I've seen a classification system that works something like the following:
Metroid: Action/Adventure > 2D
Megaman: Action > 2D
--- By extension we can say:
Zelda, Ocarena of Time: Action/Adventure > Third Person
Gears of War: Action > Third Person
--- And of course:
Metroid Prime: Action/Adventure > First Person
DOOM: Action > First Person
Portal: Puzzle > First Person
Oblivion: RPG > First Person
Now, sure, you could classify every game with a first person camera and a projectile as a first person shooter. (I even have friends with that kind of opinion on Oblivion). However I much prefer to classify games primarily under what I'm doing (Twitch, Exploration, Thinking) rather than what I'm seeing (side view, rear view, first person view).
Ah, good point--I forgot about August. I was thinking more in terms of Apr/2007, May/2007, Jun/2007, July/2007 being four of the six lowest months on record for the system.
they're casual gamers, they're not out buying a new game every week.
I'm a game developer, and before that an administrator for a gaming website. I don't buy a new game every week. Studies I've read suggest that this "once a week" demographic only accounts for 3% of all gamers.
It's happening. Look at the Japanese software charts, not just the hardware charts. Not a single Wii game in the top ten last week, this on supposedly the most popular console in Japan.
You're right, according to last week we should expect the 360 to win in Japan!...Or we could look at this week, where in the top 30 there's 5 Wii games, 1 PS3 game, and 0 360 games (despite the Wii hardware dropping AGAIN). Now, 5/30 is low, but 0/30 and 1/30 are DISASTERS.
the competition's got big games in the pipeline too (not to mention a price drop).
The Wii is also quite capable of dropping price. This is less of a big deal in Japan, mind you, and more of a big deal in North America where people continue to buy GBAs over DSs for being $30 cheaper.
Not many hardcore gamers in any territory are going to want to own the system that their grandma and little sister thinks is cool. That probably sounds harsh, but that's the way 18-24 year old males think, and they make up the majority of hardcore gamers.
My experience with siblings is the opposite--younger sisters tend to take interest in whatever the older brother is playing. People get into arguments like "I want to play the NES" "No *I* want to play the NES".
As for the 18-24 male have-moved-out-of-the-house range, why would they care what their relatives are playing? If playing a game can get them into girl's pants, they'll do it, but otherwise they'll play whatever they like, or their dorm-mates like.
Whether or not the Wii continues to outsell the PS3 and Xbox 360 (by whatever shrinking margin it can muster), the big problem for them is that games aren't selling, really at all.
In North America the Wii games are selling better than PS3 games, and worse than 360 games. More 360s have been sold than Wiis in North America, and more Wiis have been sold than PS3s in North America. It's almost like install base is important after all!
Now, yes, the 360 has a spectacular attach rate--the 360 probably having the most hardcore of the ownership bases, and having achievement points which seem to be an obsession for some people. For this reason, the Wii could pass the 360 in America and still not control the region. This doesn't mean that the clear #2 console will be ignored by developers, though (the original XBox wasn't ignored last-gen; only third place (GC) was).
I saw an analysis not too long ago that compared his displayed moves to that of some Pikachu/Luigi amalgam (both of which are low tier). He has short limbs, hell his arms are shorter than Pichu (who is bottom tier despite being very fast). He has no projectile that we've seen.
Furthermore, Sonic is known for running speed, not necessarily attack speed or attack lag, both of which are more important when it comes to tiers.
What really matters, though, is priority. Both Shiek and Fox have very high priority. For that matter, Jigglypuff manages to be decently high on the tier list based on priority and basically nothing else. Unfortunately it's very hard to gauge priority by watching a trailer.
I agree...not beating the DS does not mean you're a failure. In fact, PSP could conceivably sell the second most hardware among the five next-gen platforms, and seems near-guaranteed to be at least third. It currently has a roughly 12 million lead on the Wii, and is selling reasonably well in all regions. Yeah, it's been outsold by the Wii for the past few months, but not by such a large amount that it couldn't potentially match the Wii's pace if some killer-app made the PSP cool again (as shown by the past two weeks of Japanese sales--I wouldn't be surprised if PSP stayed ahead of Wii on a weekly basis until Mario Galaxy stops that dead).
And well...nobody's calling the Wii a failure....
Which, of course, is why none of these companies showed up to PAX. Oh wait, they did show up for PAX! This is a major, major vote of non-confidence in E for All, nothing more, nothing less.
If the Wii has passed the 360 worldwide then the next, and possibly last, major milestone will be to beat the 360 on its home turf. Being #1 on a region by region basis as well as worldwide would be indisputable proof of the Wii's dominance.
No, actually the next milestone for the Wii will be to pass the 360 in Europe, Canada, and Australia (the 360 is still leading in all of those regions, but the lead is reasonably narrow...unlike the US where the 360 nearly doubles the Wii still--source Neogaf).
If their numbers are on target (which they have been shown to be accurate in the past)
They...have? VGChartz is known for releasing data early, and then correcting for the data once actual sales figures are released. Their initial numbers greatly disagreed with the NPD numbers for July, as an example. Now, yes, VGChartz is in the right ballpark when it comes to overall totals, but allow for a margin of error.
What's interesting about this situation is that it fits perfectly with the way the market normally works. On one end of the spectrum, you have a cheaper product that aims to make less money per unit, but make it up in volume. On the other end of the spectrum, you have a product that's more expensive and aims to make more money per unit even if the volume is lower.
True...except that model doesn't work for distribution channels. Game developers want to make games for systems on which their game will sell. Gamers want to buy the system that has the games they like. It's a self-feeding process. For instance, EA recently announced that they were focusing on the 360 version of games over the PS3 version...often to the point of actually releasing the 360 version first, and finishing the PS3 port later.
Most games ARE based on previous work. EA sports games still use code from the Genesis days. Tony Hawk games still use the same engine from the PSX era. A lot of games nowadays are licencing the Unreal Engine.
What you described for "all game companies would need to do" sums up the majority of games--slap a different skin on it and throw together some levels.
What you seem to be imagining game development consists of is really only the case for a small minority of high-budget games on the market.
All game engines suck. I've worked with UE3 for a few months and it's much better than any other game engine I've touched, though sure you have to hack in a few things--better than needing to hack in everything. The support was enough for us to get a few prototype levels up and running in...I believe less than a month; again much faster than the ramp-up on any other engine I've worked with.
If you expect dramatically better, then either you don't have any real experience in game development, or else I want to know where you work.
Blizzard is one of those few game developers that can claim that players like them because they ARE Blizzard. Valve and iD are the only other ones I can think of off hand that can make a claim like that.
I think you're forgetting a couple. Nintendo, Konami, Harmonix, Bungie (starting from back in their Mac days), Black Isle/Obsidian, Square-Enix, Nippon Ichi, Sega, Bioware, Capcom, Maxis, Firaxis, Rockstar, Relic, Rare (for all that they haven't done much to earn it recently I've still seen games being hyped "because Rare is making it"), Tri-Ace.
It's almost more notable to point out companies with critically acclaimed games that don't have hero-worship. Namco doesn't seem to get much, perhaps because it hasn't been in the limelight much until the past five years. When people are into Ubisoft games, in my experience they only play one or two of them (only Splinter Cell or only Prince of Persia or only Beyond Good and Evil). Sony internal studios are starting to get attention for stuff like ICO and God of War, but most gamers I know aren't used to taking Sony first party seriously and are only just waking up to how many Sony-made games they own.
As someone who plays Smash, it's a hard game to appreciate if you don't know what's going on. At the basic level, even some game reviewers don't get the concept:
The concept seems elementary, but after testing the game for easily over 20-hours, I still am confused by the play. There is no rhyme or reason for a knockout, and delivering that "final blow" can be done in 10-seconds or 10-minutes. Probably the biggest flaw within SSBM is the complexity in simplicity.
Many times I have started off the game, and in a few seconds the game is over. Sometimes the screen is nothing short of a cluster bomb, and was clueless on what happened. On the other side of the ball, the complete opposite has happened. I've beaten my opponent into the red with over 200% damage, and still sometimes can't pull the Mortal Kombat and "finish him". There are a handful of moves that deliver this "final" blow, and many times I'll knock the guy a mile but he still reappears.
(Taken from this review).
Once you understand the basics you can certainly appreciate a high level match (though even there it was a while before I recognized and appreciated stuff like wavedashing and SHFFLing. For that matter, I learned how to wavedash myself long before something clicked into place and I recognized stuff like wavelanding--though like I say it's not necessary to recognize these in order to appreciate a high level match).
If you take a match like, say this one, I'm awed by the way they move, just because I have played probably thousands of hours of smash, and am impressed by the pace of the whole thing. However, given someone who doesn't remember the game too well, are you going to get that same "whoa, they move so much faster" reaction, or the "wow, they chase each other way off the edge" reaction?
By comparison, Fight Night may not be a brilliantly balanced fighter, but it does a good job of looking like televised boxing--something much less abstract than SSBM's quirky physics exploits. I can see why it would appeal to a Television producer. I don't see it drawing ratings year after year (unlike, say, televised Starcraft in South Korea) I don't think it will have the lasting depth. But I can see why they would use it over more hardcore games when testing the waters--the rules are clear, being basically the rules of boxing. The graphics are really pretty, and not abstract-gamey.
I mean yeah, I like info about Little Big Planet because I'm a platformer nerd, but I'm scratching my head about why it's still headline news. Sure, it deserves an initial news posting about being a platformer with user-generated content--I don't think that's been done on a large scale officially before (though obviously there's a thriving underground ROM hack community). But is the cool concept of "a platformer...with enemies!" really newsworthy?
"Are you a bad enough dude to save the president?" "This guy are sick!" "All your base are belong to us."
Cases of B-Gameplay being funny are harder to think up (partially because we don't have a strong vocabulary to talk about gameplay) but I have fond memories of watching my friend play Super Mario Bros 2, float behind Wart's head, then proceed to throw vegetables at him from that location where Wart couldn't hit back. Or watching a big fearsome undead boss in a Final Fantasy get killed by a Phoenix Down.
Though yes: "bad in a good way" only happens with certain kinds of bad. When the controls are painfully bad, that sucks. Though similarly if the lighting is terrible on a TV show, that doesn't make it campy, that just makes it an eyesore.
Fast Forward to now and the DS is projected to sell over 100 million in 2007 alone.
...WHAT? DS is currently around 45 million since its launch in 2004. This is exceptionally fast, in fact the DS sets all-time hardware records in several regions. But it's not close to selling 100 million units in total, let alone selling 100 million units in one year.
I am curious about Iwata's comments when the DS launched that the DS was not a replacement for the Gameboy and that a new gameboy would come eventually
I'm sure they have new gameboy hardware developed, as that was their original plan, they just aren't planning to call it "gameboy" anymore if/when it releases.
Leave GDC alone! I don't want it to be marred by corporate meetings formerly associated with E3. I don't want it to turn into a plastic press conference. The sessions at GDC are actually useful.
Take over that new "E for All" that's supposed to replace E3...or possibly even PAX (attendance has been growing exponentially) but don't corporatize GDC, please!
God of War 3: hasn't been announced (in fact the next two god of war games are for the PSP and mobile). Sony owns the God of War franchise, though, so it'll probably happen eventually I'll grant you.
Kingdom Hearts: Last I checked there hasn't been a PS3 version announced. A quick google search turned up "Kingdom Hearts not necessarily on PS3". Kingdom Hearts being one of the less photorealistic of Square's franchises actually seems to be an obvious switch to the Wii (much like Dragon Quest makes sense on the DS due to its cartoony style).
White Knight Story: Absolutely. Don't delude yourself into thinking that it's a high-profile game (I doubt it'll surpass the sales of, say, Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria, which is under 1 million worldwide) but it's certainly a PS3 game I'm hyped about.
Just wondering: how can I develop for Wii without spending a lot of money?
Define "a lot". As I understand it Wii dev kits currently go for $1000 or so--they just haven't been sold to the general public so far.
Hopefully this wont be like Symbian signed program, where the cost for "checking bugs and compatibility" is expensive.
There's a slight issue here--let's say a game needs 10 testers for a week. Let's say they get paid minimum wage (which is what, $5?) and let's assume they're not working overtime like nearly every test department is forced to. 10 testers * 40 hour week * $5/hour = $2000.
I see three possible solutions. Farm testing out to India, automate testing (have a bot go through and check each code branch for compatibility or something), or just not do very much testing. (Or take a loss, but this is frickin' Nintendo).
Okay, so supposing some combination of the above gets you down to $100 or so, you still need to worry about getting rated by the ESRB; Nintendo can't control the pricing of that. No, I don't think it's realistic to expect this to be an inexpensive distribution channel.
I always scratch my head when people say "where are the games?"
Number of Games released in 2007 according to Gamerankings:
360: 53 PS2: 45 PSP: 44 DS: 35 Wii: 26 PS3: 17
Now, as previous people have said, systems typically have a game drought right after launch. Wii and DS are also in a funny position where they tend to get more exclusives but fewer ports due to their unique controls and crap (the big reason why PSP consistently has more releases than DS). Fact is, despite being fresh off launch, Wii is already not far from DS level game release schedules. Seems healthy enough to me.
And before anyone objects with "where are the high profile games in 2007?"...glancing at gamerankings again I see three "Mario" games (Super Paper Mario, Mario Strikers Charged, Mario Party 8), Resident Evil 4, Warioware, a collection of EA games (Tiger Woods, Godfather, SSX), Sonic, Wii Play (say what you will, but it's the best-selling Wii game this year; possibly best-selling console game actually). For a traditionally slow stretch of the year (developers all want to release their games in November) that doesn't strike me as a weak lineup in the slightest.
Peter Monileux (Fable) is notorious for over-promising with every game.
Will Wright (Spore) generally delivers, but it could take a very long time--from all I've heard through industry connections, the technology for Spore just isn't there yet.
So now Rockstar is forced to gimp GTA IV not once, but in three areas:
1) Graphics - the PS3 and PC versions are both now gimped down to the weaker 360 graphics hardware
2) World size - the PS3 and PC versions are both now gimped down to 7 gigs - half of that in reality due to the massive seek penalty for going across one layer to another on DVDs
3) World size again - with the game being forced to be designed around the worst case streaming system - the harddrive less Core.
1) Graphics: umm...given that all reports say that the 360 has a better GPU than the PS3 (and more effective RAM due to a smaller OS) I'd guess that it's the PS3 that's constraining graphics, if anything. The fact that most demos Rockstar has shown of the game have been the 360 version would seem to confirm this theory.
2) Wait...Rockstar was planning to release the PC version on Blu-Ray? WTF? There's no way more than 5% of the PC market has a Blu-Ray drive.
3) Well yes, no harddrive in core was stupid of Microsoft.
I remember hearing something about Nintendo running out of space in their Redmond headquarters. As you said marketing is a department that would be about as effective regardless of geographic location, so it probably made the most sense to move that department as opposed to another department.
Slashdot Mirror
I've seen a classification system that works something like the following:
Metroid:
Action/Adventure > 2D
Megaman:
Action > 2D
---
By extension we can say:
Zelda, Ocarena of Time:
Action/Adventure > Third Person
Gears of War:
Action > Third Person
---
And of course:
Metroid Prime:
Action/Adventure > First Person
DOOM:
Action > First Person
Portal:
Puzzle > First Person
Oblivion:
RPG > First Person
Now, sure, you could classify every game with a first person camera and a projectile as a first person shooter. (I even have friends with that kind of opinion on Oblivion). However I much prefer to classify games primarily under what I'm doing (Twitch, Exploration, Thinking) rather than what I'm seeing (side view, rear view, first person view).
Ah, good point--I forgot about August. I was thinking more in terms of Apr/2007, May/2007, Jun/2007, July/2007 being four of the six lowest months on record for the system.
I'm a game developer, and before that an administrator for a gaming website. I don't buy a new game every week. Studies I've read suggest that this "once a week" demographic only accounts for 3% of all gamers.
You're right, according to last week we should expect the 360 to win in Japan!
The Wii is also quite capable of dropping price. This is less of a big deal in Japan, mind you, and more of a big deal in North America where people continue to buy GBAs over DSs for being $30 cheaper.
My experience with siblings is the opposite--younger sisters tend to take interest in whatever the older brother is playing. People get into arguments like "I want to play the NES" "No *I* want to play the NES".
As for the 18-24 male have-moved-out-of-the-house range, why would they care what their relatives are playing? If playing a game can get them into girl's pants, they'll do it, but otherwise they'll play whatever they like, or their dorm-mates like.
In North America the Wii games are selling better than PS3 games, and worse than 360 games. More 360s have been sold than Wiis in North America, and more Wiis have been sold than PS3s in North America. It's almost like install base is important after all!
Now, yes, the 360 has a spectacular attach rate--the 360 probably having the most hardcore of the ownership bases, and having achievement points which seem to be an obsession for some people. For this reason, the Wii could pass the 360 in America and still not control the region. This doesn't mean that the clear #2 console will be ignored by developers, though (the original XBox wasn't ignored last-gen; only third place (GC) was).
In the months leading up to the release of Halo 3, XBox 360s dropped and dropped in monthly sales.
In the months leading up to the release of [Super Mario Galaxy], [Wiis] dropped and dropped in monthly sales.
Not to say the Wii's popularity isn't dropping, I just think it's too early to draw a definitive conclusion here.
I saw an analysis not too long ago that compared his displayed moves to that of some Pikachu/Luigi amalgam (both of which are low tier). He has short limbs, hell his arms are shorter than Pichu (who is bottom tier despite being very fast). He has no projectile that we've seen. Furthermore, Sonic is known for running speed, not necessarily attack speed or attack lag, both of which are more important when it comes to tiers. What really matters, though, is priority. Both Shiek and Fox have very high priority. For that matter, Jigglypuff manages to be decently high on the tier list based on priority and basically nothing else. Unfortunately it's very hard to gauge priority by watching a trailer.
I agree...not beating the DS does not mean you're a failure. In fact, PSP could conceivably sell the second most hardware among the five next-gen platforms, and seems near-guaranteed to be at least third. It currently has a roughly 12 million lead on the Wii, and is selling reasonably well in all regions. Yeah, it's been outsold by the Wii for the past few months, but not by such a large amount that it couldn't potentially match the Wii's pace if some killer-app made the PSP cool again (as shown by the past two weeks of Japanese sales--I wouldn't be surprised if PSP stayed ahead of Wii on a weekly basis until Mario Galaxy stops that dead). And well...nobody's calling the Wii a failure....
Which, of course, is why none of these companies showed up to PAX. Oh wait, they did show up for PAX! This is a major, major vote of non-confidence in E for All, nothing more, nothing less.
Have the gamers of the world been asking for games that "talk about homosexuality"?
Yes. I don't care much myself, but I know how to do a Google search.
http://yaoi.y-gallery.net/club/158/
Most games ARE based on previous work. EA sports games still use code from the Genesis days. Tony Hawk games still use the same engine from the PSX era. A lot of games nowadays are licencing the Unreal Engine.
What you described for "all game companies would need to do" sums up the majority of games--slap a different skin on it and throw together some levels.
What you seem to be imagining game development consists of is really only the case for a small minority of high-budget games on the market.
All game engines suck. I've worked with UE3 for a few months and it's much better than any other game engine I've touched, though sure you have to hack in a few things--better than needing to hack in everything. The support was enough for us to get a few prototype levels up and running in...I believe less than a month; again much faster than the ramp-up on any other engine I've worked with.
If you expect dramatically better, then either you don't have any real experience in game development, or else I want to know where you work.
Blizzard is one of those few game developers that can claim that players like them because they ARE Blizzard. Valve and iD are the only other ones I can think of off hand that can make a claim like that.
I think you're forgetting a couple. Nintendo, Konami, Harmonix, Bungie (starting from back in their Mac days), Black Isle/Obsidian, Square-Enix, Nippon Ichi, Sega, Bioware, Capcom, Maxis, Firaxis, Rockstar, Relic, Rare (for all that they haven't done much to earn it recently I've still seen games being hyped "because Rare is making it"), Tri-Ace.
It's almost more notable to point out companies with critically acclaimed games that don't have hero-worship. Namco doesn't seem to get much, perhaps because it hasn't been in the limelight much until the past five years. When people are into Ubisoft games, in my experience they only play one or two of them (only Splinter Cell or only Prince of Persia or only Beyond Good and Evil). Sony internal studios are starting to get attention for stuff like ICO and God of War, but most gamers I know aren't used to taking Sony first party seriously and are only just waking up to how many Sony-made games they own.
If you take a match like, say this one, I'm awed by the way they move, just because I have played probably thousands of hours of smash, and am impressed by the pace of the whole thing. However, given someone who doesn't remember the game too well, are you going to get that same "whoa, they move so much faster" reaction, or the "wow, they chase each other way off the edge" reaction?
By comparison, Fight Night may not be a brilliantly balanced fighter, but it does a good job of looking like televised boxing--something much less abstract than SSBM's quirky physics exploits. I can see why it would appeal to a Television producer. I don't see it drawing ratings year after year (unlike, say, televised Starcraft in South Korea) I don't think it will have the lasting depth. But I can see why they would use it over more hardcore games when testing the waters--the rules are clear, being basically the rules of boxing. The graphics are really pretty, and not abstract-gamey.
I mean yeah, I like info about Little Big Planet because I'm a platformer nerd, but I'm scratching my head about why it's still headline news. Sure, it deserves an initial news posting about being a platformer with user-generated content--I don't think that's been done on a large scale officially before (though obviously there's a thriving underground ROM hack community). But is the cool concept of "a platformer...with enemies!" really newsworthy?
"Are you a bad enough dude to save the president?"
"This guy are sick!"
"All your base are belong to us."
Cases of B-Gameplay being funny are harder to think up (partially because we don't have a strong vocabulary to talk about gameplay) but I have fond memories of watching my friend play Super Mario Bros 2, float behind Wart's head, then proceed to throw vegetables at him from that location where Wart couldn't hit back. Or watching a big fearsome undead boss in a Final Fantasy get killed by a Phoenix Down.
Though yes: "bad in a good way" only happens with certain kinds of bad. When the controls are painfully bad, that sucks. Though similarly if the lighting is terrible on a TV show, that doesn't make it campy, that just makes it an eyesore.
Leave GDC alone! I don't want it to be marred by corporate meetings formerly associated with E3. I don't want it to turn into a plastic press conference. The sessions at GDC are actually useful.
Take over that new "E for All" that's supposed to replace E3...or possibly even PAX (attendance has been growing exponentially) but don't corporatize GDC, please!
God of War 3: hasn't been announced (in fact the next two god of war games are for the PSP and mobile). Sony owns the God of War franchise, though, so it'll probably happen eventually I'll grant you.
Kingdom Hearts: Last I checked there hasn't been a PS3 version announced. A quick google search turned up "Kingdom Hearts not necessarily on PS3". Kingdom Hearts being one of the less photorealistic of Square's franchises actually seems to be an obvious switch to the Wii (much like Dragon Quest makes sense on the DS due to its cartoony style).
White Knight Story: Absolutely. Don't delude yourself into thinking that it's a high-profile game (I doubt it'll surpass the sales of, say, Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria, which is under 1 million worldwide) but it's certainly a PS3 game I'm hyped about.
I see three possible solutions. Farm testing out to India, automate testing (have a bot go through and check each code branch for compatibility or something), or just not do very much testing. (Or take a loss, but this is frickin' Nintendo).
Okay, so supposing some combination of the above gets you down to $100 or so, you still need to worry about getting rated by the ESRB; Nintendo can't control the pricing of that. No, I don't think it's realistic to expect this to be an inexpensive distribution channel.
I always scratch my head when people say "where are the games?"
...glancing at gamerankings again I see three "Mario" games (Super Paper Mario, Mario Strikers Charged, Mario Party 8), Resident Evil 4, Warioware, a collection of EA games (Tiger Woods, Godfather, SSX), Sonic, Wii Play (say what you will, but it's the best-selling Wii game this year; possibly best-selling console game actually). For a traditionally slow stretch of the year (developers all want to release their games in November) that doesn't strike me as a weak lineup in the slightest.
Number of Games released in 2007 according to Gamerankings:
360: 53
PS2: 45
PSP: 44
DS: 35
Wii: 26
PS3: 17
Now, as previous people have said, systems typically have a game drought right after launch. Wii and DS are also in a funny position where they tend to get more exclusives but fewer ports due to their unique controls and crap (the big reason why PSP consistently has more releases than DS). Fact is, despite being fresh off launch, Wii is already not far from DS level game release schedules. Seems healthy enough to me.
And before anyone objects with "where are the high profile games in 2007?"
Peter Monileux (Fable) is notorious for over-promising with every game.
Will Wright (Spore) generally delivers, but it could take a very long time--from all I've heard through industry connections, the technology for Spore just isn't there yet.
Dead within a year...just like the Pokemon Company, right?
1) Graphics: umm...given that all reports say that the 360 has a better GPU than the PS3 (and more effective RAM due to a smaller OS) I'd guess that it's the PS3 that's constraining graphics, if anything. The fact that most demos Rockstar has shown of the game have been the 360 version would seem to confirm this theory.
2) Wait...Rockstar was planning to release the PC version on Blu-Ray? WTF? There's no way more than 5% of the PC market has a Blu-Ray drive.
3) Well yes, no harddrive in core was stupid of Microsoft.
I remember hearing something about Nintendo running out of space in their Redmond headquarters. As you said marketing is a department that would be about as effective regardless of geographic location, so it probably made the most sense to move that department as opposed to another department.
This is all purely speculation, of course.