Adam Tyner

I don't know if these numbers are accurate, but I read on another forum that for SFIV, the U.S. accounted for 48% of sales while Japan contributed only around 14%. I don't know what could be released in Japan to break them out of their apathy towards consoles.

RichC2

New Pokemon, New Monster Hunter, New Metal Gear, New "good" Resident Evil, etc; Or maybe something new. I mean in the US the best sellers are the 7th iteration of Grand Theft Auto which isn't hugely different from 3, VC, SA, or 4 (though I'll admit, a lot more fun than 4), the 11th Call of Duty game (excluding the Xbox/PS2 ones), the 7th/8th Assassins' Creed, etc;

Video gaming has gotten bland with open world and shooters, everything feels very much the same. Maybe if they throw something out with some personality and an actual plot the Japanese may take interest. RPGs have become so focused on wandering around empty terrain with minimal plot and with no hint of personality. Nintendo has just been simply repeating itself wholesale, I couldn't tell you the new additions to Mario Kart 8 and Smash Bros because they feel so insubstantial.

Gaming budgets are so high now that companies are rewarded for simply playing it safe and it kind of sucks. People bitch and moan about all the indie gaming stuff but at least those are occasionally unique and fun to play.

fumanstan

Shooting themselves in the foot? I'm going to guess the number of people that are as angry about this as you seem to be, enough to boycott anything Tomb Raider, is pretty limited. At least I hope so, given what we've been discussing here since if everyone boycotted companies that hand out exclusives game sales would tank.

Okay and understandable seem to be basically the same thing in this context to me. It should be just as understandable for these sort of deals to maintain or recover their position in the market. Shouldn't we expect companies to swing for the fences all the time?

discostu1337

Lol nope. While a LOT of them have become very stale (GoW, a Ratchet...) over the years and some were never good (resistance, killzone), a majority of them have had some really good games. I loved some old Ratchet, sly and GOW. Heavy Rain was possibly the best PS3 game behind UC2...to bad Beyond was poop.

RichC2

I too was amazed at how quickly both GoW franchises wore out their welcome. The one thing Microsoft always succeeded in that Sony constantly failed at was getting exclusive titles with great online play.

Halo is an okay series but the online community kept it alive and bustling for years at a time, same for Gears of War.

Sony's exclusives were generally solid single player experiences, but you could be done with those in a week. And when they tried to expand on that (SOCOM, Killzone, Resistance) they came off as knockoffs for better titles.

Michael Corvin

Never got the love for God of War. It was fun for a game, game and a half, but it's beyond repetitive and Kratos is just a bleak protagonist.

Difference between TR & SF? I love one franchise (TR was my favorite game last year and the Definitive was just as fun again this year) and haven't given a shit about the other since it was on the SNES. One affects my gaming, the other does not. As much as people rag on MS's D-pads, there's a reason why more noise hasn't been made about SF.

Generally it's easier to just ignore you but what the hell... Despite your repeated claims and going over this at least once before, I'm not anti MS in the slightest. I love my 360; console of choice, 100k gamerscore, greatest controller ever, etc (all that kool-aid). I'm anti X1 and business practices and concepts related to the console (Kinect, original DRM, buying exclusives instead of developing them, etc). It all just rubs me the wrong way and as a consumer I can voice my dislike with my wallet and hell, even share my opinion on a discussion board.

Sorry if that offends you so much.


-posted from my anti-MS hating Windows phone*


*Okay, not really... to long for a phone post, but I do have and love my Windows phone.

SoonerDoc

Hey Kettle, it's Pot. You're black.

Dan

Oh Stu...

chess

This is an amazing rant!

Tough year Stu?

discostu1337

Tough year? the guys is nuts. He's like me and you combined, times 100. I'm surprised he isn't lighting his 360 on fire and getting a full body Kratos tattoo

Decker

chess

All I know is that when I read your post, I kind of felt like this guy:


---Dan----------Me----------Groucho---

And Corvin is a Nintendo fanboy, if anything. So am I.

fumanstan

Pretty sure this is the reason why we can't have these discussions maturely in it's own thread


I guess this pretty much sums up the situation. It's easy to turn a blind eye when it's over a game you don't care about, as hypocritical as it is.

Decker

I would have a serious case of schadenfreude if the PS4 version of Temple of Osiris bombed because of some sort of negative reaction to this Tomb Raider exclusivity deal with Square Enix. However, I think it's more likely that the game will bomb on both systems because it's a rehash of the previous isometric Lara Croft XBLA game at a higher price and designed to accomidate 4 player couch co-op in a system where almost nobody has four controllers.

BTW : Is there anything in gaming that smacks more of greed than an XBLA game that can be purchased with a Season Pass?

RichC2

Horse Armor and Kill Animations?

Decker

Hey, at least when you buy Horse Armor, 1) You're buying DLC for a full game and 2) You know what you're getting.

bippitty

My gripe is that they should be more forthcoming. 'Only on Xbox for the holiday.' 'Timed exclusive.' 'Published by Microsoft' What's going on with this game? Tell me clearly. Tell me early.

I didn't like Bayonetta 2 going Wii U exclusive, but I don't recall them tap-dancing. I was disappointed, but didn't feel as if they were jerking me around.

chuckd21

Their only responsibility is to tell their customers about the game. They have zero obligation to tell Sony customers anything. Be mad at Square Enix if you're not getting the answers you want.

chess

It's clear, I think. If MS is publishing, it has moved from timed exclusive to exclusive exclusive.

But the equivocation has hurt them from a PR perspective. It's announced and is assumed (yes, assumed) to be a multiplat, because nobody says otherwise. Two months later, it's implied that it's a timed exclusive. Three months after that, MS is the publisher, which clearly means that it's exclusive.

I agree that if it had been announced as an exclusive when it was announced at E3 (like your Bayonetta example or SFV), the backlash would have been minimal, but the lack of clarity over an extended time has created a feeding frenzy.

So now we're at a point where TR2 is going head to head with Uncharted 4, and not just for next holiday. It's great for MS and MS fanboys to have an alternative to Uncharted, but I'm not sure how great it will be for TR to be put in that position. I kind of feel for anybody who has to compete with Naughty Dog in that way. I liked the first TR as a spring game.

Dan

fixed.

Based solely on the most recent TR vs the most recent Uncharted (3), I think RotTR's in a better potential position than U4 in terms of gameplay/fun factor.

Sales, though? Not a chance TR outdoes U4.

chess

No, I absolutely said what I meant.

It's purely list wars fodder and does absolutely nothing for those millions of people other than giving them a game they were getting anyway. Unless you can demonstrate otherwise...

I liked TR quite a bit and especially liked that it was "this close" to being an Arkham Asylum style Metroidvania, but given that we're talking about two separate teams at ND, I wouldn't make that assumption.

It's also not insignificant that TR2 will also be on 360 while UC4 looks like technological next gen tour de force.

Agree on sales.

Dan

I know what you meant, but I disagree.

Of course I can't demonstrate otherwise, but that wasn't my point. I simply saying that there's millions of XO and PS4 owners who don't care about the list wars, and just want fun games to play. TR2 is going to be a fun game to play on the XO, while U4 will be a fun game to play on the PS4. Those of us who intend to own (or already own) both systems shouldn't really be that worried, since we'll be playing both games anyway.

Fair enough. I don't pay any attention to the specific teams that make any given game, except maybe CoD, but only because others make it so incredibly obvious which teams make each iteration of that franchise. So, when I see that U4 is coming out, all I think is "Oh. U2 was a blast, but U3 was a chore to get through, but fun in parts. I hope U4 is better." I'm pretty confident that most console owners are similarly simplistic (not to say everyone thinks U3 is boring, but just that... they likely don't care which team made which iteration. They just know it's a sequel to the previous one.)

Sure. I would imagine, like Forza Horizon 2, the 'team' will be totally focused on the XO version, while they outsource the last-gen version to someone else. I can see why that would give U4 the upper-hand, though, of course.

Yeah, I mean... we all know that MS bought exclusivity to have something to compete with U4, but... I really don't think it'll be close UNLESS they can improve the general public's perception of TR. Personally, while I loved that game, I was not at all fond of the majority of the previous iterations... and TR has a bit of a "dated franchise" stigma, whereas Uncharted is still pretty fresh.

chess

Agree that it's a little bit "inside baseball"

I don't know if the ND teams have names per se, but you basically have the team who made UC1 and UC3, which was previously headed by Amy Hennig, and the team who made UC2 and Last of Us, headed by Druckmann/Straley. Hennig was forced out some time ago and Druckmann/Straley are in charge of UC4. So it's technically the dev team who made UC3 but headed by the guys who made UC2 and Last of Us (both near consensus GOTYs).

I think people view the TR reboot as entirely separate from the old series. Nothing stale about it, and I wish it were coming to PS4. Maybe my next PC, or depending on how cheap XO gets...

Dan

I'm not going to lie... while I totally follow what you're saying, my eyes glazed over. But I do appreciate the clarification.

Yeah, it's probably just me who thinks that way. I'm weird. I see "Tomb Raider" and I think, "that's been around forever," whereas when I see "Uncharted" I think, "Hey, this series of games isn't bad, and still has a lot it can do."

It's totally silly, especially because I loved the TR reboot so much, and I KNOW it's no longer a stale franchise, but... y'know... memories.

chess

Well, if you're not even going to bother to read my posts...

I get it, but I don't think that being "stale" will be a problem at all. If anything the perception problem for the previous game was that it was sort of "Uncharted Light" instead of being true to the series' history.

I really hope they take the new game in more of an Arkham Asylum direction structurally and add in some actual, you know, tomb raiding.

And don't read too much into the salt about exclusivity. People are just bummed because they won't get the game. I know I am. And yeah, I could buy an XO without risk of AIDS, but not this early and not for one game, which is where I think a lot of people will fall.