Stumpokapow said:
Again, you can easily say "Not making the Wii do <x>, <y>, or <z> was a stupid decision" but the reality of the situation is that everyone suffers the consequences of their action and all successful businesses realign themselves after failures. If Epic feels like they've missed money on the Wii, they'll likely change their philosophy. If Nintendo feels like they've missed money on the Wii, they'll likely change their philosophy.
I think you misunderstood me to a point. it's their attitude. Like you pointed out Crytek didn't go anywhere near the Wii and it's fine, because they never were childish about it, and we could point out iD Software and John Carmack, John Carmack actually wanted to but was unable to... it's fine, they were open about it as long as there was money to do there; Epic wasn't and incidentally they were the only ones actually selling their middleware for it, except it was a laughable unprofessional shitty port for a leading platform, which they actually tried to pass as "enough" for it. In short... they were taking the piss.
iD and Crytek not being able to properly support it... didn't (and their engine's are supported by their games, not by their clients; it's only natural, as smaller companies which they are and even for Epic not to be able to support every platform with games, but EPIC's engines are scalable enough to support multiple systems and they should providing their clients want it; and by clients I mean developers; there was demand for proper a Wii build of Unreal Engine <insert engine>, certainly more than for the iPhone); Epic though had the obligation to, obligation to their clients to be a serious company, not a capricious one.
Stumpokapow said:
Of course it's also highly possible to just do your own thing. Crytek is successfully doing their own thing right now. They're not supporting Nintendo platforms. They're not going to. I'd gamble that it's more likely for Crytek to get an iPhone team than a 3DS team. I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that. Let bygones be bygones, really.
You might be gambling wrong. I remember hearing the Crytek's Cevat Yerli saying they actually had Wii development kits and did throughfully testing with them; they're open with what they support even if they're quite a bit tech driven.
I don't think they have a mobile gaming division or immediate plans for it though, but that's a problem that affects the whole western industry, not taking the mobile games seriously. And iOS might seem like the gold rush now, but when they don't get the money they want out of it and the market is saturated they'll go back to what they were doing before. The problem is that they don't think about mobile market in the long range, it's secondary.
Stumpokapow said:
I think customers should buy platforms for the games they have, not buy platforms for "potential" and then complain when games don't show up. Any customer who is saying "Boy, I wish <game x> or <genre y> or <company z> was on <platform a>." is really saying "Boy, I like <company z> / <game x> / <genre y>, so why did I buy <platform a>?" as far as I'm concerned.
Epic was still way unprofessional with the way they dealt with it, as they had to do damage control themselves. All of it avoidable if they were professional and considering the Wii is a games console, the more platforms on their belt, a game engine developer the merrier; as more consumers also are.
Stumpokapow said:
From a business point of view, I really don't understand why people feel it's so important that all companies participate on either a) every single platform simultaneously, or b) <x> platform specifically. I think companies should forge their own development philosophies and paths, make the games they want to make, and be rewarded for success or punished by failure... and then learn from successes or failures and adapt or modify their philosophies to meet emerging technologies. I'm sure that certain companies leave money on the table--Nintendo doesn't have a tanning salon chain and I'm CERTAIN those are profitable, Nintendo doesn't develop for mobile phones or browser games and thus limits their software revenue in order to promote their hardware, Dragon Quest goes to the biggest hardware install base, Halfbrick make $1-5 games instead of full price ones, Gameloft's entire business model is just to copy successful franchises and stick them on mobile phones--everyone picks a specialty.
Because they're not stricly a games developer but mainly a middleware developer now, and they actually had their turd port available for it, without proper support and well... being a crap build, which ensues a crappy service if you ask me.
Criterion's Renderware wasn't being sold by the time Wii launched and they developed ZERO games for it (but they still give support to any developer that purchased their licence before aquisition by EA), yet their software support to Sega and Midway on the Wii was way better than what Epic ever did for their unreal engine 2.5 shitty build.
Stumpokapow said:
As I pointed out in every prior post on the subject, when two people butt heads because of philosophical differences, I don't understand looking at one person and say "How stubborn it is that he doesn't change his mind" and not realize that the same thing invariably applies to the other person. If what you mean to say is that you think Nintendo's decisions are financially correct and Epic's financially incorrect, history will either vindicate you or not and I suspect if you are vindicated Epic would change their tune. In the mean time, I don't see what's wrong with peaceful coexistence.
Thing is, you can't be stubborn when you're a business, and when their stubborness is due to petty reasons all the more reason.
Epic's modus operandi is amateur, flawed and a lot of developers only deal with it because they have to, until they get fed up and show them the finger. The way it never worked on PS3 nuked Square-Enix's The Last Remnant but it also nuked all future projects with it within the company; the whole Silicon Knights soap opera (not saying Epic was in the wrong, but the SK accusations were probably half there) and a bunch of developers switching to their tech or going elsewhere says a lot. They are market leader due to their timing and some well thought out choices (like the licencing and student stance) but they simply have no market vision outside of that, they allow a douche like Mark Rein to use their name a little too much and they're simply unprofessional towards their clients to whom they're offering a service, paid at that.
brain_stew said:
I don't see the problem with him calling a spade a spade. The Wii was a God awful piece of hardware and such a half arsed effort, surely even the biggest Nintendo zealots can finally accept that these days?
Truth to be told... It's not a bad system even if it's a high-spec variant of the gamecube. The gamecube was awesome and if anything we should be shocked to see that developers often do a worse job on it than they did on the GC.
The dithering should have been fixed though.