Topic: Clover Studio is Dead

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

Beyond Good and Evil was another victim of poor planning.  Bad release period, and lack of marketing.  PoP:SoT also was pushed aside by other games in the release period.  Ubi's fault for trying to directly "compete" in the holiday season.

VJ1, VJ2, Killer7 (not clover, but relavant) all sold more on GC than ps2.  Even if it's not by much, it's hard to ignore the ratio -- with ps2 having such a ginormous audience in comparison (especially fans of violence or actiony gaming), yet having such a poor turnout.  Hey, might as well maximize results for 1 console instead of jeopardizing its development by going multiplatform.  In Clover's wisdom, they decide to focus on the console with the worse turnout?

Maybe Clover was throwing a bone to the PS2.  They thought they could make a Zelda game, and capitalize on it with the lack of genre competition.  Good job, guys, but I think the people just want more Devil May Cry.

[Syl]

Having actually played through all of Okami, it simply wouldn't work on the GC.

Simple, understandable reason A - The GC doesn't have enough buttons.  Yes, this could have been fixed, but using the GC triggers for paint mode would have been a pain.

More likely reason B - Space.  Okami has more music than the entire GC disk can handle.  Okami is nearly 3.5 gigs of pure game, and at least 1/3 of that is music (I've looked at the files myself).  The game has an incredible, incredible soundtrack. (5 disks long, for instance) that due to the nature of the game - they couldn't have split the game up into 2 parts to fit onto a disk.  (As the space isn't taken up by 1 time voice acting or FMV)

Yes, Okami was wondeful, who knows if it would have sold better on the cube.  If it had (somehow) came out for the cube i probably would have bought it for the cube instead (like most 3rd party offerings) but the game was essentially a PS2 game from the ground up and this is highly obvious when it comes to the controls.  I'm very dissapointed about capcom dissolving clover - but they could very well show up somewhere else...  

[Magik]

Quote
Originally posted by: Syl
Having actually played through all of Okami, it simply wouldn't work on the GC.

Simple, understandable reason A - The GC doesn't have enough buttons.  Yes, this could have been fixed, but using the GC triggers for paint mode would have been a pain.

More likely reason B - Space.  Okami has more music than the entire GC disk can handle.  Okami is nearly 3.5 gigs of pure game, and at least 1/3 of that is music (I've looked at the files myself).  The game has an incredible, incredible soundtrack. (5 disks long, for instance) that due to the nature of the game - they couldn't have split the game up into 2 parts to fit onto a disk.  (As the space isn't taken up by 1 time voice acting or FMV)

Yes, Okami was wondeful, who knows if it would have sold better on the cube.  If it had (somehow) came out for the cube i probably would have bought it for the cube instead (like most 3rd party offerings) but the game was essentially a PS2 game from the ground up and this is highly obvious when it comes to the controls.  I'm very dissapointed about capcom dissolving clover - but they could very well show up somewhere else...

You will see the guys from Clover show up in the next generation since they will have their own studio.  The question is who will they be developing for, which I wouldn't be surprised if it was for the Xbox 360 since Microsoft has no problem putting up the money for their games.

[Athrun Zala]

Quote
Originally posted by: Syl
(lots of text to quote...)

just remember we're talking about Capcom here....they ported RE2 to N64, and RE4 to PS2 (and I bet the music isn't even compressed), so the "designed for the PS2 from groundup" doesn't exactly apply

[King of Twitch]

So they ported a sequel to one of the Capcom 5? Serves them right!

[Mikintosh]

Y'know, Capcom can still make games using Clover's properties, just under a different division (look how many different teams are handling the Sonic and especially Mario games).

[IceCold]

What's this?

Quote
Shortly after Capcom announced the  dismantling of Okami developer Clover last year, it was revealed that two of the studio's big names--Viewtiful Joe producer Atsushi Inaba and Devil May Cry director Hideki Kamiya--had already left the company in search of "fresh challenges."

They appear to have found one, as the pair are listed on the Japanese language site for upstart developer Seeds, along with fellow Clover veteran and Resident Evil creator, Shinji Mikami. While Kamiya and Inaba had left Capcom entirely, Mikami last year was still working for Capcom as a contracted producer.

[Ceric]

That's interesting.  I wonder what will come out of that arrangement.  3 biggish names one place.

[KDR_11k]

Now wouldn't it be ironic if they approached Capcom as a publisher? I recall McQuaid crawling back to SOE, that was quite funny though disheartening for those who really liked the concept of his game.

[Smash_Brother]

Personally, I hope the rumors of Okami coming to the Wii are true and that it becomes a million seller in the first month, forcing Capcom's executives to realize what worthless sacks of sh*t they are.

[KDR_11k]

Realistically I doubt it'd sell a million. The style may be less of a hurdle on the Wii but it'd still have the problem of being a third-party game on a Nintendo console.

[Smash_Brother]

Yeah, but I can hope.

Do we know how it sold on the PS2?

[vudu]

Quote
Originally posted by: Smash_Brother
Do we know how it sold on the PS2?

200K in 2006  

[Smash_Brother]

Indeed.

I'll bet the Wii could easily top that, if the rumors are true, that is.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

Trauma Center is catching up to it!

[couchmonkey]

The thing is, Capcom doesn't seem to learn.  Viewtiful Joe and Killer 7 (plus the multiplatform Mega Man games) did better on Cube than on PS2, but like Sega, the company chose to port stuff from Cube to PS2 instead of vice versa.

Of course that's not to say porting from PS2 to Cube (now Wii) would be the answer to all of Capcom or Sega's problems - I feel safe saying that Onimusha would not have done too well on GameCube...but porting some select games to GameCube would have made a lot of sense for Capcom and Sega.

If they do port Okami, it might show that Capcom finally caught on.

[Amodaus1]

Quote
Originally posted by: couchmonkey
The thing is, Capcom doesn't seem to learn.  Viewtiful Joe and Killer 7 (plus the multiplatform Mega Man games) did better on Cube than on PS2, but like Sega, the company chose to port stuff from Cube to PS2 instead of vice versa.

Of course that's not to say porting from PS2 to Cube (now Wii) would be the answer to all of Capcom or Sega's problems - I feel safe saying that Onimusha would not have done too well on GameCube...but porting some select games to GameCube would have made a lot of sense for Capcom and Sega.

If they do port Okami, it might show that Capcom finally caught on.

I agree with everything couchmonkey said. And they won't learn. Even if the wii surpases the 360 in total sales world wide by the end of this year, and by a large margin, Capcom will support it less than the 360, maybe more then the PS3 but i'll save that prediction for later.

The decent success of dead rising and lost planet will most likely solidify capcom's stance on supporting the 360, and probably ditching some of their old franchise in favor of supporting sequels to these projects.

But i digress, I know viewtiful joe will never get another sequel because viewtiful joe 2 bombed HARD, and i'm one of the only people who got it. While the addition of silva sucked, and there were no unlockable characters, and most of the bosses were lame, i gotta say the game was still solid because the game play in that game is so dead on.

Theres so much to be desired and done with viewtiful joe, it's a shame we'll never see another sequel that could move the series to an even better level, not that capcom would do it, but theoretically speaking.

Oh well, at least DMC 3 was damn good.  

[Adrock]

3rd parties just didn't have faith in Gamecube as a viable platform. Part of that was Nintendo's fault. Nintendo is really on the spot now to make sure Wii can push more than 1st party software. I don't want to jump the gun yet, but Wii is like a winner.

I don't think Capcom is necessarily abandonning their older properties (well, besides Street Fighter). They're one of the few developers that consistently attempt to create new IPs. Sure, the most successful of the bunch spawn sequels, but after those sequels, they're attempting something new again.

And Devil May Cry 3 was good but HARD. It was throw my controller at the wall in frustration hard. And that Special Edition was a bit misleading. Play as Vergil............................... after you beat the game with Dante. Ehhh..... jeez.

[KDR_11k]

It gave me the option to play as Vergil right away. Not that it matters, the game got permanently relegated to the shelf after dying about ten times to a boss that requires that you deflect his projectiles with your sword... except the camera won't allow you to see them more than a split second before they hit you so you have to swing the sword randomly hoping it connects. Sorry but not being able to see the enemy does not count as proper difficulty to me, that's more like "this game sucks HARD".