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Official April 2008 NPD thread of massive disappointment if you're not Nintendo

D

Deku

Banned
dammitmattt said:
All 3 systems are lacking here because these genres just don't sell like they used to outside of Mario and Zelda. PS3 has two great exclusives as does the Wii. 360 has some good games like Kameo, Tomb Raider Legend/Anniversary, and Assassin's Creed (plus the awesome Cloning Clyde on XBLA), but if that's all you like, gaming must kind of suck for you right now.

charlequin, I was referring to the strategy genre in the sentence where you quoted me.
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The problem is really quite deep. Xbox360 by virtue of a year head start and the PS3 practically doubling the installed based of HD consoles in the past 18 months has benefited to the most, but as Charlequin pointed out, diversity is a very amorphous kind of thing.

We can point to the PS2 as a model, but the natural instinct is almost always to go to a list of games and point out corresponding titles on existing platforms.

I hate to use the word 'ecosystem' but it does pretty much describe what is needed for any platform to have the games library that is not only self sustaining but have a diversity in both the types of games released and the number of games released.

I just don't see that happening with HD platforms when each release is a multi million dollar bet competing against other multi million dollar bets and the Wii is treated by too many third parties as a cash cow, where they throw as little money as possible to the platform and want/expect the a large return.

There needs to be a healthy cycle of investment, risk, profit and it's simply not happening and it certainly wont happen with the HD consoles without the installed base or massive subsidies. The current subsidies in place only serve the interest of the manufacturers who conveniently need killer apps of their own.

Like a good industrialized economy, you can't just have a top tier of good games and followed by a cliff. There's a lack in diversity of middling games. Niche games. Games not everyone will like but will find a cult following and it's not enough to point to one or two titles, there has to be a critical mass of them.
 
D

dammitmattt

Banned
You say it like its a good thing that so many developers shit out crappy Wii games left and right. The good (and successful) Wii games aren't cheap to develop, either. Red Steel cost more to develop than Gears, remember?
 
O

Opiate

Member
Sharp said:
No.
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You're right, although Epic would try to convince you otherwise. The math for Gears is likely a tad disingenuous, as all costs to develop the engine were excluded.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2006/10/5/5516
http://www.nintendowiifanboy.com/2006/07/26/red-steel-development-costs-might-surprise-you/

Gears of War: 10 million
Red Steel: 12.5 million

Again, though... that's not a fair picture, as all costs associated with engine development are completely free, as the U3 engine is in house. I'm sure that number was announced as an attempt to show the advantages of licensing the engine. Other games using the engine haven't seem to exhibit costs nearly that low, however
 
F

Fantastical

Death Prophet
dammitmattt said:
Mark Rein would never lie to us, would he?

I thought the preceding statement about "good" games would give away that I was being a smartass..
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Okay - I was thinking there was no way it could be true. :p
My sarcasm detector sucks...
 
J

jarrod

Banned
dammitmattt said:
All 3 systems are lacking here because these genres just don't sell like they used to outside of Mario and Zelda. PS3 has two great exclusives as does the Wii. 360 has some good games like Kameo, Tomb Raider Legend/Anniversary, and Assassin's Creed (plus the awesome Cloning Clyde on XBLA), but if that's all you like, gaming must kind of suck for you right now.
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Wii's also got No More Heroes & Okami, for high profile Zelda homages. 360's got Naruto & Crakdown, for those who like adventuring and platforming mixed (in a sandbox).

Pure platformers are all that's really lacking with the nexgenners imo... Mario Galaxy's really it so far, which pales compared to this time last gen (Klonoa 2, Mario Sunshine, Sly Cooper, Maximo, Billy Hatcher, JSRF, etc, etc). Unless you throw in downloadables (N+, Lost Winds, Cloning Clyde, etc)
 
C

charlequin

Banned
dammitmattt said:
You say it like its a good thing that so many developers shit out crappy Wii games left and right.
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I think you misunderstand his point. If crappy Wii games are generating profit based on selling to a largely non-discretionary audience (and on having almost non-existent costs), and HD games (even ones from fairly niche franchises) are all forced to be positioned as AAA titles due to their ludicrous budgets, there's no incentive for anyone to develop measured, well-considered titles anywhere -- just LCD racing/shooting games on HD and shovelware crap on Wii.

The effect is just worse on the HD systems because a company can develop 80% shovelware for Wii and 20% real games that are well-considered and appealing and even if the latter underperform they're likely to come out ahead; titles that step outside the LCD range on the HD consoles have far more to lose due to their drastically larger budgets.
 
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