- Sunday, 12 July 2009
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You may think Yes Minister is a comedy. I know it's a documentary - Peter Lilley
Ubisoft made it on the Wii
SOFTWARE OUTFIT Ubisoft has been telling man plus dog how to make shedloads of cash by having a slash at the Wii market.
Speaking at the UBS Global Media conference, Ubisoft CFO Alain Martinez said that at the end of this year there are not so many Nintendo products out there, and that he thinks there is a Wii window of opportunity, especially on the Wii Balance Board.
To make sure that the hole is filled Ubisoft has two products ready: Raving Rabbids TV Party and Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip. Both have strong advertising campaigns, both make use of the balance board, and both are expected to sell over a million copies.
Martinez said that the only thing keeping third-party developers from seeing more success is the lack of quality. If developers can come up with something good and then flog it at the right moment then the world is their lobster, he said.
To have a really good Wii title you need to have interesting controls and a strong art style, Martinez said. He observed that you can't deal with art on the Wii the way you do on other game systems, as the Wii is not as powerful in the graphics department.
Basically, developers have to adapt to the standard definition graphics, and that means striking art, strong shapes and design, and characters and settings that make sense even with limited information delivered visually.
If you have a squiz at games like Mario Kart and Metroid Prime 3 they look reasonable due to characters and levels that give you information using colour and easily recognisable shapes. µ
L'Inq
Ars Technica.
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I enjoyed FarCry one but since UBI soft descided to go draconian with their PC release of Farcry 2 in the DRM arena they can kiss my arse along with EA Games. Activation limits has gone too far and I hope my attitude is not alone with bouycotting these hack companies.
"Martinez said that the only thing keeping third-party developers from seeing more success is the lack of quality." From the creators of Babiez. Couldn't define irony any better.
Finally someone in the games industry that understands that 'good game' is not the same as 'good graphics'. Look at Tetris, crap graphics, great gameplay, so it's still played today. I have theme Hospital and Dungeon Keeper installed on my system right now. Great games, graphics aren't up to much, but I'll play them over a current game.
Good example - CSI:Hard Evidence. the gameplay is identical to the first CSI game from 4 years ago, but now it needs a Dx9 card. There are now adventure games with much higher system requirements than GTA:SA or Indigo Prophecy.
Game companies are falling into the trap of thinking better graphics is the way. Thats why there has only been one FPS game with any innovation since the likes of Delta Force (and it's voxels), and that's Portal. It's pathetic.
A previous poster mentioned that good graphics do not equal a good game. That point taken I have to add that good graphics is not the same thing as good art. Making a Wii game look good is no harder and no easier than making a Gamecube game look good. That so many Wii games are visually unimpressive is obviously the fault of lazy/uninspired development given that DS games are still occasionally lauded for their graphical quality. It's as if the devs can't be bothered to use what they have, since it's no longer cutting-edge, despite the bar being much higher for those same specs just five years ago.
WII might be an opportunity for lower cost production in games simply because it doesn't support them. How nice to focus on inventive game play rather than the graphical slide shows that games have become on the Xbox & PCS platforms.
I have a wii, the most games sucks, even the ubisoft games, the wii is the best selling console, and companies alike Ubisoft only makes stupids games knowing that companies as Rockstar(stupid company who doesnt want to sell too much with that kind of quality of games), are so stupid and they only launches games for ps3 and xbox 360, leaving all alone to ubisoft, HEY UBISOFT if you want to be happier, please make good games with good histories (not as no more heroes and bloody game without history).