Video Game Industry Thread: September's thread is done, go to the new one

Sheep

Oh hey. I had Slalom too. Didn't even know that was Rare.

What was the 64 game you're talking about?

EDIT

Also, Battletoads isn't hated. Just that one level....

Sheep

They even made this. Loved this game.

Fireflash

Sheep wrote:

Oh hey. I had Slalom too. Didn't even know that was Rare.

What was the 64 game you're talking about?

EDIT

Also, Battletoads isn't hated. Just that one level....

Yet they kept making that level in every battletoad game. Come to think of it... why is it that all Battletoads that I played (except battletoads vs doubldragong) felt like pretty much the same game? Start on the cliffs, smacking pigs and long legged robots, go down some shaft and squish some crows, then the dreaded level of controller throwing frustration.

UncleSporky

Sheep wrote:

Oh hey. I had Slalom too. Didn't even know that was Rare.

What was the 64 game you're talking about?

EDIT

Also, Battletoads isn't hated. Just that one level....

Really any number of 64 games that were set on a bunch of squarish platforms suspended over water/nothingness, with different platform heights and various objects floating around. Mario 64 etc. It's the haphazard early 3D aesthetic captured on the NES.

As for Battletoads, everyone gets hung up on Turbo Tunnel, but the majority of the levels after that are just as hated (and I'd say probably even deserving of it). Racing a rat to the bottom of the map with no time to spare, or running a gauntlet in front of a ball of death, or jumping from giant snake to giant snake with spiked balls everywhere, or Turbo Tunnel's surfing redux. There were no gameplay repeats of that incredibly strong first level. Which perhaps goes to show even more programming ingenuity, they didn't just use the same basic engine for all of their levels, but perhaps it might've been better if they had.

I feel like I should better explain what I said about the Battletoads character animation from last page. It's technical and off topic so spoil'd:

Spoiler:

This is what Mario's graphics look like:



This is the ROM method. All the data you see is all the data that's on the cart, hard coded, all the graphics they can ever use for sprites/moving objects. You can see every Mario animation there all at once, in small chunks.

This is what Battletoads' graphics look like:



This is the RAM method. Graphics have to be decompressed from the cart to RAM and can be swapped out at any time. Just about every console after the NES does it this way, but the NES was slow enough that they needed to also allow the faster ROM method.

The animated bit is the main toad character which gets swapped out every frame, between the time the renderer finishes drawing at the bottom and starts drawing again at the top. Note that some NES games actually have load times where they turn off the screen just so they can decompress graphics to RAM, and yet Battletoads is swapping out a big chunk every single frame. And what I'm showing above is just single player, it works flawlessly with two players as well!

If I remember right, they had enough time to do it because they used really efficient compression, and because they kept the rendering turned off extra long before turning it on again for the next frame. This results in a little extra black space at the top of the screen, which of course nobody really notices.

Cade

Let's get back to what really counts.................DOOM.

For Nintendo.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/patrick-garratt/ps-vita-shines-as-tokyo-g_b_967631.html

Sony's PlayStation Vita emerged as a Japanese frontrunner from this week's Tokyo Game Show (TGS), leaving Nintendo in a dire situation with its intrinsically flawed 3DS.

Vita, the successor to portable gaming device PSP, was confirmed for a December 17 release in Japan at TGS, with two Sony presentations showing the company understands fully what a portable gaming device needs to be in the post-iPhone world.

Firstly, there are two versions. Both have WiFi, but the more expensive - £30 pricier at about £230 - has a 3G connection. Sony announced at the show that Vita's 3G, in Japan at least, would adopt a pay-as-you-go model, skirting the need for expensive user contracts.

The move differentiates the machine from iOS and Android phones, meaning it can be always-on in a way perfect for games: you pay up front for time online, not for data used.

Vita can be connected always and everywhere. 3DS has no 3G option at all.

Secondly, Sony has gone to great lengths to ensure Vita has a full suite of social networking apps, showing it's cognizant of the expectation to be able to tweet or update Facebook from any mobile device.

Thirdly, Vita is extremely powerful, far more so than iPhone 4 and competitive gaming handsets, and comes replete with just about every input imaginable; it has twin thumbsticks, physical buttons and even a laptop-style trackpad on its rear.

It clearly provides an experience you'll never get on a mobile phone, and in the current handheld gaming market that means everything in terms of survival.

Sony was strong in Tokyo this week, showing it's developed a strategy to enable to Vita to exist in a brutal market opposite the likes of Apple and Google.

Nintendo, on the other hand, has been caught woefully short in the mobile games space with 3DS, it's current console, and its TGS presentation did nothing to allay fears that the Japanese giant is facing a real disaster with the machine.

Following news that 3DS sales have tanked since it launched in March and Nintendo was to slash its price as a result, both gamers and the trade alike were looking to company president Satoru Iwata to announce game-changing moves in Tokyo: instead we saw the leader attempt to fix the broken handheld with lick and spit.

3DS only has one thumbstick compared to Vita's two. This means it's ill-equipped to play modern 3D games, which traditionally use the left stick to move the on-screen character and the right stick to move the game's camera. Following considerable push-back on the decision to leave off a second stick, Nintendo announced at TGS a frankly hideous plastic add-on, called the Slide Pad, in an attempt to bring 3DS up to date.

This won't work. Adding functionality to games machines in this way rarely does. The major problem with augmenting games hardware post-launch is that software developers can never be certain the player has bought the peripheral. From a business perspective, developing a 3DS title with two thumbsticks in mind makes no sense: what happens if the gamer only has one?

The rest of Nintendo's conference was terrible. Iwata and friends announced a Misty Pink 3DS for release in Japan in October, and showed off a couple of "girl" games. Not even the Nintendo faithful were convinced.

Iwata's TGS trump was confirmation that the next in the Monster Hunter series - an 18 million unit-selling handheld phenomenon in Japan traditionally played on Sony's PSP, will release apparently exclusively on 3DS.

Shares in Capcom, Monster Hunter's publisher, cratered as a result.

If there was ever a clear indication that 3DS's time has already passed, it was that the crowd refused to even applaud Iwata until the Monster Hunter announcement. Conversely, Vita was so popular at the show that organisers were forced to close down demo queues due to demand.

Nintendo may have ruled the current hardware generation with Wii and DS, but it's terrifying to see just how quickly stars can rise and fall in the video games space.

3DS imploding, Vita burning bright: expect Sony to confirm western launch details in the coming months.

The hate is strong with this one, he shall be a strong Sith Lord.

Rehab

Battletoads was awesome. Especially Battletoads & Double Dragon and Battlemaniacs.

I even liked the challenge of the hover bike levels despite how challenging they could be, but the levels where you were lowered in by rope were probably my favorite. You could get a ton of 1Ups juggling crows in them too.

Henroid

Rare made Wizards & Warriors, for fucking real? That game was... well, impossible to lose at, since you had infinite continues and you'd pick up right where you left off.

Sheep

I've never beaten a single Battletoads game. This includes BT vs DD.

UncleSporky

Henroid wrote:

Rare made Wizards & Warriors, for fucking real? That game was... well, impossible to lose at, since you had infinite continues and you'd pick up right where you left off.

There are about 700 licensed NES games and Rare was responsible for 47 of them, or around 7% of the entire NES library.

A lot of people think they only have fond memories starting with Donkey Kong Country, but they go back further than that.

cloudeagle

Cade wrote:

Let's get back to what really counts.................DOOM.

For Nintendo.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/patrick-garratt/ps-vita-shines-as-tokyo-g_b_967631.html

snip

The hate is strong with this one, he shall be a strong Sith Lord.

Kee-ripes, that's some Sony Defense Force stuff right there. Yep, the 3DS' lack of 3G means it's dooooooomed.

Though to be fair, Vita did get a lot of interest at TGS, based on the lines. It definitely has a shot at repeating the PSP's past success in Japan.

Outside of portable-land, I'm not so sure.

UncleSporky

Vita got a lot of interest at TGS because it is still an unknown factor. It's not out yet, whereas the 3DS has been for quite some time. A lot of its games were still unknown and unseen prior to TGS (and a lot remain that way).

Also which is better, a complete lack of 3G, or 3G through AT&T? Weigh these options carefully.

EDIT: Oh shit this guy at GAF wrote the greatest thing:

Vita, Vita, burning bright

On the Internet late at night

What immortal hand or ear

Could touch thy fearful touch pad rear?

Rehab

It should be amusing to see how all these journalists and analysts predicting doom for the 3DS react during and directly after the holidays as Nintendo goes on to sell millions of units during that time frame.

Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7 alone will probably sell over 3 million copies combined between November and December.

Cade

cloudeagle wrote:

Cade wrote:

Let's get back to what really counts.................DOOM.

For Nintendo.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/patrick-garratt/ps-vita-shines-as-tokyo-g_b_967631.html

snip

The hate is strong with this one, he shall be a strong Sith Lord.

Kee-ripes, that's some Sony Defense Force stuff right there. Yep, the 3DS' lack of 3G means it's dooooooomed.

Though to be fair, Vita did get a lot of interest at TGS, based on the lines. It definitely has a shot at repeating the PSP's past success in Japan.

Outside of portable-land, I'm not so sure.

Even better....
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/a_e32005xbox360conference

Same guy, how the 360 is pretty much doomed, the PS3 is blowing everyone away, this was in 2005.

You got it right with the Sony Defense Force.

vsove

All those NES game videos are giving me hells of nostalgia, guys. Seriously.

And if you went to the BioWare studios.. well, to be fair, the floor that the majority of visitors would see is full of references to our older, 'classic' games. (Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, MDK2, KOTOR), but that's mostly because we have a floor that's pretty much entirely dedicated to Dragon Age and a floor that's dedicated almost entirely to Mass Effect (being where development for those two franchises takes place). If we'd happened to put the HR and other similar departments on a different floor and done ME on the usual 'visitor' floor, you'd probably think 'THESE BIOWARE GUYS HAVE NO RESPECT FOR WHAT MADE THEM AS A COMPANY.'

Usually, it comes down to someone wanting to flex their interior designer muscle. Nothing more, nothing less.

Sheep

What do Rare and Bioware have in common?

Xenogears of Bore

That's Blizzard.

Sheep

oooop

PolloDiablo

Blizzard's #1 game will always be the Lost Vikings. That game is in my top three or four ever.

On a totally different note, is Way of the Samurai 4 ever coming to America? If not is there a place I could import it for less than crazy nuts money?

mynameisguido

Rock N' Roll Racing is da best. I never heard any of those original songs when I was a kid, so some part of me still associates songs like "Paranoid" more with that game than anything else.

Edit: I actually totally didn't realize Highway Star was in that game until just now. Mind-blowing.

Athenor

My point in posting about Snake, Rattle & Roll was more to illustrate the changes that have happened in Rare. They've gone through about 3-4 major phases - the NES days, followed by them nearly dying, then their SNES/N64 days, when Nintendo invested in them and used them as a showcase, then their Gamecube/Xbox days, when they didn't know the meaning of the word "Pacing" (in terms of development, they just took FOREVER), and then their Microsoft says.

My understanding is that the brothers who ran Rare wanted Nintendo to buy 100% of the company during the Gamecube era so they could retire, but Nintendo was in upheval at the time, Ken Lobb had left (possibly forced out?), and the ever-lengthening production times soured Nintendo. So they had a fire sale to get rid of Rare, even giving away the back catalog with it. This is grossly over-simplified, of course, and some of it comes through some really rose tinted glasses, but basically Rare is no where near the company it was during its golden era.

Which is a damned shame, because I WANT it to be that company again. I want another fucking BLAST CORPS, Damnit!


(Oh, and I wish Nintendo/Microsoft would bury the hatchet or at least work together. I know, I know, it'll never happen due to licensing costs and revenue and all that, but I want another Nintendo/Rare joint, with Microsoft thrown in there for online. I maintain to this day that the gaming industry as a whole would be a better, more profitable place if we didn't have the fragmentation of the market and these giant conglomerates refusing to work together. But hey, the money's in the licensing fees, right?

Sagroth

Local H Jay wrote:

did they make that last banjo & kazooie game? i feel like if they had done a direct sequel and not nuts and bolts people would have been more keen on rare. kinect sports is fun but the vast majority of people never played it and probably won't, so it's easy to ridicule when you just see people demoing the game and doing body-waggle

Hey now. I loved Nuts and Bolts. I would kill for a direct or spiritual sequel to it.

darleysam

Sagroth wrote:

Local H Jay wrote:

did they make that last banjo & kazooie game? i feel like if they had done a direct sequel and not nuts and bolts people would have been more keen on rare. kinect sports is fun but the vast majority of people never played it and probably won't, so it's easy to ridicule when you just see people demoing the game and doing body-waggle

Hey now. I loved Nuts and Bolts. I would kill for a direct or spiritual sequel to it.

Man, I loved it too, but there's only so many times you can make a giant, flying monument to the male genitals with rocket engines.

Spoiler:

I have yet to find that upper-limit, and would appreciate a sequel to aid me in this quest.

Undead Scottsman

Nuts and Bolts should have done much better than it did. Not only was the Banjo-Kazooie humor spot-on, but once you got the hang of the game systems, you made the leap from "how do I design a vehicle to beat this challenge" to "how do I design a vehicle to completely break this challenge" and the fun and satisfaction level shoots through the roof. I would LOVE a sequel to nuts and bolts, or even just a 3D platformer sequel in the style of the original game and it's sequel. Sad that Rare has essentially become "Kinect Factory"

darleysam

Seriously though, people saying "there's absolutely no mention of their past in their offices!", which I have read multiple times in response to that article.. did you look past the first page? There's like, at least a whole other page there. At least. There's even photos of things that aren't Kinect Sports. Like, there's a picture of a banana or something. And some conker deal or whatever?

Couscous

So what did I miss since Monday last week while I was in the nut house?

darleysam

http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/news/1093536/Xbox-run-gaming-industrys-first-live-TV-ads/

Xbox will run real-time television ads pushing its new 'Gears of War 3' game, by displaying the number of people playing the game online at the time of broadcast.
Microsoft-owned Xbox claims the ads, which launch today (20 September), will mark the first time the gaming industry has featured live TV advertising.

The live elements of the television campaign will feature on 30-second executions, which begin on 23 September and will run in six instalments until 3 October.

The computing giant is following in the footsteps of gambling companies including Paddy Power, which already run live TV ads that show in-game odds.

Stephen McGill, Microsoft UK Xbox marketing director, said: "This is going to be our biggest controller-based game campaign.

"It is on the scale of what we did for 'Halo Reach' and 'Halo 3' – television is the main centrepiece of the campaign."

Microsoft started selling the game at 20,000 stores worldwide and in around 400 stores in the UK at a minute past midnight this morning.

The campaign was created by McCann Erickson and will cover the history of the 'Gears of War' franchise, which has sold 13 million copies globally to date. Media planning and buying, including the live elements of the ads, is being handled by UM London.

A digital campaign created by AKQA is supporting the television spots and involves fan activity on Facebook, triggering detonations that expose artwork of the game’s characters, which can be viewed on the game’s official website.

McGill said 'Gears of War 3' was being launched at a time when there were no direct competitors being released to the market, and revealed the biggest challenge to the franchise would come in November with the release of 'Battlefield 3' and the latest 'Call of Duty' game.

Seen these kinds of things in football, it's an interesting tactic to use it for a game.. wonder how it'll play out.

Couscous

The computing giant is following in the footsteps of gambling companies including Paddy Power, which already run live TV ads that show in-game odds.

Such great trailblazers.

darleysam

Couscous wrote:

The computing giant is following in the footsteps of gambling companies including Paddy Power, which already run live TV ads that show in-game odds.

Such great trailblazers.

Who, Paddy Power? Well, if they're the first to do it, then.. yes. When Ray Winstone pops up in the half-time ad break to give you live odds on who's going to score next, it's kind of neat. Admittedly, all either company is doing is just showing a live number, but hey.

Algertman

I don't see how Vita won TGS when 3DS announced multiple Monster Hunter Games and Vita showed none. That right there shows the real winner.

Couscous

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/new-kinect-dance-title-from-konami/085072

Konami has announced it is working on Boom Boom Dance, a music game for Xbox Live Arcade.

...

No release date or price has been given yet. This will be the publisher's second Kinect dancing game, following last November's Dance Evolution.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/play-com-sold-for-pound-25m/085074

Online entertainment retail giant Play.com has agreed to sell itself to Japanese company Rakuten.

The agreed fee is £25m.

Rakuten is the largest online retail operator in Japan. Play.com is its third European acquisition following moves for French site PriceMinister and German shopping portal Tradoria.

In total the company operates out of ten countries.

"The UK market is one of Europe's largest and most mature e-commerce markets,” Rakuten chairman and CEO Hiroshi Mikitani stated.

“Play.com is not only a pioneer in the market, but also one of the UK's most successful e-commerce businesses. We aim to leverage our e-commerce strength and experience to further expand and develop Play.com's business model and channel its loyal user base, merchants, and deep product offerings into Rakuten's global e-commerce network."

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/battlefield-3-pre-orders-top-1-5m/085079

Arvind Bhatia, one of the company's analysts, revealed that the publisher is reporting pre-orders in excess of 1.5m for Battlefield 3. Industry Gamers reports that Bhatia believes this is due in part to the map pack incentive offered by retail partners.

"Management remains optimistic that the title has potential to exceed sales of its predecessor, which has old through 9.5m units life-to-date," he said.

"Critical ratings for BF3 should be at least 80. The combined marketing dollars for BF3 and Call of Duty: MW3 could reach $100m this year.

"The two-week head start for BF3 versus CoD will facilitate a big launch for BF3. Once CoD launches, there would be a natural slowdown in sales of BF3. Then, at holiday, momentum for BF3 should rebuild."

He added that Sterne Agee expects Battlefield 3 to have a "long tail" thanks to future DLC, and that the US will account for 60 per cent of the game's sales.

In barely related to video games news, the printing industry is undergoing a shift that looks similar to what happened with video games..
http://www.economist.com/node/21528641

...
This has been good for readers: in Britain the average price of a book has fallen by 15% since 2003, reckons BML Bowker, a book-marketing consultancy. And demand has grown: consumers spend the same amount on books, so they must be buying more. Those independent bookshops that survived the chain war in America and Britain have held sales and prices steady. Meanwhile, mass retailers find books such a draw that they lure in customers by selling some titles at a loss.

Higher turnover should also be positive for publishers. But mass retailers demand discounts of up to 60% for bulk orders, shrinking margins. All sides prosper when books sell quickly. But, unlike groceries, if books don’t sell, retailers return them to the publisher—and do not pay. So, when a book with a large print run flops, publishers end up with an expensive pile of recycling. That is why some publishers have stopped doing new deals with the likes of Costco, an American warehouse retailer, which likes to order very large print runs.

Few people will mourn publishers’ losses from increased price competition and new technology like e-readers. The question is whether these trends undermine the quality of books which are being published, by breaking a business model that has let firms focus on variety and range. Publishers have good reason to shiver at the decline of traditional bookshops. To fund the discovery and promotion of new authors, they have relied on books that sell steadily over a number of years. Yet mass retailers stock a few hundred new blockbusters.

At first sight there is no reason for concern. New works are abundant—40% more titles came out in Britain in 2010 than in 2001. But this obscures a starker trend: “mid-list” titles are selling in smaller numbers in America and Britain. This matters for cultural life, because most literary fiction and serious non-fiction falls into that bracket and much of it could become uneconomical to publish.

For some reason, the iPad hasn't had good ebook sales.

darleysam

Play have been bought? Well maybe they'll go back to sending out the thing you pay for at the agreed-upon time, like they used to. Because they sure-as-hell haven't been operating under that structure lately.

Brainiac 8

Athenor wrote:

All I want from Rare any more is Snake, Rattle & Roll 2. Hell, it would be fun as hell with the Kinect, too.

But I recognize that it isn't that studio anymore.

I would love a Snake, Rattle & Roll 2. My wife and I still play that together on my old NES.

I would love a new R.C. Proam also.

Brainiac 8

Couscous wrote:

So what did I miss since Monday last week while I was in the nut house?

The Nintendo Doom machine is in full force.
Reviewers suck, no they don't, most do. Gaming journalism lol.

Magic Pink

Brainiac 8 wrote:

Couscous wrote:

So what did I miss since Monday last week while I was in the nut house?

The Nintendo Doom machine is in full force.
Reviewers suck, no they don't, most do. Gaming journalism lol.

That's EVERY week.

Capt Howdy

Henroid wrote:

Rare made Wizards & Warriors, for fucking real? That game was... well, impossible to lose at, since you had infinite continues and you'd pick up right where you left off.

God I love that game. I have to get that for Nes now.

Brainiac 8

Magic Pink wrote:

Brainiac 8 wrote:

Couscous wrote:

So what did I miss since Monday last week while I was in the nut house?

The Nintendo Doom machine is in full force.
Reviewers suck, no they don't, most do. Gaming journalism lol.

That's EVERY week.

That's true.

Magic Pink

Capt Howdy wrote:

Henroid wrote:

Rare made Wizards & Warriors, for fucking real? That game was... well, impossible to lose at, since you had infinite continues and you'd pick up right where you left off.

God I love that game. I have to get that for Nes now.

I remember when the sequal, Ironsword, came out I was living in a small town and the only place that had it was a good hour drive away. So I convinced this girl that desperatly wanted to date me that I might get over the gay if she drove me to get it. She bought it.

In retrospect, I'm a terrible person.

Brainiac 8

Magic Pink wrote:

Capt Howdy wrote:

Henroid wrote:

Rare made Wizards & Warriors, for fucking real? That game was... well, impossible to lose at, since you had infinite continues and you'd pick up right where you left off.

God I love that game. I have to get that for Nes now.

I remember when the sequal, Ironsword, came out I was living in a small town and the only place that had it was a good hour drive away. So I convinced this girl that desperatly wanted to date me that I might get over the gay if she drove me to get it. She bought it.

In retrospect, I'm a terrible person.

That is a terrible thing to do. D:

Sponk

Magic Pink wrote:

Capt Howdy wrote:

Henroid wrote:

Rare made Wizards & Warriors, for fucking real? That game was... well, impossible to lose at, since you had infinite continues and you'd pick up right where you left off.

God I love that game. I have to get that for Nes now.

I remember when the sequal, Ironsword, came out I was living in a small town and the only place that had it was a good hour drive away. So I convinced this girl that desperatly wanted to date me that I might get over the gay if she drove me to get it. She bought it.

In retrospect, I'm a terrible person.

Did she not realize the fallacy of that plan once she saw Fabio on the cover of the game?

Skull2185

Brainiac 8 wrote:

Magic Pink wrote:

Capt Howdy wrote:

Henroid wrote:

Rare made Wizards & Warriors, for fucking real? That game was... well, impossible to lose at, since you had infinite continues and you'd pick up right where you left off.

God I love that game. I have to get that for Nes now.

I remember when the sequal, Ironsword, came out I was living in a small town and the only place that had it was a good hour drive away. So I convinced this girl that desperatly wanted to date me that I might get over the gay if she drove me to get it. She bought it.

In retrospect, I'm a terrible person.

That is a terrible thing to do. D:

:lol:

On the flipside, that's an awesome thing to do, and you're an awesome person.