"Why on earth would we want to emulate a business that has seen a 75 percent decline in share price since their debut?"
- Kixeye chief executive Will Harbin lays into Zynga, after Zynga won a restraining order against his colleague Alan Patmore.
Zynga sued Patmore earlier this month over alleged theft of trade secrets, and this week Patmore was told to return all Zynga data to the company, and give Zynga access to his personal files.
Harbin isn't at all happy about it either, and has some strong words for Zynga.
"Given their financial situation it all feels pretty desperate," he said. "Our games have little in common with the ones that Zynga is known for. We make synchronous, combat strategy games. They make asynchronous cow clicking games."
He added, "According to their S1, their games average $.06 ARPDAU. Our games generate up to 20x that. You do the math."
The steaming wreckage that is 38 Studios is now a couple of millimeters out of the hole.
When Curt Schilling's 38 Studios filed for bankruptcy in June, the company said it owed a total of $150.7 million to creditors. That number is closer to $150.5 million today, as the Associated Press is reporting the first of three auctions to sell off 38 Studios assets brought in $180,000.
Roughly 950 items from 38 Studios' Big Huge Games outfit in Maryland were sold off in the auction. Big Huge Games developed Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, the only title 38 Studios finished in its six-year history.
A second auction to sell off equipment from 38 Studios' Rhode Island headquarters is scheduled for Tuesday. The company's intellectual properties will also be auctioned off in a separate session expected to take place three months from now.
I'd expect the IP auction to bring in the most money, but given how Kingdoms of Amalur sold and the new expectation that everything sell two million copies....
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L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
3D a fad? You don't say?
It probably means more DOOOM for Sony, as they were probably relying on 3D to help sell their TVs. With fewer movie theaters being made 3D-ready, that means fewer 3D movies (it sounds like, from the article), and thus there is less demand for 3D movies, so no one will have any incentive to buy a 3D TV. DOOOOOOM!
3D a fad? You don't say?
It probably means more DOOOM for Sony, as they were probably relying on 3D to help sell their TVs. With fewer movie theaters being made 3D-ready, that means fewer 3D movies (it sounds like, from the article), and thus there is less demand for 3D movies, so no one will have any incentive to buy a 3D TV. DOOOOOOM!
3D a fad? You don't say?
It probably means more DOOOM for Sony, as they were probably relying on 3D to help sell their TVs. With fewer movie theaters being made 3D-ready, that means fewer 3D movies (it sounds like, from the article), and thus there is less demand for 3D movies, so no one will have any incentive to buy a 3D TV. DOOOOOOM!
The Avengers, Prometheus, Spiderman, and Dark Knight Rises constitute a "cool summer" for the movie industry? Fucking corporations are never happy.
It's not that they did bad, it's that everything else did worse. Battleship was a big ole bomb.
Interestingly enough, the article notes that there's about as many 3D movies set for 2013 as there were this year. Though it could be that the studios figure they may as well finish the conversion processes they started.
Back on topic, the market for 3DTVs is pretty much dead as it is, this is just adding insult to injury. And yeah, Sony's definitely the one that received the most pain from that gamble... it's arguable that 3DTVs cost Stringer his job.
Yeah, I only bought a 3DTV because it was the only way to get a panel of the size/quality I wanted. 0% chance of me ever buying glasses to actually use it.
Update: Zynga tells us they’ve reached an amicable resolution in their lawsuit against Kobojo over PyramidVille and PyramidVille Adventures. Details of the settlement are confidential, but Zynga confirmed that neither group made any payments as part of the settlement. The original article is below.
BulkyPix and Kobojo this morning announced that the popular iOS title PyramidVille Adventure has received both a major content update and a name change. The game is now known as PyramidValley Adventure.
The update includes an expansion allowing players who reach Level 18 to start constructing new cities in Ancient Greece.
The name change is what’s really of note here, though, since Zynga filed a lawsuit against Kobojo over the PyramidVille’s title back in May. This wasn’t exactly surprising, since Zynga has a habit of going after developers who add the “Ville” suffix to their games, but it did raise some eyebrows because the game had already been out for 15 months.
As we noted then, Zynga may have finally decided to go after Kobojo in court because of how quickly Kobojo had been able to expand the brand — particularly in Arabic-language territories. We’ve reached out to Zynga to ask if the name change will have any effect on the lawsuit and will update the story if we receive a response.
While our traffic-tracking service AppData shows PyramidValley Adventure has fallen off the iOS charts, PyramidValley is still going strong on Facebook with 430,000 monthly active users and 110,000 daily active users. While this is a far cry from the game’s peak traffic levels of 2.85 million MAU and 517,000 DAU, PyramidValley’s DAU/MAU ratio is at a little over 25 percent (anything above 20 percent is considered a healthy game).
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I've been keeping an eye on the Doom 3 BFG edition (I figure I'll eventually get it on Steam during a sale) and considered updating my Doom Mods & WADs thread I made at the beginning of the year since it comes with Ultimate Doom/Doom II, but reading some of the GAF thread brought up an interesting little bit of controversy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1snCRIl16ks
This is footage from the PC BFG Edition's version of the two secret levels in DOOM II, based off of early levels from Wolfenstein 3D. . . problem is the version in the BFG Edition is essentially the XBOX Live Arcade port (rather than the widely available Doom II IWAD) which takes out all the SS soldiers and all Nazi-related imagery (as well as other things like replacing the red cross on medkits with pill symbols). In other words, id didn't even bother putting their own versions of the original Doom games in their game, they put the ports developed by Nerve Software in there - which I can understand for the console versions, but not the PC version.
I honestly don't know what to say other than that's some pretty lazy stuff right there.
Oh what the fuck, they even got rid of the cool music that has SS foot stomps in the background. Lame.
I've been keeping an eye on the Doom 3 BFG edition (I figure I'll eventually get it on Steam during a sale) and considered updating my Doom Mods & WADs thread I made at the beginning of the year since it comes with Ultimate Doom/Doom II, but reading some of the GAF thread brought up an interesting little bit of controversy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1snCRIl16ks
This is footage from the PC BFG Edition's version of the two secret levels in DOOM II, based off of early levels from Wolfenstein 3D. . . problem is the version in the BFG Edition is essentially the XBOX Live Arcade port (rather than the widely available Doom II IWAD) which takes out all the SS soldiers and all Nazi-related imagery (as well as other things like replacing the red cross on medkits with pill symbols). In other words, id didn't even bother putting their own versions of the original Doom games in their game, they put the ports developed by Nerve Software in there - which I can understand for the console versions, but not the PC version.
I honestly don't know what to say other than that's some pretty lazy stuff right there.
Oh what the fuck, they even got rid of the cool music that has SS foot stomps in the background. Lame.
The Avengers, Prometheus, Spiderman, and Dark Knight Rises constitute a "cool summer" for the movie industry? Fucking corporations are never happy.
It's not that they did bad, it's that everything else did worse. Battleship was a big ole bomb.
Interestingly enough, the article notes that there's about as many 3D movies set for 2013 as there were this year. Though it could be that the studios figure they may as well finish the conversion processes they started.
Back on topic, the market for 3DTVs is pretty much dead as it is, this is just adding insult to injury. And yeah, Sony's definitely the one that received the most pain from that gamble... it's arguable that 3DTVs cost Stringer his job.
Rank Title Studio Worldwide Domestic / % Overseas / % Year^
3 Marvel's The Avengers BV $1,511.8 $623.4 41.2% $888.4 58.8% 2012
7 The Dark Knight Rises WB $1,077.2 $446.4 41.4% $630.8 58.6% 2012
29 Ice Age: Continental Drift Fox $863.7 $159.9 18.5% $703.9 81.5% 2012
44 The Amazing Spider-Man Sony $752.2 $262.0 34.8% $490.2 65.2% 2012
53 The Hunger Games LGF $686.5 $408.0 59.4% $278.5 40.6% 2012
54 Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted P/DW $681.6 $216.4 31.7% $465.2 68.3% 2012
65 MIB 3 Sony $624.0 $179.0 28.7% $445.0 71.3% 2012
92 Brave BV $528.7 $234.5 44.4% $294.2 55.6% 2012
118 Ted Uni. $469.0 $218.5 46.6% $250.5 53.4% 2012
155 Prometheus Fox $402.5 $126.5 31.4% $276.0 68.6% 2012
(Grosses are in millions of dollars.)
Two movies this year in the Top 10 Highest Grossing Box Office Takes of All Time seems like a pretty good year to me, but what do I know? It could be similar to the AAA gaming industry where you see a game with incredible sales that the publishers aren't pleased with because they were expecting a gazillion sales.
Battleship was a huge hit throughout Europe though, made back it's budget and then some. Also the blu-ray sales were monster.
It's all smoke and mirrors with these people.
This. It's called 'creative bookkeeping'. The music industry does much the same thing. No matter how genuinely successful, or at least profitable, they can prove it lost money. Sports franchises do it, too.
NocrenLt Futz, Back in ActionNorth CarolinaRegistered Userregular
That's the reason I had to take accounting 3 times. It's not math. Its like some type of Lovecraftian dimensional math that doesn't follow logic.
Algebra makes sense.
Calculus makes sense (after awhile).
Accounting is fucking MAGIC.
So I hear the AssCreed Vita game is shaping up good and actually acknowledges that the main character is a black female in the south before the civil war.
0
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
I've been keeping an eye on the Doom 3 BFG edition (I figure I'll eventually get it on Steam during a sale) and considered updating my Doom Mods & WADs thread I made at the beginning of the year since it comes with Ultimate Doom/Doom II, but reading some of the GAF thread brought up an interesting little bit of controversy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1snCRIl16ks
This is footage from the PC BFG Edition's version of the two secret levels in DOOM II, based off of early levels from Wolfenstein 3D. . . problem is the version in the BFG Edition is essentially the XBOX Live Arcade port (rather than the widely available Doom II IWAD) which takes out all the SS soldiers and all Nazi-related imagery (as well as other things like replacing the red cross on medkits with pill symbols). In other words, id didn't even bother putting their own versions of the original Doom games in their game, they put the ports developed by Nerve Software in there - which I can understand for the console versions, but not the PC version.
I honestly don't know what to say other than that's some pretty lazy stuff right there.
Oh what the fuck, they even got rid of the cool music that has SS foot stomps in the background. Lame.
Wow, what the heck. That's literally the only thing I actually remember about Doom 2 (well, that and Romero's head on a pike). I always loved those levels. I really hate all this censorship crap (and especially the Red Cross always trying to lay claim on a damn red plus sign that is used EVERYWHERE... I'm pretty sure if they actually tried to sue anyone they'd lose on grounds of not actively protecting their trademark)
Battleship was a huge hit throughout Europe though, made back it's budget and then some. Also the blu-ray sales were monster.
It's all smoke and mirrors with these people.
This. It's called 'creative bookkeeping'. The music industry does much the same thing. No matter how genuinely successful, or at least profitable, they can prove it lost money. Sports franchises do it, too.
The more known term is "Hollywood Accounting", and it's how movie studios screw writers out of the money owed to them. They'll do things like have one company they own charge another company they own ridiculous amounts of money for production, advertising, etc so that they can basically bill themselves for bullshit to inflate the cost of the film.
Forrest Gump is the most well known movie to do this. It made almost seven hundred million dollars in theaters worldwide, but Paramount claimed that it lost them money using advanced accounting voodoo so that they wouldn't have to pay the author of the novel the 3% of the film's net profits like his contract stated.
Peter Jackson sued the shit out of New Line Cinema because they claimed that the Lord of the Rings movies were losses.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding had a budget of around five million dollars, took in two hundred and forty million dollars in theaters, and the studio claimed that it had lost somehow twenty million dollars.
As for 3D movies slowing down, I honestly don't know what Sony was thinking trying so hard to push 3DTVs. They're trying to convince people who just bought an HDTV to buy an expensive TV filled with new tech they aren't excited for with very little content in the middle of a recession. I mean, did they think that everyone was going to plunk down two grand for a new TV to replace the one they just bought, and then do it all again for a 4K TV two years from now?
Then again, everybody shit on the PS3 at launch for using an "expensive" and "unnecessary" Blu Ray drive, and now BD is the standard for high definition, so maybe they're betting the the PS4 will do the same for 4K.
Yep, the same thing happened to Return of the Jedi... budget of $32M, revenue of $450M, yet David Prowse has never seen a dime of residuals for his portrayal of Darth Vader.
Here's a balance sheet from Harry Potter and the OOTP:
The "Distribution Fee" marked on there is a fee from themselves to themselves, as are a number of the other line items in expenses.
I've been keeping an eye on the Doom 3 BFG edition (I figure I'll eventually get it on Steam during a sale) and considered updating my Doom Mods & WADs thread I made at the beginning of the year since it comes with Ultimate Doom/Doom II, but reading some of the GAF thread brought up an interesting little bit of controversy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1snCRIl16ks
This is footage from the PC BFG Edition's version of the two secret levels in DOOM II, based off of early levels from Wolfenstein 3D. . . problem is the version in the BFG Edition is essentially the XBOX Live Arcade port (rather than the widely available Doom II IWAD) which takes out all the SS soldiers and all Nazi-related imagery (as well as other things like replacing the red cross on medkits with pill symbols). In other words, id didn't even bother putting their own versions of the original Doom games in their game, they put the ports developed by Nerve Software in there - which I can understand for the console versions, but not the PC version.
I honestly don't know what to say other than that's some pretty lazy stuff right there.
Oh what the fuck, they even got rid of the cool music that has SS foot stomps in the background. Lame.
Wow, what the heck. That's literally the only thing I actually remember about Doom 2 (well, that and Romero's head on a pike). I always loved those levels. I really hate all this censorship crap (and especially the Red Cross always trying to lay claim on a damn red plus sign that is used EVERYWHERE... I'm pretty sure if they actually tried to sue anyone they'd lose on grounds of not actively protecting their trademark)
Again though, my main point isn't the censorship issue, it's the fact that id put in the. . . I don't want to say inferior versions of Doom and Doom II (the XBLA ports, although Doom II on Arcade had the new 10-map mini-episode) in the PC BFG Edition, but the less-adequate versions rather than the original versions that you can also run through source ports like ZDoom and add all sorts of mods and levels to. The censorship sucks, yeah, but focus on the more important stuff! :P
How is that not outright fraud or tax evasion or something?
If you make enough money in this country you get to do what you want.
Alternate answer: The money earned is still taxed, so the state and/or government does not care, because they already got theirs.
It's not tax evasion because, well, it's not evading taxes in any way. It's not fraud because the people it affects already got paid a salary, and their 'benefits' are spelled out very clearly (though likely buried in pages of bullshit if it's like most legal documents), it's just they are supposed to get tons of extra money for stuff 'highlighted in blue' or something and the company is using a bullshit reason to use pink highlighters instead.
Remember Watchmen? How the creator lost control of it back when because his contract said he got it back as soon as they stopped printing the run, and what they did was just continue to print the run indefinetely but in very small amounts, effectively seizing the IP as long as they paid an amount every year to publish a few copies (and yes I know that's a messy way of phrasing that debacle)? Same thing. Sleazy as fuck, but the contract was very clear in it's language, and what happened wasn't hidden in any way. That's what you get for being an optimist.
0
SirUltimosDon't talk, Rusty. Just paint.Registered Userregular
According to GAF and a Portugese interview* with Capcom, Brazil has overtaken Canada as the second biggest gaming market in the Americas.
They saw the third wave of 3D and forgot that it failed twice before. Also, they forgot that Blu-Ray was the first time they ever successfully foisted technology on the world.
Pushing 3D TV tech when HDTV still hadn't reached full penetration? Yeah. Silly.
They saw the third wave of 3D and forgot that it failed twice before. Also, they forgot that Blu-Ray was the first time they ever successfully foisted technology on the world.
Pushing 3D TV tech when HDTV still hadn't reached full penetration? Yeah. Silly.
They were responsible for 3.5" floppies, partially responsible for DVDs, and while Betamax tanked in the home market it's cousin Betacam was used in TV for decades and has only recently begun to be phased out, so while it wasn't the first time they had a tech hit, it was the first in some time.
I'm actually pretty excited about 4K after reading about Gran Turismo 5 running at 4K, but since Polophony Digital had to network 4 PS3s to get GT4 running at that resolution, it makes me wonder if the PS4 would even be capable of 4K/60fps gameplay.
Thinking more about Doom 3 BFG Edition, it just seems like the more I hear about it, the worse of a deal it is. If you're going to charge $30 for an eight year old game and two twenty year old games, you shouldn't halfass them.
Between dropping Rage, which didn't work for half the people that played it and got a collective "meh" from the half that did, and then releasing a neutered version of the only good PC game they've developed in the past decade it just really seems like id is off of their game lately.
How is that not outright fraud or tax evasion or something?
If you make enough money in this country you get to do what you want.
Alternate answer: The money earned is still taxed, so the state and/or government does not care, because they already got theirs.
It's not tax evasion because, well, it's not evading taxes in any way. It's not fraud because the people it affects already got paid a salary, and their 'benefits' are spelled out very clearly (though likely buried in pages of bullshit if it's like most legal documents), it's just they are supposed to get tons of extra money for stuff 'highlighted in blue' or something and the company is using a bullshit reason to use pink highlighters instead.
Remember Watchmen? How the creator lost control of it back when because his contract said he got it back as soon as they stopped printing the run, and what they did was just continue to print the run indefinetely but in very small amounts, effectively seizing the IP as long as they paid an amount every year to publish a few copies (and yes I know that's a messy way of phrasing that debacle)? Same thing. Sleazy as fuck, but the contract was very clear in it's language, and what happened wasn't hidden in any way. That's what you get for being an optimist.
A good agent is worth it's weight in gold in Hollywood.
How is that not outright fraud or tax evasion or something?
If you make enough money in this country you get to do what you want.
Alternate answer: The money earned is still taxed, so the state and/or government does not care, because they already got theirs.
It's not tax evasion because, well, it's not evading taxes in any way. It's not fraud because the people it affects already got paid a salary, and their 'benefits' are spelled out very clearly (though likely buried in pages of bullshit if it's like most legal documents), it's just they are supposed to get tons of extra money for stuff 'highlighted in blue' or something and the company is using a bullshit reason to use pink highlighters instead.
Remember Watchmen? How the creator lost control of it back when because his contract said he got it back as soon as they stopped printing the run, and what they did was just continue to print the run indefinetely but in very small amounts, effectively seizing the IP as long as they paid an amount every year to publish a few copies (and yes I know that's a messy way of phrasing that debacle)? Same thing. Sleazy as fuck, but the contract was very clear in it's language, and what happened wasn't hidden in any way. That's what you get for being an optimist.
A good agent is worth it's weight in gold in Hollywood.
Yep, this is why Alec Guinness got 2% of the gross receipts for Star Wars, while David Prowse just has a bunch of letters informing him that Return of the Jedi has never been profitable.
"[Telecom operators] are kind of holding us back in many respects... We have to worry about broadband when we should be thinking about making better games."
- Eidos President Ian Livingstone expresses his frustrations with modern broadband speeds.
Whether you're developing a single player game or a large scale MMO, Livingstone noted that broadband speeds are becoming an increasingly problematic bottleneck for game development.
Download speeds might be increasing worldwide, but file sizes for digital games are growing even faster. It takes quite a long time to download most digital games, and Livingstone believes home consoles haven't been able to embrace a digital-only model for that very reason.
And of course there's the ever-present problem of online latency. Until broadband speeds improve, developers will have to go out of their way to compensate for lag in their online games.
"The message is: build bigger pipes and we'll try not to fill them," Livngstone said. "ISPs, please do not rest on your laurels."
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Bullshit, they still have to fit them on discs anyway, because of the xbox basic model without a hard drive. And how the hell does the size of the game matter for lag? It's not like you have to resend all the textures or whatever
Ah, but excepting destruction like in say BF3 that actually effects gameplay, how does the netcode of a static game like CoD:MW4:BO:colons differ that much from COD 1?
Well it varies from game to game but it depends on the amount of information that's having to be represented - animations, decals, textures, lighting effects, sound effects, etc.
There's a limit to what can be done in multiplayer because of bandwidth limitations. Some games are programmed/designed/coded/whatever better than others, and can get more done without developing latency issues, but there are limits.
The New Xbox feels a lot closer this morning than it did last night.
The headline from Microsoft’s Xbox financials was the 94 per cent drop in operating income. But combine that with the massively increased R&D figure, and you have an inescapable conclusion.
R&D expenses were up 44 per cent year-on-year, reaching nearly $320m in the quarter.
Further evidence to add to the pot is Microsoft’s relatively weak upcoming Xbox 360 release schedule, which despite including undoubted chart hit Halo 4 also includes sales flop Fable: The Journey. And little beyond that.
Not that it’s game over for Xbox 360 just yet, of course. The Xbox 360 achieved a year-on-year sales increase, jumping from 1.7m units in 2010 to 2.3m this year. Also up are Xbox Live revenues.
Nonetheless, all signs point to 2013 being the year of the Xbox 720. Or Xbox 8. Or Xbox Infinity. Popular consensus suggests that at least one, if not both, of the New Xbox or PS4 will arrive next year.
The question now is simple. How long can Microsoft afford to wait?
In retrospect, they should have put it out this year or the holidays last year before things went completely shitty for console sales. Oh well, couldn't predict exactly when things were going to going to get shitty.
Also, they are amazingly quick to call Fable: The Journey a flop, not that it isn't a huge flop.
Also, they are amazingly quick to call Fable: The Journey a flop, not that it isn't a huge flop.
To be fair, if I was a reviewer and someone handed me a "rail shooter, where you are a carriage driver" adding "oh and it's by molyneux" as they fled out the door, I'd probably just skip playing it, type 'shit' 100 times, and call it a day.
That is probably why I am not a reviewer.
But yeah, 'don't judge a book by it's cover' and all that, but in some cases, such as the necronomicon and molyneux, you can make some safe bets.
Edit: Not that I'm implying that 'it's by molyneux' is itself a horrible thing, but when it's paired with some already retarded idea, well, the man has zero impulse control so you can expect it to be as bad as it sounds. Some devs take weird ideas and can make them fun. Molyneux can take normal ideas and make them weird/fun. But the weird ideas he turns into a giant pile of shit.
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Oh Snap! And/or Boosh! sick burn.
http://www.gog.com/news/watch_us_live_here
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-10-18-38-studios-auction-tallies-USD180k
I'd expect the IP auction to bring in the most money, but given how Kingdoms of Amalur sold and the new expectation that everything sell two million copies....
It probably means more DOOOM for Sony, as they were probably relying on 3D to help sell their TVs. With fewer movie theaters being made 3D-ready, that means fewer 3D movies (it sounds like, from the article), and thus there is less demand for 3D movies, so no one will have any incentive to buy a 3D TV. DOOOOOOM!
http://www.thewrap.com/movies/article/3d-boom-fizzling-and-ticket-prices-leveling-study-finds-60996
3D's been a fad for 60 years.
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It's not that they did bad, it's that everything else did worse. Battleship was a big ole bomb.
Interestingly enough, the article notes that there's about as many 3D movies set for 2013 as there were this year. Though it could be that the studios figure they may as well finish the conversion processes they started.
Back on topic, the market for 3DTVs is pretty much dead as it is, this is just adding insult to injury. And yeah, Sony's definitely the one that received the most pain from that gamble... it's arguable that 3DTVs cost Stringer his job.
It's all smoke and mirrors with these people.
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Another instance of consoles holding PCs back.
http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/world/?pagenum=1&sort=year&order=DESC&p=.htm
Two movies this year in the Top 10 Highest Grossing Box Office Takes of All Time seems like a pretty good year to me, but what do I know? It could be similar to the AAA gaming industry where you see a game with incredible sales that the publishers aren't pleased with because they were expecting a gazillion sales.
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This. It's called 'creative bookkeeping'. The music industry does much the same thing. No matter how genuinely successful, or at least profitable, they can prove it lost money. Sports franchises do it, too.
Algebra makes sense.
Calculus makes sense (after awhile).
Accounting is fucking MAGIC.
So I hear the AssCreed Vita game is shaping up good and actually acknowledges that the main character is a black female in the south before the civil war.
Wow, what the heck. That's literally the only thing I actually remember about Doom 2 (well, that and Romero's head on a pike). I always loved those levels. I really hate all this censorship crap (and especially the Red Cross always trying to lay claim on a damn red plus sign that is used EVERYWHERE... I'm pretty sure if they actually tried to sue anyone they'd lose on grounds of not actively protecting their trademark)
The more known term is "Hollywood Accounting", and it's how movie studios screw writers out of the money owed to them. They'll do things like have one company they own charge another company they own ridiculous amounts of money for production, advertising, etc so that they can basically bill themselves for bullshit to inflate the cost of the film.
Forrest Gump is the most well known movie to do this. It made almost seven hundred million dollars in theaters worldwide, but Paramount claimed that it lost them money using advanced accounting voodoo so that they wouldn't have to pay the author of the novel the 3% of the film's net profits like his contract stated.
Peter Jackson sued the shit out of New Line Cinema because they claimed that the Lord of the Rings movies were losses.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding had a budget of around five million dollars, took in two hundred and forty million dollars in theaters, and the studio claimed that it had lost somehow twenty million dollars.
As for 3D movies slowing down, I honestly don't know what Sony was thinking trying so hard to push 3DTVs. They're trying to convince people who just bought an HDTV to buy an expensive TV filled with new tech they aren't excited for with very little content in the middle of a recession. I mean, did they think that everyone was going to plunk down two grand for a new TV to replace the one they just bought, and then do it all again for a 4K TV two years from now?
Then again, everybody shit on the PS3 at launch for using an "expensive" and "unnecessary" Blu Ray drive, and now BD is the standard for high definition, so maybe they're betting the the PS4 will do the same for 4K.
Here's a balance sheet from Harry Potter and the OOTP:
The "Distribution Fee" marked on there is a fee from themselves to themselves, as are a number of the other line items in expenses.
If you make enough money in this country you get to do what you want.
Alternate answer: The money earned is still taxed, so the state and/or government does not care, because they already got theirs.
It's not tax evasion because, well, it's not evading taxes in any way. It's not fraud because the people it affects already got paid a salary, and their 'benefits' are spelled out very clearly (though likely buried in pages of bullshit if it's like most legal documents), it's just they are supposed to get tons of extra money for stuff 'highlighted in blue' or something and the company is using a bullshit reason to use pink highlighters instead.
Remember Watchmen? How the creator lost control of it back when because his contract said he got it back as soon as they stopped printing the run, and what they did was just continue to print the run indefinetely but in very small amounts, effectively seizing the IP as long as they paid an amount every year to publish a few copies (and yes I know that's a messy way of phrasing that debacle)? Same thing. Sleazy as fuck, but the contract was very clear in it's language, and what happened wasn't hidden in any way. That's what you get for being an optimist.
*http://jogos.uol.com.br/ultimas-noticias/2012/10/18/para-jogos-da-capcom-mercado-brasileiro-e-o-segundo-maior-nas-americas.htm
They saw the third wave of 3D and forgot that it failed twice before. Also, they forgot that Blu-Ray was the first time they ever successfully foisted technology on the world.
Pushing 3D TV tech when HDTV still hadn't reached full penetration? Yeah. Silly.
So we're going to see more Portugese translations then?
They were responsible for 3.5" floppies, partially responsible for DVDs, and while Betamax tanked in the home market it's cousin Betacam was used in TV for decades and has only recently begun to be phased out, so while it wasn't the first time they had a tech hit, it was the first in some time.
I'm actually pretty excited about 4K after reading about Gran Turismo 5 running at 4K, but since Polophony Digital had to network 4 PS3s to get GT4 running at that resolution, it makes me wonder if the PS4 would even be capable of 4K/60fps gameplay.
Thinking more about Doom 3 BFG Edition, it just seems like the more I hear about it, the worse of a deal it is. If you're going to charge $30 for an eight year old game and two twenty year old games, you shouldn't halfass them.
Between dropping Rage, which didn't work for half the people that played it and got a collective "meh" from the half that did, and then releasing a neutered version of the only good PC game they've developed in the past decade it just really seems like id is off of their game lately.
A good agent is worth it's weight in gold in Hollywood.
Yep, this is why Alec Guinness got 2% of the gross receipts for Star Wars, while David Prowse just has a bunch of letters informing him that Return of the Jedi has never been profitable.
Switch (JeffConser): SW-3353-5433-5137 Wii U: Skeldare - 3DS: 1848-1663-9345
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Gamertag: PrimusD | Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
There's a limit to what can be done in multiplayer because of bandwidth limitations. Some games are programmed/designed/coded/whatever better than others, and can get more done without developing latency issues, but there are limits.
Gamertag: PrimusD | Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
This is for the quarter ending September 30.
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/increased-r-d-decreased-income-new-xbox-approaching/0104868 In retrospect, they should have put it out this year or the holidays last year before things went completely shitty for console sales. Oh well, couldn't predict exactly when things were going to going to get shitty.
Also, they are amazingly quick to call Fable: The Journey a flop, not that it isn't a huge flop.
To be fair, if I was a reviewer and someone handed me a "rail shooter, where you are a carriage driver" adding "oh and it's by molyneux" as they fled out the door, I'd probably just skip playing it, type 'shit' 100 times, and call it a day.
That is probably why I am not a reviewer.
But yeah, 'don't judge a book by it's cover' and all that, but in some cases, such as the necronomicon and molyneux, you can make some safe bets.
Edit: Not that I'm implying that 'it's by molyneux' is itself a horrible thing, but when it's paired with some already retarded idea, well, the man has zero impulse control so you can expect it to be as bad as it sounds. Some devs take weird ideas and can make them fun. Molyneux can take normal ideas and make them weird/fun. But the weird ideas he turns into a giant pile of shit.