The problem dodece isn't that games are grand in scope and have production values, that's great. It's that the production values are now EXTREMELY expensive. God of War 2 is an extremely high production value game that I doubt took more than 15 mil to make, Twilight Princess took somewhere around 10 mil I think, compared 30-40 mil being thrown down on a HD epic game now. The thing is those games aren't going to sell millions upon millions more than a 10 mil high production value game.

That's the financial suicide. Not that they spent money on the game, but they spent millions making sure the pores on a corpses face are perfectly visible, and that the apple explodes realistically when shot by a handgun, but neglecting making the game itself any better. Then the game flops and they are out 20 mil.

The thing is, they are making their smartbombs out of gold and then encrusting it with diamonds. It doesn't matter if it hits or misses, they just wasted a fortune on it, and those diamonds didn't do any significant damage.

Firstly, budget and quality are hugely correlated in the videogames industry. The reason is pretty simple. Firms will only be willing to have high budgets on games that are likely to make a return on that investment, which is more likely to occur if the game ends up being good. Therefore high potential games get high budgets and high budgets imply high production values. The result is a greater likelihood of making a higher quality game. There are of course exceptions to this and some developers have done amazing things with relatively small budgets, but these exceptions are few and far between.

Secondly, the budget issue is one of the primary reasons that the graphics vs gameplay issue is unbelievably ill-conceived. Graphics and gameplay have been positively correlated for each generation since gaming began. There are very few examples of games with awesome graphics relative to its peers that had awful gameplay, and at the same time there are very few examples of games with awful graphics relative to its peers that had fantastic gameplay. The graphics vs gameplay argument is quite simply silly in every possible way.

Bad graphics relative to its peers almost always implies bad gameplay, simply because bad graphics implies bad production values and there is no logical reason to believe that this wouldn't extend to the gameplay side of things. In fact it almost certainly would. The reverse is also true. Hence in terms of quality, gameplay and graphics tend to move together within any generation of gaming.

Lair and body harvest easily destroy the argument that graphics and gameplay are directly connected.

speaking of short games, which seems to be becoming a huge problem especially in these super high budget ps3/360 games, i read in game informer in the review for mass effect they said the game has "an expansive quest (18-30 hours)." now i was led to believe this was and action-RPG. as in an RPG with action battles and elements to it. not an action shooter game with some rpg elements. cuz that'd be a good length for a game that is primarily an action game but adds in some other elements. but for an rpg that is piss poor. 18-30 hour rpg = these 6 hour fps games. ridiculously short. i was expecting mass effect to be around 50-70 hours, which is what an epic rpg should be. 40 hours is pretty much the minimum for an full length rpg, anything under that these days is crazy short. i'm talking about the first play through of course. but man if mass effect takes under 45-50 hours (let alone 18-30) i'm gonna be greatly disapointed. here i thought this fall after almost 2 years the 360 was actually gonna have some games worth getting besides gears, but they're seemingly all ridiculously short. straight up dumb!

DKII said: Graphics sell. It's a lot easier to show a screenshot of a game than to show someone playing it (tho Nintendo's done pretty well in that regard).

 Very true...  although Nintendo gets away with not having cutting edge graphics due to art design.  Their games have a very friendly look to them that make you smile when looking at them.  Take Nintendogs for example, the game may not appeal to everyone but it appeals to so many people because it's something that we can relate to.  Puppies are cute...  Nintendo put a lot of thought into making the box and the game very friendly and huggable looking.  They didn't push it past the oh too cute point either.  Very well marketed and designed all around.

 Mario is also very nice to look at for some reason, he's like Snoopy the dog to me.  I use to love my Snoopy doll as much as I loved my Mario games.  The DS feels like a beefed up SNES which was also a much beloved thing of mine as a teen.  Nintendo has taken the best of everything they did in the past and shoved it all into the Wii and DS.  There is a lot of love put into the system and it's games by Nintendo.  You can see it quite easily.

ssj12 said: Kasz216 said: I'd say a focus on cutscenes is what turned Square Enix into such a mediocre company. Considering how much space and time cutscenes take... and considering how amazing the 360 and PS3's graphics are you'd think they'd give it a rest already. They can already make awesome graphics the cutscenes are just wasteful crap that could be put into more playtesting, innovation and gameplay. A lot of other companys have the same problem, but Square fell the furtherest. Then dragged Enix down with them.  you do know it was Enix which bought Square right?

Yeah, that's what i meant by dragged down with them.  They would of been better of ending up elsewhere in my opinion as Enix was as good as Square even when they were making their best RPGs.  Though they did get significantly less attention, if they would of got a big push by a console company like Square did from Sony with FF7 it could of been the other way around.

ssj12 said: heres the problem. Small games that can be downloaded off the PSN and Live (and soon WiiWare) retailers wont allow the companies to advertise the games because they cant sell them. Companies like WalMart threatened back with Microsoft launched Live Arcade that any games were launched for only Live can not be advertised or else WalMart wont sell their console. Epic Gaming isn't hurting small games or companies that want to make many small (good) games but its retailers that force them to not to focus on some small games and have AAA titles that are supported from the success of the small games but make companies have to get big budget titles out without having the ability to have a pillow to cushion their spending budget for the game a bit. Complain to retailers not Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo.

 quoting just so people realize the biggest pain for the whole market.

kn said: Words Of Wisdom said: The only thing ruining gaming are the people buying poorly designed/shallow games. Stop buying crap and developers will stop making it. The irony in your statement vs. your screen name aside, what exactly is crap?  Are you the final arbiter of what is crap and what isn't?  Different games appeal to different people.  Heavenly Sword is a great example of what I'm talking about.  Great visuals and sound.  Among the best.  6 hours long for $60 bucks.  Gears of War was about 10-12.  While that's better, it's no much better.  60 bucks for a 10 hour game.  Twilight princess, though I hated the game (i'm not into adventure games with a lot of exploring and puzzles) was easily 30-40 hours long for the seasoned gamer.  The graphics are most certainly "good enough".  I don't know where Mass Effect will end up, but rumor has it that it will be 20+ hours.  Fine, I'll put my 60 bucks into that one if it is a good game...  I'd like to see a return to gameplay first, graphics second... Sony and MS are so hell bent on beating each other graphically, gameplay is taking a back seat...

isn't 10-15 hrs the norm of most action titles though? but that's just it, they're action games, you can play them over and over. whereas the last rpg i played, Oblivion, i got a good 160+ hrs, and FFXII was more than 230 hrs, so i got my money's worth the first time around. i do understand your point though... which is why i'm now playing HS as a rental. though i know i'm not the average gamer here as far as graphics goes. my HD rig ran me a few grand, so anything that shows it off is appreciated by me.

Kasz216 said: I'd say a focus on cutscenes is what turned Square Enix into such a mediocre company. Considering how much space and time cutscenes take... and considering how amazing the 360 and PS3's graphics are you'd think they'd give it a rest already. They can already make awesome graphics the cutscenes are just wasteful crap that could be put into more playtesting, innovation and gameplay. A lot of other companys have the same problem, but Square fell the furtherest. Then dragged Enix down with them.

i have to disagree, i've absolutely LOVED those cutscenes since the very first time i laid my eyes on FFVII. then again i really appreciate Kojima's approach of always using MGS' engine to render his cutscenes, it does tend to keep you immersed very well.

Answer to thread...

That's the reason why the Wii is the the way the Wii is.