GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
No, it really doesn't, but if you want to believe that, that's fine. The fact that most indy games are purely 2D should be very telling to you. Because the budget and time restraints to do 2D are simply not the same as good high quality 3D. I can't even believe this is really a discussion.
I'm pretty sure they've got engines in place, animations and rigs that they can tweak, etc. You only have to draw a character's texture once, but a high quality 2D game can have thousands of animation frames.
Isn't that why Disney doesn't like to do 2D animated movies anymore? They're far more expensive and time consuming to make?
I'm pretty sure they've got engines in place, animations and rigs that they can tweak, etc. You only have to draw a character's textures once or twice, but a high quality 2D game can have thousands of animation frames.
Isn't that why Disney doesn't like to do 2D animated movies anymore? They're far more expensive and time consuming to make?
Nah, Disney stopped doing hand-drawn animation because they released a few terrible movies and assumed that their low B.O. was due to audiences wanting CGI bullshit 24/7.
Once Iger came in and put Lasseter in the position he's now in they started 2D up again. Princess & the Frog is the first of (hopefully) many to come.
I'm pretty sure they've got engines in place, animations and rigs that they can tweak, etc. You only have to draw a character's texture once, but a high quality 2D game can have thousands of animation frames.
Isn't that why Disney doesn't like to do 2D animated movies anymore? They're far more expensive and time consuming to make?
This would seem like a correct understanding.
I thought they started again since they tossed out Michael Eisner. The Princess and the Frog, for example.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
I'm pretty sure they've got engines in place, animations and rigs that they can tweak, a full physics modeling suite, etc. You only have to draw a character's textures once or twice, but a high quality 2D game can have thousands of animation frames.
Isn't that why Disney doesn't like to do 2D animated movies anymore? They're far more expensive and time consuming to make?
Making a movie and making a video game are not the same thing, not even close really. In even the most advanced 2D video game, I have an incredibly constrained set of sprites and backgrounds I need to make. In an animated movie, there is no such constraint. I literally have to draw every character in one of hundreds of thousands of positions. And animatiing in 3D is hard...have you ever done inverse kinematics? Even with really good tools like 3D Character Studio, it takes weeks to rig up one animation with a model that has 150 bones.
No, it really doesn't, but if you want to believe that, that's fine. The fact that most indy games are purely 2D should be very telling to you. Because the budget and time restraints to do 2D are simply not the same as good high quality 3D. I can't even believe this is really a discussion.
Most indie games are 2D because a small team doesn't have the resources to learn/license 3D engines. Established game companies already have this stuff in the bag. Once scale gets involved it's quite cheap to crank out 3D games - notice how many games are polygonal, because it's a lot easier to work with once you've learned the ins and outs. Good 2D games by contrast take up loads of texture memory. If an animation doesn't look right, you don't get to drag a few points around, you redraw it.
Notice how a lot of indie games use simple pixel art that doesn't require many frames. They can't make A Boy And His Blob or Wario Land Shake It or Rayman Origins.
I'm pretty sure they've got engines in place, animations and rigs that they can tweak, etc. You only have to draw a character's texture once, but a high quality 2D game can have thousands of animation frames.
Isn't that why Disney doesn't like to do 2D animated movies anymore? They're far more expensive and time consuming to make?
This would seem like a correct understanding.
I thought they started again since they tossed out Michael Eisner. The Princess and the Frog, for example.
The new Studio Chibi movie counts right? Or are they just the publisher?
I'm pretty sure they've got engines in place, animations and rigs that they can tweak, etc. You only have to draw a character's texture once, but a high quality 2D game can have thousands of animation frames.
Isn't that why Disney doesn't like to do 2D animated movies anymore? They're far more expensive and time consuming to make?
This would seem like a correct understanding.
I thought they started again since they tossed out Michael Eisner. The Princess and the Frog, for example.
The new Studio Chibi movie counts right? Or are they just the publisher?
Nah, Disney's just distributor in the US.
But they wouldn't be distributing Ghibli's films in the US without Lasseter and his appreciation for their films in the first place.
Hi! Welcome to the video game industry thread. Here we discuss things like sales figures, game development, studio closures, executive quotes, marketing and general business stuff. Also poop jokes.
Just to make sure...the poop jokes include quotes from EA and Activision higher-ups correct?
Or is that restricted to crap Steve Balmer says/thinks?
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
There are really good 3D engines out there for free and open source. TorchLight uses Ogre3D...so the engine excuse doesn't hold water. 3D is simply more expensive to do. Seriously, go try doing some IK animation sometime in Maya or MAX. Tweaking each bone weight, how it attaches to the bone, what the rotation quaternion is. It's no joke.
Top-notch 2D art is expensive too. There's an up-front investment with 3D in terms of that initial model, but then that one model (the low-detail one is often generated from the high-detail one with tools, although generally this will then be tuned by hand) is used in every frame of animation, those animations can be reused amongst all characters with common skeletons, and there are huge toolchains out there to streamline those procedures. Whereas in good 2D, done properly, every frame is hand-drawn and converted. Cheap 2D is cheaper than cheap 3D, but 3D scales a hell of a lot better than 2D. Is a AAA 2D game as expensive as a AAA 3D game? I don't know, I can't think of any.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
I'm pretty sure they've got engines in place, animations and rigs that they can tweak, a full physics modeling suite, etc. You only have to draw a character's textures once or twice, but a high quality 2D game can have thousands of animation frames.
Isn't that why Disney doesn't like to do 2D animated movies anymore? They're far more expensive and time consuming to make?
This is going to lead into the general discussion when it comes to 3D vs. 2D.
3D you design something once, and then from there you just have to adjust the animations. There's a convenience, in that regard. As a use in resources, it takes more to make happen, and exceptionally so when you have higher poly counts.
2D is tedious as shit, but can produce higher-quality looks (to an extent), and will take more time as you want to add more frames to enhance that detail.
But that's more of a 3D vs. sprite argument, rather than 3D level design compared to 2D level design. I actually was listening to a podcast episode (an old one) that talked about the introduction of 3D platformers, that era of Tomb Raider and such, and how it was actually kind of abrasive and poorly done. Granted, that stage of video game development had to be experienced, but at the end of the day I'm not sure if 3D platformers measure up even in the modern day to 2D. But quality of play aside, I wonder how much cost goes into developing those games compared to a traditional 2D platformer. There's a lot more to consider, and there's more art assets to produce since there's many angles of viewing. The cost -has- to go up when it comes to game design. Another thing is that 3D games require more complex engines, and for whatever reason we're still in this age where people are writing new engines and re-inventing the wheel, as it were. I can't imagine the groundwork for a 2D game is any difficult to establish.
Edit - On my last point, we live in a world where engines for 3D games are a business unto their own. It saves time for developers, but costs them money.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Also, on the engine front, with engines like Unity costing ~2000 up front for a full pro license, no one has the "don't have access to a good 3D engine" excuse anymore. Unity is PIMP for it's price. Modern 3D engine, with both forward and deferred rendering, and a full WUSIWYG editor with play-in-editor feature...for free to start, and 2G's if you want pro features?
I'm pretty sure they've got engines in place, animations and rigs that they can tweak, etc. You only have to draw a character's textures once or twice, but a high quality 2D game can have thousands of animation frames.
Isn't that why Disney doesn't like to do 2D animated movies anymore? They're far more expensive and time consuming to make?
Nah, Disney stopped doing hand-drawn animation because they released a few terrible movies and assumed that their low B.O. was due to audiences wanting CGI bullshit 24/7.
Once Iger came in and put Lasseter in the position he's now in they started 2D up again. Princess & the Frog is the first of (hopefully) many to come.
Quoting myself, but come to think of it, the reason you don't see many high-profile 2D games these days is the same reason as the above...2D is just unpopular, unfortunately.
Which is a shame, because I'm willing to throw $50 at anybody who comes up with a beautiful, good-playing 2D game.
The point is many games aren't worth 60 bucks and would sell way better priced lower, publishers all followed the Activision "next-gen tax" model and now look where we are. Rayman seems to be proof of this (among many others, and Steam sales seem to show this trend as well when a game sells through the roof after a price cut). You don't need to be a 2D fanboy and go on a tangent about what games cost more to make about it, it's just the fact of the matter.
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joshgotroDeviled EggThe Land of REAL CHILIRegistered Userregular
I just want a Lunar game on 360. A beautiful Lunar game.
The point is many games aren't worth 60 bucks and would sell way better priced lower, publishers all followed the Activision "next-gen tax" model and now look where we are. Rayman seems to be proof of this (among many others, and Steam sales seem to show this trend as well when a game sells through the roof after a price cut). You don't need to be a 2D fanboy and go on a tangent about what games cost more to make about it, it's just the fact of the matter.
But why release a game at $20, when you can nab fanboys at $60, then everyone else with a price drop a month later?
The point is many games aren't worth 60 bucks and would sell way better priced lower, publishers all followed the Activision "next-gen tax" model and now look where we are. Rayman seems to be proof of this (among many others, and Steam sales seem to show this trend as well when a game sells through the roof after a price cut). You don't need to be a 2D fanboy and go on a tangent about what games cost more to make about it, it's just the fact of the matter.
Rayman is 'proof' of this in that all the major publishers are on board with the idea. Ubisoft is not some small company trying to make it big time. They're one of the big boys who have enough foundation to get away with this over-pricing shit.
I'm pretty sure they've got engines in place, animations and rigs that they can tweak, etc. You only have to draw a character's textures once or twice, but a high quality 2D game can have thousands of animation frames.
Isn't that why Disney doesn't like to do 2D animated movies anymore? They're far more expensive and time consuming to make?
Nah, Disney stopped doing hand-drawn animation because they released a few terrible movies and assumed that their low B.O. was due to audiences wanting CGI bullshit 24/7.
Once Iger came in and put Lasseter in the position he's now in they started 2D up again. Princess & the Frog is the first of (hopefully) many to come.
Actually the real story is that, for whatever reason, Michael Eisner just wanted to kill 2D stone dead. He ordered Brother Bear be released on a Saturday fer chrissake, with the supposed reasoning that Friday was Halloween and kids wouldn't watch movies anyway. (So why not just move it to another weekend?) The real motive was to drive down the box office for the movie so he'd have an excuse to shutter the hand-drawn department. When Brother Bear actually did decently despite the handicap he closed down the hand-drawn department anyway.
By the way, they've done a second hand-drawn movie since Princess and the Frog... a new Winnie the Pooh movie, based on more of A.A. Milne's stuff. It's actually extremely charming and very, very close in spirit to the original 1960s Winnie the Pooh stuff despite the fact that John Cleese and Craig Ferguson are in it. Absolutely worth watching.
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joshgotroDeviled EggThe Land of REAL CHILIRegistered Userregular
By the way, they've done a second hand-drawn movie since Princess and the Frog... a new Winnie the Pooh movie, based on more of A.A. Milne's stuff. It's actually extremely charming and very, very close in spirit to the original 1960s Winnie the Pooh stuff despite the fact that John Cleese and Craig Ferguson are in it. Absolutely worth watching.
I was there opening day. :P I'm a bit of a Disney nut. Actually wearing an Oswald shirt at work right now.
By the way, they've done a second hand-drawn movie since Princess and the Frog... a new Winnie the Pooh movie, based on more of A.A. Milne's stuff. It's actually extremely charming and very, very close in spirit to the original 1960s Winnie the Pooh stuff despite the fact that John Cleese and Craig Ferguson are in it. Absolutely worth watching.
I was there opening day. :P I'm a bit of a Disney nut. Actually wearing an Oswald shirt at work right now.
The movie didn't have a large release, did it? I don't remember even seeing ads on TV for it.
I'm pretty sure they've got engines in place, animations and rigs that they can tweak, etc. You only have to draw a character's textures once or twice, but a high quality 2D game can have thousands of animation frames.
Isn't that why Disney doesn't like to do 2D animated movies anymore? They're far more expensive and time consuming to make?
Nah, Disney stopped doing hand-drawn animation because they released a few terrible movies and assumed that their low B.O. was due to audiences wanting CGI bullshit 24/7.
Once Iger came in and put Lasseter in the position he's now in they started 2D up again. Princess & the Frog is the first of (hopefully) many to come.
Less "people want 3d" and more "Eisner was a DOUCHE!".
He was notorious for over-pushing anything successful into a franchise regardless of weather or not it could easily become one, and never let anything even remotely risky past the conceptualization stage, even if "risk" amounted to...say...being something Disney was known for but had a failed product in the last decade or so (musicals, 2d animation, that sort of thing).
They should have ditched him the moment the company was solvent again. The politics high-up in their food chain nearly killed them. At a minimum, Disney's survival as a company cost it much of it's soul (I know it sounds sappy, but take it from an ex-cast member: That stuff matters to their workforce).
By the way, they've done a second hand-drawn movie since Princess and the Frog... a new Winnie the Pooh movie, based on more of A.A. Milne's stuff. It's actually extremely charming and very, very close in spirit to the original 1960s Winnie the Pooh stuff despite the fact that John Cleese and Craig Ferguson are in it. Absolutely worth watching.
I was there opening day. :P I'm a bit of a Disney nut. Actually wearing an Oswald shirt at work right now.
By the way, they've done a second hand-drawn movie since Princess and the Frog... a new Winnie the Pooh movie, based on more of A.A. Milne's stuff. It's actually extremely charming and very, very close in spirit to the original 1960s Winnie the Pooh stuff despite the fact that John Cleese and Craig Ferguson are in it. Absolutely worth watching.
I was there opening day. :P I'm a bit of a Disney nut. Actually wearing an Oswald shirt at work right now.
The point is many games aren't worth 60 bucks and would sell way better priced lower, publishers all followed the Activision "next-gen tax" model and now look where we are. Rayman seems to be proof of this (among many others, and Steam sales seem to show this trend as well when a game sells through the roof after a price cut). You don't need to be a 2D fanboy and go on a tangent about what games cost more to make about it, it's just the fact of the matter.
But why release a game at $20, when you can nab fanboys at $60, then everyone else with a price drop a month later?
Because a month later everyone else will be buying it used, regardless of the new price you've set.
The point is many games aren't worth 60 bucks and would sell way better priced lower, publishers all followed the Activision "next-gen tax" model and now look where we are. Rayman seems to be proof of this (among many others, and Steam sales seem to show this trend as well when a game sells through the roof after a price cut). You don't need to be a 2D fanboy and go on a tangent about what games cost more to make about it, it's just the fact of the matter.
But why release a game at $20, when you can nab fanboys at $60, then everyone else with a price drop a month later?
I don't know, more marketing spending? How often do you see an ad for a game outside the first week it's released? And then if you ARE gonna run an ad campaign explaining that your game is cheaper now you're competing with the next big game that IS worth 60 bucks a few weeks later. There literally should be "tiers" at this point that a publisher should be abiding by, like "Ok we are developing this but research shows it will sell way better at Tier A (29.99) than at Tier C (59.99) pricing." instead of this "throw shit at the wall to see what sticks" tactic.
I am so glad Nintendo did the smart thing and priced Rhythm Heaven Fever at $29.99 rather than their standard $49.99. This game is awesome and I love it, but at 50 bucks I would have felt completely ripped off. There is just not 50 bucks worth of content here, and it looks like they knew it.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
By the way, they've done a second hand-drawn movie since Princess and the Frog... a new Winnie the Pooh movie, based on more of A.A. Milne's stuff. It's actually extremely charming and very, very close in spirit to the original 1960s Winnie the Pooh stuff despite the fact that John Cleese and Craig Ferguson are in it. Absolutely worth watching.
I was there opening day. :P I'm a bit of a Disney nut. Actually wearing an Oswald shirt at work right now.
I DIDN'T WRITE THAT
Well, you should have, the movie's that good. :P
And @Arandmoor's right, Eisner's pretty much the reason that most Disney movies past, say, Tarzan sucked balls. (The exceptions being Lilo and Stitch and The Emperor's New Groove.) For instance, Atlantis was supposed to be a full-on action adventure, but Eisner wussened it up to the point that it wasn't a good adventure, but it wasn't a good light and fluffy thing either. So damn glad he's gone and John Lasseter (the brains behind Pixar) is in charge of Disney's animation now.
At any rate, it's been a while since we've quoted Pachter lately, eh? Let's correct that with one of this thread's favorite topics:
Analyst firm Wedbush Securities believes that there is still room for social games giant Zynga's share price to further appreciate, although it doesn't think the company's online gambling plans are as solid.
Although Zynga's stock price initially floundered, it improved following news that Facebook had filed for an initial public offering. In a new analysis report, Wedbush's Michael Pachter has now said that Zynga is in a good position to further improve its stock thanks to recent releases.
In particular, he noted that Zynga has hired a number of former EA executives, including EA mobile lead Barry Cottle, putting the company in the position to develop "compelling content" in the near future.
"[We] think that having true game people in charge of its operations will position it to execute well on its business plan," he added.
With this in mind, Pachter believes Zynga may well double its current revenues by 2013, with plenty of room for growth beyond that.
However, he does not think that Zynga's venture into the online gambling space will be as successful, given that there are plenty of other companies that already have gambling userbases and loyalty programs that will provide advantages over Zynga.
"We do believe that Zynga could leverage its large base of free-to-play poker players to drive traffic to gambling sites, and believe that there is a meaningful revenue opportunity; however, we don't think the opportunity is as large as many have estimated," he noted.
Actually "true game people" would have a completely different design philosophy than what Zynga's doing, i.e. squeeze every single damn microtransaction you can.
I am so glad Nintendo did the smart thing and priced Rhythm Heaven Fever at $29.99 rather than their standard $49.99. This game is awesome and I love it, but at 50 bucks I would have felt completely ripped off. There is just not 50 bucks worth of content here, and it looks like they knew it.
Definitely. This is my third Rhythm Heaven game, and it's just as good as the others. Better than DS, if you ask me. But $50 would have been too much. $30 is perfect.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
The front page of Idle Thumbs has been changed to an image, which is of a magazine and there's some text readable about upcoming new stuff.
Hi! Welcome to the video game industry thread. Here we discuss things like sales figures, game development, studio closures, executive quotes, marketing and general business stuff. Also poop jokes.
Just to make sure...the poop jokes include quotes from EA and Activision higher-ups correct?
Or is that restricted to crap Steve Balmer says/thinks?
What? Steve Balmer is awesome. In an era where corporate execs desperately try not to anger their competition, Steve Balmer talks shit about the iPhone in front of thousands of people. He jumps around like crazy, fucks with interviewers, and has more enthusiasm for his product than any CEO I've ever seen.
For the launch of PlayStation Vita in Australia, with the specific target market being the active gamer we have chosen to launch the console with a focussed retail channel strategy across national specialist game and specialist technology retailers.
There is a long term vision for our revolutionary new hand-held platform, in the same way we had a long term vision for PS3, and anticipate that in line with this we will broaden channel distribution in the future.
Is this more likely to be an actual strategy, or a nice spin way of saying they told us no way in hell will we stock that?
I mean K-Mart directly stated that they weren't stocking it because it was too expensive.
An anonymous quote from Japan's Nikkei newspaper paints a bleak picture for the future of the PlayStation Vita, but Scott Rohde, Sony's senior vice president of Worldwide Studios, rebuts.
The PlayStation Vita has failed to catch fire in the Japanese marketplace since its December launch -- being routinely beaten in weekly sales by its predecessor, the PSP, which is still popular there, as well as Nintendo's 3DS.
In a story that went up on Nikkei's website today, written by Kiyoshi Shin, the head of Japan's IGDA branch, an unnamed source from the Japanese game industry says that "Major Japanese companies are canceling all projects intended for the Vita and are changing development to the 3DS."
"I did not see that quote, but you see extremist quotes like that all the time," says Rohde, who spoke to Gamasutra about the incipient launch of the Vita in North America.
"I mean, obviously, there is no way anyone could stand in front of a camera and say that all developers are changing focus from one platform to another, no matter what it is."
Rohde went on to say that his guess is that it's "largely exaggerated. I know many, many, many third party developers and publishers are feverishly working on Vita titles, not just for now, but for the foreseeable future."
It might not be literally true, but does it hint at a real trend? "No, I absolutely haven't heard," says Rohde.
"There's always going to be the hot platform of the moment in our industry," he says. "There's always going to be reason to talk about a story like that."
"You can, whatever -- rewind two years ago. Every developer was you knew was selling -- going towards -- I was going to say 'selling their soul', it almost came out -- to go build games for Zynga and the Facebook platform. And there's another time when you see everyone is going to do smaller iPad games, or iOS games in general. Then it was PS3, it was 360, it's Vita, it's 3ds. It's always, constantly changing. It's not something that concerns me whatsoever."
The full interview with Rohde, which contains his thoughts on the Vita's launch and future, and major competitors Apple and Nintendo, will be live on Gamasutra next week.
I hesitated to post this earlier because I'd read it was just a mistranslated opinion piece from Nikkei and seemed like a questionable rumor, but if that's all it was, why would Sony respond to it? And that's not much of a rebuttal there.
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This would seem like a correct understanding.
Nah, Disney stopped doing hand-drawn animation because they released a few terrible movies and assumed that their low B.O. was due to audiences wanting CGI bullshit 24/7.
Once Iger came in and put Lasseter in the position he's now in they started 2D up again. Princess & the Frog is the first of (hopefully) many to come.
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I thought they started again since they tossed out Michael Eisner. The Princess and the Frog, for example.
Making a movie and making a video game are not the same thing, not even close really. In even the most advanced 2D video game, I have an incredibly constrained set of sprites and backgrounds I need to make. In an animated movie, there is no such constraint. I literally have to draw every character in one of hundreds of thousands of positions. And animatiing in 3D is hard...have you ever done inverse kinematics? Even with really good tools like 3D Character Studio, it takes weeks to rig up one animation with a model that has 150 bones.
Notice how a lot of indie games use simple pixel art that doesn't require many frames. They can't make A Boy And His Blob or Wario Land Shake It or Rayman Origins.
The new Studio Chibi movie counts right? Or are they just the publisher?
Nah, Disney's just distributor in the US.
But they wouldn't be distributing Ghibli's films in the US without Lasseter and his appreciation for their films in the first place.
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Just to make sure...the poop jokes include quotes from EA and Activision higher-ups correct?
Or is that restricted to crap Steve Balmer says/thinks?
Just the distributor outside Japan.
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This is going to lead into the general discussion when it comes to 3D vs. 2D.
3D you design something once, and then from there you just have to adjust the animations. There's a convenience, in that regard. As a use in resources, it takes more to make happen, and exceptionally so when you have higher poly counts.
2D is tedious as shit, but can produce higher-quality looks (to an extent), and will take more time as you want to add more frames to enhance that detail.
But that's more of a 3D vs. sprite argument, rather than 3D level design compared to 2D level design. I actually was listening to a podcast episode (an old one) that talked about the introduction of 3D platformers, that era of Tomb Raider and such, and how it was actually kind of abrasive and poorly done. Granted, that stage of video game development had to be experienced, but at the end of the day I'm not sure if 3D platformers measure up even in the modern day to 2D. But quality of play aside, I wonder how much cost goes into developing those games compared to a traditional 2D platformer. There's a lot more to consider, and there's more art assets to produce since there's many angles of viewing. The cost -has- to go up when it comes to game design. Another thing is that 3D games require more complex engines, and for whatever reason we're still in this age where people are writing new engines and re-inventing the wheel, as it were. I can't imagine the groundwork for a 2D game is any difficult to establish.
Edit - On my last point, we live in a world where engines for 3D games are a business unto their own. It saves time for developers, but costs them money.
Yeah.
Quoting myself, but come to think of it, the reason you don't see many high-profile 2D games these days is the same reason as the above...2D is just unpopular, unfortunately.
Which is a shame, because I'm willing to throw $50 at anybody who comes up with a beautiful, good-playing 2D game.
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I actually kinda don't like that. I prefer sprites on a 3D game world / levels.
But why release a game at $20, when you can nab fanboys at $60, then everyone else with a price drop a month later?
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Rayman is 'proof' of this in that all the major publishers are on board with the idea. Ubisoft is not some small company trying to make it big time. They're one of the big boys who have enough foundation to get away with this over-pricing shit.
Actually the real story is that, for whatever reason, Michael Eisner just wanted to kill 2D stone dead. He ordered Brother Bear be released on a Saturday fer chrissake, with the supposed reasoning that Friday was Halloween and kids wouldn't watch movies anyway. (So why not just move it to another weekend?) The real motive was to drive down the box office for the movie so he'd have an excuse to shutter the hand-drawn department. When Brother Bear actually did decently despite the handicap he closed down the hand-drawn department anyway.
By the way, they've done a second hand-drawn movie since Princess and the Frog... a new Winnie the Pooh movie, based on more of A.A. Milne's stuff. It's actually extremely charming and very, very close in spirit to the original 1960s Winnie the Pooh stuff despite the fact that John Cleese and Craig Ferguson are in it. Absolutely worth watching.
I was there opening day. :P I'm a bit of a Disney nut. Actually wearing an Oswald shirt at work right now.
Switch: 6200-8149-0919 / Wii U: maximumzero / 3DS: 0860-3352-3335 / eBay Shop
The movie didn't have a large release, did it? I don't remember even seeing ads on TV for it.
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Less "people want 3d" and more "Eisner was a DOUCHE!".
He was notorious for over-pushing anything successful into a franchise regardless of weather or not it could easily become one, and never let anything even remotely risky past the conceptualization stage, even if "risk" amounted to...say...being something Disney was known for but had a failed product in the last decade or so (musicals, 2d animation, that sort of thing).
They should have ditched him the moment the company was solvent again. The politics high-up in their food chain nearly killed them. At a minimum, Disney's survival as a company cost it much of it's soul (I know it sounds sappy, but take it from an ex-cast member: That stuff matters to their workforce).
I DIDN'T WRITE THAT
Shh. Yes you did.
Switch: 6200-8149-0919 / Wii U: maximumzero / 3DS: 0860-3352-3335 / eBay Shop
Because a month later everyone else will be buying it used, regardless of the new price you've set.
I don't know, more marketing spending? How often do you see an ad for a game outside the first week it's released? And then if you ARE gonna run an ad campaign explaining that your game is cheaper now you're competing with the next big game that IS worth 60 bucks a few weeks later. There literally should be "tiers" at this point that a publisher should be abiding by, like "Ok we are developing this but research shows it will sell way better at Tier A (29.99) than at Tier C (59.99) pricing." instead of this "throw shit at the wall to see what sticks" tactic.
Well, you should have, the movie's that good. :P
And @Arandmoor's right, Eisner's pretty much the reason that most Disney movies past, say, Tarzan sucked balls. (The exceptions being Lilo and Stitch and The Emperor's New Groove.) For instance, Atlantis was supposed to be a full-on action adventure, but Eisner wussened it up to the point that it wasn't a good adventure, but it wasn't a good light and fluffy thing either. So damn glad he's gone and John Lasseter (the brains behind Pixar) is in charge of Disney's animation now.
At any rate, it's been a while since we've quoted Pachter lately, eh? Let's correct that with one of this thread's favorite topics:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/40317/Pachter_True_game_people_will_lead_Zynga_to_further_success.php
Actually "true game people" would have a completely different design philosophy than what Zynga's doing, i.e. squeeze every single damn microtransaction you can.
Definitely. This is my third Rhythm Heaven game, and it's just as good as the others. Better than DS, if you ask me. But $50 would have been too much. $30 is perfect.
http://www.idlethumbs.net/
I would be pleased as shit if the podcast came back somehow.
What? Steve Balmer is awesome. In an era where corporate execs desperately try not to anger their competition, Steve Balmer talks shit about the iPhone in front of thousands of people. He jumps around like crazy, fucks with interviewers, and has more enthusiasm for his product than any CEO I've ever seen.
The guy doesn't give a fuck and I love it.
Is this more likely to be an actual strategy, or a nice spin way of saying they told us no way in hell will we stock that?
I mean K-Mart directly stated that they weren't stocking it because it was too expensive.
On a related note.
I hesitated to post this earlier because I'd read it was just a mistranslated opinion piece from Nikkei and seemed like a questionable rumor, but if that's all it was, why would Sony respond to it? And that's not much of a rebuttal there.
They keep getting my hopes up with the occasional tweaking of their site. I wish they'd stop teasing us and start podcasting again.
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
Better hope new consoles come out fairly soon.
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