Unless the game actually involves Nazis it's unlikely that that has anything to do with WW2 amends. There are simply laws against glorifying violence (which for games means encouraging the player to be cruel or brutal) and there are strict rating systems (with the highest rating meaning it cannot be shown outside of 18+ areas that minors cannot enter). Most so-called bans are actually just the highest rating which for console games means the console manufacturer won't allow the game's release, actual bans are pretty rare (publishers know to avoid nazi images anyway so the only limit they can run into is if the game is REALLY violent, like Manhunt which encourages killing enemies in the most brutal ways possible). You can do a whole lot before you get the highest rating and you can still go a way from there to a legal ban.
Nope, violent games have always been subject to indexing and bans. I'm not sure Dead Space really got banned, could just have gotten indexed (no advertising allowed, includes putting the game on a shelf outside an 18-only area) but console manufacturers block indexed games completely.
Usually it's not just how the violence is depicted but what the context is, if the player is encouraged to be unnecessarily cruel that ups the chance of a block, if killing isn't even necessary to proceed (e.g. in a stealth game) the chance goes down. Having to maim an enemy to kill him certainly won't go down well.
As for the shovelware, the PS2 didn't get as much shovelware until Sony revised their requirements of the Ps2 devs _after_ the Ps3 launch (or near to it.)
You're American? SCEA had a no-shovelware policy but the rest of the world saw piles upon piles of it before the PS3 was even announced.
Nintendo used to have a tight leash on quality with their other consoles... I don't understand why they don't now...
It destroyed their relationships with third parties and those wounds still haven't healed. Nintendo has a hard time getting third parties to invest money into developing Wii games, telling them to fuck off when the game doesn't meet some no-shovelware standards isn't going to help (publishers seem to grasp at any reason to stop supporting Nintendo and if it's just shovelware not getting released).
Sony's market approval process per region probably forgoes some good niche titles over here, but even a well-received title that sells poorly doesn't bode well in shareholder's eyes I guess... so they try to only pick the "big sellers" (and they sometimes miss that boat as well... heh.) But letting mostly garbage in to get 1 or 2 great titles that are diamonds in the rough (so to speak) is not a good strategy for any of the game console companies to have, considering the lack of shelf space now...
Stores allocate shelf space to titles they expect to sell independent of how many other non-selling titles there are, they know what's niche and don't stock many copies of that. The likes of Ninjabread Man don't really take shelf space from games like Smash Bros.
Also with the Wii it's hard to tell what will sell and what not, Carnival Games would usually have failed a shovelware test but it sold like hotcakes. Does it make sense to block a game that could be a megaseller because it doesn't look like one according to traditional standards?
(Not pre-announcing the enhancement to the Wiimote to 3rd parties? LucasArts is pissed...)
I'm not sure there even was something to announce before they did, the thing's still far away so it's possible this was the point where they'd usually reveal it to developers only but instead they made it public.
Another aspect is that many people expected MS or Sony to unveil their own Wiimote knockoff at E3, by announcing the improvement shortly beforehand any such announcement would look outdated and the competitor wouldn't even have time to make up some bullshit about how they got their own version of that in the works. Unveiling the thing to third parties would be the same as telling the competition about it so they might have had to keep it secret.
(and get some QC on the shovelware... it's bringing the brand down...)
Not much they can do, telling third parties they can't release really bad games would just cause a backlash. They already check for some technical issues but vetoing something because it's shovelware isn't a good idea. Most of the shovelware was ported from the PS2 anyway so it went through Sony's approval process just fine. Sony has harsher requirements in the US, blocking e.g. the whole Simple 2000 series. While that's mostly garbage it kept the Earth Defense Force games out of the US until the third game came to the XBox 360.
Interestingly I see the "toy chest" pop up in fitness and sports related contexts (e.g. events held by various fitness tool stores tend to have Wiis present too) while the competitive device is nowhere to be seen outside of the entertainment context. Just to put those terms into perspective. The 360 and PS3 are for basement dwellers like us, the Wii is for average people too.
the Arcade is also a high-def console, an up-converting DVD player, and a high-def Media Center Extender. As a result, potential Wii buyers might be looking at the these Arcade features that the Wii lacks.
No.
People who are looking for a Wii are not looking for a DVD player, a HD console or a media center, they're looking for a system that plays games like Wii Sports and Wii Fit. It's completely irrelevant what extra features the 360 has, it lacks the very things people buy a Wii for.
In fact the Wii's success comes from realizing that all these extra features aren't really relevant and are more than most users can process anyway. By removing the unnecessary features and instead offering a major feature that any user can handle they gave the Wii a popular selling point the competition couldn't scratch while making the competition's selling points irrelevant to the market.
Counting previous generation sales isn't terribly helpful since those consoles have been on the market several times longer than the ones we're looking at now and a comparison in performance isn't really meaningful until the current consoles have reached the end of their life. What makes more sense to look at is how the old big consoles sold at which point in their life and how the new consoles compare (i.e. if they're on track to reach the same EOL sales).
Apparently this is one of the problems with the Wii is that very few people buy very many games for and most of the games purchased for it ARE Nintendo first party games.
The Wii has a nice price point, likely to drop now I think in wake of moves by the other two
I doubt that, they have no reason to drop it. The Wii doesn't have to be the cheapest system on the block since it's the only system of its class (appeals to groups outside the standard gamer group)
As to graphical limitations of the Wii, it should be entirely possible for them to take the higher resolution models/textures/etc. and down samplle them very nicely to something suitable to other less "powerful" platforms.
Automatic polygon reduction is messy and shaders can change the approach taken for texturing. Most companies aren't trying to get normalmapping running on the Wii and just give it a PSP port.
The tie-in ratio isn't that much different from other consoles if NPD is to be believed. The brave company part comes in because few companies actually know how to make a successful Wii game since you can't just take an old genre and slap it on the system, the userbase has expectations that differ from those on previous consoles. Hence games like Carnival Games sell big while more traditional titles fall flat. The good news is that it seems the new values are cheaper to develop for than the old values so if you land a hit it's worth a lot of money.
The price won't do anything with the Wii, most Wii purchases are to people who don't care about the XBox anyway. The Wii has reached people who don't usually play videogames, those people aren't going to get a regular videogame instead.
Price only means something when comparing the XBox and PS3 since those two are interchangeable to some degree, for most of the buyers a Wii isn't.
Note that you are talking about the weather, not the climate. Predicting tomorrow's weather is hard, predicting tomorrow's climate is trivial ("same as today" is a good guess).
Which really is a good thing, the last thing anyone wants is having to read the back of a console game box to see if their console meets the requirements.
What the comments also mention that the article left out was that they did have a court order or 52. A court has reviewed the complaint and found it valid enough to warrant a search.
People are no longer interested in nationalist dickwagging, at least not when it costs money. China has the usual totalitarian desire to look advanced and builds loads of expensive stuff just for the bragging rights, I guess the US is past that stage and just does things in ways that work rather than doing things in the most spectacular manner to get some attention.
The average gamer age went up massively since the Wii got released. Either way, many of the most popular games these days (PopCap stuff and such) are highscore hunts so I don't think constant progress is really a requirement for most people.
Slashdot Mirror
It got rated in Australia (their highest rating is 15, anything above is banned) so I don't think the USK will refuse to rate it then.
Unless the game actually involves Nazis it's unlikely that that has anything to do with WW2 amends. There are simply laws against glorifying violence (which for games means encouraging the player to be cruel or brutal) and there are strict rating systems (with the highest rating meaning it cannot be shown outside of 18+ areas that minors cannot enter). Most so-called bans are actually just the highest rating which for console games means the console manufacturer won't allow the game's release, actual bans are pretty rare (publishers know to avoid nazi images anyway so the only limit they can run into is if the game is REALLY violent, like Manhunt which encourages killing enemies in the most brutal ways possible). You can do a whole lot before you get the highest rating and you can still go a way from there to a legal ban.
Nope, violent games have always been subject to indexing and bans. I'm not sure Dead Space really got banned, could just have gotten indexed (no advertising allowed, includes putting the game on a shelf outside an 18-only area) but console manufacturers block indexed games completely.
Usually it's not just how the violence is depicted but what the context is, if the player is encouraged to be unnecessarily cruel that ups the chance of a block, if killing isn't even necessary to proceed (e.g. in a stealth game) the chance goes down. Having to maim an enemy to kill him certainly won't go down well.
I wouldn't, I don't know Kung-Fu, I can't rip a minotaurus head off with my bare hands, I probably can't even hit a target with an assault rifle.
As for the shovelware, the PS2 didn't get as much shovelware until Sony revised their requirements of the Ps2 devs _after_ the Ps3 launch (or near to it.)
You're American? SCEA had a no-shovelware policy but the rest of the world saw piles upon piles of it before the PS3 was even announced.
Nintendo used to have a tight leash on quality with their other consoles... I don't understand why they don't now...
It destroyed their relationships with third parties and those wounds still haven't healed. Nintendo has a hard time getting third parties to invest money into developing Wii games, telling them to fuck off when the game doesn't meet some no-shovelware standards isn't going to help (publishers seem to grasp at any reason to stop supporting Nintendo and if it's just shovelware not getting released).
Sony's market approval process per region probably forgoes some good niche titles over here, but even a well-received title that sells poorly doesn't bode well in shareholder's eyes I guess... so they try to only pick the "big sellers" (and they sometimes miss that boat as well... heh.) But letting mostly garbage in to get 1 or 2 great titles that are diamonds in the rough (so to speak) is not a good strategy for any of the game console companies to have, considering the lack of shelf space now...
Stores allocate shelf space to titles they expect to sell independent of how many other non-selling titles there are, they know what's niche and don't stock many copies of that. The likes of Ninjabread Man don't really take shelf space from games like Smash Bros.
Also with the Wii it's hard to tell what will sell and what not, Carnival Games would usually have failed a shovelware test but it sold like hotcakes. Does it make sense to block a game that could be a megaseller because it doesn't look like one according to traditional standards?
Sony's CEO Stringer already admitted that was a bad idea (for the PS3), will MS follow suit?
(Not pre-announcing the enhancement to the Wiimote to 3rd parties? LucasArts is pissed...)
I'm not sure there even was something to announce before they did, the thing's still far away so it's possible this was the point where they'd usually reveal it to developers only but instead they made it public.
Another aspect is that many people expected MS or Sony to unveil their own Wiimote knockoff at E3, by announcing the improvement shortly beforehand any such announcement would look outdated and the competitor wouldn't even have time to make up some bullshit about how they got their own version of that in the works. Unveiling the thing to third parties would be the same as telling the competition about it so they might have had to keep it secret.
(and get some QC on the shovelware... it's bringing the brand down...)
Not much they can do, telling third parties they can't release really bad games would just cause a backlash. They already check for some technical issues but vetoing something because it's shovelware isn't a good idea. Most of the shovelware was ported from the PS2 anyway so it went through Sony's approval process just fine. Sony has harsher requirements in the US, blocking e.g. the whole Simple 2000 series. While that's mostly garbage it kept the Earth Defense Force games out of the US until the third game came to the XBox 360.
Interestingly I see the "toy chest" pop up in fitness and sports related contexts (e.g. events held by various fitness tool stores tend to have Wiis present too) while the competitive device is nowhere to be seen outside of the entertainment context. Just to put those terms into perspective. The 360 and PS3 are for basement dwellers like us, the Wii is for average people too.
the Arcade is also a high-def console, an up-converting DVD player, and a high-def Media Center Extender. As a result, potential Wii buyers might be looking at the these Arcade features that the Wii lacks.
No.
People who are looking for a Wii are not looking for a DVD player, a HD console or a media center, they're looking for a system that plays games like Wii Sports and Wii Fit. It's completely irrelevant what extra features the 360 has, it lacks the very things people buy a Wii for.
In fact the Wii's success comes from realizing that all these extra features aren't really relevant and are more than most users can process anyway. By removing the unnecessary features and instead offering a major feature that any user can handle they gave the Wii a popular selling point the competition couldn't scratch while making the competition's selling points irrelevant to the market.
Counting previous generation sales isn't terribly helpful since those consoles have been on the market several times longer than the ones we're looking at now and a comparison in performance isn't really meaningful until the current consoles have reached the end of their life. What makes more sense to look at is how the old big consoles sold at which point in their life and how the new consoles compare (i.e. if they're on track to reach the same EOL sales).
Apparently this is one of the problems with the Wii is that very few people buy very many games for and most of the games purchased for it ARE Nintendo first party games.
There's still plenty left for third parties.
The Wii has a nice price point, likely to drop now I think in wake of moves by the other two
I doubt that, they have no reason to drop it. The Wii doesn't have to be the cheapest system on the block since it's the only system of its class (appeals to groups outside the standard gamer group)
As to graphical limitations of the Wii, it should be entirely possible for them to take the higher resolution models/textures/etc. and down samplle them very nicely to something suitable to other less "powerful" platforms.
Automatic polygon reduction is messy and shaders can change the approach taken for texturing. Most companies aren't trying to get normalmapping running on the Wii and just give it a PSP port.
The tie-in ratio isn't that much different from other consoles if NPD is to be believed. The brave company part comes in because few companies actually know how to make a successful Wii game since you can't just take an old genre and slap it on the system, the userbase has expectations that differ from those on previous consoles. Hence games like Carnival Games sell big while more traditional titles fall flat. The good news is that it seems the new values are cheaper to develop for than the old values so if you land a hit it's worth a lot of money.
The price won't do anything with the Wii, most Wii purchases are to people who don't care about the XBox anyway. The Wii has reached people who don't usually play videogames, those people aren't going to get a regular videogame instead.
Price only means something when comparing the XBox and PS3 since those two are interchangeable to some degree, for most of the buyers a Wii isn't.
Actually MMOs (or at least WoW) are the most likely online game you'd find girls in. Now, girls playing Halo...
Note that you are talking about the weather, not the climate. Predicting tomorrow's weather is hard, predicting tomorrow's climate is trivial ("same as today" is a good guess).
And water cycles pretty damn fast, making it more relevant to the weather than the climate.
I think we can just look at the sun itself to figure out whether it's radiating more...
There is no Poland, there is only the Reich!
Which really is a good thing, the last thing anyone wants is having to read the back of a console game box to see if their console meets the requirements.
I guess the whole action deal is why so many people consider adventures a dead genre.
Silly AC, they're using online auctions these days!
What the comments also mention that the article left out was that they did have a court order or 52. A court has reviewed the complaint and found it valid enough to warrant a search.
Yes but what about the People's Front of Earth?
People are no longer interested in nationalist dickwagging, at least not when it costs money. China has the usual totalitarian desire to look advanced and builds loads of expensive stuff just for the bragging rights, I guess the US is past that stage and just does things in ways that work rather than doing things in the most spectacular manner to get some attention.
The average gamer age went up massively since the Wii got released. Either way, many of the most popular games these days (PopCap stuff and such) are highscore hunts so I don't think constant progress is really a requirement for most people.