Those who decry playing unattended have never done the grind with a paladin. Grinding with a paladin's as fun as watching paint dry. I just play in windowed mode, have my HP bar above my Firefox browser and just read CNN.com. Come back in if my HP starts going down rapidly, and check in every once in awhile to make sure he's still killing the mob.
It's called autoattack. If you're a paladin you're very used to it.
I don't think you understand how the print industry works in general.
The more magazines you print, the higher the advertising rates you charge because of the higher printing costs. So the more successful the magazine, the more ads you need to break even. A magazine cannot stay afloat without ads, it's that simple. A 50% sell-through would be considered highly successful--and even then that's 50% of wasted paper that the company has to pay for (even if that's a low 150,000 issues, that money adds up). To think that a magazine can exist without ads isn't grounded in reality.
Nor is your assumption that reviewers get all the games they want for free correct. I spent $50 bucks on F.E.A.R. just like anybody else, $15 bucks a month to see my Commando get rocked by Tera Kasi Masters in SWG, $15 bucks a month to grind end-game instances in World of Warcraft. There are notorious moochers in the industry, but even the worst moochers have to front money for some games, too.
Ok. I noticed Dan Hsu quoted myself in his blog (Funkyzealot), guess he didn't know that I work on Gamepro mag too.
The thing is, nobody wants to actually come out and say "XX mag is buying covers from YY." That includes Dan Hsu. As I mentioned in Games.net, the games industry is *tiny.* Everybody knows everybody else. Journalists switch from PR and back. Frankly he hasn't said anything, and I would venture to say he's afraid of the repercussions of doing so. In short, he himself doesn't want to open the can worms while saying he does. Industry integrity is weighed less than the potential of being blacklisted and avoided by every game publisher and developer.
As for reviews being bought, that's far less common and transparent than buying covers or buying coverage. Chances are, when you see an inflated score it's just a bad review by an overly enthused fan. That, or peer review bumps the score up or down a couple notches. The review process differs depending on each pub. For Gamepro, scores tend to go up as is from the reviewer (which means I've strongly disagreed with many a score--I think scores in general are too high)
Buying coverage rather than the opinion itself would probably be the more common temptation, as in "cover this story for this amount of ad dollars." Advertisers wave that over pub's heads--and with print ads in general slipping in favor of online, it's an increasing temptation to succumb to.
The SOE's fatal mistake made is that they don't to understand what makes WoW successful, and instead have destroyed what (little) was great about SWG.
Mass market doesn't mean stupid, and unfortunately SWG has been reduced to a brainless grind as opposed to a complex grind (pre NGE). It's not just that WoW was simpler, it's that WoW was fun. SOE doesn't understand this, and try to make up for the lack of content with grinding. Ironically that's what Blizzard is doing now with endgame content (faction grinds, 40-man raids) because it takes less dev time to make a game a grind. But everything with WoW before level 60 is fun, even from a non-MMO standpoint. SOE just doesn't know how to make games fun.
And they've killed the one thing that was superior to WoW: crafting. They could've kept at least one aspect, but choose to dumb down the whole game.
To a previous poster: you are incorrect about the Asian MMO market. Asian MMOs, especially China (which is where most of the revenue comes for Lineage/Lineage II and its huge installbase) rely *not* on subscriptions, but on hour-based rates. Same with Korea, where gamers typically play at "PC-bangs" (Internet Cafes) instead of having a personal computer at home.
I wish it were the case that Gamepro reviews were bad over the years because of threats from advertising--unfortunately it's just due to the fact that some people give bad scores.
The problem is, if you're passionate enough about games to dedicate your life to it, you're bound to be a fanboy for certain genres and franchises. Some can't filter out their excessive interest for the game and give inflated scores.
If you're the "RPG guy" in the company, it's cus' you love RPGs...so if some ultra nichey game like Growlanser or Tower of Druaga is reviewed, chances are you're more inclined to like it than most. Either that or you assign games to those with no interest in the genre, which you'll have readers ticked at you too.
It's just a matter of finding the right set of reviewers that'll give an objective account--and when some gamers write 150 page college thesis papers on Final Fantasy, it's harder than you'd imagine.
"People just didn't seem to gather. There weren't a lot of large group goals, and a lot of games, in the name of simplification"
"Community" in SWG meant waiting 10 (later 5) minutes for the cursed shuttle to arrive in the starport and having absolutely nothing to do--forcing you to chat to pass the time. Or waiting 15 minutes to have a doctor buff you so you can wear the overpowered armor you bought--why social bonding of course.
Past MMOs were so dull that "community" had to be formed to prevent players from dying from boredom. Grinding the same frikkin mobs over and over (Quenkers for exp, Moks for money), the guild channel was the only thing sustaining your sanity.
"I'm just disappointed that we couldn't manage to do fun and innovative at the same time"
The userbase isn't low for EQII definitely--but when you look at the substantial time and money spent into making the game, the high expectations, it is a "low" to have an MMORPG newcomer like Blizzard beating out Everquest--which basically established the genre.
Everquest II is selling, still has a dedicated userbase, but it didn't turn out to be the MMORPGs to end all MMORPGs--and therefore disappointing.
Being the dude who wrote the editorial, I'd like to point out something:
The fact that games aren't original directly ties in to how EA treats its employees.
But first, tech companies burning out their employees isn't new at all--big companies like Intel and Motorola routinely do it by hiring college grads and waving high salaries. So EA getting the wrap for being the most evil company in the world isn't exactly accurate. The only reason why you don't see such blogs getting recognition is because it's (sadly) in other tech fields and accepted as something that comes along with the job. It's a newer phenomena for video games.
I think you're missing a point that was inferred from the article either--games *are* getting crappy *because* they are burning out the employees. How do you think a game such as Golden Eye: Rogue Agent has a 9-month dev time?
Most games start out with high ambitions of being the next greatest thing. Penny-pinching EA puts a strangle hold on innovation because of the bottom line--enforcing insanely short development times and irresponsible work hours. Hence the mediocrity of Medal of Honor: Rising Sun and Pacific Assault. Or even Battle for Middle-Earth, which was a great game but didn't fully live up to its expectations. Originally the game was supposed to have morale, with human foot soldiers backing away as Trolls approached on their positions.
That's the exact reason why the original Medal of Honor people left and created Call of Duty (though they haven't publically acknowledged it)
Most, if not all EA games have really short dev times--when's the last time you heard a game that they spend 2-3 years developing on?
This sounds nice, except for the fact that they've been promising revamps for since almost the launch, and nothing concrete nor definitive has been laid down in design or concepts forums.
Another problem is fanbase--with so many leaving, what you have left are the real hardcore fans--which like some of the [cough boring] aspects--steering the game in an increasingly fringe direction. That attributed to Jump to Lightspeed turning into a Nursery School playground, where TIEs and X-Wings peacefully fly by each other.
Plus balancing out the classes means really toning done the powerhouses that 90% of people choose--Tera Kasi. People were fuming when creature handlers got nerfed, they'll be going berserk when this happens. (No more knocking down AT-ST Walkers with fists and brass knuckles? An outrage.)
What the game should do is take some cues from World of Warcraft and make the factions more divided--like overt Rebels getting attacked by high level Imperial mobs if they go to Naboo. But ehhh, don't think that'd be happening either.
So much more of the game is broke, that there's not much that can bring the game back IMO. People never wear anything better than composite armor because weapons/armor eventually deteriorate beyond repair, so they keep valuable items as only trophies.
On the contrary, I found the more difficult moves easier to execute on the Genesis than the SNES version--with or without the fighter stick.
Dragon punch combos were especially difficult with the SNES--cancellations didn't quite work as well as they did on arcades or the Genesis. The timing for hitting the punch button for the dragon punch was closer to arcades in the Genesis version too--which is why you said you had a harder time on both the Genesis and arcade versions.
The point about the Dhalsim music was not that it sucked from a musical standpoint, but that the SNES version was really off compared to the Genesis version. Back in those days, unless it was done by someone like Yuzo Koshiro music was generally whack anyways.
That was a great April Fools gag. And that happened looong before I ever started working here so it's not as though I was the ringleader of that fiasco. But I wonder which editor did confirm that? Hmmm something to dig into.
Gamepro isn't the only mag to have made "confirmed" screwups--almost every media publication has made such "confirmations" that turned out to be wrong. You make your mistakes, and you learn.
As for editorial credibility, I think it's our reviews that could use the most improvement...there will be times when I'd think "what the heck?" when looking at some other's take on games--and that's the catch 22. On one hand we don't coax each other to giving higher or lower scores, on the other some person's who's a fanboy can give over-inflated scores.
Can you believe we gave Masters of Teras Kasi a 5.0? Wow.
Ok, this talk about good reviews=more money needs to be debunked.
If you know of any game companies that give money for positive reviews, lemme know, cus' I'm sure not getting any of that cut.
Magazines and online sites are driven by ads, and that's no surprise. What's more important to game companies is circulation numbers and exposure. Doesn't really matter if a game gets a "bad" review, if millions read that medium then it gives them that much more of an opportunity for companies to get exposure for their games.
Had Halo 2 been given a bad review, would it slow down sales? Probably not by much, if at all. Nor did bad reviews hinder the success of Cabela's Deer Hunter, Barbie Fashion Designer, or Zoo Tycoon. System Shock justifiably had great reviews, and did really poorly.
With ever-blossoming budgets that rival the movie industry, it's all in the packaging--timely press releases, etc. It's the same reasons that make mediocre movies like Van Helsing make millions. Ebert and Roper, Gamespot, Gamepro etc. isn't the impetus for success.
Scores bad? Reviews without scores aren't worth reading. I mean, how many people seriously read through the five (or eight pages with Halo 2) of all the blabbering with these online reviews? Many times I'll skip all the frivolous jabber of bump maps and just look at the score. Sometimes despite the issues there's some quality of the game that words can't describe that makes it a great game. And it's a concise way to assess what the reviewer thinks of the game.
Maybe a new editorial should spurt up of "What's wrong with reviews of video game reviews."
Whoa. I do work for Gamepro, *but*
The Genesis version was better than the SNES version, hands down. I bought both versions and played them extensively.
Controls were better, especially with the six-button controller (which along with the Saturn controller are still the best d-pad controllers, IMO)--SNES d-pads gave you blisters after awhile, and the L/R buttons were cumbersome.
Sounds sounded very raspy on the Genesis, yes. But the sounds themselves were a lot closer to the arcade version. I mean, in the SNES version the Jab, Strong, and Fierce Shoryuken each had a different pitch--unacceptable for Street Fighter arcade buffs. The Jab fireballs would go "Hadouuuuuuuken," while the Fierce went "Hdoken!" It sounded cheesy.
The Dhalsim stage music was downright bizzare in the SNES version, with the blaring horns and ear-blasting elephant sounds.
And as previously stated, the Genesis version felt more substantial. Graphics and sound were below that of the SNES version, but it more than made up for it with its great controls, closer music.
While I don't agree with all (or a lot) of reviews, online or print (Halo 2 scoring higher than Half-Life 2... huh???), that was one of the highlights of Gamepro in my opinion--didn't get sucked into just judging the aesthetic differences.
While it would be a surprise if a MGS4 didn't come out, I don't see how "create more games on the series" is a confirmation of a MGS4. It could be the Acid game that's coming out on December 16 in Japan for PSP, it could be an altogether different game. Of course Konami's not going to just dump their Metal Gear franchise.
The PSP comments are valid--a Sony rep at the Tokyo Game Show said the console will "allow for two hours of continuous play"--which kinda hints that games taxing on hardware (specifically in accessing the UMD disc) may have a very short lifespan.
Furthermore, the quality of Sony's disc-reading products (and products in general) are horrible--partially due to the fact that Sony made a shift from Japanese factories in the 90s to factories in Malayasia (while still retaining the high price tag). MD/CD Walkmans, PlayStation 2s, PlayStations break really easily, and frankly I don't trust the PSP at all to be any different.
The DS though, this guy's way off. Remakes? The touch screen LCD presents interesting opportunities for games, which will take time for developers to get used to. Granted, the first bunch of titles will make very little innovative use of the second screen (maps, status screens, etc), but there's a lot of untapped potential from a design perspective.
The GBA SP sells more than the PS2 in Japan and shows that people aren't getting weary of "new" handhelds--on the contrary it shows that unlike regular consoles (PS2, Xbox, GC) the handheld market doesn't seem to be plateauing into market saturation (as it seems to already have for home consoles, hence the launch of Xbox 2 in late 2005). Nokia has failed because the hardware itself isn't appealing, both aesthetically (QD included) and technically.
Comparisons to the Sega Dreamcast are horrible, because Nintendo is in a very different position than Sega years back. For one, Sega was already doing poorly in Japan with its Megadrive sales (though the Sega Genesis was successful stateside), and the Dreamcast suffered in terms of both consumer and developer support when launched. It's failure in Japan ultimately was the biggest blow to the fate of the console and ultimately the fate of the whole company, despite the Dreamcast being a good system.
Nintendo DS on the other hand, comes off the good reputation it has as a handheld console platform. Nintendo's not shortchanging marketing for this console's launch to, as it has pumped more money preparing its launch than any other previous system. Reception in Japan has been generally warm, as well as from journalists.
Maybe Nunavut thinks there's too many handhelds coming out too soon, but the consumer market won't.
First off, I'm one of those "evil" players that wants JTL in more than anything, and prefer that over the Combat Revamp. What's Star Wars if you're just landlocked and fighting critters and cavemen-looking Mokks?
However, I do feel for the veteran players (pretty new myself)--the combat revamp was thrown around back in the latter half of 2003, with Thunderheart promising that they were prioritizing work on it. Hence the recent 1000+ exodus.
Honestly, I'm not sure the combat rebalance would ever happen (at least, completely). Aside from staffing problems, corporate politics, the larger issue is that the combat system is in such utter disrepair that they'd have an overwhelming number of things to change. And each time they release a new publish, it just adds another layer to the things that they need to fix, especially with Jedis getting tweaked so much.
With the combat rebalance, not only do you have to change the almost impervious 90% resistant composite armor, but then you'd also have to change the doctors, who buff players so they can wear that armor. Then you gotta change all the monsters (mobs), who SOE adjusted in response to all the uber powerful armors and powerups (Death Watch Bunker, Corvette are some examples). Then you also have to change all the classes (Smuggler, Ranger, etc.) that are comparitively weak.
More than anything else, what can potentially ruin SWG is that you can become Jedis by following a quest system--there's already more Jedis in the game than you can point a stick at in the game, with publish 10 it'll only get worse. If 50% were clammoring for Jedis (as the interview said), then you'd potentially have 50% of the world swinging lightsabers around--if the game's supposed to take place between Episdoes IV and V where Jedi's are scarce or extinct, it totally destroys that universe.
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It's called autoattack. If you're a paladin you're very used to it.
The more magazines you print, the higher the advertising rates you charge because of the higher printing costs. So the more successful the magazine, the more ads you need to break even. A magazine cannot stay afloat without ads, it's that simple. A 50% sell-through would be considered highly successful--and even then that's 50% of wasted paper that the company has to pay for (even if that's a low 150,000 issues, that money adds up). To think that a magazine can exist without ads isn't grounded in reality.
Nor is your assumption that reviewers get all the games they want for free correct. I spent $50 bucks on F.E.A.R. just like anybody else, $15 bucks a month to see my Commando get rocked by Tera Kasi Masters in SWG, $15 bucks a month to grind end-game instances in World of Warcraft. There are notorious moochers in the industry, but even the worst moochers have to front money for some games, too.
The thing is, nobody wants to actually come out and say "XX mag is buying covers from YY." That includes Dan Hsu. As I mentioned in Games.net, the games industry is *tiny.* Everybody knows everybody else. Journalists switch from PR and back. Frankly he hasn't said anything, and I would venture to say he's afraid of the repercussions of doing so. In short, he himself doesn't want to open the can worms while saying he does. Industry integrity is weighed less than the potential of being blacklisted and avoided by every game publisher and developer.
As for reviews being bought, that's far less common and transparent than buying covers or buying coverage. Chances are, when you see an inflated score it's just a bad review by an overly enthused fan. That, or peer review bumps the score up or down a couple notches. The review process differs depending on each pub. For Gamepro, scores tend to go up as is from the reviewer (which means I've strongly disagreed with many a score--I think scores in general are too high)
Buying coverage rather than the opinion itself would probably be the more common temptation, as in "cover this story for this amount of ad dollars." Advertisers wave that over pub's heads--and with print ads in general slipping in favor of online, it's an increasing temptation to succumb to.
The SOE's fatal mistake made is that they don't to understand what makes WoW successful, and instead have destroyed what (little) was great about SWG. Mass market doesn't mean stupid, and unfortunately SWG has been reduced to a brainless grind as opposed to a complex grind (pre NGE). It's not just that WoW was simpler, it's that WoW was fun. SOE doesn't understand this, and try to make up for the lack of content with grinding. Ironically that's what Blizzard is doing now with endgame content (faction grinds, 40-man raids) because it takes less dev time to make a game a grind. But everything with WoW before level 60 is fun, even from a non-MMO standpoint. SOE just doesn't know how to make games fun. And they've killed the one thing that was superior to WoW: crafting. They could've kept at least one aspect, but choose to dumb down the whole game. To a previous poster: you are incorrect about the Asian MMO market. Asian MMOs, especially China (which is where most of the revenue comes for Lineage/Lineage II and its huge installbase) rely *not* on subscriptions, but on hour-based rates. Same with Korea, where gamers typically play at "PC-bangs" (Internet Cafes) instead of having a personal computer at home.
The problem is, if you're passionate enough about games to dedicate your life to it, you're bound to be a fanboy for certain genres and franchises. Some can't filter out their excessive interest for the game and give inflated scores.
If you're the "RPG guy" in the company, it's cus' you love RPGs ...so if some ultra nichey game like Growlanser or Tower of Druaga is reviewed, chances are you're more inclined to like it than most. Either that or you assign games to those with no interest in the genre, which you'll have readers ticked at you too.
It's just a matter of finding the right set of reviewers that'll give an objective account--and when some gamers write 150 page college thesis papers on Final Fantasy, it's harder than you'd imagine.
"Community" in SWG meant waiting 10 (later 5) minutes for the cursed shuttle to arrive in the starport and having absolutely nothing to do--forcing you to chat to pass the time. Or waiting 15 minutes to have a doctor buff you so you can wear the overpowered armor you bought--why social bonding of course.
Past MMOs were so dull that "community" had to be formed to prevent players from dying from boredom. Grinding the same frikkin mobs over and over (Quenkers for exp, Moks for money), the guild channel was the only thing sustaining your sanity.
"I'm just disappointed that we couldn't manage to do fun and innovative at the same time"
Me too.
Everquest II is selling, still has a dedicated userbase, but it didn't turn out to be the MMORPGs to end all MMORPGs--and therefore disappointing.
Being the dude who wrote the editorial, I'd like to point out something: The fact that games aren't original directly ties in to how EA treats its employees. But first, tech companies burning out their employees isn't new at all--big companies like Intel and Motorola routinely do it by hiring college grads and waving high salaries. So EA getting the wrap for being the most evil company in the world isn't exactly accurate. The only reason why you don't see such blogs getting recognition is because it's (sadly) in other tech fields and accepted as something that comes along with the job. It's a newer phenomena for video games. I think you're missing a point that was inferred from the article either--games *are* getting crappy *because* they are burning out the employees. How do you think a game such as Golden Eye: Rogue Agent has a 9-month dev time? Most games start out with high ambitions of being the next greatest thing. Penny-pinching EA puts a strangle hold on innovation because of the bottom line--enforcing insanely short development times and irresponsible work hours. Hence the mediocrity of Medal of Honor: Rising Sun and Pacific Assault. Or even Battle for Middle-Earth, which was a great game but didn't fully live up to its expectations. Originally the game was supposed to have morale, with human foot soldiers backing away as Trolls approached on their positions. That's the exact reason why the original Medal of Honor people left and created Call of Duty (though they haven't publically acknowledged it) Most, if not all EA games have really short dev times--when's the last time you heard a game that they spend 2-3 years developing on?
Neither are there supposed to be fist-fighting steroid users beating the crap out of guys with laser rifles.
Another problem is fanbase--with so many leaving, what you have left are the real hardcore fans--which like some of the [cough boring] aspects--steering the game in an increasingly fringe direction. That attributed to Jump to Lightspeed turning into a Nursery School playground, where TIEs and X-Wings peacefully fly by each other.
Plus balancing out the classes means really toning done the powerhouses that 90% of people choose--Tera Kasi. People were fuming when creature handlers got nerfed, they'll be going berserk when this happens. (No more knocking down AT-ST Walkers with fists and brass knuckles? An outrage.)
What the game should do is take some cues from World of Warcraft and make the factions more divided--like overt Rebels getting attacked by high level Imperial mobs if they go to Naboo. But ehhh, don't think that'd be happening either.
So much more of the game is broke, that there's not much that can bring the game back IMO. People never wear anything better than composite armor because weapons/armor eventually deteriorate beyond repair, so they keep valuable items as only trophies.
Dragon punch combos were especially difficult with the SNES--cancellations didn't quite work as well as they did on arcades or the Genesis. The timing for hitting the punch button for the dragon punch was closer to arcades in the Genesis version too--which is why you said you had a harder time on both the Genesis and arcade versions.
The point about the Dhalsim music was not that it sucked from a musical standpoint, but that the SNES version was really off compared to the Genesis version. Back in those days, unless it was done by someone like Yuzo Koshiro music was generally whack anyways.
Gamepro isn't the only mag to have made "confirmed" screwups--almost every media publication has made such "confirmations" that turned out to be wrong. You make your mistakes, and you learn.
As for editorial credibility, I think it's our reviews that could use the most improvement ...there will be times when I'd think "what the heck?" when looking at some other's take on games--and that's the catch 22. On one hand we don't coax each other to giving higher or lower scores, on the other some person's who's a fanboy can give over-inflated scores.
Can you believe we gave Masters of Teras Kasi a 5.0? Wow.
If you know of any game companies that give money for positive reviews, lemme know, cus' I'm sure not getting any of that cut.
Magazines and online sites are driven by ads, and that's no surprise. What's more important to game companies is circulation numbers and exposure. Doesn't really matter if a game gets a "bad" review, if millions read that medium then it gives them that much more of an opportunity for companies to get exposure for their games.
Had Halo 2 been given a bad review, would it slow down sales? Probably not by much, if at all. Nor did bad reviews hinder the success of Cabela's Deer Hunter, Barbie Fashion Designer, or Zoo Tycoon. System Shock justifiably had great reviews, and did really poorly.
With ever-blossoming budgets that rival the movie industry, it's all in the packaging--timely press releases, etc. It's the same reasons that make mediocre movies like Van Helsing make millions. Ebert and Roper, Gamespot, Gamepro etc. isn't the impetus for success.
Scores bad? Reviews without scores aren't worth reading. I mean, how many people seriously read through the five (or eight pages with Halo 2) of all the blabbering with these online reviews? Many times I'll skip all the frivolous jabber of bump maps and just look at the score. Sometimes despite the issues there's some quality of the game that words can't describe that makes it a great game. And it's a concise way to assess what the reviewer thinks of the game.
Maybe a new editorial should spurt up of "What's wrong with reviews of video game reviews."
Whoa. I do work for Gamepro, *but* The Genesis version was better than the SNES version, hands down. I bought both versions and played them extensively. Controls were better, especially with the six-button controller (which along with the Saturn controller are still the best d-pad controllers, IMO)--SNES d-pads gave you blisters after awhile, and the L/R buttons were cumbersome. Sounds sounded very raspy on the Genesis, yes. But the sounds themselves were a lot closer to the arcade version. I mean, in the SNES version the Jab, Strong, and Fierce Shoryuken each had a different pitch--unacceptable for Street Fighter arcade buffs. The Jab fireballs would go "Hadouuuuuuuken," while the Fierce went "Hdoken!" It sounded cheesy. The Dhalsim stage music was downright bizzare in the SNES version, with the blaring horns and ear-blasting elephant sounds. And as previously stated, the Genesis version felt more substantial. Graphics and sound were below that of the SNES version, but it more than made up for it with its great controls, closer music. While I don't agree with all (or a lot) of reviews, online or print (Halo 2 scoring higher than Half-Life 2... huh???), that was one of the highlights of Gamepro in my opinion--didn't get sucked into just judging the aesthetic differences.
While it would be a surprise if a MGS4 didn't come out, I don't see how "create more games on the series" is a confirmation of a MGS4. It could be the Acid game that's coming out on December 16 in Japan for PSP, it could be an altogether different game. Of course Konami's not going to just dump their Metal Gear franchise.
Furthermore, the quality of Sony's disc-reading products (and products in general) are horrible--partially due to the fact that Sony made a shift from Japanese factories in the 90s to factories in Malayasia (while still retaining the high price tag). MD/CD Walkmans, PlayStation 2s, PlayStations break really easily, and frankly I don't trust the PSP at all to be any different.
The DS though, this guy's way off. Remakes? The touch screen LCD presents interesting opportunities for games, which will take time for developers to get used to. Granted, the first bunch of titles will make very little innovative use of the second screen (maps, status screens, etc), but there's a lot of untapped potential from a design perspective.
The GBA SP sells more than the PS2 in Japan and shows that people aren't getting weary of "new" handhelds--on the contrary it shows that unlike regular consoles (PS2, Xbox, GC) the handheld market doesn't seem to be plateauing into market saturation (as it seems to already have for home consoles, hence the launch of Xbox 2 in late 2005). Nokia has failed because the hardware itself isn't appealing, both aesthetically (QD included) and technically.
Comparisons to the Sega Dreamcast are horrible, because Nintendo is in a very different position than Sega years back. For one, Sega was already doing poorly in Japan with its Megadrive sales (though the Sega Genesis was successful stateside), and the Dreamcast suffered in terms of both consumer and developer support when launched. It's failure in Japan ultimately was the biggest blow to the fate of the console and ultimately the fate of the whole company, despite the Dreamcast being a good system.
Nintendo DS on the other hand, comes off the good reputation it has as a handheld console platform. Nintendo's not shortchanging marketing for this console's launch to, as it has pumped more money preparing its launch than any other previous system. Reception in Japan has been generally warm, as well as from journalists.
Maybe Nunavut thinks there's too many handhelds coming out too soon, but the consumer market won't.
However, I do feel for the veteran players (pretty new myself)--the combat revamp was thrown around back in the latter half of 2003, with Thunderheart promising that they were prioritizing work on it. Hence the recent 1000+ exodus.
Honestly, I'm not sure the combat rebalance would ever happen (at least, completely). Aside from staffing problems, corporate politics, the larger issue is that the combat system is in such utter disrepair that they'd have an overwhelming number of things to change. And each time they release a new publish, it just adds another layer to the things that they need to fix, especially with Jedis getting tweaked so much.
With the combat rebalance, not only do you have to change the almost impervious 90% resistant composite armor, but then you'd also have to change the doctors, who buff players so they can wear that armor. Then you gotta change all the monsters (mobs), who SOE adjusted in response to all the uber powerful armors and powerups (Death Watch Bunker, Corvette are some examples). Then you also have to change all the classes (Smuggler, Ranger, etc.) that are comparitively weak.
More than anything else, what can potentially ruin SWG is that you can become Jedis by following a quest system--there's already more Jedis in the game than you can point a stick at in the game, with publish 10 it'll only get worse. If 50% were clammoring for Jedis (as the interview said), then you'd potentially have 50% of the world swinging lightsabers around--if the game's supposed to take place between Episdoes IV and V where Jedi's are scarce or extinct, it totally destroys that universe.