Pokémon, undeniably, has the biggest cultural influence of any game series on society, ever. Call of Duty, Tetris, Battlefield – they don’t even come close. And that’s thanks to the primary developers of the monster-hunting adventure, Game Freak.
The developer has made or overseen all of the games in the series, from Pokémon Red and Blue, all the way to Pokémon Sword and Shield, releasing this November. The CEO of Game Freak, Satoshi Tajiri, created the franchise 22 years ago and has stuck with it ever since, and has never faltered.
The Pokémon formula has always managed to lead to success in its long-running series. But that same strength is also one of Pokémon’s biggest weaknesses. Therefore, begging the question; are Game Freak getting lazy?
Marathon has always been teetered on the edge of future failure, but now that seems set in stone after recent events.
Paul Tassi is a known xbox/MS stooge.
Saying that, Marathon looks so meh to me, absolutely no interest at all.
Once he wrote an article characterizing Horizon Forbidden West, which came out over a year after the PS5 released, as a PS5 "launch game." Assuming this was just a mistake, I pointed out to him that "launch games" for a console are widely understood to be the games that come out on the day of a console's launch or in the immediate window thereafter. He responded and told me that he understood "launch game" to mean a game that launches, which would mean that every game that releases on a console is a "launch game" for that console.
I've basically ignored everything he has said since then. But I don't care about Marathon either way; playing Hunt: Showdown turned me off this genre pretty much.
If I was running Sony why would I not try to have bungie reboot Killzone and have it as their Halo. Honestly I don't know how Sony could justify that 3.6 billion purchase price. Insomniac games at 256 million has been their greatest acquisition in Playstation history for what they have already delivered and what's the pipeline
The smart money would have given them killzone but they brought them to be a pillar of their live services investment and seeming have no interest in allowing them near a single player story driven game again.
The bigger mistake imo is not having them do any SP projects. Just all LS stuff.
Also want to clear up some misinformation on my part about Marathon. It wasn't due to creative differences as to why Jade left it was due to early internal Play tests were reportedly not received very well. Which probably prompted her to leave. My fault on that.
It does look like ass shit.
Would pulling the plug now make any difference or is Bungie thoroughly cooked regardless?
The saga of the legal battle that sees Epic Games fight Apple in the attempt to bring Fortnite back to iOS has just gained another chapter.
A once bustling space offering plenty of choices, now a desolate land of greed, did EA really kill the sports game genre?
They made them better than everyone else at first. Once no one was playing any of the inferior options, they turned the investors loose on the customers.
Hey now! The Smokey Dong Bong Pokemon are some of the more originals in the series. lol
They've put other projects above it despite Pokemon being the reason they're even known and cared about in the first place. You can make other projects and that's perfectly normal, but don't disrespect the fanbase that made you who you are to begin with.
Personally I think they have become increasingly lazy over time. There are battle animations on the GameCube and even N64 (Pokemon Colosseum/XD: Gale of Darkness, and Pokemon Stadium 1 and 2) that are clear as day more in-depth and visually appealing than Sun and Moon/Sword and Shield have, and that frankly is borderline pathetic. Saying you can't have the entire Pokedex in your game due to "higher quality animations" yet having barebones animations and 3D designs worse than a predecessor is just making excuses for the lack of effort put into the title itself.
Do I want Pokemon to fail? Absolutely not, but I want them to overhaul the series and actually give a damn for something that sells 8-15+ Million copies every time. The fans are also partially to blame for not voting with their wallets and instead giving them the green light to do as little as they can because the fans will still buy it.
Despite how much money this series makes, it still looks less technically (and creatively) impressive than most indie studio titles. I think the music might be its saving grace, but you can walk through the game with no difficulty.
Pokemon evolved into a series meant for small children.
Idk if lazy is the right work. To be clear, the last Pokemon game I beat was on GBA, and I have only briefly played some older 3ds one. But I can imagine how difficult it can be to just keep inventing pokemon. Difficult from a muse perspective perhaps.
I'm not sure how fun it can be to keep doing the same thing. That's why I was a bit surprised by how similar in design the Switch game seems to be to the game I played as a child. All of that being said, I will probably be getting the new game at some point.
Sadly they can afford to be lazy since it's pokemon and it's still an easy 10-20 mil copies sold even without barely changing the formula.