I think you could have stopped at 'I really dont think' (sic).
Well, doing a quick search of the last two months of Kotaku articles, most are neutral on the Vita, three are decidedly negative and a several are positive. I remember there being some negative articles when the 3DS came out...and some positive ones. After some quick googling, I confirmed it. Reporting on other people warning about the 3D is not a negative article, for example. Kotaku recommended the 3DS pre-launch and took it to an eye doctor to assess it's danger to people's eyes (spoiler: nothing to worry about). They reported which games were the ones to buy and which ones sucked. Again, a balance of positive and negative.
I'm not seeing some massive conpsiracy, just folks taking away what they want...the same way they have been for the years I've been following Kotaku.
It was truly horrible and it certainly was the most expensive in terms of property damage...but the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami was far more horrific in terms of loss of life. (Fukushima resulted in 15,000+ deaths, 2004 had 230-310,000).
If you get a chance, watch the Nova specials on Fukushima, with some tales from some survivors. It's some amazing stuff, especially since so much of it was captured on video.
What short memories we have. Millions of Palm, Newton and Handspring users might disagree with you on that point.
Given that in 2005, Sony was crowing about how the technically inferior DS was doomed, 75 million is not all that impressive. Because the DS has sold 151 million. It's not that the PSP was a failure: it clearly was not. But Sony was painting it as the market leader against a technically inferior device with gimmicks. That's arguably true, but its success was tied directly to those gimmicks that Sony was so dismissive of, and then six years later they announce a device using those same gimmicks, echoing their exact same position with motion control.
Regardless, Sony makes a solid piece of kit. I just think they need to spend more time hyping their device and less time trying to put down their competitors device.
Every season, I see posts about how Kotaku is anti-Microsoft, anti-Sony and anti-Nintendo. They're not. People just ignore stuff they don't care about and then forget it existed when they seem something negative about what they DO care about.
It was a foolish statement then, too. Touchscreens weren't new then, either. PDAs (you know, those things that got merged into phones to make smartphones) were making extensive use of touchscreens, such as the Palm, Handspring and even the Apple Newton. Consumers clearly saw the value in them, as they were rapidly adopted elsewhere.
At the time this was said, the Palm was the pre-eminent PDA device, offering handwriting recognition, a touchscreen interface and lots of organizer features. The same features that would be absorbed into the iPhone (and that were inherited from the Newton) to make it the device it is today.
I'm sure that's a small percentage...but I see it as very small. And not exclusive by any measure. In fact, the very fact that it ISN'T a smartphone is a selling point to part of Nintendo's customer base. Parents in particular are more comfortable buying a DS/3DS for a 7 year-old, for example.
Again, I agree...but I don't think those markets are mutually exclusive. It's like saying that free games on Facebook are going to kill the PC market, IMHO. And so far I don't think the market has borne out that assumption.
Ah, thanks. Hadn't checked lately (and didn't want to fall prey to the shipped versus sold discussion). :)
Stephen, I think you're ignoring the fact that handheld console gamers have ALWAYS been in the minority. You seem to be implying that iPad owners and smartphone users have been drawn from the customer pool of the the DS, 3DS, PSP and Vita...and I don't think that's true. The guy who was playing solitaire on the iPad used to play it on his laptop. He didn't own a DS and he wasn't going to buy a 3DS to do it, either.
The iPhone appeared not long after the DS...and yet the DS has moved more than 140 million units, the PSP more than 50 million. The 3DS has sold 15 million units globally and the Vita will probably do just fine. Speaking as someone in a household of DSes and 3DSes, who also has three iPhones and an iPad.
And yet the price drop spurred the 3DS on to sell 15 million units. The iPhone and Android markets are full of low-quality games as well as good ones...and the prices are going up. The average game is $2-7 these days...and the 3DS has games on the eShop in that price range (Zen Pinball 3D and Pushmo being good examples).
There is still a significant market for dedicated gaming handheld devices. Smartphones supplement that market, they don't necessarily replace it.
It's a complicated statistic, but last I heard, the age range of 20-24 is the highest.
He's pointing out that the oft-claimed 'half of all marriages end in divorce' statistic isn't correct. Put another way: in a town there may be 10,000 couples. 8000 are married, 2000 aren't. Over the course of a year, 100 of those 2000 get married. of the now 8100, 50 get divorced. Does that mean that half of the marriages ended? No. It means that in a given year, HALF AS MANY people got divorced as got married. And that statistic does not mean that half of the people who got married got divorced, just that a number equal to half as many did.
I've been married over 17 years. If I got divorced this year, that isn't the same thing as the Kardassian marriage falling apart after 72 days.
The actual divorce statistic is a highly contested number that is argued over by census takers and statisticians. Someone who gets divorced and remarries, for example, is much more likely to get divorced (and it goes up with repetition).
I think there's room for two. There has been a healthy market for point-and-click games, but it's a very small, 'long tail' kind of thing. I mean, how many Sherlock Holmes games have come out in the last 5-10 years? "A Vampyre's Story" may be virtually unknown (I'd never heard of it before my wife bought it), but it sold well enough to spawn a sequel now under development [and one of its designers is another LucasArts alumni].
The internet has made small but rabid fan-bases a viable thing. When I was in college, anime was this weird thing only a handful of people had ever heard of...now you have anime conventions with attendance in the 30,000+ range. Steam, in particular, is empowering small development efforts to have a long reach, particularly for games like this.
True 'dat. In Europe they have a stronger market, but adventure games are still a 'boutique' genre at this point.
Majesco's business acumen was suspect from the start. Just ask Taldren, who was shuttered up by Majesco before Double-Fine even started working with them. Majesco's habit of buying into expensive media licenses that failed also contributed. They specifically cited both Advent Rising AND Psychonauts...and the fact that the Aeon Flux movie license was moved out of that financial year, preventing them from releasing an associated title.
Simply put, Majesco's entire history, pre-Psychonauts and post-Psychonauts, was one of terrible financial management. Trying to lay all of that on Double-fine's shoulders is unnecessarily reductive.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'an objective business sense'. Perhaps you need to examine Double-Fine's output over the last few years: Stacked, Once Upon a Monster, Iron Brigade (Trenched), Costume Quest and Brutal Legend. That's a pretty good record. You didn't enjoy Brutal Legend, but others (such as myself) did. Schafer has kept his studio running and profitable during a pretty nasty economic downturn.
And Majesco's downfall was hardly Psychonauts fault. Majesco had a string of commercial failures before and after Psychonauts that were part of their financial problems. Advent Rising's 'million dollar' contest, was an example of such problems. If not for the Cooking Mama series, they would already have closed. Their best selling software of the last decade were the GBA video carts with Spongebob episodes and the like.
As for profitability, letting aside the fact that sales does not equal quality, this is a kickstarter project. Schafer just has to make his costs, pay everyone's salaries and fulfill his promises to deliver the game, series and such content as is doable. He's left himself room for time, development and expansion. In essence, he's showing exactly the business acumen you seem to think he lacks: he's secured funding for a project for his studio and done it on his own terms.
Exactly. Kickstarter efforts for small indie project games will happen (and already have)...but for something like this, you need a known property. The same applies to Rich Burlew's "Order of the Stick" kickstarter project. When you have a built-in audience, you can pull this off.
We should also note that Schafer is not only a gaming legend, but one that has consistently delivered quality games...and recently has shifted his studio to smaller projects. He has never enjoyed vast commercial success, but in just the last three years his studio has released: Stacked, Once Upon a Monster, Iron Brigade (Trenched), Costume Quest and Brutal Legend. That's a pretty good record.
And, of course, he's targeting an under-served market in the video game space. Point-and-click adventures are still being made, but for small audiences, mostly in Europe. As one of the brightest lights in that genre, his announcement to work on such a game, especially with another of the genre's big guns on his staff? That makes it much more compelling.
Which is why I made sure to fund it, myself.
I suppose that depends on how you define 'adventure game'. Certainly, Psychonauts and Stacked have adventure game elements in them. Likewise, Gilbert has had a bunch of games out relatively recently.
That said, I would LOVE to see an open-world Shenmue III using technology like the RAGE (Red Dead Redemption) or Anvil (Assassin's Creed) engines (or even Skyrim's engine, if set in rural China). But I don't think Sega has the desire to make that game, regardless of how good it could be.
I think it's a pretty safe bet they'll make a mac version, at this point. Especially as there is a Mac Steam client, now. It may not come out at the same time as the PC version, but who knows?
