Messages

76

Nintendo Gaming / Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame

« on: February 09, 2010, 03:35:34 PM »

Ultimately the Wii is Nintendo's system.

NOW it is.

If they didn't want such an enormous wall of shovelware they could have certainely implemented stricter standards for releasing a game on THEIR system.

Oohhh No.  They already did that back in the NES days.   Third parties hated that with a passion and everybody called them tyrants.  And What the hell, third aprties will make awful games by default?  How pathetic are they?  Jeez.

We've seen crap games before but what you see in the Wii aisle today at Walmart is unprecedented and beyond rediculous.

That's the thread's point.  It is ridiculous.  But still, I usually see Nintendo's games all lumped in one case and all the "other" stuff in another.  Evidently most shoppers just skip over the "other" case and go right tot he good stuff.

Third parties have indeed been lazy but Nintendo certainely isn't without blame either.

How so?  Did Nintendo point a gun at their heads and force them to make their awful games?

Manage your product.

They do.  That's why their sales haven't fallen while third parties' have.  Since nobody really buys the shovelware, people only remember Nintendo's good games.  And even so, they don't have to keep shovelware out of Walmarts and Targets anymore.  They've already said "no mas" to the shovelware.  (Because it doesn't sell.  Imagine that.)

77

Nintendo Gaming / Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame

« on: February 09, 2010, 02:52:25 PM »

As far as "understanding" the Wii audience, I'm not even entirely sure NINTENDO understands the Wii audience, considering games like Excitebots have failed at retail just like some of the third party games we're talking about.

Well then why do third parties continue to act like Nintendo's got a secret line in to their customers if even Nintendo doesn't know?  And why does Nintendo not throw a PR temper tantrum when they do have a titles that fails?

Where's the outrage over that?

Nintendo didn't blame us...?

And rather, it's not that I'm surprised that you're upset that third parties seem to make mistake after mistake, but when this thread reached it's ELEVENTH page in about a week, the tone goes from "sour grapes" to absolutely enraged.

It's obviously a hot button issue that isn't going away.  People are rightfully enraged at being blamed for third party games selling poorly when they make awful games, when they make spinoff games in lieu of real effort, poorly market them, and blame Nintendo, Wii Owners, and the economy instead of their obviously crummy games.

If this community was really thirsting for a AAA 3rd party Wii game, then they'd be too busy playing Silent Hill to get this thread to 11 pages in the course of 10 days.  Once again, I maintain that they don't really want any game that doesn't fit into Nintendo's ideology, which is almost every third party title out there not named EA Sports Active.

Apparently Nintendo's ideology is wide enough to Include Wii Sports, Wi Fit, Zelda, Mario Galaxy, NSMBWii, SSBB, Resident Evil 4, and Metroid.  All of which have performed similar or better than EA Sports Active (And definitely better than the Sequel).

this thread isn't about isolating a single good game and saying "aha!  That redeems them."  This whole thread started because of PR from third parties blaming Nintendo, Wii, and its owners for poor sales, and Pro just thought he'd analyze all the third party libraries and see who actually has a legitimate complaint.  Who did the best with their brandnames and who created the best environment for their games to sell.  Naturally, nobody really did other than Nintendo.  While it is nice that, for a few titles, they may have deigned to pay attention, but their flood of shovelware definitely factors into why they underperformed.

Nintendo obviously, doesn't have that problem, because they've made good games the whole time.  Even their "worst" titles, even the ones labeled the most "casual" are leagues ahead of most of the third parties' crap.

Who CARES about the shovelware?  EVERY system has shovelware.  It's our job as a website, and your job as a gamer who cares about playing unique original titles, to filter through it and point out what is worth playing.

3rd parties should care about shovelware.  They're ruined their brandnames in front of the largest audience making any effort they make meet with suspicion, and their shovelware didn't sell to boot.  And it's not my "Job" To MAKE the third parties' games a success.  They have to make good games first.  Why is it all on the gamer, again?

EDIT

This situation is what Nintendo wants, because it ensures theyget the lion's share of all software sales on the console (as well asraking it in on the hardware sales side).  With all the buddingbusiness mavens on these boards, why is anybody complaining?  This issimply good business.

Nitnendo doesn't just have the best software sales on the Wii.  They have the best software sales, period.  I also think we're not so concerned with Nintendo.  They'll be fine (Boy will they.)  We're more concerned with the third parties' business rationale for flooding the Wii with crap nobody wanted or bought while saying the whole tiem that they do.  Shareholders for these companies are probably screaming at them right now, especially after Nintendo broke the one month console record in December.  Nintendo looks good, as always.  They look like chumps and idiots.

Besides, Nintendo gets royalties for third party games too.  It is good business to try and get them on board as well.  And Nintendo thought they had it with an excitable product, an insanely large userbase, and easy development.  But third parties turned on the floodgates, threw pity parties when the "casual Wii owners" strangely stopped buying all their casual shovelware.  It's not really what Nintendo wanted, but it ended up that way and Nintendo didn't have to do a thing other than leave Third parties to make the games they wanted to (garbage) and Nintendo to continue to make quality games That people buy in droves.  Apparently making good games is good business.

78

Nintendo Gaming / Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame

« on: February 09, 2010, 02:10:53 PM »

How is anybody rooting for their failure by simply listing the games they have made for the Wii?

The painting of Nintendo fans as ideologues notwithstanding, who do you think deserves to sell the most games on the Wii?

Is it Nintendo?  Or is it any of the third parties listed here?  I'm interested in your response.

Is it possible the animosity engendered by the third parties is actually their fault?  What steps have they taken to make considerable products on the Wii?  Have any of them arrogantly stated that they "understood" the Wii audience and made something that failed, both critically and commercially?  Could the "sour grapes" attitude copped by these publishers when they fail be another factor?

Is it really the Wii gamer's fault nobody bought the third parties' shovelware?  Is it really their fault that the hare-brained spinoffs didn't sell either?  I'm interested in this response too.

79

Nintendo Gaming / Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame

« on: February 09, 2010, 01:53:04 PM »

Oh Boy.  Here come the recommendations for self-flagellating and guilt trips for buying full-effort Nintendo games and not half-effort consolation prizes by third parties who don't care.

80

TalkBack / Re: Mario Pirate Settles For 1.5 Million

« on: February 09, 2010, 10:54:33 AM »

That's an utterly ridiculous fine. Of course, all of these media cartels think that their **** is worth more than it really is. It must be nice to have the world governments believe in your imaginary damages.

Hey he didn't just upload his own copy for "backup" in the gray-in-law, black-in-intent "filesharing" piracy scene.  He stole the game and put it up on the internet a week before it was even released.

$1.5 million is getting off light.  Just 30,000~ stolen copies.  Nintendo could have had his ass in hock for $50 X times downloaded.

81

TalkBack / Re: Report Suggests Wii Development Lagging Behind

« on: February 09, 2010, 06:07:23 AM »

Hey the third parties have been running a very effective advertising campaign too.  And it speaks louder than any TV, print, or web campaign.  Here's a sample:



Effective, yes.  Just not in the way they thought.

82

TalkBack / Re: Report Suggests Wii Development Lagging Behind

« on: February 09, 2010, 03:42:16 AM »

If The Wii is so much poison for third parties, how come Nintendo's pulling down record profits and most of the third parties are otherwise struggling, even with their minimal to nonexistent development focus for Wii?  Nintendo's making more profit and selling more games than basically all game companies combined.

Since Nintendo makes the best games on the Wii, and their games sell the most, isn't this more of an issue of third parties not making good enough games overall?  Like if they took Wii development more seriously from day one instead of shovelwaring the whole place and fouling up their reputation.

If code-porting is key, why even make DS games at all?  How come they still do?

83

Nintendo Gaming / Re: The OFFICIAL Wii rumor thread *bring your own salt*

« on: February 09, 2010, 03:06:07 AM »

Plus the revisionist history crap were people act like Rare were overrated and didn't release that great of stuff is NUTS.

Who's arguing this?  Are you arguing with people who aren't here?  Rare was great.  They weren't in 2002.  They haven't been since.  I certainly don't think Rare sucked before Star Fox Adventures.  I don't even think Star Fox Adventures was that bad, but it was a sign of dwindling talent and lack of focus.

I am talking about Rare as a creative talent here, not necessarily as a company.  I believe, we, the gamers, are worse off because Nintendo broke up the team.

If they have such creative talent, why do they suck now?  You have no idea if the Nintendo/Rare team would have been anything good if Nintendo decided to buy Rare and lose its founders and key developers.  The fact that they turned to crap after Nintendo sold their share proves it.

Total Nintendo fanboy doublethink there.

Oh you want some doublethink?  Nintendo is a lazy, corporate (LOL! that one still cracks me up), non-artist, casual, non-gaming factory, and yet somehow is, at the same time, able to pull miraculous development miracles with horrible developers, and just their involvement makes the game better, as if they were King Midas and everything they touch turns to gold.  How can both these ideas exist in your head at the same time?

84

Nintendo Gaming / Re: The OFFICIAL Wii rumor thread *bring your own salt*

« on: February 08, 2010, 05:49:52 PM »

Amusement Vision doesn't exist anymore.  It's all just Sega now.

I think that compromised the development of the game and makes it an unfair test of Rare's talent.

You ever think that the true compromise was that Rare was falling apart internally at the time?  That the "shoe-horning" of Star Fox was a desperate attempt to save a project that was already 2 years overdue?  I don't want to dig up fossils and be blasphemous but, while Nintendo can add enormous direction and talent to any project... they aren't miracle workers.  Rare was imploding and basically all that's left now is a shallow husk MS uses to make Nintendo-knockoff stuff.  (And apparently Natal games.  Yikes, talk about being demoted.)

And Nintendo doesn't own n-Space, Ian.

85

Nintendo Gaming / Re: The OFFICIAL Wii rumor thread *bring your own salt*

« on: February 08, 2010, 05:13:43 PM »

Nintendo would buy Sega and say "carry on as usual, just let us know when you need more money".

What were those Mario and Sonic Olympics games, then?  Those were basically loans to Sega to continue functioning, and what does Nintendo get in return?  A bunch of bullshit about their weird black-and-white games and mediocre shooters and tired rail shooters, while focusing on other systems, where their games underperform as well, and cost them more money.

I bet if Nintendo owned them they'd still find a way to make NGage games.

86

Nintendo Gaming / Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame

« on: February 08, 2010, 05:08:13 PM »

Hey we receive a lot of great games!  Just none of them are from any of these third parties.

I'd be more inclined to try some of them out if I weren't already disillusioned by their rampant "Petz Party: The TV Show" games.

87

Nintendo Gaming / Re: The OFFICIAL Wii rumor thread *bring your own salt*

« on: February 07, 2010, 05:17:10 AM »

Well it's developed by Paon and published by Nintendo.  It's VERY complex.

This is actually the fifth game in a long running series developed by Data East.  But when Data East died, a lot of their employees made a new company, Paon.  They are very close with Nintendo, and so far this generation has only made games for the DS and Wii.  I don't know if Nintendo actually owns them, but they do publish a lot of their games.

Interestingly, Paon only owns three of their former series.  Glory of Heracles, this game called "Chelnov," and Internet sensation Karnov.  The rest are owned by some mobile content company called G-Mode, which means they are basically dead.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame

« on: February 07, 2010, 05:07:07 AM »

Really? I've seen tons of shovelware that didn't show up, did you forget some publishers or just ignore them?

I think Pro's point is not to catalog the entire Wii library but merely to focus on the big players who have the capacity to make better games and choose not to.  We're talking about the people with the infrastructure to get considerable product to retail.  Sure, he had Zoo publishing, but he purposefully sought out a shovelware company to show that this is what the major players look like.  I'm sure companies like Conspiracy Entertainment and D3Publisher also have some horrible games, but they aren't the ones who pledged to make better Wii games or pretend they know the Wii audience,  Like you said, can't blame a dog for licking its balls, right?  They also don't blame Nintendo for anything.

I also don't think he's very concerned with Eastern Shovelware because we're more likely to see Western shovelware and are less likely to stock Eastern shovelware like D3 Publisher and such.  Also, one developer and publisher is totally off the hook.  Marvelous, because their games are actually very good and decent.  (No more Heroes, Rune Factory, Muramasa, Arc Rise Fantasia, etc.  This is good effort, period.)  If anything, they actually would have a legitimate complaint against the Wii for their games underperforming.  But even so, only recently did they turn their sights to better game development, as before the DS they were in the same boat as THQ, where they had massive piles of uninteresting games save for one series that stood out (Harvest Moon.)  It takes time to give yourself a new image.  Over time and through consistency, good word-of-mouth spreads, but you can't pull up stakes after the first disappointment.  That's what that Conan O' Briend kerfuffle was all about.

89

Nintendo Gaming / Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame

« on: February 07, 2010, 02:30:28 AM »

Yeah it's internalizing the messages of your abusers.  You see this a lot in bullied kids and rape victims.  Instead of thinking about the actual problem, being bullied/raped and the perpetrators involved, they begin to question themselves and adapt their behavior so as to appease the bullies.  It's an attitude supported by bullies because their targets will take all of the blame, the solution rests on their victim, and they do not have to accept any effort made by the victim.

Or, case in point, long editorials about Wii gamers and their habits, who they are, what they are, their behavior, what they should be doing, buying, etc. instead of even casting one critical eye at the third parties who are the ones exhibiting the bad behavior.  That's why they pull that sour-grapes attitude when people just stop buying their garbage.  As long as they can keep the focus on the Wii gamers, nobody has to look at their shoddy libraries.

And its pretty stunning how tasteful the Wii audience is.  For all this talk of shovelware selling on the Wii, there really isn't any evidence of it beyond a few titles from the naive years of 2007.  Apparently they aren't as stupid as the third parties or detractors thought, and they have made the best games the best sellers by their choices.  They should really be commended, but instead they are reviled for not being easy marks.  More's the pity.

90

Nintendo Gaming / Re: The OFFICIAL Wii rumor thread *bring your own salt*

« on: February 07, 2010, 02:07:00 AM »

Bringing the Glory of Heracles series to the US made no sense, especially considering Mother 3 which already has a fanbase and was advertised in Brawl.

I'm not sure what your point is here.  You'd fault them for bringing over a game because it doesn't have an established fanbase and thus not as profitable?  Isn't that exactly what you are complaining about?

And it took Camelot 6 years to even announce a Golden Sun sequel. Who knows how long it take for them to even consider Shining Force IV?

They weren't doing nothing the whole time.  They were trying to make their way as an independent until We Love Golf bombed.  They're a small developer.  Cut them a break.

91

Nintendo Gaming / Re: The 3rd Party Wall of Shame

« on: February 07, 2010, 02:01:49 AM »

This is a great testament that will live on through the ages.

What's funny to note about the "better" 3rd parties on the list, like Sega and Capcom, is that they still dipped into shovelware/casual territory at least once, and had bad sales and poor reviews to show for it.  Namco, instead of localizing quality games, decided to make a Food Network game that bombs.

And even Capcom falls into the awful game trap of making a game based of a Television Show nobody watched and a game about pets (Neo-pets, that is.  Thankfully no "Z").  They look completely incompetent.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: The OFFICIAL Wii rumor thread *bring your own salt*

« on: February 06, 2010, 03:48:54 PM »

big ol' quote about RPGs

I'm playing Glory of Heracles right now, and it's a rather obscure RPG Nintendo just released.  Sure they may not localize every single one of their games, but if they went to the trouble of rebuilding Sega, I'm sure they'd want to at least try to make Shining Force marketable as it is a franchise that can be saved and they do have easy access to the original developers.

Now the stuff about Sega boning their own franchises, damn straight.  They're released like 3 times as many Shining Force games without the original creators, and they've all been horrible.

93

Nintendo Gaming / Re: The OFFICIAL Wii rumor thread *bring your own salt*

« on: February 06, 2010, 02:00:10 PM »

I wonder if they would even know what to do with say, Shining Force

IT's funny you should say that because Nintendo's all chummy with Camelot, and they are the original developers of Shining Force. 

A certain part of me wants Nintendo to buy out Capcom and just fire everybody and liquidate all their assets, sell off their franchises for pennies to greeting card companies, and then force their PR guys to try and spin it positively and blame America for it, before they too get fired.  But that's just me being vindictive.

Sega was worth something around 2001, coming off the Dreamcast with good games, good talent, but poor marketing skills.  I remember that Nintendo tried buying them then, and the deal was close but fell through.  Of course, that was then.  Sega's brandname is basically mud now, and they don't have very much talent anymore.  This would be a fixer-upper for Nintendo, since they'd have to work to redo Sega's image.

94

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Is the Wii already equipped to hande 3D gaming?

« on: February 06, 2010, 07:37:44 AM »

I've being doing some thinking about 3-D and have a question.  The stereoscopic 3-D stuff.  I understand that to do this you essentially break an image into 2 pieces and send them both out to be decoded by a special pair of glasses.

The question is, for games, would this mean that the game would essentially have to be rendered twice in real-time to make such an image?  And thus would The Zii or PS4 or whatever then need 2X the processing power and 2X the graphics capabilities just so the graphics would look exactly the same in 3-D?  Furthermore, could one "image" of the 3-D signal suffer slowdown while the other doesn't?  Would they then be out of sync?  Would your brain become a pretzel trying to figure it out?

Forgive me if I think 3-D isn't going to happen next-gen.  It's probably something Sony's going to go for because they've invested heavily in 3DTV technology (Yes, this will require the purchase of new, expensive Televisions.  Considering this generation already hamhandedly forced people to by HDTVs, this will go over about as well as you'd think.) and more power to them.  But convincing people to upgrade their TVs AGAIN is goign to be a hard sell.

95

TalkBack / Re: Wii Tops Namco Bandai's Best Sellers List

« on: February 06, 2010, 05:58:14 AM »

Tekken 6 was basically a headliner for One of Sony's E3's (2006 or 2007).  I'd say it was pretty important for it to come out and sell a fraction of the older games.  Probably the source of Namco's gigantic shortfall, too, thought they won't blame the 360 and PS3 for it, probably.

96

TalkBack / Re: Report Suggests Wii Development Lagging Behind

« on: February 06, 2010, 02:31:31 AM »

I never said that.  I was simply stating that the "developers that matter" see making games for Wii as riskier than making PC-style games, which is something they're already good at.

The way you phrased it made it sound like Wii games needed a guarantee of sales while PC/360/PS3 development doesn't even though it's true that 3rd parties have made games that so far have failed across all platforms possible.  Then you listed a bunch of Nintendo franchises as if making them was not risky.  I remember the heady days of late 2007, when Wii Fit was not ridiculed and was pre-ordained to have success, and making it was in no way risky for Nintendo.

Again, I never said Nintendo was "sitting back" when it comes to THEIR OWN own titles.  My point was that they don't need third-parties when it comes right down to it, so they don't give two ****s about catering to them.

Facts not in evidence.  Just because they don't need third parties to be successful doesn't mean they hate third parties.  If anything, considering Nintendo has actually sent resources from their own developers and in more than one instance, actually developed a game for a developer, they actually care a great deal.  They've done plenty, even designing the Wii to be easy to develop for, possibly because it was the number #1 issue for third parties.  Then they get kicked in the face for it when third parties march into the room, drop trou, defecate, and then complain about the smell and ask why everyone's leaving.

Do you think Nintendo had third-parties in mind when they developed their convoluted Friend Code system?  Bwahahahahaha.  That was Nintendo looking out for Nintendo.  Which is 100% what they should be doing, but don't complain when third parties give them the cold shoulder.

They didn't seem to mind on the DS.  And what if they aren't making a game with online multiplayer?  Third parties also didn't mind the Ps2 having basically zero online capabilities last generation.

They already have PS3 and 360 dev environments set up, so they can tool around as much as they want.  How much "practice" do they need?

They've been making Wii games for 3 years and still have no idea what they are doing.  Their Natal games will be an absolute disaster if they make them at their current skillsets.  They might need more practice if they want to make decent Natal games, or games for the Sony Arc/Sphere/Whatever.

Wii is where original IPs go to die, yet everybody continues to kid themselves that it's some huge opportunity just because it has a large userbase (that doesn't play much else other than Wii Fit, Wii Sports, Wii Play, and Mario Kart).

I'm not sure what your point is.  So third parties can make high selling Wii games only if they attach a big name franchise to it?  Why do you list three games in the "Wii ____" series like they are not a new IP?  Why do you suddenly skip over games like Zelda, Mario Galaxy, Super Smash Bros. (This game has sold 10 million units) when you previously listed them before?  Why this need to make the Wii look like a "Casual McCasual" system, when third party casual games flop by the hundreds, and third parties themselves have said casual games don't sell on the Wii, and retailers stopped ordering them for this specific reason?

And the Wii WAS an opportunity for third parties.  But they screwed it up with their shovelware and spinoff antics.  How can Nintendo possibly be to blame when they let third parties do whatever they wanted and they CHOSE to make bad games?  How is asking third parties very kindly and gently to "please do not piss on the Wii" being negative to them?

How can people possibly defend third parties or blame Nintendo for all this?  Nintendo makes the best games on Wii, they get the best sales and prosper (More than all other developers and publishers combined, regardless of platform.)  Third parties developers mostly make shovelware, ports, or garbage video games, they fail and die.  Isn't this the way we would have it?  Were we all supposed to buy the bad videogames?

97

TalkBack / Re: Report Suggests Wii Development Lagging Behind

« on: February 05, 2010, 06:04:44 PM »

Fans are quick to say "Oh, the developers suck", "they need to take the system more seriously", "they need to make Nintendo like games" and quick to kill them and burn their remains on a bonfire.

Nobody is saying that for the reason of fanboyism or sour-grapes disappointment when a favored game underperforms.  They actually do not take the system seriously, and the games they've made are, in fact, the worst they've ever made for any system.  Go see Pro's Wall of Shame. (oh heh he linked to it)  IF they had made better games, and made them more consistently, and marketed them like Nintendo does, they would see success.  Instead, they made mostly shovelware, were inconsistent with any real effort, and gave most of their games stealth launches, hoping the word-of-mouth would sell the game, despite the word-of-mouth already being established that they suck.

This is exactly the way it should be, as we've been told for years.  The developer with the best games wins on Wii.  And that developer is Nintendo.  Maybe it could have changed if third parties actually gave a damn.  Maybe Nintendo would be #1 anyway due to their fans.  But since 3rd parties decided to not even bother and flood the market, we'll never know.

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TalkBack / Re: Report Suggests Wii Development Lagging Behind

« on: February 05, 2010, 05:44:21 PM »

It must be tough for third-parties to hitch their wagon exclusively to the Wii, when there's no guarantee that their non-Mario/Zelda/Kart/Metroid/Sports/Fit game will even sell.

Wow!  Third parties are GUARANTEED sales on the PC/360/PS3?  Holy mackerel!  No wonder Nintendo can't attract them.

Third-party sales are gravy to them, so it's very easy for them to sit back and shake their heads, telling third-party developers that they just don't "get it".

But Nintendo isn't sitting back.  They are also the best game makers on the Wii and going by units-sold and dollars generated this generation, the best developer, period.  And third parties don't "get it."  They flooded the Wii with Shovelware and now everybody wants to basically buy only Nintendo games because they have a great reputation and third parties do not.  So sorry that they make awful games, but Nintendo did not point a gun to their head and tell them to make garbage.

I guess third-parties are taking that to heart, and aren't trying to "get it" any more.

That will be incredibly short-sighted of them, considering Microsoft and Sony will be pushing motion controllers too.  So they'll have to learn it one way or another.  Motion controls aren't going anywhere, and they are missing out on, at the very least, practice for Natal and the Sony Wand.  And after they practice they can make a press release where they ditch the Wii and blame it for poor sales of Pigpen Casino: 23 Games.  That will be disturbing, but expected.

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TalkBack / Re: Wii Tops Namco Bandai's Best Sellers List

« on: February 05, 2010, 05:09:50 PM »

God those Tekken 6 sales are positively abysmal.

100

TalkBack / Re: Report Suggests Wii Development Lagging Behind

« on: February 05, 2010, 04:43:50 PM »

The second and third place consoles have more devs on board than the market leading console.  The market leading console is ALWAYS supposed to have the most because they attract all the best and all the worst.  Third party developers do not consider the market leading console to be the best choice to make money on.  They're insane.

Fixed.  I read another report similar in topic that had developers closing their doors and going bankrupt more quickly than ever before.  I wonder if that study and this study are somehow related.