J.Goodwin

Tenchu on Xbox looked like crap as well (news to no one, I'm sure). I could certainly do with some Otogi love though. BC, or new hotness would do nicely.

Wow. This is starting to look like a game that I would actually play.

Her "gun" is a "broomstick." As a native of Salem, MA, I have to say "Neat."

Sony's hard drive / storage medium capacity ratio thing kind of gets me. If the blu-ray medium is so integral becuase you NEED that extra storage space, AND you intend to be digitally distributing current gen major franchises during the life cycle of this console, then 60 gigs isn't enough by a long shot. It's no better than the 15-20 on the 360 from that perspective.

What the 15 usable on the 360 has proven to be enough for is demos of approximately 1 gigabyte in size. I wonder if I can think up another company headed by Peter Moore in the last 10 years that produced a console which used games that are approximately 1 gigabyte in size and could easily be emulated on the 360, thereby making them the perfect partner for digitially distributed complete retail games.

Damn, I can't think of one.

But if I could, then I'd have to think up a way to bring that old content back into the limelight. Some sort of marketing strategy. Maybe in cooperation with a major videogame news and review portal.

But who the hell would throw in on that crazy boondoggle?

And Geometry Wars. Unless Bizzarre Creations recently purchased their freedom.

Goldeneye was good fun back in college. We had it in heavy rotation along with Wipeout, SEGA Worldwide Soccer 98, and Saturn Bomberman up until I imported a Dreamcast.

Never did play the first perfect dark.

What stood out to me about Goldeneye was really just the vibe of the level design. It didn't strike me so much at the time, but when you go back and play the Xbox version of Wolfenstein Tides of War, you end up in a lot of areas that are just complete homages to the levels from Goldeneye. IMHO the mines in Far Cry have that same feel as well. It's definitely made it's mark on gaming, whether it holds up well or not.

Andy S. -

I don't doubt that there are a lot of publishers with their hands out in the US as well.

However, with pretty rare exceptions (I guess GTA? I still haven't seen any real confirmation of that), Microsoft seems to be done handing out gobs of money to developers without taking a pretty substantial share of their equity. N3, Blue Dragon, and Lost Odyssey are all examples of Microsoft essentially out-sourcing design and in-sourcing development (or arranging for development to be handled by a Microsoft-trusted 3rd party with assistance from the Advanced Technical Group). These projects are all MS all down the line.

I'll give you three guesses who is getting the money from that $50 title published by Microsoft, and who is only getting a fixed fee for their design services. The first two don't count.

I think that there's just a growing mountain of evidence that every time Microsoft bends over backwards for Japanese developers without taking a piece of the action, they get the shaft. I think they're tired of that, and they're not going to be writing million dollar checks to Konami to get a questionable port of a 3rd rate game anymore.

Personally, I look at that chart and wonder why there is an uptick in 360 sales.

The Japanese front has been nothing but bad news. Did a game release? Is the PS3 price setting in? Word of mouth?

Odd. And I should point out that, IMHO, Microsoft should just continue stabling Japanese development talent and leave that market for five more years. It's stagnant at best, outside of the handheld space.

As an addendum:

Even though it's disappointing, it's understandable, given that nearly all of the high profile franchises that the Japanese developers have depended on for their solvency over the last 10 years are now selling less and less copies with each iteration.

It's kind of disappointing to hear that the Japanese developers all want Microsoft to write them big checks. Especially considering just how far back Microsoft and Konami go.

If it wasn't for Kazuhiko Nishi and Microsoft, most of these companies would not exist as they do today. The 3rd party software vendor would likely have been an endangered species in Japan by 1990. God knows Nintendo and SEGA had little interest in dealing with 3rd parties except those who had already established brands on the MSX.

Too much. 500 was a gimme, 800 would have been reasonable, 1200 is for the hardcore only.