Messages

26

TalkBack / Re: Scribblenauts Dev/Pub Sued for Copyright Infringement

« on: May 07, 2013, 12:56:18 AM »

just a little information about copyright:


as soon as you create something 'original,' you own the copyright.  You can file your copyrighted creation with the government, but it's not necessary (and it doesn't grant you any extra protection).  Writers/Comic book artists/programmers used to mail themselves copies of their work so the USPS would put an legal date on an unopened letter or package containing the work because it was cheaper than filing anything with the US copyright office.  Sealing envelopes with a notary's seal on it was another common, cheap method of legally obtaining an official date on materials.  Email things to yourself provides about the same amount of protection.


5th Cell/WB wouldn't be dumb enough to claim that they invented keyboard cat, regardless of when the copyright was filed, since keyboard cat as a meme predates their publication of the property(or wether there is no copyright, which is what they would argue if they wanted to drag the suit out--they're probably not dumb enough to say that they created keyboard cat).  Keyboard/Nyan Cats may not be an 'original' enough ideas for them to warrant copyright protection, or the works might be copyrighted but scribblenaughts might be able to legally use them through "fair use" (another hugely legal grey area) , though--which a lawsuit may or may not provide a ruling on.


copyright/patent law is a fucking mess.  You're only protected for as much as you have the means to defend your claim in court, which means that it just becomes a matter of who has more money to waste on lawyers.

27

TalkBack / Re: Scribblenauts Dev/Pub Sued for Copyright Infringement

« on: May 03, 2013, 11:36:34 PM »

it seems entirely reasonable to attempt protect something you created, regardless of how dumb or trivial it might seem to others.  If the people think they have exclusive rights to profit off of something, they're free to sue and a court will sort it out.

28

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Nintendo hope to introduce Retro's new Wii U game in 'not so distant future'

« on: May 01, 2013, 04:26:28 PM »

Do you not remember collecting artifacts?

i didn't say they were perfect.  And the collectathons and padding in the MP games are nothing compared to the last decade of Zelda games.

29

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Nintendo hope to introduce Retro's new Wii U game in 'not so distant future'

« on: May 01, 2013, 04:16:48 PM »

Retro doing a LoZ game would be amazing (maybe).  The Primes are my favorite Metroid games and Retro seems well suited for making epic games with little in the way of superfluous garbage that a lot of studios feel like shoving into their titles.

30

Podcast Discussion / Re: RFN RetroActive #27: Mega Man 3 - Official Discussion Thread

« on: April 30, 2013, 10:14:17 PM »

I remembered the game being much more fun when I was a kid. 


I ended up with a glut of energy tanks due to their abundance in the later levels as well as 2 of the redux stages having parts that become impassable if you're all out of Rush Jet.  Terrible level design for a game that places enemies pretty fairly and doesn't ever really pile on the player.  Doc Wily was a cakewalk and I had 5 unused energy tanks when the credits rolled.  Kind of an anti-climactic end, unfortunately.


I never locked into a groove when playing MM3.  It might just be the weapon/rush switching really breaks the flow of the gameplay, or the fact that certain errors, like clipping an enemy while jumping a gap, are entirely damning, but I could never escape the feeling that I'm performing a few select functions again and again just to progress.  My play-style was more procedural than intuitive or organic--the game just didn't feel good to play.


Just for a bit of vicarious living, I checked out youtube to see how this game is played by people that love it.  Some people have truly impressive runs through the levels and glitch (or cheat/fake) in ways that would never occur to someone like myself (who was never in love with MM enough to really try and break the game down).  For all my complaints, I do really appreciate that the game is well made--with great sounds/music/graphics--as well as being loaded with unique levels and enemies.  I can easily see why people (with different tastes than my own) would love Megaman 3. 

31

Podcast Discussion / Re: RFN RetroActive #27: Mega Man 3 - Official Discussion Thread

« on: April 27, 2013, 03:35:30 PM »

After about 2 hours of playtime, I've bested the first 8 robot bosses.


I played MM3 quite a bit as a kid but haven't touched the game in 20 years or so and don't really remember too much of it.  I didn't remember the "correct" order or having to face off against Protoman.  Other things, like having to hook most of my jumps in certain areas (to scroll the screen and trigger an enemy), came back pretty quickly. 


A little patience goes a long way and, with few exceptions, it's far safer (and saner) to back up a little bit, assess where you need to land, wait for a safe opportunity, and then continue.  Charging ahead and relying on reflexes rarely pays off and often lends itself to a quick, annoying deaths.  Once I got used to the idea that Megaman is pretty weak, delicate, and immobile, I was able to lock into a method for clearing stages pretty easily. 


Outside the bosses, I'm not really enjoying the game.  The game isn't bad, per se, but being Megaman just isn't a very engaging experience and I feel like I'm on autopilot, most of the time.  I'll try and finish the game up this weekend and give a final impression.

32

General Gaming / Re: Official THQ Auction Results (Studios and IPs)

« on: April 23, 2013, 10:56:44 AM »

They are basically a shitty C-list publisher. *snip*

That's my impression from the games I have played.


I have a hard time understanding why anyone would want to purchase failed IPs.  There's a reason it's for sale--because the owner of them can't make money with it.

33

TalkBack / Re: The Legend of Zelda Impressions

« on: April 19, 2013, 05:39:06 PM »

Man do I want this game to be good.

34

General Gaming / Re: immersion ruiner: irony?

« on: April 12, 2013, 02:30:56 PM »

I just watched the Farcry:Blood Dragon trailer and I can't help but feel a little saddened by the "ironic" theme the game seems to be going for.  I don't mind a little pushing against the 4th wall but it just looks like developers have no commitment to their content when they're constantly winking and nudging the player.  You can't intentionally make something "its-so-bad-its-good"--it just sometimes happens.  Letting players know you're in on the joke with "isn't-it-so-bad-it's-good" schtick just seems extra lame. 


Things are ridiculous when they're done sincerely--absurdity functions only where there is authenticity.  Maybe I just don't get ironic appreciation or whatever you want to call it because anytime a game breaks the 4th wall to call attention to one of itself, I feel taken out of the moment.


Retro/indie games seem most guilty of this but with FC:BD and DoubleDragon:Neon, it seems like fake-awesome! is getting some actual developer muscle put behind it.  Conker's Bad Fur Day came out over 10 years ago.  Meta-ironic ideas are long past fresh and purposing inadequacy/tropes/cliches in this fashion really sucks a lot of the fun out of a game.  If a developer wants to be bold, that's great--highlighting failings this way isn't being bold though, it's being defensive.

It isn't irony when you set out to make a game that way. In the Case of Dragon's Blood the dev said lets take the Far Cry 3 engine and make a standalone game that homage to all of the Hard late 70s/early 80s Sci fi movies.
 
The whole point is that the Joke of what it is so obvious. The same could be said for Double Dragon Neon.

yeah, that's exactly the opinion I hold and espoused above: it's not ironic (hence the ? after irony in the title and the "s around ironic in the first sentence I wrote) and it's a lame approach, that even if done with a lot of detail, ruins immersion.

35

General Gaming / immersion ruiner: irony?

« on: April 11, 2013, 11:40:48 AM »

I just watched the Farcry:Blood Dragon trailer and I can't help but feel a little saddened by the "ironic" theme the game seems to be going for.  I don't mind a little pushing against the 4th wall but it just looks like developers have no commitment to their content when they're constantly winking and nudging the player.  You can't intentionally make something "its-so-bad-its-good"--it just sometimes happens.  Letting players know you're in on the joke with "isn't-it-so-bad-it's-good" schtick just seems extra lame. 


Things are ridiculous when they're done sincerely--absurdity functions only where there is authenticity.  Maybe I just don't get ironic appreciation or whatever you want to call it because anytime a game breaks the 4th wall to call attention to one of itself, I feel taken out of the moment.


Retro/indie games seem most guilty of this but with FC:BD and DoubleDragon:Neon, it seems like fake-awesome! is getting some actual developer muscle put behind it.  Conker's Bad Fur Day came out over 10 years ago.  Meta-ironic ideas are long past fresh and purposing inadequacy/tropes/cliches in this fashion really sucks a lot of the fun out of a game.  If a developer wants to be bold, that's great--highlighting failings this way isn't being bold though, it's being defensive.

36

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Satoru Iwata: Hubris versus Western Culture

« on: April 05, 2013, 02:15:59 PM »

Nintendo can't stop the droughts all by themselves. They don't have the resources to have enough teams working to fill an entire release schedule all on their own. The fact that they can even come close to sustaining a console all on their own is a testament to the quality of their software development, but without third party support the droughts are never going to go away completely. As I've said, Iwata's taken steps to try and encourage third party support, but Yamauchi poisoned that well so badly that there may not be a way to fully recover.

3rd party support, across the board on all systems, is a mess.  Developers and publishers are in for a lot of pain if they keep operating how they have been.  Graphics aren't profitable, they're a huge expenditure.  Middleware is a crutch--worse, it's a trojan horse that allows inexperienced developers the facade of talent without forcing them to develop the skills necessary to display that talent.  A lot of the uniqueness of individual developers is gone leading to all games starting to feel the same--especially considering the way separate features are adopted and absorbed--rpg elements, open world, regenerating health, puzzles, quicktime events, collectables--regardless of how well they serve the game.  The modern "AAA" game is such an unfocused mess--of course sales are suffering year after year.

37

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Satoru Iwata: Hubris versus Western Culture

« on: April 05, 2013, 12:47:34 PM »

ad hominem arguments aside, Iwata is aware that the GCN, Wii, DS, 3DS, and Wii U have suffered from droughts (and so did the N64, for sure, not that I'm blaming Iwata for it).  Yeah, Reggie is to blame for some of NOA's drought problems but, collectively, the droughts are a Nintendo problem.  PERIOD.  Nintendo posted its first loss ever to the tune of $500+ million for FY 2011 (with losses reported for the first half of 2012, too).  That's not something caused by a few fanboys not getting every game they want or some huge, expensive gamble not paying off.  Nintendo didn't post losses when the N64 and GCN, which combined didn't have the install base of the Wii, were quietly failing.


So why does Nintendo keep causing droughts?  I felt like Nintendo abandoned the Wii after 2009 (2010 financials were weaker than 2009) right on the heels of the ultra successful NSMB Wii and Wii Sports Resort as well as the widespread adoption of WM+ (which ended up being virtually unused and unnecessary by every developer).  It's debatable when the Wii support dried up but, considering the weak 3DS and Wii U launches, I can't see where Nintendo's spending their money.


Where I can see Nintendo spending their money seems like a bad idea --because Nintendo seems to love making mini-games.  Mini-games are exactly the kind of thing smaller developers can churn out for very little money and release on smart-phones/tablets for free or $1.  It's exactly the kind of thing Nintendo shouldn't be releasing for retail or using as a pack-in since the market is saturated with them--they're sales are incidental; they're not driving the market and they never have.  The history of video-game sales shows that consumers treat the video game market as a distinctive service, not as an incidental purchase that they make to compliment other goods.  The demand for more video-games has always driven games and hardware sales. 


Didn't Sony's PSP/Smart-phone fail hard?  (Didn't the N-Gage fail hard, Sony?)  As long as dedicated consoles/handhelds have the most profitable games, they're not endangered--especially when you consider that the smartphone market has produced such little demand for actual games despite the ease of distribution/potential market size/ease of development.  People might play games on their phone but what kind of market is there if people aren't buying anything?I don't know anyone spending even $20 a year on smartphone games--most everyone just seems to download a time-waster and never pay a cent for it.  The smartphone market is all supply and no demand=no money=no interest from talent/investors=little in the way of good games that would cause a market demand to rise et cetera.


Nintendo has a pipeline problem.  3rd parties, for whatever reason, have shown that they aren't going to fix this problem for Nintendo (keeping in mind how bad 3rd party developers are doing).  New hardware isn't fixing this problem.  Nintendo isn't selling enough games to grow the market and they're not releasing enough games to keep their customers.  Bad sales nor good sales have fixed this problem.  It seemed like there were going to be changes made starting with the Wii but the problem persisted--it may have even gotten worse.  Iwata isn't fixing this problem.  I have to wonder: why not?

38

Nintendo Gaming / Satoru Iwata: Hubris versus Western Culture

« on: April 04, 2013, 12:27:41 PM »

http://www.notenoughshaders.com/2013/04/02/satoru-iwata-hubris-versus-western-culture/


Another rundown of Nintendo by Emily Rogers.

39

Podcast Discussion / Re: Episode 78: Tropes vs Connectivity

« on: March 28, 2013, 11:12:07 AM »

interesting episode.


I don't have anything against FemFreq or what Anita is doing but I'm kind of disappointed that she doesn't offer anything other than criticism or praise.  I think learning how to make and distribute games that hold the values she espouses would be a far more effective way to change the gaming landscape than just teeing off on problems.

40

Nintendo Gaming / Re: The Sexual History Between Nintendo and Electronic Arts

« on: March 28, 2013, 11:00:30 AM »

2. Regardless of the quality of Dead Space Extraction, using an on-rails shooter to "test the adult core market" is at best misguided and at worst, insulting.

Considering the chorus of "we won't make wii games" coming from developers, EA's included, I'd be surprised if DS:E was a valid attempt to actually make money.  Why make and brand a rail-shooter with the title of a 3rd person action/horror game that didn't come out on the Wii?  It's clearly a bad proposition with no financial motivation behind it.  Did they think the weak/non-existant Dead Space brand would sell it?  Did they think the tiny audience that ever bought rail-shooters would make it a hit?  I'd think no.  The fact that it DIDN'T sell on any other system proves that it has nothing to do with the tastes of Wii owners and everything to do with the fact that this game couldn't sell to anyone, regardless of platform.


I'm never surprised when developers/publishers go under; I see so few of them actually trying to make money in any sort of logical way.  It always seems to be about what developers want rather than what customers want.

41

General Gaming / Re: What is your most recent gaming purchase?

« on: March 19, 2013, 08:36:49 PM »

Picked up Red Steel 2 for $10 last week and feel a little ripped off.


I'm always a little sad when I get around to games I looked forward to playing long after any anticipation of playing it goes away.  I'd seen the reviews and heard about the long and frequent load times, the repetitive mission objectives, the inverse difficulty curve--the usual kiss of death stuff that ruins games for me--and played through RS2 anyways.  The game also had a reputation of being the best controlling Wii game--which is fair, I felt the game controlled reliably--which also makes the problems the game has all the more apparent. 


The inverse difficulty curve is the thing that is really unforgivable since the main goal of any game is essentially overcoming a challenge, ideally, as a player and character (but I'll settle for player).  When the challenge goes away, so does any incentive to play better (i grit my teeth on the first boss and had fun, I slept walk through the end, bored) as well as any stakes the story has raised (the story was garbage but you can skip it)--I was really disengaged by the end and had it not come so abruptly (bad pacing in the story as well as gameplay, naturally), I might never have made it there.  The other kicker is that the game DOES start off promising--challenging sword-fights interspersed too infrequently between wandering between mission objectives and fighting frequent loading screens--and it's when the combat becomes as tedious and pointless as the wandering and load-times that the sad feeling that the game isn't good anymore starts seeping into my soul.


Not to harp on the game too much (since it does start off promising, I assure you(which makes the disappointment all the more crushing, I assure you)) but I really wonder how the load time thing happens--since the game runs smooth, the geometry seems pretty utilitarian, and the cell-shaded thing makes me believe there aren't extravagant textures under that filter.  It's also a bit weird that there never seems to be more than 4 or so enemies anywhere at any given time and that they are invincible until you get close (making the rifle all the more redundant).  The little technical idiosyncrasies just seem out of place when other things run perfectly.


I do admit that "feeling ripped off" is a bit of hyperbole but that was my immediate reaction to putting the game on the shelf.  I guess when I buy an indie game or whatever for 10 bucks, I'm just buying a game that's supposed to be  $10.  RS2 was supposed to be a $50 game but it had too many problems, at least $40 worth as far as I'm concerned, maybe more.  I guess I'd rather have RS2 be a $50 game and pay that price than the game I ended up playing.

42

Nintendo Gaming / Re: Xenoblade for 400 dollars?! WHY is Nintendo allowing this to happen?!

« on: March 15, 2013, 03:27:30 PM »

oh, silly Nintendo: shelve an anticipated game for 2 years, then do a half-ass job releasing it.

43

General Gaming / Re: Xbox720 - that's 2 full revolutions - not till 2014? ~Rumor/Speculation Thread~

« on: March 08, 2013, 11:04:39 PM »

With the exception of Half-life, all of those IPs started outside of Valve.

44

General Gaming / Re: Cliff Bleszinski says things.

« on: March 06, 2013, 04:52:25 PM »

yeah, CoD sales aren't going to happen unless you build a solid product line over a 10 year stretch, like IW/Treyarch did.  I don't know if EA, or Ubisoft, or anyone else putting in that kind of effort to achieve CoD like sales numbers, either.


Consumers have always seemed to be a bit indifferent to purely technological advances--maybe certain genres explode and then die off quickly (FMV games) as the novelty of it all wears off and the games are realized to be crap.  Wii/GB/DS are all technical weaklings but sold incredibly well (and were super profitable for Nintendo).  I'm also having a hard time coming up with a game that really broke ground from a design perspective and from a technological perspective that ever put up any kind of spectacular numbers.  Even out of nowhere surprise hits always seem to be in genre blind-spots rather than a game being technological leaders or a new genre made possible by new tech.


I don't really have any personal objections against day 1 DLC or micro-transactions.  I do believe they give off the impression that $60 doesn't buy you the full game, though--which is debatable.

45

General Gaming / Re: Cliff Bleszinski says things.

« on: March 06, 2013, 03:09:45 PM »

Just because someone trades in a game, that does not necessarily mean that they were dissatisfied with it. Likewise, keeping a game doesn't necessarily mean that it provided some endless value. When I traded Fallout 3 in, does that mean that Bethesda "didn't do their job" in providing some fantastic experience worth my money? **** no (though there were tons of bugs). It's a 100+ hour game, and I had my fill and would never play it again.  I buy games for the experience they provide me when I buy them, and if I decide I want to hold onto them beyond that, fine.  If not, they served their purpose, and there's nothing wrong with that.

For all your bragging about Nintendo, I own 12 Wii retail games, only 4 of which were published by Nintendo. I've gotten rid of all the other Nintendo-published Wii games I've purchased.  So as far as I'm concerned, Nintendo's failed to make much of anything in the past generation I wanted to keep, yet I'm not going to say their games weren't worth the money for the time I had them.  And not every game I've kept on my 65-game PS3 retail collection is a flawless classic. I just like playing them from time to time.

*addressing your points out of sequence*
Personal habits aside and tastes aside, you can't say Nintendo didn't sell a lot of games in the first few years of the Wii.  They made a ton of money, which was kind of the gist of Cliffy's tantrum--that gamers aren't giving developers enough money.  I'm not bragging about Nintendo (funny, I usually get **** for being the least bit critical of Nintendo, most threads), I'm saying they sold a bunch of games that didn't cost $100M to make, which is just an objective observation that Cliffy doesn't seem to address at all.


If you hold onto a game, instead of selling it, it's because it's worth more to you(FOR WHATEVER REASON) to keep it than sell it.  This is just a simple logical conclusion.  The inverse is also true.  It has no bearing on how much or how little you spent on the game or how much or how little you like the game... whatever the reason is, you've made a decision about the objective value of the game and are acting rationally.  Someone that buys a game is acting rationally.  Someone that sells a game is acting rationally.  Someone that keeps a game is acting rationally.  These are all true things that free-market economies demonstrate repeatedly.  As a consumer, your purchasing habits are always correct--this is another given.


Given the free-market option of selling back games they no longer want, some people want to play a lot of games but aren't going to hold onto everything they buy.  I think this is an entirely acceptable way for a consumer to behave (as did a young Cliffy).  Since the market has basically operated this way from the start, why are developers escalating development costs into the hundred million dollar range?  Either make games that people want to keep (or that doesn't flood the secondary market) or keep your costs down and price your game accordingly.  Crying about spending $100M on a $60 game that people are going to sell as soon as they've had their fill just makes Cliffy look like a pansy.

46

General Gaming / Re: Cliff Bleszinski says things.

« on: March 06, 2013, 02:29:49 PM »

I think you're making a rebuttable presumption here. It is just as arguable that people would want to keep the games but their desire to play a volume of games, right when they come out, outweighs their desire to keep (unless, of course, they are independently wealthy, like me.) If folks didn't have the option of a fast-trade back for maximum credit value, the situation might be different. Also, if games weren't all priced so high to begin with, more sales may occur anyway. Publishers could decide to test-out volume sales, like Costco, by lowering new-release prices to, say, $34.99 across the board. It worked back in the day when Batman (1989) was the first VHS to sell for $20.

The number of flops the industry produces as well as the number of developers that go tits-up every year does speak volumes about the disparity between what gamers spending habits actually are and what the industry wants/pretends gamers buying habits to be.  You bring up a point on pricing that I think is valid.  But that point does reinforce my sentiment that, at $60 a pop, most games just aren't worth holding onto.  The success of the secondary market is entirely reliant on this belief.  Yeah, some games are only worth $10 or $20 and part of the value of a $60 disc is the ability to turn around and sell it before it further loses its value.  Cliffy is just dumb to suggest that things will be better for the industry if they destroy the free-market that gamers, including himself, support.

47

General Gaming / Re: Cliff Bleszinski says things.

« on: March 06, 2013, 12:30:28 PM »

@ broodwars
I think it's disingenuous to try and compare game prices across decades when the content and context of gaming has changed in that time.  CB makes claims that arcade games operate similarly to dlc and microtransactions when that's clearly a lie.  If you put $0.25 in an arcade game, you didn't own that arcade game, you just got to play for a little bit and if you could keep playing if a)you were good at the game OR b)wanted to put another $0.25 in.  You didn't have to plunk down $60.00 or buy a console or tv or anything--you just paid the cost of a play and got to play.  Simple.  I don't remember any NES game costing more than $50 (I seem to remember toys R us selling a lot of games for around $30-35) but I do remember $60 N64 games.  The games weren't cheap, but I felt a lot better dropping money on SMB3 and OoT than I have on anything in the last 10 years, too.


Yes, only new game sales effect the bottom line of publishers but every used game is a customer saying "I'd rather have some of the money I spent on this new game back than keep this game."  If someone plays a game and immediately sells it--that says something about the quality of the game: this game is not a keeper.  Why would people pay full price for a game that no one wants to keep?  Why do developers keep making games people don't want to hold on to?  And if most people are going to get rid of their games, why do developers keep pumping more and more resources into games?  Most of the games they are making are ALREADY DISPOSABLE-- but they keep making the same disposable games and cry about bad sales and the second hand market as if it's not their fault.  The solution isn't: cry about used game sales, it's: stop making games people don't want to keep.

48

General Gaming / Re: Cliff Bleszinski says things.

« on: March 06, 2013, 11:24:56 AM »

It's software.  It has a lot in common with games and it's definitely not productivity/development/office software.  It's on pc/mac/game console.  It also cost less than $100M to make.  It's also sold more than anything cliffy b has done. 
Wether it's "game" enough is rightfully debatable-- but so are most "games" as far as I'm concerned.
It being good or creative doesn't really factor into the raw figures of how much something cost nor how much money it has made... but are still valid opinions to hold, just not worth dwelling on in this tread, probably.

49

General Gaming / Re: Cliff Bleszinski says things.

« on: March 06, 2013, 10:31:47 AM »

@ guitar smasher & soren
I pretty much agree with your statements about GS and the used-game market. 


I don't know how CB can say "vote with your dollar" and then cry when gamers, who have "voted with their dollars", turn around and want some of those dollars back.  Hey, guess what someone selling a game back to the store is?  "I don't want to keep this game or play it ever again."  Sounds like a pretty reasonable vote.  CB just doesn't want to hear it, which seems oddly hypocritical.  Maybe the industry should focus more on making games people want to keep, since there is a secondary market that thrives because the industry does make so many games people just never want to touch again, instead of crying about it all the time?


If continuous DLC and transactions are the way to keep gamers from selling THIER games, or "voting with their dollars," as Cliffy encourages, how can he then claim that games are cheaper now then they've ever been?  Especially when sequels, most often, resemble full priced map/cutscene packs which cost $10-$20 a decade ago as opposed to $60 now.  If the price of a not-full game is $60 today and the price of a full game from 20 years ago was $50 and you want to pretend that both products are equivalent you could say that games now are cheaper.  It's not really true, but it could be in some cases.


As far a development costs go: no one is holding a gun to your head to make $100M games.  Also, to suggest that it costs $100M to make games is a flat out lie.  Ask Notch how much it cost to make Minecraft or Nintendo how much it cost to make NSMBWii, Wii Fit, Mario Kart... etc.  since all those games have sold better than anything ol' cliffy has done.  Maybe the industry should focus less on ramping up development costs to make games that people "vote with their dollars" against and start focusing on games people actually want to keep.  I enjoyed not playing Gears of War 1/2/3 on my Wii, they system with the cheapest development cost and the largest install base this generation because, "this is an industry" and "business" and "free market" apparently have nothing to do with keeping costs down and selling games to people.  All those things really mean is that developers should get to do whatever the **** they want: make games customers hate after a month, increase development costs for no reason, ship incomplete games that need to be patched before people buy them-- and if gamers "vote with their dollars" in a free market, cry about it.

50

Nintendo Gaming / Re: "Wii U Can Handle Crysis 3 (And Almost Did), Says Crytek Head" -Kotaku

« on: March 04, 2013, 11:09:52 PM »

I don't really buy into the EA grudge thing.  There's just no indication that that's the case considering EA is releasing Wii U games.  It's far more likely that EA crunched the numbers and developing/releasing a Wii U Crysis3 didn't meet their MARR.  Unless it's not on psxb360, I think sales of any online fps game on the Wii U are going to suffer from the network effect, and there's not a whole lot anyone can do about that.