New Games on the Horizon (the video game thread)

[mredskins]

Originally Posted by Mattyk

Unbundling the kinect eh? I might give it a look once there are some more games.

Looks like it will be $399 with no KINECT. I have KINECT on my 360 it sucks even my kids got tired of it.

[MTK]

Originally Posted by mredskins

Looks like it will be $399 with no KINECT. I have KINECT on my 360 it sucks even my kids got tired of it.

I was over the whole motion gaming thing after a few days with the Wii.

[Dirtbag59]

Originally Posted by Mattyk

I was over the whole motion gaming thing after a few days with the Wii.

Agreed. Have to hand it to Nintendo though they struck while the iron was hot and and were rewarded handsomely for it. Its kind of funny the reactions you get when people are debating last generation and you tell them that the Wii outsold both the PS3 and 360 by ~20 million units each.

Personally I have great respect for the way Nintendo handles a lot of their IPs in that they wait until they think they have a good game rather then making come hell or high water annual releases.

With that said Nintendo is one of the most evil companies out there in the first world in terms of throwing around lawsuits for any and everything rivaling even the likes of Apple.

Nintendo launch mass lawsuit against R4 | bit-gamer.net

Nintendo Sues Modding Business Over Sale of Game-Copying Devices

Court dismisses lawsuit against Nintendo after patents invalidated | Polygon

Report: Nintendo settles lawsuit alleging ROM chip patent infringement | Polygon

Ironically Nintendo has been scared of piracy even dating before the internet went commercial. In fact its dictated the design of every home console since. For starters both the NES and SNES featured controlled chips that could only be supplied by Nintendo. In fact Nintendos micromanagement of 3rd party developers allowed Sega and eventually Sony to emerge as competitors. The biggest blow up was a chip shortage during the NES era which led to the control chips being rationed.

Most of you probably remember seeing this somewhere


When disc based games were about to become the thing during the 32 bit era Nintendo ultimately decided that CD's were to easy to copy and choose to stick with $70 MSRP cartridge based games.

Then during the PS2 era when Nintendo finally decided to make disc based games they choose to design the Gamecube with miniture disc which they believed in theory would help protect them against piracy. (Ironically today the Gamecube/Wii emulator Dolphin is considered among the best in post PS1 console emulation.) Just like Dreamcast, Nintendo fell victim to PS2 being the most affordable DVD player in the market for a decent part of the early 2000's.

Part of the reason Nintendo then choose to go with the Wii was they knew while certainly possible, the motion based gaming controls would be a pain to duplicate.

Then of course the WiiU with the tablet based controller was also deemed as a speed bump against piracy.

So in conclusion kids Nintendo is the Apple of the Video Game industry. Now what did I come in this thread to say.

Oh yeah, if you like story based games try out Walking Dead Season 2 (and 1 for that matter) as well as Season 1 of the Wolf Among Us. Personally I still have trouble wrapping my head around it but Telltale seems to have quietly emerged as one of the better developers in the industry today.

Originally Posted by mooby

It's a smart move by Microsoft. I'm still torn over which system to get, and since I couldn't care less about the Kinect, it's got my attention.

Microsofts Gaming Division right now is kind of at risk for a Dreamcast like exit from this generation. Though for completely different reasons.

Investors want Microsoft’s new CEO to kill Xbox, Bing and Surface

For starters a group of 'activist investors' which honestly sound more like "why aren't you squeezing every last dime out of your customer base investors" HATE the gaming division of Microsoft as it has been viewed as a money pit. They are now part of the board of directors.

Granted PS3 got off to a terrible start last gen and recovered well enough to pull even with the 360 at the end (anyone remember the CEO encouraging people to work harder to afford a PS3) so its certainly not the end of days but unlike Sony, the gaming division has never really been a critical part of Microsoft in terms of business.