18 of those rated it over 80.  4 rated 40 or below.  Obviously not all the professionals agree.  I enjoyed The Conduit better than a lot of games rated 90+.  It has many spots (especially in the beginning) where the graphics are not good (maybe 2 out of 5), and other where it's 5 out of 5.  It's great fun online (except when it glitches).  Anyways, it is far from a bad game.  It's biggest problem is it's not consistant in it's quality from level to level.

is this another Conduit thread?

They fooled me once. Let's see if they can fool me a second time.

why is everyone saying the conduit is bad? , whats so bad about it ? i haven't played it.

It's not 'bad' it just isn't that good.. They hyped it as awesome but it's a pretty generic run and gun shooter.

The problem with your philosophy of one game at a time is that for a studio like this, if that game doesn't succeed and sell well, they're basically SOL and will go bankrupt. A studio like this needs to have a few games prepared so if one falls off th rocker, they can get the next out reasonably soon to cover tehmselves.

They must've worked some sort of voodoo magic on me, since The Conduit is my 5th most-played Wii game in terms of playtime. So i'll be keeping a watch on this

Yes I picked it up hoping for something on the lines of Halo, but I was severly dissapointed, but who can argue their just aren't that many good shooters on the Wii. To be honest I prefered the Conduit to RedSteel which sold way more copies and I prefer it to COD:WaW. The online is better then any other online game on the Wii to my knowledge but it still falls far behind any shooter online with the 360.

I might buy Grinder and Gladiator but probubly not the latter. Co-op has me interested and online again if its anything like the Conduit it'll be a superior online showing. My only question is, with sales in the 200k's is it really worth it for HVS to keep giving us exclusive Wii titles? Would it be more profitable for the studio to make the next Conduit for 360/PS3?

The game genre they've chosen seems better suited for other platforms, which may well have had something to do with its luke warm sales, but they were acting under the notion that the FPS genre was largely underrepresented on the Wii, and by producing a high quality example for it, they would see commercial success.

Personally, I don't think the game would have held up well on either the PS3 or the 360, particularly because they are correct: the FPS genre IS largely underrepresented on the Wii unlike the HD platforms where they'd be competing with the likes of Halo, Resistance, Modern Warfare, Killzone, Bioshock, etc. and the key distinction of the game (the IR pointer/motion based controls) would be absent on the HD platforms.

And unless they kept the in game resources scaled down for an HD version (which would be losing the other distinction of the game relative to others on the platform) in the interest of keeping costs low, it would have to sell more copies on an HD platform to recoup development costs and post a profit. And if the game looked like a budget game on an HD platform, it would likely be doomed to even worse sales.

The shotgun approach of throwing out as many titles in as little time as possible and hoping at least one hits is a problematic strategy as well. It has nothing to do with beliefs or "philosophy."

Either you have a solid title on your hands during development due to the thought, effort and man hours that went into it that is well-received, or you don't. Having more titles that aren't well received as well does not help the situation either way.

If HVS doesn't have a hit with their next release, then they run the risk of being seen as just another developer for the Wii that is making somewhat uninspired games that end up selling appropriately. Game three would have to be exceptional to buck that stigma.

Without being privvy to HVS' balance sheets, one may as well assume they have enough VC/investment dollars to supplement whatever revenue generated by Conduit sales to stay in business. Since they appear to be expanding rather than laying staff off, it's a safe assumption which means there shouldn't be any rush to throw out as many titles in as little time possible.

No, it probably wouldn't make sense for them to target the HD consoles ...

For High Voltage to "Stand Out" graphically on the HD consoles they would have to double the size of their development team, and spend twice as long developing a game, and probably not see any higher sales. Games like "Halo" seem to make people forget that only 19 of 57 FPS games released on the XBox 360 have sold over 500,000 copies.

On a side note, The Grinder may not (actually) be any more rushed than The Conduit was; and may even have more resources devoted to it for a longer time than The Conduit did. The Conduit was a side project for High Voltage while they worked on other projects that were funded by publishers, and I can't imagine that it had a full development team focused on it until Sega decided to publish it. It is entirely possible that soon after Sega began funding The Conduit, The Grinder began development with a seperate team ...

With that said, I wouldn't expect The Grinder to receive dramatically better reviews than The Conduit; but if High Voltage works on fixing some of the bigger problems from The Conduit and produces a (somewhat) more polished game it could be an average quality shooter; which is above the quality of experience of most shooters released for the Wii to date. With solid mentorship, good recruitment, and a focus on constant improvement of quality High Voltage might become a high-end developer over the next 5 years ... but that is not something to "bet" on, being that so many developers have been in the same position and fallen far short.