One of the criticisms leveled at Square Enix as of late is their games no longer appeal to a Western audience. So they’re opening a studio in Canada.
Uh, problem solved?
Moving the deck chairs
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Category Archives: Stuck in a Basement
Weepy
If at first you don’t succeed, just call it a legacy platform.
Lessons not learned
The video game industry at large would be wise to read—and hopefully learn from, although I’m not optimistic—this GQ article called “The Day the Movies Died.”
Video game sales numbers are down, you see, and there are a heck of a lot of numbers in the “hotly anticipated” titles set to launch in 2011.
Jaded
Jade Raymond: Still beautiful, still talented. I just wish her shop was working on something besides a franchise or a sequel.
Indicative of a larger problem with this industry, perhaps, but that’s nothing new.
Irrelevant
Add “region-free” to the list of nerd buzzwords (like “open” and “walled garden”) that get in a product’s “negative” category in the months before it comes out and are then are utterly forgotten when everyone realizes 99.9% of the owners couldn’t give a shit.
Musclehead
Either Sony has learned nothing about what the majority of people want from their handhelds and consoles, or they’re positioning the upcoming PSP 2 as a high-powered enthusiast’s device not meant for the masses.
Music lames
Viacom unloads a turd.
Maturity
What, no hardcore gamer outcry over IGN’s 8.5 review score for Call of Duty: Black Ops? Did the Internet suddenly grow up when I wasn’t looking?
E for Everyone
Activision’s insane Call of Duty: Black Ops commercial—you know the one with all sorts of people from every walk of life playing war—perfectly encapsulates how clueless the industry is about approaching non-traditional gamers.
The CoD franchise is a marketing machine, obviously, but it’s not for everyone. Showing chubby girls and Kobe Bryant blowing shit up isn’t how you market games to people who have never played games before.
Platforming
Kirby’s a nice treat and Donkey Kong Country Returns is trending positive for all the right reasons.
So, great games, but they’re still “just” platformers. Why are third party developers so afraid of capitalizing on this cash cow?