Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts. Okay, so the real dumb move was made by the developer (I guess we can't know for sure what influence MS did or didn't have)...But I guess I can rope a blame onto Microsoft for allowing Rare to give us that, instead of a proper BK, which I guarantee would have moved at least some consoles.
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Oddest, Dumbest, or most inept move by a publisher this gen
- Thread starter Stoney Mason
- Start date
Stoney Mason
Banned
FleckSplat said:
I get that they have zero or almost zero internal development. That's the problem. They have a franchise that people want to play but no ability to actually get it made because they have to contract out with third parties or independent devs that have either gotten bought or went under. Either way it's their ultimate fault. They are the only ones who can get someone to make the game. A game that has strong demand and appeal arguably and they've failed to do so. That's more my point. I understand why there has been no Battlefront 3. It's still awful business.
Die Squirrel Die said:
I prefer to anayze things from the position of logic and that tends to lend itself to cold hard numbers and facts. There are plenty of threads that veer the other way on GAF.
GrotesqueBeauty
Banned
Even then I think it's good, albeit flawed. I'd say it's a mid tier Zelda at worst. While some of the side quests are tedious and it has at least one cardinal sin for a LoZ game (an item you can miss altogether) I actually think it has the best controls of any 2D Zelda game. The items are a blast to use, and there are a lot of awesome little platforming moments and environmental interactions like slinging yourself over pits by pulling on mushrooms.Jaded Alyx said:
DSiware: Everyone thought this was gonna be a huge thing, similar to XBLA or PSN, but upon release most of the output were demos that they were charging for, and sudoku games.
Sonic 2006: This game could of been good, the basic gameplay is their and it seems like it would be fun enough, however in a rush to get it out for holiday 06 it turned out to be a bug ridden mess,
Activisions handling of the Guitar Hero property-nuff said
Bethesda-Horse Armor.
Sonic 2006: This game could of been good, the basic gameplay is their and it seems like it would be fun enough, however in a rush to get it out for holiday 06 it turned out to be a bug ridden mess,
Activisions handling of the Guitar Hero property-nuff said
Bethesda-Horse Armor.
Red Blaster
Member
Not technically a publisher, but Sony's inane "We don't need them!" mentality towards third parties in 2006-2007 really put them in a bind that they're still trying to escape from
Konami's been abysmal on consoles. From the mangling of Silent Hill (outsourcing Homecoming, Silent Hill Arcade) to the Konami ID bullshit, to the general lack of effort they seem to put into anything these days. They've been somewhat decent on handhelds however.
Sega for not localizing Kenzan for the Summer of 2008. That was the perfect opportunity to "reboot" the Yakuza franchise in the west given the lack of PS3 exclusives aside from MGS4 that had been released that year as well as the typically slow release schedule of the summer. Would've been a great July/August release.
Konami's been abysmal on consoles. From the mangling of Silent Hill (outsourcing Homecoming, Silent Hill Arcade) to the Konami ID bullshit, to the general lack of effort they seem to put into anything these days. They've been somewhat decent on handhelds however.
Sega for not localizing Kenzan for the Summer of 2008. That was the perfect opportunity to "reboot" the Yakuza franchise in the west given the lack of PS3 exclusives aside from MGS4 that had been released that year as well as the typically slow release schedule of the summer. Would've been a great July/August release.
I play my triple lots, dude. Anyway my post was concieved mostly because of how much of an achievement whore I am, and would like something to showoff or compare with friends since the game has no trophy-support.DangerousDave said:
Heaven forbid that more people would get to play it, right? edit: wait, not the type of thread for that apparently
Stoney Mason said:
I don't think I have a set sales goal; a lot of how well it would have to do relies on how well Activision's releases do this holiday. It pretty much needs to beat one or two of those, at least.
If a couple of the franchises Activision's trying to establish totally wash out, Brutal Legend only has to not bomb to make the whole "we only want franchises!" decision look dumb. If DJ Hero, Band Hero, Tony Hawk Ride, and what all else sell obscene numbers of copies, then even a very successful Brutal Legend wouldn't really make them pause.
So I guess it's not just about seeing Brutal Legend succeed, it's about hoping to see the failure of the strategy of focusing on franchises over the strength of individual titles.
IrishNinja
Member
everyone's on about square's slow release schedule, but if XIII's good, you'll praise the time they took, watch.
as for the "no mario party on wii" crowd...doesnt Wario Ware count? i always counted that, great party game that actually used the wiimote quite well.
as for the "no mario party on wii" crowd...doesnt Wario Ware count? i always counted that, great party game that actually used the wiimote quite well.
APZonerunner
Member
IrishNinja said:
vocab will never surrender, their betrayal was too great.
Stoney Mason
Banned
iammeiam said:
Once again I like to be neutral on this whole Activision hate thing (not aimed at you) so I'll try to analyze this from a neutral perspective. Even if Tony Hawk Ride bombs then that is not the end of the Tony Hawk franchise. In fact I sort of want Tony Hawk Ride to bomb not because I have anything especially against the Ride game (Although I think it looks like crap) but simply because I want them to go back to the old style Tony Hawk games. The quicker Ride bombs the quicker that can happen. As far the rest, them failing doesn't necessarily invalidate the idea of franchises. What it invalidates is those specific franchises. That will still be their strategy. It just won't be with those specific franchises.
APZonerunner said:
Has nothing to do with betrayal. It has to do with their quality. Ever since the merge, it was all down hill. Aside from their huge budget releases, what do they have? The Bouncer? Unlimited Saga? Musashi: Samurai Legend? I can go on, but come on. I think after I played FFXII, it was the final nail in the coffin. Squaresoft was great and is no longer with us, but SE falls into the "do no want" category. FFXIII is gonna need some serious word of mouth to help convince me to buy it.
APZonerunner
Member
vocab said:
Their output's been far from 'do not want', really. All their recent releases have been far from terrible and on the whole are usually well over 70 or 80 on MetaCritic and even the shitty ones like The Last Remnant are in the mid 60s or so. Some of their output has been oustanding too, especially on the DS.
IrishNinja
Member
dude, if the gifts that were FF XII and TWEWY dont redeem some of their lesser efforts, nothing will.
Jaded Alyx said:
It's far better than Phantom Hourglass, though
and TP.
The absolute most inept move by a publisher this gen would be the handling of PGR4. Anemic marketing and Microsoft choosing to release it ONE WEEK after Halo 3...well, let's just say I know a thing or two about this stuff and they shot themselves in the foot. The game was literally sent to die for no good reason and considering that it's better than all but two or three racing games this gen, this is a tragic tale.
BlazingDarkness
Member
Square Enix made a lot of mistakes
Not necessarily having such long development cycles, but simply revealing all of their stuff so early, when they'd clearly have better favor with gamers if they'd just kept their cards closer to their chest.
They should have held off revealing FFXIII until 2008 or so, and announced it as multiplatform right from the start.
They also obviously revealed 3rd Birthday and Agito XIII very early too, considering they were soon scrapped and relaunched as PSP games. (Agito of which is still undergoing major changes)
Their naming scheme for the XIII titles also causes a lot of confusion (people saying why is XIV before Versus, and assuming Versus is just a spin off etc)
I think they should also have kept Versus a secret until after XIII hit - reveal and release it in the same fiscal year taking advantage of the XIII/XIV momentum.
If they'd kept a lot of this stuff unannounced until just recently and simply settled with Star Ocean 4/The Last Remnant on both PS3/360 (and publishing other smaller games) to at least have a small presence while they're developing the goods then they'd be in a much better position.
Having said all that, all of their major stuff is finally releasing now and with the experience with the Crystal Tools engine the following games will have much shorter development cycles. They've also binned closed theater for the time being so fingers crossed they've learnt their lesson not to blow their load years before anything actually releases. Revealing a game and then cock teasing it for several years is ridiculous.
Not necessarily having such long development cycles, but simply revealing all of their stuff so early, when they'd clearly have better favor with gamers if they'd just kept their cards closer to their chest.
They should have held off revealing FFXIII until 2008 or so, and announced it as multiplatform right from the start.
They also obviously revealed 3rd Birthday and Agito XIII very early too, considering they were soon scrapped and relaunched as PSP games. (Agito of which is still undergoing major changes)
Their naming scheme for the XIII titles also causes a lot of confusion (people saying why is XIV before Versus, and assuming Versus is just a spin off etc)
I think they should also have kept Versus a secret until after XIII hit - reveal and release it in the same fiscal year taking advantage of the XIII/XIV momentum.
If they'd kept a lot of this stuff unannounced until just recently and simply settled with Star Ocean 4/The Last Remnant on both PS3/360 (and publishing other smaller games) to at least have a small presence while they're developing the goods then they'd be in a much better position.
Having said all that, all of their major stuff is finally releasing now and with the experience with the Crystal Tools engine the following games will have much shorter development cycles. They've also binned closed theater for the time being so fingers crossed they've learnt their lesson not to blow their load years before anything actually releases. Revealing a game and then cock teasing it for several years is ridiculous.
Fimbulvetr
Member
Fixed, Square didn't develop Star Ocean 4.BlazingDarkness said:
APZonerunner
Member
I definitely agree with that. At this stage, if Square were wise, they'd only just now be announcing Versus/Agito this year as FF13 releases, or something like that. Announcing so many games so early and undecidedly shifting lots of cell phone stuff to PSP out of nowhere is just... well, not very organised.
It's their franchise and they published it, what's the difference? They should've only announced stuff that was closer.
Fimbulvetr said:
It's their franchise and they published it, what's the difference? They should've only announced stuff that was closer.
BlazingDarkness
Member
They published it though?Fimbulvetr said:
You misread "I've ever played."VALIS said:You misspelled Test Drive Unlimited.
Really? What is it? I've never noticed a missable item, but I never bothered to go for everything. (And people need to stop putting the words "Zelda" and "crap" in the same sentence without talking about the CD-i.)GrotesqueBeauty said:
Fimbulvetr
Member
BlazingDarkness said:
Yeah, but unless you're refering to Japan I'd lump it in the "smaller games" group.
leroy hacker
Member
vocab said:
Both of those games were released before the merger.
ShockingAlberto
Member
Well, okay. If it's "good", then that justifies the the four years of development that we know about?IrishNinja said:
There's lots of games that are "good" that take a year. There's games that are "great" or "fucking amazing" that take two years.
If it takes them four years to make a game that's "good", then yeah, I don't see how that's praise-worthy. If it takes them four years to make a game that revolutionizes the game genre and is better than anything before it, then more power to 'em. But that doesn't seem like it's happening. Seems like they're just hitting a number of stumbling blocks on a single project.
The boneheadedness isn't because they're taking a long time to develop a game (and the odd assumption that more time = more quality as if it were a rule and not a general consequence), but rather that they've spent nearly half a decade on one title, with the bulk of their resources, in exchange for losing the great breadth of their previous influence and output.
leroy hacker said:
Okay, I should of just said as soon as they got on the PS2 wagon. You get the point. That's where they were headed.
APZonerunner said:
Reviews mean nothing to me. The Last Remnant is a technical mess, I don't think a 60 or above would erase that well known fact.
APZonerunner
Member
vocab said:
It is a technical mess, but it's a technical mess that has some really fantastic gameplay mechanics and ideas behind it and improves greatly when installed to the HDD. It's an alright game - not great - but certainly not do not want material.
IrishNinja
Member
ShockingAlberto said:
its a long development cycle, no doubt. but konami put everybody on MGS4 for a while, didnt they? i know its debatable, im still glad they did.
nitpicking the words - yes, i want it to be "great". genre-revolution or redefining...you may have the bar high for anything past graphics. enough kids bitched about the progressive controls XII had, and let's be honest, FF hasnt been stressed for its plot nor characterization for a while now.
guess we'll see next year, but im not expecting what you're saying would justify its production time at all, stands to reason ill enjoy said game for not having such expectations as well though.
DangerousDave
Member
borsdy said:
I mean that making Vakyria PS3 exclusive instead of multiplatform is not a mistake. Niche games, like Valkyria or Disgaea 3 usually don't worth the effort of making them multiplatform. Specially in tactic-rpg, that the main userbase is in Japan and probably most of the users with 360 had already a PS3 (how many users with 360 and without PS3 would buy Valkyria? 50k as much? Even if in some cases is worthy, the possible gains are very low. So it's not a dumbest move (i.e. a big commercial mistake).
Another of the big mistakes of this generation is looking the global Wii or DS userbase without taking into account how is the standar userbase of that consoles. MadWorld, Conduit, NMH, GTA ChinaTown... It seems that sometimes the companies think "If the Wii/DS sells the double than the 360/PSP, that game will sell twice as much in the Wii/DS than in the 360/PSP"
Sohter.Nura
Member
1 - Capcom not releasing a proper Resident Evil game on the Wii -_-;
2 - Dead Space Extraction being On-Rails
3 - Tony Hawk Ride
4 - Valkyrie sequel on... PSP?!
5 - Okami sequel on... DS?!
2 - Dead Space Extraction being On-Rails
3 - Tony Hawk Ride
4 - Valkyrie sequel on... PSP?!
5 - Okami sequel on... DS?!
jim-jam bongs
Member
Kittonwy said:
The trouble is that you're arguing using "potential". The sales of DLC could have potentially done better if they'd released on both platforms. The SE games could have potentially done better if they were on the PS3.
The reason that's problematic is that someone can turn around and say "the cost of bringing those products to the PS3 would have been prohibitive and eaten into the profits they made from the more successful 360 versions". And any potential crumbles in the face of that possible outcome.
Also, the bulk of the JRPG market has moved to the DS, which is arguably the most successful console in history. Why should anyone care about "millions" of PS3 owners who (and this part makes no sense anyway) apparently own no other systems at all?
The trouble that you and vocab seem to have is that you have attached a developer to a console manufacturer and are stubbornly holding on to the penultimate fantasy that they will move back to your favourite brand. SE, Infinity Ward and Rockstar don't care about Sony or Microsoft though, so if you care about those developers then maybe you shouldn't either.
One thing you may be missing is the bonuses Ms likely offers for the exclusive DLC.jim-jam bongs said:
I imagine getting a bonus upfront and free advertising for only making it for one system is much nicer than no bonus and more work and potentially less $$$ depending on how well it sells.
jim-jam bongs
Member
WEGGLES said:
Missed it in the post, but yeah that's a big part of it. The latter half about being loyal to developers not console manufacturers was the important part though, because there will always be factors (money-hats being one) that make developers jump ship.
Spotless Mind
Member
This. This. This. A million times THIS.fizzelopeguss said:
Night_Trekker
Member
cuyahoga said:
What are we talking about here? The "RE5 is racist" outcry? Good for them for not validating the irrational whiners.
Nintendo in general.
The Wii, having been so sucessful, has had nothing but shit come out for save for a few favorites here and there and the traditional franchises. You would THINK with all the money they have, they would fund additional developers to take further advantage of the system's unique control scheme, but instead they just keep trying to come up with one new idea each year. (Wii Fit - Wii Music - Wii Vitality).
They could be doing so much more and really taking hold of the entire industry, but they're not.
The Wii, having been so sucessful, has had nothing but shit come out for save for a few favorites here and there and the traditional franchises. You would THINK with all the money they have, they would fund additional developers to take further advantage of the system's unique control scheme, but instead they just keep trying to come up with one new idea each year. (Wii Fit - Wii Music - Wii Vitality).
They could be doing so much more and really taking hold of the entire industry, but they're not.
Arpharmd B
Banned
McBacon said:
dude... don't spoil the next Wii add-on, that's for next E3.
pseudocaesar
Member
Im gonna go with Square Enix not releasing anything on the PS3.
Maybe if this were a thread about best decisions made by publishers. Tell me how Okamiden on DS is bad?
Sohter.Nura said:
Maybe if this were a thread about best decisions made by publishers. Tell me how Okamiden on DS is bad?
timetokill
Banned
Jaroof said:My biggest gripe would have to be the terrible wifi connections/netcode in Brawl.
I was so excited to be able to fight my friends in other states in this game without any problems... then I actually played it and was so disappointed.
And with all this time, you'd think they'd have fixed it by now... but noooo.
It will never be fixed.
There was no way Nintendo was going to make this work effectively. I doubt anybody could have, really. Talking with some network programmers, I've yet to run into any that say doing the netcode for that game would be easy. Some don't think it's realistically possible. The way it's structured means that everybody is waiting for the other systems to update. But let's say they allowed things to drop, like most online games?
They're doing wireless connections, and sychronizing EVERYTHING going on in the game. When you're playing Halo, you don't notice (too much) when some of your bullets seemingly do no damage. Taking a Wii game for example, you don't notice in Mario Kart when the console is "fixing" the latency issues and using dead reckoning and smoothing and other techniques to make the race work and look right. In Halo, when you melee somebody it checks to see if the other person melees back within a certain amount of time, and if so it checks health and sees who had more health and makes that person the winner. (Maybe this changed again? IIRC this was basically the way it worked for a while). Anyway, could you imagine this system working in Smash Bros? I don't know about you but I've had several "WTF? I totally melee'd him first!" moments in Halo where it seemed ridiculous that I died. Imagine a game built entirely on that sort of instant precision? How would you feel if you saw your character's sword hit the other player, but then suddenly his fist or whatever hits you first and you go flying? This would happen all the time! Or, you'd have situations of constantly "missing" when you saw yourself hit, or projectiles passing through other players, etc.
Even Street Fighter IV has net problems a lot of the time, and it's a two-player game with no items, and played mostly on wired broadband. How do you think it would work with 4 players, tons of projectile weapons, items, etc.?
Maybe there are some other games out there that are mostly played on wireless connections and feature all of the chaos of Smash Bros. and allow for twitch/physics gameplay and somehow still work. I'd love to see some examples so I could see how they did their netcode differently. I kind of wish Nintendo had cut the feature altogether but then we'd be bitching that they should have had an online mode. Meh.
Following on the line of the thread -- Konami making Rock Revolution, shitty covers and all. EA's handling of Madden on Wii. Rock Band's "handling" on Wii.
And prediction: PSPGo will be on this list shortly.
manueldelalas
Time Traveler
1 - They released RE 4 and will release 0 and REmake.Sohter.Nura said:
2, 3, 4, 5 - Your point being? You haven't played any of those games, so you are fundamentally wrong and your opinion is invalid.
EternalGamer
Banned
5) Bethesda Horse Armor.
4) Activision Handling of Brutal Legend - They dont want it because we are clueless as to its potential, but other people can't have it either.
3) Lego Rockband - This is seriously the dumbest license I have ever heard of.
2) Monopoly on CD w/o Online play - This should have been a license to print money on the 360 but they fucked it up.
1) Castle Crashers Broken Online Play - I've never seen a company demonstrate such a level of ineptitude. Their game was fucking unplayable online for like FOUR MONTHS and what is more it would eat your save data if you tried to play it on more than one system.
4) Activision Handling of Brutal Legend - They dont want it because we are clueless as to its potential, but other people can't have it either.
3) Lego Rockband - This is seriously the dumbest license I have ever heard of.
2) Monopoly on CD w/o Online play - This should have been a license to print money on the 360 but they fucked it up.
1) Castle Crashers Broken Online Play - I've never seen a company demonstrate such a level of ineptitude. Their game was fucking unplayable online for like FOUR MONTHS and what is more it would eat your save data if you tried to play it on more than one system.
UltimaPooh
Member
vocab is really terrible at defending his views.