Wow, I just found out Downpour was released a few days ago from a meme, and I just attributed that to my lack of connection to the game's industry now, but seeing others who had no clue has me really taken back.
Jimquisition: Konami
- Thread starter Jimothy Sterling
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But I'm still aware that Capcom releases games and I have one or two of them in my collection and I could name several Capcom Franchises. The last Konami release I recognized was Metal Gear Solid 4. So there is clearly something wrong in their PR-department and in their development teams.Daystar Clarion said:
And that is really a shame because in my youth (the good old SNES days) a lot of memorable and fun games were released by this company (Konami that is).
Birds of Steel recently came out, almost no marketing behind it, and the game is fucking awesome (although it is kind of a niched market).
Review
Simulator gameplay (extremely immersive)
Review
Simulator gameplay (extremely immersive)
Its not that. They refuse to release games in the states despite threats of english patch and piracy. Canning games just because they're not fighters or involve zombies. Supporting SOPA and being proud of it. DRM on PSN excusive games. They're worse than Konami or Ubisoft in my opinion.Scyla said:
My big FU konami moment happend when I saw what you had to do to get the special edition 3ds. When I hear about the release of a snakeskine 3ds to be released with the snake eater 3d I had a week long erection only to have it go limp when I found out the many hoop you would have to jump thought to buy it.
If you did not hear what you would have had to do to be elejeble to get one was, one regeuster with konami, two sign up for a list drawing, three have your name be drawn at said drawing, four pay then FULL PRICE for the system PLUS GAME sold separately....... And then it was only going to be released in Japan anyway....... FUCK YOU KONAMI
If you did not hear what you would have had to do to be elejeble to get one was, one regeuster with konami, two sign up for a list drawing, three have your name be drawn at said drawing, four pay then FULL PRICE for the system PLUS GAME sold separately....... And then it was only going to be released in Japan anyway....... FUCK YOU KONAMI
Is the Castlevania series dead or are they going to continue the series on the 3DS? I haven't bought a Konami game since that multiplayer one on XBLA. It's fun if you like grinding and get with a friendly group of folks.
I don't know what's up with Konami and Capcom. Back in the day I thought they were great. Nowadays, not so much.
I don't know what's up with Konami and Capcom. Back in the day I thought they were great. Nowadays, not so much.
I think Konami's problems started years and years ago, consider the inexplicable decision to hand Silent Hill over to a bunch of third party devs (if there is a reason that someone knows of that Konami disbanded Team Silent, someone please enlighten me. I've never had any fucking clue why this happened to a seemingly critical and commercially successful franchise). The results have been uneven at best. The best thing to come out of the post team-silent Silent Hills was probably Shattered Memories, and it's fundamentally broken. I love that game, I really do, let me reiterate, single best thing to come out of non team-silent Silent Hill, and a huge aspect of that game is straight up balls.
Don't even get me started on Castlevania. After the tremendous amount of goodwill Konami received for Symphony what do they do? they stick the A list series in the handheld ghetto while giving us a bunch of half assed major console games. First I get why they're on handhelds, that's cool. Money and cost risk and blah blah, but the fact that every post Symphony 2d Castlevania has been gravedigging assets from it is sad. WOULD IT KILL YOU TO DO SOME NEW PIXEL ART KONAMI?!? Not to mention the fact that there's been very little (good) innovation since Symphony. They're almost all Symphony clones, and when they're not well they might want to be (you know I must say I enjoyed some of those games, Dawn of Sorrow was pretty great, but if you had to pick a Castlevania game to live on a desert island with you, would anybody honestly pick a post-Symphony game? Honestly? Doesn't that say something about the direction this franchise is going in?).
And that latest major console Castlevania wasn't too bad. Not what I want out the franchise but not too bad.
Don't even get me started on Castlevania. After the tremendous amount of goodwill Konami received for Symphony what do they do? they stick the A list series in the handheld ghetto while giving us a bunch of half assed major console games. First I get why they're on handhelds, that's cool. Money and cost risk and blah blah, but the fact that every post Symphony 2d Castlevania has been gravedigging assets from it is sad. WOULD IT KILL YOU TO DO SOME NEW PIXEL ART KONAMI?!? Not to mention the fact that there's been very little (good) innovation since Symphony. They're almost all Symphony clones, and when they're not well they might want to be (you know I must say I enjoyed some of those games, Dawn of Sorrow was pretty great, but if you had to pick a Castlevania game to live on a desert island with you, would anybody honestly pick a post-Symphony game? Honestly? Doesn't that say something about the direction this franchise is going in?).
And that latest major console Castlevania wasn't too bad. Not what I want out the franchise but not too bad.
I don't see a full crash, but I do see a lot of the publishers and developers going out of business. Activision and EA will survive on CoD and Sports titles alone. Valve will survive simply because they seem to know what they're doing. Bethesda seems to know what they're doing too.Scrustle said:
As for the rest of the developers and publishers, things are looking worse and worse. I've already completed my 2012 wish list for games. I don't see anything new listed as coming out that I want to play. Is that a bad sign for me, or a bad sign for devs and publishers?
The depressing part was the Silent Hill HD collection was supposed to be out months ago. 5 extra months to get it right and they still screwed up 11 year old games.
This would be a decent excuse for their failures, beyond this though what they are doing is pretty inexcusable.Griffolion said:
Holy crap! I completely forgot about Konami still existing. And good lord, how can they make soo many bad decisions and still be in business? I'm honestly baffled by all this.
Its a damn shame because I actually wanted to finally try out MGS for the first time only to have the same issue Jim had. It was released at the most horrid time and no store even had it.
Its a damn shame because I actually wanted to finally try out MGS for the first time only to have the same issue Jim had. It was released at the most horrid time and no store even had it.
This reminds me that I've been meaning to buy the original Silent Hill 2. Just dusted off my old PS2, and I think I'll get a few new[footnote]in the sense that I don't have them[/footnote] games for it. Maybe Second Sight? I heard that one was pretty good.
"Do one about Capcom!" was my second thought upon watching this.RaikuFA said:
"Do one about EA!" was my first. Sadly, there are people out there today who think EA isn't shit anymore. Yes, I just said that, and I'll say it again: I've heard from people who think EA isn't shit anymore.
But yeah, after my own personal EA rage wore off, my immediate thought was of Capcom and how shit they've been lately too.
Hell, the majority of the big retail release publisher section of the industry has gotten shit over the past few years. There's already been episodes about Nintendo and Ubisoft, today hit Konami, and already other people are in the comments hoping to see EA and Capcom get their turn because we all like Jim's special brand of pointing out all the shitty things these companies do.
Oh, I didn't even know that bit about Mega Man Legends for PSP being planned and then canned (Capcom's now excepted MO when it comes to anything Mega Man). And legal reasons for not being able to release them on PSN? I believe that bullshit about as much as I believe that story about how Mega Man Powered Up couldn't be put on PSN because it didn't work as a digital download: not at all (as far as MMPU goes, it was already available digitally on the Japanese PSN, so that was obviously BS).RaikuFA said:
I do think the Dead Rising 2 Case Zero bit is unfair though. It's not a paid demo, it's a standalone game. And it has its own free demo (just like all XBLA titles), so you can try it out for free. Off The Record though is dumb, since apparently they didn't even change the dialog so it matches things Frank would say. Frank never gives awful punny one liners in Dead Rising, but suddenly in Off the Record, he's spouting altered versions of all of Chuck's crappy puns? Why not just release a Frank skin for DR2, then? Oh, wait, because they couldn't charge $40 for that. Never mind. And the cheat code DLC, man that pisses me off.
And yeah, Mega Man Universe, Mega Man Legends 3, Ace Attorney Investigations 2, fuck you Capcom.
Two of my favorite franchises 
RIP Good Konami.
No Hideo Kojima and no Akira Yamaoka+Masahiro Ito equals bad Konami.
RIP Good Konami.No Hideo Kojima and no Akira Yamaoka+Masahiro Ito equals bad Konami.
Hmmm, well my first thought is that you really need to look at Konami's Japanese marketing. Never underestimate how racist the Japanese are and how much PR power a good old fashioned display of scorn towards the USA can merit. Once upon a time I was into reading translated Japanese periodicals for things like video games, and apparently US releases can actually reduce the value of a franchise int he eyes of the Japanese consumer who want things to be kept exclusively for them. Snubbing the US with movies like say releasing the "Final Fantasy X: International Edition" internationally to everyone except the US, or not releasing the final chapter of "Final Fantasy X" called "Final Mission" that answered the remaining questions and tied up the story outside of Japan at all can be popular moves... albiet that's Square Enix.
Going by what I've read, albiet a considerable amount of time ago, it's quite possible Komnami is keeping it's US involvement low-key for reasons of domestic marketing. Even if more money can be made from the US market, there is more to it than that when developers and publishers can be viewed as "sell outs" and "race traitors" for bringing something to the US at all. The vaguely insulting nature of their presentations could also be intentional, again you'd have to compare any similar events they have held in Japan to really get the big picture.
That said, on it's own, I have to agree with Jim that this does sound pretty ridiculous.
One thing I *WILL* say that I disagree with Jim on is how going up against something like "Modern Warfare 3" is a bad thing. In my opinion one of the problems with the gaming industry right now is that it engages in cartel behavior. It does things like coordinate release schedules to avoid direct competition and engages in coordinated pricing and price raises (such as when you saw the price of games rise from $50 to $60). As things stand now a game that costs a million bucks to develop, and one that costs a hundred million bucks to develop both go for $60 due to the gaming industry coordinating that.
In short the gaming industry doesn't directly compete inside of itself, at least not in the way it's supposed to. The idea being that direct competition forces companies to produce the best possible product for the lowest possible prices. Not doing this ultimatly explains a lot of why so many games being released are crap, and in such sorry state, there are no real concerns among the big companies of actually being outdone.
Doing things like refusing to go up against "Call Of Duty" are part of the problems with the industry, albiet what you need is big properties to do this. Instead they stagger releases so the big releases don't directly overlap with each other as much as possible so everyone can get as much money as possible.
It just so happens that this kind of behavior is illegal in the US, or it's supposed to be. It's just that the gaming industry has avoided notice, and/or nobody has decided to pursue it. This is very similar to things like gas companies coordinating to set prices which has lead to massive federal investigations. The same can be said of other cartels like those running diamonds (or other gems), gold, and similar things which have fallen under similar scrutiny in the past, albiet not as publically as has happened with the gas companies. Monopolies are illegal, but for all intents and purposes so are "guilds" or "cartels" that effectively create multi-business alliances towards the same end and simply divvy up the market. It's a complicated thing, and truthfully I expect within a decade or so we're going to see some legal action on this front, it's just that guys like Richard Blumenthal (Former Connecticut Attorney General) who seem to have touched on it and the whole issue of corruption in the gaming/media/electronic front have always had too much on their plate to go after it whole heartedly. It is going to happen though.... and really it's not going to be a bad thing. Konami trying to compete directly with a big release (stupidly or not given the scale of products) is one of the few things it's actually done right.
Going by what I've read, albiet a considerable amount of time ago, it's quite possible Komnami is keeping it's US involvement low-key for reasons of domestic marketing. Even if more money can be made from the US market, there is more to it than that when developers and publishers can be viewed as "sell outs" and "race traitors" for bringing something to the US at all. The vaguely insulting nature of their presentations could also be intentional, again you'd have to compare any similar events they have held in Japan to really get the big picture.
That said, on it's own, I have to agree with Jim that this does sound pretty ridiculous.
One thing I *WILL* say that I disagree with Jim on is how going up against something like "Modern Warfare 3" is a bad thing. In my opinion one of the problems with the gaming industry right now is that it engages in cartel behavior. It does things like coordinate release schedules to avoid direct competition and engages in coordinated pricing and price raises (such as when you saw the price of games rise from $50 to $60). As things stand now a game that costs a million bucks to develop, and one that costs a hundred million bucks to develop both go for $60 due to the gaming industry coordinating that.
In short the gaming industry doesn't directly compete inside of itself, at least not in the way it's supposed to. The idea being that direct competition forces companies to produce the best possible product for the lowest possible prices. Not doing this ultimatly explains a lot of why so many games being released are crap, and in such sorry state, there are no real concerns among the big companies of actually being outdone.
Doing things like refusing to go up against "Call Of Duty" are part of the problems with the industry, albiet what you need is big properties to do this. Instead they stagger releases so the big releases don't directly overlap with each other as much as possible so everyone can get as much money as possible.
It just so happens that this kind of behavior is illegal in the US, or it's supposed to be. It's just that the gaming industry has avoided notice, and/or nobody has decided to pursue it. This is very similar to things like gas companies coordinating to set prices which has lead to massive federal investigations. The same can be said of other cartels like those running diamonds (or other gems), gold, and similar things which have fallen under similar scrutiny in the past, albiet not as publically as has happened with the gas companies. Monopolies are illegal, but for all intents and purposes so are "guilds" or "cartels" that effectively create multi-business alliances towards the same end and simply divvy up the market. It's a complicated thing, and truthfully I expect within a decade or so we're going to see some legal action on this front, it's just that guys like Richard Blumenthal (Former Connecticut Attorney General) who seem to have touched on it and the whole issue of corruption in the gaming/media/electronic front have always had too much on their plate to go after it whole heartedly. It is going to happen though.... and really it's not going to be a bad thing. Konami trying to compete directly with a big release (stupidly or not given the scale of products) is one of the few things it's actually done right.