j-e-f-f-e-r-s said:
Lightknight said:
My argument isn't that they have created nothing. It's that they've created very little by comparison with respect to the competition. My response to Wonderful 101 is that you are citing a game which is not out yet. Jumping the gun there.
New IPs this gen from Sony:
Little BigPlanet
Uncharted
Uncharted: Zombie Edition The Last Of Us
Resistance
Journey
Dragon's Lair HDHeavy Rain
Beyond: Two Souls
I wouldn't list games that haven't shown up yet. An inferior new IP might as well not exist and I'm not trusting any games consumers haven't vetted. Though I'll admit that Sony is finishing strongly in the new IP category. Here's a full list (and of course we're not counting handhelds):
*Demon's Souls (89 Metacritic)
*Folklore (a B game)
*Heavenly Sword
*Heavy Rain
*inFamous (a huge personal favorite)
*Journey
*Little Big Planet
*MotorStorm (I'me loathe to list racing game but this one has favorable scores)
*PixelJunk (started off weak but made it with PixelJunk Eden as the third installment)
*Resistance Fall of Man
*Uncharted
*Warhawk (Maybe Starhawk too?)
(Note that the God of War series was 2005 and most of the series was spent in the ps3 gen)
Hopeful new IPs scheduled for release on the ps3:
Beyond: Two Souls
The Last of Us
Puppeteer (I'm actually looking forward to this one)
The Last Guardian
I left several off the list as lower metacritic games and so didn't include them as significant titles.
That's not bad. Now let's look at Microsoft:
Well, I'm by no means the first to defend microsoft. They tend to have only a few but very heavy hitting IPs. Please note that even Halo 1 was released within the 2000's but necessity is the mother of invention and being a new entrant to the market like Sony was a few years before is certainly enough to push companies to innovate. It's important to contrast the relatively recent creation of these IPs because Nintendo's heavy hitters were mostly created in the 80's and much fewer in the 90's. Halo was a genre shaper and has been significant in reassigning Nintendo and Sony market shares to itself. Microsoft exclusivity is also a bit of a misnomer because they often have games that they allow to be on the PC as well (because Microsoft profits either way). So while the 360 may have exclusives amongst consoles, they may not be exclusives where consoles are considered. For example, Bioshock was for the PC and the 360 but it wasn't until a year later that it was made available on the ps3. Still, they've got some interesting new IPs that they made:
*Bioshock (for a year).
*Crackdown
*Dance Central (similar to Wii-Sport, I guess, but it seems to be more like a Rock Band/DDR scenario even though it showcases the kinect and has spawned a serious franchize)
*Gears of War
*Left 4 Dead
*Lost Odyssey/Blue Dragon (I can't tell if they're related or not. They appear to have been well liked but I can't personally vouch for them aside from their high-70's scores and decent sales)
*Saints Row
*Viva Pinata
Arguably Minecraft as a console exclusive, but we all know it was designed for just the pc to start and was independent all the way. I did not include games with less than 70 metacritics (there were several legitimate attempts that just didn't make the cut).
I think we can agree that this generation brought some excellent new IPs to the forefront.
I think we'd both call Kameo a flop.
Considering that the 360 has got about four exclusive series of note, and only one of them wasn't a pre-existing IP from this generation, I don't think you get to claim the competition are doing better in the new IP front. Sony's been pretty good at allowing new IP, but it's still relied on pre-existing franchises to provide its highest selling exclusives (Gran Turismo, God of War, Killzone, Metal Gear Solid), and they've milked three entries each of Uncharted and Resistance in the same time it took Nintendo to produce two console Mario titles.
You forget that most of Nintendo's proprietary titles are from the 80's. The 2000's is a long way away from the 80's where recent memory is concerned.
Keep in mind that I don't care how often Nintendo milks the chaffed and bloodied teets of its decades old characters. The world is no worse off for having another Mario title as long as it is done properly. I don't want to see them throw out crap titles that abuse the name, but that's their concern as long as they also produce the quality mario galaxies of the gaming world. What's important is that new IPs are being produced and experimented with some sort of success while these other nostalgic IPs are guarding the fort. Understand, this isn't someone hating on Nintendo, this is someone who has loved Nintendo games who just wants this over-a-century-old company (1889 as a playing card company) to have a bright and productive future. Every product has a life cycle. You have to expand or you will die. I do not want Nintendo to go that route. If you really love a product, you have to be willing to see its weak points and to criticize them. Ignoring them will only cause damage.
And who are you to talk about jumping the gun when you yourself said "the WiiU's titles are not as impressive as the ps4's." If you're entitled to call that, I'm perfectly within my rights to claim W101 as a new IP, given that your statement is subjective opinion, whereas mine is objective fact.
I see that you put quote symbols around a sentence but I can't find anywhere that I stated that the WiiU's titles are not as impressive as the ps4's. I do believe that the PS4 has a much stronger launch title lineup that the WiiU had (and has failed to deliver on). I also went on to state that Sony may falter come launch the same way Nintendo has but only time will tell. Other than that, I haven't made any other comparison regarding the WiiU titles so I'm not sure what kind of context you think that quote was in. Nintendo has acknowledged the weak lineup themselves and believe that remedying that issue will be vital to their success. They believe it's responsible for their weak WiiU sales. This belief, is extremely good for Nintendo fans. It should mean that we'll see some real titles come out soon. Hopefully not so soon that corners are cut.
Would a new IP have sold over 10 million copies? No. New original games simply don't sell as much. Nintendo made a legitimately awesome platformer, it sold spectacularly well. What does it matter to you that it so happened to star Mario?
Gears of War sold 6 million. Gears of War 2 sold over 6 million. Minecraft by itself sold over 10 million on the xbox but I feel like it was already a proven success rather than a risk. Several of Sony's exclusives have sold over 1 million.
The idea is generating a new franchise that will be viable for years to come. Games that can launch close to Mario titles and the like without being considered the same IP and watering down the sales of both. There's a myriad of reasons to establish a new intellectual property that is far reaching.
This isn't replacing old titles. It's launching these new IPs in addition to.
Gunpo Yokoi. The man behind the Game&Watch, the Gameboy and the D-pad. His idea of using older technology in a lateral way has become a key philosophy at Nintendo, as it allows them to compete in the market without having to go bust trying to stay up-to-date with the latest hardware. In Japanese terms, the idea is known as Lateral Thinking With Withered Technology. It's the reason why the Gameboy beat all its competitors, why the DS beat the PSP, why the Wii beat the PS360, and why the 3DS is currently clobbering the Vita.
I don't see how this disproves what I said or really disagrees wth anything.
No. Don't even start with this crap. Generation is a descriptor of time, not power. The Wii, 360 and PS3 were all seventh generation consoles. The Wii U is the first of the eighth generation consoles. Trying to describe it as anything else is a complete bastardisation of what the term 'generation' was meant to describe in console terms.
This is subject to debate. I can see I touched a nerve here.
I'll say it this way, the WiiU is more powerful than any machine of the 7th generation but nowhere closed to the officially announced specs of other 8th generation consoles. The WiiU is closer to the power of 7th generation consoles produced by Sony and 360 than it is to what we know the ps4 to have.
Is that more agreeable? Keep in mind that this generation's consoles are already remarkably viable.
Given that next-gen engines have been designed to scale all the way back to run on iPhone hardware, I think you might be jumping the gun a little bit there. Cryengine 3 is already running on the Wii U, Unreal 4 is going to be designed to scale to iOS platforms, and therefore should be able to run on Wii U by default. Retro are apparently working on their own high-end engine. Engines are being designed to be more scalable than ever, and Wii U shouldn't have any problem running any engine being developed right now, even if it's not as high-end as the PS4. Remember, PC games have to be designed with minimum specs in mind as well as maximum specs.
I think you're REALLY overestimating the ability to scale back major AAA games enough to be playable on weaker processors. I also think you know what I mean as far as next-gen capable. Saying that games can scale down to run on iPhone hardware doesn't mean an iPhone is a next-gen quality processing computer. From what we've seen, it looks like the ps4 at least will be multiple times more powerful than the WiiU. We'll have to reserve a final judgment until it gets here but I'd say they're in different leagues.
But do you really think the AAA of the future will scale down that much?
Again though, what matters about a system is its titles. The WiiU can be whatever power it wants to as long as it delivers on the titles.
No, in terms of time period, it puts it squarely at the start of the eighth generation. By your logic, the N64 would have been a 5.5 generation machine between the PS1 and PS2/Gamecube, which is balls.
This topic is hotly debated:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_game_consoles_(Eighth_generation)#Wii_U
There appears to be an element of both time and processing capabilities. The weight of either appears to be subjective and so firm answers are made fuzzy. That's why you get statements like this from the link above:
After the announcement, several journalists classified the system as the first eighth generation home console.[14][24][25] However, prominent sources have brought this into speculation because of its comparative lack of power with respect to the announced specifications for PlayStation 4 and the successor to the Xbox 360.[26][27]
You also start to get statements like the following from various people (here's the much beloved (haha) former EA CEO):
http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/02/04/ea-ceo-doesnt-think-wii-u-is-a-next-gen-console/
The article goes on to say:
"What he?s essentially saying here is that he?s seen what the Wii U is capable, of, and he?s seen what the upcoming versions of the Playstation and Xbox are capable of, and the gulf is sizable enough that we?ll be classifying the Wii U as ?last gen? once the other two are released."
I'm sorry if you disagree with this. But if you take a step back and allow yourself to evaluate the system as is you should be able to acknowledge this perception of the system. The criticism didn't matter with the Wii because the Wiimotes were a fantastic innovation that everyone wanted and the pricepoint was excellent and it did get some really great titles at launch including a new Zelda game. A good one to boot.
I simply don't think it's being honest to say it's on par with the specs already released for the ps4 if those specs prove to be true.
The Ps4 is already outdated when compared to PCs, so by that logic it isn't next gen either.
Console generations =/= PC generations. Consoles optimize hardware in an entirely different way than PCs do. In any event, console specs drive the development market. Games are typically made with consoles in mind and then the pc gets whatever it gets while only sometimes getting the ability to display things more powerfully if it is able to. This is because a developer would rather sell to PS3, 360 AND the PC than just the PC. I'm sure they'd have loved to sell their games on the Wii too but the scalability issues would have been too significant.
The Wii U's managed to just about stay level with the 6 month sales of the PS3 and 360 despite not having had any major releases out for it yet. When games like Zelda, Mario, Smash Bros and what ever else IPs Nintendo is currently working on are released (Star Fox, F-Zero, Kirby, Wii Fit U, etc), sales are going to pick up dramatically. Nintendo's been hinting pretty heavily that they're arranging their releases to have a packed second half to 2013. If they do that, then the PS4 and Nextbox won't have to compete with the Wii U having a 3.4 million lead. They'll have to compete with the Wii U having a 10 million lead.
I'd say some good titles will help them along. I don't know by how much.
...really? Because all I saw was a level editor sold with a barebones platforming campaign. That 'magical and campy' atmosphere was done far better (IMO) in Kirby's Epic Yarn, given that the actual gameplay was fun, not just the level editor. But hey, opinions...
Eh, to each their own I suppose. Do you own a ps3?
Consider this, if you owned all the consoles and a powerful PC, as I do, then you wouldn't be so invested in any one console. They all have problems and they all have benefits. It's unfair and frankly dishonest to think any one of the systems fart cinnamon and roses comparatively if you haven't had serious experience with the others. For example, I had a PSP when it launched. The fact that Sony absolutely screwed us on legitimate titles for that was not lost on me. But then again, I had their main system and other consoles to compare it with. As such, I can tell you that I got a lot more out of the other consoles this past generation than I did the Wii.