Typically, we have “exclusive” fallout from the console war which forces the hand of the consumer to purchase all consoles to play all the games they love. Many hardcore gamers are into first person shooters like Halo and Gears of War but also like their Grand Theft Auto and Final Fantasy fixes. In years prior, you’d have to invest in Microsoft and Sony’s solutions to get your fix. Now things are changing.
With these third party developers playing neutral in the war on consoles, Microsoft and Sony are forced to rely on near “first-party” titles to keep their army strong. Metal Gear Solid is a Sony exclusive and Gears of War and Halo have been Microsoft’s hype babies for a year or so now. The problem? Many of these exclusive games are not divisions, subsidiaries or in any way under the wing of the console makers.
Nintendo holds exclusive rights to almost all their hard hitting titles. Mario, Link, Zelda, Samus Aran and all their mascot style characters are designed, developed and marketed under the name “Nintendo.” These characters are all part of Nintendo’s lineup of solid best selling titles including the Metroid, Zelda and Super Mario Bros. series and all their spin-offs. Nintendo has the power to re-implement their characters into games like Mario Party, Mario Kart, Links Crossbow, Metroid Prime, Metroid Pinball and a huge array of other first party titles.
Microsoft and Sony must continue to play nice with Konami, Bungie, and Epic Games to keep their exclusivity. What happens if one of these developers “betrays” their console and starts shipping multi-platform?
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Welcome back guys, another good show.
I’m sorry I can never manage to send hate mail for Paul cause I’m just too busy sending it to Jonah. Just kidding, this is more “nerd rage mail”, because of the topic of Final Fantasy from previous episode.
Saying your not into FF because you’ve only played 10 and up is like saying you don’t like Star Wars because you’ve only seen the pre-quels. I’m sorry but as far as I am concerned you’ve only played the BAD Final Fantasy games. The Golden era of FF was parts 4, 5, & 6; 6 being my personal favorite. It had the best story, art, music of the entire series.
The thing about Final Fantasy was the first one was supposed to be the last and only but it had done so well they decided to continue, so the only thing final about them was that you only saw one world per game, you never went back so there wasn’t truly a sequel in the sense of a continuing world.
That changed after FF10,now even FF4 and 7 have sequels. FF6 was the last to have that 2d style art that I still love, ff7 had a real mix bag of art from beautiful backgrounds to horrendous 3d models. FF8 just had a terribly convoluted story and it felt too modern, FF9 I think was the last one that I really enjoyed but still missed and preferred the 2D art style over the still awkward 3D models. FF10 had unrelatable characters, it looked pretty but felt so shallow.
FF11 was the first MMO which I never played, FF12 was too easy to cheese with grinding out the chessboard skills. Just about everything is wrong with FF13, I know the bird in the dudes hair was wierd, but they did it in Suikoden V as well, maybe it’s a cultural thing. I couldn’t stand the dude with the beanie who constantly had a lock of hair in his face.
What was really obnoxious was the star rating they would give after each battle, after the first few I realized they were going to be doing this the whole damn game, I couldn’t go on after that. The game just insulted my intelligence way too much. It was a great run but I think I’ve had my Final Fantasy with that series.
@Kickstarter: It is true you have to be careful with investing but I wouldn’t say 9/10 video game kick starters have failed. You guys keep seeming to forget to mention the ones that have succeded: FTL, Divinty Original Sin, Shadowgate, Shadowrun, Pillar’s of Eternity, Wasteland 2, etc
Here is a link with a long list of them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_game_crowdfunding_projects
I will concede one has to be careful in choosing products or at least keep in mind that the project may fail and you will get nothing. Kickstarter DOES have on it’s site that there are no guarantees of any products being completed. I like what Hilary said about trying to help these developers out and giving them a chance and I do think Paul is also right that there are those shady individuals that make crowd funding look bad.
@Greg Zeschuk: It’s a shame the title made me think he might work on Baldur’s Gate or something. The idea sounds well meaning but I agree with Jonah I remember just using my imagination to fight strange aliens or playing spys or whatever.