thats 3 360 exclusives, and 2 360 ports.... curious

But you have a point Bodhesatva, the way it is worded i guess lets this slide (except it doesn't explain why rock band dev is there)

If Rock Band is on there, then Nintendo should be #2, right behind Portal. I don't care about the rest of the list. I just want Valve, then Nintendo, then the rest. I'd make it a top 2 list even, in that order.

 I think it had something to do with the 3 new games that were fantastic.....but I'm sure the 2 "old" games that were fantastic being included in the price was pretty sweet too.

Those are all very good developers, but no Nintendo at all is a serious blunder.

I would take Bungie and Harmonix off that list. Neither deserve to be there. No problems with the other three

I think it was for Portal. I still haven't even played the episodes, and I've barely recently gotten into TF2 (totally awesome), but I bought the whole box just for Portal, and Portal is why I want this box to win everything ever. I didn't expect Galaxy to be as amazing as it is though, and I think it should be a close 2nd.



Rock Band didn't push any envelopes. GuitarFreaks has been attached to DrumMania for years in Japan. I seen it! They just attached a karaoke part. Neat to have it all in one place, but it's got nothing on portals you can see through and walk through that have no effect on momentum, or ridiculous new gravity that changes an entire genre.

Why should Nintendo be on the list?

As good as SMG is, the five developers on the list did various things that will change the way future games are made. Bioshock and Mass Effect from a storytelling point of view, Halo 3 with Forge and various multiplayer developments, Orange Box through Portal, and Rock Bank through the use of a multiplayer control scheme. Can one say the same for SMG? The platformer genre is basically dead and that is unlikely to change any time soon. Essentially SMG is a wonderful game but is not going to have much effect on the direction gaming will take in the future.

I know most people love Nintendo here but they really do not appear to fulfill the criteria for this list. So leaving them off seems ok.

Rock Band is nothing new if you've been to a Japanese arcade.
Forge is nothing new if you're a PC gamer.

Galaxy actually had new GAMEPLAY.

Forge was not new gameplay, and Rock Band definitely wasn't either.

Yes the platformer genre is basically dead, but only in 3-D, and that's why Galaxy's so great. It really revived a genre that sadly gets no love these days. Platforming still rules in 2-D if you have Contra 4 or the several other great 2-D platformers that seem to only come out on handhelds.

 While I would agree that it's fine that Nintendo isn't on this list, I'd point out they've done a good deal more than just release SMG this year, and I can say with confidence that Wii Sports (which was released late last year, and thus isn't in contention) will be far more influential than any of these games listed here; in fact, I'm not sure any developer has so powerfully affected the course of gaming singlehandedly in a long time, if ever.

Again, the vagueness of the title here ("Grit?" "Pushing the envelope," without saying what envelope that is?) allows Gamasutra to do whatever they want, but that doesn't change the fact that Nintendo released the best reviewed game of the year and are unquestionably the most influential designer this year. EA (EA Casual), Ubisoft (Ubisoft Casual), and several other major developers have already set up new divisions -- not just studios, but entire divisions -- to mimic Nintendo's success. A game as great as Mass Effect will be lucky to have one or two developers design a couple games built around their option-driven dialogue style, while Nintendo is quite visibly warping the entire video game industry around itself. 

But Nintendo sure isn't gritty, I'll give you that.