Epic's Mark Rein Expounds On The Revolution 115
nb caffeine writes "Epic's Mark Rein is shooting his mouth off again, this time bashing the Revolution controller and EA's management style. This seems to be a recurring theme with him." From the article: "I guarantee you there's going to be lots of people who say the whole reason for this game is this controller, we made the perfect game for the controller. And all it'll be is about the controller, and not necessarily a great game...I've heard EA and Activision make absolutely ridiculous statements about, 'Oh, it's going to take 30 million dollars to make a game and we need 300 people' - that's just a bunch of bullsh... They're just covering up for their own management and incompetence. Or mismanagement I should say."
Single Console owners what a business is made on? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you have to make your business be only about those who own ONLY your console? That's like asking PS2 owners how many of them don't also own a gaming pc and saying it's hard for Sony to make a business on that percentage.
This guy is an idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
That's just what I want to think when I am going to drop half a grand on a new video game console. Just fine is another way of saying, "nothing new." And that begs the question - why not just stick with the current XBox?
Another gem on the completely unscientific sampling method of who in attendance only owned Gamecubes: "Hard to make a business on less than 10 per cent,"
Nintendo is in the black. Sony and MS have not made money with the PS2 or the XBox. I would say that making a business doesn't have to be measured by market share - instead focusing on profitability. Nintendo profits. That's a good business.
Hard to make a business on 10 percent? (Score:4, Insightful)
Um, yeah, Mark... (Score:5, Insightful)
You know that D-pad on the 360 controller you're holding? Nintendo did that. Vibration? Nintendo. Shouder buttons? Nintendo.
Just a thought.
Re:This guy is an idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
Bizarre Definition of Failure (Score:5, Insightful)
Rein then conducted a quick audience survey to find out how many people present owned a GameCube - and found that rather a large number of hands were raised.
He then asked everyone who also ate at McDonald's in the past week to put their hands down - and concluded that under ten per cent of the audience were Cube owners who hadn't eaten at McDonald's recently.
"Hard to make a business on less than 10 per cent," Rein said.
Gimick!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Rein then conducted a quick audience survey to find out how many people present owned a GameCube - and found that rather a large number of hands were raised.
He then asked everyone who also owned a PS2 or Xbox to put their hands down - and concluded that under ten per cent of the audience were Cube owners only.
"Hard to make a business on less than 10 per cent," Rein said.
Who would listen to someone who has such poor logic skills? If he were to switch the systems around would he be saying "Hard to make a business on less than 15 per cent" (in reference to the PS2 or XBox) because that is the reality; if you throw in a gaming PC I bet the number would be under 10% for any system you choose. [And don't say that the PS2 has sold uber-billions of units more than the XBox or Gamecube, If you look at the number of PS2s that have had a new game (rented or purchased) played on them in the past 12 months it would likely only be 1.5-2 times as many as there are Gamecubes/XBoxes. This is because a lot of PS2s were sold as cheap DVD players, are only used by pirates, or have died from the famous disc-read error]
Any developer who is worth listening to should be supporting Nintendo (at least in spirit); at one point in time every new game style was just a gimick.
Grand Theft Auto was just a gimick
The Sims were just a gimick
Tomb Raider was just a gimick
Mario 64 was just a gimick
Starfox was just a gimick
Wolfenstein 3D was just a gimick
Super Mario Bros. was just a gimick
Donkey Kong was just a gimick
Pong was just a gimick
It is through time and refinement that a gimicky game becomes a whole new genre all to itself
Re:Hard to make a business on 10 percent? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong though, that 10% number is complete BS.
For the next generation, what this really comes down to is whether the Revolution controller is better for FPSes than the XBox/PS one. If it isn't, then his thinking is on track, as most gamers would buy the game for their other system, instead of the Revolution. If it is, then his reasoning is bogus and the game would be profitable on the Revolution (assuming that the Revolution sells well).
Re:Single Console owners what a business is made o (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm having so much fun with my DS I'm going to have to try out the Revolution. The Metroid demo is just amazing, it works so much better than I expected. I'm very curious to see if they can make that TV remote like controller work.
Re:Troll? I don't think so. More like businessman (Score:3, Insightful)
The same thing could be said about Generals in WWI. Just because this is your profession, may not automatically mean you know what the front line conditions are like unless you participate in it.
When he has actually played a Nintedo revolution FPS game using the controller then he may judge it.
Re:Speaking of blowhards... (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, I'm sorry if you misunderstood me. I wasn't trying to say that it was impossible to emulate n-dimensional controls using a PC (for relatively small n). Of course it's possible. I can divide the keys on the keyboard into pairs and map each pair to a dimension and wind up with something like a 40D game (I didn't bother counting keys). My point was that the Revolution Controller has all of the mechanisms that one would need to play your average FPS (FPS, not flying-around-ship-shooter, since Mark Rein was talking about FPS's.), and that it actually provides new functions that aren't easily emulated by a PC. On a PC, if you wanted to reach into your screen, you could either get a 3D mouse, map two keyboard buttons to handle the task, or use your mousewheel. 3D mice aren't pervasive (meaning that your average game developer could not assume that their customers possessed the hardware), and mapping the keys splits your aiming mechanisms between two hands (and may also interfere with moving and aiming at the same time). The only plausible solution I can see is to use the mousewheel, but there are still some serious problems with it if you want to do anything more complicated than zoom a sniper rifle.
This isn't so with the Revolution Controller. You can use it to draw a circle in 3D space in any orientation you can move your hand in. The best you could get with your mouse/mousewheel is a sort of ovally-diamond, and that's if you're particularly coordinated and the circle was rectilinearly aligned to an axis. Many FPS's also have fluid posture and buttons mapped to make your character lean in certain ways. Since the Revolution Controller can also determine its orientation in 3D space, these functions can also become much smoother and more intuitive.
Mark Rein was also specifically talking about consoles. Even though it is possible to create a 40D game on a PC, you are going to have a lot of trouble replicating the experience on an XBox. You don't have any sort of 3D locating device on a normal console controller without pressing non-control stick buttons. (The PS2 clicky analog sticks don't count since you can only move in one direction in the third dimension with them. Also, it's difficult to press them in and move the stick at the same time.) The out-of-the-way buttons can substitute as the third-dimension controls, but normally you have your thumbs on the control sticks and your index fingers on both triggers so that you can fire, so pressing those buttons approaches being ergonomically impossible. The PS2 controller may be able to pull it off (using the secondary triggers), but the index fingers would have to choose between movement or shooting.
There's a reason game devs don't often try to impliment these control schemes.
You say you want the control system that allows you to spin around in circles forever without lifting your hand. Are you sure that's better than the one that can only do one and a half spins, but will never drift or overturn, and which responds instantly and accurately to your hand movements?
People who have actually used the controller have said that it feels completely natural and that they could detect no lag or discrepancies in how it responded to their hand movements. Of course there will be problems if the controller doesn't react quickly or accurately enough, but according to testimony I've read, it w
Re:This guy is an idiot (Score:3, Insightful)
So, what is your idea of a decent game, exactly? And why are you convinced that all other people share your views?
Your question should more accurately read "Then why, when any games I like are advertised, it says Xbox and PS2 at the bottom but never Gamecube?"
If nothing on Gamecube looks interesting to you, then so be it. Just don't assume that other people won't find something there to like.
Or maybe not. (Score:3, Insightful)
Or maybe you missed it. The point against this point is that the 10% quote holds true for all consoles, since most households own more than one console by now. If he had asked his audience who owned an Xbox, and then discounted those who also owned either a PS2 or a Cube, he'd have gotten the same 10% result.
And yeah, you can play FPS with current gamepads. It's just that you can play them better with a keyboard and a mouse.
Lastly, as others have pointed out, Epic gets money from Microsoft. So maye you're right about his being a businessman.