There’s a clear divide between the Kratos that fought against the Greek pantheon and the one who now faces Ragnarok. In the latest entry in Santa Monica Studios’ epic saga, God of War Ragnarok, Kratos seems weaker than he used to be.
Vapourware can end up being the stuff of legend, like Rockstar's Agent, Star Wars 1313, or StarCraft: Ghost. Without ever seeing the light of day, these games never risked the possibility of being played and forgotten, and instead live on forever as the subjects of lengthy YouTube essays.
Still, Molyneux's most notable lost game (or tech demo, depending on who you asked at the time) was arguably Project Milo.
I can see the potential of the kinect hardware... its rather impressive tech, but it was just not meant to be for gaming. If anything, MS had a huge missed opportunity to have used it for the AR/VR projects.
You can use the Kinect as an SLS camera for paranormal investigations. So it wasn’t a complete failure.
Remember Star Wars Kinect announcement? Biggest laughable acting seen
"Unfortunately, as we were developing Milo, so the Kinect device was being developed. And they realised that the device that Alex Kipman first showed off would cost $5,000 for consumers to buy.
"So they cost-reduced that device down to such a point, where the field-of-view...I think it was a minuscule field-of-view. In other words, it could only just see what's straight in front of you."
Hmm, exactly what tech was in it, that was cut, affected the development? It was only ever interpreting visual and audio inputs right? The xbox was processing those inputs.
Nor do I see how the field of view thing is relevant to the discussion.
Exactly! Tf kinda BS statement was that? i don't really see how fov is relevant at all, since when do you move all around a room while talking/interacting to someone?
This is entirely untrue. There was never a 5000 dollar Kinect prototype that could somehow use a wider field of view to scan and import generated in-game items and advance AI by over a decade. Anybody that fell for this was a stupid moron child, myself included. Anybody that falls for this lie now is a stupid moron child who doesn't realize that these people *only* know how to lie.
Shuhei Yoshida offers his take on the recent industry implosion and ponders whether there's light at the end of the tunnel.
Ironically, so did tech advancements.
New tech creates pressure to take full advantage of the power for people to feel a box is worth it. That expectation bloats team sizes (and by extension, costs) and to be more secure in a high risk-high reward project, they play it safe (which is why I think a lot of the industry is facing creative bankruptcy). Few franchises are proper exceptions because they're damn near entitled to a ROI.
But other than that? I'd say the adoption of Blu-ray in the PS3 kind of acted as the architect to some of the things some of us hate today. The decision to adopt it resulted in painfully show loading times because the drive was slow in the PS3. The result was mandating every console to have an HDD for installs, and Xbox 360 then discontinued those arcade models and every console came with an HDD. That adopted standard lead to a lot of games that were physical only to be available via download and that laid a path for digital distribution and the gradual death of physical media we're witnessing now. It was always going to be this way eventually, but it's hard to think that guaranteeing a HDD didn't lay some important groundwork. And now with crazy fast SSD storage and download speeds, it's gotten worse and now we're bloody streaming games via cloud computing.
Really great take on how we got to this point. Will add that the weaponizing/monetizing of the "console warring" concept, accelerated/facilitated all of your points. When you take what used to be simple bantering and jabbing between different fanbases and throw money/resources at it as the most effective marketing tool, instead of improving any areas that might add longevity to your products, you only improve sales while creating a destructive environment. Which now has come full circle. Gaming media/tech sites capitalized on this as well. So we now end up in a landscape where we get less for more, nobody is held accountable (unless you are Nintendo in which case, you will always be blamed for everything including world hunger) and what you now call and parade as "greed" to defend you own greedy company is years upon years of every asshat that has paid in $$$ what these companies get away with today, but yeah that "burn" or "you got ratioed" or "fanboy" this and that was worth it huh.
It's also screwing over gamers with limited budgets for PC hardware, well Nvidia is trying to at least.
OK, but what did Shu do about this while he was working in the industry?
If he felt so strongly about it, why didn't he quit sooner?
I'm honestly getting a bit tired of seeing this guy come out with all this stuff, week after week, yet he didn't seem to do anything about it when he was a prominent figure IN the industry.
*I got passed over for the CEO role and sidelined into an Indies CRM role, but I just sucked it up and did it for several years.* Great.
"If he felt so strongly about it, why didn't he quit sooner?"
Jim Ryan held him and down and demoted him to Indy role as you pointed out. We all wondered why Shuhei was never put in charge in the past and everyone else seemingly passing him up in high position's. Everyone getting promoted except him. He also spoke up about the LS awhile ago then folded and was actually help make Concord.
If it's not making the most money and attempt to have conversation that maximize profit they won't promote. Why? Because Shuhei was seemingly for the ppl.
Despite his 80$ comment on games.
'then folded and was actually help make Concord'.
Right, so once again he just sucked it up and went against what he thought was the correct path.
He also clearly didn't turn things around for Concord.
Seriously, if he felt so strongly about this stuff he should have quit ages ago; not just suck it up for years and then bitch about it to the public AFTER he quit.
Agree.
It’s easy to armchair QB other people’s decisions, but it’s all speculation. Maybe he loved Sony and wanted to see if things would turn around. It’s also hard to leave a place when you have been there so long. You think you have friends who will help you out, until you don’t. The corporate world really is dog eat dog. Having obligations like family also makes you do things you may not want to do in a perfect world. But this world is far from perfect, and so are we. So I will cut Shu some slack.
"Right, so once again he just sucked it up at went against what he thought was the correct path."
I mean yeah. He didn't have much of a choice. It was either go with what Jim wanted or get fired.
He went against LS but had to help with it anyway. Probably talked about all the bad spending that Sony was doing (and still are.) Corps don't want you to talk sense, they want to I to talk cents. That's goes for everybody.
Not sure why he didn't leave earlier he probably wanted to wait for the right opportunity to leave on a high note or leave on his terms. Much better than getting forced out.
Yeah, and sure, leadership don't want anyone rocking the boat; they just want 'yes' people through the ranks, but Shu didn't quit and make a point; he sucked it up for months or years. Nor did he go out on a high note.
If he felt so strongly about this stuff he should have told Jim to shove it, and join xbox, but he didn't.
At least he's talking about it and it's not just some anonymous internet person. That's why I posted his take. He was on the inside.
He knows better than most what's going on.
We live in a weird world where primary sources don't mean anything, evidence and reason hold no weight, but rumors and speculation hold the day.
Yeah, agree in general, but pretty much everything he's said since he quit could have been covered in a 30 minute interview.
Next week:
In a new interview, Shu reveals that he knew factions was going to get canned months in advance, but was powerless to do anything about it so just sat back and kept his mouth shut (and getting a juicy salary).
@SO1D
Was just going to say this. You can say this about anybody. Anyone on n4g that complains about greed but are doing nothing at their jobs to stop it... How dare you!
@ Outside
It's not just greed though; it's flat out bad decisions and poor leadership, and Shu was one of those leaders.
Because everyone knows you can really change the industry by quitting and being an outsider. I mean, his comments now aren't changing the industry at all. What would have been the advantage of doing it 8 years earlier?
He didn't, and doesn't, have to be an outsider though.
And great job by him calling out all of this stuff in hindsight. 'The Embracer thing turned out to be a train wreck'. Was he predicting this as it was happening?
As gamers we also need to make it clear what we want. Do we want fancy RT and RT
shadows, global illumination etc? Oh that's right we have to do the internet thing and brag about all those things. What we need is innovative gameplay mechanics and deeper more dynamic story telling and reactive realistic worlds and characters imo. Emphasis on Innovative gameplay mechanics. Expedition 33 was made by a tiny group of 30 ppl. Not sure what the budget was but I know it wasn't no 400m$ project or nothing crazy like that.
They join the Baldurs Gate team for being independent and releasing great game with out corporate meddling and stupidly big budget's that kills jobs and studios. If more groups get to together remain independent and create games for gamers and fans this industry would be better off in the future. Again it's about getting away from big corpos because corpos aren't gonna change, ever, they're just not. Scary to be out on your own? Yes but high risk high reward again as we've seen.
Ray Chase is a voice actor, cofounder of a game studio, and lead designer on their debut. Today we chat dateviators and the ideas behind Date Everything!
It's hard to talk about this without delving in spoilers territory, but it is pretty clear that Kratos is trying to hold back every since he arrived in this new realm. There is a fight early on in Ragnarok where Kratos' adversary says that he wants to see the Ghost of Sparta in full old style mode and Kratos does not want to go back to his old days because he is afraid to become his greek self again.
By the end of Ragnarok, though, it is possible to look back and see pretty clearly that even when trying to restrain himself, Kratos still did very well against all his adversaries, so, no, Kratos is not weaker. He is now in some kind of Superman state of mind where he never uses his full power because he would shatter the land around he like he did in Greece, but he still can beat pretty much anyone that stands in his way and refuses his offer to walk away from a fight with the greek God of War
Man has gotten old and been through too much. Haven't beaten the game yet so I don't know what happens but I hope he retires after Ragnarok and Atreus takes over.
i got killed by the first 5 worms that kept attacking me from where i could not see them and I'm a god of War? lol
Kratos is older and in a different realm, I'm sure that has a lot to do with it. Kratos also seems to have more control over his emotions these days; that definitely plays a part in his strength. How old is kratos actually? Does he age slower or like a normal human still?
I think they made Kratos talk a little to much in GoWR. He’s more sensitive than I’d like him to be. I miss the old PS3 era Kratos more.