jammy2211

I have a responcibility, I shouldn't have mentioned it anyway but I'm a bit drunk so I don't have a second thought on things. Forget I said anything .

The thing is, what exactly out of that has been done before? Online Gaming / DLC was avaliable on the PC over 10 years ago, it's nothing new just they've now put it on a console. They've very much copied the philosophy of a PC and put it in a home entertainment system. And I still think PlayStation controllers are better, but that's just preference. It's hardly innovation is it? Yeah, the Wii is going to have crap, but that's inevitable. And can you blame the developers when they're putting $25 million into one project on the X360 / PS3? That's simply too much money to risk on innovation that might not sell. The consoles have created an environment where companies can't risk anything new, as it could result in huge losses. Except on the Wii, where developement costs are worth the risk, coupled with the Wii's controller, market and emphasis.

Well, I saw the thread on getting more discussion here, so I've decided to copy and paste one of my pieces of content on the site I work for. Hope we can create some discussion or whatever, it's related to the Wii so don't snud it cause of the topic title . _________________________________________________________________ The topic title may well have just got a few of you guys in a kafuffle, and as such I think I’m going to need to be extra careful when explaining what I mean. I’ve lately been looking at both the Xbox 360 and PS3 lineups and have been left with one question whenever I see a new game; “Where’s the innovation?â€. Companies are supposed to have a massive range of new features and power available to them in these behemoth machines, but why does everything feel like I’ve played it 5 years ago. I decided to do some research into why I may feel like this and whether this is a trend that will only be more common in the future. The PS3 and Xbox 360 are both incredible pieces of technology. I’m sure we’re yet to see anything close to what either machine is capable of and that perhaps one day we’ll be looking back on games like Gears of War and Resistance: Fall of Man and questioning how dated the graphics look. Unfortunately, with this push for HD gaming and photo-realistic graphics, both machines are putting a huge amount of pressure on the finances of any company developing for the machines. Development costs for both consoles have seemingly ‘exploded’ and it’s now common place for companies to be investing $30 million on just one project. With those sorts of overheads for just one game, is the industry honestly going to be heading in a positive direction? I think this is where my biggest worries lie in what both consoles offer. If a company is investing $25 million + on one game, the simple fact is they must be assured it’s going to sell enough to see profit. I think the best way to explain what I’m saying is in a hypothetical situation. A Big Name developer is starting a new $25 million budget project for the PS3 and Xbox 360, and they have to choose from either of the two game concepts below, which one do you think they’ll choose? : • A high budget, photo-realistic, first person shooter. It will deviate slightly from the tried and tested formula that saw games like Dead Rising and Resistance: Fall of Man sell over a million copies, and simply guarantees a good profit margin. • Or, an unproven game trying to create it’s own unique genre, with it’s own unique art style. The game could be the next big thing in gaming, but there is no guarantee it’ll go down well with the gaming world. There’s no doubt, that from a personal perspective I would love to try and develop the second game listed, but from a business perspective you would simply have to develop the first. This is simply where my worries are, are we ever going to see a company risk trying to develop a completely new and innovative game when development costs are so stupidly high? Or are we simply going to see a high range of Half Life clones, Gran Turismo clones, Grand Theft Auto clones and Oblivion clones? You may not be worried about what I’m saying, I can certainly enjoy games like GTA and Halo, but at the same time some my most enjoyed games are the ones which tried to create something new, fresh and innovative. If you’re a fan of the Guitar Hero series, you should be worried, if you’re looking forward to Spore, you should be worried, if you’re looking forward to LittleBigPlanet then you should certainly be worried. These are the sort of unique, unproven concepts for games that companies simply won’t be risking huge amounts of money to develop. (LittleBigPlanet is certainly one game I’m really interested by, but is very much an exception to what I am saying because it is a first party title and Sony can afford to risk developing projects like this). Although on top of this, I have a bigger worry for what these sorts of development costs mean for the industry. This is, the fact that it’s forming an elitism between the big name, high budget developers and small budget, indie developers. Both consoles are creating an environment where if a team of 20 or so people want to start developing a game, it’s simply not possible. There simply isn’t the opportunity for fresh and new independent development teams to start projects on these consoles, because of the price involved in development. Some of the most unique and innovative games of last generation came from these low-key independent development teams. Just look at LittleBigPlanet, the team developing that were only discovered by Sony because they managed to make such a unique and inventive game with Rag Doll Kung Fu. Are both of these consoles going to create an environment where companies wanting to make such unique games are simply not going to have the opportunity? Of course both Microsoft and Sony have done something to try and fix this problem. They both created stores which allow users to purchase and download games from what are typically low-key indie developers to their console, for a small price. It is a nice solution but again it worries me, seeing as firstly it gives these games a limited audience (To only those who have connected their consoles online), but also the games will generally be snubbed by most console owners. There is no doubt a limited amount of console owners who actually purchase games off of this store, and when they could be playing these high-budget games available at retail you have to question why they would bother with the download stores. On top of this all your typical big name companies are given the opportunity to release their old games on the store in new ways, such as adding online play or HD-support. Again, this further makes it more difficult for any small development team to be recognized. I’m going to quickly address what may be seen as a saving grace to these smaller development teams, and that is the Nintendo Wii. It was heavily criticized for going against the push for HD graphics, and it’s lack-luster hardware, but what you may not know is that the console is a gold mine for anyone looking to develop for it. Games for the Wii on average cost under a fifth of the cost for a multiplatform 360 / PS3 title, and the Hardware Nintendo used is far less complex to develop a game for. We’re already seeing many of the low-key development teams pledge their allegiance with the Wii, and plenty of the newly announced games are without a doubt completely unique and ground-breaking projects I don’t think anyone would have risked developing for a cost of $25 million +. Nintendo have created a platform which allows companies to take risks while experimenting with completely unique hardware (The Wii Remote), whereas both Sony and Microsoft have left developers having to be extra cautious. I would just like to express that these are my worries, and some of you may be happy with the way both the PS3 and 360 are taking the industry. I thank you for reading and hope that for the discussion preceding this article that we can try to keep things mature. Fan boy flame wars are not welcome and please try to think twice before slating someone else’s opinion or giving us your own.

Ohhhhhhh it's so fun knowing about some of the stuff that no one else does :P. (I work for a website with 'sources'). I'm really looking forward to Namco Bandai's presentation now ^_^.

End of the day, 360 / Xbox sucks to the Socom community for PS2 :P. Wii needs to build a community... My sig has a link to a site trying to help do that. Mario Strikers isn't exactly the right game to do that though, I mean, it's a 1v1 football game at heart. Battalion Wars 2 will hopefully be where it all takes off.

It's been annouced for a while but not alot was known, but finally we have seen a trailer and it's set for a September release in America. From the D3 publisher, here's the first trailer of what I think is a pretty good looking game. http://media.wii.ign.com/media/924/924846/vids_1.html

Ahh right that makes sense. The game probably cost about $8 million to develope, so it's not exactly a massive loss (Considering they just sold some GTA downloads to Microsoft for $50 million). "Re-doing" the game won't be very expensive, I don't get where the hell these guys got a figure like that from but game developement on the PS2 is stupidly cheap nowadays.

How the hell did they manage to spend $25 000 000. That's absolutely obsurd, 360 games don't cost that much . We'll see what Rockstar do. Video games doesn't need a game like this being released and ruining it's image more so, after the Wii is doing so well in bringing the industries image back to a positive state in the mainstream media. I wanted the game but if it's going to cause the discrimination against video games like GTA did then I'd rather it gets toned down or something. We'll see what they can do about this I guess.

It's a Capcom game. Obviously it's not for everyone but I think as far as innovation, art styles and uniqueness go this game is far ahead of any other third party's efforts.

It's more that Nintendo are trying to create a way to keep developement cheap and easy for third parties. The online network they're trying to make it one that is very simple for a company to put online in a game and host a server at almost no expense. Of course, these things take time to set up. 90% of developers completely ignored the Wii due to GameCubes failures, and I think Nintendo are just ensuring third parties don't influx the Wii with a huge range of **** (Well more then there already is).

This is the most anticipated Wii game and I really think it's going to surprise alot of people. A must have for me and I hope it's as good as it's shaping up.

I've spoke to many PR contacts for the website I work for. Midway basically said the reason Mortal Kombat Armeggedon wasn't online was because Nintendo weren't allowing developers to put online in games. Harmonixer, Ignition and SNK all said pretty much the same thing about online and Mii integration, and I see no reason why it's going to be different here. Konami will develope the next PES for Wii, but there's no point when it's going to be so unappealing to most people when compared to FIFA. I'm not saying Nintendo said to Konami "No PES", I'm just saying they denied them online dev kits and Mii integration which would probably have just made the game look poor when compared to FIFA and hence sell bad and damage the franchise image for when it catches up next year.

Actually alot of companies would put online and Mii intergration in their games but Nintendo arn't giving access to these features. I'll explain the reason if you want, but Nintendo are being very restrictive with these features and won't let anyone have access until 2008. Also I think Nintendo and EA have struct up a contract over this. If Nintendo need a partner to get the casual market, it's EA, fact. Likewise, EA want a cheap platform to have a huge portion of their fanbase on, so they want to work with the Wii. I'm happy to give EA credit as they've now got 3 Wii online games lined up (Madden, FIFA, Tiger Woods) but it's unfair to be harsh to companies like Konami who are being snubbed by Nintendo.

You are rubber, I am glue.

Level swapping doesn't use a sever, online play does.

I reckon it might be Nintendo to blame for Konami's decision. Nintendo are very strict with who they give their online dev kits too, and basically most third parties can't develope online until 2008. If Nintendo denied Konami (As they seem desperate to get full support from EA, and this was probably in some contract) then Konami probably figured releasing it without online would be pointless. I think we'll see it next year, but I wouldn't blame Konami just yet. Also, give some credit to Konami, Dewy's Adventure is the best looking third party game to date and they have plenty more Wii projects under developement.

This man speaks the truth. Also there is the potential for Nintendo to release an attatchment which somehow upscales the resolution to 1080i. My mate has one in america and it seemingly puts any game in 1080i in some genius way. Some people do some research cause I don't know alot more. They cost like $1000 which is why we don't see any for the Wii yet, but if say in 2 years Hd has really taken off and these have become much cheaper what's stopping Nintendo releasing something like this?

Someone else bought the rights. i get confused with this and Sam and Max. It was about a year ago I remember hearing some report on what happend to the game. It was in some situation that pretty much said they will make another Monkey Island game in like 15 years. My memory is gone on this so I'll try and post once I remember :S.

It's complicated, I can't really explain it in a small post. Simple answer - The person who has rights doesn't want to give them up.

I doubt we'll ever see another Monkey Island. LucasArts are holding the rights to that and I don't see them giving them away. We will see plenty of Point and click adventures though I do hope. That's a genre which needs to come back from the dead! Zack and Wiki is a great start, here's hoping it sells well.

Over reaction of the year.

It's not the lack of things to do, it's the terrible rewards. They really lacked inspiration when for all the Poe's you could get 200 rupies constantly, or a larger wallet for all the bugs. In MM's you got to unlock a mask which allowed the final boss fight to be in a completely different form. In Windwaker you got that Nintendo thing (I forgot now), whereas in TP's you really didn't get anyway. There should have been something better at the end, what about another boss? Or well, something worth the effort.

Nintendo cut back on hardware to save expense for developers. Developing a Wii game is about the fifth of a cost for a PS3 / 360 game. Nintendo didn't want companies to risk going out of business so they made the Wii such easy hardware to develope for. It means we can expect alot more games and much more experiment games then the other consoles, which to me is worth the sacrifice of realistic graphics .

OoT was amazing for it's time. If you play it now then you can be forgiven for thinking TP is well ahead of it in quality, but go back 10 years and you'll see how amazing OoT was. No Zelda game will ever replicate what OoT represents, no game will ever do that. OoT was the most perfect game ever, I can't really describe what it was like for any N64 owned to take that game home, and start getting into it. Every dungeon was so unique, every Boss has so much depth, the game lacked in no department and was simply a masterpiece. Majoras Mask was a great game too. The fact they changed so much from a game which got the reputation "best Ever" shows how much balls they had, and it certainly paid off imo. It was a much harder game to enjoy though so I aprreciate others may have neglected it. Twilight Princess showed how downhill the series has gone. Although still an amazing game, it was too simple, to cliche, too generic and really other franchises have taken the limelight from Zelda now. I hope we see Nintendo reinvent Zelda but I'm not sure we'll ever see something as incredible as OoT for it's time.

I don't think anyone cares anymore anyway. Wii is kicking arse, let's keep it that way .