareware) that could keep even a heavy gaming habit fulfilled for quite some time.
The one thing that makes most people believe that 'hardcore gamers wont run Linux' is the need to be able to buy and play that next great game, regardless of where it comes out, and so far that game hasn't been a Linux exclusive, because game developers want to make money (so they make a game for Windows or 1 or more consoles and consider porting). I've known plenty of gamers that run Linux for everything but games, and keep a Windows partition only for games. Their reason is simple: use the tool that fits the job. Many of them even have a computer (rather than a partition) specifically for games, simply because they have no requirement for the higher end system specs in their normal computer use (and because a 'hardcore' gamer goes through a hell of a lot of hardware if they can afford to, it's easy to put together another system from spare parts and a couple of cheap items (ie floppy drive and a case).
Regardless of your management (as was obviously a problem at Loki), selling ~7500-9000 copies of a port usually means that you're going to stop porting to that platform, especially when the game sold quite well for Windows, and that was the best-selling game for Loki. When one of the most outspoken supporters of Linux gaming ends up being among the creditors that Loki owed money to when they filed bankruptcy, there's a good chance that things are going to dry up for at least a little while.
The Sonic Mega Collection (basically every Sonic game prior to Sonic Adventure) was released for the GameCube, and was never announced as an exclusive title, but I can't find any announcements that state it will be coming soon for XBox or PS2.
I would like to see older Nintendo titles, too, but for now I'm going with the GBA versions of the ones that are available and using the GB Player when I play at home. Of course, with a new console slated for some point in the next year and a half, I doubt they'll go too far into re-releases on the current console unless they plan to have backwards compatibility (and I must say the Ocarina of Time re-release was a pretty good idea, though I wish it had a more general release for those of us that didn't even have a Gamecube when Zelda came out (of course, I picked the remake up used anyway)).
But even reusing characters is, in many ways, a cop-out. Same reason so many TV shows start with a known character from another show (you know, Joni loves Chaci (sp?) Syndrome). Perhaps it's a very novel and creative show, but the point is that people are still banking on that name recognition and brand familiarity.
I'm aware of this, and pretty much stated as much, but again, at least publishers are willing to fund a risky game if it's tied to a franchise. I may not like the fact that this is what it sometimes takes to get original gameplay on the shelves, but I don't avoid a title that is original simply because it's part of a franchise or a sequel.
To me, that's by definition not as original as creating a new game from scratch. I'll readily admit that I haven't tried Wario Ware, but just hearing Wario conjures up certain connotations -- and from the description on IGN Pocket [ign.com], we do have a relatively kid-friendly, arcade action game, as random as it might be.
As I said in an earlier post, Wario Ware is as much a commentary on the state of the game industry as anything else. The entire storyline of the game is that Wario is cashing in on the game industry's popularity by releasing simple, familiar titles. Of course, he does it mostly through ripping off other titles as well as making very simple nonsense titles (of course, my girlfriend is now addicted to Dr. Wario (which is an unlockable game in Wario Ware), as am I, so I may have to buy Dr. Mario just to allow both of us to play).
The bottom line is that Nintendo, even when they have something quite nearly wholly original, has to tag the game with a character simply for name recognition, aka "$$$". This is no Incredible Crisis [ign.com], for better or worse.
I really tend to think that Nintendo tends to innovate within their franchises more than most others. That being said, yes they do tend to rely on their franchises more heavily. At the same time, they also seem to be more willing to let their developers take chances elsewhere (probably especially if it might mean a new franchise/character they can use).
And just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, what does ole johnC do from QuakeCon [gamespy.com]?
John Carmack: I thought it would be kind of neat if we took the DOOM renderer, and we had a team take previous games-don't touch the game, just revamp it graphically. Just take Quake II, and just use the DOOM engine to make brand new graphic models and everything. But don't spend time messing with the gameplay because we know that is pretty good. Just release it as Quake II Remix with brand new graphics technology and sell it at a middle-level price instead of a boutique price.
I thought that was a pretty good idea.
Carmack also stated that he felt id was basically stuck with the FPS genre because of the team they had, and that he felt pressured to keep releasing Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein games, although he's already stated that id's next major title (after Doom 3) will be an unrelated title. He said that because of the amount of money that goes into their games (as well as the talent within the company), they are under a certain amount of pressure to basically continue releasing games under well-known brands that are guaranteed to bring back that investment. In a way, he's basically saying that you're only really going to see original games coming from smaller development houses on lower budgets.
Super. As if updating Resident Evil for GameCube wasn't enough, now we might have the exact same freakin' gameplay from Quake 2 back again.
I really don't have any problem with re-releasing (and hopefully updating) games for new consoles, considering that in many cases the Resident Evil games either don't look as they were intended (PS1/2 versions) or are on systems that are no longer supported (Dreamcast). I have problems with the idea that a development house chooses to cash in on the re-releases, though, and I certainly wou
The only way you'll get a real accurate number would be to get behind the lines at MS and Nintendo
And even that will give you different numbers depending on where you are within MS or Nintendo. You can get the number of units shipped to retailers or the number of units retailers have reported as sold, or the number of units returned to MS or Nintendo (or Sony) for repair. Replacement numbers are almost impossible to get accurately because some number of customers will simply dispose of the old console and buy another one rather than going through warranty and return hassles.
In Japan, from January (of this year) through May 25th they sold 278,800 Gamecubes (more recent charts (8/10) show around 408,000 cubes sold in Japan this year, partially helped by a doubling in weekly sales each time a high-profile title launches, such as FF:CC the week of the 10th).
Your 320,000/yr rate is based on what is typically one of the worst quarters of the year for every console, and for games in general, and the 80,000 units is simply the number Nintendo shipped, which could easily mean that sales over the previous quarter weren't as high as the retailers expected, so reatilers didn't increase stock in a slow quarter (when they still have cubes on the shelves from the previous quarter).
you just couldn't possibly have played ALL the good NES and SNES games out there. I am more than happy to play these "rehashed" games for the first time,
I agree whole-heartedly on that point. I didn't even own an SNES, which only makes it better in some cases because I can get games that play on a current console which I never got a chance to play before, even though I would have if I had owned the system they were originally released on.
and am even happier to see sequels to games I enjoyed.
I think that in some cases the sequels on the GBA may stick a bit closer to the earlier titles than I would normally care for, but overall I haven't come upon a truly bad sequel (w/ 2 Castlevania games, Metroid Fusion, Zelda, Golden Sun the Lost Age, Advance Wars 2 (though I didn't get the first Advance Wars), and even a couple of older GameBoy Color titles (and my gf's Pokemon obsession, though she at least only wants one of each generation (she has Red, Gold, and Ruby at this point))).
I can understand the general idea that it's sad to see the majority of the titles are just franchise titles, but I must say that most of the good franchises are still good, and that it's not much different on the home consoles, either.
Hrm. I hadn't thought about doing that. I check out the local GameStops every now and then, but their used prices tend to be around $20-$30 (paid $20 for RS2, around $25 for Skies). I have a few Blockbusters nearby, so I'll check them for used games next time
Definitely check out Blockbuster, I do it every chance I can get since I found Metroid Prime for $20 new, and have found a few good deals here and there.
Also check out Eternal Darkness, which I found new for $15 at Gamestop (at that price, I couldn't justify to myself renting it before I bought it, but that's just me). I think the only games I have that I payed near normal full retail ($40-50) for were Mario Sunshine and Animal Crossing. I can't give a lot of good recommendations that haven't been heard a million times before at the moment, though, because I've been playing KOTOR every moment I get the TV to myself.
I realize all of that, and frankly, I don't think it would be possible to increase the percentage of original games all that much by considering them individually, unless there was an extremely loose definition of originality. Of course, the simple fact is that over time the number of original titles by either definition decreases significantly, especially in the US market, regardless of platform. Adding in the consideration of gameplay would, in fact, reduce the number of original titles on most platforms (as was stated in the article at one point, iirc, by pointing out that many of the non-franchise / sequel titles are still derivative works; if it wasn't in the article, then it was immediately pointed out in comments).
I don't have a problem with the article itself, but rather with the conclusions it seems to lead people to draw, which is, as the Slashdot story's title would indicate, that the GBA is a platform without creativity. The reality is that you could find similar percentages on many platforms, that the percentage is probably higher on any platform that is descendant of a previous platform (ie the GBA is descended from the GBC, from the GB; PS2 is descendant of the PS1, Dreamcast is descendant of the Saturn, Genesis, SMS, Gamecube of the N64, SNES, NES), and that Nintendo in particular utilizes their franchises much more heavily than most others (for the good and the bad; Wario Ware and the original Mario Golf, Mario Kart, and many other titles all show the good side of this). The flip side is that titles can be innovative and original within a franchise, because publishers are sometimes willing to take a gamble if there's some medium (the franchise) through which the game is likely to sell.
I noticed the article also forgot to mention something else that was blatantly obvious:
The top two original titles (Golden Sun and Advanced Wars) both have sequels now.
Of course, he also ignored franchise titles with original gameplay, such as Wario Ware, Inc. which could be viewed as a commentary on the game industry very much in line with the article, if you follow the storyline. It's much easier to simply examine the titles and figure out which are sequels or franchise games than to figure out what titles actually have original gameplay.
The IE tools menu will eventually get you there, but it definitely seems to be taking a different route. Of course, this is the first time I've ever gone to Windows Update that way, I usually just type in http://windowsupdate. (hit down arrow, hit enter) if I have an IE window open or use the start menu link, both of which go to the same old windowsupdate.microsoft.com site.