Video Game News and Miscellany
- Thread starter figmentPez
- Start date
Shovel Knight free expansion Plague of Shadows is out. Plague Knight gets his own opening cutscene and story, plus there's a challenge mode. Now when starting a new game, you get a character select screen.
So far it's cool, but I've only played the intro and the whole bomb recipe thing will probably get weirder as the options increase.
So far it's cool, but I've only played the intro and the whole bomb recipe thing will probably get weirder as the options increase.
That's really fucked. From what I've seen the engine is pretty good.
This is a continuing problem with Japanese game development: they don't like licensing out engines for their games, so it takes them 1-1/12 years just to get an ENGINE for their game going and THEN they can start actually building the game. Worse, they often don't reuse engines unless it's a quick, sequential release. This means they spend an enormous amount of money that is quickly pissed away. I can only think of a handful of times that Japanese developers have done it...
- Final Fantasy 9 uses a modified version of the Emotion engine from FF8.
- Final Fantasy 13 through 13-3 all reused the same engine because it cost them a fucking fortune to make and they needed -3- games just to break even.
- Fire Fighter F.D. 18 used the Silent Hill 3 engine.
- The Souls series reuses the same engine (but they upgrade it between games), as does Bloodborne.
I'm sure there are others but those are the ones I remember. I actually remember it was a big deal that Square Enix licensed the Unreal engine for The Last Remnant... then the game bombed and they blamed it on the engine. This forced them to stop using Unreal, which is how GRIN went out of business. GRIN was going to use Unreal to make a Final Fantasy game set in Ivalice, but Square Enix sort of strung them along for awhile until GRIN could no longer support itself and then came clean about it. Of course, the guys at GRIN would later go on to form Overkill Software (makers of Payday: The Heist and it's successor) and they are big dogs now, thanks to Payday 2, so I guess things worked out in the end.
As for the FOX Engine... Kojima apparently owns the rights to the engine, not Konami, for some reason. He let them use it for their soccer franchise, but Kojima would have to sign off on them using it. It's one of the reasons HE was going to direct Silent Hills alongside Del Toro: he wasn't going to let Konami ruin his property with their dumbfuckery.
And it will never change unless the owner sells it. The owner is the CEO and his kids and friends are the board. If he wants to run his company into the ground, he's perfectly free to do whatever the fuck he wants. I don't imagine there will be a shortage of investors looking to buy their properties when the only thing making them money are the pachinko machines.
And it's official: Konami ceases all Triple-A game production except Pro Evolution Soccer.
And it doesn't matter how much money they make on the casino side: they are heavily in with the Yakuza and a lot of that money goes to them. The video game stuff was sort of what kept them growing as a company. They might not go under any time soon, but they have lost pretty much all relevancy.
And it doesn't matter how much money they make on the casino side: they are heavily in with the Yakuza and a lot of that money goes to them. The video game stuff was sort of what kept them growing as a company. They might not go under any time soon, but they have lost pretty much all relevancy.
GasBandit
Staff member
The code got them 30 lives, but they've used them all up.
GasBandit
Staff member
Apparently there's a team-based multiplayer FPS game of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, and the westernized version is entering beta in october.
Their soccer game outsold Metal Gear by better than 3:1 in 2014. They might be less relevant to you, but they'll still probably be okay. Not to defend Konami or their business practices, I just don't know that they're going to crash and burn as a whole.
It's ultimately going to come down to how well their mobile releases go... and really, that's sort of the entire issue here. Cost-benefits analysis will always put mobile titles over Triple A titles because a dozen failed mobile games is fine when they cost nothing but a Triple A title needs to make massive sales just to break even. However, this fails to account for the fact that mobile titles rarely have successful sequels: you can't really build a brand around a 5-minute time waster. KING is circling the drain after failing to turn their Saga games into major brand... Zinga is basically gone or at least nowhere near as relevant as it was even 2-3 years ago. Angry Birds is still around but it's not the powerhouse everyone thought it would be. Compare that to Minecraft, which has been around longer but is not only getting stronger as time goes by. It's getting spin-off games and LEGO sets.
You gotta build the brand. Metal Gear was a brand... it's got games, cds, toys, posters, clothes, etc. Castlevania has audio dramas, comics, and an upcoming animated series. Silent Hill has TWO movies and all kinds of merch. They have stuff associated with them that you've probably seen and thought "I'd buy the hell out of that,". That's where the real money is and it's also the key to long term sustainability... because when your brand is strong enough to sell overpriced novelities, you have something that can endure ANYTHING.
Sadly I agree with Drifter. Konami may lose some relevance in some markets, but so what? It's a big company with many fingers in many pies. They could sell off their entire AAA game division and not suffer greatly. Just like EA could pretty much stop making anything outside of Fifa/NFL/Madden and still survive; at least for a while.
In happier news: Darks Souls III set for release in April 2016.
It sounds like you are arguing for the short of thinking that encourages endless sequels.
That's a bit unfair. Any successful franchise will have major content coming out at least every 2-3 years in order to revitalize the brand, which brings in money to launch riskier titles. Major franchises ALWAYS finance the rest of the content and that's not true of just video games.
I'd also like to point out that Konami's franchsies are effectively dead because Konami doesn't want to make them, not because they were unpopular or tired.
http://www.thejimquisition.com/2015/09/digital-homicide-and-the-case-of-the-sockpuppet-developers/
Hey folks, remember Digital Homicide? The "developer" of such games as The Slaughtering Grounds, Temper Tantrum, and Medieval Mercs? The ones Jim Sterling has been feuding with, including the hilarious interview?
They're baaaaaaaack. Or, as it turns out, they never went away. Rather, they've been developing games under a different company name! And even better, the name they used - ECC Games - is an established developer of mobile games. Who are now perusing legal action.
I swear, Digital Homicide is the gift that keeps on giving. The depts that they sink to are absolutely hilarious.
Hey folks, remember Digital Homicide? The "developer" of such games as The Slaughtering Grounds, Temper Tantrum, and Medieval Mercs? The ones Jim Sterling has been feuding with, including the hilarious interview?
They're baaaaaaaack. Or, as it turns out, they never went away. Rather, they've been developing games under a different company name! And even better, the name they used - ECC Games - is an established developer of mobile games. Who are now perusing legal action.
I swear, Digital Homicide is the gift that keeps on giving. The depts that they sink to are absolutely hilarious.
Should name it Koka Kola so it doesn't clash.
Could be fun.
Looks interesting, then I remember it won't run on my computer so I shouldn't get invested in it.
GasBandit
Staff member
Don't worry, in 7 years when you can, and the game is 5 bucks on steam, I'll start shooting "halforums edition" videos of it in which you can co-star
