uber said:
it's dismissive to say that heavy rain and infamous could fare poorly. well of course that could happen. the more important point is that sony is taking innovative chances with their software. what the hell is microsoft doing that is anywhere near what heavy rain is doing? even killzone 2 was a big risk. do you honestly believe microsoft would have dumped 60 million dollars on the sequel of a game that was generally panned? no way. what microsoft has shown with their moneymakers is that they believe change is bad, and that they will give you more of the same. now why is that a company you would want to stand behind and worship?
was no one else slightly disappointed that both halo 3 and gears 2 bore so many similarities to their predecessors?
even the resistance series (of which i am not a fan) boasted significant graphical upgrades). |
1) It is not dismissive to say that two unreleased games could fare poorly. It's as valid a statement as saying they'll be system sellers. It can't be known until they are released, reviews are in and the PS3 fans have either purchased them or let them die.
2) Heavy Rain is essentially Indigo Prophecy (which I liked) with some serious new tech. Innovative only insofar as the emotion technology that Quantic Dream is working on. Not really very innovative as a game: we've had these sorts of adventure titles before. ...And it *better* be good as it's been hyped since E3 '06.
3) KZ2 wasn't a risk, it was one of the easier to see bets they could have made. Sony needs to compete in the exlcusive FPS space with the 360, they knew that if they sold somewhere in the neighborhood of 2m copies of KZ2 they'd have broken even. It was nothing heroic, it was nothing innovative or amazing, it was merely a business decision to try to grow one of the more promising exclusive universes they had control over.
3) Moneymakers are that for a reason: they offer the experiences people want. Willfully changing those beyond what attracted people in the first place just to be innovative makes little sense. In order for any sequel to have the best chance at success, it has to keep much of what attracted fans in the first place. New features have to be added, otherwise it is just a redux, but turning Halo 4 into a 2D sidescroller just to be 'innovative' would alienate the Halo fans awaiting the new adventure. And why bother reshaping Halo 4? Just create a *new* game in that universe using a new style. Halo Wars in an example of taking an established franchise and broadening it. Innovative? Not really. It's common sense.
4) Microsoft is by no means coasting and making only safe bets. Of this I am 100% sure. As has been mentioned dozens of time in this thread alone, E3 isn't very far away. If you think Microsoft's lost the eye of the tiger, you're very wrong. I think Microsoft absolutely knows that they're in a close race and must build the 360 platform, just as Sony is beginning to wake up and realize that they can't just assume everyone will be their sheep and choose Playstation just because it's Sony - because sales show people aren't.
Halo 3 is a jump from Halo 2 graphically, of course, but frame-rate and multiplayer speed was also a huge improvement and more of a focus.
Gears 2 was only two years after Gears 1, uses the same Unreal engine, so expecting some massive change in graphical fidelity is unrealistic. It was beautiful in G1, it remains so in G2. More focus was spent on multiplayer modes and drop-in/out co-op.
I don't think that PS3's Uncharted sequel, which itself has a similar time delta between first and second, is going to see massive changes in its graphical engine, either.
