Minecraft's popularity has always confused me. Not that I don't think it is a great game, but it always struck me as exactly the kind of niche oddity that normally attracts a core following but never goes much further. Certainly not the mainstream juggernaut it has become. I guess I just don't see what the hook is, outside of the basic mechanics which have been done before plenty. Is it one of those perfect storm situations like WoW?
I think it can be reasonably attributed to the fact that it is "digital Legos". When you're the first with that idea, it's kind of hard to imagine how that idea wouldn't make money hand over fist.
This is probably the best way to put it. I've seen people mention before that Minecraft isn't the first game of its type so it shouldn't be credited with the concept, but really, that kinda crap is moot. What matters is execution and exposure, and pure old luck. There's lots of games, films, TV, novels, etc. that all were the first to breach some new territory or concept, but overtaken by others that hit at the right time or executed on things better.
Mind you this is only on the metric for success - original credit should go where it should go. But it is not the sole qualifier for success.
I'm actually kinda shocked the industry hasn't done its typical, "QUICK, WE NEED TO CAPITALIZE ON THAT NEW GOLD MINE" thing with Minecraft. Maybe it's for the better that it hasn't, because it could be a sign that the industry has learned that copycat mentality just wastes time and money. What I like about Minecraft's success is that it blows AAA development out of the water and shows the power of indie game development. Nintendo opened its doors to indie games, Sony supposedly is starting with the PS4, and hopefully Microsoft follows suit. Though, Minecraft's success on the 360 could actually make Microsoft the one lone, bold idiot of the trio that goes, "See, our nickel and diming of small developers works!"
Being first with a sellable, marketable idea is crucial. This is why everyone loves and plays Portal, yet almost nobody has ever heard of Narbacular Drop, even though it was, technically, the first with that idea. The beauty of Minecraft, I think, is that it is just so SIMPLE. WIth the billions of mods out there, it is also incredibly malleable.
Occam's Razor will almost always win out in the end. You can ahve special and awesome games, but if you just stick to basics, and create an easily-modifiable base, you'll be swimming in gold. I think that's why WoW has such a success story, as opposed to everything else. Their game is pretty darn simple, and their engine is extremely malleable, as is shown by them basically progressing the game technologically over the years to keep it relevant.
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Some Wii U owners are disappointed to see Battlefield 4 is not coming to the console. What, exactly, is the reason for that?
Patrick Bach: The biggest problem we have right now is we don't want to back down from what we see as our low spec machines. We right now don't have support for the Wii U in the Frostbite engine. The reason for that is it takes development time. What should we focus on to create the best possible Battlefield experience? We are now focused on PC and the current-gen platforms, and then there might be other platforms in the future that we can't talk about...
One of them you can.
Patrick Bach: Yes, in theory, but we won't. But it's important to understand it's about focus and setting the bar. Where do you start? What's the minimum? What's the maximum? What's the scale in-between.
Tobias Dahl: We have long experience with scalability. We've always been making PC games. But we don't want to ship different games dependent on the platform. We need to set the limit somewhere, to have the lowest spec for this title.
Patrick Bach: We could probably make a Wii U game in theory. But to make the most out of the Wii U, that's a different game because of the different peripherals. We want to utilise all the power of each console.
Are you saying it's not about the power of the Wii U itself, rather, it's about the controller?
Patrick Bach: It's everything. We could potentially make a Battlefield port for the Vita. But what would that game be? Is it something we could scale down from what you saw in the gameplay video, or would it have to be a complete redesign of the whole game?
It's about, where do you put your focus? And the Wii U is not a part of our focus right now.
No Frostbite also means going forward no Mass Effect 4, no Dragon Age 3, no *insert any core EA title here*...
0
HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
There's also Terraria which sold like crazy and is very obviously inspired by Minecraft.
Inspired by, but in a good way and not the ripoff way - it was turned into its own thing mostly in being a 2D sidescroller.
Somehow I found Terraria to be more inspired by Zelda than Minecraft. I mean, yes, there was quite a bit of inspiration from Minecraft, but Terraria wasn't really a "canvas" type of game where you just create things and live in glorious mansions, it was always more of an "adventure" game where the point was to explore, rather than build.
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And the worst thing is that Frostbite is a really shitty engine that under performs horrendously on PCs that can power an entire continent. The most poorly optimized, buggy piece of crap I've ever seen. It took me hours of tweaking just to get 60 frames with low latency on my new PC and my new PC could render the fucking Matrix.
Some Wii U owners are disappointed to see Battlefield 4 is not coming to the console. What, exactly, is the reason for that?
Patrick Bach: The biggest problem we have right now is we don't want to back down from what we see as our low spec machines. We right now don't have support for the Wii U in the Frostbite engine. The reason for that is it takes development time. What should we focus on to create the best possible Battlefield experience? We are now focused on PC and the current-gen platforms, and then there might be other platforms in the future that we can't talk about...
One of them you can.
Patrick Bach: Yes, in theory, but we won't. But it's important to understand it's about focus and setting the bar. Where do you start? What's the minimum? What's the maximum? What's the scale in-between.
Tobias Dahl: We have long experience with scalability. We've always been making PC games. But we don't want to ship different games dependent on the platform. We need to set the limit somewhere, to have the lowest spec for this title.
Patrick Bach: We could probably make a Wii U game in theory. But to make the most out of the Wii U, that's a different game because of the different peripherals. We want to utilise all the power of each console.
Are you saying it's not about the power of the Wii U itself, rather, it's about the controller?
Patrick Bach: It's everything. We could potentially make a Battlefield port for the Vita. But what would that game be? Is it something we could scale down from what you saw in the gameplay video, or would it have to be a complete redesign of the whole game?
It's about, where do you put your focus? And the Wii U is not a part of our focus right now.
No Frostbite also means going forward no Mass Effect 4, no Dragon Age 3, no *insert any core EA title here*...
It's yet another Nintendo system that you buy only for the Nintendo games.
And the worst thing is that Frostbite is a really shitty engine that under performs horrendously on PCs that can power an entire continent. The most poorly optimized, buggy piece of crap I've ever seen. It took me hours of tweaking just to get 60 frames with low latency on my new PC and my new PC could render the fucking Matrix.
And the worst thing is that Frostbite is a really shitty engine that under performs horrendously on PCs that can power an entire continent. The most poorly optimized, buggy piece of crap I've ever seen. It took me hours of tweaking just to get 60 frames with low latency on my new PC and my new PC could render the fucking Matrix.
Some Wii U owners are disappointed to see Battlefield 4 is not coming to the console. What, exactly, is the reason for that?
Patrick Bach: The biggest problem we have right now is we don't want to back down from what we see as our low spec machines. We right now don't have support for the Wii U in the Frostbite engine. The reason for that is it takes development time. What should we focus on to create the best possible Battlefield experience? We are now focused on PC and the current-gen platforms, and then there might be other platforms in the future that we can't talk about...
One of them you can.
Patrick Bach: Yes, in theory, but we won't. But it's important to understand it's about focus and setting the bar. Where do you start? What's the minimum? What's the maximum? What's the scale in-between.
Tobias Dahl: We have long experience with scalability. We've always been making PC games. But we don't want to ship different games dependent on the platform. We need to set the limit somewhere, to have the lowest spec for this title.
Patrick Bach: We could probably make a Wii U game in theory. But to make the most out of the Wii U, that's a different game because of the different peripherals. We want to utilise all the power of each console.
Are you saying it's not about the power of the Wii U itself, rather, it's about the controller?
Patrick Bach: It's everything. We could potentially make a Battlefield port for the Vita. But what would that game be? Is it something we could scale down from what you saw in the gameplay video, or would it have to be a complete redesign of the whole game?
It's about, where do you put your focus? And the Wii U is not a part of our focus right now.
No Frostbite also means going forward no Mass Effect 4, no Dragon Age 3, no *insert any core EA title here*...
The article doesn't paint a particularly rosy picture, but it doesn't necessarily rule out other games like ME or DA. Hopefully NFS sells well enough (it should since there was slim pickings in terms of games until this month for WiiU) that EA sees the value of having decently sized WiiU port teams.
Not being able to play Mass Effect on my WiiU would pretty much guarantee that I would purchase a PS4 or something.
Everyone has a price. Throw enough gold around and someone will risk disintegration.
I'm actually kinda shocked the industry hasn't done its typical, "QUICK, WE NEED TO CAPITALIZE ON THAT NEW GOLD MINE" thing with Minecraft.
I can name three separate, local, indie devs that are not working together, that are working on their Minecraft knock-off.
I meant the big guys in this case.
Fortnite. Sorta. Kinda. Maybe. I guess.
You know, in all the talk about how Crytek is doing I can't help but think about Far Cry 3. It seems to have sold really well, but all this year I can't help but bump into multiple sales for the thing. The latest one (I forget where) has it at $25, new. Maybe that one got overproduced as well?
Or is an unintended consequence of the blockbuster model the fact that prices now depreciate faster than ever for everything that's not Call of Duty?
Actually I take that back... CODBLOPS 2 is now selling for $40 new.
I mean, it's great for gamers to be able to get stuff for cheap but as an industry-watcher I'm a little spooked as to how quickly these things are cheapening.
Actually I take that back... CODBLOPS 2 is now selling for $40 new.
I mean, it's great for gamers to be able to get stuff for cheap but as an industry-watcher I'm a little spooked as to how quickly these things are cheapening.
I think that has a lot more to do with how volatile B&M stores are getting to compete with online stores.
Actually I take that back... CODBLOPS 2 is now selling for $40 new.
I mean, it's great for gamers to be able to get stuff for cheap but as an industry-watcher I'm a little spooked as to how quickly these things are cheapening.
I think that has a lot more to do with how volatile B&M stores are getting to compete with online stores.
That's possible... there's been a price war going on between the two for, what, three or four years now?
Minecraft's popularity has always confused me. Not that I don't think it is a great game, but it always struck me as exactly the kind of niche oddity that normally attracts a core following but never goes much further. Certainly not the mainstream juggernaut it has become. I guess I just don't see what the hook is, outside of the basic mechanics which have been done before plenty. Is it one of those perfect storm situations like WoW?
I think it can be reasonably attributed to the fact that it is "digital Legos". When you're the first with that idea, it's kind of hard to imagine how that idea wouldn't make money hand over fist.
This is probably the best way to put it. I've seen people mention before that Minecraft isn't the first game of its type so it shouldn't be credited with the concept, but really, that kinda crap is moot. What matters is execution and exposure, and pure old luck. There's lots of games, films, TV, novels, etc. that all were the first to breach some new territory or concept, but overtaken by others that hit at the right time or executed on things better.
Mind you this is only on the metric for success - original credit should go where it should go. But it is not the sole qualifier for success.
I'm actually kinda shocked the industry hasn't done its typical, "QUICK, WE NEED TO CAPITALIZE ON THAT NEW GOLD MINE" thing with Minecraft. Maybe it's for the better that it hasn't, because it could be a sign that the industry has learned that copycat mentality just wastes time and money. What I like about Minecraft's success is that it blows AAA development out of the water and shows the power of indie game development. Nintendo opened its doors to indie games, Sony supposedly is starting with the PS4, and hopefully Microsoft follows suit. Though, Minecraft's success on the 360 could actually make Microsoft the one lone, bold idiot of the trio that goes, "See, our nickel and diming of small developers works!"
I wonder how much of Minecraft's success is actually applicable to anything else. It seems kinda like the, I don't know, Blair Witch Project effect or something. The thing with Indie development is sometimes it hits just the perfect formula at the perfect time and absolutely explodes and makes shitloads of money. But it's not very predictable or replicable for the most part.
The current approach seems about all you could do. Throw the money around, get a decent ROI overall and hope and pray for a smash hit to randomly appear.
Actually I take that back... CODBLOPS 2 is now selling for $40 new.
I mean, it's great for gamers to be able to get stuff for cheap but as an industry-watcher I'm a little spooked as to how quickly these things are cheapening.
I think that has a lot more to do with how volatile B&M stores are getting to compete with online stores.
It could be the industry waking up finally too.
I mean, when your product's sales are incredibly front-loaded, there's no reason not to drop the price fairly quickly and scoop up more sales.
Actually I take that back... CODBLOPS 2 is now selling for $40 new.
I mean, it's great for gamers to be able to get stuff for cheap but as an industry-watcher I'm a little spooked as to how quickly these things are cheapening.
I think that has a lot more to do with how volatile B&M stores are getting to compete with online stores.
That's possible... there's been a price war going on between the two for, what, three or four years now?
Something like that, but it got a lot more serious in the last year or so. Best Buy has aggressively changed their price matching policy (though I would say for the worse) along with Target actually having one and Walmart having a fairly lax one. Strictly speaking about game sales, Gamestop is the only B&M store that has not done anything to be competitive with online stores though that has a lot more to do with the bulk of their revenue coming from used game sales. Not that other shops didn't try to capitalize on that market as well.
Actually I take that back... CODBLOPS 2 is now selling for $40 new.
I mean, it's great for gamers to be able to get stuff for cheap but as an industry-watcher I'm a little spooked as to how quickly these things are cheapening.
I think that has a lot more to do with how volatile B&M stores are getting to compete with online stores.
It could be the industry waking up finally too.
I mean, when your product's sales are incredibly front-loaded, there's no reason not to drop the price fairly quickly and scoop up more sales.
The thing is that these aren't permanent price drops. They are sale prices that are usually done by these stores to gain the upper hand. Granted, they still need to get the green light from publishers to avoid getting blacklisted (breaking MAP is frowned upon), but these are still solely done by the stores themselves. No publisher approaches a store and says put our games on sale.
price matching? if I go into best buy and show them a steam sale they will match it?
This would be glorious beyond comprehension! Other than the fact that Best BUy would bankrupt within a decade.
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Actually I take that back... CODBLOPS 2 is now selling for $40 new.
I mean, it's great for gamers to be able to get stuff for cheap but as an industry-watcher I'm a little spooked as to how quickly these things are cheapening.
I think that has a lot more to do with how volatile B&M stores are getting to compete with online stores.
It could be the industry waking up finally too.
I mean, when your product's sales are incredibly front-loaded, there's no reason not to drop the price fairly quickly and scoop up more sales.
The thing is that these aren't permanent price drops. They are sale prices that are usually done by these stores to gain the upper hand. Granted, they still need to get the green light from publishers to avoid getting blacklisted (breaking MAP is frowned upon), but these are still solely done by the stores themselves. No publisher approaches a store and says put our games on sale.
Are you sure? They do it for Steam.
If the trend exists, it could be a change in strategy. Wasn't there talk with CoD and the like about the tails of games getting shorter these days? They sell more at launch and less afterwords?
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L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
Actually I take that back... CODBLOPS 2 is now selling for $40 new.
I mean, it's great for gamers to be able to get stuff for cheap but as an industry-watcher I'm a little spooked as to how quickly these things are cheapening.
I think that has a lot more to do with how volatile B&M stores are getting to compete with online stores.
It could be the industry waking up finally too.
I mean, when your product's sales are incredibly front-loaded, there's no reason not to drop the price fairly quickly and scoop up more sales.
The thing is that these aren't permanent price drops. They are sale prices that are usually done by these stores to gain the upper hand. Granted, they still need to get the green light from publishers to avoid getting blacklisted (breaking MAP is frowned upon), but these are still solely done by the stores themselves. No publisher approaches a store and says put our games on sale.
Are you sure? They do it for Steam.
If the trend exists, it could be a change in strategy. Wasn't there talk with CoD and the like about the tails of games getting shorter these days? They sell more at launch and less afterwords?
B&M stores operate on a different metric. The vendors have to buy these games in advance to anticipate how much they will need to sell through without having excess. This also provides them with some safety nets in case they have excess stock that will not sell. The margin for profit on games is pathetic to these stores, and retail space is important to them. That's why they will be the ones to approach publishers to have sale prices on these games. Publishers don't actively change the MAP unless they feel that it will improve sales. It is an archaic system, but I doubt it will change considering the logistics involved in them.
Oh there is no doubt about it. However, they have changed it so that you can only price match these places at the time of purchase. Before, they would let you price match within 30 days of purchase though it only applied to B&M stores. Now, they will only PM their own store price within 15 days. You take the good with the bad, I guess.
Need For Speed Most Wanted U was available at 50% off on release day (through being eligible for the Origin customer appreciation sale), so I don't think EA had a ton of confidence in its sales prospects. Hopefully it'll do surprisingly well, it's a quite good port from what I've played so far. The only downside is that the Wii U controller doesn't have any sort of analog trigger, but when would you not want to be going FULL THROTTLE ALL THE TIME in a NFS game anyways?
Cross posting this here and in the WiiU thread: has there been any mention of if/when the VC on the original Wii is shutting down? I'm probably gonna grab one between now and July; if it's shutting down before then I'll go ahead and get one now. Haven't seen any notice myself but figure there are people here who may know.
Cross posting this here and in the WiiU thread: has there been any mention of if/when the VC on the original Wii is shutting down? I'm probably gonna grab one between now and July; if it's shutting down before then I'll go ahead and get one now. Haven't seen any notice myself but figure there are people here who may know.
This isn't really the thread for this, but no, no word on it shutting down.
Though semi on-topic, I've noticed that whoever has the rights for Neo-Geo stuff has been adding games to the original Wii's VC every few weeks, as recently as a couple weeks ago, even though the original Wii is near-death and I can't imagine its digital sales are great at this point. That's kinda bonkers.
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
Some Wii U owners are disappointed to see Battlefield 4 is not coming to the console. What, exactly, is the reason for that?
Patrick Bach: The biggest problem we have right now is we don't want to back down from what we see as our low spec machines. We right now don't have support for the Wii U in the Frostbite engine. The reason for that is it takes development time. What should we focus on to create the best possible Battlefield experience? We are now focused on PC and the current-gen platforms, and then there might be other platforms in the future that we can't talk about...
One of them you can.
Patrick Bach: Yes, in theory, but we won't. But it's important to understand it's about focus and setting the bar. Where do you start? What's the minimum? What's the maximum? What's the scale in-between.
Tobias Dahl: We have long experience with scalability. We've always been making PC games. But we don't want to ship different games dependent on the platform. We need to set the limit somewhere, to have the lowest spec for this title.
Patrick Bach: We could probably make a Wii U game in theory. But to make the most out of the Wii U, that's a different game because of the different peripherals. We want to utilise all the power of each console.
Are you saying it's not about the power of the Wii U itself, rather, it's about the controller?
Patrick Bach: It's everything. We could potentially make a Battlefield port for the Vita. But what would that game be? Is it something we could scale down from what you saw in the gameplay video, or would it have to be a complete redesign of the whole game?
It's about, where do you put your focus? And the Wii U is not a part of our focus right now.
*sigh* This is such a load of crap. I love how they basically confirm PS4 support though. So it's "we could support Wii U, but then we'd have to, like, do work! Work is hard! It has that scary controller and we don't want to support that!"
You know, as much as I think it's a damn travesty that third parties are turning their back on the Wii U this early in its life, the first PR guy/developer rep who skips the bullshit and says "we're not developing for Wii U because we don't think it'll sell" is getting a cookie bouquet from me.
No Frostbite also means going forward no Mass Effect 4, no Dragon Age 3, no *insert any core EA title here*...
So a...good thing?
...no?
Probably not, no. EA has its share of disappointments, but forsaking a huge chunk of their IPs is not a good thing.
That doesn't justify EA ignoring the Wii U necessarily, though as it stands, getting behind the Wii U may take some convincing. And they shouldn't disguise it as a purely technical issue.
Synthesis on
0
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
How difficult can it be to develop for the Wii U? It's got to be easier than developing for the PS3.
That quote is blaming the gamepad. It's the same bullshit they gave for Wii - "Well, we WOULD develop for it but then we'd have to do motion controls and that's soooooo haaaard!"
I agree with cloud, just fucking admit it's about sales. Stop lying :P
You know, as much as I think it's a damn travesty that third parties are turning their back on the Wii U this early in its life, the first PR guy/developer rep who skips the bullshit and says "we're not developing for Wii U because we don't think it'll sell" is getting a cookie bouquet from me.
It depends. Not starting any new projects after seeing the Wii U's reception over a few months is one thing. Fair enough.
However if people are canceling development, shit they already started (the further along, the more intense my sentiment here grows) - fuck them. They are in the perfect position to bolster the Wii U and make it something desired. They're executing sabotage.
Minecraft's popularity has always confused me. Not that I don't think it is a great game, but it always struck me as exactly the kind of niche oddity that normally attracts a core following but never goes much further. Certainly not the mainstream juggernaut it has become. I guess I just don't see what the hook is, outside of the basic mechanics which have been done before plenty. Is it one of those perfect storm situations like WoW?
I think it can be reasonably attributed to the fact that it is "digital Legos". When you're the first with that idea, it's kind of hard to imagine how that idea wouldn't make money hand over fist.
This is probably the best way to put it. I've seen people mention before that Minecraft isn't the first game of its type so it shouldn't be credited with the concept, but really, that kinda crap is moot. What matters is execution and exposure, and pure old luck. There's lots of games, films, TV, novels, etc. that all were the first to breach some new territory or concept, but overtaken by others that hit at the right time or executed on things better.
Mind you this is only on the metric for success - original credit should go where it should go. But it is not the sole qualifier for success.
I'm actually kinda shocked the industry hasn't done its typical, "QUICK, WE NEED TO CAPITALIZE ON THAT NEW GOLD MINE" thing with Minecraft. Maybe it's for the better that it hasn't, because it could be a sign that the industry has learned that copycat mentality just wastes time and money. What I like about Minecraft's success is that it blows AAA development out of the water and shows the power of indie game development. Nintendo opened its doors to indie games, Sony supposedly is starting with the PS4, and hopefully Microsoft follows suit. Though, Minecraft's success on the 360 could actually make Microsoft the one lone, bold idiot of the trio that goes, "See, our nickel and diming of small developers works!"
Xbox Indie Games sure did, but that's about the extent of it.
Maybe I'm missing something obvious on the Wii Store, but XBLIG, with its problems, seems to be a far better showing. Better late than never absolutely, but I don't think Nintendo's quite become a haven for small development and distribution. It could just be "Old junk, new hotness".
Nintendo changed its indie development and distribution policies (or announced the changes, dunno if they're implemented yet). This was like last week. But they took the step is what I was getting at.
I'm not going to fault Nintendo for trying--you actually have to implement changes for a situation to be different--and good for them for taking that first step. But anyone (not specifically saying this forum, but in general) portraying it as an indie haven right not deserves some cynical eye-rolling.
You know, as much as I think it's a damn travesty that third parties are turning their back on the Wii U this early in its life, the first PR guy/developer rep who skips the bullshit and says "we're not developing for Wii U because we don't think it'll sell" is getting a cookie bouquet from me.
Uhh, yeah, I won't be developing for the Wii U because I just don't think there'll be a big enough install-base to make it worthwhile.
Shall I PM you my address?
In other news, I'm wondering how well BioShock: Infinite's doing, after it seemed to hit some kind of pessimism dip just before launch, which quickly turned around to the Best Game Ever. I'm hoping the sudden rush of excellent reviews, good word-of-mouth and lack of sales competition give it a couple of really big weeks.
Some Wii U owners are disappointed to see Battlefield 4 is not coming to the console. What, exactly, is the reason for that?
Patrick Bach: The biggest problem we have right now is we don't want to back down from what we see as our low spec machines. We right now don't have support for the Wii U in the Frostbite engine. The reason for that is it takes development time. What should we focus on to create the best possible Battlefield experience? We are now focused on PC and the current-gen platforms, and then there might be other platforms in the future that we can't talk about...
One of them you can.
Patrick Bach: Yes, in theory, but we won't. But it's important to understand it's about focus and setting the bar. Where do you start? What's the minimum? What's the maximum? What's the scale in-between.
Tobias Dahl: We have long experience with scalability. We've always been making PC games. But we don't want to ship different games dependent on the platform. We need to set the limit somewhere, to have the lowest spec for this title.
Patrick Bach: We could probably make a Wii U game in theory. But to make the most out of the Wii U, that's a different game because of the different peripherals. We want to utilise all the power of each console.
Are you saying it's not about the power of the Wii U itself, rather, it's about the controller?
Patrick Bach: It's everything. We could potentially make a Battlefield port for the Vita. But what would that game be? Is it something we could scale down from what you saw in the gameplay video, or would it have to be a complete redesign of the whole game?
It's about, where do you put your focus? And the Wii U is not a part of our focus right now.
*sigh* This is such a load of crap. I love how they basically confirm PS4 support though. So it's "we could support Wii U, but then we'd have to, like, do work! Work is hard! It has that scary controller and we don't want to support that!"
Well, people who actually know ANYTHING at all about game development won't call it a load of crap.
Porting an amazingly powerful and complex engine like Frostbite to a completely new architecture is a huge investment of money, time and resources. They might not even have anyone on the team capable of working on Nintendo's architecture, who knows. That kind of know-how is not trivial.
They already have the code base for the PS3, the PC and the XBox 360, and the PS4 is more or less a really good PC, so they can easily make it work, too.
Then you have all kinds of analysis that might show that the (huge amount of) money invested on a WiiU port won't ever be recovered by the projected sales.
People who care about gaming as a serious hobby should stop acting like coding and developing are trivial, simple issues. They're not.
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Being first with a sellable, marketable idea is crucial. This is why everyone loves and plays Portal, yet almost nobody has ever heard of Narbacular Drop, even though it was, technically, the first with that idea. The beauty of Minecraft, I think, is that it is just so SIMPLE. WIth the billions of mods out there, it is also incredibly malleable.
Occam's Razor will almost always win out in the end. You can ahve special and awesome games, but if you just stick to basics, and create an easily-modifiable base, you'll be swimming in gold. I think that's why WoW has such a success story, as opposed to everything else. Their game is pretty darn simple, and their engine is extremely malleable, as is shown by them basically progressing the game technologically over the years to keep it relevant.
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No Frostbite also means going forward no Mass Effect 4, no Dragon Age 3, no *insert any core EA title here*...
Inspired by, but in a good way and not the ripoff way - it was turned into its own thing mostly in being a 2D sidescroller.
Somehow I found Terraria to be more inspired by Zelda than Minecraft. I mean, yes, there was quite a bit of inspiration from Minecraft, but Terraria wasn't really a "canvas" type of game where you just create things and live in glorious mansions, it was always more of an "adventure" game where the point was to explore, rather than build.
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It's yet another Nintendo system that you buy only for the Nintendo games.
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o_O Frostbite runs great.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
Man, I can run the Matrix on my dvd player.
...no?
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
The article doesn't paint a particularly rosy picture, but it doesn't necessarily rule out other games like ME or DA. Hopefully NFS sells well enough (it should since there was slim pickings in terms of games until this month for WiiU) that EA sees the value of having decently sized WiiU port teams.
Not being able to play Mass Effect on my WiiU would pretty much guarantee that I would purchase a PS4 or something.
Fortnite. Sorta. Kinda. Maybe. I guess.
You know, in all the talk about how Crytek is doing I can't help but think about Far Cry 3. It seems to have sold really well, but all this year I can't help but bump into multiple sales for the thing. The latest one (I forget where) has it at $25, new. Maybe that one got overproduced as well?
Or is an unintended consequence of the blockbuster model the fact that prices now depreciate faster than ever for everything that's not Call of Duty?
I mean, it's great for gamers to be able to get stuff for cheap but as an industry-watcher I'm a little spooked as to how quickly these things are cheapening.
And lets be honest, EA isn't supporting the Wii U because it's doing horribly. People buy Nintendo platforms for Nintendo games.
I think that has a lot more to do with how volatile B&M stores are getting to compete with online stores.
That's possible... there's been a price war going on between the two for, what, three or four years now?
I wonder how much of Minecraft's success is actually applicable to anything else. It seems kinda like the, I don't know, Blair Witch Project effect or something. The thing with Indie development is sometimes it hits just the perfect formula at the perfect time and absolutely explodes and makes shitloads of money. But it's not very predictable or replicable for the most part.
The current approach seems about all you could do. Throw the money around, get a decent ROI overall and hope and pray for a smash hit to randomly appear.
It could be the industry waking up finally too.
I mean, when your product's sales are incredibly front-loaded, there's no reason not to drop the price fairly quickly and scoop up more sales.
Something like that, but it got a lot more serious in the last year or so. Best Buy has aggressively changed their price matching policy (though I would say for the worse) along with Target actually having one and Walmart having a fairly lax one. Strictly speaking about game sales, Gamestop is the only B&M store that has not done anything to be competitive with online stores though that has a lot more to do with the bulk of their revenue coming from used game sales. Not that other shops didn't try to capitalize on that market as well.
The thing is that these aren't permanent price drops. They are sale prices that are usually done by these stores to gain the upper hand. Granted, they still need to get the green light from publishers to avoid getting blacklisted (breaking MAP is frowned upon), but these are still solely done by the stores themselves. No publisher approaches a store and says put our games on sale.
This would be glorious beyond comprehension! Other than the fact that Best BUy would bankrupt within a decade.
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Ha ha! No. In fact, I'd be surprised if you even found PC games there that aren't the big PC releases.
Are you sure? They do it for Steam.
If the trend exists, it could be a change in strategy. Wasn't there talk with CoD and the like about the tails of games getting shorter these days? They sell more at launch and less afterwords?
I'd be surprised if you could find any non-budget PC games, if there are any at all. Last one I went into didn't even have a PC section, honestly.
FYI, here's the list of sites Best Buy will price match:
http://consumerist.com/2013/02/15/best-buy-confirms-price-matching-policy-change-with-low-price-guarantee/
Still pretty impressive.
B&M stores operate on a different metric. The vendors have to buy these games in advance to anticipate how much they will need to sell through without having excess. This also provides them with some safety nets in case they have excess stock that will not sell. The margin for profit on games is pathetic to these stores, and retail space is important to them. That's why they will be the ones to approach publishers to have sale prices on these games. Publishers don't actively change the MAP unless they feel that it will improve sales. It is an archaic system, but I doubt it will change considering the logistics involved in them.
Oh there is no doubt about it. However, they have changed it so that you can only price match these places at the time of purchase. Before, they would let you price match within 30 days of purchase though it only applied to B&M stores. Now, they will only PM their own store price within 15 days. You take the good with the bad, I guess.
This isn't really the thread for this, but no, no word on it shutting down.
Though semi on-topic, I've noticed that whoever has the rights for Neo-Geo stuff has been adding games to the original Wii's VC every few weeks, as recently as a couple weeks ago, even though the original Wii is near-death and I can't imagine its digital sales are great at this point. That's kinda bonkers.
*sigh* This is such a load of crap. I love how they basically confirm PS4 support though. So it's "we could support Wii U, but then we'd have to, like, do work! Work is hard! It has that scary controller and we don't want to support that!"
Probably not, no. EA has its share of disappointments, but forsaking a huge chunk of their IPs is not a good thing.
That doesn't justify EA ignoring the Wii U necessarily, though as it stands, getting behind the Wii U may take some convincing. And they shouldn't disguise it as a purely technical issue.
That quote is blaming the gamepad. It's the same bullshit they gave for Wii - "Well, we WOULD develop for it but then we'd have to do motion controls and that's soooooo haaaard!"
I agree with cloud, just fucking admit it's about sales. Stop lying :P
It depends. Not starting any new projects after seeing the Wii U's reception over a few months is one thing. Fair enough.
However if people are canceling development, shit they already started (the further along, the more intense my sentiment here grows) - fuck them. They are in the perfect position to bolster the Wii U and make it something desired. They're executing sabotage.
I'm not going to fault Nintendo for trying--you actually have to implement changes for a situation to be different--and good for them for taking that first step. But anyone (not specifically saying this forum, but in general) portraying it as an indie haven right not deserves some cynical eye-rolling.
Uhh, yeah, I won't be developing for the Wii U because I just don't think there'll be a big enough install-base to make it worthwhile.
Shall I PM you my address?
In other news, I'm wondering how well BioShock: Infinite's doing, after it seemed to hit some kind of pessimism dip just before launch, which quickly turned around to the Best Game Ever. I'm hoping the sudden rush of excellent reviews, good word-of-mouth and lack of sales competition give it a couple of really big weeks.
Well, people who actually know ANYTHING at all about game development won't call it a load of crap.
Porting an amazingly powerful and complex engine like Frostbite to a completely new architecture is a huge investment of money, time and resources. They might not even have anyone on the team capable of working on Nintendo's architecture, who knows. That kind of know-how is not trivial.
They already have the code base for the PS3, the PC and the XBox 360, and the PS4 is more or less a really good PC, so they can easily make it work, too.
Then you have all kinds of analysis that might show that the (huge amount of) money invested on a WiiU port won't ever be recovered by the projected sales.
People who care about gaming as a serious hobby should stop acting like coding and developing are trivial, simple issues. They're not.