PS3 concerns ignite Xbox 2 support?

[Goonboy_Panzer]

Abadd i laughed at your statement of things that YOUR trying to pass off as FACT when they are not. Half of what you said were pure speculation and
your assumption and the other half was pure nonsense. If someone is making claims that are not true and they do not know it means that the person is IGNORANT of the facts. If you wanna take that as an insult than be my guest.

Uh… Begged? Proof? Nintendo was the one who pissed off Square originally after the SNES, and I can almost guarantee that it was Nintendo that begged Square. And where did you see that Square was “interested” in Xbox 2? Well, I’m sure most developers are “interested,” but that doesn’t mean squat until they release a game.

Begged. Square BEGGED Nintendo to develop for the gba. Now lets look into facts. Nintendo is currently doing ok on it’s Gamecube platform. But the sales of the GBA has always been phenomonal as well as the succesful Pokemon franchise. With the money it makes on licensing fees from third parties and it’s own software sales from two platforms what does this mean? Nintendo is in NO danger in becoming the way of the Sega which a lot of ignorant gamers like to think.
In fact Nintendo 's profits have always been on par. Especially in 2000/2001
where the incident took place.

Square: Their most succesful game is Final fantasy. Yet after an ill conceived venture with Sony pictures called FF:Spirits Within, Square was in a very bad position.The movie flopped world wide and square’s investment in this film went down the tubes. They could n’t soley rely on one platform anymore. The gba was the answer as it has a much bigger userbase than the ps2 and it would of course get them out of the red. That was also one of the reasons why they merged with Enix, For sheer survival.

But while Square wanted to develop for Nintendo again Nintendo had other ideas and decided to publically humilate Square by refusing them to develop for the GBA. Nintendo did n’t need Square and they got Square where they wanted them when Square “came crawling back.” You could say it was some sort of "payback after Square left Nintendo for the Playstation. So unlike what you say Square needed Nintendo more than Nintendo needed Square. Especially in the situation Square found themselves in.

So when you look at it Nintendo basically was holding all the cards and they
both knew it.

Here’s some info that has few details on it.
ffonline.com/news/print.php? … -18&page=1

As for Square expressing intrest in xbox2. yeah it’s true. I resent your tone
in your question which indicates that i’m making this up. It’s been all over the usual news outlet so it’s obvious you have been living under a rock.

This is purely the Japanese way of doing business. Yu Suzuki helped make Sega what it is today, so, just like any other old-school Japanese company would, they catered to his every whim. It’s purely a cultural thing.

No it isn’t. While Yu Suzuki may have done lots of good and great things for Sega there is no way that any normal japanese management would have greenlighted a game like SHENMUE in the enviroment that the gaming
industry was in(Still in) at the time. Do you really think Nintendo, Capcom and any other japanese game developer would have seriously greenlighted
an expensive game where nothing happens? What i mean by that is that
there’s no bright colours,fireballs,fantastical elements,magic and other such
stuff that makes your average RPG. There’s nothing to attract the masses
to a game like SHENMUE. I doubt that anyone other than Sega would have done a game like this. Which is part of the reason Sega gets the respect from it’s peers as it does because of them taking chances and breaking new ground. On the same note do you really think as well that Yuji Naka
could getaway not making a sequel to a certain game if he was in Nintendo or any other japanese game companies besides Sega?

[quote=“Abadd”]

And look at the level of creativity/quality in Nintendo titles vs. Sega titles. Each title released goes through a very painful process of gameplay testing and polishing, so only the best gets put out. Sega spits stuff out the door like there’s no tomorrow. Guess who’s doing better?[/quote]

Creativity? Yes, lets look at the Creativity at Nintendo compared to Sega.
Mario Sunshine, Mario golf, Mario pinball Mario baseball… Lets not forget
Zelda:four swords,Zelda:Oricana Of Time, Zelda: whatever and that Zelda
using a cell shaded look that I seem to remember was pioneered by a company that you say has less creativity than the big N.

A company I shall add whose mascot has been outselling Nintendo’s own
mascot ten to one ever since it appered on the GBA and Gamecube. A company i shall add that made the best version of F ZERO in a very long time…

Did i forget the over sanitised Pokemon and the begining of it with Metroid?

The quality? the quality speaks for itself with the epitaph of the Dreamcast. nearly every games magazine was calling this machine “The last true games machine” after Sega bowed out of the home system biz. Are you gonna deny that was said or ever happened? Or that

Sega is like fine wine it takes an aquired taste. Obviously not everyone has it as evident that the Dc was totally ignored by the masses. That was damaging to the game industry as a whole when that happened.

[quote=“Abadd”]

Hahahaha… This is in comparison to the army of developers who will be putting their best content on the PS3?[/quote]

Army of developers. Sure Sony will have that. But none of them are the developers that anyone gives a dam about. If you don’t have Capcom, Konami, EA, Square-Enix, Namco your basically screwed. Sega learned that the hard way with the DC. If these companies basically are the draw to get people onto your machine. If they are talking about going onto a rival machine than sony is in trouble. EA we all know are multiplatform company
Square-Enix Sony’s important developer is saying that they may look into xbox 2. Capcom has critiscised Sony for a while now and Konami is shifting it’s key titles onto other platforms. Sony won’t have the lead like it did back in 2000. The xbox has been the main threat to Sony and if all of it’s key licencees go to xbox2 as well sony won’t have the edge like it did in the past. It will be a level playing field. Not only will Sony have no real exclusive
games from their main parties but if Square DOES go onto xbox2 they would lose their main draw as the only machine to get FF. Which is one of the reasons why Playstation has been so sucessful in the past years.

[quote=“Abadd”]

3 years ago. And look where it’s gotten them. The RE series has suffered lackluster sales since they moved to GC, and now they’re crawling back to the PS2 for RE4. Coincidence? I think not. Capcom knows where its money is.[/quote]

Of course they do. I never said they didn’t. But all Capcom is doing is maximising their profits. Their first real hit in a long time was Viewtiful Joe
which was a NGC game. Now they know it’s a hit they’re just maximising their investment on the title by putting it on the ps2. But that does n’t change the fact that Capcom has a dislike towards Sony. The fact that Shinji Mikami was n’t made to apoligize after such a outburst which was heard live on radio is quite telling in the way how Capcom views Sony.As far as I know RE4 is coming out at the end of the year and the GNC version is coming out in the summer. It be stupid for Capcom not to maximise profit on a title that has a long history with the playstation as well as making a buck.

Guh? Increasing growth of Japanese developers for PC???

I say again: ???

I have no idea where you got that from. Aside from FFXI, I don’t know a single Japanese-developed PC game (originally developed for PC, that is… and not even FFXI is).

Konami,Capcom and Sega have both produced original pc titles or extended versions of games that appeared on console. Many of which are due to hit the pc next year. As well as the many naughty games from several jap publishers that made it’s way to DC. there has been a growing intrest from japanese publishers in the pc for a while now.

[quote=“Abadd”]

The first half of this statement is true, but losing market share??? I think not. There may be temporary fluctuations in the overall marketshare, but Sony stays very much in the lead. And eventually, yes, Sony will begin to lose marketshare to the Xbox. However, only because at that point, everyone will own a PS2.[/quote]

Of course they’re losing marketshare to Xbox. I never said Sony was n’t still in the lead unless you don’t count Nintendo’s overall sales but Xbox has
grabbed a good portion of the marketshare in the last two years. Marketshare is estabilshed on an annual basis and sonys lead has n’t been that great since xbox came into the picture. And the fact that Sony has made it clear that it wants no competition due to it’s questionable actions in the past they are all getting worried. The Playstation attributes to 40% to Sony’s overall profits. If they lost that you can’t say it wouldn’t mean nothing to Sony.

Uh… sorry to rain on your parade, but… they have? Sonic was a success, but that is a given. VF succeeded for the first time, sure, but anything else? Not really. Sega’s been moderately successful on the Gamecube, has had horrible sales on the Xbox, and less than satisfactory sales on the PS2. Where are you getting off saying Sega has “won over the casual gamer”?

Where do you get off that they haven’t? VF has always been a success for Sega and not for the first time that you indicated. Sega has done well with the recent ESPN titles due to the slash in price but your average gamer has been impressed with other certain titles from them. Sega has had a few good returns in the last two years and from the mainstream forums i’ve been to most of the casual gamers have said they enjoyed their games. So they are not getting a negative reputation among this crowd are they? In japan Sega has had the biggest success. Titles like Let’s Make A PRO J LEAGUE FOOTBALL TEAM 3 and 4 have seen massive returns for Sega as well as INITIAL D,DORORO,FIST OF THE NORTH STAR and several others the latest being SHINING TEARS .

SUPER MONKEYBALL became a franchise after it scored good sales on the gamecube and the xbox sega games have done okay with OUTRUN 2
SONIC,HEADHUNTER doing well.

[quote=“Abadd”]

Okay, Golden Axe was popular, but Skies 2? PDS 2? Since when were these big selling games? They appealed to a very small niche. Sure, they were very high quality titles, but I would hardly call them “popular,” seeing as Panzer was almost non-existant in the US and Skies hardly broke 100k units on the DC.[/quote]

Well lemme see. Despite the contary of people’s beliefs PDS was n’t a spin off title and was the third part of the series. There is nothing stopping Sega from doing the forth game of PANZER DRAGOON into an RPG. Considering that ORTA broke even and Sega has to cater towards the fanbase whose been wanting another RPG version of this game I cannot see why not.
Sega are very aware how popular the game PANZER DRAGOON SAGA was to it’s fans and I think they will make the game.

On EA2: They ported this game over to GC. If the game was such a flop on DC then why would they have bothered in porting a game that was n’t gonna sell anyway? As far as i know the game broke 75,plus K in the states.
Combine that to whatever the REAL sales were on DC worldwide and i think the game has justified in getting a sequel.

Sega has to rely on it’s fanbase who is spread among three platforms to pushstart their sales. If they get more people other than Sega fans buying the game than that’s fine and very good. Sega has been nortoriously slow
on sequels of certain games with a cult following. Now that they are a third party they HAVE to produce the games that their following wants.

But lets wait and see. Sega is doing an announcement soon in the new year so we will see if these games will appear in the next two years. We will see whether or not whose correct or not.

I’d just like to point out that Guardian Heroes was developed by Treasure and as far as I know Sega had nothing to do with the GBA release.

Actually GUARDIAN HEROES ADVANCE was financed by Sega and Treasure developed it. Sega published it in japan which is the games origin country. SOA decided not to pick it up for the western markets. It still a Sega game no matter if it is n’t over here like SHINING SOUL 1 and 2 being published by THQ and Atlus.

[Geoffrey]

Realistically, the Panzer Dragoon series can’t survive on a small hardcore fanbase. The only incentive Sega has to develop a true RPG sequel to Panzer Dragoon Saga is the simple fact that Sega needs to develop (more) RPGs if it hopes to survive. To that end, continuing a franchise that has global appeal like the Panzer Dragoon series, would be far easier than starting a whole new one… in my humble opinion of course.

I don’t care how unpopular the Panzer Dragoon series is in Japan because Sega needs to start thinking outside the box (i.e. Japan).

Am I wrong?

[UrbanReflex]

Hmmm. Sega needed to develop RPGs to survive? Surely it’d make sense to create games that cost the least amount of money but appeal to the majority audience? RPGs aren’t cheap… and while the audience might be there, it’s probably easier to get to them (or rather, their cash) via a different style of game.

[Abadd]

Now this is more like it.

Begged. Square BEGGED Nintendo to develop for the gba.

Proof. Where’s the proof? This is what is called speculation.

Now lets look into facts. Nintendo is currently doing ok on it’s Gamecube platform. But the sales of the GBA has always been phenomonal as well as the succesful Pokemon franchise.

Actually, most territories consider the GameCube to be floundering. Sales for games outside of 1st party games pale in comparison (in most cases) to their equivalents on the PS2 and Xbox. While Xbox may be dead in the water in Japan and GameCube may have the hardware sales numbers, software sales are waaaay down. In North American and Europe, hardly any companies outside of Sega and Capcom even bother with the GC.

And I agree about the GBA sales.

With the money it makes on licensing fees from third parties and it’s own software sales from two platforms what does this mean? Nintendo is in NO danger in becoming the way of the Sega which a lot of ignorant gamers like to think. In fact Nintendo 's profits have always been on par. Especially in 2000/2001 where the incident took place.

I never said that Nintendo was going to get out of the hardware business. They make most of their money from the sales of their first party games (there has yet to be a third party game to break 1 million in sales on the GC (the closest being Sega’s own Sonic Adventure 2 Battle).

Square: Their most succesful game is Final fantasy. Yet after an ill conceived venture with Sony pictures called FF:Spirits Within, Square was in a very bad position.The movie flopped world wide and square’s investment in this film went down the tubes. They could n’t soley rely on one platform anymore. The gba was the answer as it has a much bigger userbase than the ps2 and it would of course get them out of the red. That was also one of the reasons why they merged with Enix, For sheer survival.

You were right on with Square’s financial situation, and the reasons for merging with Enix. However, how is it you came to the conclusion that Square decided the GBA was the answer? Why not Xbox? And why is it they were still hurting so badly, even though they merged with Enix, who has loads of cash? And what about FFXI? That provides millions of dollars in revenue for Square-Enix. Doesn’t that count for anything?

I’m not saying that Square didn’t want to develop for Nintendo and that Nintendo bribed them to. I’m sure it was a mutually beneficial agreement that was being roadblocked by a single person (Yamauchi).

Oh, and just as a side note: Square is not Sony’s most important developer. One of the top 5 for sure, but EA is by far the most important. Square releases maybe 1 (big) game a year. 2 if you’re lucky. EA? 5-6 million sellers a year.

As for Square expressing intrest in xbox2. yeah it’s true. I resent your tone in your question which indicates that i’m making this up. It’s been all over the usual news outlet so it’s obvious you have been living under a rock.

Links? And like I said, I’m sure every company is “expressing interest” in developing for Xbox 2. But that argument is neither here nor there.

No it isn’t. While Yu Suzuki may have done lots of good and great things for Sega there is no way that any normal japanese management would have greenlighted a game like SHENMUE in the enviroment that the gaming industry was in(Still in) at the time.

It’s called out of control spending. Shenmue wasn’t originally greenlit as a $70 million project (or whatever it cost). It was originally designed on the Saturn, then redesigned, then transferred over to the DC, etc. etc. The costs just kept adding up and adding up. Yu Suzuki had so much power at the time that nobody really said anything until the game tanked.

And who said there was anything “normal” about Japanese business management?

Not sure what you meant about the “environment [of the] gaming industry… at the time.” What exactly do you mean?

As for your claims about what makes Shenmue so great, there were games on PC that did similar things way before Shenmue did. It didn’t really break any new grounds, except on console. And it was simply a matter of money. A smarter developer would have used more middleware, AI, etc., but everything in Shenmue was hand scripted. Which helped add to the cost. Most other companies were simply too smart to try something like that.

On the same note do you really think as well that Yuji Naka could getaway not making a sequel to a certain game if he was in Nintendo or any other japanese game companies besides Sega?

You mean kind of in the same way that he keeps churning out Sonic title after Sonic title? Let’s see: Sonic Adventure, Adventure 2, Adventure 2 Battle, Adventure DX, Advance, Advance 2, Advance 3, Sonic Battle, Sonic Spinball, Sonic Mega Collection, etc. etc.

Or how about Phantasy Star Online games?

He’s “forced” to make sequels to the games of his that actually sell.

Creativity? Yes, lets look at the Creativity at Nintendo compared to Sega. Mario Sunshine, Mario golf, Mario pinball Mario baseball…

See my above comments. At least with these Mario titles, they are considered to be of excellent quality.

Lets not forget Zelda:four swords,Zelda:Oricana Of Time, Zelda: whatever and that Zelda using a cell shaded look that I seem to remember was pioneered by a company that you say has less creativity than the big N.

The new Zelda is so much more than cel-shading. If you can’t recognize quality, well, then I’m sorry. The new Zelda game, Metroid, etc. are leagues beyond anything Sega has done in a very, very long time.

A company I shall add whose mascot has been outselling Nintendo’s own mascot ten to one ever since it appered on the GBA and Gamecube. A company i shall add that made the best version of F ZERO in a very long time…

You’re kidding, right?

Let’s see:

Super Mario Sunshine - 1.6 million units
Sonic Adventure 2 Battle (best selling Sonic game on GC) - 0.9 million units

Super Mario Advance 2 - 2.2 million units
Sonic Advance (the best selling Sonic game on GBA) - 0.9 million units

Oh, and F-Zero was published by Nintendo in America, and even then only sold 250k units.

Did i forget the over sanitised Pokemon and the begining of it with Metroid?

Not quite sure what you meant by this. Could you explain?

[quote=“Goonboy Panzer”]The quality? the quality speaks for itself with the epitaph of the Dreamcast. nearly every games magazine was calling this machine “The last true games machine” after Sega bowed out of the home system biz. Are you gonna deny that was said or ever happened? Or that
Sega is like fine wine it takes an aquired taste. Obviously not everyone has it as evident that the Dc was totally ignored by the masses. That was damaging to the game industry as a whole when that happened.[/quote]

You’ll never hear me say that about the Dreamcast. I have one of the largest DC collections you’ll ever see. And the DC means more to me than you’ll ever know.

That being said, Sega was behind the times. It was a hardcore gamer’s machine. It was quality, but ultimately the lineup was too hardcore. It wasn’t keeping up with the times. As I’ve said many times on these boards, gaming is becoming more and more of a cultural phenomenon, and must reflect the tastes of popular culture to stay afloat. The DC did not.

Sure Sony will have that. But none of them are the developers that anyone gives a dam about. If you don’t have Capcom, Konami, EA, Square-Enix, Namco your basically screwed.

Uh… huh? Who said that these people weren’t going to be on PS3? I guarantee you that all of the above-mentioned developers will be putting forth their biggest titles on PS3. Perhaps not all exclusives, but that’s where the bulk is going.

The xbox has been the main threat to Sony and if all of it’s key licencees go to xbox2

There is nothing to suggest this will happen. Pure speculation on your part.

As for the importance of FF, please refer to my comment above about EA.

Of course they do. I never said they didn’t. But all Capcom is doing is maximising their profits. Their first real hit in a long time was Viewtiful Joe which was a NGC game.

Viewtiful Joe (GC sales) - 260,000
Devil May Cry (PS2 sales) - 1,000,000

You were saying?

Konami,Capcom and Sega have both produced original pc titles or extended versions of games that appeared on console. Many of which are due to hit the pc next year. As well as the many naughty games from several jap publishers that made it’s way to DC. there has been a growing intrest from japanese publishers in the pc for a while now.

Okay, sure… there are PC games that come out of Japan. But they all sell around 3k-5k units. A 10k seller is considered a hit. I wouldn’t consider that “growing interest.” Name one hit title from Japan.

…but Xbox has grabbed a good portion of the marketshare in the last two years.

Actually, Xbox hasn’t taken away any marketshare at this point. They’ve increased the market size. Two different things. Also, more people nowadays have multiple consoles than ever before. I have charts, but unfortunately, I can’t upload them.

Marketshare is estabilshed on an annual basis and sonys lead has n’t been that great since xbox came into the picture.

Actually, marketshare is calculated monthly, but I’m not going to nitpick
And Sony’s marketshare has been steadily growing, even after the release of Xbox and GC. The latter two received spikes in sales that overtook Sony’s day-to-day sales on a couple of exceptional occasions, but those were due to price drops, releasing of AAA games, etc. I do believe that currently, there are about 25 million PS2’s out there, compared to about 11 million Xbox’s. I’d say that was a significant lead.

The Playstation attributes to 40% to Sony’s overall profits. If they lost that you can’t say it wouldn’t mean nothing to Sony.

Never said that it wouldn’t. Percentage of profit has nothing to do with this, seeing as Sony is sitting pretty in the lead.

Where do you get off that they haven’t? VF has always been a success for Sega and not for the first time that you indicated.

Well, because they haven’t. Previous VF’s barely hit the six-digit mark in sales. VF4 (plus Evo combined) is nearing the 1 million mark. A huge increase.

Sega has done well with the recent ESPN titles due to the slash in price but your average gamer has been impressed with other certain titles from them.

They’ve only done well because they’re $20. Last year, the games tanked. And what other titles are you talking about? The next best-selling titles are Super Monkey Ball and Shinobi (aside from Sonic). And Shinobi could hardly be called a success, and Super Monkey Ball resonates with the same people who buy Sonic. I wouldn’t really call them the mainstream gamer.

Sega has had a few good returns in the last two years and from the mainstream forums i’ve been to most of the casual gamers have said they enjoyed their games.

Here’s a tip: You won’t find mainstream opinions online.

So they are not getting a negative reputation among this crowd are they? In japan Sega has had the biggest success. Titles like Let’s Make A PRO J LEAGUE FOOTBALL TEAM 3 and 4 have seen massive returns for Sega as well as INITIAL D,DORORO,FIST OF THE NORTH STAR and several others the latest being SHINING TEARS/

Actually, yes… they are. All the examples you’ve given (but you also pointed out this fact) are for Japan. That doesn’t matter. The Japanese market is shrinking. Hell, Dororo didn’t even sell that well. In fact, it tanked. Shining Tears ain’t faring so well, either. Fist of the North Star is a Sammy title, and Initial D only really did well in the arcades. Aside from Sonic, Sega’s biggest selling title is Super Monkey Ball, which comes in at a measley 500k. By itself, that’s a good number. But as the #1 hit from a company the size of Sega??

SUPER MONKEYBALL became a franchise after it scored good sales on the gamecube and the xbox sega games have done okay with OUTRUN 2 SONIC,HEADHUNTER doing well.

You were right with Monkey Ball, as I mentioned above. But Outrun 2? First month’s sales were pitiful and Headhunter 2’s sales were pathetic. Utterly pathetic.

But yes, Sonic games always sell. That doesn’t mean Sega is popular with the mainstream, though. Sega is popular with the extremely young/Nintendo crowd.

Well lemme see. Despite the contary of people’s beliefs PDS was n’t a spin off title and was the third part of the series. There is nothing stopping Sega from doing the forth game of PANZER DRAGOON into an RPG. Considering that ORTA broke even and Sega has to cater towards the fanbase whose been wanting another RPG version of this game I cannot see why not.

Technically, it was a spin-off. But, that’s besides the point. Sega did PDO because of the online noise that surrounded PDS. Sega didn’t realize how small the vocal minority of Panzer fans was.

Care to explain how you know PDO “broke even”? It sold around 30k in Japan and about 120k in the US (but only after the price drop).

Sega is very aware of how few Panzer fans are out there, and is cautious of spending the millions it would take to make another Panzer RPG.

On EA2: They ported this game over to GC. If the game was such a flop on DC then why would they have bothered in porting a game that was n’t gonna sell anyway? As far as i know the game broke 75,plus K in the states. Combine that to whatever the REAL sales were on DC worldwide and i think the game has justified in getting a sequel.

It was ported to the GC because Sega knew it was a quality title and thought that perhaps DC sales were stiffled due to the fact that it was on an unpopular hardware.

Skies has actually sold about 125k on the GC, but again, only after the massive price drop. It hardly sold in Japan. Even on the DC, before all the DC clearance prices hit, it topped off at around 100k.

When you compare that to how much developing an RPG actually costs, I don’t think you can call it a success (hint: RPGs cost in the ten’s of millions).

[Geoffrey]

Hmmm. Sega needed to develop RPGs to survive? Surely it’d make sense to create games that cost the least amount of money but appeal to the majority audience? RPGs aren’t cheap… and while the audience might be there, it’s probably easier to get to them (or rather, their cash) via a different style of game.

Sega has already released Shining Tears, and is currently developing two new Shining Force games on top of a new Phantasy Star game, so I think it’s safe to assume that Sega sees the potential for financial success that modern RPGs have (if all goes as planned).

[Al3xand3r]

[quote=“Goonboy Panzer”]Hmph. An over reaction if i do say so myself. None of his points were valid
and none of my points were rushed out assumptions either. This is the typical “How dare this noob can presume too much” mentality. They were opinions no more and no less but because you know him longer than me you believe him and try and warn me for expressing my self. I did not personally insult him. I just don’t agree with his comments. So i don’t care if you and your ilk wish to bully me just because of my opinions. I’m not a noob to this site either i’ve been here for a LONG time. i’ve only decided to register recently. I don’t care much for your warning as it was n’t warranted.[/quote]

It wasn’t a warning, it was an opinion on your attitude which, apparently, only keeps getting worse, this time by insulting “my ilk”, doing assumptions on the reasons that I replied to you, atempting to distort what I said into having hidden meanings (warning you for expressing yourself? Wtf?) or something when my statement couldn’t have been more straightforward, and continuing telling others about how you laugh at their ignorant posts and yet trying to show that you are not attempting to insult them by bringing up the literal meanings of the words (which I don’t think they include any “I laugh at you” type comments)…

All I asked was for you to show some respect and not attack people in these forums like you continue to do so because I thought that the reason you were here was that you liked the forums and didn’t wish to ruin their atmosphere by turning arguments into a bash fest… I guess I was wrong so I’ll end this here, if you wish to tell me anything more about my ilk, feel free to private message me.

[Ehndow]

The new Zelda is so much more than cel-shading. If you can’t recognize quality, well, then I’m sorry. The new Zelda game, Metroid, etc. are leagues beyond anything Sega has done in a very, very long time.

The new Zelda isn’t really out.It’s funny that you aren’t the only person who says it’s great but I really wouldn’t know why.Because Link is finally gonna leave the fairytale look behind?

[Abadd]

“The new Zelda is so much more than cel-shading.”

I was hoping that would signal that I was talking about Wind Waker. And personally, I don’t mind the fairytale look. It added a certain charm, and really helped unify the overall art style of the game.

[UrbanReflex]

Sega has already released Shining Tears, and is currently developing two new Shining Force games on top of a new Phantasy Star game, so I think it’s safe to assume that Sega sees the potential for financial success that modern RPGs have (if all goes as planned).

But how well are those games going to sell? A profit is a profit, but small profits don’t make up for big loses. You’ll not see Sega make a game like KOTOR, or Morrowind. Sega can’t afford to do that, so all we’ll see is mediocre games that’ll sell a few thousand and never be remembered.

[Ehndow]

[quote=“Abadd”]“The new Zelda is so much more than cel-shading.”

I was hoping that would signal that I was talking about Wind Waker. And personally, I don’t mind the fairytale look. It added a certain charm, and really helped unify the overall art style of the game.[/quote]

Oh.I honestly thought you were showing your disregard for Wind Waker in favor of the new look.

[Goonboy_Panzer]

[quote=“Geoffrey Duke”]

Hmmm. Sega needed to develop RPGs to survive? Surely it’d make sense to create games that cost the least amount of money but appeal to the majority audience? RPGs aren’t cheap… and while the audience might be there, it’s probably easier to get to them (or rather, their cash) via a different style of game.

Sega has already released Shining Tears, and is currently developing two new Shining Force games on top of a new Phantasy Star game, so I think it’s safe to assume that Sega sees the potential for financial success that modern RPGs have (if all goes as planned).[/quote]

Sega will be releasing at least six RPGs next year. Three of which are MMORPG players for the PC like RF ONLINE:ROMANCE AND FANTASY, SHENMUE ONLINE and THE MATRIX ONLINE while the others that are not online are SHINING FORCE, SAKURA TAISEN V while the last title may or may not be online called PHANTASY STAR UNIVERSE.

[Al3xand3r]

Two of those titles aren’t being developed by Sega and I really wouldn’t put MMORPGs in the same pot as single player RPGs, they are totally different genres aiming toward totally different things and most likely have totally different development cycles. Atleast the way they are being done so far.

By the way, can you point me to a source that states SEGA will be publishing Rising Force Online? I’m unable to find anything related to it on the official website of the game (rfonline.x2game.com/) or in a google search.

[Goonboy_Panzer]

Now this is more like it.

I was always going to reply to your points like this. I just wanted you to dig your own grave when you said that i was n’t saying anything factual.

Proof. Where’s the proof? This is what is called speculation.

I gave you a link which told some details about the situation. Considering you originally said that THIS never happned and i’ve proved you wrong i will suggest that you should find it yourself.

Especially on the square bit which you guaranteed that Nintendo BEGGED
square which i can guarantee they didn’t. It’s not in Nintendo’s nature to beg and they are very arrogant for a company.

I gave you a link that mentioned the begging situation. It was reported all thru the media that Nintendo was blocking Square’s attempt to license games for the GBA which they wanted. Nintendo forced them to aquire
a license for NGC as well.And that only happened when the president left the company. Square wanted to go on Nintendo and kept trying to initiate
negotiations with them but Nintendo kept saying no. If you choose to ignore this well known incident then that’s your call.

Actually, most territories consider the GameCube to be floundering. Sales for games outside of 1st party games pale in comparison (in most cases) to their equivalents on the PS2 and Xbox. While Xbox may be dead in the water in Japan and GameCube may have the hardware sales numbers, software sales are waaaay down. In North American and Europe, hardly any companies outside of Sega and Capcom even bother with the GC.

And I agree about the GBA sales.

The gamecube is hardly floundering in japan. But while i agree that nintendo is operating the NGC at a loss after the price cuts I willstill maintain it’s holding it’s own against Xbox and ps2. And other companies don’t bother with NGC? Acclaim made that mistake and look what happened to them but EA is giving strong support as well as other companies like activision and a few others.

You were right on with Square’s financial situation, and the reasons for merging with Enix. However, how is it you came to the conclusion that Square decided the GBA was the answer? Why not Xbox? And why is it they were still hurting so badly, even though they merged with Enix, who has loads of cash? And what about FFXI? That provides millions of dollars in revenue for Square-Enix. Doesn’t that count for anything?

I’m not saying that Square didn’t want to develop for Nintendo and that Nintendo bribed them to. I’m sure it was a mutually beneficial agreement that was being roadblocked by a single person (Yamauchi).

Then you obviously DID read the link then. If you know the games industry as well as you say you do from what your saying then you of all people should know that Nintendo has always been arrogant bastards. Yamauchi is famous for holding grudges and making third parties suffer. A similar situation happened to Namco when they decided to develop games for the
newly released megadrive and when they applied to renew their license with Nintendo He gave them a lot of trouble in doing it. As for FFX1 that happened way after this. Square needed to fix the situation at the time or they would n’t have gone bck to Nintendo.

Oh, and just as a side note: Square is not Sony’s most important developer. One of the top 5 for sure, but EA is by far the most important. Square releases maybe 1 (big) game a year. 2 if you’re lucky. EA? 5-6 million sellers a year.

The playstation as far as i know was head to head in sales with the saturn until FF7 turned the tide for Sony. It was one of the titles that they did have total exclusivity on. If it was n’t for FF which brand alone help shift millions of PSX i don’t think Sony would be in the position that they are now. Sony even went as far as to buy shares in the company and help make that ill fated movie of theirs. EA don’t make exclusive titles for anyone. Though they are not to be overlooked they did give the PS2 a huge advantage over Sega when they refused to make games for it. But as a title that people associate PS with it would be FF more than any EA title.

Links? And like I said, I’m sure every company is “expressing interest” in developing for Xbox 2. But that argument is neither here nor there.

It is here and there. For someone who seems to know certain things about the industry i’m amazed you still trying to maintain that Square is n’t shopping around at microsoft.

It’s called out of control spending. Shenmue wasn’t originally greenlit as a $70 million project (or whatever it cost). It was originally designed on the Saturn, then redesigned, then transferred over to the DC, etc. etc. The costs just kept adding up and adding up. Yu Suzuki had so much power at the time that nobody really said anything until the game tanked.

And who said there was anything “normal” about Japanese business management?

You said that it the japanese way of doing things in letting a superstar developer making an game he wanted. To a degree i will agree with you on that but SHENMUE was only an example of what i’m talking about. games like REZ and COSMIC SMASH would not be made by any other company because they would at least try to make the game marketable to the public.
SHENMUE is to ordinary for a game for johnny public to gt into. It’s not an all out beat em up it has no power ups or anything out of the ordinary. Sega management seemed to let their developers have free reign in doing whatever they want. And compared to certain other companies in japan that is n’t normal or buisness wise.

[quote=“Abadd”]

Not sure what you meant about the “environment [of the] gaming industry… at the time.” What exactly do you mean?[/quote]

Basically what i mean was it was at a time where a good title could n’t draw people to a platform anymore. Just a brand that was popular regardless if anything good was available for it at the time was all that people was intrested in. It was a sad testement to what the video games market had become.

As for your claims about what makes Shenmue so great, there were games on PC that did similar things way before Shenmue did. It didn’t really break any new grounds, except on console. And it was simply a matter of money. A smarter developer would have used more middleware, AI, etc., but everything in Shenmue was hand scripted. Which helped add to the cost. Most other companies were simply too smart to try something like that.

That’s frankly poopycock. What titles on the pc did similar things? A smarter company did n’t do these things or would have done it better you don’t know because it’s never happened. That is your presumption again.

On the same note do you really think as well that Yuji Naka could getaway not making a sequel to a certain game if he was in Nintendo or any other japanese game companies besides Sega?

You mean kind of in the same way that he keeps churning out Sonic title after Sonic title? Let’s see: Sonic Adventure, Adventure 2, Adventure 2 Battle, Adventure DX, Advance, Advance 2, Advance 3, Sonic Battle, Sonic Spinball, Sonic Mega Collection, etc. etc.

Or how about Phantasy Star Online games?

He’s “forced” to make sequels to the games of his that actually sell.

Yuji Naka has n’t made a sonic game throughout the whole era of the saturn. And NIGHTS was a success so don’t even bother to make out that it was n’t. Only recently have Sega pushed the Sonic brand but as for NIGHTS he still refuses to make a sequel for it.

Creativity? Yes, lets look at the Creativity at Nintendo compared to Sega. Mario Sunshine, Mario golf, Mario pinball Mario baseball…

See my above comments. At least with these Mario titles, they are considered to be of excellent quality.

The new Zelda is so much more than cel-shading. If you can’t recognize quality, well, then I’m sorry. The new Zelda game, Metroid, etc. are leagues beyond anything Sega has done in a very, very long time.

Poppycock again. I used the cel shaded game as a basis that Nintendo
decided to use that tool which Sega pioneered in JSR. That’s Nintendo’s creativity for you. Sega has shown more creativity in the last 20 years than Nintendo has ever done. Nintendo sticks to the same tested formula. At least Sega strives to create a new type of gameplay experience.The recent titles are not beyond anything sega has done in a very long time either.
Mario sunshine is a very average title while the other games are good. Nintendo has n’t rivalled Sega’s legendary DC run. That’s a fact. they are slightly better than the sega titles out at the moment i agree but until Nintendo can produce triple A game after triple A game for a two year period that ISn’t Mario or Zelda than i would agree with you that they have more quality/creative titles. At the moment Sega outshines them in this aspect.

A company I shall add whose mascot has been outselling Nintendo’s own mascot ten to one ever since it appered on the GBA and Gamecube. A company i shall add that made the best version of F ZERO in a very long time…

You’re kidding, right?

Let’s see:

Super Mario Sunshine - 1.6 million units
Sonic Adventure 2 Battle (best selling Sonic game on GC) - 0.9 million units

Super Mario Advance 2 - 2.2 million units
Sonic Advance (the best selling Sonic game on GBA) - 0.9 million units

Where’s your proof on this? SDX which you have left out have been in the Nintendo charts forever as well as the SA games on GBA

Oh, and F-Zero was published by Nintendo in America, and even then only sold 250k units.

Which was developed by Sega’s Amusement Vision which was my original point that Sega made a BETTER F Zero than Nintendo ever did.

You’ll never hear me say that about the Dreamcast. I have one of the largest DC collections you’ll ever see. And the DC means more to me than you’ll ever know.

That being said, Sega was behind the times. It was a hardcore gamer’s machine. It was quality, but ultimately the lineup was too hardcore. It wasn’t keeping up with the times. As I’ve said many times on these boards, gaming is becoming more and more of a cultural phenomenon, and must reflect the tastes of popular culture to stay afloat. The DC did not

While I agree with this statement I would say to you look at Sega’s attempt to lure the casual gamer. It’s resulted in some very low brow average Sega titles. If ASTRO BOY on ps2 is considered keeping up with the times then i really shall worry for sega’s future releases.Popular culture at that period was dumbed down gaming. I’m glad sega never went that route back then.

Sure Sony will have that. But none of them are the developers that anyone gives a dam about. If you don’t have Capcom, Konami, EA, Square-Enix, Namco your basically screwed.

Uh… huh? Who said that these people weren’t going to be on PS3? I guarantee you that all of the above-mentioned developers will be putting forth their biggest titles on PS3. Perhaps not all exclusives, but that’s where the bulk is going.

Yes but Ps3 won’t have that exclusive advantage like they did before.
Basically the majority of games from the main parties will probably be on every other machine.

Of course they do. I never said they didn’t. But all Capcom is doing is maximising their profits. Their first real hit in a long time was Viewtiful Joe which was a NGC game.

Viewtiful Joe (GC sales) - 260,000
Devil May Cry (PS2 sales) - 1,000,000

You were saying?

What does that prove? DMC came out WAAAY before VJ ever did. Come up with a more recent title to prove me wrong not an old title. Sheesh. And it still does n’t take away the fact that the reason ps2 is getting VJ because it’s the only recent NEW title that proved to be a critical and money making success for Capcom.

Konami,Capcom and Sega have both produced original pc titles or extended versions of games that appeared on console. Many of which are due to hit the pc next year. As well as the many naughty games from several jap publishers that made it’s way to DC. there has been a growing intrest from japanese publishers in the pc for a while now.

Okay, sure… there are PC games that come out of Japan. But they all sell around 3k-5k units. A 10k seller is considered a hit. I wouldn’t consider that “growing interest.” Name one hit title from Japan.

This is pathetic. The PC industry is growing in japan at a good rate or Sega and a few other japanese developers would n’t be intrested in porting titles to the pc market. It may not be big but there have been growing intrest from japanese publishers in the PC in the last two years or so. sega recently ported Neverwinter Nights to PC in japan. Also several of them want to tap into the korean market which is bigger than japan is. You can naysay all you want but they would n’t be doing it if there were no reasonable return to be made…

]Marketshare is estabilshed on an annual basis and sonys lead has n’t been that great since xbox came into the picture.

Actually, marketshare is calculated monthly, but I’m not going to nitpick
And Sony’s marketshare has been steadily growing, even after the release of Xbox and GC. The latter two received spikes in sales that overtook Sony’s day-to-day sales on a couple of exceptional occasions, but those were due to price drops, releasing of AAA games, etc. I do believe that currently, there are about 25 million PS2’s out there, compared to about 11 million Xbox’s. I’d say that was a significant lead.

I take that 's the recent number?

Where do you get off that they haven’t? VF has always been a success for Sega and not for the first time that you indicated.

Well, because they haven’t. Previous VF’s barely hit the six-digit mark in sales. VF4 (plus Evo combined) is nearing the 1 million mark. A huge increase.

Due to a bigger market in video games now then it was before prehaps?
Sega would n’t bother porting all the VF if they did n’t sell good on console.
this point you made is ridiculous at best.

Sega has done well with the recent ESPN titles due to the slash in price but your average gamer has been impressed with other certain titles from them.

They’ve only done well because they’re $20. Last year, the games tanked. And what other titles are you talking about? The next best-selling titles are Super Monkey Ball and Shinobi (aside from Sonic). And Shinobi could hardly be called a success, and Super Monkey Ball resonates with the same people who buy Sonic. I wouldn’t really call them the mainstream gamer.

And you know this because your a market researcher? Pure speculation on your part. And I already mentioned ESPN did well due to the price slash did n’t I? So why are you repeating what I said ?

[quote=“Abadd”]

Sega has had a few good returns in the last two years and from the mainstream forums i’ve been to most of the casual gamers have said they enjoyed their games.

Here’s a tip: You won’t find mainstream opinions online.

Here’s a tip: Everyone uses the internet from 8 to 45 which is within the age bracket of an average gamer. YOU DO find gamers of all sorts on the internet. Another presumption in your part that you don’t. If not counting what people say in the shops and other places. But mainly the internet is a good focus.

So they are not getting a negative reputation among this crowd are they? In japan Sega has had the biggest success. Titles like Let’s Make A PRO J LEAGUE FOOTBALL TEAM 3 and 4 have seen massive returns for Sega as well as INITIAL D,DORORO,FIST OF THE NORTH STAR and several others the latest being SHINING TEARS/

Actually, yes… they are. All the examples you’ve given (but you also pointed out this fact) are for Japan. That doesn’t matter. The Japanese market is shrinking. Hell, Dororo didn’t even sell that well. In fact, it tanked. Shining Tears ain’t faring so well, either. Fist of the North Star is a Sammy title, and Initial D only really did well in the arcades. Aside from Sonic, Sega’s biggest selling title is Super Monkey Ball, which comes in at a measley 500k. By itself, that’s a good number. But as the #1 hit from a company the size of Sega??

Point out any negative reaction from the public towards Sega in the last year or so? DORORO did quite well. SHINING TEARS sold out in it’s first week. INITIAL D did exceptionally well as well.FIST OF THE NORTH STAR is not a Sammy title it was a remake of the old master system title that SEGA produced originally and was released as part of the SEGA AGES series.Sheez I thought every sega gamer knows that. The last two years of good product results(Not counting the arcade side of course) speaks for themselves.

You were right with Monkey Ball, as I mentioned above. But Outrun 2? First month’s sales were pitiful and Headhunter 2’s sales were pathetic. Utterly pathetic.

But yes, Sonic games always sell. That doesn’t mean Sega is popular with the mainstream, though. Sega is popular with the extremely young/Nintendo crowd.

If Sega was n’t getting popular with the mainstream their games simply would not sell. The games that have done well for Sega has been on the Nintendo paltforms and the playstation one. And isn’t the little kiddie audience count as part of the casual audience?

Well lemme see. Despite the contary of people’s beliefs PDS was n’t a spin off title and was the third part of the series. There is nothing stopping Sega from doing the forth game of PANZER DRAGOON into an RPG. Considering that ORTA broke even and Sega has to cater towards the fanbase whose been wanting another RPG version of this game I cannot see why not.

Technically, it was a spin-off. But, that’s besides the point. Sega did PDO because of the online noise that surrounded PDS. Sega didn’t realize how small the vocal minority of Panzer fans was.

Care to explain how you know PDO “broke even”? It sold around 30k in Japan and about 120k in the US (but only after the price drop).

Sega is very aware of how few Panzer fans are out there, and is cautious of spending the millions it would take to make another Panzer RPG.

Like I said wait and see. SAGA is n’t a spin off. the storyline ties directly with the previous two. Sega officially says this is the third title of the series in the manual. Are you saying mr abadd that Sega are wrong in this matter?
PDO was originally PANZER DRAGOON NEXT but got ported over to Xbox along with GUN VALKYRIE when the DC died. There was no suggestion that ORTA was made due to internet demand. PD series was a good earner for Sega so it was always going to get a sequel.

On EA2: They ported this game over to GC. If the game was such a flop on DC then why would they have bothered in porting a game that was n’t gonna sell anyway? As far as i know the game broke 75,plus K in the states. Combine that to whatever the REAL sales were on DC worldwide and i think the game has justified in getting a sequel.

It was ported to the GC because Sega knew it was a quality title and thought that perhaps DC sales were stiffled due to the fact that it was on an unpopular hardware.

Skies has actually sold about 125k on the GC, but again, only after the massive price drop. It hardly sold in Japan. Even on the DC, before all the DC clearance prices hit, it topped off at around 100k.

When you compare that to how much developing an RPG actually costs, I don’t think you can call it a success (hint: RPGs cost in the ten’s of millions).[/quote]

Again show me proof of this. The game did okay in its DC outing and you said that it did n’t even reach 100k before. Now your changing your story.
It could be the best made game ever made but if it didn’t do well then Sega would n’t bother with porting the title. And i seriously doubt that they would not release another version especially when every other company is ripping off the ideas from SKIES. Not every RPG cost ten million to make either. UNLESS you have proof that the cost of the game was ten million and it flopped then i’m not intrested in your rebuttals. Half of the stuff your
saying is speculation. I’ve backed up some of my remarks now it’s time for you to do the same if you can…

[Geoffrey]

But how well are those games going to sell?

I’m fairly certain that if Sega didn’t believe its latest RPG offerings would sell well, Sega wouldn’t waste time and money developing them.

RPGs are extremely popular in Japan, meaning there is much less risk involved. Sega can afford to make RPGs; Sega just can’t afford to make games that stand little chance of selling in today’s market.

The Shining series has a large cult following in Japan, but it’s obvious to all who can see that the new Shining Force game is being designed to reach out to a wider audience. Of course, the single most greatest flaw of most mainstream Japanese RPGs is that they are more akin to interactive stories than true role playing games. I’m pretty certain, though, that Sega can tell better stories than Square-Enix. Only time will tell.

[Goonboy_Panzer]

[quote=“Al3xand3r”]Two of those titles aren’t being developed by Sega and I really wouldn’t put MMORPGs in the same pot as single player RPGs, they are totally different genres aiming toward totally different things and most likely have totally different development cycles. Atleast the way they are being done so far.

By the way, can you point me to a source that states SEGA will be publishing Rising Force Online? I’m unable to find anything related to it on the official website of the game (rfonline.x2game.com/) or in a google search.[/quote]

They are still RPGs are they not? That’s why I mentioned it. Sega has put their own money into THE MATRIX ONLINE and are publishing it so it’s still a Sega game in that regards and unless your talking about RF :ONLINE i think Sega is handling the japanese distrubution of the game and co producing this title.

SAKURA TAISEN developed by RED is owned by Sega and co developed by Overworks anyway.

RISING FORCE eh? I was wondering what it stood for. i can’t go into too much depth that deals with the announcement as it was in japanese/korean and plus it took me ages to find the site that was talking about it and i did n’t get to bookmark it but the trailer for the recent TGS indicates it as the Sega logo is right at the front of it as well as the other publisher.

classicgaming.com/saturn/con … ndex.shtml

[Goonboy_Panzer]

[quote=“Geoffrey Duke”]

But how well are those games going to sell?

I’m fairly certain that if Sega didn’t believe its latest RPG offerings would sell well, Sega wouldn’t waste its time and money developing them.

RPGs are extremely popular in Japan, meaning there is much less risk involved. Sega can afford to make RPGs; Sega just can’t afford to make games that stand little chance of selling.

The Shining series has a large cult following in Japan, but it’s obvious to all who can see that the new Shining Force game is being designed to reach out to a wider audience. Of course, the single most greatest flaw of most mainstream Japanese RPGs is that they are more akin to interactive stories than true role playing games. I’m pretty certain, though, that Sega can tell better stories than Square-Enix. Only time will tell.[/quote]

Time will tell indeed. Why i’m afraid for any future installement of PD. Though i love to see Sega wipe the smiles of those people who did that Dragon Dragoon game as it’s very similar to PDS ,I just don’t want a dumbed down RPG like were getting with SHINING FORCE. On a sidenote :I know you loathe the new Shining movement but was TEARS considered a success by Sega do you know?

[Geoffrey]

Time will tell indeed. Why i’m afraid for any future installement of PD. Though i love to see Sega wipe the smiles of those people who did that Dragon Dragoon game as it’s very similar to PDS ,I just don’t want a dumbed down RPG like were getting with SHINING FORCE. On a sidenote :I know you loathe the new Shining movement but was TEARS considered a success by Sega do you know?

If Sega ever gave the greenlight for a new Panzer Dragoon RPG, it wouldn’t just be developed with Japanese gamers in mind. But that’s a story for another day.

As a 2D game, Shining Tears probably wasn’t very expensive to develop, so I’m sure that Sega views the sales of the game as some small victory. The game’s high sales have more or less proven that hiring a Hentai artist to draw the main character designs was a good move for Sega, sales-wise. Personally, I think using sex to sell anything is cheap and exposes the lengths people are willing to go to earn a quick buck, but that’s just me.

The jury is still out on the new Shining Force games though. While the graphics in the first new Shining Force look beautiful, the artwork and battle system leave a lot to be desired in my opinion. You never know though; the battle system could turn out to be more innovative than we can imagine. Of course, I’m more interested in the second Shining Force game. If it turns out to be a true Shining Force game (i.e. a game true to its Strategy/RPG roots) then I might even be tempted to forgive Sega for its handling of the series…

I loved the Mega Drive/Genesis Shining Force games; they were easily two of the best RPGs of their time. The question is: can Sega successfully resurrect this once great series from the dead? I hope so.

[Al3xand3r]

I’m not gonna bother replying to each of your points since I’m sure Abadd and maybe Geoffrey too will do a better job at it but there’s three things I want to say.

1. You keep asking for “proof” for the numbers Abadd gives but you keep talking about titles that according to you sell good and provide no proof for it.

2. You seem to think that every single title Sega creates is because in the past the series has sold well. If Virtua Fighter, Panzer Dragoon, Nights Into Dreams and every other game you have mentioned here was such a big money bringing hit then how come Sega flopped in those years and Sony basically took over the market? Most of the titles you seem to think sold great were actually sleeper hits for a small hardcore fanbase which was sadly the only real fanbase Sega ever had.

3. Creativity? What has Sega done recently (ie after the short lived DC’s death) that was so creative (and maybe has also been considered as being a great game)?
   And why would you discount the Zeldas and Metroids from the succesful titles of Nintendo? Metroid was actually quite creative since it looked like a FPS but played more like the old side scrolling platform games. No other FPS I’ve played gives that kind of feel.
   Zelda may not be so unique anymore but it’s a triple A title for sure. Also, noone other than Nintendo has done a game of that type as good as Nintendo so it’s not exactly something you see all over the place either. As for the cell shading comments that’s totally silly since it’s just a new tech (which has been used in a very different way in the two games btw), it’s like saying that one company is copying another because they are both doing 3D games.
   Then Nintendo has done things like Wario Ware, Pikmin, the multiplayer The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures (which IS unique even if it’s got a lot of the same gameplay as the normal Zelda series), Mario Golf Advance Tour (a golf game with Mario and a solid RPG feel?!) and more. Hell, they are even being creative with hardware with the coming of the Nintendo DS.
   Also, most if not all of their titles, wether they are innovative or not, are considered as top choices and must-have titles which is something that can be said for an extremelly limited selection of recent games created by Sega which has managed to even degrade the quality of some of their legendary -but still not well selling- series rather than make them better…

To add to this last statement, the only new-ish must-have game by Sega is, in my opinion, Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution. Most of their other games I don’t mind that much for not having, not even PDO since it’s not up to the standard set by the previous games regardless of the raving reviews -and disapointing sales- it got. You could also count Shinobi and even Otogi maybe but Ninja Gaiden totally owns them so they don’t seem to be something special any more…

As for Shining Tears, I think that it got great sales in the first few days due to the artist that was hired but then stopped selling alltogether after everyone realised that the game itself wasn’t anything special. That’s the whacky Japanese market for you I guess but I doubt it’s going to work as well when the game gets an American and European release so I doubt that its worldwide sales will be that great… We’ll see.

[Ehndow]

They are going to make a remake of Shining Force 2?!!

[Geoffrey]

They are going to make a remake of Shining Force 2?!!

God I hope not. After what Sega did to the original Shining Force, I dread to think what Sega will do to Shining Force 2. To be brutally honest, Shining Force 2 doesn’t need to be remade; the game’s colourful and sharp 2D visuals have easily stood the test of time.

The Game Boy Advance’s resolution is actually lower than that of the Mega Drive/Genesis, so if anything, Sega would have to downgrade the game for the GBA.