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naznatips on 07 August 2008
De85 said:
Pristine20 said:
De85 said:
naznatips said:
Yes, they buy games. It's not that big a deal. Sony did it the entire PSone generation. I don't mind them doing it, but the problem is when developers sell their time they are selling it for what the financier wants, and what MS wants is nothing but the safe, popular, no-risk games. That's why the only RPGs they've paid for are generic mainstream ripoffs or games from the already popular franchises.

That's fine for the casual RPG gamer, but it hurts other RPG gamers because it means the companies that are getting paid stop making the games that take chances. For that reason, you'll never see a game like Valkyria Chronicles or Fragile on the 360, because it's too risky, and MS won't pay for stuff like that.

So it's great for 360 gamers that they are getting some RPGs, but it can be genuinely detrimental to innovation in the genre, and that's why you need platforms like the DS, Wii, and to a lesser extent the PS3 to get the RPGs that take chances, and truly evolve the genre.

My two bits.

 

Not entirely. Mistwalker was a startup, you can't tell me that's not risky. I know it was started by the creator of FF, but past succes is no guarantee for the future.

 

Sakaguchi is the creator of FF. How's that risky? Many who have played LO keep writing about how many similarities it has to FF. I heard they even had someone called Cid just that it was spelt differently. Past success partially guarantees the future because the names of developers and frachises sell as well. Why did Dragon Quest: Swords sell so many copies if not for the name of the developer and franchise?

 

I'm not ripping on LO, in fact I think it was a great game.  But even though Sakaguchi was the creator of FF it was an enormous risk because of the stigma the 360 had as the "shooter box." 

Also, I still don't believe that past success has any guarantee for the future.  Free Radical was made up of the people who made Goldeneye and Perfect Dark over at Rare, then turned around and delivered Haze.  

As for the Dragon Quest Swords Example, I guess I need to clarify my assertion, or at least be more specific.  A huge franchise name can guarantee at least moderate sales, but 95% of gamers don't have a clue what developer's names are or their past histories.  They just look at whatever precedes the colon in the title, in your example Dragon Quest.

 

 

I don't think you really understand what a risk is to Microsoft.  They don't care about losing money on their goal.  Their goal was for the Japanese RPG audience, and the way to get that was to publish clones of the already popular RPGs.  The way to do that was to make a studio to make them, which is EXACTLY what Mistwalker is.  The sole purpose of their existence is to clone the Square-Enix RPGs. 

And yes, it's true in America 95% of gamers don't know developer names, but that's not true at all in Japan.  Developers are very well known, and so is Sakaguchi.  He did fail to capture the Japanese audience like MS hoped, but they took no risks in the games they paid him to make. They went down the path of least resistance, and unfortunately, the least innovation.



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Pristine20 on 07 August 2008
De85 said:
Pristine20 said:
De85 said:
naznatips said:
Yes, they buy games. It's not that big a deal. Sony did it the entire PSone generation. I don't mind them doing it, but the problem is when developers sell their time they are selling it for what the financier wants, and what MS wants is nothing but the safe, popular, no-risk games. That's why the only RPGs they've paid for are generic mainstream ripoffs or games from the already popular franchises.

That's fine for the casual RPG gamer, but it hurts other RPG gamers because it means the companies that are getting paid stop making the games that take chances. For that reason, you'll never see a game like Valkyria Chronicles or Fragile on the 360, because it's too risky, and MS won't pay for stuff like that.

So it's great for 360 gamers that they are getting some RPGs, but it can be genuinely detrimental to innovation in the genre, and that's why you need platforms like the DS, Wii, and to a lesser extent the PS3 to get the RPGs that take chances, and truly evolve the genre.

My two bits.

 

Not entirely. Mistwalker was a startup, you can't tell me that's not risky. I know it was started by the creator of FF, but past succes is no guarantee for the future.

 

Sakaguchi is the creator of FF. How's that risky? Many who have played LO keep writing about how many similarities it has to FF. I heard they even had someone called Cid just that it was spelt differently. Past success partially guarantees the future because the names of developers and frachises sell as well. Why did Dragon Quest: Swords sell so many copies if not for the name of the developer and franchise?

 

I'm not ripping on LO, in fact I think it was a great game.  But even though Sakaguchi was the creator of FF it was an enormous risk because of the stigma the 360 had as the "shooter box." 

Also, I still don't believe that past success has any guarantee for the future.  Free Radical was made up of the people who made Goldeneye and Perfect Dark over at Rare, then turned around and delivered Haze.  

As for the Dragon Quest Swords Example, I guess I need to clarify my assertion, or at least be more specific.  A huge franchise name can guarantee at least moderate sales, but 95% of gamers don't have a clue what developer's names are or their past histories.  They just look at whatever precedes the colon in the title, in your example Dragon Quest.

 

I only knew the name "Rare". I never heard of FR and didn't know where they came from. I said past success guarantees the future but  it doesn't mean bungie can develop a game about president Bush doing backflips and expect it to sell on Halo levels. you still have to develop something decent. 2 differences:

1. FR was only known by people who bothered with the research

2. Haze sucked so bad in a genre where there's heavy competition and even great games don't sell that well because of the intense competition.

 



"Dr. Tenma, according to you, lives are equal. That's why I live today. But you must have realised it by now...the only thing people are equal in is death"---Johann Liebert (MONSTER)

"WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives"---Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler

Gearbox on 07 August 2008

Grow up companies make less money on the 360 overall. MS has billions of dolars a year to spend on w/e sony only has around 5 billion. MS spent 60 million to make DOWNLOADABLE content of gta 4 exclusive.



crumas2 on 07 August 2008
Zucas said:
ZenfoldorVGI said:

The real question is why to Sony fanboys feel that it makes to handle, by assuming MS was willing to pay developers to support and appease its fanbase, but Sony wasn't. Isn't, "Well MS paid them" a good thing. Don't you wish super-rich Nintendo paid 3rd party developers for FFXIII and such? Wouldn't that be a good thing for Nintendo?

Or is it because of the stigma that "MS has infinite money, so this is nothing to them, and the PS3 is better, but developers choose the 360 cause of MS money, only." So basically, you're saying one piece of metal and plastic is better than the other, because of the name printed on it, and the fact that it has a blu-ray device that is replaced by 4 seconds of disc changing every 10 hours of gameplay?

Wouldn't a better talking point to spout in all these FFXIII threads be, "Well RRoD existed and there was no excuse so I bought a PS3." That one actually makes sense, and isn't a...you know...positive piece of PR for your competitors and their fans?

Your not going to see a Japanese company do that because even corporations follow the code of honor and respect. Something like that hits the media and you can bet stock prices drop.

I'm not saying they don't do it but it's something they'd never allow to hit the media because that's considered bad press. Personally I agree with them as it is a matter of honor and respect... but unfortunately you aren't going to see that with most business. Which is nothing to argue about because honor and respect can interfer with profits and money of course... but not in a case like this.

 

 

I know for a fact that Japanese business honors and respects only if the competition is Japanese. In the 70's the Japanese trade ministry (METI) pumped billions of yen into the Japanese consumer electronics industry to allow those companies to basically take over the industry from the US. They attempted the same in the 80s regarding semiconductors, but ran into stiffer resistance from the US government and were unable to completely decimate the US segment of the industry, although things degraded to the point where only two US memory manufacturers, Micron and IBM, remained. Fortunately, the US government stepped in and forced the Japanese companies to stop dumping memory (selling far below cost to force competitors out of the market).

I have a lot of respect for Japanese culture, work ethic, etc., but I don't see Japanese companies as always operating in an honorable fashion when it comes to foreign competitors.

 



De85 on 07 August 2008

@ naznatips  

If they don't care about how much money they lose over at MS then nothing they do is ever a risk so your point is moot.

 

@ Pristine20

The research involved about 20 seconds on Wikipedia, but I see where you're coming from.  As for your second point, what great games are you thinking of that didn't sell well due to saturation?  I can only think of the Orange Box, and that because most of its content has been available for awhile already on PC.



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Timmah! on 07 August 2008

Isn't paying for an exclusive from a dev a pretty standard practice?? The publisher gets reimbursed for the money they would have made in sales on the other console, and the console manufacturer hopes their investment will help them sell more consoles and make their money back. Sounds like business to me, I don't see what the big deal is.



Golvellius on 07 August 2008
naznatips said:
De85 said:
Pristine20 said:
De85 said:
naznatips said:
Yes, they buy games. It's not that big a deal. Sony did it the entire PSone generation. I don't mind them doing it, but the problem is when developers sell their time they are selling it for what the financier wants, and what MS wants is nothing but the safe, popular, no-risk games. That's why the only RPGs they've paid for are generic mainstream ripoffs or games from the already popular franchises.

That's fine for the casual RPG gamer, but it hurts other RPG gamers because it means the companies that are getting paid stop making the games that take chances. For that reason, you'll never see a game like Valkyria Chronicles or Fragile on the 360, because it's too risky, and MS won't pay for stuff like that.

So it's great for 360 gamers that they are getting some RPGs, but it can be genuinely detrimental to innovation in the genre, and that's why you need platforms like the DS, Wii, and to a lesser extent the PS3 to get the RPGs that take chances, and truly evolve the genre.

My two bits.

 

Not entirely. Mistwalker was a startup, you can't tell me that's not risky. I know it was started by the creator of FF, but past succes is no guarantee for the future.

 

Sakaguchi is the creator of FF. How's that risky? Many who have played LO keep writing about how many similarities it has to FF. I heard they even had someone called Cid just that it was spelt differently. Past success partially guarantees the future because the names of developers and frachises sell as well. Why did Dragon Quest: Swords sell so many copies if not for the name of the developer and franchise?

 

I'm not ripping on LO, in fact I think it was a great game. But even though Sakaguchi was the creator of FF it was an enormous risk because of the stigma the 360 had as the "shooter box."

Also, I still don't believe that past success has any guarantee for the future. Free Radical was made up of the people who made Goldeneye and Perfect Dark over at Rare, then turned around and delivered Haze.

As for the Dragon Quest Swords Example, I guess I need to clarify my assertion, or at least be more specific. A huge franchise name can guarantee at least moderate sales, but 95% of gamers don't have a clue what developer's names are or their past histories. They just look at whatever precedes the colon in the title, in your example Dragon Quest.

 

 

I don't think you really understand what a risk is to Microsoft. They don't care about losing money on their goal. Their goal was for the Japanese RPG audience, and the way to get that was to publish clones of the already popular RPGs. The way to do that was to make a studio to make them, which is EXACTLY what Mistwalker is. The sole purpose of their existence is to clone the Square-Enix RPGs.

And yes, it's true in America 95% of gamers don't know developer names, but that's not true at all in Japan. Developers are very well known, and so is Sakaguchi. He did fail to capture the Japanese audience like MS hoped, but they took no risks in the games they paid him to make. They went down the path of least resistance, and unfortunately, the least innovation.

 

How is Mistwalker cloning Square-Enix games if the original innovator (Sakaguchi-san, or rather Sakaguchi-heika) is with Mistwalker? It's the other way round, if at all.



naznatips on 07 August 2008
De85 said:

@ naznatips  

If they don't care about how much money they lose over at MS then nothing they do is ever a risk so your point is moot.

 

@ Pristine20

The research involved about 20 seconds on Wikipedia, but I see where you're coming from.  As for your second point, what great games are you thinking of that didn't sell well due to saturation?  I can only think of the Orange Box, and that because most of its content has been available for awhile already on PC.

 

You don't understand, the resource they are risking isn't money it's support and time.  They need to get as much consumer support in as little time as possible.  The way to do that is by publishing the most generic mainstream games you can possibly get.



De85 on 07 August 2008
naznatips said:
De85 said:

@ naznatips

If they don't care about how much money they lose over at MS then nothing they do is ever a risk so your point is moot.

 

@ Pristine20

The research involved about 20 seconds on Wikipedia, but I see where you're coming from. As for your second point, what great games are you thinking of that didn't sell well due to saturation? I can only think of the Orange Box, and that because most of its content has been available for awhile already on PC.

 

You don't understand, the resource they are risking isn't money it's support and time. They need to get as much consumer support in as little time as possible. The way to do that is by publishing the most generic mainstream games you can possibly get.

 

I understand perfectly.  Mistwalker was formed in 2004, and didn't release a game until 2007.  It sure sounds like they're trying to push as much stuff in as little time as possible.



naznatips on 07 August 2008
De85 said:
naznatips said:
De85 said:

@ naznatips

If they don't care about how much money they lose over at MS then nothing they do is ever a risk so your point is moot.

 

@ Pristine20

The research involved about 20 seconds on Wikipedia, but I see where you're coming from. As for your second point, what great games are you thinking of that didn't sell well due to saturation? I can only think of the Orange Box, and that because most of its content has been available for awhile already on PC.

 

You don't understand, the resource they are risking isn't money it's support and time. They need to get as much consumer support in as little time as possible. The way to do that is by publishing the most generic mainstream games you can possibly get.

 

I understand perfectly.  Mistwalker was formed in 2004, and didn't release a game until 2007.  It sure sounds like they're trying to push as much stuff in as little time as possible.


Oh come on it doesn't take a genius to see how long it takes developers to make their first HD console game.  Even worse it was the studio's first game, and they were making two games at once.  They got 2 games out in 3 years.  That's pretty impressive for HD development.