I couldn't agree with you more. It seems to me like micropayments are just a scheme to slowly suck the life out of customers without them realizing it.
I'm a huge fan of The Elder Scrolls series, but I haven't downloaded a single one of the official plug-ins for Oblivion. It's not that I don't want them, and it's not that I can't afford them, but rather, I don't want to encourage Bethesda to get involved with episodic content. Granted, Oblivion is DEFINITELY a complete game, but I'd be devastated if Elder Scrolls V cost $50 for the gameworld, and then required you to pay a dollar to unlock each individual quest (This is an exaggeration, but the point is valid).
While episodic content and minor, regular payments may not seem bad now, if more devs end up considering it a worthwhile business plan, I guarantee you that some companies will alter games, withhold content that was going to be in the original release, lock off entire gamemodes, and so on, just to increase the frequency of those small payments.
If I pay for a game, I want the whole game.
As for advertising ingame, if I'm flying around in outerspace, I don't want to fly past billboards for X3. Furthermore, if my spaceship gets shot down, I don't want to receive a communication from the hostiles saying "Uh-oh, better get MAACO!"
While advertisements make sense in games taking place in a MODERN SETTING, it's just absolutely ridiculous and completely harmful to the immersion of fantasy or sci-fi games.
I applaud Iwata's stance on the subject, and look forward to a great console generation with the Wii:)
After nearly falling asleep while watching Sony's conference, Nintendo's was a breath of fresh air. The games they had on show looked great, and looked like they played great. They actually had something significant to show! It was awesome, plain and simple. I think Nintendo's really got the goods this generation. I just wish we could've seen a price.
Also, I'm very happy that there's going to be a Fire Emblem game for Wii:)
Pikmin 2 is full of in-game advertising, and it actually kind of adds to the game's narrative. Modern-day Earth products are lying around everywhere, implying that the game takes place on a post-apocalyptic Earth, after the entire human race got so fed up with ubiquitous advertisements that it killed itself just to get away from it all.
I'm personally hoping that Nintendo will announce a Fire Emblem game for DS at E3. Fire Emblem has quickly become one of my favorite game series in general (not just favorite strategy RPG series), and I haven't heard about any projects Intelligent Systems has been working on since Advance Wars DS and Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, so I'm very optimistic that we'll be hearing about a new Fire Emblem come May.
The NPCs in the game really are entertaining. I once walked into an inn once just as a fight was breaking out between two NPCs. They fought for a good 3 minutes, a battle that took them all the way to the top floor of the inn, before one of them finally fell. The victor (and aggressor) then looted the valuables from the corpse, and fled.
Another great story involves something my friend did the other night. He got the owner of a shop to like him a lot through bribery, and then snuck through the store, stealing various items. He wasn't seen by the shop's owner, but when he left the shop, he got confronted by a guard. He resisted arrest, and shortly after his fight with the guard began, his friend, the shop owner, ran outside and fought alongside him against the guard.
The NPCs are far from perfect, but they sure are a huge step up from Morrowind's talking statues.
I can't stress enough the sheer multiplayer bliss that can be found in the first Super Monkey Ball. It's a game that gets played a lot whenever my family gets together.
Particularly the minigame "Monkey Target." No matter your skill level, you can have loads of fun; the game is competitive, but in a way that doesn't make it less fun if you get completely obliterated by your opponent. The sounds, colors, and animations make it easy to laugh about doing poorly, to the point where you don't even care who wins or loses. It's a lot of fun, either way.
Plus, the cute graphics will probably make it easy for your girlfriend to get into.
They just don't like rip offs (see Grand Theft Auto v. True Crime, Final Fantasy v. Shadowhearts, etc.)
I don't know if you've actually played Shadow Hearts, but it's NOTHING like any Final Fantasy game I've played. It's actually got a fresh setting for a JRPG (The first two take place during World War I. That's right, in the real world), and a great battle system that requires some reflexes, so you can't just depend on the menu selections.
Sure, there are some RPG cliches in there, plotwise, but it's honestly one of the few RPGs that manage to make you care about the characters while STILL having a sense of humor (and none of that anime-cutesy-crap humor that pollutes so many Japanese RPGs). If you never played Shadow Hearts 2 and wrote the series off as a Final Fantasy rip-off, I urge you to reconsider and try it. I guarantee that you won't be disappointed.
Hell, I'd even go as far to say it's better than any Final Fantasy game I played (save for maybe 6; but the newer FF games pale in comparison to the Shadow Hearts games).
I really hope Shadow of the Colossus wins game of the year. Admittedly, I haven't gotten around to playing God of War yet, but my friend said it wasn't as good as the hype would lead one to believe.
As for best writing? I think Psychonauts really deserves to win for that category. While the gameplay could get a little dull on occasion, the writing was always fresh and quirky.
On a related note, I felt that the writing for Indigo Prophecy really started to fall apart once the actual "Indigo Prophecy" was introduced in the plot. The main character inexplicably gained Matrix-esque superpowers, and it just felt cheap. All character interactions past that point felt really unlikely for the characters that the game had spent so much time building, and I was left extremely disappointed.
What if Nintendo's strategy was to make an announcement that they're hiding a Revolution feature that will change the gaming world, then go onto the intarweb, read peoples' speculation, pick the best ideas, and implement them?
Seriously, they've announced features, without actually announcing what they are, about three times now since the Revolution was first announced.
This doesn't really come as a surprise, considering Takahashi has said numerous times that he doesn't even really like video games that much.
Nonetheless, it's kind of disappointing to see Takahashi, someone who came out of literally nowhere to deliver something completely unique to the industry, leaving it.
"...and of course with Morrowind they released expansion packs which were not available on XBox as far as I know."
The expansions were released on XBox in the form of the Game of the Year edition, which was a compilation of Morrowind, Tribunal, and Bloodmoon. So, XBox owners had an option, if they were willing to pay for the game all over again.
I, too, would recommend buying PC versions of TES games, due to the massive extent they can be modified. Nearly infinite replay value just from mods alone, and if you'd rather make your own plug-ins, a lot of fun time spent making your own dungeons and quests.:)
I'm sad to see this game delayed, as it's one of the two games I was greatly looking forward to for this holiday season (The other being Zelda: Twilight Princess. Good thing that hasn't been delayed until 2006!.....OHWAIT!). Oh well, better to release an awesome game later than a buggy game now.
Perfect competition: Characterized by a free flow of information, no barriers to entry, and a large number of buyers and sellers.
This isn't perfect competition though, because perfect competition is also characterized by the selling of perfect substitutes, and some games are considerably funner than others. Therefore, the funner games would have an advantage.
Everyone thought gaming was dead in the early '80s and then Nintendo revitalized it with, of all things, the D-Pad.
It wasn't the D-Pad alone, Nintendo's Official Seal of Quality had a lot to do with it, as well. One of the contributing factors to the video game crash in the 80's was that the market was flooded by a lot of awful games, and Nintendo's Seal of Quality and 10NES lockout helped a lot with ensuring customer confidence in the console.
As for game sales figures being expected to improve, I'm extremely skeptical. I honestly think that much of console gaming's future rests on the shoulders of Nintendo. The XBox 360 and PS3 are both going to be extremely expensive systems with very little improvement aside from prettier graphics, and this high price point is going to be a barrier to the more casual gamers. The Revolution's unique control method as well as Nintendo's commitment to keep its hardware affordable will most likely be extremely appealing to the less hardcore who just want something to keep them entertained for short periods at a time.
I typically only block ads if they cause problems with a page's layout. Many of the webcomics I read will have it set up so that the ads fit in nicely (and sometimes are even relevant to my interests!), but with a lot of sites, they'll have ads in the middle of the screen or will actually be causing me problems with reading the page due to layout issues.
Also: Sound in internet ads is completely unforgivable, due to the fact that I'm listening to music quite often while browsing webpages.
As for television ads, I find that most of them are completely abnoxious, and getting my DVR made television viewing far, far more enjoyable an experience.
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Damnit, I just lost the game.
I couldn't agree with you more. It seems to me like micropayments are just a scheme to slowly suck the life out of customers without them realizing it.
:)
I'm a huge fan of The Elder Scrolls series, but I haven't downloaded a single one of the official plug-ins for Oblivion. It's not that I don't want them, and it's not that I can't afford them, but rather, I don't want to encourage Bethesda to get involved with episodic content. Granted, Oblivion is DEFINITELY a complete game, but I'd be devastated if Elder Scrolls V cost $50 for the gameworld, and then required you to pay a dollar to unlock each individual quest (This is an exaggeration, but the point is valid).
While episodic content and minor, regular payments may not seem bad now, if more devs end up considering it a worthwhile business plan, I guarantee you that some companies will alter games, withhold content that was going to be in the original release, lock off entire gamemodes, and so on, just to increase the frequency of those small payments.
If I pay for a game, I want the whole game.
As for advertising ingame, if I'm flying around in outerspace, I don't want to fly past billboards for X3. Furthermore, if my spaceship gets shot down, I don't want to receive a communication from the hostiles saying "Uh-oh, better get MAACO!"
While advertisements make sense in games taking place in a MODERN SETTING, it's just absolutely ridiculous and completely harmful to the immersion of fantasy or sci-fi games.
I applaud Iwata's stance on the subject, and look forward to a great console generation with the Wii
After nearly falling asleep while watching Sony's conference, Nintendo's was a breath of fresh air. The games they had on show looked great, and looked like they played great. They actually had something significant to show! It was awesome, plain and simple. I think Nintendo's really got the goods this generation. I just wish we could've seen a price.
:)
Also, I'm very happy that there's going to be a Fire Emblem game for Wii
Pikmin 2 is full of in-game advertising, and it actually kind of adds to the game's narrative. Modern-day Earth products are lying around everywhere, implying that the game takes place on a post-apocalyptic Earth, after the entire human race got so fed up with ubiquitous advertisements that it killed itself just to get away from it all.
I'm personally hoping that Nintendo will announce a Fire Emblem game for DS at E3. Fire Emblem has quickly become one of my favorite game series in general (not just favorite strategy RPG series), and I haven't heard about any projects Intelligent Systems has been working on since Advance Wars DS and Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, so I'm very optimistic that we'll be hearing about a new Fire Emblem come May.
The NPCs in the game really are entertaining. I once walked into an inn once just as a fight was breaking out between two NPCs. They fought for a good 3 minutes, a battle that took them all the way to the top floor of the inn, before one of them finally fell. The victor (and aggressor) then looted the valuables from the corpse, and fled.
Another great story involves something my friend did the other night. He got the owner of a shop to like him a lot through bribery, and then snuck through the store, stealing various items. He wasn't seen by the shop's owner, but when he left the shop, he got confronted by a guard. He resisted arrest, and shortly after his fight with the guard began, his friend, the shop owner, ran outside and fought alongside him against the guard.
The NPCs are far from perfect, but they sure are a huge step up from Morrowind's talking statues.
I can't stress enough the sheer multiplayer bliss that can be found in the first Super Monkey Ball. It's a game that gets played a lot whenever my family gets together.
Particularly the minigame "Monkey Target." No matter your skill level, you can have loads of fun; the game is competitive, but in a way that doesn't make it less fun if you get completely obliterated by your opponent. The sounds, colors, and animations make it easy to laugh about doing poorly, to the point where you don't even care who wins or loses. It's a lot of fun, either way.
Plus, the cute graphics will probably make it easy for your girlfriend to get into.
They just don't like rip offs (see Grand Theft Auto v. True Crime, Final Fantasy v. Shadowhearts, etc.)
I don't know if you've actually played Shadow Hearts, but it's NOTHING like any Final Fantasy game I've played. It's actually got a fresh setting for a JRPG (The first two take place during World War I. That's right, in the real world), and a great battle system that requires some reflexes, so you can't just depend on the menu selections.
Sure, there are some RPG cliches in there, plotwise, but it's honestly one of the few RPGs that manage to make you care about the characters while STILL having a sense of humor (and none of that anime-cutesy-crap humor that pollutes so many Japanese RPGs). If you never played Shadow Hearts 2 and wrote the series off as a Final Fantasy rip-off, I urge you to reconsider and try it. I guarantee that you won't be disappointed.
Hell, I'd even go as far to say it's better than any Final Fantasy game I played (save for maybe 6; but the newer FF games pale in comparison to the Shadow Hearts games).
I really hope Shadow of the Colossus wins game of the year. Admittedly, I haven't gotten around to playing God of War yet, but my friend said it wasn't as good as the hype would lead one to believe.
As for best writing? I think Psychonauts really deserves to win for that category. While the gameplay could get a little dull on occasion, the writing was always fresh and quirky.
On a related note, I felt that the writing for Indigo Prophecy really started to fall apart once the actual "Indigo Prophecy" was introduced in the plot. The main character inexplicably gained Matrix-esque superpowers, and it just felt cheap. All character interactions past that point felt really unlikely for the characters that the game had spent so much time building, and I was left extremely disappointed.
...of being able to download Mischief Makers to my Revolution.
What if Nintendo's strategy was to make an announcement that they're hiding a Revolution feature that will change the gaming world, then go onto the intarweb, read peoples' speculation, pick the best ideas, and implement them?
Seriously, they've announced features, without actually announcing what they are, about three times now since the Revolution was first announced.
This doesn't really come as a surprise, considering Takahashi has said numerous times that he doesn't even really like video games that much.
Nonetheless, it's kind of disappointing to see Takahashi, someone who came out of literally nowhere to deliver something completely unique to the industry, leaving it.
The article also claims that Super Mario 64 was the first console title with 3D graphics.
Oops!
"...and of course with Morrowind they released expansion packs which were not available on XBox as far as I know."
:)
.....OHWAIT!). Oh well, better to release an awesome game later than a buggy game now.
The expansions were released on XBox in the form of the Game of the Year edition, which was a compilation of Morrowind, Tribunal, and Bloodmoon. So, XBox owners had an option, if they were willing to pay for the game all over again.
I, too, would recommend buying PC versions of TES games, due to the massive extent they can be modified. Nearly infinite replay value just from mods alone, and if you'd rather make your own plug-ins, a lot of fun time spent making your own dungeons and quests.
I'm sad to see this game delayed, as it's one of the two games I was greatly looking forward to for this holiday season (The other being Zelda: Twilight Princess. Good thing that hasn't been delayed until 2006!
Perfect competition: Characterized by a free flow of information, no barriers to entry, and a large number of buyers and sellers.
This isn't perfect competition though, because perfect competition is also characterized by the selling of perfect substitutes, and some games are considerably funner than others. Therefore, the funner games would have an advantage.
Everyone thought gaming was dead in the early '80s and then Nintendo revitalized it with, of all things, the D-Pad.
It wasn't the D-Pad alone, Nintendo's Official Seal of Quality had a lot to do with it, as well. One of the contributing factors to the video game crash in the 80's was that the market was flooded by a lot of awful games, and Nintendo's Seal of Quality and 10NES lockout helped a lot with ensuring customer confidence in the console.
As for game sales figures being expected to improve, I'm extremely skeptical. I honestly think that much of console gaming's future rests on the shoulders of Nintendo. The XBox 360 and PS3 are both going to be extremely expensive systems with very little improvement aside from prettier graphics, and this high price point is going to be a barrier to the more casual gamers. The Revolution's unique control method as well as Nintendo's commitment to keep its hardware affordable will most likely be extremely appealing to the less hardcore who just want something to keep them entertained for short periods at a time.
I typically only block ads if they cause problems with a page's layout. Many of the webcomics I read will have it set up so that the ads fit in nicely (and sometimes are even relevant to my interests!), but with a lot of sites, they'll have ads in the middle of the screen or will actually be causing me problems with reading the page due to layout issues.
Also: Sound in internet ads is completely unforgivable, due to the fact that I'm listening to music quite often while browsing webpages.
As for television ads, I find that most of them are completely abnoxious, and getting my DVR made television viewing far, far more enjoyable an experience.