General gaming news

[Syn]

Pretty sure the point is that Microsoft is trying to market their stuff to a culture they don't understand, and people like Sakaguchi are saying that nobody in Japan will understand what the hell they are talking about.

From the comments in one of the articles earlier.

Microsoft can't break into Japan because they don't appreciate and understand pedophilia as much as the Japanese do.

Microsoft just needs a few naked 9 year old girls in their Xbox 360/Vista commercials and they're all set.

LOLI IS CUTE NOT PEDO.

[Xavier]

I'm not sure if he still dislikes Nintendo or the Wii system, but the bitterness between him and Nintendo is definately still there. I really don't see him being the head of any game that would be released on the Wii in the near future.

Wasn't his problem mostly w/ the head of Nintendo, Hiroshi Yamauchi, who had a reputation of being difficult to work with? Satoru Iwata seems to have completely turned the company around.

[GRT]

I'm not sure if he still dislikes Nintendo or the Wii system, but the bitterness between him and Nintendo is definately still there. I really don't see him being the head of any game that would be released on the Wii in the near future.

Wasn't his problem mostly w/ the head of Nintendo, Hiroshi Yamauchi, who had a reputation of being difficult to work with? Satoru Iwata seems to have completely turned the company around.

Yah pretty much, and you could say if Yamauchi didn't step down there wouldn't have been FFCC.

But then another rumor (rather popular but largely unconfirmed) was that Sakaguchi was the one who pushed to create a whole separate studio to make FFCC for Nintendo, which was also the point in time when Sakaguchi started to distance himself from SE.

Not that he's unreasonable and likes to hold grudges, but for Nintendo's PR to have kept calling him a traitor for half a decade, that would leave a pretty bad taste in anyone's mouth.

[Bethany]

You said he doesn't like Nintendo, I can't find anything of him saying that. Only thing even close was him talking about the Wii. "The system is intriguing, but right now, I have no plans on making a game for the Wii." How is saying he thinks the system is intriguing but he has no plans for it equal Nintendo sucks?

I assume you guys were too young in the pre-PS1 generations to care about "game politics" at that time, but there were some very big conflicts between Nintendo and SE (or Square as it was back then) and Sakaguchi was almost the leader of the disbute on SE's side.

If you call him the whole reason why Square very suddenly "betrayed" Nintendo by announcing Square's new alliance with Sony and would be releasing FF7 exclusively for the PS1, you wouldn't be too far off.

So I wouldn't really say he's burning bridges, at least not recently, because that bridge between him and the Nintendo guys have already been mega-flared over a decade ago.

I'm not sure if he still dislikes Nintendo or the Wii system, but the bitterness between him and Nintendo is definately still there. I really don't see him being the head of any game that would be released on the Wii in the near future.

My first systems were Atari, Colecovision, & Odyssey etc. I was not only around for the pre-PS1 politics, I was actively paying attention. I grew up with two brothers. I grew to learn very quickly to be into whatever they were into if I wanted my things to survive their destruction of all things girlish. ( I weep for what my older brother did to my Party Popple I begged for one year for Xmas.) Anyways, to get to the point that whole relationship with Square, Nintendo, & Sony has enough drama to make a movie.

Nintendo in the mid eighties wanted disk technology on their Famicon (Nes). When the Super Famicom (SNes) was made, it used Sony Audio thingies thanks to PS Father Ken inking a deal to sell them the chips. When Nintendo got serious about doing a Disc add on drive for their SNes, they went back to Ken, and Sony.

Sony does another deal basically saying Okay, we'll make the drive but we get to make a machine too for us to sell that plays your cartridges as well as our discs and we get to keep control of the discs cause we make them blah blah.

Enter the evil Yamuchi... He decides umm why are we handing over so much control to these guys? So in his anger he does a big Japanese no no and goes behind Sony's back and hops into bed with Phillips instead which some consider to be even bigger Japanese no no. Sony was basically left all ashamed at the 89 announcement of the SNes CD drive and nearly threw in the towel on all that they had done.

Thankfully for PS fans around the world they didn't. They even managed to work into another deal with Nintendo to go ahead and release the Play Station with a slot for SNes Carts in the early 90s despite a nasty name battle over who had the rights to use the Playstation name. Eventually even that fell through since by then SNes was old school and they removed the cart slot and made a newer system that we lovingly call the PS1.

Backing up in time a bit.. All the way to Final Fantasy V. Ahh sweet number Five. This is the last extremely hands on Sakaguchi FF there was. FFVI he handed over a ton of the control to Kitasi including the director Chair.

When work started on pre-production for the next in the series, Kitasi once again was given point and it was Kitasi who scrapped all the 2-D in favor of trying to do a 3-D style game to keep up with current gaming trends. They put together a playable demo using 3-D characters & backgrounds & even showed it at a trade show in LA. This demo wasn't FFVII but it was the foundation that it would be built on. When Nintendo announced that the N64 would indeed be cartridge based instead of CD, the fighting began.

Kitasi led the charge that he would not return to 2-D, but gave in and tried to make game work using the N64 cartridge constraints. Kitasi didn't get very far, and it was then they approached Sony. Sakaguchi didn't have any contract to keep Final Fantasy on a Nintendo system & he and Kitasi were upset at Yamuchi's refusal to drop Carts for CDs. Sooo Square took the plunge and Sony embraced them with open arms & a nice big contract.

Kitasi had his CDs now but he was now butting heads with Sakaguchi too. Sakaguchi was used to cartridges and their zero loading time. He basically said he wanted nothing to take the players out of the game & loading times did that. Talk about wanting to your cake and trying to eat it too. Sakaguchi even went on to say later in interviews, they were guilty of being too ambitious at the time & he some what regretted it.

Yamuchi was obviously miffed but in his own arrogance he wrote it off as something Square would be sorry for. Sakaguchi didn't like Yamuchi but he later grew to hate Kutargi even more as Sony kept a tight grip on everything Square did ten times worse than Nintendo ever did.

When Gamecube rolled around, Square was willing to do a Nintendo console game. Sony didn't like that though & the main chain was Sony only. That's how you got The Game Designers Studio. A Black ops part of Square if you will that used Nintendo/Square Money and a bunch of the Final Fantasy staff to make Crystal Chronicles. It's creation wasn't made out of hate for Nintedo, it was made out of necessity in trying to get something done for home console other than the Playstation.

I guess you can pretty much say, everyone has burnt everyone in the past, & all this is before Microsoft gets thrown into the mix lol.

[GRT]

right, let's give a big round of applause to Bethany for the history lesson :D

onto more console war related news:

The latest GTA title is getting limited for the PS3 because of its multiplatform status. Speaking to Official PlayStation Magazine (via CVG) Rockstar’s creative VP Dan Houser was asked “On PS3 you've got a guarantee that every machine is going to have a hard-drive and, with Blu-ray, you've got plenty of storage, whereas on Xbox 360 there's no guarantee of a hard-drive and you're working with the DVD format. Does that create limitations?” He replied "Yep," adding "To be honest with you we haven't solved all those riddles yet." It's not just a problem of developing for the PS3 though, as the two platforms apparently "both have enormous challenges."

This is a real kick in the teeth for PS3 owners. PS3s have been criticised for their high pricing, but a mandatory hard drive and Blu-ray drive soften the blow. But if the game has to be changed to accommodate the Xbox 360, then the extras on the PS3 are pretty worthless when it comes to playing games. It's bad for Sony, because it means that there's little point shelling out for a PS3. It’s a sort of vicious circle: Sony make a machine that’s expensive and has lots of complicated features, so it arrives late on the market and doesn’t have a huge user base. Next-gen development is an expensive proposition, so developers decide to release multiplatform games to try and make as much money back as possible. Then fewer people buy the PS3, because the same games are available for the PS3 and Xbox 360, and the Xbox 360 is cheaper.

Although PS3 owners are no strangers to games getting multiplatform releases. It’s going to be one of the biggest challenges for the PS3: how can Sony differentiate their console from the Xbox 360 when the same set of titles are available for both? Al wrote recently that the multiplatform approach could lead to compromises. It looks like it already has.

http://www.pspsps.tv/2007/05/gta_iv_get ... _down.html

[Pyro]

Amazing how something not so good for the 360 gets turned around and made into something bad for the PS3.

[Bethany]

Amazing how something not so good for the 360 gets turned around and made into something bad for the PS3.

Nah, what's amazing is how Dan Houser's comments are being twisted to make his comments mean something they don't.

A pro PS3 magazine asked the question of were the negatives of the 360 an issue developing the game, to which he replied one word. He then went on to say that both systems had their problems and they were working them out though. That's it.

He didn't ramble on about how he and his people liked one versus the other. He didn't say the PS3 version would be inferior in the end because it was being held back to 360 limitations. People looked at his comments and twisted them to their own cause.

Rock Star has until September to have the game ready for the October release. If they decide that the 360 version needs to have a 20G HDD to play it, so be it. I doubt too many 360 owners would complain, seeing how nearly all of them have the thing anyways. If they decide that the space on a DVD is too small to fit the data they need, they can either have a chunk downloaded and patched for the 360, or release two DVDs with one disc to copy data to the HDD instead of downloading it. Is all that annoying for a 360 user, some what yes. However, if they want the game I'm sure they'll do whatever.

If Rock Star decides they don't want to do either of those options, and instead it would be best to fit both games into specs based on the 360, well then that's their choice & right as a multi platform developer. PS3 users get nothing more than what the 360 users are getting. If the fact that the PS3 gets the same as the 360 bugs the PS3 owners, then they have no one to blame other than Sony for the long delays with hardware and development kits to the game studios.

[Elcura]

I've always thought that if you're gonna have a multiplatform release you should make each version work to the consoles strength. It's unfortunate because one side invariably loses out because devs seem to cater to one side more then the other (due to how games are made, but I can't blame them for that).

[Kenai]

I've always thought that if you're gonna have a multiplatform release you should make each version work to the consoles strength. It's unfortunate because one side invariably loses out because devs seem to cater to one side more then the other (due to how games are made, but I can't blame them for that).

It would be great if it worked like that. However, in 99% of multi-platform situations, they make the game for one specific system and then port it to the others. Game devs who release multi aren't usually interested in putting much extra features in for a particular system, the idea is usually just to get it out to as many people as possible with as little money involved as possible, and as you probably know, making a lot of notable, unique features for each system's version isn't really cheap, and often isn't profitable for the company in question either. The PS2 used to have the benefit of this last gen since most multis were made for it, ironic how the PS3 is likely going to suffer from multi-syndrome now. This could actually change at some point if a lot of companies start going multi with titles, and companies like Sony could actually pay game devs as incentive to make extra features I think, but it's not happening right now...

[Deejay]

I've always thought that if you're gonna have a multiplatform release you should make each version work to the consoles strength. It's unfortunate because one side invariably loses out because devs seem to cater to one side more then the other (due to how games are made, but I can't blame them for that).

It would be great if it worked like that. However, in 99% of multi-platform situations, they make the game for one specific system and then port it to the others. Game devs who release multi aren't usually interested in putting much extra features in for a particular system, the idea is usually just to get it out to as many people as possible with as little money involved as possible, and as you probably know, making a lot of notable, unique features for each system's version isn't really cheap, and often isn't profitable for the company in question either. The PS2 used to have the benefit of this last gen since most multis were made for it, ironic how the PS3 is likely going to suffer from multi-syndrome now. This could actually change at some point if a lot of companies start going multi with titles, and companies like Sony could actually pay game devs as incentive to make extra features I think, but it's not happening right now...

Actually, for games that were developed for PS2 and xbox, you could normally tell the differences. One example would be Driv3r: in the xbox version you could see the bullet holes in cars where you shot them. The PS2 version didn't even have bullet holes. Nowadays, since the gap between the systems is moreso with storage(if you can even call it a gap), I really dont think you'll be seeing these differences quite often. GTAIV just seems to be like that because of all the hype thats put around it. Crackdown, Saints Row, and Elder Scrolls all worked fine or 360, so i dont see how this title cant.

The only extra features that I can foresee for Sony is whatever they add with Home. This could in turn be cancelled out by Gamer points with M$. Sure they can have the downloadable content, but again, so can Microsoft...

[Kenai]

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I don't consider slight graphical improvements to be a huge deal, especially now, for reasons you said already, they are so close right now graphically. I was thinking like...when Soul Caliber 2 got released, every game got a different exclusive character, which I thought was kinda neat. I can't really think of any huge bonuses in other games, not unless they were remakes...

[Elcura]

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I don't consider slight graphical improvements to be a huge deal, especially now, for reasons you said already, they are so close right now graphically. I was thinking like...when Soul Caliber 2 got released, every game got a different exclusive character, which I thought was kinda neat. I can't really think of any huge bonuses in other games, not unless they were remakes...

I agree, graphics usually are made to fit the console, but graphics can only go so far. Gameplay/features unique to each console gives people choice and it's probably one of the only ways Sony can lose exclusives but still keep sales up. Of course, I dunno if Sony is the kind of company that will throw money at a problem until it goes away, but you never know.

[Exoduso]

Hey Deejay, your sig = win.

[Deejay]

Thanks lol, Vade posted them. Iunno where he found em though.. Your avatar is cool too.

[Semitry]

Too bad you 2 will have to get rid of them when the Warriors get swepted by the Jazz!

[Exoduso]

lawl... right.

In Davis we trust!

[Po]

Go Warriors

Wonder how many times S. Jackson will get thrown out in this series

back on topic, short snippet:

Gameplay/Innovation differences > Graphical Differences
(Sigma gets them both right)

[Mysterio]

http://kotaku.com/assets/resources/2007/05/dqboxart.jpg

[Stilgar]

not sure why you just posted that pic with no comment... hasn't that game been announced for a while? Am I missing some greater meaning here?

[Deejay]

Go Warriors

Wonder how many times S. Jackson will get thrown out in this series

back on topic, short snippet:

Gameplay/Innovation differences > Graphical Differences
(Sigma gets them both right)

lol Do tell me what is so innovative about 4 levels and a new playable character?