True that, and i’m not sure our perspectives are as divided as you think
i understand that easy to play party games sell well and i get why, it’s the reason the wii sold so well to every demographic. what i’m saying is i’m not so sure they should…
innovation can be well received, when it’s good but that doesn’t always turn into profits most of the time they struggle to break past 4 million (, and those were the best selling ones by the way), in fact a lot of the time it REALLY doesn’t and i don’t get why!
Great creative, innovative, crucially acclaimed games like the wonderful 101 and no more heroes (one of my favourite games of all time) just didn’t sell as well as they should have.
We complain about bad repetitive design but revolt when we see change (DMC), we complain about boring grey and browns in our games then change our mind when we see colour, we scream for innovative GOOD games but pass them up for Military shooter version 2.09 then complain how the don’t change, we say want new things interesting things but do we really when we act like this.
We all see the stagnation of creativity in games as they all start to look the same feel the same, i remember a time when i had to read an instruction manual to learn the controls of a game because i knew it would play and feel differently from all the others, now i don’t; X is to jump, O is to roll/crouch, L2 is to aim/brake/reverse and R2 is to shoot/accelerate, etc.
maybe i’m the only one, maybe everyone else likes it this way, but as games become more and more expensive to make; publishers and developers are gonna be less and less willing to take risks on new creative ideas because at the end of the day ‘money talks bulls**t walks’ and we’ve already voted with our wallets.
I was talking about their gaming division.
PS3 era was horrible profit wise.
if I could find the graph that compared Ninty to Sony it’d be easier but I can’t ;-;
PS4 turned all that around doe
You do know Ninty does more than vido games too right? Except those divisions aren’t losing them money like Sonys.
(I don’t think Nintendo’s QOL division has made any money yet 'cause… wtf is it?)
Anyway, this is completely off from the whole Innovation topic. Just wanted to point out “nintendo loses more and more money” is wrong.
Nintendo are the Oprah of video gams, dey can fuk up plenty of times and still be GG. Dat Wii money yo!
holy gif-moly
itsTwister
(running is punk... on a personal level)
#29
That’s the thing. There is no number that they should have sold. While I’m sure they were wonderful games, it didn’t appeal to everyone. I’m sure some people truly did not enjoy those games and I’m sure many (including myself) never even heard of them. Both those things aren’t bad at all. I have no time to browse through a lot of sites to look for new games. Sometimes I’ll look at my que and find a fun small time game that looks cool and sometimes I’ll see a big name game that looks cool.
I also think that a lot of what you’re saying is from a personal perspective and might not necessarily translate to larger groups of people. From my perspective, I don’t really complain about repetitive or new designs. I know in TPS my biggest complaint about gear is that I wanted more not that things were re-used. And I enjoy many types of game at different qualities and types of graphics and color schemes. I remember when my friend picked up the dreamcast. Both the rich world of Shenmue and the dreary Nosgoth in Soul Reaver were awesome.
I wasn’t a big instruction manual guy myself, I preferred to jump in a figure it out myself. I’d go back if I wanted to see if I could do something specific, but there was always something like little tutorial signs or complete learn the game modes. I’ve also switched to PC and haven’t kept up with consoles since the 360/wii, but I know a lot of games have there own little tricks and tweaks.
I’ve also been a little reserved with the the whole judging games by profits things. There are companies that don’t take risks yes, but there are people that still do and will likely keep on taking them. I think it’s very easy to get caught up in things like numbers and what exactly they mean, but I’ll tell you if Nintendo died every time someone on gamefaqs posted bad numbers on a game and said they were about to go belly up, they’d have died a long long time ago.
I’m confident that despite there always being a number of insane and sane complaints about different games, people will gravitate towards what they enjoy and my 80 some game steam account will keep growing until either it or I die. There will be plenty of original and innovative games that I enjoy in it and there’ll be plenty of cookie cutter sequels. I’ll most likely get fallout 4 and continue to play guild of dungeoneers while it grows.
Innovation isn’t an instant pay off, it takes time and yeah often a sequel. Borderlands doesn’t prove the video right, its shows its wrong. Innovation isn’t an instant payoff, it takes time.
I don’t know its only 2 examples, we call that cherry picking
It’s much more than graphics, its frames, resolution, polygons, how much you can get on screen, its not having the game slow down or freeze, etc…
There are computer games and better hardware lets you Innovate more and do more. Better hardware often leads to better game play. I went from a 360 to PC and Borderlands is a better game with better hardware. More frames, more FOV, etc…
Hardware and software are very important.
If the WII had equal hardware of the 360 and ps3 I bet it would of destroyed that generation of consoles. The 360 was the winner of the last gen and it did do it with innovation. One big reason the xbox did so well is they did a really good job transforming it from a mere console to really decent set top box, another thing the wii failed to keep up with.
When you have bigger games you have more potential for bugs, golden eye was 16 MBs, games today can be bigger than 50 GBs. Its much more than graphics, they are just way more complex. But also publishers pushing to meet release dates is also a part of it.
To say we don’t want innovation because the new games or innovation doesn’t sell as well as big well known franchises is flat out wrong. Once again making video games is much like other art, how many brilliant artists died poor and unknown? How many innovative bands were unknown for year and it took history to know them?
I’m not trying to prove the video wrong or right, i’m trying to discover why good innovative games don’t sell as well as they should.
The problem with a lack of an instant payoff is one off games won’t make their dues (, and may not get their chance for a sequel), hence our sequel focused gaming industry
If you read all my posts instead of just one you’d realise i’ve used more than two examples, so sorry to tell you, but its not cherry picking.
So what? The wii and the gamecube had those problems?
The indie market is ever growing, showing that as much as all the those things matter so does gameplay. With less polygons, etc. games could run better with less of a need for cpu power frame rate could be higher allowing for more enjoyement
Games are bigger because of “graphics, its frames, resolution, polygons, how much you can get on screen, etc”
Publishers are pushing to meet release dates because games cost too much because of “graphics, its frames, resolution, polygons, how much you can get on screen, etc” do you see what i’m getting at?
The current market is not sustainable, games are getting more and more expensive to make but the prices of games aren’t increasing, for a lot of developers for example THQ, or blitz games, or clover studios and a number of this vast selection of ‘cherry picked’ examples, this means failure is not an option. game making is a risky business right now and the makers want to make sure they make their money back so way break out of the box when a little bit of interior design would do.
I never said hardware or software was unimportant.
but it did, which makes your whole statement wrong and the wii did it with innovation through gameplay but the wii u isn’t making as much money as it should and that worries me.
I never once said we don’t want innovation. The question is written; “Do we REALLY want innovation?” for a reason, maybe you need to reread it and all my posts BEFORE answering.
I never said “innovation doesn’t sell as well as big well known franchises” it don’t even know what you mean by that. there is no innovation vs big franchises in my argument because innovation in big franchises doesn’t always sell well either. my question has always been why doesn’t good creativity and innovation sell as well as it should?
Yes, what you said is true, but this ISN’T the art or the music industry so your hypothesis is completely wrong. This is the gaming industry and as such the need for immediate profits is necessary or the developer will go defunct, look at my ‘cherry picked’ examples for your evidence.
Also you should take into consideration the fact that the gaming industry more than any other industry moves at an exponentially fast pace move with the environment of how games are made and received drastically changing every decade.
Imagine for sec’ a great game comes out with beautiful graphics and nice controls but no one plays the game, later on people see how critical acclaimed the game was and go and play it but alas it wasn’t as fun as it was stated to be because its dated; the graphics are old and ugly by todays standards the controls are unintuitive and sluggish by todays standard, the game just can’t stand up to today’s games. do you see what i’m getting at?
Games aren’t movies, they’re not music, they’re not paintings, they’re games; a totally separate entity and entertainment medium.
Also, remember just because I have a opinion or perspective that you don’t agree with or align with doesn’t mean i’m wrong or that you’re wrong we can always just agree to disagree.
Some do and some don’t, some new games take off in big way, commercial, critical, etc… Minecraft is an example of a new IP exploding. Some critical darlings fail commercially some do well enough, some do great. GTA 3 was another example of this, the first 2 were that top down look and didn’t really do much. Once they "innovated " and really made the game what it is today it exploded into a huge success with 14.5 million copies sold. Sure GTA V just sold 52 million I think but GTA 3 was innovation with almost instant success.
But really what is a successful game? Sure you get your big 50 million copy games but there are few of those, even 10 million games sold seems somewhat uncommon. Is 5 million good? I don’t know. I don’t think a game needs to sell 10 million to be considered a success.
You keep mentioning those 2 examples that they used in the video when there are so many more.
What I mean is hardware matters, its really simple while yes indie games can be great they can also be terrible. But a lack of hardware would limit you to only simple indie games and not other big games. Hardware is restrictive. You need to sell the COD’s so you can have your indie games. Also on that topic, nintendo also failed to support the indie game market unlike the rest of the platforms.
Saying we should lower graphics to we can have smoother performance is an innovation issue, we have the tech so why not have both? Thats the Nintendo issue, they are multiple generations behind. The newer up to date hardware can run both the little indie games and the big AAA titles.
You shouldn’t have to choose, frames or graphics.
I just don’t buy that argument, there is more money than ever being made in video games right now and its just going up and up. Not only at the top but the indie market as well has opened up the bottom and then you have the entire mobile gaming. You have the free to play models as well.
There are more ways than ever to make money on games.
Sure some publishers are not doing great, but they are failing themselves, not being failed by the industry.
Yeah I admitted above I was wrong, so innovation should just always = better sales. Did you ever consider that the Wii UI wasn’t good innovation? Or maybe people got tired of the Wii motion controls and they were just gathering dust when the Wii U came out?
Innovation can lead to great sales if its great innovation. Not all innovation is great. Hell even the Wii U game devs have failed on a large part to make good use of the Wii U.
Do we want innovation?
Do we REALLY want innovation?
Those questions are not really different. Yes we want it and Yes we REALLY want it. Some innovation is good, other is a fail. But we do want it, REALLY. If we did not games would not be where they are today.
That point is not unique to video games, all art moves at a rapid pace.
Yes but they share similar issues. Old games are also played a lot, look at the retro movement of indie games or look at tetris.
I stand by my points, we like innovation and innovation does well if its good innovation, but not in all cases. Some take off faster than others, some things fail, and the best doesn’t always win. This is not new, beta max vs vhs. This is not that unique of an issue to video games. I pretty much reject the entire video in the OP as baseless and misleading.
It reminded me of a time at a party a few drunk people got into a political argument with a friend of mine who was going to Harvard studying political science. At once point he said to them after a slew of facts, “have you ever read a supreme court case?” They turned around and found someone else to spew their same baseless “facts” on.
Innovation is the video game industry, I’m old enough to remember when the atari was new and I’ve seen generations of it. We crave and desire it, and support it with our wallets, even if games like COD don’t innovate much and sell like crazy does not mean we do not also support innovation.
Well… thank you for finally answering my question.
I don’t agree with all your points but I do understand your point of view.
and at the end of the day all i really wanted was see some else’s perspective on the issue.
