Team Meat did it again. I’m pretty sure you all know about the clusterfunk of a story Beefjack posted about Team Meat’s new game announcement. Of course, the blunder about the new game being Super Meat Boy 2 notwithstanding from Beefjack, the issue became again the other major thing that came from a Twitter post where Beefjack got this info from: Team Meat reiterated the whole “Super Meat Boy will never be on the PS3” line again (as if we should say never in the game industry, anyway). What a line that is, if only they didn’t use a new excuse as to why.
We all know about the first reason that they used: that Sony didn’t want it, so Team Meat went elsewhere. When it got on Steam and Microsoft, it did really well, but they have yet to try to go to Sony again. If Sony saw the success of the game, they would think twice, logically, about letting the game through, you would think. So why not try, try again? If I had a working headset, I would’ve been able to interview these guys for a gaming website I had. Apparently, I should’ve tried harder to get things ready to go. Because this issue springs into action nearly exactly one year after they first said this.
You see, the SMB2 rumor was cleared up by Beefjack as their misunderstanding, but the “never on PS3” line was not. The SMB2 assumption was edited out of the article, but the “never on PS3” line or reason was not. The reason, though, was completely different than one year ago. That it has a permanent exclusivity agreement with Microsoft AND Nintendo!
Wait a damn minute! How in the hell does that work?
Exclusive to TWO companies? Think of what the word means, according to the Merrian Webster Online Dictionary. “Limiting or limited to possession, control, or use by a single individual or group”. So, by definition (“exclusive” is a noun), this cannot actually happen. Two companies cannot hold the same amount of exclusivity power because it would break the exact nature of what exclusive means. Why would Nintendo be okay with Microsoft being able to host the game on the 360 (and vice versa), but they both would team together to stop Sony but not each other? The logic is lost on me, and it probably is for a lot of people that read that and thought “huh?” Oh, and keep in mind that the game is available on Steam, as well, which means PC AND Mac!
The very nature of the wording (Team Meat’s, not Beefjack’s) leads to the biggest issue I have with Team Meat bringing this up again. That is that they have now changed their reason as to why they won’t publish the game on Sony’s platform, and refuse to even try to make things work with Sony. This also brings into question their first reason as if it was actually truthful or not.
Meat is pulling a Valve here, and they are getting rewarded for it in dividends. They created an asinine reason as to why they won’t publish that game on the PS3, just as Valve told us that the PS3 was a waste of time to develop for. However, when the reason gets absolutely destroyed by the people who would know better than to believe it, Team Meat decides to, instead of conceding that they weren’t truthful with us gamers, just change their reason. This is akin to throwing things to the wall hoping something sticks. This is something Valve did several times when continuing to be challenged about why they weren’t developing for the PS3. When the last excuse didn’t work, they just went to the next excuse on their list, and that gets fed to the press, and the press just eats it up without even the least bit of a challenge because the press is too damn scared of getting blacklisted by these guys.
And yet, here we are, letting this happen and even rewarding them. Why is it that we gamers continue to do this to ourselves? Team Meat is essentially screwing over a particular demographic while changing their story as to why they are screwing them over. If the exclusivity contract exists (which we could say that it might not from what was said about this above), then why not just say that from the beginning? Why circle jerk people into this crap? Why not just say “hey, we’d like to develop for the system, but we have an exclusivity deal with a particular system”? They are closing themselves off of potential sales of their game, which seems to be very popular. They are screwing over a certain part of the gaming community and telling them “hey, you don’t matter, and we can’t be bothered to care, but can make sure you never forget that we don’t care about you.” Why game companies continue to do this just baffles the mind.
We let this happen. Despite, or perhaps because of, the PS3 snubbing, SMB has gotten mad sales. People are mad about the PS3 snub, but yet, this game gets sales anyway. This is like gamers getting pissed off about EA’s inclusion of the Online Passes, yet we’ll continue to buy the games that include them. Like the Origin antics being frowned upon, yet people will go and buy the games from Origin that was pulled from Steam. This is because we seem to not be able to hold to our convictions. If we don’t like how a company is treating us, then we shouldn’t be rewarding them with our money. Not giving them the money will be the best way to get the message across. Yet, we, as gamers, continue to be weak minded and/or immature about showing such anger, then wonder why mainstream America doesn’t take us gamers seriously.
I’m sure SMB is a great game. They certainly done something right with how many people enjoy the game. However, I have stayed true to my word about not buying this game (I can easily buy the game from Steam if I so wanted to) until Team Meat treats PS3 gamers with more respect and fairness, and be transparent about this issue. I did not buy a Valve game for this same reason. In fact, it was because of the Portal 2 announcement that I decided to check up on the original Portal, and I was more than impressed. I held, and continue to hold, to my convictions, so why in the hell can’t anyone else?
This is not about being fanboyish about any system. I want all gamers to be treated with the respect that they deserve, but call them out if they are not acting with maturity about their convictions. When I defended Hotz’s position during the PS3 jailbreak thing, it wasn’t because I hated Sony (hell, if I did, I wouldn’t be writing this thing now), or because I went rogue, or whatever else you might want to tag me with for doing that. I did that because I believed that he did nothing wrong, and that we were not understanding the real nature of what we were discussing, and just making up dangers that weren’t exactly happening. I may have been attacked left and right for it, but I held true to my convictions because I believed that what I said was correct, and I didn’t get crazy about it like everyone else on the other side was getting.
Team Meat owes us a long explanation as to what the eff is going on here. They have to be truthful starting now. And we, as gamers, need to grow the eff up and call people out on this bullspit. We gamers who do act maturely, regardless of where you stand on issues like jailbreaking consoles or what games get published on what platform, need to tell those that can’t do that much to do so, and call them out.
Count on the gaming press to not lift a finger about the inconsistency or lack of logic on Team Meat’s end about the PS3 thing, and count on everything that we could learn from this to fall on deaf ears of those who can’t be bothered to grow a spine…or a brain!
The friendly folks over at Razer recently sent us their full size Kishi Ultra mobile gaming controller, and this thing didn't disappoint.
VGChartz's Mark Nielsen: "Upon finally finishing Devil May Cry 5 recently - after it spent several years on my “I’ll play that soon” list - I considered giving it a fittingly-named Late Look article. However, considering that this was indeed the final piece I was missing in the DMC puzzle, I decided to instead take this opportunity to take a look back at the entirety of this genre-defining series and rank the entries. What also made this a particularly tempting notion was that while most high-profile series have developed fairly evenly over time, with a few bumps on the road, the history of Devil May Cry has, at least in my eyes, been an absolute roller coaster, with everything from total disasters to action game gold."
Me leaving it out should be telling of my thoughts on it. Better than 2 as a DMC game.
Still a good game though.
3,1,4,5 to me, never played 2. 5 gameplay is amazing but level design was really disappointing to me, just a bunch of plain arenas, the story felt like a worse written rehash of the 3rd and the charater models looked weird ( specially the ladies ). Another problem with 5 was that there was not enough content for 3 charaters so I could never really familiarize with any of them
2.
Dmc.
4.
5.
1.
3.
God DMC2 was an awful game.
And in case this isn't obvious it goes worst to best
Order changes depending on your focus. I tend to focus on gameplay/fun factor, so...
5, 3, 1, 4, 2.
I really didn't like 4 but commend Dante's weapon diversity. The retreading of old ground was pretty unacceptable to me.
But even then... Still more enjoyable than 2 for me
TSA go hands on with the beta for Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road, but how is the game transitioning to the post-stylus era?
Team Meat are petty blow-hards at the best of times. I remember they were goin ape-sh*t because MS didn't talk up their game enough on release and made a bunch of whiny little comments all over the place. But yet here they are in bed with eachother again?
Plus, it's not hard to imagine that MS and Nintendo are seeing this as an opportune time to try and stomp on Sony collaboratively. If they can turn it into a two-horse race then they're both better off, and Sony is looking like the horse whose legs can be most easily broken right now. They have taken on a big financial responsibility with the Vita this year and they're going up against a strong Nintendo lead and a media who can't stop drooling over Apple and their shiny things. Whilst in the console space, they're in a neck and neck struggle with MS who have a much stronger and very dominant presence in the US -- the largest and perhaps most influential market -- which puts them in an awkward position. If those two start scheming and plotting Sony's demise behind the scenes then we may start to see some pretty damaging results (not to mention the bad press from last year with all the security issues).
Of course, this is purely speculative at this point, but if there's a media bias and their competitors are ganging up on them when they are potentially at their weakest, it's not a good omen.
I have no doubt that Sony will continue to serve me as a gamer better than either of those two will, but unfortunately that won't likely be the determining factor in this business any more. As you widen the audience and customer-base, you invite more idiots into the fold, and you invite more money and thus more money-men. And when they're the overwhelming majority, sh*t like this will happen more often.
/rant
It's simple, they're toddlers having a tantrum first and foremost with the whole Sony can't have it now nonsense. But they're also scared to completely burn their bridges with Sony in case it goes pear shaped with everyone else.
I have to agree that the excuse is pretty weak, at the heart of it they are saying they are exclusive to everybody except Sony. Far too transparent.
Sony didnt want SMB.
http://www.psnstores.com/20...
So look up your information before going out full blown fanboy
One of my biggest problems with our community is the "ha ha, we have this and you don't" mentality. And then a developer tries to expand their audience by going to multi-platform, idiots get mad. I understand that being exclusive to a system does give a game certain advantages. You can put all your effort into using one system's resources. But developers need to make money, and if they are able to go multi-platform, it's probably worth losing a bit in the total polygon count.
Team Meat makes great games. But this is just appealing to fanboy-ism to build hype and making that problem worse.
First world problems. Stop pouting. If you don't want the game, don't buy it. It's as simple as that. Problem over.
There's no need to act like it's a personal insult. The company can act in any manner they so please.