Ready at Dawn ceases PSP development

The port wasn't bad - only difficulty I had was rolling, and even that becomes easy once you've had time with the game.

The port is good. Improved graphics, progressive scan and 16:9 support. And skipable cut-scenes.

The only thing about the controls is the motion gesture that you do with the nunchuck, but is not a really necesary attack.

Everything else is good. You still use analog stick to move the character, and buttons for attacks.

actually Fernando, there are many problems with the port, you should really read reviews from sources other than Nintendo fansites...

Come on guys, not only is Okami Wii really fun, the metacrtic rating for the port is like 91%. That's pretty far from mediocre.

Again, the port was mediocre, not the game. They ported a game with a drawing mechanic to the Wii and couldn't even get that to work well. That's mediocre.

WRE,

This is topic has already been talked about, here is a summary of some of the problems with it...

IGN
"The nunchuk-mapped dodge move, for instance, feels much worse..."
http://wii.ign.com/articles/865/865958p3.html

1up
"Now, too many of those same actions take more tries than they should; drawing simple horizontal lines can cause headaches..."
http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3167381&p=44

Gamespot
"Standard reflectors, on the other hand, may cause you frustration at first, because you can't string attacks together simply by incessantly flinging your remote forward and back...."
http://www.gamespot.com/wii/action/okami/review.html


So yes, I would call that a mediocre port, because in THIS case, the motion sensing and IR pointer capabilities of the Wii should have made the game 10 times better...

And here I thought having owned the game would give me a more validated opinion than those who haven't even touched it and are interpreting 80+ scores as 'mediocre'.

Forgot thats how the internet works.

I don't have problems drawing a straight line.

If you do a fast short stroke, even if it waves a little, it recognizes it as a straight line. I haven't used the Z button at all...

My problem comes when I draw circles...

I'm currently playing through Okami Wii and I'm not having any problems with it. I didn't get the "nunchuck dodge" move because everyone said it doesn't work that well. That being said I haven't had any problems with the other motion controls.

As for linking attacks with the reflectors, it's just a rhythm thing. Once you get the rhythm down it's a piece of cake... isn't that why you practice them in the dojo before being able to take advantage of the move?

The Wii is pretty easy to pirate as well.

Nothing to do with the PSP, just being a boring handheld PS2?

No no no, it's not a handheld PS2....

....The PS2 had TWO analogs.

Definitely. Ready At Dawn were amongst the top PSP developers, especially with Chains of Olympus. Ah well, maybe we'll see a 360/PS3 title from them now.

actually Konami and Capcom do support the PSP, its pretty much the one selling the most software in Japan if Im not wrong...

But I do agree about Sony doing nothing, hell, even developers have mentioned it, they love the damn hardware (except Itagaki) but that until Sony is cleared about what they want to do with the PSP their support will be limited to none...sad indeed

Rockstar still has 2 confirmed games coming. Sony hasn't canceled GT mobile, they have just put it on hold due to GT5P and GT5 development.

Gran Turismo mobile might as well be canceled. I doubt it will come out before PSP is replaced by something else.

Ready At Dawn, when formed, stated they are working on two PSP titles exclusive to the console. This was said a long, long time ago. Ready At Dawn is a small studio formed from Insomniac, Blizzard, and Naughty Dog alumni who wanted to move out of the uber huge productions. They stated multiple times during GOW's development that Chains of Olympus would be their last PSP game as they plan to move onto bigger hardware. This is not a suprise.

Capcom still has PSP games in the pipe and is even working to throw Remote Play into their PSN titles.

Ubisoft was... well hell, when was Ubisoft ever behind PSP? Seriously, I fail to understand how the tactics they used on Wii is a huge fucking crime and "they deserve to suffer" but take those same tactics and apply them to PSP and somehow Ubisoft was a patron saint of the console. Ubisoft was every inch as lazy as EA on PSP and suffered because of it. I could buy their bullshit if their biggest titles on the console we're months old PoP ports and Splinter Cell runoffs.

Tecmo isn't cranking the games out anywhere. I fail to see their inability to launch on PSP as an indication of failure when all other systems remain equally barren of Tecmo releases.

Konami has limited support? Aside from Castlevania and the Metal Gear series (which, incidently, has another chapter coming in the form of Portable Ops 2 and a RUMORED AC!D 3), I don't recall much from Konami on the system either.

EA's strategy on the console is the same as before. Port what we can, don't worry about quality. Is it coincidence that EA managed to ship Madden for two years in a row with a fatal system crashing bug in the MAIN MODE of the fucking game? Meanwhile they were expecting full price for their defective ports. $50 for madden on PSP? Yeah, okay, I'll get right on that. Truth be told, I threw my support behind EA when they actually did unique things on the console like Burnout (I know, it only collected previous stages but so did Ridge Racer and I loved that game so fair's fair) and.. well, Burnout. Nothing else put out on PSP by EA is worth mentioning.

So when most companies are being lazy as fuck on PSP, why is it suddenly Sony's responsibility to fix the situation? Sony is doing what they should, developing games on the console and promoting excellent titles. I'm not saying they were blameless in this issue because that simply isn't true. Everywhere Sony tried to focus PSP, it failed. And so Sony is letting the system do it's own thing which leaves some people unhappy. But if you're NOT finding games to buy on the system, you're NOT looking. For every Ubisoft dropped port on the system, that's shelf space for an Atlus translation. For every EA Sports title that doesn't make it this year, that's a spot for another NIS title.

well give them an Oscar cause they are great actors. i have not once seen/heard them complain about anything Sony has done publicly. i mean if their pillow talk is filled with Sony hate at home then whatever but i have never seen anything that suggest they are just acting like they like it at Sony.

(and if they have someone point me to it, i cant see every article on the net)

Ted Price's comments are in one of the Insomniac Full Moon Show podcasts. Or just check Kotaku's interview with him (search for Ted Price whipping boy).

Note the comment says that Sony paid Insomniac for the development of Resistance to offset crappy sales of the launch game. But that may not be true, as sales have not been crappy. It's sold a lot of copies now, because Sony did a ton of advertising for them and bundled a lot of copies.

Perhaps Ted Price was not paid off up front on Resistance, but just took the long view, taking a hit on a game that sold a "mere" 2.5 million copies so far knowing Sony would make it up to them in the future with more strong comarketing and bundles for their future games.

Does Sony really have no financial interest in Insomniac? Well, I dunno, as a private company (Insomniac) we have no way to be sure. But neither Sony nor Insomniac has said anything in public to the contrary. (My friend at SCEA told me privately otherwise, but I'm starting to think he's wrong, he has been before.)

I have also heard about Sony owning shares, but I wasn't never able to confirm that, but then again, I don't think they would make that public as that would go against the whole "Insominiac is independent yet still exclusive to PS consoles thus far" image...

Okami actually sold right around what they expected. Okami is just not something that sells well in today's market.

Whether it was expected or not, it's sold under 100,000 copies it seems. That is crappy.

Like I said, they were expecting to only sell that much. It sold like shit because it's a last gen port of a game that wasn't popular to begin with. At least with RE4Wii it was a port of a game that sold well initially(not to mention having good controls that didn't feel so tacked on, unlike Okami).

Sony in general doesn't buy exclusivity like MS has. Why? Because it isn't permanent. Witness BioShock.

Sony develops or co-developers exclusive IPs. If you own the IP, you know it won't end up on a different platform.

I have no idea where you get the idea that MS is doing a great job on exclusives. The general consensus by gaming pundits is that 360 has a fairly bleak future for exclusives right now. Gears being a very notable exception.

Sony doesn't buy exclusives? They develop most of their big name titles?

Are you on drugs or something? Sony has always relied on 3rd party games, and keeping a stranglehold on them via exclusive deals(GTA4, VC, SA comes to mind), to push their systems

Except that I've played all the GTA games on PC. Timed exclusivity is different.

I did not say Sony developed the games. I said they develop or co-develop the IPs. So they own the IPs.

Sony didn't buy exclusivity for the GTA games. They were exclusive because Sony would give co-marketing for them if they were exclusive, and they figured giving up the miniscule number of sales from Xbox would be more than made up with Sony backing their games with comarketing. They were very right, by the way.

In what world is GTA4 exclusive to Sony? Who is the one on crack here?

Look at the PS3 exclusives Sony has paid for so far:
Ratchet & Clank
Resistance
Lair
Heavenly Sword
Eye of Judgement
GT5P

All of those are Sony owned IPs. They will never appear on another platform.

On PS2, Sony got a lot of "natural" exclusives where the developer didn't feel the need to develop for other platforms, especially when giving Sony a timed exclusive would net valuable comarketing. On PS3, Sony isn't as dominant, so they have relied primarily on exclusives they own the IP for, not bought exclusives (that usually turn into only timed exclusives).

"All of those are Sony owned IPs. They will never appear on another platform."

They are also underwhelming titles, I'm sure I could name a lot of mediocre selling/rated Microsoft only titles as well.

Ratchet & Clank, Gran Turismo and Resistance are mediocre selling IPs?

Resistance has sold a "mere" 2.5M so far. The other two probably have topped over 10M in total sales.

What's mediocre mean in your world?

Anyway, this isn't a pissing contest about game quality. I was explaining the difference in how Sony and MS are getting exclusives right now.

This method when used by MS produced MS' one truly breakout 3rd party exclusive for 360, Gears of War. So I think even MS probably thinks the method has merit.

It might have been doing "well" in hardware sales, but have you taken a look at the software sales? It's the main reason(coupled with Piracy) why companies are starting to slowly pull away support for the system.

4MyFriends,

"but have you taken a look at the software sales?"

Yes I have, and unlike you had previously mentioned about its software sales lagging behind others in Japan, well, the PSP has the top spot...

Im starting to believe that you don't even have one...

I agree the software sales could be better, especially in the US. This will naturally reduce the number of companies willing to spend their own money developing PSP-exclusive titles.

"Yes I have"

You obviously haven't.

It's to send the following message to Sony.

"We're done with your hardware until it becomes profitable"

It's no different than when major retailers were threatening to remove the system from their shelves, it sparked Sony to fix the problem.

"It's no different than when major retailers were threatening to remove the system from their shelves,"?

I must have missed that memo, but as far as I knew, all they threatened to was to remove UMDs....

"It's to send the following message to Sony.

"We're done with your hardware until it becomes profitable""

what? that doesnt even make sene, Sony was the publisher of both of their games...

And no, RaD mentioned that they wanted to work on the PSP to prove what the system was capable of, from the beginning they always stated that they wanted to work on the consoles...

PiemanPieman

Actually, this article is weeks old, and they mentioned this pretty much because of the requests by fans to make more PSP games, they wanted to work on big projects for the consoles from the beginning...and the PSP games just proved that they can

Try reading what I said before commenting on it please.

I guess that makes sense in a "stop asking us, okay!" kind of way. Still, I wouldn't think there's anything wrong with working on PSP, but I suppose a small developer really only has the ability to do one project at a time, so they'll probably be really busy with the big stuff from now on and just figure they won't have time to do anymore handheld development.