Marek

Right so first everyone is like Wiiiiii omg it will own, PS3 too expensive lol Kataguri am cry, giant enemy crab!!! Then the three Wii events happen and everyone is like "oh shit it's $30-40 more expensive than I thought, Nintendo failure, plus it's not that exciting anyway and the launch games we previously said were awesome are now not new anymore therefore meh, 360 for the win". Then TGS happens and everyone goes "HOLY SHIT PS3 VICTORIOUS, 360 has given up Japan (apparently by announcing several Japenese RPGs), and Wii sucks anyway, say hi to our 1080p overlord!!" I'm guessing everything will shift back to 360 after X06 (i.e. tonight)? So I'm obviously bored and trolling a bit, but I really get the impression that a lot of writers are responding directly to the events and not putting it into a larger perspective. I'm not saying you should have one opinion and then stick to it forever, but the flip-flopping that's occuring in the blogosphere/journosphere () is kinda annoying. I have always said that Wii is going to do great, 360 is going to do great everywhere except Japan, and PS3 will do kind of okay and grab its piece of the pie (as in, it's not an N-Gage) but will be a failure in corporate terms and in overall developer support, and I really can't say any of the events since E3 have changed my perspective other than substracting or adding minor percentages of confidence for the three platforms. Is it really that easy for companies to sway public opinion like that? I should probably get back to my job now.

Yes, except EA paired up Steven Spielberg with Doug Church, Randy Smith and others. That makes sense and I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. Also yeah agreed about the Rubin thing. By the way, that speech was legendary and I'm sad I deleted the video of it.

Just saw the video of the press conference and some of Microsoft's press quotes regarding the new Jackson games and, wow, does anyone know what they are actually going to make? Even MS seems confused.

Hang on, so we have Halo 3, Halo Wars, Halo movie, and a prequel called Forerunner? So basically there will be three Halo franchises? Won't that dilute the brand? Not that I care that much about Halo...

The unique selling point of the Xbox 360 is really the 360 operating system in combination with Xbox Live. It includes the smooth online play, online game store, downloadable content, a strong competitive social element ('oh shit I can see my friend is still playing Oblivion! better catch up') and strong promotion of specific titles through demos. (Dead Rising and Fight Night's successes depended heavily on this.) The whole connectivity thing through XBL is something that gives the platform focus and is easy to communicate and demonstrate to consumers. It changes the way you play games. Sony would like the PS3's USP to be BluRay (and 1080p) but I think it's harder to convince people of its importance. And despite what they want people to think, they do not have "their own version of Xbox Live", but something that is going to be inferior. Of course there are other factors such as brand power and games lineup but I think these are, for a large part, consequences of the focus/positioning of the platform and the level of support given to developers. Both Wii and 360 have a focal point and excellent developer support, while PS3 seems like an expensive high-end jack-of-all-trades with poor developer support and questionable concept approval from Sony. This is for instance why SquareEnix is likely to move Dragon Quest to Wii, i.e. the effects of a platform's positioning gradually trickle down to the lineup. Of course you can try to sell anything to consumers with great ads and marketing and a bunch of paid exclusives and be succesful to some degree, but your product positioning still matters above all. PS3 is poorly positioned to be the leading platform this gen, and while it will find a large audience, 360 and Wii are the ones that will be calling most of the shots in terms of innovation and penetrating new markets on their merit as products alone. Woo, tangent time! I hope what I wrote made any sense.

That's not what I was saying. Of course you can adjust or even completely reverse your opinion if there is sufficient basis to do so. But really it just seems like some people have low attention spans and let their opinion go in every direction all the time depending on what information came last, not the sum total of information.

"Boten" means "boats" in Dutch so some guys made a version that goes like... I have a boat I have a whole brand spanking new boat Her name is Anna and she's here in the ditch and I'm going sailing on the canals she is the most beautiful boat of all I assure you it's almost kind of funny, maybe.

Oh man a few days ago I figured out that you actually have to roll the balls and not just tap the start and finish. Fuck. Now the game is easy as pie.

SCEA I need more coffee.

Hang on, this was said by Jack Tretton of EA? I read elsewhere that Harisson said exactly the same, which is why I posted the Iraq dude. The hell... is EA stealing Sony's talking points?

Holy shit I can see my house in that screenshot!

The first webisode is out. It features Tigh, Cally and the chief, and three new characters. The webisodes are 3-4 minutes long and take place during the Cylon occupation, i.e. between the season 2 finale and the season 3 opener. It's nothing spectacular but it's nice I guess. It feels a bit like watching deleted scenes. For Americans: www.scifi.com/battlestar Others: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BIxMgbcneA

"Nintendo is now in disarray! Their faltering handhelds of infidels have not expanded the market and are not selling more than PSP. I triple guarantee you, there are in fact no Nintendo DSes in America."

Oh man. Thank you for that. Ringtone upgraded.

Thumb is everywhere, whispering dirty sexy things in the game industry's ears. It's proven fairly succesful in several cases.

Yeah exactly. XIII and BG&E may have bombed (and PoP:SoT may have underperformed initially), but seen from the big perspective they were all incredibly important for the company. PoP's sales picked up and then became a big franchise, BG&E led to King Kong, and XIII led to Red Steel (which could be a bit shit but will doubtlessly sell quite well). Basically, Ubisoft's "failures" in 2003 made the company very succesful in 2004, 2005 and 2006. Ubisoft needs a new 2003 soon in order to sustain itself.

Meh, seems fine. They'll have the money to do awesome stuff for a few years now, then some of the people will get bored and start a new company. It's the ciiiiiircle, the ciiiiiiircle of life...

BTW, while I think Ubi is doing a great job production-wise with most titles (read: their games are usually good), I am really worried about their old IP / new IP ratio. Is Assasin's Creed the only next-gen brand they are working on? The Splinter Cell, PoP and Rainbow Six franchises are going to get saturated very soon. Far Cry will be good for another few years but is also weakening. I am not sure Ubi is doing a good job with their portfolio management. You need to phase brands in and out once in a while, even EA knows that (hi Command & Conquer).

HOORAY for art direction! All those games look a hundred times more interesting than, uhh, MotorStorm or Resistance: Fall of Man. Sorry for turning it into another console thing, but it's true.

It is not in Ubisoft's interest at all to have this leaked. My gut says it is absolutely not an intentional leak. Actually, I would say it's a 99,99% certainty that this was an actual fuck-up.

For what it's worth: apparently a developer asked Nintendo and this is more related to PAL/NTSC technicalities than actual region locking.

Nintendo DS seems like the better Sinterklaas gift, so no worries there.

Awesome awesome news.

Come out, come out, wherever you are! I'm just curious how many thumbers are working in the games industry (in whatever capacity). Of course I know some of you are, and I occasionally read a passing reference to someone being a programmer on something, but I thought the topic warrants its own thread. I'll avoid speaking about myself in this first post for fear of the thread seeming like I want to talk about myself.

Ah yes. I liked it.