Its not just an engine you create upfront though, its all the internal toolsets as well. Once all thats in place, all you do is plug in the new levels, art, sound, etc. Is that still expensive? sure, but with a full set of tools, they don't spend so much time trying to make things work and are able to spend more time actually making a game.
Look at Insomniac for example. They are cranking out a game a year now, Because after resistance 1 they now have all they need to make new ps3 games and get them out quickly. That's got to have an improvement on their bottom line, with less man hours now required per shipping product.
People keep saying this, but its been what, 2 years since release and even the big developers aren't really showing massive improvements. Its just a continued cop out by nintendo fans to explain their consoles short commings.
Its not a question of resources, its a question of market demographics. The wii is selling as a partygame/minigame console, not as a platform for major blockbusters. Nintendo can get away with those because their brands are so well known. But for others, the money seems to be comming from enhanced ports, minigame collections, or simple, easy to explain games. The problem is those types of games just don't have the budgets or the team commitments to be mindblowing, and the market is just too finicky and too ADD on the wii to really go after those types of games. If you can't explain how to play in 2 mins, I don't expect the game to sell really well on the wii.
That's where things like PSN, XBL, XNA, wiiware, etc come into play. Smaller, cheeper games, with smaller, cheeper budgets. Get your game out, build a rep, then earn money (hopefully) to finance your next big thing.
Re:Because its not part of the game play
on
Torture in Games
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· Score: 1
Litch King actually improved on this, with several very long, lore filled quests with permanent effects on the gameworld.
For example, during the dragonblight line, you'll discover several things, such as the fact that the Azure dragonflight is forcing several mages to preform tasks after threatening their families with death, one such encounter leads to a heart felt letter from her father thanking you. At the end, after a major battle, you'll see a fire bakes landscape and the screams of the injured and dying instead of the battle, and then take part in events that place the horde and alliance on a direct path to open war.
To say wow is shallow is pretty ignorant these days. Blizzards done a lot to improve the narrative in the recent expansion.
Game.com wasn't that bad for a Tiger produced handheld. It was way ahead of it's time, and Nintendo barrowed quite a bit from the little handheld when they made the DS.
Way to miss the point. The Above was talking about the republican habbit of spending without raising money first, leaving the nexta dministration or generation of citizens in debt. To cut taxes now, they effectively are leaving the burden to your children.
Right, because no one in office actualy wnats those things. Both Dems and Republicans are pro-big government, pro increased spending, etc. The only difference is the repubs just spend the money while the Dems tax you before hand.
FFX has two good parts: The Part in front of Lulu and the part behind Rikku.
Bioshock, on the other hand, was amazing from start to finish and showed that yes, you can have a compelling world in a FPS, somethign people seem to have forgot. The Loss of the game as an exclusive to MS was a major blow.
Re:You BELIEVED the maniac?!?
on
Batman Discussion
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I think that was part of the Experiment. People didn't want to die, so they believed what the villan said at face value. In all likelyhood, it was indeed their own detonator, and the jocker was waiting to see which group would get up the nerve to murder the other first.
Batman wasn't expecting to find Harvy there, the Joker had tricked him. He knew batman would go after the girl, so the Joker gave him the wrong address. Joker had already observed Batmans reaction to Rachel, during the penthouse scene, so he knew there was something going on between them.
It also had the double effect of pushing Dent twords jokers plans for him.
Re:Can Oscar's be given posthumously?
on
Batman Discussion
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Jack's joker wasn't nearly as Good IMHO, but he was playing the more comedic insane joker. What Heath plays is completely insane, very disturbing joker, with loads of very dark humor, and a ton of violence.
It's pretty much what everyone was hoping it would be. You don't even recognize him as Heath, it's all Joker.
It's just Anti-sony FUD. No matter what sony shows, announces, etc, it's never enough. Sony's being held to this insane standard, where as MS isn't and people outright excuse nintendo for any wii short comings.
There are 58 games rated above 80% on the ps3. The wii manages only to have 24. There is far more to play on the ps3 than most people give it credit for.
Warhawk is like battlefield light, with more game modes and some great action. well worth it's $40 cost, $50 if you pick up the game and its two expansion packs.
Honestly, they have a good reason to want them: they have a warlike nation on both borders, and two other nuke armed nations, the USA and Israel, are sabre rattling like mad. But the question is, are they indeed developing these weapons, and if so, is it to ensure MAD to to give them away?
COnsiderign the abysmal scores for wii games and my personal experience with a few dozen titles, I'd say they focused more on marketing and cost reduction than games. Even first party titles look and play terible, for the most part.
The biggest game from sony I played last year were Uncharted, which was great, Rachet and Clank which was amazing, and Warhawk which was a surprising amount of fun. Ps3's also got a lot of niche titles like Eye of Judgement and Folklore, among others. A lot of games are rentals, but still worth playing once or twice. Future titles like Reistance 2, Infamous, LittleBigPlanet and others look great as well.
Now, with my 360, we see a trend that also hurts it: most of the major game go PC after a few months with superior versions, or were PC from the start. Mass effect and Gears for Example, both had superior PC versions. Oblivian was also PC, and Bioshock was not only a PC game but now has a ps3 port comming.
As for the wii, its got plenty of exclusives, but the vast majority aren't wort paying for. I'm amazed how little quality the system actualy has for how much it sells. A triumph of marketing I think, rather than games.
That makes sense if you ignore the recent annoucements of other 360 exclusive rpg's from SE. This is microsoft money, pure and simple.
The worst part is, this basicaly means a year or two long delay while they port on the 360 port. SE screws over the US ps3 fanbase so they can port to another system. Many aren't happy about that aspect. As someone who owns both a 360 and a ps3, That's what peeved me about the situation.
Go watch The Shining on blu-ray. It's amazing. Colors are vigrant, detail that we havn't seen in 20+ years shines though, and it's in true widescreen. I was watching it on my friends 28 inch 720p set and it was amazing, I took it home to my 40 inch 1080p set and it was jaw dropping.
Slashdot Mirror
Sony's offered downloadable video for some time now. Not sure if you can stream it, but you can rent and watch movies on it.
its a sony team isn't it? Why would they go multiplatform?
Wish I could have been there. Didn't even know about the showing here in Austin till after the fact.
Inflation for one thing. I remember snes era games being 70+ a pop..thats what, $90-100+ in todays currency? .
So does Bionic Commando Rearmed.
the use of 2.5 d allows the utility of 3d objects with the solid controls and such of a 2d world. Its a criminally underused perspective/game style.
Its not just an engine you create upfront though, its all the internal toolsets as well. Once all thats in place, all you do is plug in the new levels, art, sound, etc. Is that still expensive? sure, but with a full set of tools, they don't spend so much time trying to make things work and are able to spend more time actually making a game.
Look at Insomniac for example. They are cranking out a game a year now, Because after resistance 1 they now have all they need to make new ps3 games and get them out quickly. That's got to have an improvement on their bottom line, with less man hours now required per shipping product.
People keep saying this, but its been what, 2 years since release and even the big developers aren't really showing massive improvements. Its just a continued cop out by nintendo fans to explain their consoles short commings.
Its not a question of resources, its a question of market demographics. The wii is selling as a partygame/minigame console, not as a platform for major blockbusters. Nintendo can get away with those because their brands are so well known. But for others, the money seems to be comming from enhanced ports, minigame collections, or simple, easy to explain games. The problem is those types of games just don't have the budgets or the team commitments to be mindblowing, and the market is just too finicky and too ADD on the wii to really go after those types of games. If you can't explain how to play in 2 mins, I don't expect the game to sell really well on the wii.
That's where things like PSN, XBL, XNA, wiiware, etc come into play. Smaller, cheeper games, with smaller, cheeper budgets. Get your game out, build a rep, then earn money (hopefully) to finance your next big thing.
Litch King actually improved on this, with several very long, lore filled quests with permanent effects on the gameworld.
For example, during the dragonblight line, you'll discover several things, such as the fact that the Azure dragonflight is forcing several mages to preform tasks after threatening their families with death, one such encounter leads to a heart felt letter from her father thanking you. At the end, after a major battle, you'll see a fire bakes landscape and the screams of the injured and dying instead of the battle, and then take part in events that place the horde and alliance on a direct path to open war.
To say wow is shallow is pretty ignorant these days. Blizzards done a lot to improve the narrative in the recent expansion.
Game.com wasn't that bad for a Tiger produced handheld. It was way ahead of it's time, and Nintendo barrowed quite a bit from the little handheld when they made the DS.
Way to miss the point. The Above was talking about the republican habbit of spending without raising money first, leaving the nexta dministration or generation of citizens in debt. To cut taxes now, they effectively are leaving the burden to your children.
Right, because no one in office actualy wnats those things. Both Dems and Republicans are pro-big government, pro increased spending, etc. The only difference is the repubs just spend the money while the Dems tax you before hand.
FFX has two good parts: The Part in front of Lulu and the part behind Rikku.
Bioshock, on the other hand, was amazing from start to finish and showed that yes, you can have a compelling world in a FPS, somethign people seem to have forgot. The Loss of the game as an exclusive to MS was a major blow.
I think that was part of the Experiment. People didn't want to die, so they believed what the villan said at face value. In all likelyhood, it was indeed their own detonator, and the jocker was waiting to see which group would get up the nerve to murder the other first.
Batman wasn't expecting to find Harvy there, the Joker had tricked him. He knew batman would go after the girl, so the Joker gave him the wrong address. Joker had already observed Batmans reaction to Rachel, during the penthouse scene, so he knew there was something going on between them.
It also had the double effect of pushing Dent twords jokers plans for him.
Jack's joker wasn't nearly as Good IMHO, but he was playing the more comedic insane joker. What Heath plays is completely insane, very disturbing joker, with loads of very dark humor, and a ton of violence.
It's pretty much what everyone was hoping it would be. You don't even recognize him as Heath, it's all Joker.
It's just Anti-sony FUD. No matter what sony shows, announces, etc, it's never enough. Sony's being held to this insane standard, where as MS isn't and people outright excuse nintendo for any wii short comings.
There are 58 games rated above 80% on the ps3. The wii manages only to have 24. There is far more to play on the ps3 than most people give it credit for.
Warhawk is like battlefield light, with more game modes and some great action. well worth it's $40 cost, $50 if you pick up the game and its two expansion packs.
Honestly, they have a good reason to want them: they have a warlike nation on both borders, and two other nuke armed nations, the USA and Israel, are sabre rattling like mad. But the question is, are they indeed developing these weapons, and if so, is it to ensure MAD to to give them away?
COnsiderign the abysmal scores for wii games and my personal experience with a few dozen titles, I'd say they focused more on marketing and cost reduction than games. Even first party titles look and play terible, for the most part.
The biggest game from sony I played last year were Uncharted, which was great, Rachet and Clank which was amazing, and Warhawk which was a surprising amount of fun. Ps3's also got a lot of niche titles like Eye of Judgement and Folklore, among others. A lot of games are rentals, but still worth playing once or twice. Future titles like Reistance 2, Infamous, LittleBigPlanet and others look great as well.
Now, with my 360, we see a trend that also hurts it: most of the major game go PC after a few months with superior versions, or were PC from the start. Mass effect and Gears for Example, both had superior PC versions. Oblivian was also PC, and Bioshock was not only a PC game but now has a ps3 port comming.
As for the wii, its got plenty of exclusives, but the vast majority aren't wort paying for. I'm amazed how little quality the system actualy has for how much it sells. A triumph of marketing I think, rather than games.
Naughty Dog and Insomniac would like to have a word with you.
That makes sense if you ignore the recent annoucements of other 360 exclusive rpg's from SE. This is microsoft money, pure and simple.
The worst part is, this basicaly means a year or two long delay while they port on the 360 port. SE screws over the US ps3 fanbase so they can port to another system. Many aren't happy about that aspect. As someone who owns both a 360 and a ps3, That's what peeved me about the situation.
Go watch The Shining on blu-ray. It's amazing. Colors are vigrant, detail that we havn't seen in 20+ years shines though, and it's in true widescreen. I was watching it on my friends 28 inch 720p set and it was amazing, I took it home to my 40 inch 1080p set and it was jaw dropping.