Because (as the article clearly pointed out) Nintendo isn't releasing innovative games to go along with it. They may be taking a slight risk on the hardware (though I am not sure "cheap portable hardware with good battery life" qualifies as risky or unusual for Nintendo), but they are playing it completely safe when it comes to the games. That is the problem.
Sure, most movies are derivative crap. But the big studios still put out nowadays a lot artier films that they recently used to. In the 70s they did the same kind of artistic stuff - these things go in cycles.
I am not convinced the same thing will happen in gaming (especially with the increasing irrelevance of the PC platform), but this kind of change does happen in other big business art-forms.
None of the Halo games have really contributed to pushing the envelope to date. Seriously, what is so great about Halo?
It's shield system was a huge innovation. It completely changes the pace of the FPS game, making it focus on the battles more like the game should. (Halo 2 refined it to perfection.) Games with health and armor packs just don't play as well.
It also made weapon management the focus of item collection, another change for the better. Truly every weapon is useful and deadly - the player doesn't waste their time with lame pistols, etc.
Halo was the first FPS game to really do vehicles right. Even big games like HL2 still aren't getting it right (probably because of the deficiencies of the keyboard-mouse setup).
Oh yeah - it also had the best cooperative play in an FPS. How it did respawns is exactly the right method to take.
Neither of the Halo games are remotely perfect, but they did both introduce plenty of innovation and had tons of raw gameplay polish. They did also feature some graphics innovations of a sort (no FPS game prior to Halo1 had everything bump-mapped, for example, and its shader usage was also pretty new), not to mention all of the sound advancements, but honestly all of that pales in comparison to the gameplay.
(And HL2 only upped the ante for physics to PC-only gamers. Console-only games like Psi-ops used the exact same freaking physics engine earlier, took it further [ex: round things can be rolled around the environment], enemies will use the physics more actively against you [ex: one character throws train cars at you], enemies being manipulated will still try and fight you, etc.)
You are talking pretty much entirely about boxed software. That is a very small part of the software industry, and it always has been. Most of the software written today isn't being sold at Best Buy, etc., it is via contracts with businesses that need some kind of new application. Copies don't even really factor into that - the company is paying the programmer(s) for the program being created, period.
Software creation isn't really a manufacturing industry (where the ability to copy something for 'free' could be devastating), it is a service industry. There will always be a need for new software.
(Certain software niches probably don't work 'service-style', like games. But most Free software proponents seem to realize that, IMO - including Stallman. The goal is ultimately freedom where it works, which just happens to be fortunately almost everywhere.)
Richard Stallman is wrong. There is nothing ethically wrong with selling software - it is no more unethical than selling groceries.
Huh? You don't remotely understand what you are talking about. You understand Stallman means "free as in freedom", right? Please, find us some evidence of him suggesting that selling software is remotely wrong in any way!
Please. If you really believe that God's responsible, then you believe in a sick God: He punishes people (including innocent children) via tsunamis just because he doesn't have enough fans? I seriously doubt other Christians would share your view.
If you believe in the God of Christianity (who is omnipotent and omniscient), this tsunami almost has to be punishment. This is a big problem area in religious philosophy, normally referred to as the problem of evil. A common argument is that suffering can actually be good, so that is why a absolutely good diety would allow disasters like this (on a smaller scale, it is like the idea of a parent spanking a child to make them a better person).
Anyway, I would imagine quite a few Christians believe this was punishment. They don't have a lot of other choices considering the basics of their religion.
When the massive power of hype and other peer pressures are in effect, the majority of people are oftentimes wrong. When a game has poor AI, bad level design, boring weapons, nonexistent challenge, repetitive enemies, and a sketchy storyline it is a disappointment. I could care less that a whole bunch of videogaming 'journalists' have decided that they absolutely love a newly released game they have already been publicly worshipping for almost two years now (and all without a moment of playtime, either).
Playing Mario Kart or Mario Tennis against a nameless, faceless 13 year old takes something away from the experience. The fun with these titles is playing against friends, relatives, people you know.
But that is what a lot of people are using Xbox Live for - to play their friends and relatives online. My brother is away at college in another state - I can't get together with him very often and play games in the same room. And a universal friends list means you don't have to play against strangers if you don't want to, and that even strangers can quickly become friends. People make new friends through the internet all the time - how is doing it over a gaming chat line any different?
And including online play for the people that want it doesn't mean you have to play online. An option to play online won't take away the modes you already enjoy playing!
Nintendo is just ignoring online play out of cheapness (it is expensive to set stuff like Xbox Live up, no doubt), tradition (ie fear), and general laziness (witness the laggy half-ass LAN play of Mario Kart - you can't even choose your kart!). When they finally decide it has become vital (like ditching cartridges eventually became obvious to them), they will do it. So after everyone has, of course.:D
Racing and fighting games (excepting the button-mashy no-long-animations 2D types) work perfectly well on Xbox Live. Good programming and low latency from broadband connections are really what is necessary. It probably is late enough in this generation that Nintendo would be silly to push online play, but let's not pretend this heavy lag thing is a problem that hasn't been long solved already.
Not that I want to defend EA here,but Ubisoft is already roughly averaging one Splinter Cell release a year. We are a little past three years from the first game (November 2002 I believe), and the third game comes out in a month or so. Hell, Ubi tried to release two Splinter Cell games just this year!
The majority of the nation has spoken and there must be a reason for it.
That kind of mistaken thinking is what scares a lot of people who are not fond of the Moral Majority. Most of the people in this nation didn't even vote (a slim majority of potential voters did, I believe). So ~25% of America votes for Bush (most of them for non-religious reasons!) and suddenly we have to hear all over "Americans have spoken! This country needs to be more Born Again! (Our) religion is what the people really want!" That is really intimidating to all of the secularists and various members of all the other religions in America - we know damn well where this kind of thing leads eventually.
Apple's DRM wasn't broken in this. This is Apple preventing another company's DRM from working (who also has a license with the record companies). If the iPod being able to play MP3s doesn't break Apple's contract, why would being able to play Real's music on it?
Prince of Persia is pretty famous for its gore, actually. I know I found it pretty shocking back when the first two each came out. Quest for Glory definitely had some good amounts of gore, too.
So does Metroid Prime, I believe. (I haven't played it much. But don't some aliens bleed all over the place when you kill them?)
All this is ignoring what the original Coward wrote. Mature games have nothing necessarily to do with gore, sex, or nudity, and they didn't suggest that they do. The Mario series still doesn't qualify as mature.
(I didn't mean to imply that you could play something like Ridge Racers for 5 hours, incidentally. Just using it as an example of unlikely usage.)
Just to be sure, we are talking about this article, right?
Based on our estimates and a few battery-draining tests, Ridge Racers seems to last somewhere between 90 minutes and three hours.
No contrast or sound info given. No real data given (if it was just a few tests, why not give us the numbers?). Their study didn't seem all that scientific to me. Though I am sure Ridge Racers won't last too long, I am pretty comfortable assuming it is closer to that 3 hour mark when using proper settings.
Believe me when I say that I have played Super Mario 64 DS for more than 3 hours straight since I got my DS. The only time I can possibly imagine myself away from an outlet for 3 hours straight and able to turn my attention to a portable gaming system is on a plane trip or if I happen to be a passenger on a very long car ride. Neither happen that often for most people. The PSP battery life isn't great, but people are blowing its limit out of proportion I think.
And I would be surprised if a game that looks like Super Mario 64 DS wouldn't run for well more than 3 hours on the PSP.:P
Re:Less then 5 hours is "not too shabby"?
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PSP Battery Journal
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· Score: 1
Interesting. I wonder why Nintendo chose to do that. They can't honestly be making any real profit on the batteries... are you positive they both put out the same juice? (I could see the DS one being slightly better.)
Re:Less then 5 hours is "not too shabby"?
on
PSP Battery Journal
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· Score: 1
DS batteries are $15, but I am not sure they are the same as the SP ones. Nintendo at least sells them as different products. And in the PSP's defence, it does recharge a lot faster (2 hours or so compared to the 4-5 for the DS). It will be interesting to see what economies of scale do to its battery price...
And the IGN article pointed out that playing one game for 5 hours is an unrealistic depiction of what most people would use the PSP for. Their test was supposed to get a feel for average use. Gamespot didn't even give exact numbers, or any real data on volume or contrast settings...
I beg to differ. I don't want another device I have to remeber to charge every night if I want to use it the next day. My cell phone, palm, and laptop are enough.
Then you probably aren't in the market for a portable gaming machine, now are you?
How did this got modded up to +5 Insightful? I am not planning on buying a PSP, DS, or GBA anytime in the future as I rarely travel. Oooh! Give me points, moderators! I'm insightful!
Ridge Racer on DS is NOT a port of the N64 game. It features a new control scheme, and is an entirely new Ridge Racer game with tracks from previous games.
Umm, yeah, it's a port. A few minor additions don't mean it suddenly becomes "an entirely new Ridge Racer"! Of course it has a slightly new control scheme - the DS doesn't have the analog controller of the N64. That isn't a feature I would be bragging about. The "tracks from the previous games" is exactly what Ridge Racer 64 offered. And it is pretty universally being called a worse game than the new PSP Ridge Racer.
N64 was the big console of the era.
A ridiculous claim. It did okay business, especially in America, but it just didn't sell big in places like Japan. And in America it was still pretty handily beat by the PSX. Other people have pointed out the exact numbers.
The N64 certainly has some minor influence in the West (especially with party-style games), but it was the PSX (and in Japan, the Saturn too) that really shaped and influenced that gaming generation. (And do I say this as someone who only owned an N64 during that generation and mostly enjoyed it.)
I have no interest in PSP because (as I've repeated already several times), it has no games of interest, the hardware seems fragile, the battery life is absurdly short, and the price is way too high. These are not characteristics of good engineering.
Very few consoles have good launch titles - the same lack of interesting games is a problem with the DS right now. Neither system is going to start to have an interesting library for at least six months or so.
The battery life is short but not terrible. Even 2 hours would be plenty for me and most other potential buyers - realistically how often do most people really find themselves in need of a 3-4 hour period with nothing to do and no electrical outlet? And an extra battery is around $30 - big deal.
The price is just slightly higher than the DS - $50 is a little more than a single game for either system. You get a much larger screen (that is also higher resolution), you get better controls (sorry, an analog controller is a standard game control nowadays Nintendo - you don't got it, you are missing something vital), you get better sound, you get a lot better graphics (devs suggest we are talking slightly better than a Dreamcast, which is awesome), you get more fancy features if you want them. For a better screen and controls alone the $50 would be worth it for me personally.
(Not that I am planning on buying either system yet. I will wait for the good games before I decide...)
lol.
Isn't there some saying about glass houses?:D We all are a little misinformed sometimes - get over yourself.
(Wipeout 1 sold more than 1.5 million copies worldwide according to Wikipedia, but backing evidence is hard to find. Wipeout XL probably sold even better. Regardless, both games were insanely popular, especially in the West - a million+ copies is a very reasonable expectation. It certainly doesn't have the track record of a Mario Kart however.)
Like you point out, selling a console at a loss is by no means an absolute rule. But this new counter-myth that it was only three consoles is nonsense.
For example: add to that the Gamecube and Playstation 2. Nintendo themselves revealed (at Spaceworld 2001 - not the best link, but I am sick of wasting my time digging up great links for all you liars with no links that don't know what you are talking about) that the Gamecube was sold at an initial loss and is back to selling at a loss since it became $99. Sony had to expensively airlift consoles to make the US PS2 launch.
Other consoles have been sold at a loss, too. But the real point is that the standard used to determine if a console is sold at a loss right now is silly and inconsequential. No console makes back its R&D, advertising, and initial manufacturing setup costs in its early selling period. Materials + Manufacturing Labor = Retail cost is an indicator of nothing of real value in these discussions. All consoles are sold on the basis of achieving long-term profit, not a short-term breaking-even.
That machine was a slouch in the CPU area. Barely faster than an Xbox CPU, but with all that 'wonderful' Windows overhead. Halo1 may not have a lot of geometry, but it features tons of shader effects, large environments, advanced AI, and bump maps on everything. (Not a lot of PC games have done some of this stuff prior to Halo, so drivers and everything simply weren't tuned for the game's requirements, which just exasperated performance issues.) Gearbox should have certainly done a better job on the port, but your machine had a pretty big weakness.:D
And a problem with your criteria is this - most games sold today exceed your requirements (ex: see most console games). Where do we go from there? Meeting a technical level is great and important, but ideally most games are going to achieve that. We need to be able to go further...
Disregarding that, I do agree a similar review check should be made on all software (especially for framerate, being relatively bug-free, and controls). But I think we should treat it as a basic requirement - it shouldn't factor into the game's 'important' score like it does now ("One star off for a bad framerate!"). It should just be a separate score, a simple yes or no. Then the game's content should be reviewed separately.
Right now if a game has a good story, or fun multiplayer, or some other really positive factor it can somehow outweigh basic unacceptable faults like a crappy framerate. That isn't right - devs need to be held to a certain level of expected technical quality. We don't really see films released that are unintentionally lit incorrectly, right? It needs to be that if a game can't work correctly, it completely fails some kind of very important criteria. No amount of quality in the rest of it should let it avoid that mark of shame.
Slashdot Mirror
Because (as the article clearly pointed out) Nintendo isn't releasing innovative games to go along with it. They may be taking a slight risk on the hardware (though I am not sure "cheap portable hardware with good battery life" qualifies as risky or unusual for Nintendo), but they are playing it completely safe when it comes to the games. That is the problem.
Yeah, for rag dolls and crates. In Psi-ops it is an integral part of the gameplay (since you and certain enemies use plenty of telekinetic powers).
Sure, most movies are derivative crap. But the big studios still put out nowadays a lot artier films that they recently used to. In the 70s they did the same kind of artistic stuff - these things go in cycles.
I am not convinced the same thing will happen in gaming (especially with the increasing irrelevance of the PC platform), but this kind of change does happen in other big business art-forms.
None of the Halo games have really contributed to pushing the envelope to date. Seriously, what is so great about Halo?
It's shield system was a huge innovation. It completely changes the pace of the FPS game, making it focus on the battles more like the game should. (Halo 2 refined it to perfection.) Games with health and armor packs just don't play as well.
It also made weapon management the focus of item collection, another change for the better. Truly every weapon is useful and deadly - the player doesn't waste their time with lame pistols, etc.
Halo was the first FPS game to really do vehicles right. Even big games like HL2 still aren't getting it right (probably because of the deficiencies of the keyboard-mouse setup).
Oh yeah - it also had the best cooperative play in an FPS. How it did respawns is exactly the right method to take.
Neither of the Halo games are remotely perfect, but they did both introduce plenty of innovation and had tons of raw gameplay polish. They did also feature some graphics innovations of a sort (no FPS game prior to Halo1 had everything bump-mapped, for example, and its shader usage was also pretty new), not to mention all of the sound advancements, but honestly all of that pales in comparison to the gameplay.
(And HL2 only upped the ante for physics to PC-only gamers. Console-only games like Psi-ops used the exact same freaking physics engine earlier, took it further [ex: round things can be rolled around the environment], enemies will use the physics more actively against you [ex: one character throws train cars at you], enemies being manipulated will still try and fight you, etc.)
You are talking pretty much entirely about boxed software. That is a very small part of the software industry, and it always has been. Most of the software written today isn't being sold at Best Buy, etc., it is via contracts with businesses that need some kind of new application. Copies don't even really factor into that - the company is paying the programmer(s) for the program being created, period.
Software creation isn't really a manufacturing industry (where the ability to copy something for 'free' could be devastating), it is a service industry. There will always be a need for new software.
(Certain software niches probably don't work 'service-style', like games. But most Free software proponents seem to realize that, IMO - including Stallman. The goal is ultimately freedom where it works, which just happens to be fortunately almost everywhere.)
Richard Stallman is wrong. There is nothing ethically wrong with selling software - it is no more unethical than selling groceries.
Huh? You don't remotely understand what you are talking about. You understand Stallman means "free as in freedom", right? Please, find us some evidence of him suggesting that selling software is remotely wrong in any way!
There actually is a pretty cool cutscene after the credits, FYI.
If Microsoft didn't buy Bungie we never would have even got Halo 1. Bungie was broke.
Please. If you really believe that God's responsible, then you believe in a sick God: He punishes people (including innocent children) via tsunamis just because he doesn't have enough fans? I seriously doubt other Christians would share your view.
If you believe in the God of Christianity (who is omnipotent and omniscient), this tsunami almost has to be punishment. This is a big problem area in religious philosophy, normally referred to as the problem of evil. A common argument is that suffering can actually be good, so that is why a absolutely good diety would allow disasters like this (on a smaller scale, it is like the idea of a parent spanking a child to make them a better person).
Anyway, I would imagine quite a few Christians believe this was punishment. They don't have a lot of other choices considering the basics of their religion.
When the massive power of hype and other peer pressures are in effect, the majority of people are oftentimes wrong. When a game has poor AI, bad level design, boring weapons, nonexistent challenge, repetitive enemies, and a sketchy storyline it is a disappointment. I could care less that a whole bunch of videogaming 'journalists' have decided that they absolutely love a newly released game they have already been publicly worshipping for almost two years now (and all without a moment of playtime, either).
Playing Mario Kart or Mario Tennis against a nameless, faceless 13 year old takes something away from the experience. The fun with these titles is playing against friends, relatives, people you know.
:D
But that is what a lot of people are using Xbox Live for - to play their friends and relatives online. My brother is away at college in another state - I can't get together with him very often and play games in the same room. And a universal friends list means you don't have to play against strangers if you don't want to, and that even strangers can quickly become friends. People make new friends through the internet all the time - how is doing it over a gaming chat line any different?
And including online play for the people that want it doesn't mean you have to play online. An option to play online won't take away the modes you already enjoy playing!
Nintendo is just ignoring online play out of cheapness (it is expensive to set stuff like Xbox Live up, no doubt), tradition (ie fear), and general laziness (witness the laggy half-ass LAN play of Mario Kart - you can't even choose your kart!). When they finally decide it has become vital (like ditching cartridges eventually became obvious to them), they will do it. So after everyone has, of course.
Racing and fighting games (excepting the button-mashy no-long-animations 2D types) work perfectly well on Xbox Live. Good programming and low latency from broadband connections are really what is necessary. It probably is late enough in this generation that Nintendo would be silly to push online play, but let's not pretend this heavy lag thing is a problem that hasn't been long solved already.
Can anyone say Splinter Cell: 2007 Edition?
Not that I want to defend EA here,but Ubisoft is already roughly averaging one Splinter Cell release a year. We are a little past three years from the first game (November 2002 I believe), and the third game comes out in a month or so. Hell, Ubi tried to release two Splinter Cell games just this year!
The majority of the nation has spoken and there must be a reason for it.
That kind of mistaken thinking is what scares a lot of people who are not fond of the Moral Majority. Most of the people in this nation didn't even vote (a slim majority of potential voters did, I believe). So ~25% of America votes for Bush (most of them for non-religious reasons!) and suddenly we have to hear all over "Americans have spoken! This country needs to be more Born Again! (Our) religion is what the people really want!" That is really intimidating to all of the secularists and various members of all the other religions in America - we know damn well where this kind of thing leads eventually.
Apple's DRM wasn't broken in this. This is Apple preventing another company's DRM from working (who also has a license with the record companies). If the iPod being able to play MP3s doesn't break Apple's contract, why would being able to play Real's music on it?
Prince of Persia is pretty famous for its gore, actually. I know I found it pretty shocking back when the first two each came out. Quest for Glory definitely had some good amounts of gore, too.
So does Metroid Prime, I believe. (I haven't played it much. But don't some aliens bleed all over the place when you kill them?)
All this is ignoring what the original Coward wrote. Mature games have nothing necessarily to do with gore, sex, or nudity, and they didn't suggest that they do. The Mario series still doesn't qualify as mature.
Just to be sure, we are talking about this article, right?
No contrast or sound info given. No real data given (if it was just a few tests, why not give us the numbers?). Their study didn't seem all that scientific to me. Though I am sure Ridge Racers won't last too long, I am pretty comfortable assuming it is closer to that 3 hour mark when using proper settings.
Believe me when I say that I have played Super Mario 64 DS for more than 3 hours straight since I got my DS.
The only time I can possibly imagine myself away from an outlet for 3 hours straight and able to turn my attention to a portable gaming system is on a plane trip or if I happen to be a passenger on a very long car ride. Neither happen that often for most people. The PSP battery life isn't great, but people are blowing its limit out of proportion I think.
And I would be surprised if a game that looks like Super Mario 64 DS wouldn't run for well more than 3 hours on the PSP.
Interesting. I wonder why Nintendo chose to do that. They can't honestly be making any real profit on the batteries... are you positive they both put out the same juice? (I could see the DS one being slightly better.)
DS batteries are $15, but I am not sure they are the same as the SP ones. Nintendo at least sells them as different products. And in the PSP's defence, it does recharge a lot faster (2 hours or so compared to the 4-5 for the DS). It will be interesting to see what economies of scale do to its battery price...
And the IGN article pointed out that playing one game for 5 hours is an unrealistic depiction of what most people would use the PSP for. Their test was supposed to get a feel for average use. Gamespot didn't even give exact numbers, or any real data on volume or contrast settings...
I beg to differ. I don't want another device I have to remeber to charge every night if I want to use it the next day. My cell phone, palm, and laptop are enough.
Then you probably aren't in the market for a portable gaming machine, now are you?
How did this got modded up to +5 Insightful? I am not planning on buying a PSP, DS, or GBA anytime in the future as I rarely travel. Oooh! Give me points, moderators! I'm insightful!
Umm, yeah, it's a port. A few minor additions don't mean it suddenly becomes "an entirely new Ridge Racer"! Of course it has a slightly new control scheme - the DS doesn't have the analog controller of the N64. That isn't a feature I would be bragging about. The "tracks from the previous games" is exactly what Ridge Racer 64 offered. And it is pretty universally being called a worse game than the new PSP Ridge Racer.
A ridiculous claim. It did okay business, especially in America, but it just didn't sell big in places like Japan. And in America it was still pretty handily beat by the PSX. Other people have pointed out the exact numbers.
The N64 certainly has some minor influence in the West (especially with party-style games), but it was the PSX (and in Japan, the Saturn too) that really shaped and influenced that gaming generation. (And do I say this as someone who only owned an N64 during that generation and mostly enjoyed it.)
Very few consoles have good launch titles - the same lack of interesting games is a problem with the DS right now. Neither system is going to start to have an interesting library for at least six months or so.
The battery life is short but not terrible. Even 2 hours would be plenty for me and most other potential buyers - realistically how often do most people really find themselves in need of a 3-4 hour period with nothing to do and no electrical outlet? And an extra battery is around $30 - big deal.
The price is just slightly higher than the DS - $50 is a little more than a single game for either system. You get a much larger screen (that is also higher resolution), you get better controls (sorry, an analog controller is a standard game control nowadays Nintendo - you don't got it, you are missing something vital), you get better sound, you get a lot better graphics (devs suggest we are talking slightly better than a Dreamcast, which is awesome), you get more fancy features if you want them. For a better screen and controls alone the $50 would be worth it for me personally.
(Not that I am planning on buying either system yet. I will wait for the good games before I decide...)
Isn't there some saying about glass houses?
(Wipeout 1 sold more than 1.5 million copies worldwide according to Wikipedia, but backing evidence is hard to find. Wipeout XL probably sold even better. Regardless, both games were insanely popular, especially in the West - a million+ copies is a very reasonable expectation. It certainly doesn't have the track record of a Mario Kart however.)
You are correct about the "3D on one screen only" thing, for the record. Though I imagine you could fake it on the other screen, using GBA-style 3D.
Like you point out, selling a console at a loss is by no means an absolute rule. But this new counter-myth that it was only three consoles is nonsense.
For example: add to that the Gamecube and Playstation 2. Nintendo themselves revealed (at Spaceworld 2001 - not the best link, but I am sick of wasting my time digging up great links for all you liars with no links that don't know what you are talking about) that the Gamecube was sold at an initial loss and is back to selling at a loss since it became $99. Sony had to expensively airlift consoles to make the US PS2 launch.
Other consoles have been sold at a loss, too. But the real point is that the standard used to determine if a console is sold at a loss right now is silly and inconsequential. No console makes back its R&D, advertising, and initial manufacturing setup costs in its early selling period. Materials + Manufacturing Labor = Retail cost is an indicator of nothing of real value in these discussions. All consoles are sold on the basis of achieving long-term profit, not a short-term breaking-even.
That machine was a slouch in the CPU area. Barely faster than an Xbox CPU, but with all that 'wonderful' Windows overhead. Halo1 may not have a lot of geometry, but it features tons of shader effects, large environments, advanced AI, and bump maps on everything. (Not a lot of PC games have done some of this stuff prior to Halo, so drivers and everything simply weren't tuned for the game's requirements, which just exasperated performance issues.) Gearbox should have certainly done a better job on the port, but your machine had a pretty big weakness. :D
And a problem with your criteria is this - most games sold today exceed your requirements (ex: see most console games). Where do we go from there? Meeting a technical level is great and important, but ideally most games are going to achieve that. We need to be able to go further...
Disregarding that, I do agree a similar review check should be made on all software (especially for framerate, being relatively bug-free, and controls). But I think we should treat it as a basic requirement - it shouldn't factor into the game's 'important' score like it does now ("One star off for a bad framerate!"). It should just be a separate score, a simple yes or no. Then the game's content should be reviewed separately.
Right now if a game has a good story, or fun multiplayer, or some other really positive factor it can somehow outweigh basic unacceptable faults like a crappy framerate. That isn't right - devs need to be held to a certain level of expected technical quality. We don't really see films released that are unintentionally lit incorrectly, right? It needs to be that if a game can't work correctly, it completely fails some kind of very important criteria. No amount of quality in the rest of it should let it avoid that mark of shame.