large game development studios are as risk-adverse as the movie and music industry. They're going to go the safe route--do the things nintendo has done successfully.
I think that is both true and false: The third parties are indeed behaving like that but their assumption that cloning Nintendo's work is safe is completely wrong. They're going up against possibly THE best game developer ever with games that aren't even remotely near their regular quality standard, that's about as safe as covering yourself in barbecue sauce and jump naked into the lion cage at the local zoo. I think commonly cited standout hits are Carnival Games and Just Dance, does Nintendo have anything like that? No! The main draws of these two games are not present in Nintendo's library at all. I guess actually looking at the market and looking for reasons for how it's behaving is too much work for executives who were successful for decades by simply repeating "same procedure as last year".
They don't buy fewer games, the attach rate is similar to the PS3. Third parties have trouble selling games because their main product is not competitive and they've developed a reputation as producers of inferior goods.
Companies have been doing free online on the PC for ages. Setting up a matchmaking server that connects people into their own P2P matches and then forgets about them isn't that expensive.
Do you realize that the Wii just had its best Christmas sales-wise due to New Super Mario Bros Wii?
Third parties abandoning the Wii does not mean the Wii is suffering, for the most part these third parties have been completely useless and only producing garbage that hurts the Wii more than it helps.
Nintendo isn't very hostile anymore, especially not enough to make ignoring half the console market worth it. Third parties only make godawful games for the Wii to prey on "stupid casuals" while putting anything worth buying on the 360 and PS3, then they proclaim that third party games don't sell on the Wii. I don't know if they honestly believe the bullshit they've been spouting but they act like Nintendo is some magical being that does not follow the rules of the market that the rest of the world follows and is inherently the only company capable of making games sell on the Wii. No matter how many stupid prejudices you have about the Wii userbase, there should be no reason that the next big thing on the system can't be made by a third party instead of Nintendo but the third parties don't think of ideas like Wii Fit until Nintendo does it first, grabs the whole market and shows them how it's done properly (at which point third parties will release shoddy knockoffs that will not convince anybody to buy a non-Nintendo game). If you only offer products that have been done before and better how do you expect to compete?
For visualization, look at these lists and imagine you aren't informed as to which games are good, wouldn't you likely end up with a few duds and associate those company names with crap? I've seen user reviews on Amazon for a shitty Wii Sports knockoff by Activision and these "non-gamers" swore to never buy a game from Activision again because they felt cheated out of their money. Is that how you develop a positive brand image?
I agree with most overhyped but I've been a PC gamer for a long time, if you think MW2 was anywhere near the most unbalanced or glitchiest AAA PC title you're coddled by modern games. I remember when we had to get patches just to make the installer work.
Didn't the BNetD ruling mean that these servers are vulnerable to lawsuits? Sure, most companies aren't jackasses on a level that they'd sue you over serving obsolete games but some just might be.
Newer games aren't always better, some just don't have more modern replacements. Sometimes the replacements are of lower quality (ask any Deus Ex fan...).
Yeah, "loads of cheap e-books". We're talking about 10$ a piece, iTunes App Store programs tend to be an order of magnitude cheaper and we don't see any industry people trying to "kill it to save the developers".
Console games love making one of the players the host instead of using dedicated servers and some games are even bringing that over to the PC (I thought it was fine in DoW2, not so much in MW2).
it's bad enough I have a Nintendo, Super Nintendo, PS3 and a Wii hooked up to my TV. I'm running out of input jacks to plug things in.
I'm using a scart hub for the older systems (the Wii is running on component and the 360 on HDMI), causes a bit of trouble with those stupid standby-only approaches some systems take (the PS2 slim I have can only be brought out of standby by pulling the plug and will interfere with the audio on other systems on the hub) but overall prevents me from having to climb behind the TV all the time.
I hate adaptive AIs, when I run against something over and over that means I want to develop the skills to beat it instead of it giving in because it doesn't want me to struggle.
Sometimes pushing yourself to the limit and trying to figure out just how the fuck you're supposed to beat that is a part of the game's fun. Some multiplayer games feel like stupid repetition unless you deal with someone of an appropriately high skill. E.g. RTSes aren't really much fun if all you do is amass a gigantic army and then attack move over anything of a different color, they are much more fun when you have to balance your constraints like resources and leaving yourself open in the hope that your opponent cannot capitalize on it fast enough.
I got annoyed at the first boss because I didn't manage to get past the third part and every death meant I had to repeat the first and second parts which were pure puzzle parts that are trivial once you know how to beat them. Hard is fine, wasting my time with piss-easy stuff before the parts that actually challenge me is not.
The AI in AI War is pretty much cheating (its units act like yours but it has no resources or unit caps to worry about) but then again using your brains to surgically exploit its weaknesses and beat a threat that could crush you if it ever took you seriously is kinda the point of the game. Make the AI really angry and you'll have an army that you couldn't even remotely obtain yourself annihilating your systems in no time.
Many casual games are an endless highscore hunt that has you struggling until you die, I wouldn't call that easy. Casual gamers develop extreme proficiency at their games like Tetris or Bejeweled. It's the hardcore games that are easy, they are more designed around the spectacle and story now and that's stuff that you can't make the player replay so having him die often and replay scenes over and over again is seen as a bad thing. I don't know about you but to me a game where even a minimally skilled person can make progress past the next checkpoint and thus beat the game slowly but surely without any practicing is an easy game.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe there have already been successes with stem cell-based teeth regrowing.
Don't rush them or the first models will emit an ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmminous hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
large game development studios are as risk-adverse as the movie and music industry. They're going to go the safe route--do the things nintendo has done successfully.
I think that is both true and false: The third parties are indeed behaving like that but their assumption that cloning Nintendo's work is safe is completely wrong. They're going up against possibly THE best game developer ever with games that aren't even remotely near their regular quality standard, that's about as safe as covering yourself in barbecue sauce and jump naked into the lion cage at the local zoo. I think commonly cited standout hits are Carnival Games and Just Dance, does Nintendo have anything like that? No! The main draws of these two games are not present in Nintendo's library at all. I guess actually looking at the market and looking for reasons for how it's behaving is too much work for executives who were successful for decades by simply repeating "same procedure as last year".
They don't buy fewer games, the attach rate is similar to the PS3. Third parties have trouble selling games because their main product is not competitive and they've developed a reputation as producers of inferior goods.
Companies have been doing free online on the PC for ages. Setting up a matchmaking server that connects people into their own P2P matches and then forgets about them isn't that expensive.
Cracking is slightly different from being handed it on a silver platter, cracking can be intercepted by counter-intelligence.
And the NES....?
Market leader consoles live longer.
Do you realize that the Wii just had its best Christmas sales-wise due to New Super Mario Bros Wii?
Third parties abandoning the Wii does not mean the Wii is suffering, for the most part these third parties have been completely useless and only producing garbage that hurts the Wii more than it helps.
Nintendo isn't very hostile anymore, especially not enough to make ignoring half the console market worth it. Third parties only make godawful games for the Wii to prey on "stupid casuals" while putting anything worth buying on the 360 and PS3, then they proclaim that third party games don't sell on the Wii. I don't know if they honestly believe the bullshit they've been spouting but they act like Nintendo is some magical being that does not follow the rules of the market that the rest of the world follows and is inherently the only company capable of making games sell on the Wii. No matter how many stupid prejudices you have about the Wii userbase, there should be no reason that the next big thing on the system can't be made by a third party instead of Nintendo but the third parties don't think of ideas like Wii Fit until Nintendo does it first, grabs the whole market and shows them how it's done properly (at which point third parties will release shoddy knockoffs that will not convince anybody to buy a non-Nintendo game). If you only offer products that have been done before and better how do you expect to compete?
For visualization, look at these lists and imagine you aren't informed as to which games are good, wouldn't you likely end up with a few duds and associate those company names with crap? I've seen user reviews on Amazon for a shitty Wii Sports knockoff by Activision and these "non-gamers" swore to never buy a game from Activision again because they felt cheated out of their money. Is that how you develop a positive brand image?
I agree with most overhyped but I've been a PC gamer for a long time, if you think MW2 was anywhere near the most unbalanced or glitchiest AAA PC title you're coddled by modern games. I remember when we had to get patches just to make the installer work.
If you bought it at the right store you got a pricedrop in the first few weeks it was out. I hear the UK had a serious price war over MW2.
Didn't the BNetD ruling mean that these servers are vulnerable to lawsuits? Sure, most companies aren't jackasses on a level that they'd sue you over serving obsolete games but some just might be.
Newer games aren't always better, some just don't have more modern replacements. Sometimes the replacements are of lower quality (ask any Deus Ex fan...).
Yeah, "loads of cheap e-books". We're talking about 10$ a piece, iTunes App Store programs tend to be an order of magnitude cheaper and we don't see any industry people trying to "kill it to save the developers".
How about those game licenses that people pay for because they'd rather get the version of the game that doesn't require a monthly fee to play online?
Console games love making one of the players the host instead of using dedicated servers and some games are even bringing that over to the PC (I thought it was fine in DoW2, not so much in MW2).
it's bad enough I have a Nintendo, Super Nintendo, PS3 and a Wii hooked up to my TV. I'm running out of input jacks to plug things in.
I'm using a scart hub for the older systems (the Wii is running on component and the 360 on HDMI), causes a bit of trouble with those stupid standby-only approaches some systems take (the PS2 slim I have can only be brought out of standby by pulling the plug and will interfere with the audio on other systems on the hub) but overall prevents me from having to climb behind the TV all the time.
I hate adaptive AIs, when I run against something over and over that means I want to develop the skills to beat it instead of it giving in because it doesn't want me to struggle.
Sometimes pushing yourself to the limit and trying to figure out just how the fuck you're supposed to beat that is a part of the game's fun. Some multiplayer games feel like stupid repetition unless you deal with someone of an appropriately high skill. E.g. RTSes aren't really much fun if all you do is amass a gigantic army and then attack move over anything of a different color, they are much more fun when you have to balance your constraints like resources and leaving yourself open in the hope that your opponent cannot capitalize on it fast enough.
I got annoyed at the first boss because I didn't manage to get past the third part and every death meant I had to repeat the first and second parts which were pure puzzle parts that are trivial once you know how to beat them. Hard is fine, wasting my time with piss-easy stuff before the parts that actually challenge me is not.
The AI in AI War is pretty much cheating (its units act like yours but it has no resources or unit caps to worry about) but then again using your brains to surgically exploit its weaknesses and beat a threat that could crush you if it ever took you seriously is kinda the point of the game. Make the AI really angry and you'll have an army that you couldn't even remotely obtain yourself annihilating your systems in no time.
Can you point at example games?
Many casual games are an endless highscore hunt that has you struggling until you die, I wouldn't call that easy. Casual gamers develop extreme proficiency at their games like Tetris or Bejeweled. It's the hardcore games that are easy, they are more designed around the spectacle and story now and that's stuff that you can't make the player replay so having him die often and replay scenes over and over again is seen as a bad thing. I don't know about you but to me a game where even a minimally skilled person can make progress past the next checkpoint and thus beat the game slowly but surely without any practicing is an easy game.
I wouldn't say no to a horse burger.
Doesn't seem like that was actually a part of his job, he was just blackmailing them with information he misappropriated from work.