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[Industry Thread] Read the OP, or you'll see more red than 38 Studios.
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You mean like the oil industry? Oof, that's a can of worms not meant for this thread.
Really though, now that "better graphics" has little room to go and takes less effort for consoles to make happen, more features makes sense. Television providers partnering with consoles makes sense. Hulu has already stepped up to provide a new means of watching TV. Really, cable providers should be contacting MS, Sony, and hopefully Nintendo in the next gen following the Wii U, getting them to include the necessary hardware to take television cable input. Just universal hardware. Then, the providers can still focus on their channel packages, and they don't have to bother handling their own hardware so much (not everyone plays video games so there would still be some need).
"It's a game box and a computer and a cablebox all in one, the only one you'll need for the family household! Has all your favourite sports channels, if you live in the US."
I got a little excited when I saw your ship.
Well shit, good point. Japan this probably isn't culturally a thing desired. Not that I'm an expert. And as for EU, god knows what kinds of hoops exist for such a feature on consoles.
I.... uh.... what? There's not a single thing about this you can't do with a PC you already own (connect to a TV, use a controller, play games, install or emulate android os). Why are people even funding this?
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
I don't know, it baffles me. Honestly the whole thing reminds me a little of the Phantom :P
Because not everyone knows you can do that with a PC. Plus, proximity of your face to the PC monitor is a more intimate experience; in the living room on your TV, everyone can watch you play the shit out of Angry Birds.
Way to stay on topic.
You can connect a PC to a TV. That was part of my last statement. Point is moot.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
But not everyone does, or knows you can, or knows how. You're assuming your tech savvy is something that's universal. And dude, it very much is not. This community is full of people who at least know you can. It's full of people who know how to assemble their own PCs. But we are not representing the majority of the population. People are ignorant of technology to this level. And let's make this super clear - they aren't wrong for not knowing as much as you or I.
Every country that has a football team in the EU has it's own national tournament every year, same goes for the other popular sports such as hockey, basketball, volleyball, you name it (not to mention the niche-ier sports which may not even have international equivalents but may still be significant on the level of individual nations). Getting a coherent channel package for all of that is gonna take some magic. To me, it seems like Microsoft is basically working from a base assumption that the NA (or, US more like) market is theirs and is going to be theirs for years into the future, so they're working to secure it as best they can. They've been pushing the "Allmighty Media Machine" mantra for their products for a good long while now, and seeing as they're either unable to deliver on the "Allmighty Media" part in certain parts of the world, or the "Media Machine" part isn't really desired in other foreign markets... They're gonna work their asses off to make sure this business philosophy gains a foothold in a part of the world where they can actually deliver on what they promise.
I got a little excited when I saw your ship.
There was an infograph in Wired last month that showed something like 20% of Kickstarters make their goal, and out of that something like 80% just vanish into the wind with the money and never produced the product.
I mean, their competition (PS3) already streams Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and some others with a Crunchyroll app coming soon. Has broadcast+streaming packages for NFL, MLB, NHL, and a couple of the college divisions. Plays Blu-Rays as well as playing more file formats and offering the same PC --> Console WiFi streaming. And you don't need to play for an online service on top of your streaming packges to access them.
And I don't think any console developer will get a cable deal. Again, as people have mentioned, it's way too fragmented and the companies are way to greedy. They only place they can offer services right now is on the Streaming front.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
80% of Kickstarters don't produce the product despite making or exceeding the goal? Seriously? How accurate is that "infograph"? (the hell is an infograph anyway?)
It's not as uncommon as you think. I mean, hell.. The Shadowrun kickstarter seemed to fall completely off the radar for the last couple months if you weren't involved in their forums. Only a couple of days ago did they finally update.
Sadly, that is one of the biggest risks with Kickstarters in general: The money is distributed to the project immediately, in full. Now, a sane company would invest that money somehow and then work off a combination of the interest and the actual funding. I don't think most companies think in those terms, however. Kind of reminds me of the lotto, only for businesses.
Its like a graph...with info. I don't know I was reading it on a plane.
It's just not that uncommon for them to get all the money they think they need and then blow it on stupid shit or just mismanage it and give up (or just decide its not possible and quit while they're ahead? We'll never know). Exactly like that Star Commander game developer that someone posted about today, blowing the cash on iPads and trips to PAX and then going "uhhh yeah we're out of money and haven't made the game yet, SORRY".
Infographic example:
Star Commander was more not thinking through their prizes rather then blowing the money on shit for themselves.
But yeah, in general any startup like most of these Kickstarters, you should expect mismanagement.
I'm not seeing that infographic. I only found one kickstarter infographic on Wired and it did not have that statistic, from what I could tell.
EDIT: I may have been digging in the wrong place, but I still can't find it.
http://andriasang.com/con1vs/project_sora_closed/
So the one and only Project Sora game ended up being Kid Icarus: Uprising.
I guess SSB WiiU/3DS will indeed be a Namco Bandai game with Sakurai directing and Nintendo overseeing.
Strange.
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Going back to Iwata's E32010 speech, this isn't surprising as Project Sora was "created specifically with the goal in mind of making a game designed for 3DS". Much like Brawl, it was all piecemeal in nature, with talent being hired on a per person basis. I'm quite certain Sora the company will continue to follow Sakurai himself where ever he goes. Even now I'm only looking at Namco as code monkeys and grunt workers with some input from the heads of the different divisions within the company.
EDIT: It's a good topic for discussion about the insular nature of gaming development. Heck, guys who worked on Metroid Prime are now working on Halo 4 and guys who worked on Uncharted are at Retro now.
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"Did ya hear the one about the mussel that wanted to purchase Valve? Seems like the bivalve had a juicy offer on the table but the company flat-out refused and decided to immediately clam up!"
I think V Faction is right that Sora as an entity will just be Sakurai as he tends to take in talent for specific games. It seems though that Nintendo will do what they can to keep him around, and why shouldn't they, the dude is awesome at what he does. And yes, I'm sure that Namco are basically just the programmers for Smash, but it was still a surprising development. But when has Nintendo ever not moved to their own beat?
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I was going to laugh and point out how the Nintendo company has a 360 hooked up, but then I noticed the PS3... and the N64... Super Famicom... whatever that thing is on the left, and those others on the right...
How remarkably chill of them. I wouldn't have seen that coming, but I'm also not really shocked by it.
I'm actually kinda bummed about the company now. If it really was because KI didn't do as expected, then that's a shame.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console
Well damn. 29 days to go.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/
I write about video games and stuff. It is fun. Sometimes.
So mobile games ARE video games then.
I really want to see a link to the information because 80% sounds way too high.
Amazing that Ouya has made 2 million in less than 24 hours. A bunch of what amounts to preorders a year before it is released. A lot of indie developers seem interested in it which makes me interested in what happens.
I can't go fishing for it right now due to lolworkfilter, (maybe another Double Fine backer can?) but in their last video they had a little snippet out of a meeting where they talked about just how much it'll cost them to get all their backer rewards taken care of and it was something bonkers like $500,000. I think if there's one giant flaw to the Kickstarter system is the reward setup. Not properly budgeting costs for them is going to ruin a lot of projects.
Anyhoo, Pachter is fucking bonkers if he thinks that US telcoms would do anything that didn't involve them taking steps towards an even more dominant monopoly that actively screws the customers. There's no way in hell they'd play nice with each other and allow their services to politely compete on a 3rd party device. Setting up a cell phone style subscription/buyout service for the next gen consoles on the other hand I think is a very likely scenario.
That said, I do suppose stating that Pachter is fucking bonkers is kinda redundant. I really wish that guy would just go the fuck away.
Why is Nintendo taking pictures of my living room?
I'm in Ireland and we still don't have XBLIG. I can sort my games collection to just see Indie games, just not get any. You can get SKY television, but as far as I can see, you already need to be subscribed to SKY.
He may have been hyperbolic about how much cable integration there would be, but as noted before by other posters, if he really means you can get way more cable channels than you can now (as opposed to cable suppliers), MS are likely to give that a try
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I remember when I had time to be good at games.
That still leaves over TWO MILLION more than you originally thought you were going to have :P
While I too think 80% sounds high, I believe the big disconnect here (in this thread) is that people might be forgetting that Kickstarter is for a lot, lot more then just video games. I've seen KS pages for sculptures, paintings, community gardens, movies, albums, basically anything that can be remotely labeled as "creative". Thousands and thousands of them. From goals as little as $1000 to, well, you all know how big they can get.
Actually, I guess I wouldn't be to surprised if 80% of all Kickstarters disappeared in a puff of smoke after all.
Not really.
There's an economics of scale issue going on. So far, Kickstarter projects have treated the reward tiers as roughly equivalent to pre-order bonuses. The lowest tiers effectively act as a lost sale, the mid tiers start getting into special edition bonuses, the higher tiers get to collector's edition levels, and then the highest tiers are.. well, actually the "cheapest," as they tend to involve simply the time of the people involved in the kickstarter, trading on celebrity and such.
The problem with super-massive kickstarters is that there are a LOT of people at the low and medium tiers. With boxed collector's editions, you have a set number you produce in ratio with the actual product. With digital collectors, it's just another sale - all it costs is the mechanism of storage and distribution, whatever that might be. These are costs that can be controlled ahead of time. Kickstarters won't know that ratio until the final tallys are in and actual budgeting for the rewards is calculated, taking into account bulk order discounts.
I think that given enough examples of successful kickstarters, we'll hopefully reach a point where there's enough data points that people will better balance the scaling of rewards. For instance, a free copy of the game should only be at a donation level of at least 2x the retail cost of the game (sort of like how PBS sells shows during their pledge drive at 2-3x the cost of an average movie), so that there isn't a lost sale factor.
I just hope the kickstarters, once done, will give back to the community with a "post-mortem" on where the money went, so that those datapoints are available for others to gauge off of.
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/android-grabs-smartphone-majority-in-key-markets/099369
In other news, could you imagine the shift in branding power if this happened:
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/activision-blizzard-Sale-Buyers-Acquisition,news-15812.html
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