Seems mr. @$$hole wanted to sort of apologise:
eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=61668
Know what the really funny thing about that “apology” is?
Every single thing he ‘clarifies’ about his infamous comments was already evident if anyone actually bothered to watch the video. As far as I can tell he didn’t actually retract anything, and he’s now got my respect for that.
If he’d tried some lame contrition act I’d have laughed again and just forgotten about it.
No actually, he simply acts as if he never said some things, while trying to present the rest of it in a different, nicer light. And it’s pretty obvious to everyone that this is what he attempts to do. When someone tries to act as if he never said certain things, it simply shows how amazingly dumb statements they were.
For example:
“I never really passed a judgement on the controller itself. I think the controller’s cool!”
When in the previous interview he said these:
“Remember the one that nearly destroyed your thumb on the Dreamcast, and on the N64 remember how after you played a game for a couple of hours you had to suck your thumb for a month? It’s that kind of controller.”
If someone who tries to act like he never said some things, and also tries to present other statements under a different light, which was NOT the way they were told has your respect, then, well, whatever works for you…
He did say he regrets one thing I guess…
“I wasn’t bashing Nintendo, I wasn’t bashing the controller, I was really just saying that a byproduct of having a device like this is that people are going to make games that possibly are just there because of the controller, as opposed to being great games of themselves, and I said it badly… I regret that.”
As I said for anyone who actually watched the video it’s essentially consistent.
You’re right though, saying he never bashed the controller is technically kind of a retraction, but originaly his opinion was directly solicited, he didn’t just start talking crap about it cause he wanted to. He gave a presumably honest opinion in response to a question about the Rev controller being better for FPS’s, and in context he never did bash the idea of the controller, only a certain feature of it’s execution.
But yeah, it does work for me. I can certainly respect him more than I can respect all the people so determined to hate him they’ll ignore the fact he also said from the beginning that Nintendo will make “amazing” games.
I never ignored he said that, in fact it was one of the reasons this baffled me. If he agrees Nintendo can use it to make amazing games, why is he so negative about the whole thing? If Nintendo can do it, can’t every good developer do it too? And if so, where’s the problem?
Just because some things were not directly stated but rather hinted at from his whole attitude, doesn’t make me think said attitude was decent/reasonable/justified. Like the fact he didn’t even consider the Revolution as part of the next generation since he said “BOTH” will certainly be good. From his attitude in the rest of the interview it’s obvious that he was excluding the Revolution and not the 360 or PS3. But that was not directly stated so I guess we can’t call him on that can we? So I guess we can’t consider it “Nintendo/Rev” bashing. The wonders of “translating” spoken words into written sentences and presenting them in segments where attitude doesn’t really come accross, huh?
And I don’t hate him or have displayed such feelings anywhere near as much as he has expressed them toward Nintendo and their systems despite acknowledging that they make great games.
He also acknowledges he said things “in a bad way” and he regrets it, so I don’t see why there’s still an attempt to make his initial speech appear fine/proper when he agrees/sees it wasn’t.
Anyway, various parts of his little speech have been questioned here, showing his obvious dislike for Nintendo and how he went out of his way to bash them (ie the 10% sales thing), in ways that you can’t really say anything against whether you agree with the general idea or not. I won’t bother quoting them and turning this conversation into an endless cycle, they are in this thread for anyone who wants to read it and not nitpick at certain little parts that he is able to do so.
Just to hazard a guess, I’d say the nagativity was his opinion, the same way all the negativity over the original XBOX controller was an opinion, and was that somehow “justified” any better?
Mark Rein was dismissive of Nintendo obviously cause his company isn’t working on anything for it, and he’s probably been asked to justifiy why they aren’t specifically interested in developing for Rev a lot lately, so what, do you actually expect his opinion to be inconsistent with that? And as he also clarified after he was called on the “both” slip, no one really knows what Rev will be yet so he responded, naturally enough I’d say, in reference to “both” the systems he actually knows something about and is personally working on.
His genuine “attitude” is indeed missing in that context skewed article you linked to, he comes across if anything even more obnoxious in the video, but not nearly so hateful as some people want to make him out in text. Wonders abound…