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- A Private Eye
- Rep: 77
Re: The Video Game Console Thread
Jameslofton wrote:EA has a monopoly on NFL games. No one can compete with them, so they have no drive to actually create kick ass games. Sega was starting to kill Madden before EA got exclusive rights.
EA used to have that over here with "FIFA Football", but then came along Konami who had no rights over any team or competition, but they had a system that worked better than the official (Good Game Play)... It's popularity grew and with it the funds to buy official licensing thus pushing EA to make their game good, not just up-to-date... Now the Football gaming (Soccer) market has never been better, great games on each side.
Theres nothing like healthy competition.
PES owns FIFA, there is no competition for PES 
Re: The Video Game Console Thread
AtariLegend wrote:Jameslofton wrote:EA has a monopoly on NFL games. No one can compete with them, so they have no drive to actually create kick ass games. Sega was starting to kill Madden before EA got exclusive rights.
EA used to have that over here with "FIFA Football", but then came along Konami who had no rights over any team or competition, but they had a system that worked better than the official (Good Game Play)... It's popularity grew and with it the funds to buy official licensing thus pushing EA to make their game good, not just up-to-date... Now the Football gaming (Soccer) market has never been better, great games on each side.
Theres nothing like healthy competition.
PES owns FIFA, there is no competition for PES
They owned them every year till 05, since then the FIFA versions have been getting alot better...
What team do you support APE...?
- A Private Eye
- Rep: 77
Re: The Video Game Console Thread
A Private Eye wrote:AtariLegend wrote:EA used to have that over here with "FIFA Football", but then came along Konami who had no rights over any team or competition, but they had a system that worked better than the official (Good Game Play)... It's popularity grew and with it the funds to buy official licensing thus pushing EA to make their game good, not just up-to-date... Now the Football gaming (Soccer) market has never been better, great games on each side.
Theres nothing like healthy competition.
PES owns FIFA, there is no competition for PES
They owned them every year till 05, since then the FIFA versions have been getting alot better...
What team do you support APE...?
Leeds 
You?
Re: The Video Game Console Thread
AtariLegend wrote:A Private Eye wrote:PES owns FIFA, there is no competition for PES
They owned them every year till 05, since then the FIFA versions have been getting alot better...
What team do you support APE...?
Leeds
You?
So you're a proper football fan, you support a Conference team....
Liverpool.
- A Private Eye
- Rep: 77
Re: The Video Game Console Thread
Yep grass roots football for me We'll be back just you wait and see, we're still unbeaten in the league this season, are you?
FIFA might be improving but they still don't come close to PES, the new FIFA is supposedly the best yet though.
Re: The Video Game Console Thread
'Halo 3,' Wii drive robust Sept. game sales
U.S. sales of hardware and software jumped 75 percent
By Scott Hillis
Reuters
Updated: 8:11 p.m. ET Oct 18, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO - U.S. sales of video game hardware and software jumped 75 percent in September, driven by Microsoft Corp's "Halo 3" and Nintendo Co Ltd's Wii console.
(MSNBC is a joint Microsoft - NBC Universal venture.)
Total sales in September, a 5-week retail period, soared to $1.36 billion, up from $779 million a year earlier, according to market research firm NPD.
"Halo 3," the latest installment of Microsoft's flagship franchise, sold 3.3 million copies, more than twice as many as the next nine games combined, the data showed.
The game received such positive buzz that it spurred consumers to buy Xbox 360s just to play it. Microsoft sold nearly 528,000 of the consoles in September.
"True to it's name, the game rubbed off on hardware sales too '” the Xbox 360 realized its best month ever in unit hardware sales outside last holiday season," NPD analyst Anita Frazier said in a statement.
Microsoft said "Halo 3" set the stage for a steady flow of highly anticipated games through the holidays.
"People keep asking me, is it all about 'Halo'? It's about the games. We've got a great lineup of games and it just keeps coming. A game of a month of system-sellers isn't going to hurt our business," said Microsoft spokesman David Dennis.
The "Halo" effect did not dim enthusiasm for Nintendo's Wii, which sold 501,000 units, the most since last December.
The Wii has been the best-selling console this year, thanks to its low price and ability to appeal to gamers outside the traditional young male audience.
"The Wii went up against the self-proclaimed 'biggest entertainment launch ever' and we emerged with our best month of the year," Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo of American, told Reuters.
"They fired their bullet and our gun is loaded and ready to fire throughout the holidays," Fils-Aime said.
Nintendo's "Wii Play," which is bundled with an extra Wii controller, was the number two title, selling 282,000 copies.
Sony Corp's PlayStation 3 continued to languish in third place with sales of 119,000 units. With a price tag of up to $600, the PS3 is the priciest of the new consoles due partly to its inclusion of a high-definition Blu-ray DVD player.
The company said it would introduce a new PS3 model for $400 and drop the price of the high-end version to $500.
"Next month, with the PS3 price reduction, we should see a notable increase in sales of that platform," Frazier said.
Sony's "Heavenly Sword" was number 10 on the list of top-sellers, moving 139,000 copies.
Electronic Arts, the world's biggest games publisher, had three games in the top 10, led by the PlayStation 2 version of "Madden NFL 08" at fourth place with 205,000 copies.
Copyright 2007 Reuters. Click for restrictions.
Re: The Video Game Console Thread
Nintendo tops EA in annual industry list
Game Developer magazine added reputation feedback to methodology
By Kristin Kalning
Games editor
Updated: 9:36 p.m. ET Oct 19, 2007
This year, Mario trumps 'Madden.'
Maybe not in overall revenues, but according to the top 20 publisher's list, put out annually by Game Developer Magazine, Nintendo leveled up on Electronic Arts this year.
How? It wasn't pure financials, although Nintendo was competitive in that respect. And it wasn't due to number of releases: Nintendo shipped just 32 games last year. EA shipped 116.
But this year, for the first time, the list-compiling people at Game Developer decided to add in another factor '” reputation. They asked game industry professionals to rate publishers and leave comments about them. Based on those results, Nintendo got the brass ring.
'Nintendo is a really well-regarded company in the industry right now,' says the magazine's publisher, Simon Carless. 'Electronic Arts has some reputation problems.'
Nintendo's George Harrison says the company is 'pleased to be recognized' but in the same breath said 'consumer recognition is the thing that's most important to us, and drives our business strategies.'
And EA? They're not buying it. They point out that the difference between the rankings of the two top companies is less than 3 percent '” hardly an upset. And they say that adding a squishy thing like reputation into the methodology undermines the validity of the survey.
'Our claim as being the number one publisher in the world remains undisputed,' says EA spokesperson Holly Rockwood. 'This claim is based on revenue and purely from a business perspective '” it is what we are measured by on the street. '
But Carless says there's more than one way to go about ranking top publishers. Revenues are important, sure. But companies that ship games on multiple platforms '” 'Madden 08,' for instance '” have a built in advantage. He says adding reputation to the mix evened things out a bit '” and made things more interesting.
'The list is based on opinion, which is one of the things that makes it entertaining,' he says. 'Any top list is necessarily subjective. But alongside the subjectiveness, there is lots of salient data.'
The magazine used five different criteria to compile its rankings: Reputation, revenues, number of releases, average review score ratings and detailed responses from developers who'd worked directly with the companies. The magazine tracked data from September 2006 to August of this year, and put out the call for anonymous comments on their Web portal, gamasutra.com, at the end of this summer.
Because the comments are anonymous, there's no way to know for sure that a grouse about Konami's salary package, for example, actually came from someone who works at Konami. Or that EA's negative reputation responses weren't just from someone with an axe to grind. But Carless says that he's confident that they received honest responses.
'We tracked IP addresses to make sure that all the responses weren't from the same person,' he says.
That did happen in one case: NCSoft. The staff at the magazine noticed that a lot of the positive responses about the PC publisher were coming from the company's Korean headquarters. So, they docked the company down to an 'average' reputation rating.
For the record, NCSoft denies that the voting was an organized effort.
"If people want to participate individually, they're welcome to do so," said company spokesperson Mike Crouch.
Here are some other interesting developments in this year's top publishers list:
# Sony dropped four slots this year, from No. 4 in 2006 to No. 8 in the most recent ranking. This is mostly due to fewer releases, but Carless says reputation hurt them too. Although developers were asked to comment specifically on the software side of the business, the company carries around 'reputational baggage' from the beleaguered PlayStation 3.
# Microsoft saw its ranking slip three slots, to No. 9, due to a limited number of releases that garnered mixed reviews from critics. 'Gears of War' was the first big hit for the Xbox 360, which helped keep them in the top 10. Developers gave the company high marks on the reputation part of the survey, but detailed feedback saw criticism of the company's organizational structure. (And as always, I must point out that MSNBC is a joint Microsoft - NBC Universal venture.)
# French publisher Ubisoft shimmied up the rankings this year, from No. 8 to No. 4. Carless says the company was smart to see the potential in casual games, and has enjoyed strong sales from 'Dog/Catz' relaunch and 'Rayman Raving Rabbids.' The company was second only to Nintendo on the reputation survey, but took some hits from external partners on the detailed feedback. The magazine has offered up the Ubisoft profile as a freebie on its gamedevresearch.com Web site, as an incentive to sell the rest of the report.
# And finally, a moment of silence: Atari, so dominant in the 70s and 80s, has dropped off the list. Declining revenues and a poor showing on the survey contributed to its exit.
So, does this annual ranking impact what you, the consumer, see on the retail shelves? Not directly. But companies with good reputations attract smart people. Ideally, that leads to better games.
What do you think of the top 20 list? How does it match up with the publishers that you like the best? Weigh in on our discussion board.
© 2007 MSNBC Interactive
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21380484/
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© 2007 MSNBC.com
Re: The Video Game Console Thread
Yeah, Nintendo is reclaiming the throne. I don't think anything can stop it.
I'm glad that Sony continues to get negative remarks everywhere. I don't hate Sony. Far from it. The first and second Playstation did great things for the industry. However, ps3 needs to be discontinued. It has been a clusterfuck from the beginning, and will never dig itself out of the hole they are in. They need to scrap it and start fresh with a new console. If/when they launch a new console, they need to let ps3 owners get a huge discount on it and start mending their relationship with its dying fanbase.
The atari name needs to be retired. Its not even really atari. Other companies have bought the name over the years. The name doesn't hold any power, influence, or mystique anymore, and its foolish to continue it.
