First review I've seen is from TeamXbox...

http://reviews.teamxbox.com/xbox-360/1375/Stranglehold/p1/

Rated it 7.7... Knocked Longevity and Innovation... And for a game that uses the Unreal Engine they even knocked the graphics.

It should have got an 8.5 if it was going to be a hit.

I didn't think it would do that well to begin with. Not sure why Midway would spend so much money on game they haven't advertised much if at all. Guess they figured the name it itsel would be enough to sell to a wide audience but doubt that is going to work. The only way this game would have sold well is if it came out during the slow period a few months ago but now there is alot of competition as from this week forward we will see 2+ games being released with 1 or more big hitters each month it jsut doesn't stand a chance especially with the so-so reviews. I am personally getting it through gamefly this week only to beat it a couple of days and have it shipped back in time to get eternal sonata. Midway better hope Unreal 3 pulls a gears of war and sells else we will see them filing for bankruptsy.

Quite note on Unreal engine. I could have sworn Mark Rein said that developers using the Unreal engine would save tons of money and have shorter development time. I think he used gears as an example of being developed for 1-2 years on a small staff with a 10 million dollar bugdet. How the hell does Midway spend 3x that much with numerous delays and about the same lenght of gears? If midway wasn't publising unreal 3 I bet they would be in there suing with silicon knights.

I have an odd feeling StrangleHold will sell better on the PS3 when it's released.

Couldn't agree more, shams. Gaming sites have been talking a lot about how there are so many exceptional, high-budget titles being released this year. I don't know if all of the games will be worth playing, but with these huge development budgets, there's just no way that all of these games can turn a profit. Especially so if you factor in the relatively slow adoption rate of the "HD" consoles thus far. Most publishers probably thought that the PS3 would have 10 million sales by Christmas, and the 360 in the range of 15 million. Instead, the two platforms combined are barely over half that number. If the Wii didn't exist, I think we might be seeing a huge market crash for the industry this year. Instead, we'll just be seeing a sea of red ink from those companies that read the market incorrectly. Which is a lot of them, sadly.

Stranglehold? I've never even HEARD of this game! From the short descriptions posted here, it looks... generic, cliched, and so on. Does the world need yet another bloody shooter featuring "bullet time"? Call me crazy, but I'm with Bodhesatva on this. The game will never do anywhere near enough sales to meet a $30 million (!) budget.

Midway - what were you THINKING?!

Well you are overlooking somethings about Stranglehold. Epic didn't have to budget in John Woo or Chow Yun Fat for Gears, both of which certainly added a substantial amount to the budget. Since the game is the sequel to Hard Boiled, I am sure that also added to the cost as well. I wouldn't be surprised if half of Stranglehold's budget was for costs not related to the game's actual development.

Artists are a lot more expensive than programers. A lot of programing is reusable (and resellable, especially for a company like Midway), art... not nearly as much.

There won't be a crash mainly because first party and second party software has sold sell especially for MS and Nintendo. Then you have some 3rd party that have had success and might not have had the huge budgets. Also you have to look at it worldwide in terms of making a profit and most high profile 360 games have made the 500k if you combine world sales. I don't think is fair to see a number of games bomb or flop as that is nothing new. Based on the numbers success far outweights failure in the gaming industry. The main company's that are hurting are the ones that only went with the PS3 and as mentioned it has a smaller installed based which means less sales or profits. Again doubt there would be a crash and some games bombing is normal.

I figured as much which is why I made the reference about they hoping to sell based on the name which I just don't think there are enough people who know about John Woo or Chow Yun Fat or to be more blunt would care about buying a game just based on that.  If it had gotten great reviews then you would buy it based on being a really good game which happens to be based on a movie with a real actor as nice bonus but not base your purchase just on that at least for most poeple.  It is just too big of a risk I think and money not well spent if you are correct.

5 Mill for John Woo and 5 Mill for Chow Yun Fat. Balance 15 Mill for the game. :-p