PS3 and 360 should have been as powerful as the Wii.
Hear me out.
long as fuck
[details=Spoiler]PS3 and 360 should have been as powerful as the Wii, to save a lot of amazing developers and franchises/IPs that we lost this generation. If games weren’t as fuck-all expensive to develop as they are now, we’d still have stuff like the Timesplitters series, or more Valkyria Chronicles games, and we’d have more variety in gaming–developers would be more willing to take risks and create new IPs because they’d know that it wouldn’t be the literal death of their development houses if the IP didn’t sell well. A lot of today’s beloved franchises exist because developers made a gamble and took that risk.
The only developers capable of taking risks today are owned by companies that make more than enough money from big-name IPs they own like SquareEnix/Final Fantasy, Capcom/Resident Evil, etc. Even then, most of what SquareEnix has released since the mid-2000s have been remakes of games they released forever ago. Besides The World Ends With You, what’s the last truly new IP you’ve seen from them? Capcom seems to be doing a bit better. They’re releasing new IPs more frequently, but look at the quality of their newer IPs like Asura’s Wrath. It’s a glorified CG cutscene movie with an ending you had to pay for separately. But make no mistake, even these companies don’t have enough to take nearly the same number of risks as they could last generation. That’s why Capcom is raping consumers with DLC-everything and why SquareEnix keeps churning out re-releases… and also why Activision releases almost nothing but Call of Duty games: they’re safe investments with very low probability of failure/low sales.
Sega is dying because of the suffocating nature of today’s gaming industry. They took risks, and most of them failed horribly. They developed and published a LOT of great titles, and all but one or two of them did not sell. And now it’s come to this. They don’t have enough to take any more risks. They’re not to blame–at least, not fully. The blame falls on a variety of parties, including we the consumers. Consumers should have supported them more and bought the good games they developed and/or published. They’ve released a lot of them this generation: Yakuza 3, Yakuza 4, Sonic Colors, Sonic Generations, Valkyria Chronicles, Valkyria Chronicles 2, Bayonetta, Vanquish, and MadWorld are a few that come to mind.
You slapshits hate so hard on Nintendo, but they’re the smartest of the three console powerhouses. There are so many AMAZING games on the Wii because it’s low development costs allowed developers to take risks and try out new ideas. They weren’t bankrupted if their game didn’t sell well for what ever reason. Nintendo was first to capitalize on the fact that games were becoming more and more mainstream–they catered to the casual consumers with the games like Wii Sports and the nature of the Wii’s controls. They made the system only slightly more powerful than the previous generation’s because they wanted their system to be more affordable, so that it would be in more homes. They made the controls they way they did and packaged every Wii with Wii Sports because they wanted Wii systems to sit in homes instead of store shelves.
A situation: You are a typical starving artist. You make just enough to pay the bills and eat a few cups of ramen noodles a day. You create a very distinct and specific kind of art and you love doing it. More than anything. You show your art to a few friends and acquaintances, and they love it so much they they offer to pay you for creating some for them. An acquaintance shows one of your works to a friend that is a marketing agent. The marketing agent is so impressed that he/she gets your contact info from your acquaintance and contacts you for a meeting. He/she tells you that if you change your style, your art will appeal to a broader group of people and you’ll make a killing with his/her help. You’d be able to move out of the shit-hole cesspool you call a living space/house/neighborhood. You’d be able to eat something other than the same salty noodles you’ve been living on since college. You will be able to have so much more. But you love your distinct style more than anything and you want the world to see this style instead of a something different. Would you decline the agent’s offer because you’re too proud and stubborn to change your style, or would you accept the agent’s offer and be rewarded with new opportunities?
Same nonsense with people who cry about musicians and movie directors “selling out.”
roflmaozedongdongcopter @ you because they’re GETTIN’ MONEY, NIGGAS.
You’re all butthurt because Nintendo “sold out”, made a “shit system” that has “shit games,” a “shit controller,” and caters only to “soccer moms,” “children” and “casualfags.” You think Nintendo gives a shit about what you, the minority thinks? They don’t, because they’re getting PAID. They’ve got a giant ass vault full of money that they spring board dive into and swim in all day. They see everything in the color green because they’re eyes are permanently attuned to the color of 'dat paypuh™. When they read their message boards, they don’t see consumers complaining. Hell, they don’t even see their happy consumers’ posts–they don’t see anything because all the letters and numbers are replaced by $$$$ symbols.
Sega doesn’t have that. Not any more. So they did the best thing they could do and release some IPs in hopes that other companies would pick them up. Again, Nintendo played smart. They knew how popular Bayonetta was, so they made sure to throw enough money at Platinum Games and/or Sega to get the rights to publish a sequel. we don’t know what happens behind closed doors. For all we know, Sony and Microsoft probably threw a ton of money at them too, but it went down like those bidding wars you see in cartoons and movies where someone bids enough money to buy the planet Jupiter. Then as everyone is picking their jaws up from the floor, they hear someone mention an amount that can buy the Sun. That was Nintendo, for all you know.
If you’re mad, blame yourselves and your fellow consumers if you did not support Sega by buying their good games, blame the gaming industry for creating this hostile environment for developers and publishers, and blame Sega’s marketing branch for not knowing how to sell a banana to a chimpanzee. The latter might also be because of lack of money, in which case, blame yourselves again.
I’m not a fanboy of any company, but I respect smart business tactics. All 3 companies are playing to win, but as of right now, Nintendo is the one that has the winning strats.
Best believe I’ll be playing the shit out of Bayonetta 2 when it gets released and enjoying every minute of it. And like Nintendo, butthurt anti-Nintendo consumers won’t even be on my mind when I’m hitting those Non-Stop Infinite Climax Graciouses and Gloriouses with Kilgore Glitches (part 2).[/details]
Happy gaming, all! 
