After reading several forums, some got to the conslusion that the numbers mean two different dates:
in 15 days.
augusth 24th.
after being puzzled for a while, they realized this: The next issue of OXM ships in aug 24. this issue will include "Info" about halo 2.
"Net users" (subscribers) will receive it in 15 days. (Too much of a coincidence.)
Ok So whats so important about OXM coming out ? well... Ninja Gaiden got a "surprise" demo in the issue dated one month before its release. If that is the same case for Halo 2 to be shipped in november 9, that would be:...
The augusth issue (holliday preview) (shipping in August 24th)
If you have an xbox.. you may begin your smiling, now.
Oh yeah, and start banging on the door of your friend who has a subscription.
I think I have to extent my reply a bit so...
(Continued from previous post...)
I think each one has its share, there are a number of great 2d games (arkanoid, pacman, digdug, super mario, street fighter etc) and theres also a good lot of 3d games (doom, mario64, zelda, half life, tribes 2, silent hill, etc) each needed the features of its genere to succeed. No medium is better than the other, is like cartoons and movies, they didnt destroyed or occluded each other, they evolved, sometimes even borrowing elements from the another (The matrix using anime effects, spiderman2 comic like battles?)
About your bet:
I'd bet if you sat a 10-12 year old down with one of those plug-n-play "retro" games they would have a blast.
Yeah right. you'd lose your money pal. I have tried to sit down my 5 year old and my nephew to play an Atari and NES games (good ones!) and they both said "this one's ugly, put the another one!" they do play SNES games and have a blast with them,however they dont prefer them over "kung fu chaos","soulcalibur2" or any other last generation game.
Is not because they are "stupid" as many are implying is because they got familiar with the medium at another technological level and therefore consider everything at a previous level antiquate and unattractive. Is like I offered you a copy of a previously unknown Charles Chapplin mute film in one hand and "Lord of the rings 4: Saaruman's revenge" in the other, which one will you choose? honest?
Seriously guys, its statements like this that make "retro" look like a fad for future retirement home troublemakers, is just as stupid to label all 3d games as pieces of art as it is to label all 2d games as unsurpassed quality gameplay. I've played raiders of the ark lost and ET and believe me I had have more fun running monitor video tests than those two. Actually I think ET had a note in the manual that read: "if the ET image appears after inserting the cartridge your atari is working if pressing the button makes ET's neck stretch your joystick button is functional, you may remove the cartridge."
2d is simpler than 3d. Therefore is easier to create 2d art than 3d.(we knew that) Also some effects are much more difficult to create in 3d than 2d.
Per example creating a "tidal wave" in 2d simply means sketching a wave and then animate it as a fluid of sorts (of course it takes a lot of artistry to make it look natural) but in 2d it means creating a net mesh with a lot of vertices and then adding some kind of fluid equations to it (since it would be impossible to add bones) or lots of meshes with a vertex animation to it (which is GPU expensive). The only other way will be to add a particle system and then adding some physics collision to each particle so it behaves like a wave but it will look pretty unrealistic. Either way the work is more extensive and the results are more prone to look unnatural.
However! as technology advances such effects could become easier for artists, in a next next generation engine a fluid generator could already exist in a GDK (the next id engine will feature fliud and fur rendering). motion capture will eventually become cheaper and much more complex. home use laser scanners (instead of hand modelling) would be used to scan real clay models or actors. Also we have only scratched the surface of non realistic rendering in the future actual realtime simulations of hand drawing could be used for rendering an anime 3d character (these methods already exists but are too slow to be used in real time).
We are still behind in the technology, but eventually the day will come that a game exactly like guilty gear x2 or metal slug could be rendered in realtime from 3d models instead of painstakingly drawn frame by frame animation
Oh come on, I just finished spider man2 for xbox (which was no easy task mind you) and I saw the model of mj in discussion , I will be honest: I didnt noticed anything "gigantic" in her model probably only her jaw that appears to extent miles away from her neck but other than that the model looks average (all models were low poly to keep with the city frame rate) but not unproportionate.
Is not a quake 3 paul steed model to put in few words.
I think this could qualify a shameless plug by dunst to say "hey look Im there! and that my voice" curious thing is it doesnt sound like her her at all while peter parker/spiderman was played by an immitator that sounds EXACTLY like Tobey Mcguire. (?)
It could also a publicity stunt on the videogame itself. (for some reason I believe me people would like to see the "busty" Kirsten Dunst model)
The only news we have about HL2 these days is that Gabe Newell and his team are still personally helping in catching the "code thief" no beta testing, no network testing, not even a damn stress test of the steam server has taken place. Yet a lot of people still buy it when they say "Half life 2 is coming this summer!" yeah sure the same day we find those really well hidden weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.-
Lets throw a quick poll:
If you could suggest a course of action for valve at the time being that would be:
You should catch those pesky code thief thugs, their crimes cant go unpunished, justice shall prevail! even if they probably (and really) are from a country were "code thief" is not a crime we shall invade that country or something!
I dont care about the code thief! I have been waiting for hl2 since the stone age and I think you have a bigger responsability to the public than shielding in this as an excuse for not releasing a game you have hyped us about so much for such a long time!
SIT YOUR FAT ASS IN THAT CHAIR! GET SOME COFFEE TO KEEP YOU AWAKE AND START CODING LIKE THERE'S NO TOMORROW! NOW!
Option D would Involve scorting key valve employees at gun point to their workstations until a gold candidate is produced. Thats a bit harsh so is out of the poll. although could be considered in the future.
Except that Microsoft's tools are easily accessed and digested. All you need to know is on msdn.microsoft.com
Sorry but, no.. unfortunaly MS insisted in keeping his COM reference standard in directx and it also uses their WINAPI style standard both are probably the most convoluted, bloated, unuseful and less friendly pieces of code you have ever seen, some of their commands (including parameters) can get over the 255 characters long. (just imagine how a 255 char command looks like)
They use this weird pre-h syntax which is hardly useful anymore (LP and FP for local and far pointer what utility does that have when you have to use handlers?) and the parameters are so bad designed they actually have something called *PUNK (Pointer unknown) which means its undocumented (you dont know what it does but hey! you have to use it anyway!)
You probably can do the same in the same number of lines in dx than opengl.. but believe me you eventually understand OpenGL and how to change it, in directx you copy and paste the initial code being very careful not to change anything otherwise it wont run.
Im not surprised at all that Japanese neglected to use DX instead of opengl and straight asm (which is used in PS2 and Gamecube) I think thats the REAL reason of the japanese failure of the xbox and thats probably the reason why There almost arent any japanese games.
Well.. thats great, they didnt saved a video of the entire run, so thats all I ands just about everyone except themselves can say. Thats... great. Btw: Could you
do it again? I didnt saw a thing.
What type of security do you think they will have here? I am sure they do not want this leaked
Er... Doom 3, will already be in stores by then, (august 3rd is the release date) otherwise this competition wouldnt be possible.
So? the xbox version doesnt have modding abilities, meaning you will be able to play doom3 and then all mods made for it for free, while xbox is going to be stuck with the same game.
Besides, co-op will be added later in a mod. like you didnt knew.
Let's hold a huge convention featuring cash prize tournaments based on a piece of software that is testing new video card technology, has taken years to design and build, is probably going to be so massive that we'll need to ship it on DVDs, and won't even have been on the shelves for two weeks.
So..? I know gamers that beat games like doom3 in 2 days. (48 hours straight) 2 weeks of online training should be more than enough for these guys.
And just to make sure all of our eggs in one basket, let's drop support for any of the team-based competition games set in WWII even if they do seem to be kind of popular right now.
Just make a list of any complaints you may have about doom 3 gameplay, put it in a basquet and set it on fire. Modding for doom 3 is easy as hell in less than a week. I predict we are going to have at least 10 considerable gameplay mods (hundreds of small ones) within a month or two we are going to have complete makeover gameplay mods. (by then someone is going to start playing a co-op alpha.) Expect complete game overhauls to start hitting in 6 months. I wouldnt worry about gameplay. Besides who said the only gameplay mode is going to be deathmatch? I expect team deathmatch and CTF (and just about all the modes available in quake 3 original) to be available from start as well. However I dont think they are going to go over the 4 player limit.
The ESRB has an automatic software system to rate games:
If it detects a boob or two is rated A+ (until a bribe by the publisher is collected)
If it detects any red liquid or "pooty mouth" language is rated M (Mario was rated M for "magma" until a big N cheque was collected)
If any guns are detected is rated T
Anything else is rated E. So is easy to spot why the system didnt detected prostitution. Now all we have to do is to tell the developers to get the girls topless and offer a handy cheque to the ESRB and the game will be rated "M" plus a huge sales boost.
I just love the smell of the game industry in the morning!
Simply IGNORE articles like this, and PLEASE do not submit them when you see one, all you are doing is increasing hits/importance to an article that otherwise would be ignored by anyone who is not a geek (like us) Thanks .
What am I missing here? The unquestionable truth that slashdot is full of geeks perhaps?
Its just a phrase someone started using to mock MS business plans funny thing is that it turns out you can use it in just about everything, is kind of Slashdot's own "all your base" phrase and its funny to use it, try it sometime. And losen a bit ok? these are comment posts, not PHD thesis, they are not even articles.
1.-DONT make fun of japanese business men in your E3 presentation video! (It doesnt work I've tried.) Sorry I dont have the link around.
2.-Get square enix to sign just picture this: Final Fantasy X... BX!
3.-Convince capcom to port megaman, viewtiful joe and DMC
4.-Change every single football game in development for dating sims and every FPS (except halo2) for RPGs replace blood and gore in adventure for cutesy hamsters, girls with eyes the size of the moon and hair every color of the rainbow and fuzzy critters that curiously enough can only pronounce their own wacky name.
Er.. guys does anyone at least considered the option that they will eventually sell a hdd like the ps2? or that an usb device these days can handle up to 1 gig of info? and they are almost as fast as a hdd?
[i]People without network access, dont have access to patches... [/i]
Er... these are not patches they are extra features (for real not like those in windows) since they are not solving any problem with the game (camera spinning maybe cool but its not needed, extra AI, believe me, you really dont need it or want it), several games have access to extra levels and features via xbox live. so er.. get a grip.
For god sake's! those damn thing's are hard as nails as it is! what are they going to do now? trace me up in every corner of the map? steal my credit card number? lookup my home address?
(please link the obligated penny arcade reference)
I know Im supossed to feel enraged over an offensive and straight agressive (plus factually incorrect ) piece like that but That film is so sad and utterly geeky that I can help to laugh my ass off at it.
Seriously Bill Gates robbing the cab from the ps2 guys, the ps2 guys sleeping off at the hotel room, oh and the face of the pressident when they fire him oh that was precious!. This is the equivalent of Bart Simpson mocking his principal with a crude school parody video, everyone knows is wrong but no one can help to laugh.
if you havent watch the video yet you should even if you have a ps2 you will probably get a few laughs too.
Btw: since when some dude eating pizza in a park, a guy with a huge afro and some brain condition and a girl that obviously hasnt played anything in her life and cant stop yapping are considered a good focus group? ok now I have an idea why things are that way they are at xbox live. (I suspected something like that actually)
Sometimes events like this remind me that MS actually has no experience in gamedev only in business, fantasy whatever online wasnt such a bad idea simply because there are no other MMORPGs for the xbox.
Of course that game was not going to work in Japan, final fantasy its an institution there and the game its more than a tad similar to it, but thats not all, most of the audience in Japan is tech savy and perfectly capable of using other more mature (although more complex) games like WOW , FFXI or EQ2, the only way to market this game was to offer it to total non gamers who wanted to learn about online playing and MMORPG basics.
Its a shame MS didnt saw that and instead tried to xerox copy FFXI to the book.
Well that leaves a HUGE niche for an Xbox live rpg , who would take the call now? bioware? dare I say Blizzard? (hey! I can dream at least). Anyway chances are the answer is "no one" and we will have to wait until xbox2 (xbox-j) arrives. so as stated: this sucks.
[rant]
If you are wondering why no project of Rare has been cancelled, Its simple, MS knows RARE has tons of industry experience and they dont. So they let them have their way even when they dont fully understand what they are doing.
Thats not the case with the rest of their teams (except bungie) since they are oftenly almost as unexperienced as MS.
Sometimes this backfires as proved in "grabbed by the ghoulies" which was mostly a failed gameplay experiment but wait til you see what they did with "conker reloaded" after seing the e3 trailer my confidence in them has been recovered, lets hope it lives up to expectations.
[/rant]
" Yeah, I
read this story on Gamespot the other day and thought "Hmmmm, seems like they're after the wrong next gen handheld." The PSP is a system of ports. The DS is going to be where all the groundbreaking, innovative games are born."
Is this a good time to pull the FANBOY -1 moderator ?
ARE BORN? seriously guys! they havent even released the thing yet ! at least say "WILL BE" !
And I hate to break your fanboy bubble but Most, no wait a second, ALL "games" shown at the e3 for the DS are straight nintendo 64 and GBA ports! They didnt even changed the name of Mario Kart 64 for crying out loud! In case you havent noticed metroid hunter IS the metroid game they were making for 64 and never released!
Let me see according the ESRB Manhunt gets an M and Some silly game with slight sexuality gets an AO ?
Whats the esrb tagline? "Horrible acts of violence are fine as soon as no one shows their privates?".
And brent.. Hentai and porn games had been sold on PCs for over 10 years your "coming of the apocalypse, will you think of the children?" warning is 10 years off track.
To the news poster, when you see this kind of "articles" please ignore it, slashdotting this sort of thing, only makes the article get more hits and attention. And as you can probably realize it doesnt desserve it. .
Slashdot Mirror
after being puzzled for a while, they realized this: The next issue of OXM ships in aug 24. this issue will include "Info" about halo 2.
"Net users" (subscribers) will receive it in 15 days. (Too much of a coincidence.)
Ok So whats so important about OXM coming out ? well... Ninja Gaiden got a "surprise" demo in the issue dated one month before its release. If that is the same case for Halo 2 to be shipped in november 9, that would be:...
The augusth issue (holliday preview) (shipping in August 24th)
If you have an xbox.. you may begin your smiling, now.
Oh yeah, and start banging on the door of your friend who has a subscription.
S.O.U.L.C.A.L.I.B.U.R. Soulcalibur! (like excalibur with a soul get it?) great example though!
I think I have to extent my reply a bit so...
,however they dont prefer them over "kung fu chaos" ,"soulcalibur2" or any other last generation game.
(Continued from previous post...)
I think each one has its share, there are a number of great 2d games (arkanoid, pacman, digdug, super mario, street fighter etc) and theres also a good lot of 3d games (doom, mario64, zelda, half life, tribes 2, silent hill, etc) each needed the features of its genere to succeed.
No medium is better than the other, is like cartoons and movies, they didnt destroyed or occluded each other, they evolved, sometimes even borrowing elements from the another (The matrix using anime effects, spiderman2 comic like battles?)
About your bet:
I'd bet if you sat a 10-12 year old down with one of those plug-n-play "retro" games they would have a blast.
Yeah right. you'd lose your money pal. I have tried to sit down my 5 year old and my nephew to play an Atari and NES games (good ones!) and they both said "this one's ugly, put the another one!" they do play SNES games and have a blast with them
Is not because they are "stupid" as many are implying is because they got familiar with the medium at another technological level and therefore consider everything at a previous level antiquate and unattractive. Is like I offered you a copy of a previously unknown Charles Chapplin mute film in one hand and "Lord of the rings 4: Saaruman's revenge" in the other, which one will you choose? honest?
Sure grandpa, now have another pill...
Seriously guys, its statements like this that make "retro" look like a fad for future retirement home troublemakers, is just as stupid to label all 3d games as pieces of art as it is to label all 2d games as unsurpassed quality gameplay.
I've played raiders of the ark lost and ET and believe me I had have more fun running monitor video tests than those two. Actually I think ET had a note in the manual that read: "if the ET image appears after inserting the cartridge your atari is working if pressing the button makes ET's neck stretch your joystick button is functional, you may remove the cartridge."
Im not even using anonymous for this one.
2d is simpler than 3d. Therefore is easier to create 2d art than 3d.(we knew that) Also some effects are much more difficult to create in 3d than 2d.
Per example creating a "tidal wave" in 2d simply means sketching a wave and then animate it as a fluid of sorts (of course it takes a lot of artistry to make it look natural) but in 2d it means creating a net mesh with a lot of vertices and then adding some kind of fluid equations to it (since it would be impossible to add bones) or lots of meshes with a vertex animation to it (which is GPU expensive). The only other way will be to add a particle system and then adding some physics collision to each particle so it behaves like a wave but it will look pretty unrealistic. Either way the work is more extensive and the results are more prone to look unnatural.
However! as technology advances such effects could become easier for artists, in a next next generation engine a fluid generator could already exist in a GDK (the next id engine will feature fliud and fur rendering). motion capture will eventually become cheaper and much more complex. home use laser scanners (instead of hand modelling) would be used to scan real clay models or actors. Also we have only scratched the surface of non realistic rendering in the future actual realtime simulations of hand drawing could be used for rendering an anime 3d character (these methods already exists but are too slow to be used in real time).
We are still behind in the technology, but eventually the day will come that a game exactly like guilty gear x2 or metal slug could be rendered in realtime from 3d models instead of painstakingly drawn frame by frame animation
Oh come on, I just finished spider man2 for xbox (which was no easy task mind you) and I saw the model of mj in discussion , I will be honest: I didnt noticed anything "gigantic" in her model probably only her jaw that appears to extent miles away from her neck but other than that the model looks average (all models were low poly to keep with the city frame rate) but not unproportionate.
Is not a quake 3 paul steed model to put in few words.
I think this could qualify a shameless plug by dunst to say "hey look Im there! and that my voice" curious thing is it doesnt sound like her her at all while peter parker/spiderman was played by an immitator that sounds EXACTLY like Tobey Mcguire. (?) It could also a publicity stunt on the videogame itself. (for some reason I believe me people would like to see the "busty" Kirsten Dunst model)
uh, my mail-order dvd version arrived the day it was released
;)
OT: So you actually have the game already? how did you managed? you preordered are you from a magazine? but most importantly...
PLEASE TELL US IF ITS AS GOOD AS THEY CLAIM!!!
"A large group of xbox owners carrying pitchforks and lit torches were seen marching towards Vicarious Visions offices in California..."
Overrated and the parent initially got 0? gee talking about a tough croud.
I dont have any mod points, but I think is funny, tragic yes, but funny
.
Lets throw a quick poll:
If you could suggest a course of action for valve at the time being that would be:
You should catch those pesky code thief thugs, their crimes cant go unpunished, justice shall prevail! even if they probably (and really) are from a country were "code thief" is not a crime we shall invade that country or something!
I dont care about the code thief! I have been waiting for hl2 since the stone age and I think you have a bigger responsability to the public than shielding in this as an excuse for not releasing a game you have hyped us about so much for such a long time!
SIT YOUR FAT ASS IN THAT CHAIR! GET SOME COFFEE TO KEEP YOU AWAKE AND START CODING LIKE THERE'S NO TOMORROW! NOW!
Option D would Involve scorting key valve employees at gun point to their workstations until a gold candidate is produced. Thats a bit harsh so is out of the poll. although could be considered in the future.
Results may vary.
Mod me as your heart pleases
Except that Microsoft's tools are easily accessed and digested. All you need to know is on msdn.microsoft.com
Sorry but, no.. unfortunaly MS insisted in keeping his COM reference standard in directx and it also uses their WINAPI style standard both are probably the most convoluted, bloated, unuseful and less friendly pieces of code you have ever seen, some of their commands (including parameters) can get over the 255 characters long. (just imagine how a 255 char command looks like)
They use this weird pre-h syntax which is hardly useful anymore (LP and FP for local and far pointer what utility does that have when you have to use handlers?) and the parameters are so bad designed they actually have something called *PUNK (Pointer unknown) which means its undocumented (you dont know what it does but hey! you have to use it anyway!)
You probably can do the same in the same number of lines in dx than opengl.. but believe me you eventually understand OpenGL and how to change it, in directx you copy and paste the initial code being very careful not to change anything otherwise it wont run.
Im not surprised at all that Japanese neglected to use DX instead of opengl and straight asm (which is used in PS2 and Gamecube) I think thats the REAL reason of the japanese failure of the xbox and thats probably the reason why There almost arent any japanese games.
Xbox 2 wont use DX (exclusively)
Well.. thats great, they didnt saved a video of the entire run, so thats all I ands just about everyone except themselves can say. Thats... great. Btw: Could you do it again? I didnt saw a thing.
What type of security do you think they will have here? I am sure they do not want this leaked Er... Doom 3, will already be in stores by then, (august 3rd is the release date) otherwise this competition wouldnt be possible.
So? the xbox version doesnt have modding abilities, meaning you will be able to play doom3 and then all mods made for it for free, while xbox is going to be stuck with the same game.
Besides, co-op will be added later in a mod. like you didnt knew.
Let's hold a huge convention featuring cash prize tournaments based on a piece of software that is testing new video card technology, has taken years to design and build, is probably going to be so massive that we'll need to ship it on DVDs, and won't even have been on the shelves for two weeks. So..? I know gamers that beat games like doom3 in 2 days. (48 hours straight) 2 weeks of online training should be more than enough for these guys. And just to make sure all of our eggs in one basket, let's drop support for any of the team-based competition games set in WWII even if they do seem to be kind of popular right now. Just make a list of any complaints you may have about doom 3 gameplay, put it in a basquet and set it on fire. Modding for doom 3 is easy as hell in less than a week. I predict we are going to have at least 10 considerable gameplay mods (hundreds of small ones) within a month or two we are going to have complete makeover gameplay mods. (by then someone is going to start playing a co-op alpha.) Expect complete game overhauls to start hitting in 6 months. I wouldnt worry about gameplay. Besides who said the only gameplay mode is going to be deathmatch? I expect team deathmatch and CTF (and just about all the modes available in quake 3 original) to be available from start as well. However I dont think they are going to go over the 4 player limit.
If it detects a boob or two is rated A+ (until a bribe by the publisher is collected)
If it detects any red liquid or "pooty mouth" language is rated M (Mario was rated M for "magma" until a big N cheque was collected)
If any guns are detected is rated T
Anything else is rated E.
So is easy to spot why the system didnt detected prostitution. Now all we have to do is to tell the developers to get the girls topless and offer a handy cheque to the ESRB and the game will be rated "M" plus a huge sales boost.
I just love the smell of the game industry in the morning!
Simply IGNORE articles like this, and PLEASE do not submit them when you see one, all you are doing is increasing hits/importance to an article that otherwise would be ignored by anyone who is not a geek (like us) Thanks .
What am I missing here?
The unquestionable truth that slashdot is full of geeks perhaps?
Its just a phrase someone started using to mock MS business plans funny thing is that it turns out you can use it in just about everything, is kind of Slashdot's own "all your base" phrase and its funny to use it, try it sometime. And losen a bit ok? these are comment posts, not PHD thesis, they are not even articles.
1.-DONT make fun of japanese business men in your E3 presentation video! (It doesnt work I've tried.) Sorry I dont have the link around.
2.-Get square enix to sign just picture this: Final Fantasy X... BX!
3.-Convince capcom to port megaman, viewtiful joe and DMC
4.-Change every single football game in development for dating sims and every FPS (except halo2) for RPGs replace blood and gore in adventure for cutesy hamsters, girls with eyes the size of the moon and hair every color of the rainbow and fuzzy critters that curiously enough can only pronounce their own wacky name.
5.-PROFIT! (maybe)
(Hehehehehe, Sorry I couldnt help myself)
Er.. guys does anyone at least considered the option that they will eventually sell a hdd like the ps2? or that an usb device these days can handle up to 1 gig of info? and they are almost as fast as a hdd?
[i]People without network access, dont have access to patches... [/i]
Er... these are not patches they are extra features (for real not like those in windows) since they are not solving any problem with the game (camera spinning maybe cool but its not needed, extra AI, believe me, you really dont need it or want it), several games have access to extra levels and features via xbox live. so er.. get a grip.
Better AI for Ninja Gaiden enemies?
For god sake's! those damn thing's are hard as nails as it is! what are they going to do now? trace me up in every corner of the map? steal my credit card number? lookup my home address?
(please link the obligated penny arcade reference)
I know Im supossed to feel enraged over an offensive and straight agressive (plus factually incorrect ) piece like that but That film is so sad and utterly geeky that I can help to laugh my ass off at it.
Seriously Bill Gates robbing the cab from the ps2 guys, the ps2 guys sleeping off at the hotel room, oh and the face of the pressident when they fire him oh that was precious!. This is the equivalent of Bart Simpson mocking his principal with a crude school parody video, everyone knows is wrong but no one can help to laugh. if you havent watch the video yet you should even if you have a ps2 you will probably get a few laughs too.
Btw: since when some dude eating pizza in a park, a guy with a huge afro and some brain condition and a girl that obviously hasnt played anything in her life and cant stop yapping are considered a good focus group? ok now I have an idea why things are that way they are at xbox live. (I suspected something like that actually)
Sometimes events like this remind me that MS actually has no experience in gamedev only in business, fantasy whatever online wasnt such a bad idea simply because there are no other MMORPGs for the xbox.
Of course that game was not going to work in Japan, final fantasy its an institution there and the game its more than a tad similar to it, but thats not all, most of the audience in Japan is tech savy and perfectly capable of using other more mature (although more complex) games like WOW , FFXI or EQ2, the only way to market this game was to offer it to total non gamers who wanted to learn about online playing and MMORPG basics. Its a shame MS didnt saw that and instead tried to xerox copy FFXI to the book.
Well that leaves a HUGE niche for an Xbox live rpg , who would take the call now? bioware? dare I say Blizzard? (hey! I can dream at least). Anyway chances are the answer is "no one" and we will have to wait until xbox2 (xbox-j) arrives. so as stated: this sucks.
[rant]
If you are wondering why no project of Rare has been cancelled, Its simple, MS knows RARE has tons of industry experience and they dont. So they let them have their way even when they dont fully understand what they are doing.
Thats not the case with the rest of their teams (except bungie) since they are oftenly almost as unexperienced as MS.
Sometimes this backfires as proved in "grabbed by the ghoulies" which was mostly a failed gameplay experiment but wait til you see what they did with "conker reloaded" after seing the e3 trailer my confidence in them has been recovered, lets hope it lives up to expectations.
[/rant]
" Yeah, I read this story on Gamespot the other day and thought "Hmmmm, seems like they're after the wrong next gen handheld." The PSP is a system of ports. The DS is going to be where all the groundbreaking, innovative games are born."
Is this a good time to pull the FANBOY -1 moderator ?
ARE BORN? seriously guys! they havent even released the thing yet ! at least say "WILL BE" !
And I hate to break your fanboy bubble but Most, no wait a second, ALL "games" shown at the e3 for the DS are straight nintendo 64 and GBA ports! They didnt even changed the name of Mario Kart 64 for crying out loud!
In case you havent noticed metroid hunter IS the metroid game they were making for 64 and never released!
Let me see according the ESRB Manhunt gets an M and Some silly game with slight sexuality gets an AO ?
Whats the esrb tagline? "Horrible acts of violence are fine as soon as no one shows their privates?".
And brent.. Hentai and porn games had been sold on PCs for over 10 years your "coming of the apocalypse, will you think of the children?" warning is 10 years off track.
To the news poster, when you see this kind of "articles" please ignore it, slashdotting this sort of thing, only makes the article get more hits and attention. And as you can probably realize it doesnt desserve it.
.