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Fighting Games Weekly | Sept 1-7 | Opponent-Based Action Games Weekly
- Thread starter enzo_gt
- Start date
There's nothing I fear more in gaming than Capcom being bought out by Nintendo at this point. A very real possibility if their next few outings in major franchises don't pan out, and potentially the death of a bunch of beloved franchises, or at the least sending them back to the stone ages where Nintendo's conceptions of industry standards lie. Somehow I think that'd be even worse than current Capcom management which is already sort of doing both on a smaller scale.
Just Dance series.
To put things in perspective. I know people including myself which have multiple copies of those games across multiple platforms. By games I mean your average genres, platformers, action, rpgs, etc. Not casual stuff which will always find some success depending on circumstances. All of those imagine Ubisoft games are trash but are still more successful than many high budget games.
The whole can't compete with Nintendo games is a big load of horse shit. That didn't stop 3rd parties from releasing top games on SNES/N64/GCN.
The real problem is that Nintendo's hardware is lagging behind Sony/Microsoft hardware which means that if say Capcom wanted to release a new MVC4 they can't release a Nintendo version because it's going to look like shit compared to the real versions. Plus the online infrastructure sucks so companies like Activision can't release Destiny on Wii U.
Even when Gamecube was lagging in sales behind the other consoles... it was still getting 3rd party games like Soul Calibur 2.
The real problem is that Nintendo's hardware is lagging behind Sony/Microsoft hardware which means that if say Capcom wanted to release a new MVC4 they can't release a Nintendo version because it's going to look like shit compared to the real versions. Plus the online infrastructure sucks so companies like Activision can't release Destiny on Wii U.
Even when Gamecube was lagging in sales behind the other consoles... it was still getting 3rd party games like Soul Calibur 2.
No it isn't horseshit. But it is one of many reasons. You are right about other reasons like online play. But despite all of that, no matter how much effort a company puts into making games for Nintendo consoles, the majority of the gaming industry will mainly buy Nintendo consoles for Nintendo games. It will be an endless cycle.
It's not just hardware, it's also policy and general philosophy. Shit is progressing so slow, and people are way too comfortable giving Nintendo pats on the back for shit everyone was doing years ago.
All of this PR about focusing on the core gamer again and statements where they try to draw sympathy from loyalists and gamers in general doesn't mask that they're still comfortable moving at their own pace. And when they move, it's too little too late. Miiverse, Unity licensing, software announcements and release, eShop support, the list goes on.
Ragingnight
Member
to be fair, nintendo is the only primarily gaming company that originated out of the big 3 as a gaming company. Their whole company is dedicated to gaming unlike Sony or MS. So of course they have a stable of making some great games.
edit
And nintendo has to be stupid to call the new handheld "new"3DS. Shit is as bad as Wii-U. Now you are going to have families being like "why can't I play this 3DS game?" "Well is it for the new 3DS?" "Yeah I bought my 3DS new from target".
And once they understand whats going on, they are going to be like "Wow nintendo is trying to rip me off".
edit
And nintendo has to be stupid to call the new handheld "new"3DS. Shit is as bad as Wii-U. Now you are going to have families being like "why can't I play this 3DS game?" "Well is it for the new 3DS?" "Yeah I bought my 3DS new from target".
And once they understand whats going on, they are going to be like "Wow nintendo is trying to rip me off".
WesternHeretic
Member
This family tree thing is following me all over GAF now.
FML...... what have I done!
Turned myself into a meme.
FML...... what have I done!
Turned myself into a meme.
Too bad you didn't get a tag.
Lol, where is it coming up
QisTopTier
XisBannedTier
I loved every part of Ys2. But dark fact and the bat boss means nope never again
WesternHeretic
Member
Random off topic, and NFL-GAF all on it.
FormallyFamicom
Member
I can't imagine Nintendo buying a company with as much baggage as Capcom. They'd sooner be merged into some random pachinko company or Chinese super company and their IP's forced into grindy MMOs or something.
theprodigy
Member
you mean it already did by March 2014?
or was PS4 supposed to be XB1 (no sorry guys there's little evidence pointing to Wii U outselling XB1 WW currently at all)
or is this not sales at all
link to an example?
SolarPowered
Member
Straight to the point. Around the end of the GC era I was just a kid and I was already feeling suspicious about how slow Nintendo was compared to it's competition thanks to mini disks and online. It was painfully obvious as soon as we could compare what the Wii offered versus the 360 and PS3 on a software, multiplayer and online level.
Then 2010 happened and you could totally tell Nintendo expected people to toss their money at them like they were the Apple of home consoles (not handheld, Nintendo actually tries there) hardware.
Nintendo penny pinches even when it rains money, Sony over-engineers and Microsoft goes mad with power. My opinion of the big three in a position of power if we're talking home consoles.
The only thing worse than this is EA or Activision making the purchase.
*shivers*
I doubt that would happen.
Well, the merger did turn out pretty well for Bandai and Namco. I've recently researched them. They own a lot of arcade/amusement facilities, have a separate toy business, are always at the top in arcades thanks to Gundam and Tekken, are able to get contracts for big franchises as recently demonstrated (i.e. Smash Bros, Pokemon), are actually pushing their mascot (Pac-Man games, TV show, guest appearance in Smash, etc), are largely the only ones even bothering to localize/fund different series (i.e. Ni No Kuni, Dark Souls I & II, Tales series, Eternal Sonata, Fragile, Project X Zone, potentially Digimon 3DS, etc), and don't need their games to sell 6 million copies to be profitable.
You still have many examples of third party stuff selling successfully on Nintendo platforms, though, even if it's not selling 6 million or something.
Bandai and Namco were both gaming companies.
I mean, it wasn't Bandai's only business, but they already had a significant stake in the industry.
I mean this is assuming you consider GBA/DS/3DS trying, but GCN/Wii/Wii U not. They spend far more money on the latter, of course for far smaller returns.
The only difference was that there was no competition, and there are key franchises that had only done well on those types of devices.
During the end of last gen and now, you saw software completely dry up for DS/3DS cause there are actual competitors now.
I mean, it wasn't Bandai's only business, but they already had a significant stake in the industry.
I like how people think that just cause Nintendo's successful in handhelds, it means that they try harder than their consoles.
I mean this is assuming you consider GBA/DS/3DS trying, but GCN/Wii/Wii U not. They spend far more money on the latter, of course for far smaller returns.
The only difference was that there was no competition, and there are key franchises that had only done well on those types of devices.
During the end of last gen and now, you saw software completely dry up for DS/3DS cause there are actual competitors now.
It can happen but my whole point is third parties aren't going put in too much effort when success is less guaranteed like on other platforms for many reasons. Modern Nintendo here. It's becoming less and less likely for third parties to give a crap with each passing generation. And Nintendo doesn't seem to care as much if at all because their games still sell and so forth.
Yeah I suppose the Chinese megacorps would have first dibs.
I don't know about baggage. If we're talking baggage, they put Megaman into Smash and look at the reaction. Those kinds of changes are opportunities for brand perception to change entirely.
Buying Capcom doesn't really solve talent problems or some of the other important problems with Capcom like IP handling and being able to read foreign markets, which Nintendo is pretty shitty at as well. There would have to be a big shakeup in Nintendo internally, and I don't see them doing that.
Activision might be one of the biggest tragedies last gen, for real. Claimed the life of my favourite studio, and anyone still alive is working on one of 3-4 mega IPs. Either that or fuck off.
QisTopTier
XisBannedTier
I think when I go tomorrow I'm just going to do the last half of my top and stop there for that day. I don't think my body can handle the shock and stress of doing more than half a part at a time. My teeth are super long too so all that tugging and blood loss put me into shock.... ugh this seems like the safest route but... 3 more visits
You guys make Nintendo sound like the boogeyman.
Just remember that the talent brought into the Nintendo fold such as Rare, Retro, and Monolith performed wonders under Nintendo's watchful eye.
Not to mention they prefer to keep teams together rather than prematurely laying them off at the worst times.
Just remember that the talent brought into the Nintendo fold such as Rare, Retro, and Monolith performed wonders under Nintendo's watchful eye.
Not to mention they prefer to keep teams together rather than prematurely laying them off at the worst times.
I don't know. I guess I still disagree. This is in large part due to their being a lot of quirky and mostly excellent third party titles on Wii (Little King's Story, MadWorld, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, Boom Blox, No More Heroes, Red Steel 2, The Last Story, Muramasa, De Blob) to even more prominent ones (Monster Hunter Tri, Epic Mickey, Resident Evil Darkside/Umbrella Chronicles).
Clearly, the case isn't the same for the Wii U. That console also started off with great third party support, though. It just never caught up with the public and I have to blame Nintendo for that. Outside of having a terrible name choice, it lacked strong exclusives at or close to launch. People wanted Nintendo games in HD and instead got reused assets from old games (read: Super Mario Bros. Wii U game, Tropical Freeze, Super Mario 3D Lad, etc. are not particularly going super above and beyond as they could with the visuals and seem to use similar assets from previous games in the series). By the time Pikmin 3 and Mario Kart 8 launched, people had already moved on.
Aside from that, they copy-pasted the same Mii avatars that were used on the Wii. Here you have an HD console and here you have avatars that still look like they're from the N64 generation. And of course, there's also the lack of a proper account system, lacking hardware, lacking online infrastructure, and still no trophy/achievement system. Of course, this will dissuade people from buying their consoles and thus the lack of third party support as well. I don't think Nintendo having quality games is the reason third party games don't do well on their consoles.
In any case, I'll be buying a Wii U for Smash anyway so yeah.
That's true. Note folks leave Cap because they lose creative control, and that's solely because of the execs at the top who reportedly have little understanding of the hobby their financially invested in.
VanillaCakeIsBurning
Member
Blood loss is no joke. That seems like a better idea in the long run versus losing more blood in a shorter period of time. But I don't work in dentistry so I could be wrong.
Stay safe, Q. Vanilla is right, blood loss is no joke. Be careful brother.
SolarPowered
Member
I would say their handhelds have longer software support than their consoles. I admit that they've done as well as they have partly because of a lack of competition too. Somewhere on GAF I could sworn I'd made several posts pointing out that very fact as one of the reasons why people should using their handheld success as a barometer for any sort of long term stability on the home console front. Iwata's Nintendo behaves completely differently on the home console front so comparing the too may as well be a crapshoot imo.
I would say they tried with the 3DS too and it worked very well to put Vita in it's place in Japan. Iwata's Nintendo was never ready for Apple, though. His particular Nintendo may in fact never be... which is something a lot of Nintendo diehards (and even lapsed fans like myself) are scared of. God knows how terrible or amazing they'd be under someone else's leadership. Azure J opened my eyes a bit on that one.
I could have sworn the director (or someone pretty high up) of Driveclub was an ex Bizzare Creations employee. Apparently Lucid Games also has ex-BC employees working on the new Geometry Wars. The former might be hard to substantiate and the latter comes straight off wikipedia.
Sounds like a good idea. I've had 4 taken out at once, and I can't even begin to imagine taking half of everything in your condition as well. Might be annoying for more visits, but it sounds safer.
Thomasorus
Member
Since I am a game reviewer I can add something to the debate. I review ONLY fighting games on the second biggest french website and the reason they keep me is simple: I don't list features, I learn how to play the games and get a good understanding of them before writing. At best, I try to write in a simple form what the games wants to be, what it's trying to do.
I started by reviewing VF5FS and I didn't play the series since VF4EVO on PS2. I was completly lost so what I did was talking and playing for hours with the leader of the VF community in France. He explained to me the best he could, I asked questions all the time, I tried to get what the game is about. I played Tekken 3 and Soul Calibur a lot but there's a gap between playing and understanding what the game is doing. I did the same with Tag 2 and had a great time discovering the inner problems of the DOA series and how DOA5 was designed to correct them. But it's hard work.
For example when Killer Instinct came out, my conclusion was it's a game with a poker mechanic that you don't see in other fighting games since the combo system asks you to substract moves (like cards), make probability on the next move/card, and bluff or try to see the bluff of your opponent. It took me hours of playing, thinking, writing and re-writing again just to put this conclusion in a simple manner in the review (and for me one of the big failure of the game is that moves aren't well animated/different from each other to help players substract them in combos). Two weeks later, the KI team said they used cards and poker mechanics to think the combo system. It was great to feel I didn't failed to see it.
But it takes time. I write from 5 to 8 hours for a FG review and I know most people don't want to take so much time on them. For me the goal is to emulate, in the review, the discovery of the game I had by myself by presenting mechanics, how they clicks with each other, and what is the final result. The best I can compare this with is cooking: in most FG review, people lists mechanics (ingredients) and talk about the flavor of the final game (meal) and forget to explain the recipe that permited it. If you don't do the recipe thing, you are mistaking things and your review lacks the WHY this game is what it is.
I started by reviewing VF5FS and I didn't play the series since VF4EVO on PS2. I was completly lost so what I did was talking and playing for hours with the leader of the VF community in France. He explained to me the best he could, I asked questions all the time, I tried to get what the game is about. I played Tekken 3 and Soul Calibur a lot but there's a gap between playing and understanding what the game is doing. I did the same with Tag 2 and had a great time discovering the inner problems of the DOA series and how DOA5 was designed to correct them. But it's hard work.
For example when Killer Instinct came out, my conclusion was it's a game with a poker mechanic that you don't see in other fighting games since the combo system asks you to substract moves (like cards), make probability on the next move/card, and bluff or try to see the bluff of your opponent. It took me hours of playing, thinking, writing and re-writing again just to put this conclusion in a simple manner in the review (and for me one of the big failure of the game is that moves aren't well animated/different from each other to help players substract them in combos). Two weeks later, the KI team said they used cards and poker mechanics to think the combo system. It was great to feel I didn't failed to see it.
But it takes time. I write from 5 to 8 hours for a FG review and I know most people don't want to take so much time on them. For me the goal is to emulate, in the review, the discovery of the game I had by myself by presenting mechanics, how they clicks with each other, and what is the final result. The best I can compare this with is cooking: in most FG review, people lists mechanics (ingredients) and talk about the flavor of the final game (meal) and forget to explain the recipe that permited it. If you don't do the recipe thing, you are mistaking things and your review lacks the WHY this game is what it is.
Hopefully this isnt breaking any rules as far as self promotion stuff goes, but here it is!
Myself and a couple of friends live in Osaka and have been meeting up to play marvel on a regular basis for a while. At first, it was literally two people (me and a friend), but then it expanded to four (and then to six) and recently its quite a bit bigger, with a dozen or more people showing up, depending on the week. We started streaming a while back, but early streams were hella primitive. Weve recently made an effort to clean things up presentation-wise and to make the stream a bit more family friendly (actually, its absolutely NOT family friendly, but its hard to get people cognisant of the fact that with people watching, you cant always say the same kind of stuff you would if you were just playing games with some people youve known for a long time).
Weve recently been getting some more Japanese players showing up. One of the guys (Heartia) is one of the organizers behind KVO, so Im hoping in the not-so-distant future, we can get some even more prolific Osaka players to show up (dudes like Mamespider).
Anyway, if anybody is interested in watching slightly scrubby marvel from Osaka at what must be an insane hour of the morning for most of you, we stream pretty much every Friday here: http://www.twitch.tv/rickchunter
Any constructive criticism is more than welcome!
Myself and a couple of friends live in Osaka and have been meeting up to play marvel on a regular basis for a while. At first, it was literally two people (me and a friend), but then it expanded to four (and then to six) and recently its quite a bit bigger, with a dozen or more people showing up, depending on the week. We started streaming a while back, but early streams were hella primitive. Weve recently made an effort to clean things up presentation-wise and to make the stream a bit more family friendly (actually, its absolutely NOT family friendly, but its hard to get people cognisant of the fact that with people watching, you cant always say the same kind of stuff you would if you were just playing games with some people youve known for a long time).
Weve recently been getting some more Japanese players showing up. One of the guys (Heartia) is one of the organizers behind KVO, so Im hoping in the not-so-distant future, we can get some even more prolific Osaka players to show up (dudes like Mamespider).
Anyway, if anybody is interested in watching slightly scrubby marvel from Osaka at what must be an insane hour of the morning for most of you, we stream pretty much every Friday here: http://www.twitch.tv/rickchunter
Any constructive criticism is more than welcome!
Bring tsundere maids like what KVO has. Every tourney needs tsundere maids to slap frauds around.
Capcom in 2007.
See GGPO launching, see how ahead of its time is, not only as a netcode, but in other features (mass spectating before streaming was widely available: 1, 2, 3; replays database embedded in browser: 4, promising game client with an established userbase: 5).
Buy GGPO entirely, hire Ponder. Make a deal with SNK to keep the library intact.
Offer ROMs at $5-10 a piece, with seasonal sales and packs. Add basic things like achivements and ladders to the existing library.
Sit on this until you see how the PC market swings, Steam starts rising in 2009. It's GO time!
Improve the client and mold it into Steam/Origin. Besides emulation of old titles, offer PC ports of your games, co-opt other Japanese studios into launching PC ports via your client. Convince them and encourage them to do so, regardless of genre (from date sims to shmups)!
GGPO becomes a digital distribution platform with real flavor and attractive gameplay-oriented titles, like a digital arcade or a reminder of how gaming used to be before Westernized AAA titles. Capcom carves out a significant piece of PC market banking on Japanese games and what makes them unique.
Now money starts pouring in and they have time to polish future games and support them properly.
Add Rematch button to Ultra Street Fighter 4.
BibleThump!
See GGPO launching, see how ahead of its time is, not only as a netcode, but in other features (mass spectating before streaming was widely available: 1, 2, 3; replays database embedded in browser: 4, promising game client with an established userbase: 5).
Buy GGPO entirely, hire Ponder. Make a deal with SNK to keep the library intact.
Offer ROMs at $5-10 a piece, with seasonal sales and packs. Add basic things like achivements and ladders to the existing library.
Sit on this until you see how the PC market swings, Steam starts rising in 2009. It's GO time!
Improve the client and mold it into Steam/Origin. Besides emulation of old titles, offer PC ports of your games, co-opt other Japanese studios into launching PC ports via your client. Convince them and encourage them to do so, regardless of genre (from date sims to shmups)!
GGPO becomes a digital distribution platform with real flavor and attractive gameplay-oriented titles, like a digital arcade or a reminder of how gaming used to be before Westernized AAA titles. Capcom carves out a significant piece of PC market banking on Japanese games and what makes them unique.
Now money starts pouring in and they have time to polish future games and support them properly.
Add Rematch button to Ultra Street Fighter 4.
BibleThump!
call_kotaku
Member
Driving your best talent to leave and poisoning your franchises til you only have one moneymaker seems like a much more sensible direction, though.
Since we're talking about Capcom, I'd like to get this out of my system. I was a huge Monster Hunter fan, and was suprised there were no MH character in MvC3 when it came out, I remember coming across this Seth Killian interview:
It seems that MH producer refused the inclusion of MH characters in MvC3, sure he has the right to protect his work, but it was really surprising to see him doing that less than a year after whoring out MH in a marketing deal with MGSeace Walker. Did he thought MGS was a good fit for MH stuff?!
Anyway, I forgot about that until few months ago when I saw duckroll's posts in this thread on GAF:
Ryozo Tsujimoto (Monster Hunter Producer) becomes Executive Officer for Capcom
Talking about MH producer:
Though, more than anything, this made me sympathize with those who left Capcom a lot more.
http://www.siliconera.com/2011/03/1...-didnt-want-the-hunter-in-marvel-vs-capcom-3/
It seems that MH producer refused the inclusion of MH characters in MvC3, sure he has the right to protect his work, but it was really surprising to see him doing that less than a year after whoring out MH in a marketing deal with MGS
eace Walker. Did he thought MGS was a good fit for MH stuff?!Anyway, I forgot about that until few months ago when I saw duckroll's posts in this thread on GAF:
Ryozo Tsujimoto (Monster Hunter Producer) becomes Executive Officer for Capcom
Talking about MH producer:
This is how Capcom operate apparently. So now, why do you think this guy denied MvC3 the inclusion of a character from Capcom's biggest series in Japan? What could come out of it other than give the game a nice boost over there, something the game really needed! Surely it wasn't to protect his creation and it can't be because MH as a series is above putting their characters in other games!He is not the creator of Monster Hunter, nor the original producer. Tsuyoshi Tanaka was the producer of Monster Hunter PS2 and Monster Hunter Portable PSP. He left Capcom after that. Ryozo Tsujimoto was a planner who has been in Capcom since 1996, and mostly worked on smaller games. He was credited for leading the online technical parts of MHP. Suddenly when MHP explodes in popularity, he is made the series producer of Monster Hunter. Is this nepotism? You decide.
Though, more than anything, this made me sympathize with those who left Capcom a lot more.
Smooth Operator
Member
Yeah, Tsundere maids or bust.
Great and insightful post.
I wish more people reviewing fighting games had this mentality.
sixteen-bit
Member
more like crapcom amirite?
Smooth Operator
Member
Crapcom with that YOLO way of life
Riposte
Member
I suppose you filled in some gaps I left untouched. I didn't mention the time frame where a review would be released and I didn't mention the target audience (e.g., whether the audience remains the same as present). I guess the disconnect here is that I do not value the "buyer's guide" concept in the slightest; I see criticism as a nuanced expression of the audience and a way to both record and rank game design (with some "healing" qualities for the writer).
It's a rare thing for me to find a lot of value in a review that drops the day or even week after an embargo is lifted. Compared to that, I'm much more interested in reviews that appear a year or years after the game comes out (which, among other things, usually means buying it is hardly an endeavor that requires a guide). So, I'm also totally okay with the idea of waiting for an EVO before anything is put to print. This is a common expression I see when judging a game's competitive value and the health of its scene. I feel the mechanism for this is already happening, has always happened, it is just the conversation is not evolving to the point of solidifying into pieces of game criticism (outside dark corners of message boards). This leaves the enterprise solely to the individuals who have no business there in the expertise sense. However, even in the case of having to release review within a game's launch window, consulting players who, you know, can actually play the thing with any sort of competence could only help. And more importantly, having the writer be able to make conclusions and judgments would make a big difference.
The audience is a tricky thing though, it's likely why these reviews haven't naturally come to exist in the first place. For the Kotaku audience, it is clear they are not in need of better reviews, but I can't say if they would be repelled by them. That comes down to how a specific review is written, including the writer's talent for making their words interesting without dumbing it down, and in this context it can be written many ways, of varying lengths and so on. That being what it is, let's move away from that audience and explore the possibility of another, as that better expresses what I want to see accomplished. Fighting game reviews don't need to be written for people seeking buyer's guides; they can be written for enthusiasts, by enthusiasts. The model that most appeals to me are the film blogs that can even manage to one-up the most famed critics in their ability to examine the craft of the medium. These individuals are breaking down film in ways that isn't done in the race to fill up a Rotten Tomatoes page; they are above all else enthusiast writers engaging in an enthusiast conversation. Where this would happen for fighting games if not Kotaku and IGN? Seems pretty obvious to me: our enthusiast websites (whom seem to already have better reviews, that can likely be improved further). Like I said, the mechanisms are already there. I want to say that moving towards complete, condensed articles where clarity and precision is demanded is good for elevating the FGC discussion. This exists even outside game reviews, as one of the most important series of articles ever written for the FGC (or at least, for myself) was Seth Killian's Domination 101 (particularly, deconstruction of the scrub).
I've no intention of apologizing for current fighting game reviews, insofar I have no intent to read them. They will quickly disappear into the ether as disposable writing meant for people with disposable interests always does. If what I'm describing comes to pass, even the target audience of a typical fighting game review will come to understand difference, just as most people understand the difference between film critique and TV Guide. Perhaps then, I'm wrong to describe this as a means to change the present fighting game criticism, when I should instead describe it as a means to turn the FGC into a producer of fighting game criticism of a higher form.
EDIT: Your methodology is highly praiseworthy, Thomasorus. That was an interesting post.
This is true and I look forward to buying Smash in 2015 with my U purchase.
But I gotta get Phantom Dust first
I bet all this talk about publishers is gonna make Shouta come down with the hammer eventually.
Doesn't the dentist drug you?
I wish more reviewers followed this, and not just for fighting games.
I'm interested in this. I really need to find some fighting circles myself locally.
That game will probably won't release until 2016!
Doesn't the dentist drug you?
I wish more reviewers followed this, and not just for fighting games.
I'm interested in this. I really need to find some fighting circles myself locally.
That game will probably won't release until 2016!
QisTopTier
XisBannedTier
I only get the numbing shots. It's too risky for anything else since my body is already weak as it is.
Curry-Hakase
Member
If only Jazz wasn't banned...
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