Nikkei - Seaman on 3DS and maybe more 3rd party favourites to follow

[noname2200]

I suppose if you find a total of 8-10 successful revivals over the course of gaming history to be encouraging, I can't argue. But I do not feel the same. That ratio helps make me pessimistic. Especially when you look at that list, and realize that those successes had one thing in common: they were developed by their publishers' top teams.

That's why I keep harping on about talent. I can not and do not think that these revivals will enjoy top-tier talent, and judging from your posts, neither do you. You think it might succeed in spite of that. I can not share your optimism. And, once again, even if these initial games do succeed, against all odds, nothing in recent history leads me to believe that it will spur third-parties to devote better talent for future big IPs.

As an aside, I still don't buy your argument about audiences and Seaman 2. If I understand it correctly, you're saying that the Sega audience flowed from the Dreamcast to the Gamecube, with Sonic Adventure's sales (half of the original sales for 1, unknown for 2) being the lynchpin. This disregards how the Xbox was the primary Sega console post-Dreamcast, and how pretty much everyone that generation flowed to the PS2, including Dreamcast fans. Take a gander at the sales of the multi-platform sales for Crazy Taxi, for instance.

And even if we accept your assertion, it does you little good, unless you want to tell me that the Dreamcast audience is the same as the 3DS/Wii U audiences.

As for marketing, I again emphatically reject that stance. If good marketing is all it took to make a successful product, there would be no flops. You're attributing the success of the products you listed primarily to marketing. I firmly believe that the intrinsic qualities of those titles is responsible, with marketing being secondary. In other words, I think products primarily stand or fall based on their own innate appeal to the market. I have seen little to dissuade me.

I'm certain that this talk of marketing is a sideshow to the issue at hand, but since you seem to think it's important, and for the sake of this discussion, let us agree on a compromise regarding marketing. Do you not agree that a product's quality is more important to its success than its marketing? And do you not agree that a talented team is more likely to create a quality product than a third-stringers?

Finally, the things you refer to under technology are the things I'm referring to when I asked my question. The things you listed are all true. They're also irrelevant, unless you think the earlier games were held back by some technical limitations. Better graphics, sound, etc. are great. But every game has access to that improved technology, so your game isn't going to stand out because of those. We are definitely going off topic now, but let me rephrase that tangential question: what technical limitation do you think was holding back the original Seaman from reaching its full potential, and what new technology will help it realize that potential?