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[BeefontheBone]

Short development cycles, that's what it is - the game gets rushed out and it's often the story and gameplay that suffer while the graphics are pushed to be at least average in order to sell games to idiots and kids, who make up a fair chunk of the market. Witness Battle for Middle Earth - looks great, but wasn't finished before release and is full of bugs etc.

Gal, it doesn't offend me, but I happen to like The Breakfast Club and am a fan of 80s music (well, not hair metal, but synthpop rocks).

[The Fifth Horseman]

Short development cycles, that's what it is - the game gets rushed out and it's often the story and gameplay that suffer while the graphics are pushed to be at least average in order to sell games to idiots and kids, who make up a fair chunk of the market. Witness Battle for Middle Earth - looks great, but wasn't finished before release and is full of bugs etc.

Agreed. While I was chewing through Bloodrayne for example - they had a lot of options to use, lots of possibilities sleeping in their script code - and yet instead of making something _good_, they stopped on _decent_. With a minor degree of effort compared to what they already did, the game could become unique every time it was played. But no, they decided otherwise. :ranting:

But there are still fan modders like me, so not all is lost. k:

[DeathDude]

Yeah I agree the development cycle being sped up his really pushed a lot of games out the door fast when really some need tweaking and such, but with costs rising and publishers pushing at the developers it's sad to see. Especially when it turns out to be a straight port from a certain platform, I hate when that sort of thing happens.

[win98]

deathdude right i saw this game don't rember the name but it was out for 2 months and hardly anyone brought it because the story line was crap and the graphics were okay

[DeathDude]

I know a big issue is cost when they rush out the games, but still I hate it when I play a game and it ends up looking and running like a ps2 port, not there is anything wrong with the ps2, just sometimes I want to play a game that has been optimized for the system, maybe add a few features, make it appealing to the consumer to buy it.

[xoopx]

Originally posted by Tulac@Apr 24 2005, 02:02 PM
PC Gamer probably gets a huge amount of $$$ for promoting either ATi or Nvidia, and it's only only natural then, that their policy would be to ensure expenditure on theiir new products even if we don't need them, and since many of those who read these magazines are younger population, they didn't have the chance to play them...
So they spit on these games so they wouldn't even try to play, because they would find out how good they are, and would play some of them, and ofcourse lower their expenditure on the fancy videocards...

this is definately a part of it. why the editor allowed that one journalist to spout such a stupid opinion. they only get money from the current advertisers, so they pimp the new games and the devil can take the games that used to pay their wages.
if his opinion was true, how would he explain magazines like retro gamer? thats people paying money for stuff about old games. old games and systems sell well on ebay. more people who disagree with him.

[Sebatianos]

Well I just now looked at this thread and all I have to say is this:

Gaming magazines are sponsored by the gaming industry. The quality old games (mostly abandonware) are availabe for free - so the industry isn't making enough money. If the new generation of gamers start thinking that graphics aren't everything - they'll stop buying expensive new games - and that will harm the industry. So it doesn't matter what they really think, or what the truth is - it's all profit driven!

[DeathDude]

Yep this is a what $11 Billion dollar industry we're talking about bigger than hollywood and the music industry, profits mean everything now a days with publishers, yup it's unfortunate it's like this there is influence on this sort of thing, but until gamers act that way and start changing their opinions, it won't change.

[PrejudiceSucks]

Yes, but the next generation won't be getting anything new at all, PC game companies either release something 'Off-the-wall' that nobody buys or makes Quake 7 and sells half a million copies (Which is more money than 2/3 platinum albums).

I'm sorry, but people have got this worked out.

I'm not going to go into piracy, but if a game sells half a million copies at ?35 each then that's about 15 million quid, in Britain alone (I suppose that that's about $25 or 30mil dollars, I don't know how much the currency is worth, but it isn't that much) then any piracy is irrelivant, the company has made serious cash.

[BeefontheBone]

dollars are worth less than gbp, so ?35m is about US$50m I think.