Video Games Thread

[Late]

Started HP:Y5-7 and got bored after 1 level.. oh I dont know why I bother with these lego games sometimes... not in the mood to play them at all now    Back to Prince of Persia for a bit I think.

I started it 2 nights ago, too. Was tired and fell asleep halfway through level 1. Woke up to see I had an achievement for falling asleep whist playing!
(It was for standing still for 5 minutes or something like that.)

Seems a decent enough game, but I prefer the older ones. These latest ones you spend forever wandering around inbetween levels. If, like me, you kick lumps outta everything you see (to maximise income and find hidden stuff) it can take about an hour to wander from the end of level 1 to the start of level 2...

[harv]

Yup, I have the same problem lol

The Lego GTA game is going to take me bloody years to complete considering it's open world lololol. Shame that Take Two didn't allow Travelers Tales to use the name, Lego GTA sounds much better than  Lego City Undercover. Still, we all know it's GTA anyway lol.

Edit: Very well researched and very well written article by Emily Rogers here. It's quite a long read but well worth it. She's written a fair bit of crap over the last year or so due to some useless 'sources' but this is pretty much spot on imo.

As much as I hate to say it regarding home console gaming I can see publishers dropping retail releases in favour of digital distribution to try and offset losses otherwise we're going to see more publishers and developers biting the dust next gen. Sega and THQ are on their last legs as it is, although Sega have got a big earner coming early next year with Aliens Colonial Marines and the Olympics should boost the Mario and Sonic franchise.

Can't believe that so many decision makers in the industry get things so wrong so often. I knew after playing the demos of Vanquish and Singularity that they would both flop and the mistakes that twat Ian Livingstone and his department over the years are laughable. Tomb Raider 6..? Escape From Bug Island..? Highlander..? Letting the Lego franchise go, turning down Bioshock and Fallout 3 meaning that Eidos missed out on the sequels and DLC too..? I used to love the Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson books in the late 70s and early 80s but I'd put good money on Jackson doing the majority of the work for them lol.

Anyway, there goes another rant lol, read the article because it's quality.

[jman]

Article sounds like complete bollocks to me.. I ascertained that from the first paragraph where she wholly declares she is a nintendo fanboy/girl/whatever and that despite the "Fall of Gaming" ... bringing out a "next-gen" machine in a worldwide recession and when so many developers are going down the pan.. is a great idea by nintendo.. I presume thats why the article glossed over Nintendo's recent massive annual loss too..

And comparing game budgets to movie budgets.. im sorry but isnt the Call of Duty franchise worth more than the Star Wars franchise or the LOTR franchise for example ??  I think you'll find it is... so why the big hoo-hah about it.. oh I see.. she's only really talking about games that spent big on budget and flopped... how is that technologys fault.. I think you'll find thats the fault of the developer for not delivering a game worthy of that budget... because there are a ton of examples where companies spent big on budget and succeeded.. like RDR.. but of course, that was a fluke according to her..

This is my favourite part of the argument though..

People said third parties didn’t jump on the Wii bandwagon even though Xbox 360/PS3 were expensive to develop for.   But I believe this is a different situation.  We are living in an age where developers can’t break even on their costs for current gen games, and they are becoming more cautious about what projects they’ll take risks on.

Actually the Wii had plenty of 3rd party support, the problem was it wasnt good 3rd party support and any games that had any sort of budget on the wii just didnt sell.. Dead Space Extraction for example..  thats what makes it all the more laughable when she suggest the Wii U is going to be the saviour of gaming..


If you want a non-biased opinion folks.. dont bother reading the article.. save yourself 10 minutes!

[bealec]

Harv are you just whacking on a blind wig and calling yourself Emily Rogers now then?

[harv]

She actually makes some very valid points, 120 developers have gone out of business this gen and you'll see even more going down the toilet next gen.

[jman]

Again that was that debunked in the comments section...

Consider that in the giant list of closed studios are places like GRIN, who earned their shutter with back-to-back poorly received titles, or Hudson, which didn’t close, it was simply purchased, and lost its North American distribution centers due to redundancy. All sorts of publishers are listed, rather than just developers. MTV Games closed because it no longer existed once Harmonix was spun off.

So we know the list is a misrepresentation already with some bloated figures.. and 120 developers/publishers out of how many exactly??  There is no percentages to say.. wow thats a large chunk, (I'd hardly heard of many of those studios)... there are also no comparisons to earlier gens to say that the number has increased/declined/whatever to support her argument, and where are the figures to say how many independents started their business in this gen... there are none.. usually when studios go under.. you'll get fragments of that studio go off and create new ones.. so Bizarre Creations who are on the list after a myriad of successful titles - definitely got canned by Activision because of poor sales of Blur (which was quite underated I thought).. I think they started 5 different studios between the lot of them now.. they will all start small and work their way up again... so does that count as -1 or +4 developers ??

Sorry but its a blind one sided argument which pulls at reports to support her underlying theory which is total cobblers anyway because she's a raving nintendo fangirl...

[harv]

How about Sega and THQ..? The former has only been kept going by the Mario and Sonic Olympics franchise and the latter is definitely on its last legs. And there are loads of publishers announcing losses all over the place. Got my guitar kit delivered today, I'm going to post some pics in a minute. A bargain for £68

[jman]

Yup Sega in financial troubles has nothing to do with rising production costs or anything that dozy bitch goes on about though....  Sega just make average games that dont sell a lot.. thats the reason they are in trouble.  Ok they are streamlining - great.. Football Manager/Total War and Sonic are always going to sell... like you said, sales of Mario & Sonic have been good... but never enough to keep a massive company afloat.  Aside from these core IPs theres bugger all Sega have actually made in the last 3-4 years that has been any good... despite that, I cant see Sega going out of business anytime soon, the plethora of IPs they currently hold are worth a lot and they have a good core of IPs to make money from.. they desperately need to restructure and stop wasting money on mediocre games though...

The main reason THQ are in trouble is mainly down to the failure of UDraw.. again nothing to do with next gen graphics or anything like that.. they produced too many units which didnt sell.. a massive mistake.. if you dont know what UDraw is.. its a drawing tablet used in conjuction with the Wii.. (sound familiar??).. sales started well and then completely fell away... THQ also dont have triple AAA games to hold them steady if things do go awry.. like Ubisoft has with AC, EA has with its sports titles and Activision has with COD... It has Saints Row and WWE.. and whilst they both make profit.. its not enough when you lose that much money on other things..  I dont think THQ will go under either to be honest.. not if they can restructure themselves properly and not make massive mistakes again.

[harv]

They were fine with the Wii version of UDraw, bringing it to the PS3 and 360 combined with poor sales of other products has got them in trouble. PS3 and 360 development has cost publishers and developers a small fortune and things will get worse next gen.

Won't be too bad for indie developers next gen though as long as all 3 platform holders reduce the hurdles that they have to overcome and if Sony and Microsoft follow Nintendo's lead and include tens of thousands of pounds worth of middleware with each dev kit.

Let me know what you think of my guitar, thread is in the Music sub-forum. Am getting some tools I need at the mo.

Am going to update with pics as I go along

[AVFCRoss]

Dead Space Extraction was so good, it was bundled in completely free with Dead Space 2....And that was released in January 2009...

[harv]

Who mentioned EA and Dead Space Extraction..? We were talking about developers and publishers struggling to survive after venturing into HD gaming, not Wii titles. Quite the opposite in fact. For some strange reason known only to themselves EA decided to stealth release it, but it was a comparative low budget title anyway so they probably made a profit on the Wii SKU. It deserved to sell more than 410,000 though.

Publishers have done very well from Wii development due to needing to shift less units to make a profit, most of them got away with not advertising their titles but if they think they can get away with that next gen with U titles then there are going to be plenty of disappointed execs lol.

Didn't have the patience to wait a couple of days for my tuner so have bunged the strings on and done a makeshift setup. Am very tempted to try plugging it into my Marshall base head but I borrowed it off a friend years ago and don't want to run the risk of doing it any damage...tubes are bloody expensive lol. Sounding good so far (albeit without an amp), will have to see how it has kept in tune tomorrow morning. There's a bit of fret buzz but I couldn't get a steel ruler so not sure if I need to adjust the truss or bridge, I suspect the former.

[ancelotti]

Completed Red Dead Redemption last night. Had it lying around for ages and finally decided to give it a go. Unbelievably good story and such a sad ending. The epilogue mission afterwards caps it off perfectly.

Going to download the 'Undead Nightmare' DLC and play through that since it's only 800MS points.

[jman]

Who mentioned EA and Dead Space Extraction..? We were talking about developers and publishers struggling to survive after venturing into HD gaming, not Wii titles. Quite the opposite in fact. For some strange reason known only to themselves EA decided to stealth release it, but it was a comparative low budget title anyway so they probably made a profit on the Wii SKU. It deserved to sell more than 410,000 though.

Publishers have done very well from Wii development due to needing to shift less units to make a profit, most of them got away with not advertising their titles but if they think they can get away with that next gen with U titles then there are going to be plenty of disappointed execs lol.

I mentioned it.. as an example of a wii game that had a relatively higher budget than most (wii) 3rd party games.. and was a game that flopped - big time... no matter what sales figure it stands at now.. first week & month sales were appauling.. whether it sold under a cheaper price later on down the line is a different matter... in fact I doubt very much that EA made any profit from the game whatsoever.. but if you have the production costs or any proof they made profit.. feel free to show me, otherwise the general assumption will be that they lost money on it.. especially when you consider that they cut all 3rd party support from the Wii after it bombed - why would they do that if they made a profit ??

I was highlighting the stupidity of the article by claiming that "the wii was the only console worth developing for.. and the only reason developers didnt.. is because they had lost all their money on the ps3/360"... I have already stated.. there was plenty of 3rd party development on the wii.. most of it was shovelware that didnt sell and most of the titles with higher budgets didnt sell either... DSE, Muramasa, Madworld, Conduit, Cursed Mountain for example... of course there are games that did sell OK (mostly girly, poofy games).. and Im sure you could name a few off the top of the head, but it doesnt change facts that the main reason the Wii didnt have the support was because most 3rd party games just didnt sell on the system..budget or no budget.. its the same with pretty much any nintendo console....

Doesnt matter about "stealth releasing" either.. did the article mention anything about not advertising games when it was talking about all those studio closures.. using the example I used previously.. Blur was released alongside Split/Second which definitely effected sales.. she doesnt mention specifics in her article though.. just that gaming is dying in general... and its microsofts, sonys (or anyone that supports those companies) fault for wanting to move technology along... dont you just think she has the hump with Epic because UE4 doesnt run on the Wii U... sounds that way to me 

[jman]

Completed Red Dead Redemption last night. Had it lying around for ages and finally decided to give it a go. Unbelievably good story and such a sad ending. The epilogue mission afterwards caps it off perfectly.

Going to download the 'Undead Nightmare' DLC and play through that since it's only 800MS points.

You only just finished RDR.. wow, thats a great game.. I was fixed on finishing that as soon as I started playing it... amazing game

I finished Prince of Persia : The Forgotten Sands last night.. its good for a fiver.. but linear as anything.. controls take a while to get used to... frustrating (harder) parts towards the end of the game make the gameplay feel like a chore and no real replayability.. however the story is quite good and I like PoP games so I enjoyed most of it... got most of the achievements in 1st run, cant see myself replaying it again unless Im completely bored though.

Would love Ubisoft to ditch Assassins Creed for a while and focus on a quality Prince of Persia game instead though, just think theres so much scope there.

[harv]

UE4 will run on the U...just not with as many bells and whistles that the PS4 and 720 will have. And apart from the PC no other platforms have been announced anyway. Now that the U has been confirmed, via leaks, that it's going to have a GPGPU and hence a similar architecture to the PS4 and 720 we know that next gen engines are going to have no problem running on the U - and Nintendo have been working with the likes of Crytek, Epic, Capcom and EA to make sure that their next gen engines will be able to take advantage of the rumoured fixed functions that are implemented in GPU7 imo.

That's assuming that the patented part of the GPU is using a combination of compute shaders, programable shaders and fixed functions.

As for EA and Dead Space Extraction you've also got to take into account the PS3 sales from the PSN Store because it was only included in the LE SKU of Dead Space 2.