Jimquisition: Launch Splooge

deckai

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DVS BSTrD said:
4:12 Jim look out! there's a Ninja behind you!

Ask not what your Launch Line-up can do for you,
but what can you can do for your console's longterm viability.
Dammit, and here I thought I was the first one to notice "Asian"-Jim... and it's the first comment .....

Back on Topic:

Whenever I heard someone say, there are no games for the console I always thought they meant there are no games "worth playing" for the console.

I always considered the "worth playing" to be implied...

But yeah, for a strong line-up, quality is always more important than quantity.
 

hermes

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It happens a lot. Games are moved from "launch title" to "launch window" and no one bats an eye. Most of the examples I have are from Nintendo consoles (I don't think they are the only ones, just the ones I can remember).

Besides, Jim, attention span is the name of the game. How are you going to convince a kid in the holidays that they should focus on enjoying the games they have, because its good for the quality, instead on demanding far too many games for the little time they have to play them?

Also, launch time is the best time to accommodate your new games, if you are a publisher with access to it. Look at Lair, Red Steel or Dark Kingdom... none of those game would have sold a fraction of what they did if the market wasn't an uninhabited wasteland.
 

CyberMachinist

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I'll agree that it does sound like an ideal situation, if the quality games can at least last us most of a month until the next, but it won't work like that in RL, like someone said before me it's companies and shareholders that dictate how this works by their logic, and their logic is numbers justify the means, which is why we're in this situation to begin with.

That and it's pretty hard to make a good game with tech specs that people are still getting used to, maybe they could release them a bit earlier if they can, so Dev's have more time to make a good game(or atleast a decent one) but i don't think that will happen with the way things are going.

At times like this we could use a time machine so they can send us good games from the future.

or maybe they can try making smaller but addicting games so we have something to kill the time until they can get something going by next month, they could use some of last gen tech to help with that.
 

rembrandtqeinstein

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Launch means nothing. PS2 launch was TERRIBLE. Only SSX and maybe Dynasty Warriors 2, which were half game and half tech demos, saved it. It didn't get its "good" games until a year after launch (GTA3, Metal Gear Solid 2, FFX, ICO, etc).

And historically most of the best games are released at the end of a system cycle, not the beginning.
 

Hellfireboy

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The thing is that when gamers say, "(system x) has no games," they don't really mean that literally but figuratively. What they really mean is that there are no games worth playing. Unfortunately marketing people aren't the cleverest of folk and take the words at face value bragging about the quantity of games at launch. No gamer just wants something to play when they first grab their new system, they want something that they will enjoy playing. Having twenty games at launch is meaningless if you just put out twenty games that no one wants to play. If that's the case then, "you have no games."
 

Vicioussama

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You know what fixes this problem? BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY!! True Backwards Compatibility. I can see why Sony might have a problem with backwards compatibility for PS3 games, but why not PS2 and PS1? Those can easily be software emulated (hell, they already have them on PC and PS4 is basically a PC). But that's no excuse for MS which shouldn't have any real hardware problem running 360 or XBox games on the XBone. Backwards Compatibility would have made me buy a Vita asap. Some add on that could be connected to use UMDs? A REAL program to plug in your UMD and get a free digital download (without a stupid fee or having to "just buy it again on PSN" bs like the wanted).

Ya... I'm sorry, but the corporations create this problem without true backwards compatibility AS WELL as not having real good games on release. Sure they might have that one good game on release, but as Jim said, most games are ports or rushed (or both) and that causes a lot of problems. And ya, staggering releases so they are consistent good games coming up (say first week is one good game, second is another, etc). But they'd have to make sure that on release at least ONE good game for each major genre is covered. After all, not everyone likes the same genre of game.

I wonder if any console has opted to hold off releases until the developers of the games say they are done with the games... hmmm

rembrandtqeinstein said:
Launch means nothing. PS2 launch was TERRIBLE. Only SSX and maybe Dynasty Warriors 2, which were half game and half tech demos, saved it. It didn't get its "good" games until a year after launch (GTA3, Metal Gear Solid 2, FFX, ICO, etc).

And historically most of the best games are released at the end of a system cycle, not the beginning.
BLASPHEMY!! PS2 launch had:

Armored Core 2 (Agetec, Action)
DOA2: Hardcore (Tecmo, Fighting)
Dynasty Warriors 2 (Koei, Action)
ESPN International Track and Field (Konami, Sports)
ESPN X-Games Snowboarding (Konami, Sports)
Eternal Ring (Agetec, RPG)
Evergrace (Agetec, RPG)
FantaVision (SCEI, Puzzle)
Gun Griffon Blaze (Working Designs, Action)
Kessen (EA, Adventure)
Madden NFL 2001 (EA, Sports)
Midnight Club (Rockstar, Racing)
Moto GP (Namco, Racing)
NHL 2001 (EA, Sports)
Orphen (Activision, RPG)
Q-Ball Billiards Master (Take-Two Interactive, Simulation)
Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2 (Midway, Sports)
Ridge Racer V (Namco, Racing)
Silent Scope (Konami, Shooter)
Smuggler's Run (Rockstar, Racing-Adventure)
SSX (EA, Sports)
Street Fighter EX3 (Capcom, Fighting)
Summoner (THQ, RPG)
Swing Away (Paradise Golf in Japan) (EA, Sports)
Tekken Tag Tournament (Namco, fighting)
TimeSplitters (Eidos, First-Person Shooter)
Unreal Tournament (Infogrames, First-Person Shooter)
Wild Wild Racing (Interplay, Racing)
X-Squad (EA, Action)

Of those, at least AC2 and Tekken Tag were decent as was Dynasty Warriors 2 (all of these decent for the time mind you). Since you could choose 3 games with your PS3 of the release titles it was a pretty amazing deal. And let's not forget Dark Cloud came out shortly after the release. Dark Cloud was so great :)

I don't think PS2 had a "horrible launch" lol
 

Kenjitsuka

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You've always had a good case per Jimquisition, but I guess this week there was no good topic?
It'd be nice to spread it out, but consumers will splurge at the start.
A few months later the average gamer's wallet is STILL reeling from the 600+ dollar hit it took.

Kids get the console at Christmas with 1, max 2 games. They will not buy new ones for a long time, unless it's second hand...

So please, get the best line-up you can on day one, so everyone has choice.
Too bad 90% is shit... and 1-2 months of more dev time will not help, as they where just made to exploit the fact that there is zero reference and no real competition at launchday. These are mom and pop games, that the kid will hate, but the parents don't know that.
 

MB202

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"Too Late for Nintendo"? What's that supposed to mean? ...Well, I guess nobody I know, or people I talk to even know there's another Nintendo console, let alone that it's been released.
 

el_kabong

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This is one of the only videos wherein I fundamentally disagree with Mr. Sterling, if only because the opinion was presented in a very binary fashion. Having a strong launch line-up and having a continuous stream of good games are not exclusive. As consumers, we can demand to have both things. Demand is not a finite resource for consumers because we are the source of demand.
 

Maxtro

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WaitWHAT said:
It's, uh, good to see that Jim's really celebrating the repeal of DOMA in this video. Especially in some of the....images.
Yeah that was a bit excessive and I stopped watching halfway because of them.

*Insert ironic joke about how women must feel.*

Now excuse me while I stare at my avatar for a minute.
 

ConanThe3rd

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First off; You're looking a hell of a lot healthier these days, Jim. Maybe it's the haircut.

Second; at this point I've accepted that a year in is the proper launch window, when we end up geting the Super Mario 64's of the new console's life. For Example; I got the 3DS some time after Luigi's Mansion 2 came out (oh and a little game known as Animal Crossing: New Leaf otherwise known as "Oh Shit! Tom Nook has my eternal soul and won't let go and yet I'm ok with it because I'm Moé for Isabelle") I'm sure one day soon the Wii U will have it's Mario 64 as will the Xbone and PS4 (though I'm not betting hard on the Xbone because I'm sure it's going to be a PC Mario 64 too).
 

Deadagent

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Altough no one outright says it, when people say "X has No Games" they usually mean no games worth playing.
So you're basically adressing a non-issue.
 

Arawn

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There is another aspect of the launching titles one must consider aside from quantity and that is quality. Not just the way a game looks, but how much fun/enjoyment the purchaser will have. We can all admit games of late are usually conquered within hours of playing. How often has you purchased a game on release day, and when you get home there is already a FAQ posted? And even a casual game will tear through a single player campaign within a week if not less. I guess it's not much of a problem for the console as it means the person will need to buy another game that much sooner. Having alot of games isn't as bad as having games that don't occupy our time that long despite how pretty they may be rendered. That's why with most system launches I look for RPGs, but that genre has fallen off of late. Now there are action games with RPG elements. None the less the system exclusives may look less than promising, but there are some decent games that share both consoles. Watch_Dogs for one is something I'm looking forward to playing. While I understand why they've dumped backwards compatibility I don't really like it. Both systems seem like an upgrade rather than a new unit. The parts under the hood are similar enough to handle the old workload. But MS and Sony want to focus all of that on newer items. Again; I understand it, but just don't like it. Thankfully they're not completely abandoning the old systems, yet.
 

AWAR

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Please Jim, make a video that's not about the new consoles please.. pretty please
 

omgeveryone9

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So far, most of the games that I want to play on PS4 and Xbox 1 (or Xbone 1) can be played on PC. Assasins Creed, Watch Dogs, most of the F2P games, Elder Scrolls Online, Mad Max, Witcher 3, and lets not mention Battlefield and COD. The only one that is only available for consoles is the new Tom Clancy game, and even that for me is meh at best considering my hate of everything Tom Clancy except the first book he wrote.

Wait, Zoo Tycoon is coming to Xbox 1 but not on PC?! Well, looking at the logo it looks like another Simcity 2013 (aka it is gonna be so bad)
 

Atmos Duality

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This is a problem with no real solution.

Console launches have been shit for a long long time now.
Why? For one thing, Developers need to become acclimated to the new platform; each new step brings new tech and even having the devkit for a solid year in advance, there's no way a company is going to know its ins and outs by launch. (Their skill levels will definitely not compare well to the previous console generation. Which is why we were still seeing good PS2 games all the way through 2008.)

Second, no developer publisher is going to support a system that's selling poorly in the long run (hello WiiU) so they probably aren't going to stagger their releases for the first year.
Assuming a company is going to support a system at all, it's easier to put their first game onto the system at launch and then watch the response, see what people liked on launch, what they didn't and ready round 2 based on how well the system held up. Or to just put their first game into the Round 2 lineup.

Staggering releases seems logical to the consumer, but this flies in the face of everything a blockbuster-centric publisher does (and right now, that's all the big players).

Summarily, the worse the company performs, the more conservative they become.
It's why AAA games are becoming increasingly homogenized and "safe" as they try as hard as they can to polish and market their games or establish new schemes that integrates "online" as some magical catch-all enhancer that ultimately does fuck-all for the experience...y'know, instead of making better gameplay.

(As for staggered releases in general, even in the best of times, big game launches mostly occur in bursts.
I can't be the only one who notices this.

Most launches are centered on the Christmas Rush in Sept-December, then a much smaller rush in March-Late May with a lot of nothing in between. Maybe 1 or 2 big games over the summer and in late winter. MAYBE.)

Of course, there was a feature called "Backwards compatibility" that alleviated some of those growing pains but including that is too expensive for the console manufacturers to provide now (as Sony learned) unless it's planned for or on hilariously obsolete (cheaper) hardware (like the Wii and WiiU).
 

Dragonbums

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MB202 said:
"Too Late for Nintendo"? What's that supposed to mean? ...Well, I guess nobody I know, or people I talk to even know there's another Nintendo console, let alone that it's been released.
That confused me too.
Last time I checked, the 3DS had not one, but two years of no games, and now nobody is saying the 3DS has no games.
If a handheld can last that long with the titles and still pick up speed, so can the WiiU.