Badge, this is the first serious and informative post I've ever read from you. So glad!

Remember when Dinosaur Planet became Star Fox Adventures? Yeah, developer freedom my ass hey? :P To be fair, things may have slacked a little (probably an understatement) since then. New leadership, lots of big changes internally and externally at Nintendo. It all depends on when he's talking about, and if my assumption is right (that things have changed).

Hey, my posts are always serious and informative beneath all the nonsense. It's just that this time Joelcool provided enough nonsense by himself that I decided to dispense with my usual MO.

But Rol, we weren't talking about Nintendo's control of core studio in-house developers (EAD, Team Ico). We were talking about control over external 1st party developers and 2nd party developers (Hal, ND, Insomniac, Retro, Rare, ...), so as to compare with Sony. Maybe I got this wrong, but I don't know if we were unclear or if I'm the one who lost track.

One way or the other, it all depends on the developer. Miyamoto is more the exception than the rule. He is very high up at Nintendo, even in the board of directors I believe :S

http://www.google.com/finance?q=nintendo

True. And I don't believe it to be the case.

Some devs need more freedom, some need less. It all depends on how comfortable they are with direction. Also, when a studio expresses the need to create something new, rather than something for the man (as was the case for Rare), in that situation, for the sake of the partnership, that need has to be met.

If Sony is not offering that freedom at least at some point so as to offer an outlet for its faithful studios, the same could happen as happened with Rare. They get fed up, demotivated, and end up getting sold off...

Much like how Sony left the PS3's hardware to Ken Kutaragi. This approach simply doesn't work, such decisions can not be made by a single person.

This is a sad development, but one that is completely true. If sony wants to compete on the same level as microsoft, they need to act more like microsoft.
It's really sad because in the end, all microsoft will have achieved with their "attack" on Sony is a stifling of creativity. Sony will be able to respond and restructure, but in the end the gamers will lose. Sony can easily cut 10 or so IPs and really really focus on their big games and advertising. This will prevent MS from pounding them as hard, will sell more games and consoles, and is generally better business. It just sucks for people like me.
I agree that Resistance should be cut though. I just don't think it's a very compelling game.

@as far as creative liberty, Sony gives far more license to their devs than the other two. Nintendo is super controlling, even with the third parties they are controlling, and MS is super controlling with their first party, forcing them to make games that MS wants to sell. Look what they're doing to Rare for evidence.
Sony's problem is mismanagement. They aren't strict enough, they pay their devs too much, they give too much leeway to fail (look at last guardian), and they don't drive focus within their games. If sony is supposed to be pushing little big planet, why isn't there things to centralize it?
EVERY SINGLE GAME SHOULD COME WITH A SKIN FOR LBP, PERIOD.
You buy god of war, you should be given a code for kratos, zeus, hades, sackboys, and wings. You buy infamous, you should be given a code to make your sackboy electric, or allow you to have new tools to lbp with electricity.
You buy Gran Turismo, you should be able to insert cars into the levels.
The same goes for modnation.

The problem is that Sony has disrupted the chain of command at SCE. Their is no centralization. Everyone acts almost independently and their is no "vision-guy" roping them all together. I had the idea for playstation suite in the early ps3 days. If I can think of it, why can't they? A system like steam where their games can work on pc but only if you're a member. I mean, they're in the PC business with Vaio! How hard can it possibly be to say, gee, we should be selling these on pc too, there are bluray drives in pcs now. They should play ps3 games. If we're losing money on ps3 sales, then why push people to buy a ps3 to play the content?

Sony has problems selling games because they simply are not focused on it. They're focused on making quality games, and frankly that's not good enough. They need someone to look at how they make and sell games, and realize that they're doing pretty much everything wrong...aside from making quality games. IMO nobody makes games that are as compelling as Sony's first party (except maybe atlus), but they really don't have any idea how to make money, because nobody is there telling them how. They are saying, "make good games and we will make good money", and that's really all they think.

I mostly agree. You know, what good is a quality+appealing game if nobody knows about it, if nobody talks about it, if nobody is going to play it?

Marketing is important beyond money, it's important in the community aspect of it. If nobody is told about the game (via marketing for example), and the community is smaller, it's less fun to be part of that community, in general (there are exceptions). I remember back when OoT 64 and FFVII launched. It wasn't just the games that were awesome, it was the fact that people were talking about them,sharing tricks, sharing answers to plot holes. These were social phenomenons. That's a VERY important part in the industry, and sadly a part not alot of people on the online forums understand or talk about. The fact that you know that others genuinely enjoyed a game you enjoyed is a great sense of belonging I have personally felt. Yet if a game is barely marketed, how can that realistically happen? It really can't.

And also, to be fair, the games need to be genuinely appealing for this kind of thing to happen. I don't think Resistance or KZ are the type of game to make the cut.

well if it's to centralized/control then we loss creativity, and then every game becomes the same, but for some strange reason i fill this make loads of sense.

the studio heads should be able to control the direction, but i think you're saying for most projects that's not happening, but i think you may be right. 

Socom4 sucks. that is all.

I think Resistance needs to be dropped, but I think KZ is a very good game. I haven't played KZ3, but they really need to up the...um..overtness of the game.

Throw in some crazy pollution, and grim dark. There is certainly Not Enough grim-dark in that game. They could also expand the game a bit. Develop the relationships between the characters, less linearity so that doing things certain ways unlock more back information or character development. They need to give players variety. Let the player decide how they want to play the game. Somebody wants to run around knifing people? Make it possible for them to do that. Don't force a player to do something a certain way, because a lot of times, a player is bored, or is on drugs, or drunk, and just wants to fuck around. Have an option that is like paintball mode for goldeneye. Shoot rockets that explode in splatters of bright paint, and flowers. Have a "Tron" mode. Have an ability that double loads a gun every cooldown or something and makes a super loud PLBTHPLTBBTBTH sound like 4 bullets being fired simultaneously out of an amplified rainstick.

Players like to feel powerful and the game just doesn't provide for that. For instance, in doom 3 and quake, I got so good that I could run into a room full of enemies, and punch half of them to death while running and jumping around, getting headshots with pistols in mid jump. That's what needs to happen to KZ.

Sure in the harder difficulties, make me need to do things a certain way, but if I wanan fuck around let me fuck around. That's something Halo and gears does really well. If you can't play a game while you're drunk, then the game has a problem.

See nintendo and ms are stifling because of how much direction they force, but Sony could use *some* direction. They really have none. The other two could do with a little less direction, also, although Nintendo seems to really wander into the forest when they don't have good direction.