| noname2200 said: 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. |
Yeah, we'll have to agree on disagreement because in my view big names are hard to come by. Already 8-10 is a good number, and there are more. As an example, Nintendo's BIG 3DS game to come is Kid Icarus Uprising. Mark my words the game will go on to sell 6Mil. (You can quote me on it).
Lots of old names out there could rise from ash with proper effort and the new technology that can today be made use of (discussed below).
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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. |
You're right, I don't believe they will recieve AAA talent, but I do believe they will receive talent, as well as support and partnership of Nintendo. Take a game that came out yesterday, Dillon's Rolling Western. The game was made by a small studio (not AAA obviously, but still talented) with the help of Nintendo. The game clearly makes use of reworked wind waker Zelda art and MM mechanics. Needless to say it looks great. AAA wasn't needed. That's one example of a way Nintendo has leveraged talent to diversify the offerings on its platform. This same leverage can be achieved with pretty much any developer afai understand.
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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. |
The Dreamcast audience is not a uniform thing. Some flocked to the Cube (mostly Sonic fans), others flocked to PS2/Xbox (Soul Calibur, Crazy Taxi, Shenmue, Virtua Fighter) fans. That's because Sega distributed their games on platforms depending on where they thought they would best reach their new audiences, and that is where Sega fans migrated (and many went multi-plat). Having said that, I think my argument holds. Moreover, Seaman 2 was already a quirky game. It needs to be handled very carefully in order to sell (a bit like Brain Age). This is what I mean by marketing (below).
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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. A) Do you not agree that a product's quality is more important to its success than its marketing? B) And do you not agree that a talented team is more likely to create a quality product than a third-stringers? |
I know this might be much to ask, but if you took the time to read my posts in the Sony thread I linked to, alot of your doubts as to my POV on marketing would be cast away and you would realize we see eye to eye on this topic. For now, to demonstrate, I'll answer your questions.
A) Quality is fundamental. If a game is of high quality, it may sell by its own merits, marketing unrequired. However, in many cases, very good games get missed due to lack of mediatic exposure and advertising. Having said that, some games of low quality, if marketed properly, may end up selling more than they deserve intrinsically. However, my view on this is that these sales are not sustainable on the long run. Customers will realize what they are being fed and will abandon the IP/content/studio what have you ;).
B) Yes, the greater the talent, the more likely the quality. However, two factors come into play. 1) Management. 2) Creative injection and skill leveraging. These I talked about earlier with the example of Dillon's Rolling Western. There are many more examples. Camelot, Monolith, Mystwalker, Browni Brown, and so on.
Am I right to say we mostly see eye to eye, especially on qtn A? 
| 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? |
Prince of Persia benefitted from 3D modeling, martial coreography (cross-over of VGs with other art forms), voice acting and narration, advanced physics, visual effects (for time reversal). So much just on one game. None of that was possible (except prince's advanced 2D body animation at the time) back when it was 2D.
Oh, and I'm not sure you knew, but PoP had a remake before the Ubi one and it flopped! A poor job made the game fail, they didn't re-invent anything and the old themes didn't appeal to barely anybody. The game was called Prince of Persia 3D and was developed by RedOrb.
With a better studio, advanced technology and creative direction (able to reinvent the game), we finally got The Sands of Time (an incredible game by the way).
To answer your 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?"
My best guess would be reduced development throughput due to slower development. With today's rapid development, much of what the game was focused on can be done very quickly. For instance, graphics can be greatly enhanced without spending too many resources on it. Still on a technical point of view, the 3DS has a built-in microphone, cameras, a touch screen. For a game in which you need to interact with the AI character, from a HW user interface level Seaman as an IP now has alot to work with out of the box. No need to pay extra for cluttering accessories. The game now stands on its own (from a marketing/distribution perspective).
From an evolved VG dev team management point of view, the game's interactivity can now become the focus (since other implementation burdens are now lifted). With the evolved domain knowledge of user to NPC interactivity games, a game like Seaman could greatly benefit from modern creative development in terms of an expanded and fresh user experience.
With Nintendo involved, the leverage spoken of earlier would inject that domain and creative knowledge into a lacking team.
