Actually, in nearly all the Xbox staffer articles I ever read, many completely admit to owning multiple systems and playing games on those system (particularly Ken Lobb). Moreover, while many of these guys will quite gladly point out sales figures, many of them also seem to really admire Nintendo. I can't say they have the same respect for Sony, but I don't think they've ever really "badmouthed" Sony or Nintendo in the sense that they are competitors.
Since we're english-speaking, we see many more articles and interviews with Xbox officials. The ones with Nintendo's in a post-Peter Moore world are little more than press releases. I would venture to say you can't find one interview in which a Sony or Nintendo rep admits to playing one of their competitor's systems or games.
You know, I seem to remember reading shortly after Deus Ex came out that they built the subway station level in homage to the Matrix. Does anyone else remember reading this?
Now now Boglin, be fair before prejudging and classifying me as one of the few who whined CELDA when screenshots first appeared. I was all for the cell-shading - and yes, it is cell-shaded while the others were not - from day one. One of my arguments for this was that the series had always been "cartoony" and the only thing contrary to this was one single E3 screenshot.
That said, Windwaker is by far the most cinematic of any of the series. Secondly, nearly *everything* on the NES/SNES was cartoony because realistic graphics were impossible. I think Nintendo would very much argue that they are still not, and hence Windwaker.
So, that's why it felt like voices were "missing" from Windwaker. It was all there; the presentation, the story, the cutesy carryover characters...everything except the voices.
I won't argue with the whole Zelda non-voice legacy. However, Zelda hasn't always been cell-shaded either. I personally think that while the whole text thing worked just fine for previous Zelda's, Windwaker was different. It was far more cinematic than any other Zelda game, and I felt the only thing that was detrimental to this feeling was the lack of voice acting.
In regards to voice acting, I think he's talking specifically about KOTOR here, which is quite possibly one of the best voice acted games I've ever played, and I'm not a huge fan of voice acting. The scene in which one of your shipmates catches up his prodigal son was riveting to say the least.
Maybe I didn't catch the sarcasm, but are you serious about the writing on Animal Crossing? Don't get me wrong, I love the game and think it's one of the best games I've ever played. I just don't think it's a testament to writing skill, that's all. The animals are terribly repetitive and predictable in what they say, but I think that's the point.
Just off the top of my head, I'd also throw in Mafia, Simpsons: Hit & Run (surprise), and the Monolith trilogy (NOLF 1&2, Tron 2.0) as fine examples of voice acting.
Can you provide me with a link backing that up? The way I understood PlayOnline, it was initially a hintbook attachment system. I can find plenty of Japanese links, but I'd like to read something about that in English.
Give me a break, and return to your linux.slashdot.org section. The main reason why companies are not supporting XBL is that they don't have complete control over the cost. At some point in the very near future, EA, Activision, and [insert game company here] will start charging $5 a month to play their games. They can't do that as easily if someone is already paying $6 a month for XBL.
I'm sorry. Dislike Microsoft PC all you want or make fun of their crappy first party games and you'll hear nothing from me. There's plenty to dislike about the Xbox. But if you dislike XBL, it's only because you haven't seen it in action. It's heads and tails above anything the PS2 can do, and in many ways is revolutionary for what it has accomplished. In fact, much of the PS3 online structure will almost exactly resemble Microsoft's. Surprise. It's not as if Sony is some mom and pop shop like Nintendo. They're a monopoly unto themselves, it's just they played their cards smarter than MS did.
I have a PC (have had since the old XT days), and quite frankly I'd much rather play online games through my Xbox than my PC. Why? Universal voice communication is a big one. But the major one is that there is just far less cheating on XBL than any game on the PC. There still is some, in terms of team killing and the like, but they frequency and mere annoyance level is much lower than anything on the PC.
I used to work at an EB (I've been saying that a lot here) and I think you'd be surprised at how many people did in fact buy a broadband connection just for their consoles. Now, there were the hardcore-own-all-3-consoles-finish-a-game-in-a-wee k people, but it would surprise you how many people just have the connection to play Xbox Live with.
As an interesting sidenote, whereas Comcast (which was the local broadband provider) would gladly setup a new broadband connection on a PC, and would configure everything in terms of wiring and software setup, they refused to do so with the Xbox and PS2. In fact, one customer of mine told me that Comcast kept telling her that their service would not work with Xbox Live - all the while having a little Xbox Live logo on their pamphlets. I don't think it's necessarily customers who aren't ready for a console only broadband connection, it's the broadband industry itself. If they were willing to set up consoles like they do PCs with free installations (and I see no reason why they wouldn't), then the customer wouldn't have to do anything anyway.
I'll say this much. It's harder to set up a PC on broadband than it is a console.
Gamers like to complain about game length, because it all comes down to the issue of value. But if any of us go to movies, we're paying at least $4.50 an hour (sometimes more). With Max Payne 2, a 10 hour game at $50 a pop, that's $5 an hour. It's not THAT much worse than movies, and in extreme cases like RPGs, you're looking at 50+ hours - about a buck an hour for entertainment.
I don't think that the Tapwave is necessarily trying to go mass-market like the N-Gage has obviously attempted to. I think their target is 20-40 year old business people and the PC enthusiast/LAN gaming market. In terms of aesthetic design, it's obviously much better design than the N-Gage, and dare I say the standard GBA, rivaling in at least design and layout to the GBA-SP.
I think the best way to categorize the Tapwave is that it's the American wonderswan; quiet, not terribly grandeous aspirations (i.e. eliminating Nintendo, as is most likely Sony's ultimate goal with the PSP), but something that will probably succeed on a limited and specific basis.
Whenever I heard Ken Levine talking about possible sequels to Freedom Force just after the game came out, I remember him and other Irrationals speaking specifically of moving the Freedom Force characters through comic ages with each sequel. Maybe I'm just not seeing the correlation with this one, but it doesn't seem like this is following in that trend.
That's not say that I won't be the only one lined up at EB's gate the morning the sequel's out. I absolutely adored the first one and consider it among the best games ever crafted. Nevertheless, this seems more along the lines of an expansion pack than a full-fledged sequel.
Was anyone else as freaked out as I was when hearing the System Shock 2 announcement voice in Freedom Force for the first time? I kept thinking zombies were going to jump out from behind a corner, "Kiiiillll meeeeee...."
Yeah, the publishers must writhe in anger in their office executive chairs when they see fans promoting their games. They'd much rather rely on expensive PR companies than the electronic equivalent of word of mouth and grassroots distribution. Damn those fans! Always getting other people to buy games! Just who do they think they are anyway!
You mean to say it'll look better AND have more content?
I used to be a PC guy only. But even given slightly worse graphics (the content will be downloadable through XBL), I'd much rather be sitting on a couch holding a simpler controller with true DTS 5.1 and a 27 inch "monitor" than on a PC. To be honest, I kept hearing about how much better the Splinter Cell graphics were going to be on PC, and I didn't think it was at all better than my Xbox (Athlon XP 1500, 512, GF44200 128MB).
Don't write off consoles that easily. I hate to say it, but I'm now of the firm belief that console gaming is more pure and in many cases more creative than PC gaming. I also have the innate feeling that many PC game devs agree with me. That's not to say I'm not a fan of Freedom Force or No One Lives Forever (can't wait for the Pirates! remake!), but I have yet to see stuff like REZ or ICO or Panzeer Dragoon Orta on a PC.
Actually, there are several games that do reward players for the more hours put into a game. The one off the top of my head is Project Gotham Racing and its prescursor Metropolis Street Racing. Those games are so damn hard that my first impression of the time-based rewards were that they were pity awards ("Ahhh poor player has only unlocked one car in TEN hours of play, here's a lame-ass car for your troubles). The more recent Otogi seemingly does the same thing.
And don't forget Seaman for the DC, which was more time based than it was task-based. It had that, AND Leonard Nimoy's voice! What else can you ask for in a game?
Is it possible that some people just don't WANT to be reminded of how many hours they've played?
I thought this as soon as I saw the words "delay" and "leaked" in the same sentence a week ago. What if Valve leaked the code themselves to explain a delay? It's a perfect answer to the question, "How the hell do we explain a delay when we said as early as the first week in September that it was coming out September 30th?"
I think publishers need to start penalizing developers for missing release dates. I know, I know, it will result in subpar work. My assertion is that only at first. You can't possibly tell me that creating HL2 is any less complicated or involved than creating a $250 Billion dollar film, and yet when was the last time you heard of a movie getting pushed back within a month of its release date?
All this date pushing reveals is how disorganized and rabbled the game industry truly is, on both the developer and publisher side.
It's also not that gamers need to somehow communicate with their wallets that release dates need to be both accurate and stable. A game that's been pushed back too much loses "steam" (no pun intended) and can eventually backfire (the most obvious example being DNF). Most industries and corporations work with deadlines every day, and while they do slip, there are certain penalties and ramifications of slipping.
Basically: if you give a release date as certain as Valve did, you better be hauling ass and anticpating crap like this. Call me merciless, but in any other job if I gave a deadline to a client you better believe I'll have it done by then. So why aren't gamers being treated as clients?
Traditional artists can't even decide what art is, so how can apply to that video games? We need another word here to describe what we feel but can't express. What I mean is that few would argue there's substantial difference between a movie like Pirates of the Carribean and a movie like Apocolypse Now. Likewise, there's something different about ICO as opposed to Madden 2003. If these were on a multiple choice test, Either POTC or Apocolypse, and ICO and Madden, and we were told to choose the most artistic, most people who probably vote Apocolypse Now over POTC, and ICO over Madden.
But the problem is that by terming something "artistic" we are setting it higher than that which is not. Let's not do that with games. There is a technical proficiency that is most certainly artistry, and whereas we may very well award an Artist Award to Grim Fandango over Quake II, obviously Quake II has more technical proficiency than Grim Fandango. Virtual Fighter 4 Evolution is artistic, yes, but it's a very fundamentally different kind of artistry than that of REZ. So, we've established a kind of technical artistry. It's a little more easier to evaluate than whatever is artistry type #2. In other words, anyone can easily say that a game like Mario 64 is more techincally artistic than a game like Superman 64.
But what of artistry type #2? Very basically, I think that it games in artistry type #2 have to communicate something in addition to or other than the sense of entertainment to be #2. This does not have to be something like, "Guns are bad" or some kind of hard culturally relevant message. It can also be an abstract sense, such as the one presented in REZ. Why do I think that Freedom Force is more "artistic" than Battlefield 1942, and yet I've had more hours of fun out of BF1942? Why do I consider Panzeer Dragoon Orta a "higher form" of entertainment than, say, CounterStrike, and yet I've enjoyed Counterstrike more?
It's this Type 2 Artistry that I'm applying as a definition to Freedom Force and PDO.
I think it's fairly important not to forget that Nintendo is the only company in the console manufacturing business whose only business is consoles (including handhelds). Nintendo doesn't have a line of electronic devices or movies or operating system to fall back on. We'll never really hear if the Xbox or PS2 divisions of Sony and MS are losing money because those are largely internal divisions, whereas if Nintendo is losing money it's solely because of poor console/software sales.
It *is* notable that it's the first time Nintendo has posted a loss, but I think that this may be slightly representative of the gaming market at large. We're on the downhill from here to 2005 in the sense that the market is no longer hard-core first adopters but largely families or potential multiple console owners.
The good news is that Nintendo will probably just keep on being Nintendo. That means we'll continue to see one or two extremely high quality Gamecube games until and perhaps even into the next console lifespan. The bad news is that, well, Nintendo will just keep on being Nintendo. That means that if there's one of the three companies feeling a bit like a third wheel, it's Nintendo. What with the PSP on the horizon that may potentially do to the portable market what the PSX did to home console market,
I think Nintendo's in a rough spot here. They're stubborn bastards though, and I don't think they'll go down without a fight, nintendo-style. The problem is that while Nintendo-style is good for those of us here and the serious gaming community, I don't think it's a viable strategy for the post-PSX/GTA market (regretably).
Boy, this is *exactly* like the old days of floppies like Pirates!, Starflight, or Test Drive, where all you'd do is pop the disc in there and boot from the floopy.
Does that mean by 8086 IBM "clone" was the "ultimate gaming console"?
I know Microsoft is the company to toss out whenever a sentence with the word "empire" is mentioned. But regardless of how sandbox-y Ubisoft is being ("I found them first!"), it does reveal that EA is just as "gulpy" as MS. They scoop down, pick up developing houses, and integrate them into the corporate structure.
Of course, 5 years later they spit you out Westwood style, chewed and used. Westwood should serve as notice to anyone thinking about applying to EA as a programming peon. EA is the JP Morgan of the video game world - not Sony, Nintendo, or Microsoft.
Slashdot Mirror
So, the obvious question is: why can't they catch these people on-duty? Why does it take a spam email directly to an FBI agent to get action?
Actually, in nearly all the Xbox staffer articles I ever read, many completely admit to owning multiple systems and playing games on those system (particularly Ken Lobb). Moreover, while many of these guys will quite gladly point out sales figures, many of them also seem to really admire Nintendo. I can't say they have the same respect for Sony, but I don't think they've ever really "badmouthed" Sony or Nintendo in the sense that they are competitors.
Since we're english-speaking, we see many more articles and interviews with Xbox officials. The ones with Nintendo's in a post-Peter Moore world are little more than press releases. I would venture to say you can't find one interview in which a Sony or Nintendo rep admits to playing one of their competitor's systems or games.
You know, I seem to remember reading shortly after Deus Ex came out that they built the subway station level in homage to the Matrix. Does anyone else remember reading this?
Now now Boglin, be fair before prejudging and classifying me as one of the few who whined CELDA when screenshots first appeared. I was all for the cell-shading - and yes, it is cell-shaded while the others were not - from day one. One of my arguments for this was that the series had always been "cartoony" and the only thing contrary to this was one single E3 screenshot.
That said, Windwaker is by far the most cinematic of any of the series. Secondly, nearly *everything* on the NES/SNES was cartoony because realistic graphics were impossible. I think Nintendo would very much argue that they are still not, and hence Windwaker.
So, that's why it felt like voices were "missing" from Windwaker. It was all there; the presentation, the story, the cutesy carryover characters...everything except the voices.
I won't argue with the whole Zelda non-voice legacy. However, Zelda hasn't always been cell-shaded either. I personally think that while the whole text thing worked just fine for previous Zelda's, Windwaker was different. It was far more cinematic than any other Zelda game, and I felt the only thing that was detrimental to this feeling was the lack of voice acting.
In regards to voice acting, I think he's talking specifically about KOTOR here, which is quite possibly one of the best voice acted games I've ever played, and I'm not a huge fan of voice acting. The scene in which one of your shipmates catches up his prodigal son was riveting to say the least.
Maybe I didn't catch the sarcasm, but are you serious about the writing on Animal Crossing? Don't get me wrong, I love the game and think it's one of the best games I've ever played. I just don't think it's a testament to writing skill, that's all. The animals are terribly repetitive and predictable in what they say, but I think that's the point.
Just off the top of my head, I'd also throw in Mafia, Simpsons: Hit & Run (surprise), and the Monolith trilogy (NOLF 1&2, Tron 2.0) as fine examples of voice acting.
N-Gage, Tapwave, PSP...now, Leapster? It took these companies how long to figure out that there's a handheld market?
So, I hear that you can pick up a new handheld console in Corn Pops all this month.
Can you provide me with a link backing that up? The way I understood PlayOnline, it was initially a hintbook attachment system. I can find plenty of Japanese links, but I'd like to read something about that in English.
Give me a break, and return to your linux.slashdot.org section. The main reason why companies are not supporting XBL is that they don't have complete control over the cost. At some point in the very near future, EA, Activision, and [insert game company here] will start charging $5 a month to play their games. They can't do that as easily if someone is already paying $6 a month for XBL.
I'm sorry. Dislike Microsoft PC all you want or make fun of their crappy first party games and you'll hear nothing from me. There's plenty to dislike about the Xbox. But if you dislike XBL, it's only because you haven't seen it in action. It's heads and tails above anything the PS2 can do, and in many ways is revolutionary for what it has accomplished. In fact, much of the PS3 online structure will almost exactly resemble Microsoft's. Surprise. It's not as if Sony is some mom and pop shop like Nintendo. They're a monopoly unto themselves, it's just they played their cards smarter than MS did.
At least taxpayers aren't paying for it.
Yet.
I have a PC (have had since the old XT days), and quite frankly I'd much rather play online games through my Xbox than my PC. Why? Universal voice communication is a big one. But the major one is that there is just far less cheating on XBL than any game on the PC. There still is some, in terms of team killing and the like, but they frequency and mere annoyance level is much lower than anything on the PC.
e k people, but it would surprise you how many people just have the connection to play Xbox Live with.
I used to work at an EB (I've been saying that a lot here) and I think you'd be surprised at how many people did in fact buy a broadband connection just for their consoles. Now, there were the hardcore-own-all-3-consoles-finish-a-game-in-a-we
As an interesting sidenote, whereas Comcast (which was the local broadband provider) would gladly setup a new broadband connection on a PC, and would configure everything in terms of wiring and software setup, they refused to do so with the Xbox and PS2. In fact, one customer of mine told me that Comcast kept telling her that their service would not work with Xbox Live - all the while having a little Xbox Live logo on their pamphlets. I don't think it's necessarily customers who aren't ready for a console only broadband connection, it's the broadband industry itself. If they were willing to set up consoles like they do PCs with free installations (and I see no reason why they wouldn't), then the customer wouldn't have to do anything anyway.
I'll say this much. It's harder to set up a PC on broadband than it is a console.
Gamers like to complain about game length, because it all comes down to the issue of value. But if any of us go to movies, we're paying at least $4.50 an hour (sometimes more). With Max Payne 2, a 10 hour game at $50 a pop, that's $5 an hour. It's not THAT much worse than movies, and in extreme cases like RPGs, you're looking at 50+ hours - about a buck an hour for entertainment.
So why the whining?
I don't think that the Tapwave is necessarily trying to go mass-market like the N-Gage has obviously attempted to. I think their target is 20-40 year old business people and the PC enthusiast/LAN gaming market. In terms of aesthetic design, it's obviously much better design than the N-Gage, and dare I say the standard GBA, rivaling in at least design and layout to the GBA-SP.
I think the best way to categorize the Tapwave is that it's the American wonderswan; quiet, not terribly grandeous aspirations (i.e. eliminating Nintendo, as is most likely Sony's ultimate goal with the PSP), but something that will probably succeed on a limited and specific basis.
Whenever I heard Ken Levine talking about possible sequels to Freedom Force just after the game came out, I remember him and other Irrationals speaking specifically of moving the Freedom Force characters through comic ages with each sequel. Maybe I'm just not seeing the correlation with this one, but it doesn't seem like this is following in that trend.
That's not say that I won't be the only one lined up at EB's gate the morning the sequel's out. I absolutely adored the first one and consider it among the best games ever crafted. Nevertheless, this seems more along the lines of an expansion pack than a full-fledged sequel.
Was anyone else as freaked out as I was when hearing the System Shock 2 announcement voice in Freedom Force for the first time? I kept thinking zombies were going to jump out from behind a corner, "Kiiiillll meeeeee...."
Yeah, the publishers must writhe in anger in their office executive chairs when they see fans promoting their games. They'd much rather rely on expensive PR companies than the electronic equivalent of word of mouth and grassroots distribution. Damn those fans! Always getting other people to buy games! Just who do they think they are anyway!
Boy, I was beginning to think that "haxors" had it in *just* for MS's Xbox. At least now I know they're not discriminatory.
You know, I think this represents that one of the two parties is desperate. Poll?
You mean to say it'll look better AND have more content?
I used to be a PC guy only. But even given slightly worse graphics (the content will be downloadable through XBL), I'd much rather be sitting on a couch holding a simpler controller with true DTS 5.1 and a 27 inch "monitor" than on a PC. To be honest, I kept hearing about how much better the Splinter Cell graphics were going to be on PC, and I didn't think it was at all better than my Xbox (Athlon XP 1500, 512, GF44200 128MB).
Don't write off consoles that easily. I hate to say it, but I'm now of the firm belief that console gaming is more pure and in many cases more creative than PC gaming. I also have the innate feeling that many PC game devs agree with me. That's not to say I'm not a fan of Freedom Force or No One Lives Forever (can't wait for the Pirates! remake!), but I have yet to see stuff like REZ or ICO or Panzeer Dragoon Orta on a PC.
I loved that about MSR too. You know, I've always wondered why we don't see this more, especially in sports games.
What with always-on net connections like XBL, is why not pull the exact weather for the stadium's zipcode?
Actually, there are several games that do reward players for the more hours put into a game. The one off the top of my head is Project Gotham Racing and its prescursor Metropolis Street Racing. Those games are so damn hard that my first impression of the time-based rewards were that they were pity awards ("Ahhh poor player has only unlocked one car in TEN hours of play, here's a lame-ass car for your troubles). The more recent Otogi seemingly does the same thing.
And don't forget Seaman for the DC, which was more time based than it was task-based. It had that, AND Leonard Nimoy's voice! What else can you ask for in a game?
Is it possible that some people just don't WANT to be reminded of how many hours they've played?
I thought this as soon as I saw the words "delay" and "leaked" in the same sentence a week ago. What if Valve leaked the code themselves to explain a delay? It's a perfect answer to the question, "How the hell do we explain a delay when we said as early as the first week in September that it was coming out September 30th?"
I think publishers need to start penalizing developers for missing release dates. I know, I know, it will result in subpar work. My assertion is that only at first. You can't possibly tell me that creating HL2 is any less complicated or involved than creating a $250 Billion dollar film, and yet when was the last time you heard of a movie getting pushed back within a month of its release date?
All this date pushing reveals is how disorganized and rabbled the game industry truly is, on both the developer and publisher side.
It's also not that gamers need to somehow communicate with their wallets that release dates need to be both accurate and stable. A game that's been pushed back too much loses
"steam" (no pun intended) and can eventually backfire (the most obvious example being DNF). Most industries and corporations work with deadlines every day, and while they do slip, there are certain penalties and ramifications of slipping.
Basically: if you give a release date as certain as Valve did, you better be hauling ass and anticpating crap like this. Call me merciless, but in any other job if I gave a deadline to a client you better believe I'll have it done by then. So why aren't gamers being treated as clients?
Traditional artists can't even decide what art is, so how can apply to that video games? We need another word here to describe what we feel but can't express. What I mean is that few would argue there's substantial difference between a movie like Pirates of the Carribean and a movie like Apocolypse Now. Likewise, there's something different about ICO as opposed to Madden 2003. If these were on a multiple choice test, Either POTC or Apocolypse, and ICO and Madden, and we were told to choose the most artistic, most people who probably vote Apocolypse Now over POTC, and ICO over Madden.
But the problem is that by terming something "artistic" we are setting it higher than that which is not. Let's not do that with games. There is a technical proficiency that is most certainly artistry, and whereas we may very well award an Artist Award to Grim Fandango over Quake II, obviously Quake II has more technical proficiency than Grim Fandango. Virtual Fighter 4 Evolution is artistic, yes, but it's a very fundamentally different kind of artistry than that of REZ. So, we've established a kind of technical artistry. It's a little more easier to evaluate than whatever is artistry type #2. In other words, anyone can easily say that a game like Mario 64 is more techincally artistic than a game like Superman 64.
But what of artistry type #2? Very basically, I think that it games in artistry type #2 have to communicate something in addition to or other than the sense of entertainment to be #2. This does not have to be something like, "Guns are bad" or some kind of hard culturally relevant message. It can also be an abstract sense, such as the one presented in REZ. Why do I think that Freedom Force is more "artistic" than Battlefield 1942, and yet I've had more hours of fun out of BF1942? Why do I consider Panzeer Dragoon Orta a "higher form" of entertainment than, say, CounterStrike, and yet I've enjoyed Counterstrike more?
It's this Type 2 Artistry that I'm applying as a definition to Freedom Force and PDO.
So...is there a word for this?
I think it's fairly important not to forget that Nintendo is the only company in the console manufacturing business whose only business is consoles (including handhelds). Nintendo doesn't have a line of electronic devices or movies or operating system to fall back on. We'll never really hear if the Xbox or PS2 divisions of Sony and MS are losing money because those are largely internal divisions, whereas if Nintendo is losing money it's solely because of poor console/software sales.
It *is* notable that it's the first time Nintendo has posted a loss, but I think that this may be slightly representative of the gaming market at large. We're on the downhill from here to 2005 in the sense that the market is no longer hard-core first adopters but largely families or potential multiple console owners.
The good news is that Nintendo will probably just keep on being Nintendo. That means we'll continue to see one or two extremely high quality Gamecube games until and perhaps even into the next console lifespan. The bad news is that, well, Nintendo will just keep on being Nintendo. That means that if there's one of the three companies feeling a bit like a third wheel, it's Nintendo. What with the PSP on the horizon that may potentially do to the portable market what the PSX did to home console market,
I think Nintendo's in a rough spot here. They're stubborn bastards though, and I don't think they'll go down without a fight, nintendo-style. The problem is that while Nintendo-style is good for those of us here and the serious gaming community, I don't think it's a viable strategy for the post-PSX/GTA market (regretably).
Boy, this is *exactly* like the old days of floppies like Pirates!, Starflight, or Test Drive, where all you'd do is pop the disc in there and boot from the floopy.
Does that mean by 8086 IBM "clone" was the "ultimate gaming console"?
I know Microsoft is the company to toss out whenever a sentence with the word "empire" is mentioned. But regardless of how sandbox-y Ubisoft is being ("I found them first!"), it does reveal that EA is just as "gulpy" as MS. They scoop down, pick up developing houses, and integrate them into the corporate structure.
Of course, 5 years later they spit you out Westwood style, chewed and used. Westwood should serve as notice to anyone thinking about applying to EA as a programming peon. EA is the JP Morgan of the video game world - not Sony, Nintendo, or Microsoft.