Zero Punctuation: The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

KDR_11k

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I do enjoy Nintendo's games because they tend to be extremely well made but it's quite odd that Nintendo's solution to the old stuff not working is to double down on making the old stuff. The Mario 2D platformer isn't selling the console? Maybe if we make a Donkey Kong 2D platformer or a Yoshi 2D platformer or a Kirby 2D platformer... The solution to Wii owners not upgrading to the Wii U probably isn't to give them games that are fairly similar to what they can already play on their Wii.

Nintendo's failure to use the gamepad as something worthwhile also undermines the system's value (as the gamepad is the most expensive part) and with a part of the audience using it only for off-TV play it seems like they're pretty much fucked. Off-TV play doesn't really warrant having the pad in every box as not all Wii Us will be connected to a shared TV. Games that properly use it would but then again you already have the off-TVers demanding that every game be playable with just the gamepad which would undermine the two screen nature of the thing.

The system name (that makes casuals think it's just a new controller for the Wii and hardcores think that it's just another casual machine) and general marketing problems are a major contributor too.

Dunno what they can do now, I'd say they have to wait it out, keep the Wii U audience entertained to maintain consumer trust and learn from their mistakes for the next console. Their main objective now should be maintaining their reputation so that the next console doesn't launch with people distrusting it.

EDIT: As for Zelda I wish Nintendo would stop requiring that it always have the same story and structure. Look, the story of most of these 8-bit era franchises was never strong or worthwhile, Link's Awakening is considered one of the stronger Zeldas, why do mainline Zelda titles still have to have the same story every time? I'm getting tired of Ganon and Zelda (never cared for Link at all but like most Nintendo characters he's just a two legged thing that responds to controller input) even though I like the Zelda formula itself. Same goes for the item selection, it's far more interesting to find new mechanisms for defeating obstacles than to do the same thing we've done hundreds of times before. This goes for the Metroid powerup selection too.

Oh and get rid of Sakamoto, if he wants Samus as his waifu then get him a body pillow, don't have him wank all over the games you want us to buy.
 

Nixou

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It took me the majority of that video to realize that he had stopped reviewing the game....

The Escapist pays Yahtzee for his Aggressively Blasé Brit schtick: what did you expect? A video where he says: "Nintendo competently made a game built around deliberate structuring choices I respectfully disagree with."?

***

I don't think the WiiU's touch screen controller is any more forced than the Kinect and the touch pad on the XBone and PS4

It's not: it's just the excuse used by third party developers, because they somehow became convinced that candidly saying:
-- We want to play with the shinier toy that allows us to put moar polygons on screen
-- We remember the bullies Nintendo were during the 80s/90s and we don't want to deal with them ever again
-- We're going to have to compete with Nintendo's own first party titles and they're going to crush us saleswise on their home turf anyway.
-- Our target audience is the specific group of middle-class nerds technically literate enough to be turned on but tech porn but neither wealthy enough to buy a powerful computer nor skilled enough to build one themselves
doesn't cut it.

***

Gave up on the 3D gimmick

Funny how the last two games -to name only these- I bought on the console -ALBW and Bravely Default- both look spectacular in 3D.
They never gave up on the 3D: it was always optional, something that sufficiently skilled developing teams could use to make their games better looking. But people started pretending that Nintendo was shoving 3D down their throats, because, you know, faked outrage is so much fun when it's done in politics, why not doing it also in conversations concerning toys?
 

Strazdas

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Ah, i see Yatzee keeps mentioning turbotax. Has he finally joined the master race? How many taxes per second can your PC do yatzee?

Thanatos2k said:
See, it's almost like there's two Nintendos. The Handheld Nintendo which makes great games, great hardware, and knows what its doing.
console division and handheld division dont communicate with eacother? wouldnt be the first time.

Xman490 said:
I just realized: Yahtzee dislikes Nintendo games not because they are inherently bad, but because he does not think on the same "wavelength" as us Nintendo fans. We grew up with The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Super Mario Bros 3 (or in my case, their Nintendo 64 evolutions), while he grew up with PCs with adventure games like Fantasy World Dizzy.

Yahtzee is reluctant to write-off the streamlined and unsurprising adventure games of today because of a fondness of that genre's past, sort-of like I think Super Mario 3D World is GOTY 2013 because I'm fond of the Mario games that led up to it. Both of us dismiss A Link Between Worlds because neither of us have grown up with SNES Zelda. Meanwhile, the part of the fanbase that is older than me loves its guts out and has fallen in love with the 3DS.
so, basically, massive nostalgia bias?

MoltenSilver said:
Wait, I should probably clarify that:
A GOOD Metroid game.
As Jim eqlequently pointed out during the Escapist expo "Metroid is not a system seller. only core fans care"

VG_Addict said:
Is it just me, or have the last few reviews just been Yahtzee getting on his soapbox and criticizing the next generation of consoles? This review, Knack, Killzone, and Ryse.
Criticizing atrociuos "consoles" for thier attrociuosness? you dont say....

Blaine Houle said:
But then there is the realization that there is... well... more to the hand held market. We don't include the various apple products. You know, the Iphone and Ipad. Those are pretty much portable gaming. They move tons. Android phones and tablets? Tons. That is portable gaming.
there was a billion smartphone sold last year. thats 1 billion install base you got there. mobile gaming revenue and profits have exceeded that of any other gaming couple years ago and continue being in the lead. 3DS got nothing on android or ifauxes.
 

Nazulu

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Ugh, Nintendo's WiiU is the only console I would consider buying, if there was anything I wanted on it, and it's for those very reasons you said Yahtzee. Including I can't even get used to the gamepad because I've handled so much better controllers before, but I didn't think you could still call the gamepad 'forced' when they have an option for a normal controller. Guess I'll need to research that more.

Nintendo doesn't make games like they used to. They use pretty much the same concepts and names but my problem is they just look far more bland, so nothing appeals to me. Frankly, I don't believe they have any real talented designers there anymore and the only way they're going to make a come back is to think of another gimmick that can sell. I can't see any of these devs making a come back, I just can't see it anymore.
 

tikalal

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Nazulu said:
Nintendo doesn't make games like they used to. They use pretty much the same concepts and names but my problem is they just look far more bland, so nothing appeals to me. Frankly, I don't believe they have any real talented designers there anymore and the only way they're going to make a come back is to think of another gimmick that can sell. I can't see any of these devs making a come back, I just can't see it anymore.
I agree with you 100%! It's all about the developers. Technology is secondary to developer talent, finance and autonomy. But the ADHD industry seems obsessed with technology gimmicks and unable to hone in on that fact.
 

Alarien

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Xman490 said:
I just realized: Yahtzee dislikes Nintendo games not because they are inherently bad, but because he does not think on the same "wavelength" as us Nintendo fans. We grew up with The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Super Mario Bros 3 (or in my case, their Nintendo 64 evolutions), while he grew up with PCs with adventure games like Fantasy World Dizzy.

Yahtzee is reluctant to write-off the streamlined and unsurprising adventure games of today because of a fondness of that genre's past, sort-of like I think Super Mario 3D World is GOTY 2013 because I'm fond of the Mario games that led up to it. Both of us dismiss A Link Between Worlds because neither of us have grown up with SNES Zelda. Meanwhile, the part of the fanbase that is older than me loves its guts out and has fallen in love with the 3DS.
Actually, as a gamer who is about the same age as real gaming, I disagree with just about everything you said. I grew up on the Atari 2600 and was elated with the NES and it's first iterations of Mario, Zelda, Metroid and their SNES follow ups. However, I am also an all around gamer, with most of my focus now on the PC because of a lot of the points Yahtzee has been making for the recent past.

Consoles, these days, have forgotten that they are supposed to be gaming consoles. The typical advantage of the console platform being:

1) Cheaper than a PC
2) Less technical knowledge as an entry requirement
3) Completed and polished games
4) Instant gaming access (as opposed to downloads, patches, tweaking, etc)
5) Did I mention cheaper than PC and completed/polished games?

The Xbone and PS4 are not even on my current list of "wants" simply because they are outrageously priced wannabe "do everything in the living room" machines. Currently, I have my travel laptop (a pretty powerful desktop replacement I use on business trips) hooked up via HDMI to my receiver in my living room that can do all of that just fine. Why would I spend $500 for another machine to do that? I want to pay $200-$250 for a dedicated console, at most. Oh, and let's not forget that, unless you live off the used market, console games are more expensive than PC games, considering Steam's regular sales.

This is why the WiiU can be approached as a last bastion. I think, like Yahtzee, that the WiiU still remembers it's a gaming console, for many of the reasons listed above. That's great.

What's not great is that Nintendo has basically languished for about 20 years. What do we get from a Nintendo system? We get Mario, Zelda, Matroid, Kirby, a Mario Kart, a Smash Brothers... What did we get 20 years ago? What did we get 27 years ago? A Mario, a Zelda, a Metroid (yeah, the others I mentioned came slightly later).

I just can't be bothered with Mario and Zelda anymore. I just don't care, for the same reasons that after 13 iterations of Final Fantasy, I just really can't be bothered there anymore. They feel stale... because they are stale.

Nintendo has really done great in the past coming up with new IP's, but when was the last one? When was the last one we cared about? That's what they need to focus on, and what I think Yahtzee was getting at. I agree. Nintendo stands in the sole position of making a console that still purports to be a console. If they can get back to the games, and make new, interesting, and fresh ones (or even freshen up the god-awfully stale formula of the existing ones), then they stand a chance at really coming back and putting the boot down on both Sony and Microsoft.
 

UltraPic

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The_Kodu said:
Honesty Yahtzee didn't need to make a The West Midlands model so accurate. For those who don't know there's a lot of flooding here in the UK at the moment so there are quite a few places actually underwater.
He didn't, the sign clearly says Coventry, which is deep in the east midlands last time I looked :D.
 

immortalfrieza

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The reason the Wii U is failing while the Wii succeeded is it doesn't have the advantages that the Wii did. When the console war started the X360 was a failure prone piece of garbage that had the tenancy to turn into a useless brick at any moment and was more expensive than the Wii, while the PS3 was monstrously more expensive than either while lacking the technical advantage to make up for it. When the Wii came out it was a cheaper and more reliable console than it's competitors, it also had a strong starting lineup, as a result despite being a much more inferior machine than either it ended up outselling them. However, with the Wii U it's not only still inferior to it's competitors in technical specs, the price gap between it and them is nowhere near as high as it used to be, and this is why it's failing. The lack of many particularly good games in it's lineup is only just another failure on their part.
 

ToastyMozart

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Strazdas said:
there was a billion smartphone sold last year. thats 1 billion install base you got there. mobile gaming revenue and profits have exceeded that of any other gaming couple years ago and continue being in the lead. 3DS got nothing on android or ifauxes.
The problem is that comparing sales of Phones and Tablets to the 3DS sales is like comparing sales figures between the XBO/PS4 and Windows 7 (except imagine that the consoles had almost nothing but horrible "games"). It's not really a fair comparison, since gaming isn't the primary use for them.
Also most of the cash made on phone gaming is made via microtransactions. Fuck microtransactions.


Strazdas said:
How many taxes per second can your PC do yatzee?
I'm managing somewhere around 550 KTx/s myself, but I'm still tweaking the .BAT to hopefully edge me over that 600 mark ;)
 

ToastyMozart

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immortalfrieza said:
The reason the Wii U is failing while the Wii succeeded is it doesn't have the advantages that the Wii did. When the console war started the X360 was a failure prone piece of garbage that had the tenancy to turn into a useless brick at any moment and was more expensive than the Wii, while the PS3 was monstrously more expensive than either while lacking the technical advantage to make up for it. When the Wii came out it was a cheaper and more reliable console than it's competitors, it also had a strong starting lineup, as a result despite being a much more inferior machine than either it ended up outselling them. However, with the Wii U it's not only still inferior to it's competitors in technical specs, the price gap between it and them is nowhere near as high as it used to be, and this is why it's failing. The lack of many particularly good games in it's lineup is only just another failure on their part.
Additionally, the Wii managed to catch the attention of people who wouldn't game much otherwise, and due to that lack of investment, are less inclined to upgrade.

Combine that with a somewhat unclear advertising campaign (I've had to explain that the WiiU isn't just the controller dozens of times), and they're going to have a hard time attracting the members of that demographic who didn't really dig in hard to the idea.
 

Nazulu

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tikalal said:
Nazulu said:
Nintendo doesn't make games like they used to. They use pretty much the same concepts and names but my problem is they just look far more bland, so nothing appeals to me. Frankly, I don't believe they have any real talented designers there anymore and the only way they're going to make a come back is to think of another gimmick that can sell. I can't see any of these devs making a come back, I just can't see it anymore.
I agree with you 100%! It's all about the developers. Technology is secondary to developer talent, finance and autonomy. But the ADHD industry seems obsessed with technology gimmicks and unable to hone in on that fact.
I don't know about that. I know what I like, but what seems to sell the most appears to be nearly the opposite to my interests. For example; I reckon the Gamecube is an incredible gaming machine with some of Nintendo's best games ever TO BEHOLD BY US MORTALS!! However, it didn't sell that well unfortunately. I was looking for answers back then and still found fuck all. I was hoping it was because it was competing against the legendary PS2 and it's big ass library, or maybe it's more to do with that it just had more types of games.

Either way, I'd be lying if I said I knew what made something popular, but I still believe they should get all the crazy developers who really want to make things more interesting and taking new turns building up everything, instead of just retreading old franchises in a more boring way.
 

Elvis Starburst

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MoltenSilver said:
While I think all the points Yahtzee brought up were valid there's one he said that really sticks out bigger over the others: Games. This console will recover just fine if it finds its killer app. If a new Metroid game came out I would buy that thing tomorrow.

Wait, I should probably clarify that:
A GOOD Metroid game.

It's a sad day that I have to be specific with that qualifier relating to Metroid, but Team Ninja just had to go and ruin it for everyone.
Problem is that Team Ninja only handled the gameplay and aesthetics. Nintendo did the whole story BS

OT: Yup, I was lost too. Oh well, till next week!
 

Arnoxthe1

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You forgot one thing though, Yahtzee. The Wii U is running on seventh gen. hardware and, you know, a lot of game devs and publishers kind of moved on from that party a while ago.
 

Strazdas

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Hutzpah Chicken said:
Though they still make a great deal of profits, I expect Nintendo will go the way of Atari within the next decade.
Nintendo has actually suffered a financial loss this in 2013.


NuclearKangaroo said:
its like, after consoles reached their peak with the PS2, it all went downhill pretty damn fast
if you look at sales, the 7the generation (xbox 360, PS3, Wii) had sales around that of 5the generation, while the 6th generaion (PS2, Xbox, forgot then intendo equivalent) was the peak with much more sales. in fact, last gene consoels were the first generation where sales DIDNT increase. now its too earnly to tell about current gen consoles, buti t does feel like consoles have went over their peak.

Kyle Davis said:
Another blow to non PC gamer? You know not all of us have fun modding the machine or are use to the keyboard/mouse setup.
and you dont have to do either on PC. you can buy a PC that is prebuilt for a bit extra that you dont need to mod. there are programs that keep all your stuff up to date automatically, and you can use any controller you want too.

EyeReaper said:
I think Yahtzee doesn't understand how amazing the gamepad is because he lives alone. It's a family oriented thing really. You want to play Ducktales, your brother needs to catch up on Hunter x Hunter, both can happen at once! I think it's genius really.
you know, this can also be done.... with your phone.

gamegod25 said:
So I'm guessing he couldn't find anything really wrong with the game to nitpick besides the fact that its very same-y from previous games. That and maybe he actually enjoyed it but didn't want to admit it.
ah the good old non-argument of you actually enjoyed you just dont know it.

ToastyMozart said:
I'd say the reason most people don't include smartphones and tablets in handheld gaming comparisons is because they simply aren't built around gaming. It's more of an afterthought or feature then the purpose, and I don't think I'm alone when I say that the best gaming experiences I had on an iDevice was either one of SquareEnix's games or Capcom's port of Pheonix Wright 1.

We generally don't compare sales figures for the same reason we don't (well, most people don't) compare console numbers with the sales figures of Windows 7: most people don't buy it for the purpose of gaming.
However the numbers tell a different story. mobile gaming has both more revenue and more profits than all other gaming, combined. so a heck of a lot people play games on mobiles. this is why even the old giants liek EA is pushing for mobile this much - theres a lot of profits to be had there. Granted, not everyone buys phones for games, but plenty of people play games on it, and with 1 billion isntall based[footnote]In fact, much higher. 1 billion was sold in 2013 alone, but for the purpose of comparison we imagine that old smartphones (like mine) dont play games (that is false)[/footnote] (compared to over 100 times lower install base the current consoles have) you still get a lot of players.

And we actually DO compare console numbers to PC hardware sales. The problem is that nowadays building a PC is so easy its like playing a lego and sales of PC components dont get counted it, so PC gamers get heavily underrepresented. As well as is thep roblem with steams inability to comprehend meaning of transperency and hiding even such things as sales numbers.

ToastyMozart said:
The problem is that comparing sales of Phones and Tablets to the 3DS sales is like comparing sales figures between the XBO/PS4 and Windows 7 (except imagine that the consoles had almost nothing but horrible "games"). It's not really a fair comparison, since gaming isn't the primary use for them.
Also most of the cash made on phone gaming is made via microtransactions. Fuck microtransactions.


Strazdas said:
How many taxes per second can your PC do yatzee?
I'm managing somewhere around 550 KTx/s myself, but I'm still tweaking the .BAT to hopefully edge me over that 600 mark ;)
ToastyMozart said:
The problem is that comparing sales of Phones and Tablets to the 3DS sales is like comparing sales figures between the XBO/PS4 and Windows 7 (except imagine that the consoles had almost nothing but horrible "games"). It's not really a fair comparison, since gaming isn't the primary use for them.
Also most of the cash made on phone gaming is made via microtransactions. Fuck microtransactions.
i adressed the sales comparison in my other reply to you in same post, so i wont repeat myself. Yes, a lot of phone gaming cash is made via microtransactions, and when said microtransactions are gamebreaking i dont like them just as much, however that is irrelevant. what the companies care is money. and as long as there are plenty of people willnig to spend 880 dollars (im not kidding) on a game mobile will rule the market.

ToastyMozart said:
Strazdas said:
How many taxes per second can your PC do yatzee?
I'm managing somewhere around 550 KTx/s myself, but I'm still tweaking the .BAT to hopefully edge me over that 600 mark ;)
Im jelous, my old machine can only do 11 turbotaxes per second, i need a new GPU!
 

Batou667

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McMarbles said:
Yes... why on Earth would should we expect a Zelda review to actually [sneery Yahtzee voice] REVIEW ZELDA.
I think the point was that, in the absence of any notable innovations or flaws, the best he'd be able to say is "Yup, it's a Zelda game" - and by this point, even somebody who's never actually played a Zelda game knows what that means: an inoffensively pleasant but not groundbreaking mix of exploration, fighting, dungeons, hub-based world, mute protagonist must save the princess because reasons, get periodically given a new gadget to fill a gameplay need that didn't exist prior to being given the gadget, Ganon, bomb some dodongos, eat an Octorock, etc. Nintendo games exist in this weird twilight zone where they're obliged to constantly refer back to previous, more critically acclaimed games in the series, to the point where half of their games resemble remakes more than sequels. I'm guessing that's the point Yahtzee is making about this one: "Yup, it's a Zelda game. You'll enjoy this if you enjoy Zelda games. People who don't like Zelda games should look elsewhere".

On the subject - what the hell is Nintendo's strategy these days? Who is their target demographic? Because their marketing (and the company's continued existence outside of Japan) just confounds me. They seem to be trading almost purely on a conveyor-belt of first-timers, and the nostalgia and brand-name recognition of a pretty narrow stable of games - but this nostalgia is now at least a couple of generations old. The gamer who will be most likely to be interested in the latest Zelda or Mario release is either a) a kid who's new to Nintendo or b) a 20-something who has fond memories of playing an earlier Mario/Zelda game - but this would place their first experience of the franchise somewhere in the N64/Gamecube era, and the Mario/Zelda games that were contemporary then were themselves almost 3D homages to games from the 8/16-bit era. Anybody who was legitimately "there from the start" is now in their mid-30s; and while we know that the "average gamer" is indeed a male in their early 30s, you have to scratch your head and wonder whether that loyal gamer has been inhabiting the same sub-demographic his whole gaming life (buying and playing Nintendo games) - or has he by now moved on to the deeper and more involved land of the PC, or the bite-sized adrenalin of Xbox/PS. And, from what I gather it's not even a kid's console these days. Young kids like the 3DS, but the consoles that get kids excited are Xbox/PS.

Basically, it's pretty bewildering that Nintendo is still banking on rehashed nostalgia trips as their primary breadwinner. Even more bewildering is the fact that it bloody well seems to be working, for now.

sidewinder fang said:
I found the little minecraft model of the west midlands joke particularly amusing and rather ironic, given that I happen to live there, specifically Coventry, and with all the flooding in the UK right now its practically the only place NOT underwater.
The UK is underwater, Australia is on fire. I know which I prefer.

KDR_11k said:
The system name (that makes casuals think it's just a new controller for the Wii and hardcores think that it's just another casual machine) and general marketing problems are a major contributor too.
Yeah, this. The Wii U launch had all the impact of a pebble thrown into the Atlantic. They snuck a new console onto the shelves, said "Hey guys, Next Gen is here, a full year before our competitors, check it out" - and the overall public reaction was utter apathy. Not even antipathy - people genuinely didn't notice. I'm not sure who was meant to get excited about it.

Dunno what they can do now, I'd say they have to wait it out, keep the Wii U audience entertained to maintain consumer trust and learn from their mistakes for the next console. Their main objective now should be maintaining their reputation so that the next console doesn't launch with people distrusting it.
What reputation? "That company that makes consoles with no games, and the games it does have are for kids. I mean, sure, I played some Pokemon and Mario back in the day, but no way am I going back to that". Everybody but the most die-hard Nintendo fans already distrusts it: "oh look, here's the incrementally-updated version of Franchise X. Ah look, here's the updated version of the hardware, 6 months after launch, I sure am glad to be an early adopter. Oh look, there goes all the 3rd-party support. Oh well, I hear good things about the upcoming Wii 2". Even the fans are giving off an aura of resigned fatalism.
 

Nixou

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What do we get from a Nintendo system? We get Mario, Zelda, Matroid, Kirby, a Mario Kart, a Smash Brothers...

And also Xenoblade, Zack & Wiki, the No More Heroes, Little King Story, A Boy and his Blob, Bomberman Blast (you know, Bomberman, except not turned into a soulless mockery of a game), Monster Hunter, Lost Winds, Last Story, Cave Story, Mad World, Muramasa, La Mulana, the Guitar Heroes, Trauma Center, the Red Steel series, Silent Hill Shattered Memories, Harvest Moons, Fire Emblem and so on and so forth... Many great games which either never sold as much as they deserved and/or are now dismissed as mediocre substandard games by people who never bothered playing them.

***

I just don't care, for the same reasons that after 13 iterations of Final Fantasy, I just really can't be bothered there anymore

Once, Squeenix tried to shake up the foundation of their series: they brought on board one of the best writer of the industry, revamped the battle system, gave players the possibility to fine-tune the IA of their teammates to a degree never seen before or since, design an enormous interconnected open world...
This was the corridor shaped predecessor [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_XII]
As much as I loathe FFXIII and its sequels, I can't say I don't see where Squeenix is coming from: people loved the corridor shaped game with a plot revolving around an improbable love story between a surfer and a Mary Sue, and they definitely delivered another corridor shaped game with a plot revolving around an improbable love story between a surfer and a Mary Sue, except this time the surfer gets repeatedly punched by his sister in law, which clearly is a plus.
 

ToastyMozart

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Strazdas said:
ToastyMozart said:
I'd say the reason most people don't include smartphones and tablets in handheld gaming comparisons is because they simply aren't built around gaming. It's more of an afterthought or feature then the purpose, and I don't think I'm alone when I say that the best gaming experiences I had on an iDevice was either one of SquareEnix's games or Capcom's port of Pheonix Wright 1.

We generally don't compare sales figures for the same reason we don't (well, most people don't) compare console numbers with the sales figures of Windows 7: most people don't buy it for the purpose of gaming.
However the numbers tell a different story. mobile gaming has both more revenue and more profits than all other gaming, combined. so a heck of a lot people play games on mobiles. this is why even the old giants liek EA is pushing for mobile this much - theres a lot of profits to be had there. Granted, not everyone buys phones for games, but plenty of people play games on it, and with 1 billion isntall based[footnote]In fact, much higher. 1 billion was sold in 2013 alone, but for the purpose of comparison we imagine that old smartphones (like mine) dont play games (that is false)[/footnote] (compared to over 100 times lower install base the current consoles have) you still get a lot of players.
Uh, erm... shit. Can't argue with (depressingly large) sales figures :(
I guess there's still the argument that people go to smartphones and dedicated handhelds for different experiences. I wouldn't whip out a 3DS for the sake of playing a quick game of Angry Birds, and trying to play SM3DL on a phone would be a nightmare, but people do have limited funds, so they might not be able to splurge on more than 1 item to pack into their pockets.[footnote] But seriously! who the fuck drops over $800 on a mobile game's in-app purchases?! You could buy a mid-tier PC or console AND a decent library with... I just... what... drugs... 1st degree financial irresponsibility... aasfhapondh! [/footnote]


Strazdas said:
Im jelous, my old machine can only do 11 turbotaxes per second, i need a new GPU!
Huh, that seems strangely low. It could be stuck running in 2D mode. Is the card heating up when you try, or does it just sort of sit there and refuse to move?
Failing that, try upping the intensity. Bump it up to around 15 to start, and tweak from there.
 

ToastyMozart

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Nixou said:
And also Xenoblade, Zack & Wiki, the No More Heroes, Little King Story, A Boy and his Blob, Bomberman Blast (you know, Bomberman, except not turned into a soulless mockery of a game), Monster Hunter, Lost Winds, Last Story, Cave Story, Mad World, Muramasa, La Mulana, the Guitar Heroes, Trauma Center, the Red Steel series, Silent Hill Shattered Memories, Harvest Moons, Fire Emblem and so on and so forth... Many great games which either never sold as much as they deserved and/or are now dismissed as mediocre substandard games by people who never bothered playing them.
Wait, Cave Story? I totally hear you on most of the others, but the only time I've heard anyone diss Cave Story was one person who was being deliberately (and pretty non-subtly) contrarian. And barring complaints of resulting inflated egos, Guitar Hero isn't really obscure or dismissed.

It really is a bummer when good or great games flounder in obscurity for unrelated reasons though, like crappy/little advertisement, shitty business moves *glares at GameStop and Xenoblade*, or just getting released at a bad time.
 

NuclearKangaroo

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Strazdas said:
NuclearKangaroo said:
its like, after consoles reached their peak with the PS2, it all went downhill pretty damn fast
if you look at sales, the 7the generation (xbox 360, PS3, Wii) had sales around that of 5the generation, while the 6th generaion (PS2, Xbox, forgot then intendo equivalent) was the peak with much more sales. in fact, last gene consoels were the first generation where sales DIDNT increase. now its too earnly to tell about current gen consoles, buti t does feel like consoles have went over their peak.
i dont care much about sales, the problem is the games, the PS2 era simply had so much more innovation, it was the age of the devil may crys, the gods of war, the GTAs, Shadow of the Colossus, etc


it always seemed to be something new and exciting and new ideas were constantly explored, this gen we got... DLC, microtransactions, and i guess spunkgargleweewee

i cant think of a single genre that was born this gen, except maybe music games, which incidentally also suffered a miserable death long before the gen was even finished


i can honestly say the most innovation came from PC this gen, specially towards the end, the indie revolution, digital distribution, kickstarter, free to play, i think the PS2 era games are still better, but there was certainly a turnaround when it comes to ways to deliver games to customers and the people making those games
 

MetallicaRulez0

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I'm just hear to say "I told ya so" when I said gamers didn't want gimmicks wy back when the Wii was gaining popularity.

That thunderous sound you hear is the wind whistling past my smugness.