Posts by Izuno

No not Mackey! And he just got that apartment across the street!

I played it on the show floor at E3 last year. It was kinda fun in an arcadey way as Erratic said. I'll check out the beta on XBL. Thanks for posting about it.

MMO audience share was way off for some games, accurate for others.

Assumptions depending on dollar volume of particular business models in Asia were out of date.

Little things like that. On the whole not a big deal.

Overall Ibis should be commended for bringing all that together in one deck, assuming you are a portfolio manager or hedge fund investor type trying to make sense of the increasing complexity of this business. Honestly I could not have built that deck but M&A finance is not my area of expertise anyway.

A lot went into that deck and it was obviously targeted at the investment community as it had quite a bit of video games M&A Finance 101 in it. Some of the content was spot on and very insightful, yet some of it was actually out of date and very inaccurate. I actually saw this deck already and honestly I didn't have have time yet to go read every slide thoroughly. Interestingly the main company I partner with in my business was listed as a source for one of the slides.

Overall verdict: :roll: + +

He is the new Eric Cartman of video game related litigation.

I'll wait for ingame footage, tyvm.

Quote from Mazy

Agreed. Can't believe they're the first to do that, seems so obvious when you think about it. Now you can actually focus on whats going on, while interacting.

That was the first thing I noticed about the QTE's and am glad someone finally did that. This says that the designers got in the mind of gamers at an "impulse" level, as in, you want the played to hit square, so have the square prompt be on the left etc. They see left and can think with their bodies which I believe is easier to get used to and ends up reducing response time.

In a way, I had always hoped there would be all these innovative Wii games that would have similar [screen prompt] -->[brain process] --> [physical gesture with Wii controls] that would connect gamers closer to their on screen avatars in games, but it just never happened. But I digress.

Well, work done for the day. Time for more GoW3 playing...

Played first 45 minutes of the game. Totally sick and epic. A must buy for any PS3 owner.

If you liked the first 2 games and have not bought a PS3 yet, this is a good reason to buy it.

Finally looking into this game and it actually looks fun, but maybe I think that because I liked Stalker so much and I'm in the mood for something that reminds me of it. Anyway, it came out today (at least in the US) but so did God of War 3 for PS3. Choices...

So the two fired execs signed with a talent agency... http://www.industrygamers.com/news/mode ... ts-agency/

Discuss.

I think it is only a matter of time before current IW staff gets poached given how it is basically impossible to enforce non-compete clauses in California based on residents' right to work. It is a question of when, not if. I just hope we get new good games out of whatever they do next.

E3 demo last year on the floor of the Sony booth was pretty good. I got to play it upstairs in the booth but I think it was actually a different and not quite as spectacular section of the game. Still good though. I haven't tried the new demo yet but will later tonight.

However...I am very happy that Sony came up with a good Kevin Butler TV spot for it. It doesn't show much of the game, but the ad is still funny.

Anyway, now that it is on PSN I finally was able to finish it all the way through. Overall I rate it as excellent for a brief demo and I think it shows off PS3 graphics well and somewhat innovative gameplay thinking for the GoW series, even if the basics are essentially the same. So another impressive 1st party game from Sony.

Royalties at internal game studios at most major publishers work like this:

1) Release a game, which by default is either in calendar Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4. (Jan 1 to Mar 31 = Q1, Apr 1 to Jun 30 = Q2, etc)

2) At the end of the following quarter after the game releases, studio employees get whatever royalties they earned against previous quarter sales according to the contract or royalties agreement.

In the case of MW2, the game released around Nov 10, 2009..and it sold millions and millions of copies world wide between Nov and Dec 31, 2009. After Dec 31, Activision's royalty department calculates how much royalties IW staff should get. Those royalties for Q4 2009 would normally be paid at the end of Q1 2010 which is March 31 or April 1 depending on the fine print.

Assuming this is still how Activision does it (fairly safe assumption) we're still in royalty limbo until the end of March. Just have to wait and see what happens.

Er...ya...basically what KFS said.

Great new responses. Thanks.

Interesting that on Xbox 360 dealing with preset purchase quantities of MS points is a bit of a deterrent from buying DLC (or anything else) on XBL. But if we can get past that, the next issue is quantity of game value for the dollar.

Would other people agree that for RPG DLC/expansions that cost $10, you really need at least 10 hours of new gameplay at hopefully the same quality as the original game? Would you pay $5 for 4 to 6 hours of new gameplay (assuming you were still interested in the game etc.)? Another way to ask this is how much content does DLC need to have to be worth $10?

Thanks for continuing feedback.

Some general conclusions I'm coming to between responses here and some other discussions I've been having:

- Free DLC is take or leave it. If it's good people will grab it. If it sucks it's a waste of time.

- Paying for weapons, armor and minor stuff isn't generally worth $10 even if a bunch of it is jammed together because it's mostly just window dressing

- If said minor DLC was cheaper...ie only a dollar to add a weapons pack that actually made the game more fun and added replayability, it might warrant a purchase

- XBL still has the issue of requiring Microsoft points that many people don't like compared to buying with direct credit card on PSN, even if they still really like their Xbox 360 in general

- Larger RPG DLC packs consisting of new areas/quests/missions that have been typically priced at $10 (in US anyway) are likely to be purchased to keep the experience going mainly if you loved the original game and the DLC came out while you still care about it. There is a chance such worthy non-free DLC might bring back lapsed players, but you will probably get more people to buy it if it comes out closer to the original game release (like 1 to 3 months) or within 1 to 3 months of last worth non-free DLC.

(Zomg there's more? )

As for expansion packs:

- Traditionally only PC RPGs had expansions and like anything else fans would buy if the content was really good. Duh!

- Console RPGs didn't really have expansions until 360/PS3 era. Shivering Isles was first true console (and PC) expansion pack but it wasn't DLC

- Fallout 3 has had most expansions but they were all released as DLC as well, then some were released in bundled retail packs.

- By now RPG DLC and expansion packs are kind of the same, meaning that rather than make big expansions developers are making "sorta big" DLC packs that hopefully are worth the $10 bucks and may also get sold at retail. However, Dragon Age Awakenings will be a true expansion priced at $40 (as opposed to $60 for Dragon Age) and be significantly larger than the typical DLC.

Any more opinions?

Very interesting feedback so far. Thanks.

I've been getting the feeling that paying for little bits of DLC such player skins, weapons or even new squad mates in games like Dragon Age or Mass Effect 2 aren't actually worth paying in most cases.

I haven't downloaded anything for Mass Effect 2 yet myself, even though it is free since I got a new copy of the game and it includes the free Cerberus Network card code in the packaging. Obviously if I didn't have that I'd have to pay the $15 (in the US anyway) to get access, then I assume I'd get all the DLC for "free".

dux - The idea of being able to use achievement points to get more free DLC is interesting...as in rewarding fan loyalty. Thanks for bringing that up.

sentura - I've heard that exact sentiment from other people I've spoken with this, for RPGs anyway. High quality expansion packs are more likely to be worth the money than a $10 DLC pack that includes some new content. As for the 6-9 after the initial game ships, I'm tending to think gamers won't wait as long for expansions anymore unless the original game was freaking awesome and the expansion has that potential as well. My favorite expansion packs of all time regardless of genre were HL: OP4 and Warcraft 3: Frozen Throne and if I recall those both took at least a year to come out after their respective original games? My point is that today the time window probably needs to be shorter than that.

Jetsetlemming - does that include for shooter games? ie...ever buy a mappack for a Call of Duty game or other shooter? Those seem to be relatively popular DLCs...almost to the point of being mini expansions though I would definitely not classify them as true expansions.

Speaking of that...these days the RPGs seem to have more expansion packs while shooter games tend to have more DLC/map-packs for multiplayer.

I'm doing some research on downloadable content & expansion packs for PC/console RPGs like Fallout 3, Mass Effect 1&2, Dragon Age, Oblivion, etc. A lot of DLC is becoming free at launch if you purchase a new copy of the game, such as what EA has done with Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2. Of course, not all RPG DLC is free, and for sure major expansion packs sold at retail are not free.

A few questions. If you play RPGs feel free to answer as much or as little as you want:

- Does the DLC for these RPGs actually interest you?

- Would new DLC bring you back to play the game if you beat it already or otherwise stopped playing it?

- How long after a game releases would you still be interested in DLC?

- Have you/do you buy the expansion packs to RPGs? How long after the original game releases would you want a major expansion pack to be released?

Thanks!

Here is the exact quote from that SEC filing, under "Commitments and Contingencies" section on page F-50 just in case ye olde curiositee be thy biting thoust:

Quote

In November 2009, the Company released Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, a game developed by one of the Company's wholly-owned studios, Infinity Ward. As noted above, Modern Warfare 2 was the best selling console title in the U.S. and Europe in 2009. Consistent with past practice, the Company intends to release a Call of Duty game in 2010 developed by another wholly-owned studio. The Company is concluding an internal human resources inquiry into breaches of contract and insubordination by two senior employees at Infinity Ward. This matter is expected to involve the departure of key personnel and litigation. At present, the Company does not expect this matter to have a material impact on the Company.

Sounds pretty real.

If publicity stunt then they better have something awesome up their sleeves.

Assuming for real then:

Wow. Jason is one of the best engineering leads I have ever met in this industry. Very focused, driven guy who produces results. Same with Vince, except he is more COO/producer then code lead. Very curious what happened and what will happen with the crew IW.

Composite...I doubt you can say but I know we would all love an update. Hope you guys are hanging in there.

All software companies need to implement an achievement system for their products so that when you do something you've never done before (that is hopefully productive and does not involve system crashes) you get an achievement. For example, when you create a pivot table in Excel you get an achievement.

Ok maybe unrealistic but in terms of health care there is a book I read last year called "TH3 NUM3RATI" that features a section on implementing some dubious big brother monitoring systems into people's homes to more accurately track medical data on a daily/hourly/minutebyminute basis as opposed to annual checkups that tell doctors nothing without overall context of a patient's life in the year since the last checkup.

Speaking of run-on sentences...

...you could implement a health and wellness achievement system where your activities are tracked and you get achievement points for exercise and "contra" achievements for engaging in activities like smoking. The best part is there is absolutely no chance of privacy rights being violated (wait...that doesn't sound right ) and it will solve this nagging healthcare debate in the US.

[Blocked Image: https://migrationtest.mapcore.org/public/style_emoticons/default/mapcore_smilies/emot_shakehead.gif]

On topic Darksiders:

Just to be clear Bayonetta was a Sega game. Darksiders actually did 300k units on 360+PS3 in first NPD month (US only, obviously) while Bay did about 165k (360+PS3)...and the both released on the same day. Bay had meta/GR scores in the upper 80s while DS was in the lower 80s. So it's not like Bayonetta was a turd of a game but clearly it did not resonate the way DI did (kudos to THQ on that).

Slightly offtopic on Dante's Inferno and EA:

AoT40thD seemed to underperform in its launch month while, coming no where close to what the original game did in its launch month despite supposedly improving a lot of things. Hmm..

DI looks to be headed in the same direction. I still think releasing on the same day as Bioshock 2, even though that is a shooter game, hurt DI.

While no publisher gets everything right, EA is becoming a real mixed bag recently with excellent products like Mass Effect 2 and FIFA 10 contrasted against AoT40 and DI. Next test is Bad Company 2 due out in early March...though this seems to be clearly going after the MW2 crowd so it better bring something special to the party.

Oh yeah we were talking about Darksiders...