stusser
3167
Steam Greenlight comes to mind.
Okay, as long as folks don’t mind talking about this openly, I have other questions. How does Sony approach this? The PS3 isn’t exactly flooded with spammy F2P games. They must do some curating. If they found a middle ground option, why doesn’t Microsoft just steal that? Also, as Stusser points out, why not a Steam Greenlight approach. Since consumers will have to pay for both LIVE and PSN this next generation, they might as well have a voice.
This seems like such an easy fix…
Well, Microsoft hasn’t really answered the whole indie self-publishing question to anyone’s satisfaction. I mean, we along with a bunch of industry pundits and indie devs have suggested solutions to MS. Who knows why this is so difficult for them.
Canuck
3170
See this is important for me. Many people consider Japan to be an irrelevant market these days and in terms of sales it almost is. But what about all those quirky games that come from the Japanese developers? I remember really cool games like Katamari Damacy, Disgea and Culdcept (for which the sequel inexplicably only came out for the 360) being on the PS2 and that was a major advantage of the PS2-ALL of those games came out for the PS2. The 360 had a bit of an advantage last go around because they had a year head start and so they could scoop up some Japanese developers but now they’ll be releasing after the PS4 and I don’t see the reception being any better than the 360. Will developers have any incentive to develop these quirky games for the xbox (other than MS throwing bags of money at them).
“Other than MS throwing bags of money at them”
Yeah, developers aren’t designing for any system because they like Sony or they like Nintendo or they like Xbox. They develop because they’re matching their passiong to an install base and the audiences they reach. Haven’t you played Game Dev Story? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Dev_Story
Canuck
3172
Yeah that’s sort of my point. The install base for quirky Japanese games is not the world market but the Japanese one. We get some of those games passed on to is from time to time. If a game does well in Japan it MAY be localised for English language. But if a game isn’t even made originally for a console because of non-existent user base then its chance of localisation is zero. I guess what I’m saying is that if you’re into Japanese games (and a lot of people have moved away from that) then it seems like the PS4 will get all of the available localisations whereas Xbox will get at best, some. The exception of course is if MS is willing to pay for exclusivity again for a bunch of games this gen. Of course, that didn’t prove very successful for them last gen.
I think the Xbox exclusivity is what help killed some of that. A lot of exclusives on Xbox, but nobody there was buying Xboxes thus they didn’t get a localisation here. Then even when they did, I don’t think they sold very well or as well as they could have if it was multiplatform or on the PS3.
Money. Xbox360 takes xx% of each sale. Adding a Publisher takes an even bigger chunk of change from the developer as well. In the past it could often be as much as 50%. So if Microsoft takes 20% for an Xbox game, then you’re forced to use “Microsoft Studios” as a Publisher, you’ve lost another 20%-50% of your revenue. Microsoft will claim it’s for “quality control”, but in reality it’s a way to just take more of the pie. Having a Publisher doesn’t do squat for quality nowadays. Just look at Simcity.
Many of the Xbox 360 exclusives in Japan after the first couple of years were exclusive because of Sony policies blocking companies from releasing those games on PS3, not because of moneyhats. Sony’s since let up on those policies, which is why games like Mamoru-kun Has Been Cursed!, Ketsui, and Gal Gun have gotten PS3 ports, and why Earth Defense Force 4 is multiplatform instead of being a 360 exclusive like Earth Defense Force 3 was until the Vita port seven years later.
Similarly, a lot of Japanese PS3 games didn’t get US releases or were PSN-only (like Battle Fantasia, Arcana Heart 3, and Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage 2) because of SCEA policies about retail releases requiring English dubs, which often aren’t deemed to be worth the expense for niche releases like those. Considering how few games were able to bypass that restriction (most of them were part of the Yakuza series), I hope for the sake of any dev wanting to localize smaller Japanese games and still release a physical disc that Sony removes that restriction for the PS4.
That’s true that SCEA did stupid things like requiring English dubs. I was more just referring to the very early games which were Xbox exclusives. The many RPGs either through moneyhat deals or just cause the Xbox was out first they were put on the 360 instead of the PS3 and never did get release. Though some of those were pretty bad from what I recall so it might have just been for the better anyways.
There was definitely moneyhatting going on for games like Tales of Vesperia, Star Ocean: The Last Hope, and Eternal Sonata, but as soon as exclusivity ran out, you saw PS3 ports very quickly*. The big ones that didn’t get PS3 ports were Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon, Infinite Undiscovery, and The Last Remnant; the first two had Microsoft Game Studios involved, and The Last Remnant was planned for PS3 release, but got canceled, probably because it would’ve had even more issues on PS3 than it did on 360 (the only worthwhile version of that game is on PC). Dunno about IU; it might just be that Square Enix decided it wasn’t worth the money to port it once exclusivity ran out.
*I’ve heard Tales of Vesperia’s exclusivity period was indefinite in the US, which is why we didn’t get the PS3 port over here, but it definitely came out in Japan, and outsold the 360 version’s lifetime sales in less than a month.
Yeah, those early attempts by MS to buy their way into the JRPG market were basically all sales catastrophes. I doubt publishers would be interested in a repeat. Even if MS fully funds development the opportunity cost of having a team making that instead of something multiplatform that will actually sell is still too high.
I still want Tales of Vesperia. I remember reading they even bought the voice actors in and possibly did all of that for a U.S. release but it just never came out. Makes me sad. Those were mainly the titles I was thinking of. Which is what might’ve helped killed JRPGs sooner rather than later as they were always popular with the Playstation crowd. With all of those relatively big titles underperforming I can see why they became adverse to the risk and we saw the JRPG genre dry up combined with an increasing popularity in western style RPGs.
Nesrie
3180
I have a mild interest in the PS4. Not enough to buy the console at launch, but an interest when my series go to a console. The series i buy a console for all come out of Japan. Otherwise, it’s usually PC for me.
The difficulty and added expense of HD development “killed” JRPGs (read: drove devs to handhelds) more than anything else.
Teiman
3182
Thats incredible lazy. The right way to do it, its to include screenshots, videos and a classification for every game. Maybe even other stuff like a forum or user comments, gamescores, userscores, and so on. Fail games will fail at provide a good video, or good screenshots. And entice the same way a interesting artsy indie game.
random link of the day
Its like “Our search option is bad, so we try to no include cheap games”. Maybe fix the search option? make games discorverability better. Discoverability of games is The most important service you are doing.
Surveys I can get behind. I would rather have survey data than individuals saying “I think others feel” or “I bet based on my call of duty list.”
That said, the timeline here stinks. I feel bad for IGN because surveys are expensive (if done right and they didn’t just throw up a “poll” on their website). And unfortunately, they only capture a moment in time unless you do a tracking poll.
Here, they basically have data on how people felt shortly after the change, when emotions were still raw (myself included). Would be interested in more recent info.
I assume that was that is just an XBone specific slice of a much broader survey question pool?
If so, bit hard to draw any conclusions without the context of the whole survey.
That survey seems pretty reasonable to me. I’m on the fence as to whether I’m more interested in PS4 or XB1, since I imagine I will buy one (and only one) but I don’t intend to make a purchase decision the first year of release. I need to see what’s going to happen.
