HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
It's a distinct style. Though the comment regarding being like TF2 I disagree with a lot; it's like TF2 if you generalize art / aesthetics in a very VERY broad way, yes.
Gamasutra has an article up right now regarding potential buyers for Activision-Blizzard, but the most important part of it is that it points out that Vivendi hasn't actually said it's going to sell anything at all. Companies have been looking into the possibility of buying and Vivendi is obliging that interest in talking to those companies, but Vivendi hasn't announced, "We're going to sell. Any takers?" So now I'm kinda irritated that this important point hasn't come up at all in this thread as far as I can remember. It's a rumor that's gone on to be assumed true.
I'm with Chris Morris on this one though; if they do sell, they're going to wait for a stock rebound when the next generation of consoles is in swing.
... Wait a minute, wasn't this hyped as a 360 exclusive or something way back when? If so, that'd be kind of a dick move on Epic's part
muahahahahahaha
I wonder if there are any big companies that don't feel the need to shove an old IP onto a new game.
Not really and it's pretty pathetic. All they're doing is ruining these once great IPs and making it so that no one will ever want to buy a game with that name again. XCOM (the one everyone hates) or Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor anyone? It wouldn't be so bad if they were putting out quality games that were legitimately interesting fresh takes on old concepts but they're not. They're actually managing to one up Hollywood in the "who can put out more blatantly cash grabby bullshit" game.
You're forgetting the granddaddy of them all, Star Control 3.
(EA would still be in the lead of MMORPG's if LB had been allowed to keep UO the way he originally designed it.)
Are you speaking of a quality assessment or actual business? I sure hope you mean the former because that's a fair enough opinion to hold, but if you mean the latter, you're just as crazy as EA thinking they can smooth things over with 'Lady British.'
UO had the early lead in both, but lost it to Evercrack, who then lost it to WoW. Many would argue that UO's true sandbox approach was amazing, although, you had better be traveling with a large group, or be an absolute powerhouse because there were all sorts of PvP'ers camped right outside of every city ready to kill you. This gank happiness led the suits at EA to demand a "better play experience", but ended up just ruining the game.
It's amazing that EA is the biggest video game maker today, it seems that they can't stop shooting themselves in the foot. Well, I guess yearly Madden is enough to save them repeatedly.
(EA would still be in the lead of MMORPG's if LB had been allowed to keep UO the way he originally designed it.)
Are you speaking of a quality assessment or actual business? I sure hope you mean the former because that's a fair enough opinion to hold, but if you mean the latter, you're just as crazy as EA thinking they can smooth things over with 'Lady British.'
UO had the early lead in both, but lost it to Evercrack, who then lost it to WoW. Many would argue that UO's true sandbox approach was amazing, although, you had better be traveling with a large group, or be an absolute powerhouse because there were all sorts of PvP'ers camped right outside of every city ready to kill you. This gank happiness led the suits at EA to demand a "better play experience", but ended up just ruining the game.
It's amazing that EA is the biggest video game maker today, it seems that they can't stop shooting themselves in the foot. Well, I guess yearly Madden is enough to save them repeatedly.
It's fine for people to like what they like in video and computer games, but what you like or don't like doesn't mean it is universally shared. I enjoyed Ultima's goddamn brutality, but not everyone does and with good reason. Now, it doesn't warrant changing an existing product from one to the other. If EA kept a brutal UO and made a new mass-friendlier UO along with it, everyone could get what they want. We older style PC gamers have our game, and the business gets to bring in new consumers. Having one or the other though is stupid for the industry. Alienating existing audiences for newer audiences is dumb, and acting xenophobic not wanting newer audiences is also dumb.
So that said, this new UO isn't for you or I. But for other people? Whatever, let them have it. We're just screwed because they gutted what we did have.
Also UO never had enough appeal to theoretically beat out WoW on the business side, even if it remained in its idealistic form. That's silly thinking. "Casual-friendly" will always do better business wise.
(EA would still be in the lead of MMORPG's if LB had been allowed to keep UO the way he originally designed it.)
Are you speaking of a quality assessment or actual business? I sure hope you mean the former because that's a fair enough opinion to hold, but if you mean the latter, you're just as crazy as EA thinking they can smooth things over with 'Lady British.'
UO had the early lead in both, but lost it to Evercrack, who then lost it to WoW. Many would argue that UO's true sandbox approach was amazing, although, you had better be traveling with a large group, or be an absolute powerhouse because there were all sorts of PvP'ers camped right outside of every city ready to kill you. This gank happiness led the suits at EA to demand a "better play experience", but ended up just ruining the game.
It's amazing that EA is the biggest video game maker today, it seems that they can't stop shooting themselves in the foot. Well, I guess yearly Madden is enough to save them repeatedly.
It's fine for people to like what they like in video and computer games, but what you like or don't like doesn't mean it is universally shared. I enjoyed Ultima's goddamn brutality, but not everyone does and with good reason. Now, it doesn't warrant changing an existing product from one to the other. If EA kept a brutal UO and made a new mass-friendlier UO along with it, everyone could get what they want. We older style PC gamers have our game, and the business gets to bring in new consumers. Having one or the other though is stupid for the industry. Alienating existing audiences for newer audiences is dumb, and acting xenophobic not wanting newer audiences is also dumb.
So that said, this new UO isn't for you or I. But for other people? Whatever, let them have it. We're just screwed because they gutted what we did have.
Also UO never had enough appeal to theoretically beat out WoW on the business side, even if it remained in its idealistic form. That's silly thinking. "Casual-friendly" will always do better business wise.
@Henroid - I agree with you. It was a stupid move to change the game to alienate the existing paying base in order to attract a player base that wasn't there. It's bad business to piss off people who are giving you money to placate people who haven't.
Not sure what you're definition of "casual" is, but I don't consider WoW a "casual" game. Its time requirements are insane. Maybe when you say "casual" you mean "able to attract female gamers"? maybe that is what the gaming industry means by "casual" as well...
Back to the MMORPG evolution, I'm really surprised that WoW hasn't been supplanted by something new and shinier. Given the lifespans of UO and EQ, someone would have done it by now.
The Tecmo Koei Teiban Series budget re-release of PSP's Sangokushi VIII, released just yesterday, has somewhat of an issue. Buyers who loaded up the UMD found that the content on the disc was actually the game's predecessor, Sangokushi VII.
Temco Koei confirmed the slip in a notice at the Game City portal site. The company has halted sales of the game and is currently arranging a replacement program for current owners.
This is how thousand dollar collectibles are born.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Well, I'd get into the "casual" thing but that's gonna go on for too long and be off topic. I will say I don't appreciate the "able to attract female gamers" thing because... yeah. Let's not go there.
Honestly I'm just baffled they bothered to use the Ultima name at all, since there's pretty much zero benefit considering the audience.
Yeah, bingo. Ultima was never a mass-appeal name. I guess they're trying to do a rebranding, which... yeah, see all of the above. Game series' have their established audiences and changing that is bad for business. It's a huge gamble that I can't remember a time it has ever really paid off. Sacrificing an existing audience for a new potentially bigger one.
They've got something they wanna try and thinks will make them money.
They've got established IP that's so old and mostly forgotten by now it's practically all new again, which means there's no franchise fatigue to combat.
Pairing those two together should sound like lots and lots of guaranteed monies to investors, I would imagine.
Alright and in this next scene all the animals have AIDS.
Honestly I'm just baffled they bothered to use the Ultima name at all, since there's pretty much zero benefit considering the audience.
Well there's the simple benefit of not having to do the work of creating an IP. Plus there's the off chance that someone who doesn't know of the series could look it up, see a rather positive opinion of it, and think that, with a modern twist, might be something worth playing.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Honestly I'm just baffled they bothered to use the Ultima name at all, since there's pretty much zero benefit considering the audience.
Well there's the simple benefit of not having to do the work of creating an IP. Plus there's the off chance that someone who doesn't know of the series could look it up, see a rather positive opinion of it, and think that, with a modern twist, might be something worth playing.
That's where the press of the industry can be important; if everyone in it makes a note that the series is different than what it was and there's backlash because of it, people might see that too.
Most likely not. EA will get some business off this. Enough to continue to support this franchise being gutted, but not enough to produce anything more beyond this game.
Honestly I'm just baffled they bothered to use the Ultima name at all, since there's pretty much zero benefit considering the audience.
Well there's the simple benefit of not having to do the work of creating an IP. Plus there's the off chance that someone who doesn't know of the series could look it up, see a rather positive opinion of it, and think that, with a modern twist, might be something worth playing.
That's where the press of the industry can be important; if everyone in it makes a note that the series is different than what it was and there's backlash because of it, people might see that too.
Most likely not. EA will get some business off this. Enough to continue to support this franchise being gutted, but not enough to produce anything more beyond this game.
In my experience, most of the main stream press tends to view them optimistically. And in some cases deride the ones complaining about the changes and erroneously point to Fallout 3 as a success story.
Anyway, I think the success of Ultima Forever will depend less with it being an Ultima game and more to do with whatever crazy F2P scheme EA has for it.
Honestly I'm just baffled they bothered to use the Ultima name at all, since there's pretty much zero benefit considering the audience.
Well there's the simple benefit of not having to do the work of creating an IP. Plus there's the off chance that someone who doesn't know of the series could look it up, see a rather positive opinion of it, and think that, with a modern twist, might be something worth playing.
Eh, I guess. Of course this is a series that's been fallow for a looooong time (not counting the tiny number of crazy people still playing Ultima Online). Huh, just checked wiki, and it looks like UO's peak subscriber base was a quarter million. What was once a good success would now be considered crushing failure.
In other news, some "industry veteran" you've probably never heard of named Mark Friedler is violently excited about Ouya.
I believe this announcement will go down in history as something as big as the launch of the iPhone five years ago.
...
I spoke with Brian Fargo of InXile (who raised $900,000 for Wasteland 2 on Kickstarter in March) and he believes customers are frustrated with traditional game publishers and are demanding more creative products instead of the endless sequels released by the leaders. In 48 hours, the console business has been turned on its head by a sub $100 open console whose mission is to make games less expensive and free to play.
...
The Ouya can be seen as a descendant of the Sega Dreamcast and much maligned Phantom console whose vision of a download only game console was debuted at E3 in 2004 - I was a member of the advisory board of the company whose vision was accurate to where the industry was going but failed to execute on delivering the product.
Well, I'd get into the "casual" thing but that's gonna go on for too long and be off topic. I will say I don't appreciate the "able to attract female gamers" thing because... yeah. Let's not go there.
Honestly I'm just baffled they bothered to use the Ultima name at all, since there's pretty much zero benefit considering the audience.
Yeah, bingo. Ultima was never a mass-appeal name. I guess they're trying to do a rebranding, which... yeah, see all of the above. Game series' have their established audiences and changing that is bad for business. It's a huge gamble that I can't remember a time it has ever really paid off. Sacrificing an existing audience for a new potentially bigger one.
@Henroid fair enough on both casual and female gamers. They're both off-topic, and discussing female gamers has a tendency to bring out the trolls and misogynists, which isn't what I want to do, either. (although PA is much better with this than... other... gaming communities)
The re-use of "Ultima" as a franchise is really bizarre for a couple reasons.
* Most people who were big fans of Ultima are around 40 today (like me), this can't possibly be their target demographic.
* The name has been out of use for so long that younger audiences are unlikely to associate *anything* with the name Ultima, Lady British or whatever.
* Those that were fans of Ultima know the entire LB/EA story, and don't usually like to be reminded of the treatment that EA gave Garriot.
There's no "win" here for EA. It's a puzzling decision, like someone in a board room said, "Hey, do we have any properties around that we can use as a title for this new game laying around that we haven't used in a while?", and they have no idea of the history of said property. It really is baffling. It's a decision that is going to alienate a portion of their potential audience, and mean nothing to their target. Almost any other name would be better.
Are you really sure you want to compare a prospective product that isn't even out yet, to a product years ago that wasn't out then either and then never came out?
I mean, it almost sounds like he's cursing the thing while it's in its cradle.
Alright and in this next scene all the animals have AIDS.
That "Ouya is a groundbreaking moment in gaming history" article includes the following:
The immediate loser in this battle will be Nintendo
i.e. you can discount the article completely.
I hate that this running gag isn't a gag to some people. They're in some fucked up denial about Nintendo's success. Why are they not able to just get the picture already? Nintendo is doing well. Oh no, the horror in admitting that.
That "Ouya is a groundbreaking moment in gaming history" article includes the following:
The immediate loser in this battle will be Nintendo
i.e. you can discount the article completely.
For "failing to create a meaningful online business," no less. Never mind they're allowing digital downloads of retail games on the 3DS and have plans for the Wii U that sound reasonably workable.
The other side of the spectrum for Ouya is presented by Ben from the PA Report.
The entire system hangs on the ability that you want to play ported Android games on a cheap system, with an unseen controller, on a television screen. While many developers are willing to provide quotes about how great the OUYA could be, so far no one is willing to put their money where their mouth is and announce projects for the hardware. No one involved in the project has experience launching products even close to the complexity of the OUYA, in terms of either gaming hardware, software, and services.
At least, we don’t think so. “There are plenty of other people involved, but some of them would get fired if we tell you who they are,” the Kickstarter page stated. That doesn’t inspire confidence, and if any of these individuals works at a company that owns their extra-curricular output, which is a sadly common state of affairs, the legal mess could become quite deep.
With a cameo appearance from, well, Rainbow. :P
I dunno... I'm not sure how this is all that different from a PC running Steam games on a TV.
I don't understand the denial about Nintendo's success. This is a manufacturer that has made money on every console they've produced since the Famicom. Just the console, not including the software sales.
Nintendo 3DS, which lets users see 3D images without the need for special glasses, has now sold 5 million units in the United States, according to the NPD Group, which tracks video game sales in the United States. With Nintendo 3DS XL, which features 90 percent larger screens, and New Super Mario Bros. 2 both launching on Aug. 19, and a holiday lineup that sees the Luigi’s Mansion and Paper Mario franchises make their hand-held debuts, the system’s momentum should continue through 2012 and beyond.
“Nintendo 3DS is entering the next phase of its life cycle with new hardware, new games and proven franchises. This milestone shows we’ve got a great foundation to build from,” said Scott Moffitt, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. “The game lineup for Nintendo 3DS last holiday season was one of the strongest in our history. We’re poised to top it this year. Every week, gamers will have the best franchises in the world in a glasses-free 3D experience that can’t be found anywhere else. Add Wii U into the mix and it’s a great time to be a Nintendo fan.”
Other Nintendo milestones achieved in June include:
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D became the third Nintendo 3DS title to sell more than 1 million units, joining Super Mario 3D Land (2.1 million units sold life to date) and Mario Kart 7 (1.75 million units sold life to date).
For the month, two of the top five and nine of the top 25 best-selling software SKUs play on Nintendo platforms.
For the second month in a row, Nintendo held a 75 percent market share for portable hardware in the United States.
Nintendo sold more than 400,000 total hardware units in June and saw double-digit growth across each of its product lines compared to May. This includes more than 155,000 Nintendo 3DS systems, more than 150,000 units of the Nintendo DS family of systems and nearly 95,000 Wii consoles.
Oh yeah, NPDs are tonight. Well, bully on Nintendo for giving us solid figures, even though the Wii number is horrible.
There's a sort of underlying implication in that the Friedler article though that free to play games can't find success on existing consoles or console business models. Yeah, a really cheap box for F2P games isn't a bad idea in theory I suppose, but the way it's framed it sounds like F2P games can only be made/ make ends meet on Ouya.
Challengers have entered the ring of the established console market for decades now, and most of them got their asses beat, with few exceptions. Personally, I'm not seeing anything in the Ouya that spells instant success, but it's absolutely possible it can find it's own niche. What its fate ultimately is going to be however, is to me, pretty much a tossup.
Zephiran on
Alright and in this next scene all the animals have AIDS.
That "Ouya is a groundbreaking moment in gaming history" article includes the following:
The immediate loser in this battle will be Nintendo
i.e. you can discount the article completely.
I hate that this running gag isn't a gag to some people. They're in some fucked up denial about Nintendo's success. Why are they not able to just get the picture already? Nintendo is doing well. Oh no, the horror in admitting that.
"Nintendo doesn't make the kind of games that I like to play, and thus they don't deserve the success they're receiving."
That has to be the line of thinking. I can't think of anything else that fits.
Is almost 100,000 in sales really all that awful for a system that is getting very few new releases, has been out for years, and is going to be replaced by the next generation of Nintendo hardware in the near future? I figure any sales the Wii has at this point are just gravy.
Want to find me on a gaming service? I'm SwashbucklerXX everywhere.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Is almost 100,000 in sales really all that awful for a system that is getting very few new releases, has been out for years, and is going to be replaced by the next generation of Nintendo hardware in the near future? I figure any sales the Wii has at this point are just gravy.
People are unable to process the concept that current performance is not past performance. That time is, in fact, a thing.
Is almost 100,000 in sales really all that awful for a system that is getting very few new releases, has been out for years, and is going to be replaced by the next generation of Nintendo hardware in the near future? I figure any sales the Wii has at this point are just gravy.
People are unable to process the concept that current performance is not past performance. That time is, in fact, a thing.
Any excuse they can find to claim that Nintendo's a failure they latch onto.
Is almost 100,000 in sales really all that awful for a system that is getting very few new releases, has been out for years, and is going to be replaced by the next generation of Nintendo hardware in the near future? I figure any sales the Wii has at this point are just gravy.
The DS family is going up against all that, except that in theory it's already been replaced by the next generation of hardware (with the incremental upgrade already announced). Of course, it's not the same market, and the DS costs less than a Wii. But still, it's older and still apparently selling well against its successor.
Well, I'd get into the "casual" thing but that's gonna go on for too long and be off topic. I will say I don't appreciate the "able to attract female gamers" thing because... yeah. Let's not go there.
Honestly I'm just baffled they bothered to use the Ultima name at all, since there's pretty much zero benefit considering the audience.
Yeah, bingo. Ultima was never a mass-appeal name. I guess they're trying to do a rebranding, which... yeah, see all of the above. Game series' have their established audiences and changing that is bad for business. It's a huge gamble that I can't remember a time it has ever really paid off. Sacrificing an existing audience for a new potentially bigger one.
@Henroid fair enough on both casual and female gamers. They're both off-topic, and discussing female gamers has a tendency to bring out the trolls and misogynists, which isn't what I want to do, either. (although PA is much better with this than... other... gaming communities)
The re-use of "Ultima" as a franchise is really bizarre for a couple reasons.
* Most people who were big fans of Ultima are around 40 today (like me), this can't possibly be their target demographic.
* The name has been out of use for so long that younger audiences are unlikely to associate *anything* with the name Ultima, Lady British or whatever.
* Those that were fans of Ultima know the entire LB/EA story, and don't usually like to be reminded of the treatment that EA gave Garriot.
There's no "win" here for EA. It's a puzzling decision, like someone in a board room said, "Hey, do we have any properties around that we can use as a title for this new game laying around that we haven't used in a while?", and they have no idea of the history of said property. It really is baffling. It's a decision that is going to alienate a portion of their potential audience, and mean nothing to their target. Almost any other name would be better.
I thought the puzzle games based on the Might & Magic and Warlords licenses were the most utterly bizarre applications of their franchises -- I don't really know if it's possible to draw less on the source material than those two games -- but both were received fairly well. And the Japanese console Wizardry games are a pretty weird forking of the franchise, too, one which people here like a lot. The Bard's Tale remake didn't go over so well, but I don't think it got trashed, either.
Is almost 100,000 in sales really all that awful for a system that is getting very few new releases, has been out for years, and is going to be replaced by the next generation of Nintendo hardware in the near future? I figure any sales the Wii has at this point are just gravy.
People are unable to process the concept that current performance is not past performance. That time is, in fact, a thing.
Any excuse they can find to claim that Nintendo's a failure they latch onto.
Well, I said they were awful for the month of June. I never said anything about it negating its ginormous and spectacular sales in the majority of its life.
Granted, it's at the end of its life, but it still seems disappointing considering that systems and games were still selling decently for, say, the PS2 and Xbox during their final months. Of course the Gamecube didn't do that well at the end of its life either, though it didn't have any impact whatsoever on how the Wii did.
And of course it's possible that the insane firehose of sales and its cheap initial price caused the Wii's sales to be somewhat frontloaded for the first four years of its life, since most people who wanted one got one.
... Wait a minute, wasn't this hyped as a 360 exclusive or something way back when? If so, that'd be kind of a dick move on Epic's part (maybe they're pissed off at Microsoft for not putting 8 gigs of RAM in the Nextbox, eh? Pffssshhh, yeah right)...
Err.. no? I seem to recall it was hyped as being Epic's "big return to PC" and "proof they're not abandoning thier PC fans" and all that jazz. It was even announced at a non-Microsoft event (Spike's VGA's).
... Wait a minute, wasn't this hyped as a 360 exclusive or something way back when? If so, that'd be kind of a dick move on Epic's part (maybe they're pissed off at Microsoft for not putting 8 gigs of RAM in the Nextbox, eh? Pffssshhh, yeah right)...
Err.. no? I seem to recall it was hyped as being Epic's "big return to PC" and "proof they're not abandoning thier PC fans" and all that jazz. It was even announced at a non-Microsoft event (Spike's VGA's).
Hunh, is that so? Well, I've got no stake in the race, but there are some other parts of the internet who treat it as if though it actually had been a 360-exclusive up until just now. Might've just been people presuming it would be 360 first and PC second, then.
Alright and in this next scene all the animals have AIDS.
I thought the puzzle games based on the Might & Magic and Warlords licenses were the most utterly bizarre applications of their franchises -- I don't really know if it's possible to draw less on the source material than those two games -- but both were received fairly well. And the Japanese console Wizardry games are a pretty weird forking of the franchise, too, one which people here like a lot. The Bard's Tale remake didn't go over so well, but I don't think it got trashed, either.
At least Bard's Tale had Fargo behind it. He took it in an odd "make fun of the genre" slant on the game, and with all the fantasy/rpg tropes out there, i can't really blame him, it needed to be mocked. I'm really excited about the Wasteland project, and hope that he can do it right because it was kickstarted.
The NPD Group's retail sales data report for the US games business did not paint a pretty picture for the month of June. The double-digit declines keep mounting as total game industry sales fell 29 percent to $699.8 million, while software sales (including PC) also dipped 27 percent to $362.8 million. Accessories was the only category to tick up slightly (4 percent) to $169.8 million.
"The 3DS is still up nearly 25% over where the NDS was in a similar point in time after release to market, and has topped portable hardware unit sales for the last 11 months. I am excited by the content that is coming to market later this year, and to watch what impact that will have on hardware sales," she said.
On software weakness overall she added: "In the first half of 2012, there were 34% less new software SKUs compared to last year. On an average SKU basis, they generated 4% less units, but 2% more dollars on average. This shows that while new launch performance is relatively stable, it is the sheer reduction in the number of launches that is contributing to the overall softness we are seeing in software so far in 2012. The decrease in new launch volume accounts for 41% of the net unit decline and 47% of the net dollar decline from first half of 2011."
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HedgethornAssociate Professor of Historical Hobby HorsesIn the Lions' DenRegistered Userregular
edited July 2012
450K for Lego Batman 2
107K for Lollipop Chainsaw (I never would have guessed this would do that well.)
It's always funny to look back at last year's Vita price announcement and see how so many thought it would absolutely crush the 3DS in the marketplace.
Posts
Gamasutra has an article up right now regarding potential buyers for Activision-Blizzard, but the most important part of it is that it points out that Vivendi hasn't actually said it's going to sell anything at all. Companies have been looking into the possibility of buying and Vivendi is obliging that interest in talking to those companies, but Vivendi hasn't announced, "We're going to sell. Any takers?" So now I'm kinda irritated that this important point hasn't come up at all in this thread as far as I can remember. It's a rumor that's gone on to be assumed true.
I'm with Chris Morris on this one though; if they do sell, they're going to wait for a stock rebound when the next generation of consoles is in swing.
You're forgetting the granddaddy of them all, Star Control 3.
UO had the early lead in both, but lost it to Evercrack, who then lost it to WoW. Many would argue that UO's true sandbox approach was amazing, although, you had better be traveling with a large group, or be an absolute powerhouse because there were all sorts of PvP'ers camped right outside of every city ready to kill you. This gank happiness led the suits at EA to demand a "better play experience", but ended up just ruining the game.
It's amazing that EA is the biggest video game maker today, it seems that they can't stop shooting themselves in the foot. Well, I guess yearly Madden is enough to save them repeatedly.
As for killing Lord British - There was always a way in every game he appeared: http://www.computerandvideogames.com/181917/features/the-many-deaths-of-lord-british/
Joe's Stream.
It's fine for people to like what they like in video and computer games, but what you like or don't like doesn't mean it is universally shared. I enjoyed Ultima's goddamn brutality, but not everyone does and with good reason. Now, it doesn't warrant changing an existing product from one to the other. If EA kept a brutal UO and made a new mass-friendlier UO along with it, everyone could get what they want. We older style PC gamers have our game, and the business gets to bring in new consumers. Having one or the other though is stupid for the industry. Alienating existing audiences for newer audiences is dumb, and acting xenophobic not wanting newer audiences is also dumb.
So that said, this new UO isn't for you or I. But for other people? Whatever, let them have it. We're just screwed because they gutted what we did have.
Also UO never had enough appeal to theoretically beat out WoW on the business side, even if it remained in its idealistic form. That's silly thinking. "Casual-friendly" will always do better business wise.
@Henroid - I agree with you. It was a stupid move to change the game to alienate the existing paying base in order to attract a player base that wasn't there. It's bad business to piss off people who are giving you money to placate people who haven't.
Not sure what you're definition of "casual" is, but I don't consider WoW a "casual" game. Its time requirements are insane. Maybe when you say "casual" you mean "able to attract female gamers"? maybe that is what the gaming industry means by "casual" as well...
Back to the MMORPG evolution, I'm really surprised that WoW hasn't been supplanted by something new and shinier. Given the lifespans of UO and EQ, someone would have done it by now.
Joe's Stream.
This is how thousand dollar collectibles are born.
Yeah, bingo. Ultima was never a mass-appeal name. I guess they're trying to do a rebranding, which... yeah, see all of the above. Game series' have their established audiences and changing that is bad for business. It's a huge gamble that I can't remember a time it has ever really paid off. Sacrificing an existing audience for a new potentially bigger one.
They've got established IP that's so old and mostly forgotten by now it's practically all new again, which means there's no franchise fatigue to combat.
Pairing those two together should sound like lots and lots of guaranteed monies to investors, I would imagine.
I got a little excited when I saw your ship.
Well there's the simple benefit of not having to do the work of creating an IP. Plus there's the off chance that someone who doesn't know of the series could look it up, see a rather positive opinion of it, and think that, with a modern twist, might be something worth playing.
That's where the press of the industry can be important; if everyone in it makes a note that the series is different than what it was and there's backlash because of it, people might see that too.
Most likely not. EA will get some business off this. Enough to continue to support this franchise being gutted, but not enough to produce anything more beyond this game.
In my experience, most of the main stream press tends to view them optimistically. And in some cases deride the ones complaining about the changes and erroneously point to Fallout 3 as a success story.
Anyway, I think the success of Ultima Forever will depend less with it being an Ultima game and more to do with whatever crazy F2P scheme EA has for it.
Eh, I guess. Of course this is a series that's been fallow for a looooong time (not counting the tiny number of crazy people still playing Ultima Online). Huh, just checked wiki, and it looks like UO's peak subscriber base was a quarter million. What was once a good success would now be considered crushing failure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_online
In other news, some "industry veteran" you've probably never heard of named Mark Friedler is violently excited about Ouya.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-07-12-ouya-console-will-be-as-big-as-iphone
...yup, those are definitely two consoles you want to emulate.
The Dreamcast comment is insulting though. Screw that guy.
@Henroid fair enough on both casual and female gamers. They're both off-topic, and discussing female gamers has a tendency to bring out the trolls and misogynists, which isn't what I want to do, either. (although PA is much better with this than... other... gaming communities)
The re-use of "Ultima" as a franchise is really bizarre for a couple reasons.
* Most people who were big fans of Ultima are around 40 today (like me), this can't possibly be their target demographic.
* The name has been out of use for so long that younger audiences are unlikely to associate *anything* with the name Ultima, Lady British or whatever.
* Those that were fans of Ultima know the entire LB/EA story, and don't usually like to be reminded of the treatment that EA gave Garriot.
There's no "win" here for EA. It's a puzzling decision, like someone in a board room said, "Hey, do we have any properties around that we can use as a title for this new game laying around that we haven't used in a while?", and they have no idea of the history of said property. It really is baffling. It's a decision that is going to alienate a portion of their potential audience, and mean nothing to their target. Almost any other name would be better.
Joe's Stream.
Are you really sure you want to compare a prospective product that isn't even out yet, to a product years ago that wasn't out then either and then never came out?
I mean, it almost sounds like he's cursing the thing while it's in its cradle.
I got a little excited when I saw your ship.
i.e. you can discount the article completely.
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
I hate that this running gag isn't a gag to some people. They're in some fucked up denial about Nintendo's success. Why are they not able to just get the picture already? Nintendo is doing well. Oh no, the horror in admitting that.
For "failing to create a meaningful online business," no less. Never mind they're allowing digital downloads of retail games on the 3DS and have plans for the Wii U that sound reasonably workable.
The other side of the spectrum for Ouya is presented by Ben from the PA Report.
http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/the-reality-of-the-ouya-console-doesnt-match-the-hype-why-you-should-be-ske
With a cameo appearance from, well, Rainbow. :P
I dunno... I'm not sure how this is all that different from a PC running Steam games on a TV.
Joe's Stream.
Oh yeah, NPDs are tonight. Well, bully on Nintendo for giving us solid figures, even though the Wii number is horrible.
Challengers have entered the ring of the established console market for decades now, and most of them got their asses beat, with few exceptions. Personally, I'm not seeing anything in the Ouya that spells instant success, but it's absolutely possible it can find it's own niche. What its fate ultimately is going to be however, is to me, pretty much a tossup.
I got a little excited when I saw your ship.
"Nintendo doesn't make the kind of games that I like to play, and thus they don't deserve the success they're receiving."
That has to be the line of thinking. I can't think of anything else that fits.
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People are unable to process the concept that current performance is not past performance. That time is, in fact, a thing.
Any excuse they can find to claim that Nintendo's a failure they latch onto.
Switch: 6200-8149-0919 / Wii U: maximumzero / 3DS: 0860-3352-3335 / eBay Shop
The DS family is going up against all that, except that in theory it's already been replaced by the next generation of hardware (with the incremental upgrade already announced). Of course, it's not the same market, and the DS costs less than a Wii. But still, it's older and still apparently selling well against its successor.
I thought the puzzle games based on the Might & Magic and Warlords licenses were the most utterly bizarre applications of their franchises -- I don't really know if it's possible to draw less on the source material than those two games -- but both were received fairly well. And the Japanese console Wizardry games are a pretty weird forking of the franchise, too, one which people here like a lot. The Bard's Tale remake didn't go over so well, but I don't think it got trashed, either.
Well, I said they were awful for the month of June. I never said anything about it negating its ginormous and spectacular sales in the majority of its life.
Granted, it's at the end of its life, but it still seems disappointing considering that systems and games were still selling decently for, say, the PS2 and Xbox during their final months. Of course the Gamecube didn't do that well at the end of its life either, though it didn't have any impact whatsoever on how the Wii did.
And of course it's possible that the insane firehose of sales and its cheap initial price caused the Wii's sales to be somewhat frontloaded for the first four years of its life, since most people who wanted one got one.
tl;dr: Dooooooooom.
Err.. no? I seem to recall it was hyped as being Epic's "big return to PC" and "proof they're not abandoning thier PC fans" and all that jazz. It was even announced at a non-Microsoft event (Spike's VGA's).
Hunh, is that so? Well, I've got no stake in the race, but there are some other parts of the internet who treat it as if though it actually had been a 360-exclusive up until just now. Might've just been people presuming it would be 360 first and PC second, then.
I got a little excited when I saw your ship.
The best-selling titles of the month, in order, are:
1.Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes (360, Wii, PS3, NDS, 3DS, PSV, PC)
2.Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier (360, PS3, PC)
3.Diablo III (PC)**
4.Max Payne 3 (360, PS3, PC)**
5.NBA 2K12 (360, PS3, Wii, PSP, PS2, PC)
6.Batman Arkham City (360, PS3, PC)**
7.Pokemon Conquest (NDS)
8.Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (360, PS3, Wii, PC)**
9.Battlefield 3 (360, PS3, PC)**
10.The Amazing Spider-Man (360, PS3, 3DS, NDS, Wii)
**(includes CE, GOTY editions, bundles, etc. but not those bundled with hardware)
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107K for Lollipop Chainsaw (I never would have guessed this would do that well.)
360: 257K
3DS: 155K
DS: 150K
Wii: 95K
PSP + Vita: < 100K
Total Sales declined by 30% YoY.
At least Bard's Tale had Fargo behind it. He took it in an odd "make fun of the genre" slant on the game, and with all the fantasy/rpg tropes out there, i can't really blame him, it needed to be mocked. I'm really excited about the Wasteland project, and hope that he can do it right because it was kickstarted.
Joe's Stream.
Total Sales declined by 30% YoY; hardware down 45%.
I don't have last month's sales handy, but these seem to compare favorably to last month IIRC.
Lollipop Chainsaw too... definitely good for a game of that kind of niche, but of course this new industry will likely judge it as a failure. Blah.
Looks like the "publish less titles, sell more of them" strategy isn't really working all that great, based on Cous' last quote.
Vita's still struggling.
The fact that they had to combine PSP and Vita together is both sad and hilarious.
Switch (JeffConser): SW-3353-5433-5137 Wii U: Skeldare - 3DS: 1848-1663-9345
PM Me if you add me!
Shit be cyclical yo.
Switch: 6200-8149-0919 / Wii U: maximumzero / 3DS: 0860-3352-3335 / eBay Shop