I'm sure My Little Pony did great back in the 80's, but how many people would honestly consider that to be innovative, influential, interesting, or historically worth noting?
Does My Little Pony have 100 million fans worldwide? Are there 400,000 My Little Pony web pages? Was My Little Pony ever #1 on Amazon.com?
They do jump over the important stuff to mention their favorites, don't they?
1990s: A whole lotta nothing going on. Uh huh. The obviously slept through 1992.
Could buy and sell Evangelion six times before corn flakes. It also deserves mention in the U.S. licensing portion of the article, since it was one of three shows that formed the basis for the current success of anime in general.
Oh, and it did about ten figures in merchandising too.
Commercial literature has been around for centuries, probably longer than any other business except agriculture.
If anything, American comics have learned the hard lessons first, having had a lot more experience dealing with a fickle readership. I think they could probably teach the manga industry a lesson or two.
Yeah. Explains why manga probably outsells comics by at least two orders of magnitude in a country with a third the population.
It's a cultural difference. Reading is discouraged in this society. There is also the fact that manga publishers see markets other than boys 8-15.
Presenting a shoujo manga to the average U.S. publisher would be like trying to show a medieval fisherman how to use sonar.
Also, there are more genres in manga. There are sports manga, business manga, sitting in the park and watching the sunset manga. They may all have 0.00001% of the market, but together, it's the most widely published form of literature in Japan, and like anime, it is slowly going to gain popularity in the U.S. until the competition either wakes up or goes out of business.
A "business case" can be made for outsourcing: it costs less.
Those from whom the jobs are taken can never make a business case for the alternative, since all they can offer is a "better" product, which plays right into the hands of skeptical management, who will ask "what makes you think your product is better?"
This is an unanswerable question. They aren't interested in the answer, they just want to see a quick tap-dance and a few beads of sweat before they say "no."
(For those of you watching at home, the correct answer is "thanks for the coffee.")
3) Even the top sellers don't sell in sufficient quantities to compete with other forms of advertising, like television.
I'm sure, however, in conference rooms across the game industry, egotistic, nasal-voiced "gurus" are convincing game companies to spend millions to force people to watch ads in order to continue playing the sequel they are paying a monthly fee + $200 for the console + $80 for the box to play.
The hype shouldn't write checks the product can't cash.
Then again, it would be nice if important inventions could be evaluated on something other than how well they play as the lead story on Entertainment Tonight.
What are we up to now? Three months to obsolescence? It was just last Fall that we heard about the ultra-mega-super Radeon 9700 that could render 47umptyzillion somethingorothers every picosecond (only $400 while supplies last)?
I wonder if we're ever going to get to a point where "this is the hardware. You have 10 years to do something cool with it" instead of "oh, look, your program is obsolete again! Your graphics are dated! Another 10 man-years down the drain! Place your bets... (spin)"
Slashdot Mirror
Suppose this time they could arrange it so we don't have to spend four hours rebuilding our e-mail accounts?
So what?
There is no such thing as a mass market except for three products: detergent, automotive, orange juice. Everything else is a niche.
But please, don't pretend that you can turn back time to when competitive computer games
could be produced by a lone independent developer.
Wow. You really bought it all didn't you? Horses, trees, even the dog.
There are thousands of units of independently produced games being sold right this minute. Thousands.
It used to be much cheaper to produce a game,
It still is. A good programmer and artist team can build a game for a few hundred dollars.
but now the costs are rising to the point where VC's don't want to risk their money on small, unknown outfits.
VC's don't invest in computer games, despite the romantic myth of the perfect game start-up.
Of course, the idea of a VC who doesn't want to risk their money is amusing enough on its own. If they want a sure thing, they should buy T-bills.
Mozilla ate my comment, so I'll just reply with "I agree."
:)
and I'm glad I skipped the GDC.
How about Civilization? Tetris, to expand on your addictive puzzle game? The Ultima series? Most of the Wing Commander series?
Note that all of those games are 5-10 years old.
Coincidence? No.
This has devalued and / or shown the true value of music and it is a very low value.
That explains the five-figure costs of advertising on a major market radio station.
Always so quick to call something a commodity so we can say "gimme gimme gimme..."
If Spirited Away doesn't win Best Animated Feature, the Oscars are a joke.
Right now 4 GB of memory might be enough.
18 exabytes is a bit much though.
But they should hurry, because we all know how important it is to get a pointer to the combined memory of every PC as quickly as possible.
Oh, and while we're at it, let's make the entire current software library obsolete too. Hooray for obsolete.
sigh...
Who cares if it did ten figures in merchandising?
LOL
I'm sure My Little Pony did great back in the 80's, but how many people would honestly consider that to be innovative, influential, interesting, or historically worth noting?
Does My Little Pony have 100 million fans worldwide? Are there 400,000 My Little Pony web pages? Was My Little Pony ever #1 on Amazon.com?
No.
That's the point.
They do jump over the important stuff to mention their favorites, don't they?
1990s: A whole lotta nothing going on. Uh huh. The obviously slept through 1992.
Could buy and sell Evangelion six times before corn flakes. It also deserves mention in the U.S. licensing portion of the article, since it was one of three shows that formed the basis for the current
success of anime in general.
Oh, and it did about ten figures in merchandising too.
It's because nobody else but Apple can make anything as cool as this.
Apple leads. Anyone else watch the Macworld 2003 speech? Notebooks, Safari, Keynote, Firewire 800, etc. Sheesh.
(And I don't even use a Mac.)
Dexter's Lab, Power Puff Girls, Samurai Jack, Batman Beyond..
anime.
The article mentions $2 bil.
Don't forget the merchandising. NOW you're talking Hollywood numbers, and then some.
But these are not good foundations for any business that desires longevity and stability.
Like, what? Orange juice? Detergent? Automotive parts?
Commercial literature has been around for centuries, probably longer than any other business except agriculture.
If anything, American comics have learned the hard lessons first, having had a lot more experience dealing with a fickle readership. I think they could probably teach the manga industry a lesson or two.
Yeah. Explains why manga probably outsells comics by at least two orders of magnitude in a country with a third the population.
Manga is literature.
Comic books are not.
It's a cultural difference. Reading is discouraged in this society. There is also the fact that manga publishers see markets other than boys 8-15.
Presenting a shoujo manga to the average U.S. publisher would be like trying to show a medieval fisherman how to use sonar.
Also, there are more genres in manga. There are sports manga, business manga, sitting in the park and watching the sunset manga. They may all have 0.00001% of the market, but together, it's the most widely published form of literature in Japan, and like anime, it is slowly going to gain popularity in the U.S. until the competition either wakes up or goes out of business.
My argument? Get lost.
As usual, employers are only interested in finding reasons to disqualify people.
For all the point and sneer "ahh haaa! what a waste!" types out there:
Without these "dismal failures" there wouldn't be a Playstation 2 or Gamecube.
It's called trial and error, folks, and yes, it's important. Fact: The foundation for every success is a string of failures.
A "business case" can be made for outsourcing: it costs less.
Those from whom the jobs are taken can never make a business case for the alternative, since all they can offer is a "better" product, which plays right into the hands of skeptical management, who will ask "what makes you think your product is better?"
This is an unanswerable question. They aren't interested in the answer, they just want to see a quick tap-dance and a few beads of sweat before they say "no."
(For those of you watching at home, the correct answer is "thanks for the coffee.")
Game companies are realising that story telling has a lot of potential that has not been tapped yet.
GASP!! Ya THINK??!?!?!
-_-
1) People are sick of advertising
2) 95% of retail games lose money
3) Even the top sellers don't sell in sufficient quantities to compete with other forms of advertising, like television.
I'm sure, however, in conference rooms across the game industry, egotistic, nasal-voiced "gurus" are convincing game companies to spend millions to force people to watch ads in order to continue playing the sequel they are paying a monthly fee + $200 for the console + $80 for the box to play.
sigh... hooray for the game industry...
The hype shouldn't write checks the product can't cash.
Then again, it would be nice if important inventions could be evaluated on something other than how well they play as the lead story on Entertainment Tonight.
What are we up to now? Three months to obsolescence? It was just last Fall that we heard about the ultra-mega-super Radeon 9700 that could render 47umptyzillion somethingorothers every picosecond (only $400 while supplies last)?
I wonder if we're ever going to get to a point where "this is the hardware. You have 10 years to do something cool with it" instead of "oh, look, your program is obsolete again! Your graphics are dated! Another 10 man-years down the drain! Place your bets... (spin)"
sigh...
with the primary messages: everything sux. Only big media companies know what people want.
lol