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| Gatt:
@opt2not Do you feel digital distribution has the potential to bring about change? I know Steam and Live both still take huge chunks of the revenues, but do you feel that over time they can put the power of Development back in the hands of the Devs? I've noticed a trend starting, with Mount & Blade and Minecraft being bigger names, it seems to me these services are starting to have an impact. Dead State and Age of Decadence both seem to have pretty reasonable production values and are bringing back interesting gameplay mechanics in some pretty intriguing titles. I'm wondering if the advent of digital distribution is starting to weaken the Publisher's stranglehold and a couple more breakout Indie hits might shift the Industry in a big way. Especially given my research that indicates to me that some of the biggest publishers are on horribly shaky ground. EA seems to be hanging on only by virtue of the NFL series, and Zenimax is so overextended it's scary. So do you think we're standing on the edge or a precipice like Randy discusses? One which will eventually alter how the Industry functions? @RandyT Very good point, you bring up something I've been terming as Gamer Fatigue, an overabundance of extremely similiar titles, much like what occurred with Atari and later with the Genesis/SNES generations. Combined with the lack of a hardware refresh to lead people in with more Flashy. I agree that we're looking at an Industry crash, I feel the Industry is overextended, and due to too many ultra-similiar offerings they're starting to get desperate to keep afloat, converging to the genres that have traditionally sold well as an attempt to stave off disaster at the expense of releasing new IPs. Which ultimately just leads to the disaster as it's an overabundance of Shooter/RTS that got us here. As an engineer of sorts, what is your take on the sustainability of consoles? Do you think we're looking at the last generation? I ask because I've been of the opinion that consoles have hit a wall they won't be able to overcome. I question if they can manage the heat generated by modern chips in those small form factor consoles, as they can't dissipate the heat from older generations. I'm on my 5th 360 and my PS3 just cooked it's own power supply. Further, I question if they can manage to offer a new generation of hardware without requiring power supplies that exceed most people's wiring limits. With hardware easily requiring 500w these days between GPU and CPU, I question if they can deliver a low power console. I've been thinking the future is in home servers, sitting in the basement with 16-32 cores, pushing multiple screens in the house independently. Handling gaming, office, VoD, and any arbitrary task. With someone delivering a closed box baseline and tinkerers can have their systems that exceed it. Essentially a PC that takes the Console's one advantage and makes it ubiquitous. @Leedsfan I'm with you 100%. The EA model of leave things out of the game and hit people for another $20 on release is unacceptable. They're essentially increasing the price of a game to $80, especially as alot of the time this DLC is actually already on the disc and all it does it unlock it. I was very much angered by the way EA handled Dead Space 2. Multiple rooms in the main game accessible only if you bought the DLC prior to the game's release with many desireable items contained within. It was even more obscene because I bought the PC version, the DLC never existed for the PC version, so I have no way of ever opening those doors and experiencing the full Dead Space 2. It was such a huge middle finger to me as a PC Gamer, especially as I bought the Collector's Edition and was still permanently locked out of the whole game. I much prefer the Capcom Dead Rising method. D/l a demo that is itself a short prequel, that gives you small advantages if you get the main game and have bought the prequel, and then another short game as a epilogue. I felt my money was very well spent on Capcom's DLC. Fable 2's sat well with me as well, small contained games that had a small impact when the title finally released. |
| Paul Olson:
--- Quote from: eds1275 on April 03, 2011, 12:47:50 pm ---The music industry is a sore spot for me, as I am a professional musician, composer, and sound engineer. Nobody wants to buy an album anymore, and so they just download the biggest and best tracks, and in my experience sometimes the best songs are not the ones that catch your ear right away because they are catchy - the best tunes are more often the ones that grow on you after a few listens or sometimes it takes years for you to develop the connection to music in a way that moves you. This is hardly the case with arcade games though, as if the first level sucks you are going to stick your coins in elsewhere. Back on the "Bird Debate"... Angry birds is not fun for everyone, and if you've played Trials until the hard and extreme settings that one is not fun anymore - but the addictive game play and the meter at the top that shows who's been doing better than you [i.e. the top score] is what keeps you playing. Having a competitive aspect to it really adds to the addictiveness of games - throw in a few secrets and you have a winner! --- End quote --- As someone who bought albums for over 25 years, I would say that most of the tracks weren't all that great. You can listen to just about anything enough times to make you like it. I believe that is the theory that radio operates on. Sorry, if it takes years for me to enjoy something, I will pay for it after that happens. In my opinion, the music industry is killing itself off. The movie and game industry seems destined to follow their lead, too. They keep cranking out garbage, and the customers do not even have the option to return it when it sucks. Most of the sales in all of these industries happen before the customers can try the product, so these sales are almost 100% the result of marketing. That is not a model that will keep the customers buying long term. Services like Pandora are great, and really the only way I listen to music anymore. They are going to end up killing themselves off too though, because they are going crazy with ads. Last FM is currently a better choice to me, because there are less interruptions. Soon, it will probably be another one that pops up to take over. I download a lot of demos on the 360, and it is extremely rare that I want to play enough to purchase the full game. I paid for Trials because I wanted more. Then it turned out that I didn't want all that much more. After a certain point, it just wasn't fun anymore, so I stopped playing. I wish I had the option to resell it, but I don't. |
| ark_ader:
What I hate the most is the hype. We had hype back in the day of the Commodore 64 and Ocean Software. the advertisements looked good, but the games were either buggy or plain sucked. It looks like we are going full circle again with hype and sucky games. Fable 3 is a perfect example. We hear Peter Molyneux banging on what a great game Fable 3 is, lots of choices great graphics, etc. It is not a cheap game at £39.99 - still that price at ASDA and a few outlets. Fable 3 when released was buggy, crap story line, crap choice facilities (that was bragged by Peter) to the point where it was completely disappointing. The previous releases of Fable is superior to this title. And the list goes on: Fallout Las Vegas, Hawk2, Afterburner Climax and please don't even think about those Dreamcast games they are selling on Live... :dunno The DLC on Fable 3 is expensive and dire all rolled into one. I know I'm bashing one title - but when you wait for a title that excites you and then you play it - and get depressions because of how dire it is. Like watching Tron 2.0... I think we will see more showmanship - pushing crap console titles, but this also alienates your fan base. I am much more picky on titles now. Try before you buy doesn't cut it with demos. I think if a game is crap enough - you should be able to get your money back. |
| jimmy2x2x:
I am very happy to see a small Amiga renaissance: Battle Squadron one: http://cope-com.com/ Katakis 2: http://www.katakis2.de/ http://www.siebold.org/katakis2/ss05.png http://www.siebold.org/katakis2/ss09.png Possible new Turrican game: 03.02.2011 Manfred Trenz now owns Turrican word mark The word mark Turrican was registered to Softgold until 31.12.2010, after it expired, Manfred Trenz registered it at 13.01.2011 http://register.dpma.de/DPMAregister/marke/register/3020110018855/DE |
| eds1275:
--- Quote from: Paul Olson on April 03, 2011, 04:34:36 pm ---As someone who bought albums for over 25 years, I would say that most of the tracks weren't all that great. You can listen to just about anything enough times to make you like it. --- End quote --- I wasn't saying that there wasn't bad music in the past. I enjoy music both new and old. My point was you had to buy an album and I think that it's a better way to go - the entire album was given a chance, as opposed to today where you can cherry pick the ones you want, leaving some potential gems lost in obscurity. |
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