Lair Reviewer's guide

Originally posted by Resolver1+Sep 11 2007, 12:36 AM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Resolver1 @ Sep 11 2007, 12:36 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin--Gm2â„¢@Sep 10 2007, 11:45 PM
You raise some excellent points Buckster. A $6,000,000,000.00 loss on the 360 alone is not possible. Even including R&D, Marketing, Game Development Subsidy and the extension on the Warranty Agreement would in no way come to that amount! As you said M$ have written off just $1B to fund the warranty replacement program, but that does not necessarily mean it will cost that much.

However, this is really not the issue. Lair scored bad, because it was more graphical might over game play. Comparing it to the excellent Bioshock is ridiculous. Bioshock has been widely acclaimed by the majority of the Worldwide Gaming Press. It is selling well, because it is a good game and it lived up to the hype...

... Something SONY is having a major issue in achieving.

M$ can afford to lose money, they make so much on software licensing that they can write off 10's of billions of dollars. SONY simply can not. SONY's hayday was Walkman, PS2 and Trinitron CRT technologies. They do not have a leading portfolio anymore. Even their Bravia HDTV range is not particularly worthy of praise, they get trounced by Phillips, Samsung and Matsushita/Panasonic equivalent technologies.

M$ are still popular here in the UK and whilst Nintendo still PWN in sales, SONY is struggling. In fact in the last couple of weeks M$ have had a 260% increase in sales of 360 consoles. <MORE HERE>. I bet SONY could really do with a turn of fortunes like that!

Lair got hammered more for its controller rather then gameplay. Most reviewers mentioned that the option of using analogs wouldn't hinder the game as much as they did, but in all honesty I think that's a lot of bull shit. You have motion controls in Warhawk also, but the reason reviewers never saw it as a negative, because there was the option of using analog sticks.

Wait...what's the connection between Sony and Bioshock? I don't see one, get me up to date with this shit.

Actually majority of Sony's profits come from the Bravia brand, their camcorders, and their mobile division, not to mention the profits they get from PS2 and PSP.

Yeah they got increase in sales because of the price drop, but they are still struggling to get 12 million consoles shipped, the number that they were supposed to achieve by now.

I wouldn't write of Sony just yet, for same reason people didn't write of Xbox 360 before Gears came out. [/b][/quote]
I don't know if anyone actually compared Bioshock and Sony, but Bioshock was used to prove that reviews can have a large effect on sales.

Originally posted by Flaming_Afro@Sep 11 2007, 12:45 AM

I don't know if anyone actually compared Bioshock and Sony, but Bioshock was used to prove that reviews can have a large effect on sales.

Can't say the same about Shadow of The Colossus, Okami, Ico, Psychonauts, Beyond Good and Evil just to name a few. It's not just about reviews, it's also about hype and marketing, and Bioshock achieved both.

BioShock also had SystemShock to push it...if it wasn't for SystemS it would have been only a good game IMO

Originally posted by KamisoriX@Sep 11 2007, 01:03 PM
BioShock also had SystemShock to push it...if it wasn't for SystemS it would have been only a good game IMO

I don't see how kami. System Shock and System Shock2 are completely irrelelevant to the mass-market and are relatively unknown but for a small group of older PC gamers. At no point have the developers or publishers relied or referred to it to hype the release of Bioshock. It is the media who have referred to it.

I am a fan of those titles and apart from the high-quality polish and attention to detail, especially aurally, they are not similar at all.

I like Bioshock's style, the 60's style and all, it's cool!

A couple of other observations about the current console industry:

1) While it is true that Sony is at about the spot MS was with the release of the 360, there is one huge difference: MS had the only NextGen console out at the time. This gave MS months to entrench with their console before anybody else came along. Would the 360 have survived if the roles were reversed? I seriously doubt it, especially factoring in the reliability issues.

2) Sony has no major titles coming out before next year at this point, leaving MS alone (again) to further entrench through another critical Christmas season. And make no mistake, MS looks like they will put miles between them and Sony with the pending release of Halo3. The noise is that Halo3 is positioned to be the highest grossing entertainment property in history. Lord knows the hype is certainly there... we'll have to see if the game can deliver. Add a seemingly endless list of AAA titles coming out this season and it's looking grim for Sony.

3) The console industry has, by tradition been a 2 product line industry. Looking back, you see Nintendo/Sega going at it, then Sony gets involved and out goes Sega. Sony is now in the precarious position of being the number three man in a 2 man game. If history repeats, we won't see a PS4.

Now, having said that, there are still some interesting factors in the equation. One is that Nintendo has played a brilliant move and totally abandoned the traditional console gaming fight to the 2 big bullys on the block. As far as I'm concerned, what Nintendo did is just astonishing and I can't say enough about it from the perspective of the game industry (don't particularly care for their system though )

So.. Nintendo pulled a vanishing act and left Sony and MS to have it out. Does that leave room for 2 consoles that are head - head with Nintendo on the (very, very lucrative) fringe?

That to me is the interesting question here.

I'm interested to hear some thoughts on this.

Well, I could have responded to your previous post, but I like your last better so I'll respond to that one. I was still right about all my points but there is no point in boosting my ego on that one, everybody knows Gazz is always right :P No need in continuing this flaming back and forward when we could adress this point which I am right about too.

1) It's highly unlikely that MS had survived if it would have released it's console at the same time as Sony's PS3. The Xbox 1 (which I liked) had been discontinued from support at that time and we all know that consoles only get discontinued if they are not commercially successful (enough).With the PS3 in the market at that time it wouldn't have sold have the consoles it did now and the reliability issues wouldn't have been forgiven that easily as they have been done now. I actually think that the 360 will never pass the 25 million mark if it gets to that point at all.

2) Sony has tons of mayor titles coming out this Christmas, but they have them coming out on PS2 and PSP, not on PS3 unfortunatly. Both PS2 and PSP are still doing great , just for reference some game (translated loosely as) “Another Century’s Episode 3: The Final� has sold around 230.000 copies in a single week in Japan, a single week! Also, the web is buzzing with rumours about a 40 gb PS priced at 399 to be released around Christmas too, linky. Also, it's rumoured the PS2 will drop to 99 dollars and the new PSP slim is just about to be released, it also brought PSP sales to an all time low this month as everyone is waiting for the slim version. It's also quite debatable wether Halo will really attract that many new customers or if all Halo fans already bought a 360 in these last few years in anticipation.

3) Nintendo rules, I am not a fan of their console, hell I even sold mine after 2 weeks but they sure make gaming more socially acceptable. The market is way big enough for the 2 players, gaming has made a huge popularity boost and the number of gamers have immensely grown. Comparing the Nintendo/Sega market to today's market is impossible.

Hey, I used the word also alot in this post

Well actually i think MS gets a big slap in the face for the rate of dead 360's and certainly shows they aren't the big guy in this war.


Though Nintendo took a big risk, Sony is kinda doing the same with the PS3 (The high cost). Though these two are certainly more experienced, which is easily to see. I'm still thinking sometimes, what the hell was MS thinking when they brought out the 360 anyway? Man that failurerate is soo big, nobody should EVER accept it. ;)

Can't help but linky PA's cartoon from yesterday
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/09/10

Perhaps it has something to do with me not being a native English speaking person, but I don't get this one. I was actually hoping on a real response of you instead of a mediocre cartoon that used to be fun ages ago when these guys were still inspired to make something out of their talent.