Saint

Incidentally, the first metroid was also released in august 21 years ago, 1986/08/06 to be specific.

bVork, that might be. The quality of the QA isn't that important, really, just the fact that EU submission is handled separately by Sony and not by Microsoft should give a big hint as to why it is possible for a game to be delayed in EU only for Playstation, but not for Xbox 360.

That being said, I don't think crap games being Euro-only has anything to do with how stringent they are on submission. If the games were intended for US release, I find it very hard to believe that the publishers would give up access to the biggest market instead of just fixing the bugs reported in submission. The submission testing doesn't really cover the 'quality' of the game anyway, as long as it doesn't crash and interfaces with the user/hardware in the way the console manufacturer intended, you're good to go.

It should be noted that Microsoft only requires one global submission to approve new games for their consoles, while games for the playstation are evaluated individually by SCEA, SCEE and SCEJ. It is rumored that SCEE is a lot more anal in the approval process than SCEA so it is likely that the delayed games were approved in the US but failed Euro submission.

Oh god, I sure hope Chris Crawfoord hasn't started a trend here. Where's that link to the gamasutra responses? ah, right, here. http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060622/hong_01.shtml

I got a black one (although, they were released thursday around here), and i've already managed to run the battery dry. Twice. Didn't really get much work done yesterday... Shame, that.

Gotta love that Power Paintbrush, thou'

It should be pointed out that neither online gaming nor the Wiimote are innovations by themselves. Online gaming has been around for ages and it was really big on PCs before Microsoft brought it to consoles - technically, Satellaview and DreamArena happened before, but Live is more successful. Motion-sensitive controllers have existed in the arcades for a long time.

Given this, the real question is "which was more clever to bring into the console-gaming mainstream"? The Wiimote is certainly more daring as it wasn't based on a tried-and-true concept for a similar market (the PC gaming market). But XBox Live was a lot safer and financially more clever choice, so it depends on your standpoint.

I personally prefer the Wiimote, but then again, I have only played a few Halo2 matches in the year and a half I've been a registered Live user, so I may be the wrong audience.

When I was still studying (about a year ago), the guys from Gizmondo came around the university and held this huge PR event. I talked to one of their producers for about an hour and got his card. The card itself is pretty fancy, and with all this commotion, it should be sort of a rarity. Maybe I'll frame it and hang it in my office.

I liked this one, caught my attention. And making me think "Hmm, I might have been putting off playing this series for long enough now..." when I'm rifling through magazines waiting for the microwave to finish my lunch (gotta save up the monies for E3) is pretty good according to my standards.

The ad itself reminds me of the "Absolut" commercials, though with a little more humour and a little less style. Still a very good ad, though. What I am getting at is that this is the *perfect* advert for this game, morally responsible or not. There exists worse cases of both death/violence and sex/nudity in even more easily accesible media, and I don't think that this particular image should take the blame just because it is done well enough to get through.

I do not advocate pushing the limits of the freedom of expression just because you can. But I don't think censorship is the answer if the message gets diluted, either. If we cannot stand up and defend the "good" examples in the violence debate, then there's no real point in defending the freedom at all.

And don't forget- it will earn you princess geek points!

... I am so getting three screened sphorbs, by the way. Can't believe we are still using ordinary sphorbs in this day and age.

While I can agree with LaughingTarget on most points, I disagree on some things.

First of all, I don't think the programmers should be blamed for *everything* as it is just as easy, if not easier, to get hired as a modeler, texture artist or level designer at entry level positions (with a possible exception in companies that do a lot of outsourcing). The real problem is in the lead design since almost all of those are recruited from inside the company, or from other companies.

I would also like to point out that while "hard science tends to limit creativity", it can just as often induce creativity and spark new ideas. The reason games actually improve even though the platforms remain unchanged (say, over the 5-year lifetime of a console) is because people constantly work on figuring out new ways to use the hardware. Most of the time, this means a better audiovisual experience, but sometimes new concepts and ideas appear due to technical innovation. Just look at http://www.experimentalgameplay.com to see some very good examples of how simple scientific ideas spawned entertaining games (although I guess it can be argued it didn't really take a programmer to come up with most of those).

And finally, the real "problem" with the programmer is that everything get filtered through his interpretation of the design decision. Most inexperienced designers have a very good idea of the "What", how they want the game to play and how the player should feel, but they don't know *how* to achieve this through interactive media. Not having a complete task at hand, any programmer/artist can only assume that they should do the missing parts "as usual". From this viewpoint, having someone unfamiliar with games be in charge of design would actually produce a *less* creative game (and this has happened a number of times).

Again, I am not taking a stand against LaughingTarget's point, I'm just saying "It's not that simple", even if you count out the unwillingness of publishers to invest in new ideas.